Susan Liimatta

A chance discovery of a photo of the Crab Nebula and the almost simultaneous purchase of a hand-dyed piece of fabric lead to the creation of this piece.

Created using free-motion machine embroidery techniques and then embellished with gold Shiva Oil Paint. A graphic overlay was bobbin-couched into place using a metallic yarn. Two layers of tulle were stitched down then burned off with a heat gun. Heavily quilted using silk thread.

Swarovski crystals create named constellations: Ursa Major and Minor, Pisces, Cassiopeia, Orion, Virgo, and many more!

Cotton fabric, wool batting, cotton, nylon and silk thread.

40 x 24

A slice of sky, water, and earth at sunset. Stitched in are swirling clouds, the jet stream, ocean waves, flowing water and stone, and bedrock.

Hand-dyed cotton sateen fabric, wool batting, and silk thread.

21 x 39

Created with two yards of hand-dyed cotton sateen fabrics: one from bright turquoise to deep teal the other from light gray to black. Free-form rotary cutting and improvisational piecing. Domestic machine quilted using a walking foot.

Captures a memory of skipping stones at a beach on Lake Superior in the Keweenaw Peninsula.

19 x 32

Traditional pattern using colors found in many antique Amish quilts, although the palette is much brighter. Cotton fabrics, cotton batting, hand quilted.

74 x 82

Created using a technique in Ricky Tims' book Convergence Quilts and hand-dyed fabrics. Free-motion quilted with an original swirling star design.

71 x 49

Traditional "New York Beauty" block with a modern interpretation. The pieced border was drafted on freezer paper using a technique created by Karen Stone. Individual block units were paper pieced. Cotton fabrics, wool batting, Aurifil 50 wt. cotton thread.

79 x 96

Traditional "Ocean Waves" pattern created with contemporary batiks. Machine quilted with nylon thread, cotton batting.

65 x 79

Original design appliqué four block quilt. Cotton fabrics, cotton batting, hand quilted.

65 x 75

This is a Carol Doak paper-piecing pattern. Heavily machine quilted with organic shapes using cotton and nylon threads. Cotton batik fabrics, wool batting.

53 x 53

A challenge quilt pieced and quilted in only one week using batiks and quilted on the longarm machine.

60 x 60

A pattern from Quilts Made Modern by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr. Cotton fabric, cotton batting, and quilted on the longarm machine with cotton thread.

63 x 77

Inspired by the traditional pattern "Delectable Mountains." Cotton batik fabrics, original quilting designs and traditional feather pattern in the border. Quilted with Aurifil 50 wt. cotton, wool batting.

54 x 54

Inspired by the "No Patience Block" as taught by Anita Grossman Solomon. Cotton fabrics include Japanese indigos. The blocks look like they're dancing but they are perfectly square! Quilted edge to edge in a traditional fan pattern.

75 x 85

Blocks created using Karen Stone's fusible appliqué pattern. The undulating ribbon in the border was machine embroidered using a technique developed by Libby Lehman.

Cotton batik fabrics wool batting, rayon and cotton threads.

56 x 56

Modern Monkey Wrench was pieced using Anita Grossman Solomon's paper piecing technique. Stitching onto vellum I created precision points. The quilt appeared in Anita's Craftsy Class Quick Techniques for Modern Blocks.

In my haste to bind the quilt and send it Colorado in time for recording of the class, I applied the binding quickly, not realizing my seam was too wide, cutting off all the points in the outer blocks. I thought about fixing the binding ... but instead I'm using this quilt on my bed. Modern cotton prints, Dream cotton batting, and Aurifil thread.

87 x 94

Traditional log cabin pattern created with hand-dyed fabric and Cherrywood cottons. Quilted with Aurifil 50 wt. cotton thread. Wool batting.

48 x 48

Quilt pattern from the book "Quilts Made Modern," by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr. This was my first modern quilt and I am hooked. For me, it's a more relaxed style of quilting. Modern quilt designs are known for having larger blocks and bright colors. Piecing goes along a bit faster. Even quilting this on the long arm in a large meander pattern was fun and easy.

69 x 69

Floral fabric squares bordered with alternating deep red and orange red strips for six inch finished blocks. Heavily free-motion quilted on the longarm machine with feathers and a "garden fence" in the floral squares.

77 x 99

Inspired by traditional "Ohio Star" block and Civil War reproduction fabrics. Cotton fabric, wool batting, and quilted with silk thread.

2nd Place Award, Bed Quilts Home Machine Quilted, American Quilter's Society Show, Paducah, Kentucky, 2015.

1st Place Award, American Quilter's Society Show, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2015

72 x 80

One yard of cotton hand dyed fabric cut apart and stitched together creating value variation in the background. Three satin-stitched boxes of treasure flow through the fiery tempest beautiful and untouched.

Machine quilted with rayon and cotton threads, embellished with Swarovski crystals.

27 x 31

Inspired by a Josef Albers painting I saw at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. Albers painted dozens of color studies in this form. I used 4 yards of Cherrywood fabrics.

Quilted on my longarm machine using 6 thread colors, from taupe to gold to yellow and saffron. Quilted lines are one-eighth inch apart. I’ve figured out a way to quilt a modern quilt to within an inch of its life.

60 x 60