Seams French

Using fabric designed by Leah Janzen; Print and Pattern, I recently made a few sample designs of throw pillows. In this first cushion, I combined Leah's blue patterned fabric with a matching solid blue cotton that was pleated and accented with white semi circles. This second pillow shows her fabric next to a panel of free-motion quilting on a white cotton. To see more of her patterns and designs, see her website at: www.leahjanzen.com , and for her latest patterns, see her blog at leahjanzen.blogspot.ca Also new to the fabric stash, is the start of a collection of silks. Here silk is used only as an accent in the piping around a quilted white cotton pillow. A small assortment of blue dupioni silks that will co-ordinate with Leah's patterned blue fabric.

I'm fairly certain that it was Libby Lehman who first introduced me to the concept of "free-motion" quilting, sometime in the late 90's, most likely on "Simply Quilts". Sewing mostly garments at the time, where it was absolutely necessary for measurements and seams to be accurate, this "free" concept of sewing was somewhat intimidating. Even so, the idea intrigued me enough at the time to buy Libby's book entitled "Threadplay", published in 1997. Since then, I have been lured away from garment sewing and have been completely seduced by the lure of "quilting". In my current work, I use both very traditional patterns and techniques (either hand or machine quilting), as well as a lot of free-motion machine work. Although many books have been published since that first introduction, I still refer to Libby's book often, and in my mind, she is the "queen of free-motion". Therefore, when I saw that Libby was teachin...