in the Quilting Studio
This April another beautiful group of quilts has come through our long arm quilting studio. Here are some highlights, including the finished quilt from the border demo earlier this week. Come see!
Aviatrix King Bed Quilt
I was so excited when the customer expressed interest in quilting her Aviatrix quilt with our new Graffiti edge to edge quilting pattern. Such a fun choice!
As this quilt includes linen, which has a looser weave than quilting cotton, it needs denser quilting for durability. Graffiti really shines at this scale. The quilting pattern also has lots of curves but few overlapping lines, which helped it eat up the fullness in the customer's medallion-style quilt.
The newly attached borders definitely helped the quilting stay as flat as possible.
Quilting such a large quilt with fullness issues was challenging, but the end result is so worth it. As I was trimming away the excess backing and batting, I thought how pleased I would be with this finish myself. That's always a good cue that we did right by the quilt!
Vintage Granny Smith by Kristy Daum
In April we were excited to receive orders from a bunch of repeat customers, including Kristy Daum. Our overall quilting volume in April was about the same as in March. We do hope to see an uptick, so return customers are key.
This "Vintage Granny Smith" pattern looks like a fun, quick sew. Kristy says the pattern is in Camille's book, Simple Retro. I selected Continuous Eight quilting, which has a simple, vintage vibe that matches the quilt.
Sometimes less is more. Don't you think?
Log Cabin by Jane Hyeon
Jane sent this gorgeous wedding gift quilt our way. It's such a classic stunner, both the pattern and the color combo.
For quilting, I sent Jane several pattern ideas. She settled on Cathedral, a new pattern I added this April on her behalf. The graceful arches and interlocking design seem fitting for a wedding quilt.
I scaled this pattern to quilt somewhat densely. Even so, the drape on it is wonderful. Curved quilting patterns tend to produce a nicer drape than straight ones, when you quilt densely. And, of course, denser quilting is a good idea when your quilt has lots of thin patchwork pieces.
Custom Quilting
This April we also quilted several custom designs, for myself and for a few customers. Here is a design I put together to compliment a customer's holiday star quilt.
I used a geometric design over the stars in contrasting thread for emphasis. A meandering holly quilting pattern falls over the patchwork squares.
Pricing custom quilting is tricky, but we have set up a pricing base for simple custom quilting. From there I work with customers to come up with a plan and a final quote. I believe as we get more experienced that our custom prices will gradually rise. Actually, we are also still reviewing our regular edge to edge prices. So far we have invested everything we've made back into the company, stockpiling supplies, quilting patterns, investing in education, etc. We hope to see that change soon, so that our business is actually profitable.
Thanks for reading along and for your encouragement! I'm enjoying getting to add these diverse quilts to Stitched in Color's blog space. Thank you for allowing me to share!