New Pantographs

I love getting new pantographs in the mail. I swear I'm like a kid at Christmas waiting for those packages to arrive. I'd like to share with you some of the newer ones that I have gotten to use in the past month.
First up is Arabesque.
This pattern is a very scrolly looking design and it is just beautiful. It is a very dense pattern, and takes a lot more machine time so the charge for this pattern and a few others is 1 1/2 cents per square inch rather than the regular 1 cent per square inch price.
This quilt was made by Virginia.

Here's a picture of the quilt from the backside while it is still in progress.

And a picture of the border where you can see the quilting on the front-side!

The next pattern is perfect for the up-coming season. It's called Pumpkin Meander. This is another pattern that is in the 1 1/2 cent price range.

 This bed runner was made by Diane and is just one of 3 Halloween-themed quilts that I have quilted for her so far this year.

 Isn't that pumpkin just sweet?

The pumpkins are surrounded by curly-cues and leaves and I really enjoy using this pattern.
Next up is the pattern called Sunday. This is a sweet floral pattern and I charge 1 penny per square inch for it. I've used it on 2 quilts so far. This one is from Kathy.

And the second quilt is from Barbara. Both of these ladies live out of town.

The next design is called Poppy Fields. My friend Jeanne let me use it on her gorgeous one block wonder quilt. I got to use a bright pink thread on it and the backing is a solid black, so you won't have any trouble seeing the pattern that I used on this one!!

 Isn't this quilt gorgeous?  She did an amaing job piecing this quilt together.

The next quilt was made by Connie. She saw some of my new patterns when I brought it into the quilt shop and when she saw the Gecko pattern, decided that she needed to make a whole new quilt just so that she could have this pattern quilted onto it. I have to admit, I just finished this quilt. Usually I like to wait until the customer has seen it before I share with everyone else, but I'm sure that she will forgive me!

Can you see it? I admit that it is hard to see. The gecko is in green thread. I think they are just adorable, and surrounded by leaves.
I'll have more to share with you once I can talk some customers into letting me use my new patterns on their quilts. Patterns I haven't used yet include "All Squared Up" "Monster Bash" and a very sweet "Sheep Lullaby".
Happy Quilting everybody!!

Custom customers

Custom quilting. Those words used to scare me, but I have come to love it more and more!! I didn't used to think of myself as a creative person. I doodled on notebooks in school, sure, but I never dreamed that I would be a quilter when I grew up!
Nancy's quilt was so much fun to work on. When I first saw her dresden plates they reminded me of peacock feathers, so that is what I based my quilting on.

Nancy doesn't live around here so what she does is send me her quilt in the mail. Once I get the quilt I'll look at it and come up with some ideas and we email back and forth, using pictures of previous quilts or from google to show what we are thinking of, and we make it work! This is what we came up with. There is a lot of curly cues in this quilt so I wanted to put some straight lines into it and it turned out great. The backing that Nancy chose is a great glittery purple and it showed off the quilting well, check it out!

The next quilt is also from a customer that lives far away, in fact she was one of my first customers and she referred Nancy to me. Thanks Elise, for all the work. This quilt is another custom job, but the design process was a bit different. Elise bought a kit out of the Fons and Porter magazine and in the magazine it had photos and descriptions of how the quilt was quilted. She loved  their ideas so she sent me the magazine and I recreated it on her quilt. This is how it turned out!

 Isn't it gorgeous? Classic beauty!

As it turns out, Fons and Porter had some great quilting ideas on this quilt, I think that it turned out just great!

I stitched in the ditch around all of the dark blue squares and stars, which made them pop out and then there were loopies around the rest of the quilt. I used wool batting too, which has just the right amount of fluff to help those blue stars stick out even more.

 

Thanks for sending these quilts to me ladies! I really enjoyed working on them.
Ok, there is one more quilt to show you. Sometimes I will make a complete quilt for someone. I got a call a couple of months ago to make a ... unique quilt and I couldn't resist!!

 Yup, that's right! This quilt is made out of Crown Royal bags. I can freely admit that it was somewhat difficult to cut all of those bags, very hard on the rotary blade, but it turned out pretty good didn't it?
I used a yellow flannel for the inner border and binding, and a purple flannel for the back, but the rest is completely the bags from Crown Royal whiskey! :D Just in case you were wondering, there are 163 bags in this quilt.

Oh look, there's my flip flop-tan lined foot! :D
This is the proud owner of the quilt, Nicole (isn't that a great name?) She was very happy with the finished product and couldn't wait to get it back home where her husband was currently having a get-together with some golfing buddies. You just KNOW that the dudes are going to actually like this quilt.

Happy quilting everyone!