Free motion quilting adds depth, texture and artistic expression to an art quilt.  For me, the focus on creating the art quilt itself is one process and the quilting of the quilt top is a different process.  I rarely have any idea about quilt stitching when I’m designing and constructing the actual art quilt.  Often
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I have been experimenting with curved outside edges for my wall art quilts.  Many designs don’t lend themselves to this option because their design works fine as a squared off wall quilt.  But with some of my curved piecing I’m wondering about continuing those curves to the outside edges.  I did this with a recent
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This week I made a fairly simple contemporary design of a sun with a wide variety of yellow, orange, rust, red and maroon fabrics.  I like to use many different fabrics even for the same color groups because I like the effect of the variety of fabrics.  This is a design in which you first
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Now that the festival season is over (for me) I am looking towards the fall holiday season followed by the winter months when I can return to lots of creative work.  Right now I’m focused on making smaller quilts, usually under 2.5 square feet, as this size seems to have better prospects for holiday purchases. 
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When people see my abstract tree quilts, I am often asked if I ever make birch tree art quilts.  I haven’t until now.  I just finished my first one.  My hurdle up until now has been the fabric for the birch trees.  There are many very realistic fabrics out there and some quilters simply cut out
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I hear from people at art festivals that they like a particular quilt but they believe it isn’t big enough for above their bed or above their sofa where they would like some art.  I can easily make larger (wider) quilts, more suitable for above sofa and bed headboards BUT….and this is a big BUT…..people have very specific color
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This week I designed a triptych wall quilt made of all vertical curved piecing.  I used the same 10 fabrics in these three quilts, coordinated so the design and color coordination carries through across the three quilts.  I added another element of “curves” by curving the sides and then matching the curves of the sides to
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CURVED PIECING is one of my favorite characteristics of contemporary quilting.  Traditional quilting relies almost completely on straight edge piecing but unlimited options open up when you begin to sew curves.  Curves can be small wiggles or whole circles though often whole circles are made with four blocks of quarter circles (see quilt in photo).  Curved
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I live in rural central Pennsylvania, traditional quilting central.  We have quilt guilds in just about every county and a bounty of beautiful Amish quilts from our German heritage.  Sometimes to merely suggest designing and creating contemporary quilts feels almost sacrilegious.  But contemporary designs just speak to me! Recently I tried to communicate my passion, interest
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