Blueberries!

One of my favorite customers, Miss Melanie, gave me another quilt which I got quilted over the long weekend. 

I call this type of quilting "Graffiti Quilting" because I densely quilt the background but, I do all different things in it. Here are some detail shots spotlighting different textures etc...

 It is sort of an "I spy" because I put all different things in the quilting, shapes, words and many, many textures.

Can you find the dragonfly in the picture below: 

 See the hidden word in the shot below:

It is a lot of fun to quilt like this though it does take some time. The end product is so much fun though!

Hope everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving! Now the sprint to get all our projects done by Christmas begins!!!

It always feels so good to get a bunch of check marks on my "To Do" list. Here are my weekend accomplishments!

 I was able to finish this quilt for Melanie. 

This is the second quilt of this type I have quilted for her.  She likes to use this wallhanging pattern for gifts.

Here are some detail shots:

wavy grid

pebbles

echoing tears

peek at the back

I was also able to get another quilt quilted for the Tri-County Quilt Guild's "Quilts for Sale" booth:

 This quilt reminded me of the colors of Rainbow Sherbet.  

I found a variegated King Tut thread in all the same colors to quilt it with. Again I don't know who pieced and donated this little beauty to the guild but they did a great job and had a great eye for color.

On the non-quilting front I got a bit of cleaning done in my house and organized a bit in my sewing room as well. I also got a lot of sleep which had been eluding me lately. 

I am often jealous of how our four cats have the ability to sleep 20 hours a day.

Looking forward to a four day weekend with my family! Hope it is as productive as this weekend has been.

Just for me!

I have always enjoyed making bags of almost any kind. 

Purses, totes, wallets, etc...

could not pass up an opportunity to embellish with rick rack!

 This is a little zippered bag I made, pattern by Atkinson Designs, called Zippy Strippy. It is Jellyroll friendly ( meaning it uses 2.5" strips in its construction) and has three size options included in the pattern. 

I made the largest size out of the fabric line Hometown by Moda. 

I wanted to try the pattern out now to see if it would be suitable for a "mass" production run of them later for Christmas gifts.  It was! It whipped up quickly. It was the perfect scratch for my itch to stitch and get something DONE just for me and just because you know?

One of my biggest pet peeves in making bags with zippers is getting all set to do the project and realizing I do not have the correct size zipper for the job.  

Does this happen to other people I wonder? 

Anyway, these Make-a-Zipper rolls are an answer to a prayer for me! I just measure out how long I need my zipper to be and I am all set. They come in several colors too ( the whole roll is one color though so you sort of have to commit to one color scheme if you are mass producing). 

They will be perfect for my mass production plans and I can make the bag in different sizes all using this same zipper roll. 

And now back to quilting! 

Modern Christmas

I was asked to quilt a few quilts for the "Quilts for Sale" booth at the Tri-County Quilt Guild's show coming up in March.

Judy thoughtfully gave me the tops, backs and batting in September so I would have plenty of time to get them done before February- she is impressively organized and I appreciate it. 

All the tops are donated so it is a wide array of styles and colors. Should be fun to try different things on them and hopefully they will raise some money for our guild.

 Here is the first one which I believe is a Maple Island pattern called Carnival because I think we sell this pattern in our shop too.

 Love the curvy lines, metallic gold in the fabrics and appliqued circles which extend out into the border in some places. The person who constructed this did a good job- the risk when sewing curves in quilts is that it won't lay flat once it is done. This one was perfect, nice and flat.

 Check out the texture the stipple created.

 The backside also had a metallic gold fabric on it which contributed to my decision to use metallic gold thread to quilt it with.

 I bought this thread at the quilt show a couple of weeks ago, it is actually an polyester embroidery thread but the guy said Sharon Schamber and many others used it a lot. So I figured it was good enough for me (ha-ha). I loved how it was high sheen and he promised me that because it was NOT constructed like other metallics (which wrap the metallic around a core of poly) and that it was stronger.

 He was right! This thread never broke once and I have quilted two quilts with it now. Didn't have to reduce my speed or anything! Woo-hoo. The only small change I made to my normal set up was to put a thread bag over it (seen in the pic above) because it had a tendency to wrap around its base as it was pulled off the cone. The bag solved the problem instantly.

I bought a couple other colors at the show to try (silver and coppery orange) now I wish I had bought more. 

More to come, in the Quilts for Sale category and several customer quilts that I am committed to finishing before the holidays so you can expect a lot of pictures coming up!

Baby You're a Firework

Okay so this pattern is actually called Firecracker but I couldn't resist the Katy Perry quote because I hear my kids playing it on Just Dance so it is stuck in my head!

This pattern is by Julie Herman of Jaybird Quilts and I am a long time fan of her blog and I even saw her in person at Quilt Market this fall but couldn't think of anything cool to say to her so I didn't introduce myself. We are carrying a few of her patterns at the shop and they all use they Lazy Angle Ruler by Creative Grids(*love*).  

It was an easy to follow pattern and it uses fat eighths so you can really do it from your stash if you have a bunch of brights. I want to try it with a different color way next to see the different effects.

I quilted it with a simple meander but with some hidden things in the quilting like a sun,

 and some stars, hearts, a car, spirals, a triangle etc...

I played with some freehand "circle in a circles" in the stripy boarder (seen in above pic)-- some were more "ovals in ovals" but I am just gonna let that go. First time trying it and all that....

For the outer border I played with one of my arc templates that I bought at the quilt show. I noticed when working with the arc on the French Braid quilt that if I did arcs on opposing sides I would get these pointed ovals shapes alternating along the edge so I thought I would try that on here:

I learned with this quilt that I could buy 24 different fabrics that I really didn't like, put them together and get a quilt that I actually do like. Go figure! Even my husband and kids said they didn't were surprised at how cute it came out!

 It photographs well

and is kitty cat approved!

Nancy's French Braid

Nancy finished this quilt top months ago and it has been waiting in my queue patiently to be quilted. I was waiting patiently for it to speak to me about how it wanted to be quilted.

Somewhere in the flux and flurry of Quilt Market suddenly I heard it make up its mind and speak to me. (Perhaps it took a few months to learn English?? haha since it's a FRENCH Braid-- pathetic I know....)

Textures! It wanted lots of texture. So I treated each band of the french braid uniquely.  It is a lot of fun to try different things on quilts. A little free- motion, a little ruler work etc...
Here are a few more pics:

 The diamonds (above) have a spiraling feather in them and the set in triangles (below) at the top and bottom of each braid are done with curved cross hatching.

I hope Nancy loves it! It was a lot of fun to quilt!

Busy week

I went to the "Schoolhouse" day that precedes Quilt Market for the first time this past Friday. Got to see lots of "Quilting Stars" and learned a bunch of cool things.  It is sort of a rapid fire mini demo day where you switch rooms every 15 -30 minutes learning a new subject each time.
Here are some shots I snagged there many are lectures given by bloggers I have read for years:

Sandi Henderson from the Portobello Pixie blog

Kelly McCants from the Oilcloth Addicts Blog

Major Star power here: Lila Tueller, Valori Wells, Tula Pink and Amy Butler! Wow!

My mom and I also took some business building seminars which were very informative and gave us a lot of ideas. Then ALL the Quilters Crossing gals got to go to preview night last night!  Here is Nancy stopping to give us a wave as she shops! 

We had a great time! I grabbed some bobbins for my longarm from Nolting and some new longarm rulers from The Gadget Girls which I can't wait to try!!
Hopefully I will be posting some quilting pictures soon! Back to work!