Afternoon Picnic Quilt by Nancy Zieman Productions for Riley Blake 2017

Custom Quilting for the one-and-only Nancy Zieman for her last fabric collection before her passing in 2017.

Custom Quilting for Riley Blake and Nancy Zieman Productions, LLC.

I cannot believe this was almost 10 years ago! In, what feels like a different lifetime, I had an active blog site (ReannaLily Designs,) and I've recently come across some of my older blog posts. It might be fun to have the content live on here at the Quilty Quill. I'll add current commentary at the bottom, but scroll down to see the original blog post from 2017 ➡️

It was my honor to custom quilt this sample for Riley Blake Designs’ booth at Spring Quilt Market 2018. The beautiful small quilt is designed by Nancy Zieman Productions, LLC’s team and will be displayed with all the other new fabric lines launching this season.

Custom quilting is so exciting as it gives the project a whole second dimension, though technically, I supposed I should say a third dimension. Of course, there’s only a tiny bit of pressure when the quilt will be seen at the high Quilt Market level. Phew! I think it turned out alright.

The entire design is stitched using my hand-guided HandiQuilter Avante 18, using free-motion quilting techniques and rulers.

Defining and Combining Shapes

I started first with converging straight lines in alternating blocks.

I added pebbles in the 3″ corners of each block. They look cool, but man, as I may have mentioned before, I do not like stitching them.

Hum. So star shapes and borders are remaining. There was some brainstorming here. Do I subdivide the stars? Do I treat them as one shape? Should I focus on eight triangles and one square? In the end, the large star won out. I echo quilted 1/4″ from the shape’s perimeter and then filled the design with very small pointed swirls.

Border Decisions

The border needed to be more subtle to not detract from the quilt design as a whole. The modified piano key style features a 1/4″ stitched line every inch-and-a-half or so. The ruler I used didn’t have regular measurements, but did have a printed logo. Each line jump is aligned with the printed logo. Technical, right?

In many cases, you will really see the quilting from the back. This is especially true if the back is a solid or tone-on-tone fabric. Here, the backing is 108″ wide Riley Blake Snow tonal fabric.

Updated to add:

At the end of the original post there was a whole "stop by the booth and snap pictures" request. I was at the Quilt Market where it was displayed. This was at the end of October 2017. Nancy Zieman passed on Nov 14, 2017, two weeks later.

This quilt was on display, though a few others were folded up under a portrait of Nancy that looked 1000% like an "in memoriam" display for a woman who WAS ALIVE. It was so weird and so disappointing and so sad.

I was so honored to have worked for Nancy Zieman Productions for 2-1/2 years as their blogger & community manager person. I authored a few patterns in Nancy's style and edited mountains of photos. She is missed.

Flip side:

This was the same weekend the Astros won their first World Series. WAHOOOO. I was downtown when the games were going on. As a native Houstonian, it was fantastic... until it wasn't. You know what I'm sayin.

Categories: : Quilting