SCRAPPY APPLES BY REBECCA LATHAM

 

I just finished a project!  From start to finish, I guess it was a little less than a week in the making.  I'm calling it "Scrappy Apples" because it is made from my stash of scraps left over from other quilts, and the quilting design is apples and leaves.

I made this Sixteen Patch quilt for a dear friend that I have never met. That's right - we met on the internet and became friends in real life. We live in different parts of the country, so we have never met in person, but we speak on the phone and text often.

My friend's name is Karen, and the quilt is on its way to her, and she has no idea it is coming. I can't wait to hear from her when it arrives!

 

When I first started designing the quilt with my quilt software, I envisioned the blocks set side by side. But after I made several of them, I reconsidered and changed the setting to "on point" with setting squares in between.

I always appreciate the opportunity to use the new design wall that Bill and I made a few months ago. It is insulation board with cotton batting glued to it. The blocks just stick to it naturally and you can rearrange to your heart's content. Here is where I kept playing with the color placement until I was happy with it.

 

With the top completed, it was ready for the longarm quilting machine. I was going to do an edge to edge quilting design, but with the large white setting squares, I could not resist the urge to treat each block separately and use the "Apple Orchard" set that I purchased in from Urban Elementz that is all different shapes of apples and leaves. This is Block One, in progress, which is a square design.

 

 

Block Two is a circular shape with just leaves, and I used it in the sixteen patch blocks. I had so much fun with these blocks, because the swirlies placed themselves on four of the small colored blocks. What a crazy random happenstance!

 

 

 

 

 

The photo above shows how the quilt top, quilt backing and quilt batting are loaded on the long arm machine. I took this picture after I had only been quilting for about an hour. I worked on this all day, and it took over eight hours to finish!

 

 

 

 

This motif is Triangle One, and is specially designed just for triangle patches in the quilt.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Triangle Two is a different design, leaves without an apple, that I used in the smaller four corner setting triangles. I used a leaf pattern for the small border, and it is also just leaves with no apples. This was not part of the apples set, but had similar shaped leaves and worked very nicely.

 

 

Because the borders can only be worked from side to side, doing a border like this necessitates taking the quilt off the frame, turning it, and reattaching it to do the last two borders.

 

Originally, I planned on using a printed fabric for the quilt backing, but decided to use white. First of all, I had a lot of this fabric on hand that I had purchased at Hancock's of Paducah a few years ago. It is 100% cotton, of course, and it is a soft as butter! So I knew that it would make a soft and comfortable backing. Secondly, and maybe more importantly, I wanted a back that would show off the quilting. Mission accomplished! A printed backing would have looked pretty, but the quilting would not have shown up as much.

 

 

 

Here is the finished quilt, ready to be delivered to Karen. I really enjoyed working on it, and hope that I have the chance to make something like this again soon.

I really need to use up some more of my scraps!