My daughter asked for a king-size but simple quilt, just subway tiles in shades of taupe. She gave me a cushion cover in the color she likes, so I used it to pick the fabrics. Then I took a few of them and made two cushion covers, one in simple quilting that is like bricks and the other using a panto that she liked.
She picked the panto. Now to get all those bricks cut out. They will finish at 3" x 9" so that is a lot of cutting. With my neck and shoulders acting up, I can only do a few at a time.
Hubby enlarged my design wall, so that is a blessing!
I'd like to find a couple more darker taupes though. Not an easy task.
Some of what I bought has a bit of texture in it. At first she wanted all solids but that was not possible. Once she saw these samples, she was happy (even though I worried that one of the colors was too brown). Commissions are not always easy, even if they are simple patterns!!
This is my 'cure' or therapy for keeping on when a project takes so much energy... make another project using a panel. This one is simple and cute. I used a panto on it for practice. The only 'extra' is the yellow piping with the red binding. I used the method explained by Susan Cleveland and her excellent tool to help make it.
Our city has a group known as "Basically Babies" who collect a year's worth of items for layettes to give to needy families. Quilts are welcome, so this one is designated for them.
I have several other quilts ready to go on the longarm, so back at it...
That panto with the straight lines did manage to get stitched on my quilt. I could not find any solutions (other than buy the software) so tried to watch the laser and stitch it with a ruler. If the panto had been wider than 6" and my machine arm longer than 18" and my body any shorter than 5'4", it would not have worked. As it was, parts required standing on my toes.
Here are the photos. I finished it yesterday and today started applying a facing to finish the edges. I'll post more pictures later.
The pain? My attention wandered as I worked, and while it did, my machine decided to take a bite out of my hand. Sorry, no gross photos. The goose egg went down in a few hours and the black and blue showed up the next day. No blood, but the part that hit me (micro handles) did break the skin. No griping. It was worth it... I think.
LIfe keeps getting in the way of my good intentions - or is it procrastination? I've loaded my GD's quilt and looked at it for several days. Finally, last night I quilted a row across the top border. I'd been practicing with a pantograph for awhile, but this particular design had no practice because my hand/eye coordination finally started to work. I discovered that if I squeeze my body with my elbows, following the lines and getting smooth curves is much easier. So I just jumped in and did it.
This turned out much better than I expected. It is not perfect, but neither is anything else (but God) so I qm delighted. This queen-size has a long way to go, but this border took less than ten minutes, so maybe this will be finished before the end of the year?? Stay tuned...
My daughter asked for a king-size but simple quilt, just subway tiles in shades of taupe. She gave me a cushion cover in the color she likes, so I used it to pick the fabrics. Then I took a few of them and made two cushion covers, one in simple quilting that is like bricks and the other using a panto that she liked.
She picked the panto. Now to get all those bricks cut out. They will finish at 3" x 9" so that is a lot of cutting. With my neck and shoulders acting up, I can only do a few at a time. 
