Thimbleberries

I had the opportunity to quilt a quilt for the President of the Thimbleberries club at a local quilt shop. She brought this quilt to me after seeing me bring a sample into the shop, she liked the pattern that I had used on the quilt that I brought in, so she decided to give me a shot with her beautiful quilt!

Isn't it sweet? The cute little trees, flowers and houses, what you can't see is that in the windows of some of the houses she put a stamp of a little cat curled up. It was so cute! She was planning on embroidering the cats into the quilt at a later time.
I used the Plummage pattern on this quilt. It's a really great all-over pattern for more traditional looking quilts.

This pattern takes more time to actually complete in comparison to most because it is a really dense quilting job, but the effect that it creates is worth it!

What do you think? Its a very well connected pantograph. You really have to look at the quilting in order to see where the pattern stops and starts. A lot of the pantographs make it very obvious, you can see the gaps and the rows that are created...this pattern blends together.

This next quilt is from a new customer. She actually travels full time in an RV and quilts as she goes. This was sent to me from Texas. Aren't those colors awesome?

This is actually a double-sided quilt. Check out the "backing"...

Isn't that great? We used the "Paisley Rose" pattern on this quilt in a cream color and it turned out really well...

I machine hemmed this quilt as well. This is a service that I provide that I haven't really talked about before. If you would like I can trim your quilt and turn the backing fabric over into a binding. This cost is pretty minimal, for a queen sized quilt I only charged $35. I also hand sew binding...the cost to do that is .30 cents per lineal inch. So if you hate binding your quilts, now you have an alternative! Just provide me with the top, backing, and batting (unless you buy your batting from me) plus the yardage needed for binding fabrics, and you will receive a completed quilt!



Happy Quilting!!!

Jeannie

I've made another new quilting friend and I love it! Having a friend to share the joy of quilting with is so fun and motivational!! Jeannie has let me quilt 3 of her quilts now and I hope that I will get to continue quilting for her for a long time to come. First up was a kitty quilt...

When we were choosing a pattern to quilt on it I looked closely at some of the prints on the quilt. In each of the panels the kittens are playing with yarn and in another print there is some tightly wound ribbon so I suggested that we do some loops over the whole quilt. I had a lot of fun with this one!

I quilted three loops in the same direction, very close together so that it looked like ribbon does right after you curl it with scissors, then all over loops around it. The over-all effect was really neat! Here is a more solid print so you can see the quilting a bit better...

The second quilt that I quilted up for Jeannie was a sampler quilt. This is the second sampler quilt that I have quilted from this class, but I got to do a different design on this one. Since the border fabric had very prominent flowers, we decided to go with the daisy pattern. Somehow I forgot to take pictures of it...hmm. But you will have to take my word for it, that it was really cute and the backing showed off the pattern of the quilting very well. Jeannie, if you have pictures of it...please email them to me and then I will update this post with them!

The third quilt was a fishy quilt. We looked through my patterns and found a couple that would work, but then our friend Annie and I had a great idea, why not make it look like water, so I free motion quilted the next one, which is a lot of fun for me. I love being able to stand at the front of the machine!!! When I quilt with a pantograph, which is a specific design, I stand at the back of the machine and I watch the pattern that I am tracing with a laser light, which means that I don't get to see the quilt as much...anyways back to Jeannie's quilt...I used a variegated thread that goes from a light blue, to medium blue, to purple. The changing colors made the water effect even more prominent.

Lets get a closer look...

Wow, those pictures can get big!  Here's another

And here is a picture of the backing...

I had a lot of fun quilting for you Jeannie!

Happy quilting! 

Happy Colors

This next quilt is designed by my favorite fabric designers, Me & My Sister Designs. This is from their Strawberry Lemonade fabric line. This quilt is actually one of my own so I got to decide exactly what kind of quilting to do without having to worry about coming up with any custom design pricing.

Wouldn't this quilt just brighten any room? That's why I love their fabric lines so much! They are always cheerful!
I had a little bit of fun with this quilt since it is my own. I put loops and flowers all over in the borders, in the blocks the outer square got loops and the small center square has a sweet flower in it.

The backing turned out pretty neat too. I used a blue thread so that it stuck out in the yellow a bit. There's loops and flowers all over the place!

I really enjoy being able to do some freehand work. It is admittedly a very simple design, but sometimes simple is best. I am a big fan of my quilting being the second thing that you see when you look at a quilt. The piecing should be the main focus! I certainly think that I achieved that when I quilted this one!

This next quilt was pieced by a neighbor of mine. She was referred to me by my good friend June, when I was on the phone with her telling her how to find my house she started laughing...then she told me that she literally lived around the corner from my house, I pass by her house any time I leave the house. We both had to chuckle at that! This quilt was made during her college years (yup she's a young quilter like me) and I was super excited to help her finish it up! Isn't this celtic knot quilt gorgeous?

This quilt measured 98" X 98"...it's a big one! Of course, when selecting a pattern to use, I suggested the 3" tall Chantilly Lace pattern...this quilt took a day and a half to complete, but it was well worth it! The pattern looked amazing on this quilt. The picture below is of the backing. We were going for an irish interlocking look and I really think that we accomplished that!

Isn't that a pretty, dainty pattern?? I enjoyed it!!

Stay tuned for more pictures! Until then, Happy Quilting!



Clam shells and geometrics

I quilted Annie's first ever completed quilt top! She was so shy about bringing it out but I think that it is really nice for a first quilt! Check it out...

We decided to use the clamshell flowers pattern on this quilt and I think that it turned out really well. It goes with the print of the fabric.

She pieced her backing on this quilt and in the center was a large white strip, I chose a pink thread to go on the back so the pattern showed up really well.

What do you think??

She also had me quilt this one for her

Her husband called it his "Route 66" quilt. You'll see why in the picture below. They asked me to do my geometric design on this quilt and it was fun to hide a few things in there. Brian, I'm not going to show you everything, you are just going to have to look at every square inch until you find it all!!
This is the backing fabric. I hope that someday you two get to take that route 66 trip of your dreams!!

Next up is a quilt that was shipped to me from a new friend in Nevada. I loved opening up the package to see this gorgeous stained glass window quilt. It is just beautiful!! 

There are some small dragonfly's in the pattern of the border fabric so I was asked to quilt some dragonfly's onto the quilt.

I had a lot of fun quilting these little beauties onto this gorgeous quilt!!

I am still playing catch-up as far as blogging goes, so stay tuned for some more pictures of beautiful quilts that I have been priviledged enough to add my own touch to...in the meantime, Happy Quilting!

I'm Back!!

Ahh the internet, we forget how great it really is until we don't have it anymore! I've been without it for 2 weeks now and it has been torture! I finally have a web connection now so y'all will be hearing from me a lot more! I'll give you a quick run-down of what I have been up to and share a LOT of pictures! Let's dive right in!!

This first quilt was made by a new customer, Maurya. She did an amazing job piecing this quilt, every one of the blocks lined up perfectly, and the prints on the dino blocks were cut so meticulously that each of the dinos were in the same place in each block!

I quilted this in wavy diamonds.

The backing was flannel, the little boy that is going to receive this blanket is really going to be warm under this quilt!!

The next quilt was also pieced by Maurya. This pretty quilt will be going to the sister of the little boy who will be receiving the dino quilt. What lucky siblings!!

 Again, the piece work was impeccable! Great job Maurya!!

I used the cotton candy pattern on this quilt, which you will really be able to see in the next photo. Maurya used Minky for her backing fabric which really made me nervous. I have heard that a lot of longarm quilters have had a lot of problems with Minky bunching up on itself and making the finished quilt look more like a scrunchy...luckily for me that wasn't the case, the quilt layed out nice and flat and the feel of the super soft minky was awesome, it has inspired me to try minky on one of my daughter Jordan's next quilts!

The flow of this pattern is great, very smooth...following it for half an hour I got a little motion sick and had to sit down for a few minutes before starting again! I still love the way i turned out though and I can't wait to try it again.

I just LOVE how the pattern stuck out so much on the minky backing.

Allright, there is no way that I can make blog posts short, I just love sharing all of these photos with everyone! More to come later! Stay tuned...In the meantime, Happy Quilting!

Internet

I have been super busy and quilting away at home. I am quilting full-time now! The only thing that is bugging me right now is that I do not have the internet at home yet. I haven't been able to update my blog in a long time!! I just wanted to let all of you know that on April 11th my internet will be hooked up and you will be bombarded with pictures of the beautiful quilts that I have had the pleasure of working on for the past couple weeks!
Stay tuned, and happy quilting!
Nicole