QUILT SIZE | Louise Naples Quiltmaker

Crazy Quilt

31 05 2014

This crazy quilt evolved over many years, as I kept adding embroidery, beading, buttons, and bows, braid, lace, and charms. The panels were done as individual twelve-inch blocks, and it was hard to finally stop, deciding when “enough” was “enough”. That’s the thing about crazy quilts! I decided to join the blocks with dark green grosgrain ribbon, and back it with black velvet. It is now a wall hanging.

A long labor of love.

Detail

Patches of silk, brocade, velvet, toile, and cotton

Anything goes!

Blocks laid together before joining with grosgrain

Lots and lots of beads

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Categories : Brights, Earth Tones, Geometrics, Uncategorized, Wall Hanging

Outer Space

31 05 2014

This bright quilt was made for my grandson Estifanos, who at a very young age, was fascinated with the moon. I found a panel of fifteen different space images, cut it up into individual pictures. I selected vivid primary colored prints of suns and stars for the frames, and sashing, and finished with an over all yellow backing of suns. It is out of this world, and he loves it.

Details of some panels

Phases of the moon

Saturn and corner detail

Reverse, images of the smiling sun.

The Shuttle

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Categories : Basic Squares, Brights, Crib, Lap Blanket, Primary Colors, Triangles, Uncategorized, Wall Hanging

Boy Blue – Take II

25 05 2013

This quilt was made from additional fabric leftovers from a prior quilt. I recut the wedges into narrower slices, and put them together on cloth foundations, sew and flip style. Playing on my design wall, I decided upon alternated directions for the blocks, then just framing the quilt top in red, white and blue. It has a bright, patriotic look.

I mitered the corners of the three borders.

Portrait

Closeup of blocks on design wall.

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Categories : Brights, Crib, Geometrics, Primary Colors

Amish With A Twist

25 05 2013

This dramatic king-sized quilt in Amish colors was designed by Nancy Rink. It was a kit in many segments, twelve different classic blocks, using black as the backdrop. The borders contain stylized appliqué flowers. The bright pieced inner border and sashing blocks brighten it up. I sent it to Melanie Vaughn at The City Quilter in NYC for long-arm quilting. It was too big for me to manage on my domestic sewing machine. It was a most enjoyable project.

Corner detail

The blocks

Close-up of connecting lines

Detail of the variegated colored thread Quilting

Crumpled Quilt!

Reverse side: B & W butterflies all over

Another corner view

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Categories : Brights, Geometrics, King Size, Primary Colors

Fallen Leaves

27 02 2013

This mini quilt, constructed from twenty-five different fabrics, plus the borders, was the result of a class at City Quilter, called ‘Little Bits”. The design is by Cindi Edgerton, and reminds me of walking in the woods in the deep Fall, with all the magnificent colors on the ground. The project was “paper pieced”, with very careful attention to the placement of the colors and bits. The little piles of each color were placed in a precise order because each one “borrowed” some bits from adjacent piles. It was a very interesting project, and resulted in a delightful table topper for Autumn. I found in my stash the perfect border, of Autumn Leaves.

Portrait

Carefully placed sets of pieces

Color list and placement chart help keep things in order.

Tessellating Leaves

Corner detail

Closeup of leaves

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Categories : Earth Tones, Geometrics, Table Topper, Wall Hanging

Baby Boy Blue II

26 02 2013

This quilt was made for a grand nephew, Conor. I wanted to use a large number of light to medium blue fabrics, and break it up with splashes of red, and really dark blue. Running the wedge shaped patches in sequence created an even flow of color and balance. Sashing the rows with a white print with red and blue stars, and framing it in dark blue tied it all together. I quilted each patch with curved lines, which created a flowing motif across the quilt.

1 Portrait

Reverse side

3 Quilting detail

2 Closeup

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Categories : Brights, Crib, Strips

Matched Pair for a Matched Pair

26 02 2013

When my niece Meaghan gave birth to a set of identical twin girls, I came up with this color scheme, lively and bright. I used a pattern by Liz Porter, of Fons & Porter. The fabrics were a matched set of precut squares, transformed into “snowballs” by the addition of flipped yellow triangles in all four corners of each precut patch. The quilts are bordered in a dark pink floral, and backed with an allover pastel pink floral. Each “snowball” was quilted with a five petal flower. To enable Meaghan to tell the quilts apart, I just arranged the blocks in a different order.

Reverse side

On the design Wall

Shifting the patches for the second quilt.

4 Bright Colors for Babies

Portrait photo

“Snowball” closeup

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Categories : Basic Squares, Brights, Crib

Simple Symmetry

15 06 2012

At Paula Nadelstern’s all day workshop at City Quilter in NYC, I ventured into the world of art quilting. Using a bilaterally symmetrical fabric as the basis, (Paternista designed by Paula); fussy cutting identical squares; then cutting and rearranging them, enjoying the magic and surprise at the results, made this a fascinating class. The complex designs that resulted were far removed from the original “mother” fabric – kaleidoscopic ideas that resolve into tiles.

Portrait of completed quilt. All tile-style rows are cut from the same mother cloth

detail of one color band

Another color band detail

Pink band detail

Cut from the same cloth but oh how different

And yet another

Corner detail inner border cut from original mother fabric

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Categories : Basic Squares, Brights, Wall Hanging

New York Beauty

15 06 2012

: 1 NY Beauty portrait

: 2 NY Beauty process 1

: 3 NY Beauty process 2

: 4 NY Beauty process 3

: 5 NY Beauty point detail

: 6 NY Beauty on the design wall

: 7 NY Beauty close-up

: 8 NY Beauty border-backing

At an all-day Linda Hahn workshop at City Quilter in NYC, I enjoyed my inaugural experience in Paper Piecing. I always wanted to learn how to make those really sharp points as used in NY Beauty, but was intimidated by the technique. Linda’s class took the mystery away, and I felt emboldened. The fabrics all came out of my stash, and I was thrilled that I had a batik in the colors and pattern to really frame and enhance the central theme. There are many ways one could lay out the individual blocks, and after much “playing” I decided on this one.

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Categories : Curves, Earth Tones, Wall Hanging

“T” is for Tony – Tessellating Ts

14 06 2012

: 1 Tessellating T’s portrait

: 2 Tessellating T’s close-up

: 3 Tessellating T’s detail

: 4 Tessellating T’s on display

: 5 Tessellating T’s back

: 6 Back detail

: 7 Tessellating T’s back detail

I saw this pattern in several quilting books, and knew it would be perfect for my brother Tony. He is a technocrat and I knew he would like the interlocking tessellating pattern. I first selected many earth tone fabrics for the Ts, but thought it was too dull, so I added several primary jewel tones, and that brought it to life. The bold border of a black and tan zebra strip gave it the masculine feel I was seeking. I used the border fabric for the back as well with the addition of two vertical bands of triangles, for a two sided quilt.

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Categories : Basic Squares, Brights, Triangles, Twin

Louise Naples Quiltmaker