Curly-Cues

The V.P. of my quilt guild walked up to me, handed me a bag, and left. I knew it was a quilt, and that she wanted me to quilt it...but apparently everything else was up to me! Yippee!! I got it home and opened up and found this adorable thing!

Isn't that cute? The wrapper ends of the candy stick out, so I pinned them into the center of the candy while I was quilting the background. I chose to do my new favorite, small curli-cues in the center and larger ones on the border. In the striped border I did a fun feather.

And in the center of the candy I did a swirl. I tried to keep it sweet.

The next quilt that I got to work on took my breath away. It almost makes me want to learn to do embroidery. This is going to be the block of the month club for The Blue Iris Quilt Shop in Palo Cedro, CA. I was so excited when I saw what Pauline had brought for me to quilt!!

Isn't that great? I had some fun with this one!! I originally named this blog post "Sweetness", until I realized that every quilt that I worked on in this post had those cute curli-cues in it. I put curli-cues around the outside of the elf. Pauline told me that she didn't want me to quilt over the embroidery but the rest was up to me. I was super careful not to go over the embroidery and to leave the inside of the embroidery alone, but I couldn't just leave that big area alone...so I did a small amount of thread play in each of the characters. On this one it is in her collar and hat.

Santa got some thread play in his hat brim and the star, as well as his belt. 

 



Mr. Mouse had some fun quilting on his quilt and ears.

And this lovely fairy's ribbon is full of thread as well as her collar. I used a very white thread called Glide, it has a lovely slight sheen to it and it came across as a bit glitzy when I did my thread play. I loved it, very Christmasy.

The houses were even more fun! I had some fun in the wreaths on the doors, the hearts in the windows, etc.

And I played with the roofs on a few of the houses as well...

What fun!
This next quilt is actually mine!!!! Normally I don't take the time to custom quilt my own quilts...I had an all-over pattern all picked out for this quilt and everything! I loaded it onto the frame and I just couldn't do it. What would've been a 6-8 hour job turned into a 2 day job once I decided to custom quilt this one! The first thing that I did was I went through with an invisible thread and stitched in the ditch...around every...single...square. Whew...that took some time!

Stitching in the ditch is hard to do on a longarm...they just want to wiggle and curve all over the place so straight lines are challenging, but I wanted all of the squares to stick out a bit...I used a wool batting to help puff it up a bit. I think it turned out!

I just finished the machine part of the binding today, and I didn't want to wait until it was all stitched down to share this with you so here's the whole thing!

My daughter was just asking me what I was going to name it and I told her I wasn't sure yet. She decided she was going to name it and promptly decided it should be called "Puppies" but then she changed her mind seeing as there weren't actually any puppies in it...so "Sunflowers" it is. Oh, she cracks me up. This quilt was designed by Linda Ballard at www.letsquilt.com The title of her pattern is "Glory Bee"

I'd better get cracking on that hand binding.
Happy Quilting everyone!!!
P.S. My first Scrap Squad quilt went up Friday...if you haven't, go check it out here and tell me what you think. I read and greatly appreciate all coments! http://www.quiltmaker.com/blogs/quiltypleasures/2013/03/qm-scrap-squad-nicoles-seaside-majestic-garden/