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Free quilt pattern: Round and Around
APQS Dealer Manon Keeley shares a pattern with us that is happy, modern, and full of color! She fell in love with the RK Fusion Meadow fabric colors and wanted them to play happily together. The split circle design adds whimsy, while the solid white backgrounds provide a place for the eye to rest after viewing the tantalizing color array.
The black and white binding provides a wonderful frame and contrast so that the quilt can be a wall hanging without the white edges fading into the wall.
The edge to edge quilting design of allover arrows and the blocks that looked like shooting targets, made it come together. “Round and around” quilt was born!
Manon started piecing and quilting with her grandma by using up old clothing when she was only five years old. As her talent grew, Manon found herself looking at her projects with the eyes of an illustrator. She wanted to doodle on fabric like her grandma told her to do with hand quilting. However, she quickly discovered that free motion quilting on her sewing machine was not helping her achieve her vision.
After trying machines out at a local quilt show, she invested in an APQS Millennium. She also wanted the machine to pay for itself. So she whipped up some quilted samples, connected with a local quilt shop owner and became the shop’s sole longarm quilter. Her talent was evident as her schedule quickly filled with both traditional and modern quilts for customers.
Soon she added the APQS Quilt Path computerized quilting system to her machine, allowing her to pour more time into designing patterns and creative freehand quilting. With the speed and accuracy the Quilt Path has to offer, edge-to-edge quilting became her bread and butter, which allowed her to pay off her machine in record time. Her creative quilting talent—both freehand and computerized—has helped many of her customers win awards for their quilts.
Manon said, “Never in a million years had I dreamed that this would happen to me and that I would be where I am at right now, being a longarmer and making a living of what I love – quilts! I quilt out of my home studio on a daily basis and I also teach and design quilts. In every form, shape or stage, quilting has helped me grow as a designer every single day and I am grateful for what I have!”
