Zion National Park Quilt – Peach Days Peoples Choice 2024

Posted on April 19, 2025 by Jenny

This quilt took me about four years from when I started with the idea of it. I took this photo below in 2018, and I decided I wanted to quilt it.

I started looking for fabrics, and even started this quilt with a different sky fabric before I found the one I ended up with. To execute this quilt, I printed the photo in four 8×10 photos, and drew a grid of 1″ blocks on the back. I labeled them in alphabetical columns and numerical rows (A1, B1, etc.) Then I took each 1″ square and made an 8.5″ block (8″ finished) from each one.

The quilting reflects what part of nature is shown, with airwaves in the sky, rocky lines in the mountains, and swirls in the river. I used a fair amount of gold thread in sky and river, and the threads in the earth and greenery blend with those. I love Superior threads for long arm quilting, and I am sad they moved their headquarters out of my local county. Thank goodness I can still get their goodies online!

I decided to display it in Peach Days with the Zion Piecemakers Quilt Guild (my local guild) in 2024. The Guild’s Peach Days show is a peoples’ choice competition, and to my surprise, I won! I was a little humbled by that, because there were many wonderful quilts that were created with much more technical skill than this one in the show. However, Zion National Park has always been a breathtakingly beautiful place of spiritual renewal for me. I was very grateful to realize that the park that speaks to me also spoke to others.

One More Pic

Posted on October 30, 2019 by Jenny

October 2019-1 Just wanted to share a picture of her quilt once it was quilted. This picture was taken with my camera sitting on the floor, and I was cracking up at our little faces just peaking over the top. This meander stitch took her about 5 hours, and she went very fast. The quilt is about 105 by 105, (that is approximate, I can’t remember the exact dimensions). That is pushing the limit of the largest quilt that will fit on my machine.

Record Fast

Posted on October 25, 2019 by Jenny

My sister in law came to quilt today, so I thought I’d take a couple of pictures of the process and share what it’s like to use a long arm machine.

This is the quilt when it is first loaded on the machine. This is the reason you need the back of the quilt and the batting to be larger. The front will lie on them, and may travel as you quilt it. The extra space keeps you safe from going off of the edge.

Using the Long Arm

Isn’t her quilt magnificent? It is Moda’s Nest Fabric, with nesting stars. I may have died of cuteness, but then I wouldn’t have been able to help her use the machine. She is an unusually fast stippler. This is a large, king sized quilt, and she stippled it in less than five hours. If you are thinking you can do that, I would pause and try it first. I am pretty sure I could not do it that speed, and I’ve had a lot of practice. That is the fastest I’ve seen one done on this machine.

I love that she hand stitched a little inscription here. Always sign your work, friends.

This is what the edges of the quilt look like when it comes off of the long arm machine. The quilt is ready to be trimmed, and then bound. There is a line of stitching around three sides of the quilt, and the fourth side is basted together. I always trim these edges so the stitching will be inside of the quilt binding. Up in the corner of the photo is a non matching scrap I used to test tension. That’s the other reason you need the backing and the batting to be bigger. Long arm machines need the tension adjusted if there are variances between sizes of battings, threads, etc.