Intricate complicated piecing designs are amazing to look at. These are the show stoppers that demand attention at competitions or hanging on your living room wall. But not every quilt needs to be ornate. A lot of times, we just want a warm quilt to curl up in on a cold winter's evening. The following quilts are simple, but fabulous! Nancy made this fun block quilt with snowmen prints. I like the diagonal line that she created by placing her blocks in the same order for every row shifting by one. She quilted this free hand edge to edge swirls. I can almost feel the cold swirl of snow swirling around the snowmen and their buddies. This is a quilt by Debra. It’s a simple square block quilt, but I love the fabrics she chose. The color palette is very simple, red, black, white, and gray, but the use of red and black gingham as well as a matching white and black gingham blends the colors without actually having varying shades of the same color. She completed this quilt with an all over meander, which really works well with this design, simple, functional, but very appealing. This was Rhonda’s certification class quilt. She is new to long arm quilting, but very artistically gifted and eager to take on this new art form. She chose to try a couple of different techniques to complete this simple block quilt. The top and bottom were both minky, making this quilt super cuddly. Each row was completed with a different method. She started with free motion designs, tried our spiral circles design board next. Returned for more free motion designs, before trying a pantograph and finishing with more free motion. A little bit of everything went into this quilt! Terri made this huge t-shirt for a friend's daughter. I say t-shirt quilt but it only partially applies. There are t-shirts, fabric squares with machine embroidery that give more details about the girl’s life, like graduation dates and majors, bits of sweaters and baby clothes as well. There is even an dog's bandana with the names of all her childhood pets on it. I think she balanced the colors well on this top, as no spot is drawing more attention than any other. What a big endeavor, and what an amazing gift for someone! Because of the unevenness of the top (so many different fabrics) it was necessary for her to quilt from the front of the machine to get this done or risk having the hopping foot get stuck. She used an easy meander edge to edge which worked out beautifully. Sometimes we think it has to be harder than it needs to be in order to make something beautiful. That is not always the case. Sometimes large simple blocks can create beautiful and functional designs that are treasured by those who receive them.