This is a sample quilt created for Quilt Market 2016 in Houston to feature Paula Nadelstern's new Kismet fabric line from Benartex.

My Garden Serendipity quilt won first place in the 2011 Minnesota State Fair as well as first place in its category in the Minnesota Quilters 33rd Annual Quilt Show and Conference.  It also won the Capitol City award for small quilt.  I adapted Mary Sorensen's Simple Gifts quilt pattern by creating a purple lattice border to frame the needle-turned applique flowers enhanced with beads and the vines, bees, butterflies, dragon flies, snail, grasshopper and frog.  This garden serendipity makes me think of spring.

Beautiful fabric inspired this spiral lone star quilt pattern from Jan Krentz's Lone Star Quilts & Beyond pattern book.

This is the 2016 BOM from The Quilt Show using William Morris Jewel Tone fabrics.

This was a pattern designed by Shawn York.  I used Select Print & Piece for the small stars that are foundation pieced.  Began in June 2016 and finished in February 2017.

"Wired" represents the everyday Man/Woman who has received too much stimuli from the world in which we live.

Original design using mariners compass paper piecing patterns and the Wedge ruler. Second quilt in a series of three.

From my own photographs of birds living in my neighbourhood in Helsinki, Finland I free motion embroidered blocks on white cotton.  Sewed them together and free motion quilted heavily around.  Since there is no quilting on the birds they rise up brom the background.  Cotton batting and backing.   For this quilt I used nine of my embroidered bird.  

Last year I designed and made a small quilt using Moda Fig Tree fabric scraps.  I wondered how it would look in reproduction fabrics - again, scraps from my scrap bag). This second version is a little larger as I made some small changes to the design.  It was great fun and very interesting to see the difference!

From a photo I took at a Polo match in our area.  I took so many pictures I decided to do a series.  This is one of three in the series.  Painted fabric to create the audience and then covered with tulle.  Used cotton fabric collage technique for the remainder of the quilt. 

From a photo I took at a Polo match in our area.  I took so many pictures I decided to do a series.  This is one of three in the series.  Painted fabric to create the audience and then covered with tulle.  Used cotton fabric collage technique for the remainder of the quilt. 

This was a class project with Gail Garber June 2016.

Gail's design with my fabrics. White background lets the light shine thru when hanging in a window. Looks like stained glass. Batiks were fussy cut for outer spokes. Crystals were attached to give it some pizzazz. Fun to make. Lovely to have in my home.

This quilt, representing King Arthur and the knights of the round table, was designed by my oldest son Ken Tatum, who gifted the design along with the digital files, the fabrics, and the threads to me for my birthday in March 2016.  I had to figure out how to make his beautiful design.  This quilt is the third in my ongoing series of ancient illuminated manuscript-inspired quilts.  The text below the central picture is in old English.  I had the throne room in the background, which he provided as a separate digital design file, printed by Spoonflower on cotton.  Then I appliqued the people's bald heads (digitally painted and printed on cotton), clothes, swords, table and 3 dimensional wall hangings.  I free motion embroidered their hair and the crowns.  I digitized the chain mail shirts for the king and knights and machine embroidered them with variegated silver gray thread on black.  The Celtic borders were the biggest challenge.  I marked the green satin, free motion/ruler stitched the long borders, and digitized the corner designs in simple single line stitching and machine embroidered them in my embroidery module.  Then I painted the border designs.  After piecing the quilt top together and sandwiching the quilt with two layers of batting (thin polyester and wool), I free motion quilted this quilt on my new Bernina Q20 sitdown longarm.  This provided the opportunity to give the border designs their Celtic dimension (over and under dimension).  I also attached the banners after quilting and hand stitched them down to maintain their 3 D appearance.  Check out my blogs on the making of this quilt and tutorials for making the chain mail and the Celtic borders.

Art Quilt

  Made for the Hoffman Challenge.  The window contains the challenge fabrics and the design  inspiration is from the famous painting of "The Girl With A Pearl Earring".  The model is a family member and the piece is traveling with the 2017 Trunk Show.

Block of month from Homespun Magazine. Mostly pieced and some embroidery. All over machine quilting

Block of month from Homespun Magazine. Mostly pieced and some embroidery. All over machine quilting

This quilt was so fun to make. It was made for a quilt challenge on the Oregon Coast, Gem of the Ocean Quilt Show. My daughter took the photo on the Oregon Coast. As I was making the quilt I tried to get it to look three demensional so, I used ink dyes and pens to embellish it. The quilt took second place in the
challenge! I would have never entered if it wasn't for Sarah's photo and a push from my local quilt shop owners of Tater Patch Quilts. Thanks, Diane and Robin!