Don't laugh....

(in no particular order) 
This week I am happy about:

1. I found good nectarines at Kroger! They weren't mealy and they weren't rocks. Just perfect, fragrant and juicy. I have been eating two a day because I know they won't last and they are my favorite fruit!


2.  I finished three customer quilts so far this week and am sending them home to their talented owners! Feels great!


3. I have still have one more year before my daughter starts learning to drive, I know it won't be long after that until she is off living her own life.


4. Coming home to yummy dinner smells issuing from my crockpot that I forgot I turned on that morning-- blissfully nice surprise!


5. My husband has two weeks of vacation coming up. *love*


6. Part of that vacation will be spent here:

7. Listening to Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix book on tape while I quilt. I read the whole series years ago but I am really enjoying falling into the magical world again.

8. My son, who now has feet bigger than mine- soon he'll be taller than me too and he can reach things for me.


9. New fabric at the store I am crushing on and will have to make something out of for a friend who is having a baby boy! I am attempting the Twister technique. Pictures soon to follow.


10. "The Farmer's Wife"blocks that are all over the quilting blogosphere right now all from this book. 


What is it about patchwork? It is just so cute! 
Hope you are all having a fantastic week too.

Design Workshop

I took a nifty class through my local quilt guild with Denise Green.  She asked us to bring in a "center"and a bunch of things that looked like coordinates and we'd play with them and build borders etc... on the center.  I had some experience with putting pieced borders on quilts but I had an inkling that the class might have some other good information and I was right!
Denise was a wealth of information and my fellow classmate and I had a great time with her all to ourselves! 

I started out with this fabric:

When we got it in the shop I immediately thought, "Oh I would love to play with that and some solids" so this workshop seemed like the ideal time to play since I had no pattern in mind! So off I went and gathered these:

I know not all of them are solids but the dot and the stripe were too perfect with the colors not to invite them to the party too.

Denise suggested several simple pieced border options in her directions. I like flying geese, so I decided to make some of those. I had this darn tool from I don't know how long ago still in the bag 

( can you believe it? *blush*) so I thought its time had come!  I pulled it out, ( brace yourself), READ THE DIRECTIONS and made flying geese four at a time with Eleanor Burns' method. Pretty nifty. Denise told me about another tool for flying geese called a "wingclipper" that is more versatile so no doubt I will have one of those in its package on my notions wall soon....

Anyway.

I pieced the geese together and with Denise's expertise in coping borders had a perfect fit for my center! Wah-lah! My fellow classmate came a bit more prepared than me so she got 2 rounds of borders on hers! We also gathered several other tidbits on making fast an accurate 4 patches and more. We made a pact to show off our products at the next guild meeting together too. 

The workshop was a really nice break for *me time*, I have otherwise been very busy with customer quilts.  Customer quilts are always really enjoyable for me each posing new possibilities and each unique but, then I have to send them home when they are done! It is nice to make something occasionally that I get to keep!

 Here is mine as of the end of class.  I really like it! It is happy and colorful and I have no plans for it whatsoever... should I add more borders to make it bigger? Or frame it on point and continue bordering to make it a quilt? or should I just call it done and quilt it into a wallhanging or pillow? It is about 18" square now.  Any thoughts?

Humbugs by the dozen

I am getting ready to go on my annual quilting retreat with good friends. We all do little gifts for each other and of course I would like to make everyone something handmade.  Many of you know how this goes....things sneak up on you and before you know it time has run out.

I wanted to make these little Humbug bags designed by Quilting Woman:

I have used this pattern before and knew it was quick but making a dozen is still time consuming because each one is quilted.  Then I had an idea. If I made each one have the same lining I could do all the quilting at once on the longarm.  So I loaded the lining as the backing of a quilt and the batting. Then I placed each piece for the bags on top and basted around them.

Then I could quilt each one individually or go across 4 at once.  I grouped them by the color of thread I wanted to quilt them with. Row one seen above were all quilted with black thread, row 2 below was with gold thread etc...

Here are some shots of the quilting:

Here is what I ended up with when they were all quilted up:

 The lining side:

So these all got cut apart and trimmed down to the size needed for the bags according to the pattern:

Then I followed the pattern directions and got these:

Cute little bags for all my quilting buddies:

I can't wait to give them to everyone!

Angela's Quilt

I had the pleasure of quilting this for Angela who is expecting her first grandchild in the fall! It was so soft and made even more lovely by the wool batting she chose for it.

It's a triple Irish Chain pattern with a beautiful combination of browns, pinks and greens with fun appliques in the open areas. There was lots of room for fun quilting.

She requested the baby's family surname be quilted subtly in the bottom border, I had never tried this type of thing before but I loved how it came out and I plan to try to play with this idea some more-- putting words in the quilting. 
In preparation for doing this quilt, I asked my longarm mentor/friend how I should do this and she gave me some wonderful Trace and Quilt paper to execute this name.  
After printing out the name in the font of my choice and the desired size I traced the name out on the paper and pinned it to the quilt where I wanted it to be and then stitch right through it. The paper is easily torn away after, leaving the stitches perfectly copied! Surprisingly easy and precise. Then I just filled in all around it to make it pop.

Angela picked up her quilt today and had BIG news....it is going to be a boy so I can expect another quilt (boy themed) soon!  

Eureka!

This is a pattern called Eureka put out by Maple Island.  It has you cut your curves without measuring or a ruler- just your rotary cutter. It is kind of liberating. I have made this pattern twice ( following the pattern exactly in Black and white and red)

But my daughter thought it would be a nifty addition to her room in black and white and GREEN and oh could I maybe make it a little bigger? Kids are so great at helping us keep busy aren't they?

 She was right of course it looks fabulous in her room.

I thought since this was a quilt for our house I would take advantage of the opportunity to practice some of my quilting skills that are needing some fine tuning. I have a list of things I am anxious to master (feathers, pebbles, sharp points, echoing tears etc...). Feathers of course are very important in quilting and I am far from mastering them but, I realize I will never improve without practice.

 I also did some different fillers and textures so experiment and see what I could do now that I have had quite a few hours on the machine.

 I found I need to work on the backtracking portion of the feathers. This caused a lot of frustration but I did see some improvement. It will be worth it when I have more options to put on quilts.

 The back:

It was encouraging to compare this practice quilt with an earlier one I had done and see some progress. Much smoother in my large motions and more able to stay within a shape.  The first few times on the longarm reminded me of my first time behind the wheel learning to drive.  I thought it was hard to stay within my lane (until my mom said to look ahead down the road instead of down at the hood).   On the longarm, trying to stay within the part of the block I was trying to quilt was tough at first, no guardrails to keep me on the road!  Experience, practice and getting a feel for things has helped.  
It is really fun seeing my skills starting to catch up with my ideas. Endless possibilities!

Mosaic Madness

Last fall I took one of the two workshops our guild offered with guest speaker Cara Gulati.  We had a great time in class and I finished the top quickly but hadn't quilted it yet!

I finally finished it last night! It was great to snuggle under it while we re-watched Harry Potter movies in anticipation of the last movie coming out this week.

I found a fun variegated King Tut thread to quilt it AND,  having finally figured out that a little turn of the bobbin screw on my longarm when using King Tut equals perfect tension...it quilted up fun and quick- nothing fancy needed on this fun throw quilt. 

 I love brown so it was fun to use that as my background and find hot colors that glowed enough on it. I went for the 5 hot/4 cold nine patch configuration, very symetrical but it looked the best and I thought the varying brown backgrounds made it look less planned and more fun.

I found a Kaffe Fassat wavy stripe for the binding which was perfect. I love striped binding as a finishing touch.

Also I was super excited today that my mom's shop finally has Alexander Henry fabrics!! I have wanted some since we opened but  we have had so much going on it was hard to pursue.

 Finally we have some. 

I can't wait to make quilt out of this print:

Pictures as promised

This is Nancy's quilt! It uses a Stonehenge Christmas 2.5" strip pack to make the tessellating trees and just a bit more fabric from the same line for the border.

Details shots: I had some fun playing on the border.

 backside:

The pattern is by"Quilt Woman".  The funny thing is "Quilt Woman" owns the quilt shop in Spencerport, New York where my mom lived! It is a small world.

Nancy assures me that the pattern was quick and easy to follow. The quilt is gorgeous and the Northcott fabric really does feel like silk as they promise it will. 
This quilt was so much fun to quilt!! It was bliss! 
Also had a fun sewing these today:

 Stockings and ornaments:

My daughter was busy cutting fabric for a Birdie Sling to give a friend while I sewed these.  She was following the pattern and doing it all on her own! My baby is growing up....