Mike's Quilts

On this page:

Mike's Log Cabin
Eureka! Feathers!

I made this quilt for my husband to use as a throw (it measures 45 1/4" x 50 1/4"). It took me a long time to come up with what I wanted to make for him, but I knew it had to have purple in it, since that's his favorite color! I finally settled on this Log Cabin variation, giving a woven effect; the layout for it was sent to me by another quilter online. I then translated that layout into a QuiltPro pattern (available here) to make my life easier. The quilt is machine pieced and machine quilted, and I finished it in January of 2000.

I used yellow for the center of each log cabin square, just to brighten things up a bit. Since Mike loves to garden, I machine quilted the names of his various crops into the white borders. This includes chiles, tomatoes, peaches, and lots of other fruits and vegetables. The logs in the pattern represent the logs he used for his square foot gardening, and there are lizards quilted into some of the blocks; they're to keep the insects away! Even the back of the quilt is garden-themed, as it's a vegetable and garden-tool print.

Eureka! Feathers!

This is the second quilt I've made specifically for Mike. It started in a class with Jackie Robinson at Quilt Camp in the Pines in 2003; that's where she taught the pattern for the top. I've made this one in what she calls a lap quilt size, though it's the biggest lap quilt I've ever seen. ;) It measures approximately 70" x 87"! After I'd finished the top, it sat around for a long time while I debated how I was going to quilt it; I knew I wanted curves and that the curves would probably have to be feathers; but I was put off by the prospect of having to mark all of those feathers for quilting. However, Kathy Sandbach then taught a class (the Infinite Feather) at Quilt Camp in 2004, and that was what I needed. I now knew how to do feathers without all of the painful pre-marking. I quilted feathers in matching threads in almost every section of the quilt except for the parts that look like trees; those were quilted with a pine tree motif -- sort of. ;) I also did different motifs in two of the teal/turquoise sections. The cream log cabins have feathers in undulating rows; the aqua stars have feathered wreaths; the purple log cabins have rows of single feathers; the cream feathered star points have feathered sprays. The quilt was machine pieced and quilted, and I finished it in October, 2004. Here is the front:

And here are a couple of details of the back so you can see some of the quilting, which is pretty heavy:

Home