done!

I finished the last stitch of the binding for this quilt yesterday and was able to show it off at the local quilt guild meeting last night.

 You can see the curved cross hatched quilting in these pictures a little better than previous ones.
I was excited to see it come out so well. My first ruler work on the longarm! 

As with all the quilts I have longarmed so far I learned a lot but, I think the quilt came out beautifully despite my novice abilities. Onward I go. Practice makes perfect.

Birdie Sling

My fashionable daughter works here and there with me in my mother's quilt shop and recently opted to be paid in fabric so I could make her the Birdie Sling bag. 

It is an Amy Butler pattern for a somewhat large purse/tote. Generally I find Amy Butler patterns to be well made and user friendly. I was not disapointed. I whipped this bag out in a couple of hours with no hair pulling, and minimal reverse sewing ( ripping out).
It is large enough for my daughter to use as a dance bag for her dance shoes and accessories with two large pockets within the bag itself.

 But more fashionable than a tote bag or zip up duffle.

These are fabrics from the "Green with Envy" line from Exclusively Quilters. And now I am a little envious and I may need to make one for me too.

That moment when....

I know you have had this moment.
You know when you are ready to work on a project, all the planets have aligned and you somehow have a block of time when you can focus on a project.
That was me the other night. I skipped off to my new studio ( I know, I need to post pictures!) thinking I would have some time on a quilt.  I got a CD to listen to, cleaned, oiled and warmed up my longarm and was ready to go.

Until I started stitching. Then it all went to hell in a handcart.
The machine was skipping stitches. Like--massive stitches. Toe nail hookers was what my "wordsmith husband" called them, an inch long in some cases.
So I took a deep breath and made some adjustments.
Tension-checked, tightness of the quilt on the frame loosened, uptake bar lowered, checked thread, new needle.
Still. No. good.
Now my nice block of time was down to half and my patience was down to nothing.
Nearly in tears I turned as my husband came in to tell me dinner was ready.(--Yes he cooks,  yes it is wonderful)
Our conversation went like this:

Awesome husband: "Dinner is ready!" then seeing my distressed look: "What is wrong?"

Me: "I was all excited to get this done and now the machine is skipping stitches and I have tried everything I can think of to fix it but nothing worked and now all that is left is the timing but that is scary because I have to take stuff apart to do it and have never done that before."*sniff*

Awesome husband: "I will help you with it after dinner, don't worry."

Me: "Umm... hon, you don't know anything about sewing machines how can you help me? These are really fine tuned machines....."

Awesome husband: "It is a machine hon, they are all pretty much the same, let's eat!"

Me: "ummmm........okay???"

So after dinner he briefly read through the directions and then deftly adjusted the timing on my longarm sewing machine- like he'd done it everyday of his life!
Then he explained to me (the one with the blank look on her face) why the machine had been skipping stitches and how it all made sense!
Of course it did.
Then I really did cry because I had another moment you have probably had too-- the one where you realize how awful life would be without your other half and how truly lucky you are!

New Camera and new projects!

My husband did a little research for me and after reviewing my camera needs he found a camera for me and I went and bought it today. So far two thumbs up-- it is easy to use and takes a nice picture. It is a Nikon S8100 10x wide 12.1 mega pixel Coolpix, if you are interested. Hopefully it bounces but, if it doesn't I did get the 3 year warranty package!
On to new projects:

I have been working on this quilt for a couple of weeks now. 

All the fabrics are from Ginny Beyer's collections except the jadite green one. 

It is a pattern called Fab-tastic by Marlous Designs. 

My only criticism is that I decided to make mine a twin size version, which the pattern gives the specifications for, but it was a pretty skimpy twin size.  I added another row of squares to mine. Fortunately the fabric requirements were a little inflated so I was able to make 4 more blocks with no additional fabric purchases.

It is mostly strip pieced so it went together pretty quickly. I did have to slow down to add the piping but I am glad I did because it really makes the quilt for me.  I used Susan Cleveland's Piping Hot  Binding Tool for the piping and it sure makes it easy!

Now for the quilting... I have been chomping at the bit to try the curved cross hatching quilting. I am an avid reader of the Green Fairy Quilts blog. She uses this technique often (as well as many other awesome techniques) in her quilts it just looked really cool to me. I decided to try it on this quilt. All the floating black paisley squares have 3/4" curved cross hatching in them made using these:

These are from Lakeside Quilt Company. 

Each square of cross hatching took 18 minutes and there are 24 squares. 

So just those alone took 8 hours, but I LOVE how they came out and I can't wait to try it on some other quilts.  I am now waiting for some purple thread to arrive so I can finish the rest of each block.

I took a class with Karla Alexander in February and she encouraged me to play with the Creative Grids rulers and design some quilts. I have this ruler called Straight Out of Line and it is designed by Karla.

I have been playing with it on paper (because EQ is still somewhat a challenge for me)

And finally decided to play with it on some fabric, here is a preview of my quilt.

More on that later when we will do the big reveal!

broken camera

I have been happily busy sewing and quilting a graduation quilt for someone special this last week and sadly my camera also took a tumble ( well its last tumble....)and blinked no more, so I am unable to post any in-progress pictures! 
Very frustrating because I am pretty jazzed about how it is coming out so far! 
I will remedy that camera problem tomorrow hopefully and get some pics posted.
Meanwhile surf the blogosphere ladies and gents-- Spring market was last week and everyone is bursting with new lines, patterns and inspiration! Anyone have a good blog to share???

Check it out!

Please check the article on the Quilters Crossing Blog which is all about my conversation with Patty Sloniger. 

Patty has won two contests for fabric design on the Spoonflower website and was just signed on as Michael Miller's newest designer!

We had a great time chatting over coffee about fabric, designing and making things.

Blogosphere silence

All week I have been doing my daily blog surfing on my favorite blogs and have come away irritated. No new posts have been posted, then it occurred to me that they are all getting ready for Spring market in Salt Lake City, Utah.  New fabric will be debuted and they are all busy readying their booths for "the Show". Then I thought, well they all have that excuse but, what is mine? 
Here is mine:
First I went to Dallas with my daughter for an irish dance competition, feis ( pronounced fesh).  She did well, she got 6th place out of 18 and she was proud.  We had a good time though it was only an overnight.
We watched  "The King's Speech" with Collin Firth in it while we were at the hotel. What a great movie. Really inspiring to watch this biography of Queen Elizabeth's father struggle and overcome his speech impediment. Good messages and well done I thought.
I had a very pleasant mother's day with these two and my husband, who is neither part frog nor part panda but IS a darn good cook.

 I was treated to a french toast breakfast and fish fry for dinner.  I also received a Kindle which I have enjoyed very much. I spent the day sewing, quilting and eating, very relaxing and restoring.  I am reading Water for Elephants by Sara Gruen on my new Kindle. It is out as a movie and as usual I have waited until the movie is out to get on the bandwagon and read the book. It is very good so far and an enjoyable read. I read that the book has a happy ending which I am glad about- I hate a sad ending in a book.

I am also working on a quilt project I can't reveal yet but I will post pictures when I can reveal it! Hope everyone is well.