My First Attempt

January's finished quilt at the show & tell

I am an embroidery design addict. I freely admit it. I buy too many designs that never make it into the gorgeous quilt I envisioned. So to start the year off right, I decided to take just two of those designs and make a simple four block wallhanging quilt. 

Ohio Rose

I started with two Baltimore quilt blocks from the San Francisco Stitch Co., the Ohio and Indiana Roses. I liked the two together because they were both cross designs. Ironically enough, with that huge embroidery library that I haven't stitched, these were designs I had used in a previous quilt. But I love them and they stitch out beautifully. 

Indiana Rose

My two embroidery machines are both Pfaffs, the 2170 and the Creative Vision. Both have a very large embroidery field and I love big blocks. Using my Creative Vision, I quickly appliqued 8 inch designs on a 10 inch square. Big hoops are a great time saver. Having two of the same size is even better. I just run each color stop twice, switching hoops instead of rethreading the machine. Twice the work done in half the time.


I love yellow and blue. Half of my house is decorated in those colors. My mother-in-law gave me the Eleanor Burns "True Blue" fabric collection for Christmas because it features those colors. With my color palette decided, I turned to the design work, my favorite part.


Time to fire up Electric Quilt. Sadly, I design way too many quilts that never make it out of the computer. All I needed in this case was a simple fabric frame around my embroidery blocks. Hah! Instead I ended up with a EQ file that had over 80 possible quilt combinations! (All you EQ addicts know what I'm talking about.) 

I ended up with this rough design from EQ.

After I did the design, I realized I didn't have enough of the fabrics, so there was a time out while I ordered more fabric over the internet. When it arrived, I realized I had ordered the wrong dark blue and had to visit some quilt shops to replace it. More waiting time. January was fast disappearing. 

Back of the quilt

Finally the construction was finished and I needed to do my least favorite part, quilting and binding. I had FusiBoo in my stash which is great for small wall quilts. But I didn't have enough leftover fabric for the backing. I needed to add some to the one big piece I had. So I created a quick row of 9 patches and inserted into the middle of the back. 

Detail of roses

Detail of feathers

Erik installed my fabric mover on my 2170 and I meandered around the embroidered blocks. I am not good at free motion quilting, but part of this challenge is to try new things, so I looked up some info on the web and gave it a try. My stippling turned out pretty good. So I tried a Youtube bed of roses pattern that I saw demonstrated by DayStyle Designs.com. 

She made it look so easy. It wasn't. I did finally get the hang of it, but never really liked it. So I used machine embroidery designs (from Embroidery Library) for the outer border feathers. Now that type of quilting I can do! Voila...One for 12 complete.

Quick, easy, and finished!

Introduction to the Challenge

Last year I created a challenge for my quilting guild to complete those pesky UFOs. For some the challenge helped get those projects off the shelves and onto beds and walls. Sadly, I was unable to complete any UFOs though I did make some progress.

This year I wanted to feel instant accomplishment with my New Year's challenge. I considered scrap quilts or stash busters, but I wanted something that encouraged me to try new techniques and allowed me to spend quality time with my computer doing my favorite thing, designing quilts!

So was born the Twelve 4 Twelve challenge. My goal is to complete 12 original quilts in 12 months. Where possible I wanted to use my stash and either new techniques or techniques that always inspire me such as machine embroidery or printing photographs on fabric.


Join me in my challenge or just read my reports. Either way, welcome to the Twelve 4 Twelve Challenge.