We’ve had so many requests for finished quilts! In response to those requests, we have decided to start featuring completed quilts, and making them available to you for purchase. Just in time for Valentine’s Day, our Love Quilt is the first quilt in a new venture for Candy Apple Quilts! This quilt measures 60 inches by 53 inches — just the right size for snuggling with your sweetheart. There are eight different shades of red and pink 100% cotton fabrics. The border features a double heart stitched in each section, with a scalloped outer edge. The binding is finished completely by hand, with the quality that you have come to expect from Candy Apple Quilts. Small hearts are stitched in the center area — and the center square has a light feather design. Please click on each of the pictures below to enlarge them, and look at the fine details. This item has a 100% satisfaction guarantee! If you aren’t happy for any reason, just return the quilt to Candy Apple Quilts in it’s original condition, and you will receive a refund of your purchase price. Order yours today to receive it in time for Valentine’s Day. Just 299.99 plus shipping. Only one available, so order quickly!

ITEM SOLD — PLEASE WATCH FOR OTHER QUILTS AVAILABLE SOON!

I received a Quilt In a Cup kit from my friend Dawn the other day — and it was so much fun to make! The kit comes with a white inner liner, a clear acrylic outside piece, batting, a template, a lid and a straw.

You can use any scraps you have, and place them however you would like on the batting. Then just use a log cabin method of adding pieces in a clock-wise fashion until you have covered the entire piece of batting.

You only need to finish one side with a binding because the other side won’t show from the outside. Then collect all of your pieces, and a bottle of white glue. I didn’t follow all of the directions, because I didn’t want the piece permanently glued inside of the cup. I want to be able to change my little quilted piece with the seasons. The only place that I used glue was down the length of the side binding. When I was all done, my finished cup was ready to fill with coffee (or a cold beverage). This was so much fun to make!

The secret to an amazing quilt? The inside. That’s right — the part that no one can see. Connie pressed each tiny block in this quilt, and paid a lot of attention to the squaring of each block, and the direction of her seams. When she joined each block together she made sure to alternate her seam allowances, and there are no lumpy areas in this quilt. Waiting until the end of piecing the quilt top) or even the piecing of just one row SEEMS like a time-saver, but in reality you save time by taking care of each tiny issue along the way. This reminds me of something a house painter explained to me years ago. “A wall can only look good painted if it’s smooth before the paint is applied. If you paint over all of the lumps and bumps, trying to hide them, you’ll still be able to see them in the end.”

Adding a feathered over-all design to this quilt in a nice even density enables the eye to go to Connie’s accurate piecing and enjoy her vast selection of fabrics. It also makes the back of the quilt as pretty as the front. This quilt measures 103 inches square, and will be used and washed frequently. An over-all design is perfectly suited for a high-use quilt.

Connie’s quilt also reminds me of something that George Washington said because I firmly believe in this principal…. people won’t remember how QUICKLY you did something, they will remember how WELL you did it. Relax and take a little extra time pressing along the way, and enjoy your piecing. Years later, you’ll be happy you did!

I love vintage quilts, and I love 1930′s reproduction fabrics! This pretty quilt was done by Susan Mars, owner of All About Blanks, where you can see the most gorgeous linens and holiday items. Susan is so creative, and she created the layout for this quilt by combining the best ideas from different sources and sprinkling them with her imagination!

I asked Susan how she created this adorable quilt, and here is what she has to say…

“The idea for this quilt began as a Block of the month club from Grandma’s Attic.” Wanting to expand upon the idea, and do something fun with the setting, Susan went to Block Central and found an idea in the 2008 “Somewhere In Time” quilt. Says Susan, “…it worked out PERFECTLY for my 1930′s block of the month.  I made it a little scrappy, using a variety of the 1930′s repros for my sashing.  I adore the way it turned out.  I have always wanted to do a 1930′s reproduction quilt …”.

Susan, I love your approach!

Christmas is my favorite time of year, and this quilt tops my list of things that can make me start singing Christmas carols! While working on this beautiful quilt, I could imagine cookies baking, twinkling lights, and the sound of jingle bells.

Bev did a beautiful job piecing this quilt from The Quilt Company, and it was truly a joy for me to do the quilting on it! The quilt is called Holly Lane, and you can see it here. We decided to use Christmas bells, holly leaves, hearts, and stars in the separate borders to add even more fun to the quilt. Each of the four corners has a crisp snowflake. Bev still has a little more work to do. There are red buttons to be sewn on all the way around the outer border, tiny door knobs to add, slower buttons in the windows, and hand-stitched smoke from one of the chimneys. A dark green binding will finish the edges of this quilt. Each house features a layer of high-loft polyester batting to make it really stand out from the background.

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I can just imagine how this happened….. Linda’s mother started piecing this Lone Star back in 1939. Sometimes, life gets in the way, and she set it aside for “someday”.

Years go by, and Mom passed away. Linda and her sister were going through some of Mom’s possessions, and they found this project — that was back in the 1980′s. Linda decided that she would be the one to finish this quilt… for Mom.

Years pass again, and the project was set aside… again. Just recently, Linda decided to finish this quilt for her daughter. When she looked at the quilt top, she noticed that the white fabrics were starting to disintegrate from age. She lovingly replaced all of the white fabric, and brought it over for me to quilt it for her.

I was honored (and thrilled!) to be able to finish this quilt! When the binding is put on, it will be displayed with antique photos of…. Mom. How fitting.

Have you ever started a project, and then …. just sort of… lost interest in it? That’s what happened with this challenging Double Wedding Ring project. Maureen started it a few years ago, and then moved on to other projects before she had a chance to finish this. She intended to make the quilt bed-sized, and was using a set of acrylic templates to make the job easier. Even with the aid of the templates, Maureen packed up the project for a “rainy day”, and never went back to it. She was chatting with her friend Pat recently, and Pat said that she had a wedding coming up, and would like to make a Double Wedding Ring as a gift for the couple. Knowing how challenging this would be, Pat decided a lap-sized quilt would be a nice alternative to a bed-sized version. Maureen and Pat worked together to finish this beautiful Double Wedding Ring quilt, and I’m sure the bride and groom will be very happy!

Using Creative Studio, version 4, enabled me to size each design specifically for each tiny section of this quilt. The process was pure joy!

SID refers to a common expression in quilting — Stitch In the Ditch. SID can make quilters tremble with fear, because it’s a real challenge to stitch exactly in a ditch without wobbling. Many quilters will go to great lengths to avoid learning the process, and some quilters will turn down any job that involves SID.

If you are using a computerized system, you may have been taught to click in lots of places along your seam in an effort to have your stitching match the quilt’s slight imperfections. This can consume a TON of time, and it just isn’t necessary. Think about it logically — a straight line consists of only two points, the beginning and the end. Clicking anywhere in between these two points implies that the line is not straight, and that you don’t want it to be stitched straight.

I know what you are thinking….. “But my customer hasn’t sewn a straight seam!” Or, maybe you are just thinking that SID takes too much time because you have been making too many clicks to accomplish your straight lines. Or “My customer hasn’t ironed her quilt correctly!”.

Ironing is a topic better saved for another day, but if the quilt top you are getting ready to work on has tragically wobbly seams due to an ironing technique, I’d like to suggest that you spend a few minutes correcting the problems before you mount the quilt on your machine.

In the following example, Linda has sewn perfect seams, and her ironing technique is fantastic, so no issues there.

Linda wanted a slight custom treatment of this quilt, with just a bit of SID. She wanted to highlight the gold areas, and have the striped sections recede just a bit. In order to accomplish this, we decided to do SID only around the gold sections, and have the “logs” all blend together as one area.

If you look verrryyyy closely, you can see that there was just one seam that wasn’t ironed perfectly.(And I really had to look hard to find this one! LOL)  I could have clicked about 6 times in order to make the stitching follow the slight wobble, but then that “unstraight” line would be obvious on the back of the quilt which was done in a solid color with contrasting thread.

As you can see from the picture, a better approach to take is to click at the beginning and the end only. If you slow down the speed of the machine just a bit, the fabric can be manipulated with your hands as the machine moves, resulting in a nearly perfect straight line.  Straight lines always look better on the back of the quilt.

The larger flower motifs follow the gold sections, and the smaller designs are in the striped section. The denser quilting makes the stripes recede, which is what Linda wanted for this quilt.

Many people wander whether they should do all of the SID first, and then go back and fill in the areas inside. I don’t have a particular preference — it all depends upon the quilt. If there is a lot of horizontal SID, I like to do that first to stabilize the entire piece. I may do SID near the upper border(s), and then more near the belly bar, knowing that the entire area is now stable and I can “wander around” in an efficient manner. If the SID is mostly vertical, I don’t worry as much as long as I keep an eye on keeping the quilt square as I work. If there is diagonal SID, as there was in this quilt, I do prefer to do that first so that everything is held in place before the designs are entered.

On your next small project, try incorporating SID. Even if you don’t use it between every block, SID can be very effective making certain areas recede and allowing other areas to move forward. You will be happier with the backs of your quilts, too. Keep in mind that a straight line only has one point at the beginning, and one at the end, and your project should move along quickly. Mastering SID is something that takes practice, but you will be very happy when you have mastered the technique.

This embroidery collection from Priscilla Madsen of Madsen Originals is one of my favorites. If you look closely, you can see beautiful birds in each of the embroideries. Priscilla wanted quilting that would emphasize the gorgeous fabric she used for this quilt. Here is a screen shot of the layout that we used:

Each embroidered block has a small stipple, combined with a little bit of stitching following the embroidery to hold the layers together. If you click on each of the pictures, you can see close-ups of the designs that are included in this collection called “Calligraphy Art”. You can also see the back of the quilt, which shows the designs that were placed in the blocks that were not embroidered.

Minkee can be tricky to work with on a longarm machine. Keeping the stretch parallel to the rollers will help to keep the stretchiness of a wild Minkee backing  tamed. Also, keeping the side clamps very loose —- so loose that you will think that the quilt top looks rather baggy —- will also help you to avoid having the backing shrink up when you remove the quilt from the machine. The most important tip I like to pass along is: REMEMBER NOT TO ROLL THE QUILT TOO TIGHTLY.  If that’s the only tip you remember, you will avoid a lot of headaches.

Backings pieced from Minkee should be avoided if possible. Because of the thickness of the Minkee, the seam on the backing can show through to the front of the quilt. Also, it’s a bit difficult to piece Minkee without having it slide around, causing a backing that looks square on the table to look like this on the machine:

If this backing had been pieced out of any other fabric but Minkee, I would have removed it from the machine and done the piecing over. As it was, I held my breath and let the extra fabric be absorbed by the dense snowflakes that would be quilted on it.

If you have any frustrations during the process of working with Minkee, just slide your hand across the wonderful fabric and you will be guaranteed to smile!

If you would like to experiment with a little touch of Minkee, but don’t want to use it for the entire quilt, consider using it for your appliqué fabric. Leslie brought over a quilt that had adorable elephants appliquéd on it, and she used various pieces of Minkee as the appliqué fabric. She used flat Minkee, striped, nubby… a little bit over everything. The elephants look so cute with the little bows on their heads!