Tailfeathers

Oh boy, it feels like I have been on vacation for the last couple of weeks. Now that the Christmas rush has ended, quilting has slowed down around here! I have been busy working on a new project that I am very excited to tell you about!!! I have been selected to be a part of the Scrap Squad for Quiltmaker Magazine!

"Quiltmaker's Scrap Squad is an enthusiastic team of eight quiltmaker readers who are making scrappy versions of one pattern from each new issue of Quiltmaker. These women are fun and energetic and they love scrap quilts! "



Stay tuned at their blog http://www.quiltmaker.com/blogs/quiltypleasures/ because they will be introducing us this week! I am so excited to be a part of this awesome group, we have all been working really hard on our first quilts and sharing photos with each other on Facebook. These ladies are awesome!!! I can't wait to see what we all come up with throughout the year!

Besides working on and completing my first quilt for the scrap squad, I've been busy working on a few customer quilts. This quilt was made by Bobbie. She went to a retreat hosted by Linda Ballard from www.letsquilt.com. Linda is one of my great friends and she has a great way of using traditional blocks, with easy to piece methods, to create stunning quilts! I have made 5 of her quilts so far and I am looking forward to going to 2 of her retreats this year to get a couple more of those done!

I did some very simple custom quilting on this quilt. I stitched in the ditch around every seam (which took some time!!!) then used a tight stipple over the rest of the quilt.

I used a white thread in the background fabrics, an invisible thread to stitch in the ditch, and a chocolate thread for the borders. Doing a tight stipple like this over a large area is a great workout for my upper arms. I tell you what, I was BEAT by the time I finished this quilt. But isn't it worth it? This is a picture of the backing. You can clearly see the block on the actual quilt, pictures are a little difficult sometimes.

Another quilt that I got to work on was pieced by Carole. She has given me 7 quilts to quilt in the past few weeks! I guess she has been stock-piling her quilt tops until she found a quilter. :)

She wanted to use an all-over oriental styled pattern on this one so I showed her Tailfeathers and she loved it!

I used a tan thread that is called "Glide" I love using this brand of thread because it really does glide through my machine and it has just a hint of a shimmer in the thread which is just beautiful! The backing on the quilt was a light cream color and I used the tan glide on the back so you can really see the pattern jump out at you!

Isn't it pretty? I charge a penny and a half a square inch for this pattern.

Thank you for letting me share my joy of quilting with you!!
Happy quilting!

Quilts, what else?!?

So, in my last post I promised photos of the quilts that I was giving to my hubby and daughter for Christmas. Here they are!

As you can see, chaos ensues on Christmas morning. I am one of 7 children, and now some of us have our own children, so there is a lot of presents to open and wrapping paper littering the floor! It was near impossible for the kiddo to settle down enough to take a picture...but she really loves it.
Here it is on her bed, in her new big girl room!

It is made using Me & My Sister Designs fabrics. They are my absolute favorite, so bright and cheery! Close up!! I quilted Plummage on this quilt. It is a lovely feathery pattern that looks awesome on everything!

Next up was my husband's quilt.

Isn't he handsome? :) I made him a flannel quilt. He loves it so much that he actually said to me "you should always make flannel quilts...always!!" Well honey, I'm glad you like it!
You can see more of the quilt design here. It is an irish chain pattern and I quilted my arabesque pattern on it.

I also really enjoy making sample quilts for our local quilt shops. One of the shops kept me busy during my Christmas break by having me make two! I took them with me to my mom's place for Christmas and made them there while showing my mother a thing or two about quilting. Here they are! This one is called Garden Shuffle and is made using a bali pop.

I've recently discovered just how much I love using batiks! They are gorgeous!! Just look at this border fabric!! I especially love the accent fabric that also matches the binding. I quilted my fantasia pattern onto it and I think it turned out great!

I made a hanging sleeve for this quilt since it will be hanging in a quilt shop for a while. I didn't have enough of the gorgeous backing fabric left to make one so I used the large border print for it.

I make my labels using my fancy domestic sewing machine. It has the ability to do some great patterns on it as well as 3 different alphabet fonts! How do you make your labels?

This is the second quilt that I made for the quilt shop. When I first saw the pattern for this quilt I didn't think that I would like the finished result very much. I liked the pattern but there are so many different types of flowers and it is so bright... but now that it is finished, I love it!! The colors aren't just bright, they are vibrant! It all works really great together. This is called Botanica II in Spring by Henry Glass Fabrics.

Check out this backing fabric! It is definitely bright on the back as well!

Picking out a quilting pattern and thread for this quilt was difficult. I have a lot of flowery patterns to choose from, but there are dahlias, wildflowers, crocuses, and tulips in this quilt, so picking one flower was hard. In the end I chose my "Sunday" pattern. It has a flower in it but is mostly some pretty scrolls and loops.

That's it for now! I hope you enjoy reading my blog. The best part for me is when you leave a comment telling me what you think!!
Happy quilting.