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!