Okay, Count me in!

[Kathryn S.]

Wowie Zowie, Shirley, what a great quilt! It's loaded with details, so keeping the quilting simple sounds good. Crystals go on after quilting, right? I haven't done those before. I love the border fabric.

Kathy

[Rita C.]

Shirley your quilt looks great too. As for the quilting - and you know I am an expert here :roll: - I think you should keep it a simple as you like because the top is so busy that the quilting will hardly show anyway. If you SID around all the blocks to begin with you will then only have to worry about 8 1/2" at a time from then on. I read in Gyleen's book that she has her tops quilted with a pantograph overall design because anything else will not be worth it as it won't show. It's going to look great on your kitchen wall at Christmas time. Especially with all that bling!

[Terry K.]

Wow, Kathy--what an awesome quilt and I LOVE the back!!! Thanks for sharing your story as well as the photos!
Shirley, bling is a great option! I look forward to seeing how you quilt it. Your quilt is so bright and cheery. I LOVE the border!

[Lois B.]

Shirley, I am loving that quilt. It is such a great Christmas Quilt. Enjoy it!

[Nancy R.]

Shirley - I agree with Kathy and Rita -- simple quilting since the top is so busy. Whatever you do won't show much, so concentrate on a texture that you like. Circles and pineapples sound nice. Or, if you want to emphasize Christmas, an all-over design with holly leaves and berries or something else Christmassy. The prairie points sound perfect and I always love bling! Can't wait to see it finished!

Nancy

[Nancy R.]

Wowie Zowie, Shirley, what a great quilt! It's loaded with details, so keeping the quilting simple sounds good. Crystals go on after quilting, right? I haven't done those before. I love the border fabric.

Kathy

Kathy, you're absolutely right about the crystals being applied after the quilting. I'm taking a class in Oct. at MQX-West in Portland with Claudia Pfeil about how to apply different shapes of Swarovski hot fix crystals. I almost fainted when I saw her beautiful castle and fairies fantasy quilt with 20,000 crystals on it at Portland's Expo show last year! If anyone knows how to apply those crystals, it would be Claudia!

Shirley

[Catherine S.]

Kathy and Shirley, I love both of you're quilts. Kathy yours is so cheeriful and bright. Love the back too! Shirley, yours is so festive, and it mostly being the Christmas colors. I noticed some very unholiday fabrics. I love the total look. You could leave it out all year if you wanted.

[E.M. T.]

Kathy..Shirley...Beautiful quilts !!

[E.M. T.]

Wow Shirley. Very nice. What color are the prairie points going to be?
I can see a little Christmas tree sitting in front of it with red ornaments.

[E.M. T.]

Wow Shirley. Very nice. What color are the prairie points going to be?
I can see a little Christmas tree sitting in front of it with red ornaments.

Terry, the prairie points will be black to balance the 2 black stripes that frame the cherries. I must confess that this quilt will hang on a quilt display stand in our large combination dining/living room just outside our kitchen. I don't have a lot of wall space because of favorite paintings and a large wall unit in our dining room. So, after I made my HST quilt and used the stand to photograph it, it still stands in front of a beautiful wall unit that I've looked at for 36 years! :lol: It's out of the way, doesn't seem to bother DH that it's there, and I can look at my quilt while reading in my favorite chair in the living room part...and just smile thinking about all those HSTs! 8)

[E.M. T.]

Kathy and Shirley, I love both of you're quilts. Kathy yours is so cheeriful and bright. Love the back too! Shirley, yours is so festive, and it mostly being the Christmas colors. I noticed some very unholiday fabrics. I love the total look. You could leave it out all year if you wanted.

Cathy, the only thing that makes my quilt a Christmas kitchen quilt are the red, white, and green fabrics and a few Xmas ones including Snoopy! :lol: Most of the fabric scraps are close to 20 years old and are from ties I made for DH and many gifts custom made for family and friends. I did raid my stash to add some kitchen fabrics. The cherry border was pieced together from 6 fat qtrs.

[Rita C.]

Shirley that quilt by Claudia Pheil was at IQFOI and I couldn't believe it either. It took a lot of examining from many admirers. How great to take a class from her, lucky you.

[Diane F.]

About a year ago I made this pineapple quilt top, and some of you might have seen it on a blog I did about it at that time. It was put aside because of other projects and I just wanted to take a breather for a while during this summer. I've enjoyed reading along with and seeing all of your marvelous quilts inspired by Gyleen's fabulous TQS episode, book, and ruler. I plan to add a black Susan Cleveland-type prairie point edge to it to balance the 2 black borders framing the cheeries. So far, I'm thinking of quilting something circular...maybe a cross-section of a pineapple slice, or little pineapples in the black areas. I'm not wild about how the 9 tiny center squares turned out in the center blocks so I bought some gorgeous Swarovski square crystal buttons in clear, medium green and black to see how they will look (gasp! lol!) in covering up those uneven tiny squares. (Remember, I love bling and glitz...and it is a kitchen Christmas wall quilt!) :wink: I would really appreciate any help from you about the quilting. I use my walking foot a lot (another gasp!) because it's been about 5 years since I did FMQ and I need to get up to speed again. Oh, and I'll probably add tiny red, green, and white Swarovski crystals on all those tiny red dots in the black fabric.

Thanks for any help you can give me.
Hugs,
Shirley

I like it! It is so cheery (and cherry of course.) :wink:

Diane

[Karen G.]

ALL YOUR PINEAPPLE QUILTS ARE GREAT. I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED THIS BLOCK. :wink:

[Karen G.]

Thanx, everyone for your encouragement, wonderful suggestions, and nice comments. I'm going to work on a pineapple slice overlay on my quilt this afternoon. Terry Knott suggested quilting around each cherry in the border several months ago, which I will try out on a fabric sample. BTW, the name of Claudia Pfeil's beautiful quilt is "Magical Mermaids Castle." It won BOS at the Sept 2011 NW Quilting EXPO show, and First Place for Best Machine Quilting, standing, at the MQX-West show Oct. 2011. Her work is outstanding!