Market

International Quilt Market was last week. If you read a few quilters blogs...you've probably read enough about Market by now...but just in case, I'll share a few photos of my experience as well! Maybe you will see something in my photos that you didn't in another's post.
I couldn't decide who I was most excited to see...my favorite fabric designers that I have loved for over 8 years...or my buddy Angela Walters...or the Quiltmaker Magazine editors that I have been working with for the past couple of years. They are all superstars in my book...well we are just going to have to go in the order of folks as I saw them. First up, my buddy Angela Walters.

Isn't she cute? She was at market debuting her 2nd line for Art Gallery Fabrics "Legacy" The prints were inspired by her favorite quilting designs...and they are gorgeous!



She is an amazing longarm quilter and an amazing teacher. I have learned a lot of her techniques and enjoy using them in my every day quilting.

When I was having fun at Angela's booth she decided to tattoo my arm. . . with markers. The funny thing was while I was hanging with her at her booth a lot of other ladies came up and asked for a tattoo as well.

I also came across one of my best online friends I've ever had, Mrs. Diane Harris, Interactive Editor for Quiltmaker Magazine, and I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to get a picture with these two lovely ladies!

Meeting Diane (Left) was a dream come true. I have been working with Diane since my very first project with Quiltmaker Magazine in June of 2011. I have enjoyed staying in touch and working with her ever since. Diane is not only in charge of the Quiltmaker blog, but also their facebook page AND she is the Scrapsquad wrangler!

Not only did I get to meet Diane (Right to left), but I also got to meet Eileen Fowler, Assoc. Editor, (then there's me) Carolyn Beam, Quiltmakers Creative Editor, Anne Wiens, fellow Scrap Squad member, AND June Dudley, the Editor in Chief.

We had a blast getting to know each other over dinner. I had such a good time that my cheeks were literally hurting from smiling so much! Thanks so much for a wonderful night out ladies!!!

Last but not least, the ladies from Me and my Sister.

Oh my word, these ladies are a hoot! They are every bit as fun and sweet as they seem from their blog. I've made at least 5 or 6 quilts out of fabrics that they have designed and I have collected quite a bit more fabric to make even more quilts. Their newest line is adorable! It is bright fun florals, which is their niche. Check out this adorable quilt that they designed and made out of their newest fabric.

I can't wait to break into a fat quarter bundle and get started on it!
More pictures from Quilt Market:
I must make this quilt. I love these color combinations...I look at this quilt and it just says..."me"

I'm going to be working on a quilt for my local quilt shop in the next week...the funny thing was that I saw the quilt and the designer while I was at quilt market. I took advantage and had to check out the quilting on it so that I can get ideas for when I quilt mine. P.S. that is Nancy Halvorsen!!

I'm loving this batik quilt. What a gorgeous way to use up some of my scraps!

This is Vanessa Christensen from V&Co. I love her new fabric line that is coming out, I was lucky enough to be able to snag a bundle of this fabric at sample spree.

There was some amazing quilting that I got to look at. Unfortunately I didn't always pull out my camera and snap a pic, but here are two of my favorites...

One cool thing that happened was I saw this quilt in the magazine booth and it reminded me of a quilt that my friend Nancy McNally had made, then I remembered that it had made the cover of a magazine and realized that it probably was her quilt...so I snapped this pic and sent it to her via facebook to find out if it was hers...well it was! She didn't even know that it was going to be at market...so it was a nice surprise for her and for me!

I can't possibly put everything into one blog post...quilt market was every bit as amazing as I had imagined it being and I hope that I will be able to attend it again!
Happy Quilting everybody!!

Strips & Curves

I received this quilt from quilt shop owner Lynette from The Blue Iris Quilt shop in Palo Cedro, CA. All she really said to me was that the quilting had to be "AWESOME". Ok. No pressure! I fretted over this quilt for a long time. Nothing "AWESOME" came to mind. A few weeks passed and I knew I had to get this quilt back to her soon...so I loaded it up with only an idea for the border in mind.

It's funny how a quilt can get to me sometimes. I don't always have a clear vision of how to quilt a quilt immediately. I finally loaded the quilt onto the frame and took it one portion of the quilt at a time and the ideas started flowing almost immediately! OH!!! I should do THIS!

I took each individual block one at a time and it made life so much easier. In the previous picture I used my own version of a curli-cue feather. In this next photo I did some pebbling but I wanted to show depth so I went from itty bitty circles in the center and the pebbles got larger as they got closer to the edge of the circle.

On this 3/4 circle I decided to put a type of sun with rays coming out from the center. I thought it turned out very well and may be my favorite! (there was really no way to get a picture of the whole circle while still being able to see the quilting, so you get a close-up shot of 1/4 of it)

This next one is a flower, I added some curli-cues inside of the petals and did a bit more pebbling...

Another wavy flower...

And a fun and funky feather!

For the border I really wanted to bring the strips from the center of the quilt to the border, so I did a piano key style quilting job on it and I love how it turned out!

Lynette, I hope you think that the quilting made your already awesome quilt even more AWESOME! Thanks for letting me quilt this for you!
Happy quilting everybody.

Big

This week I worked on the biggest quilt ever! The backing of this quilt took up every inch of my 12' table! It is good to know that I made the right deciscion to purchase the 12' table instead of going with the 10' version. I was really worried about the 12' fitting into the room that was designated to be my longarm room. Check out this clearance.

This small space is how I get to the back of my machine, multiple times a day, in order to be able to do pantograph quilting. Needless to say, I have to turn sideways and suck it in in order to get back there!
This is my beautiful room! I love that it has that large window, front and center, so I have plenty of light. Another bonus is that as soon as you come through my front door you turn right and this is what you find. My customers don't have to walk through my entire house to get to my quilting room!

OH! Back to the quilt. This quilt was sent to me by Cheryl from North Dakota! It was made using stonehenge fabrics and it is so beautiful and soft!

This picture is while it was still on the machine...

She used a solid brown for the backing and I used a tan/gold thread on the back so the quilting showed up really well. She chose my Arabesque pattern.

I attempted to lay the finished quilt out on my floor...but the quilt was so big that it covered all of my floor space, as well as the overflow of quilts that currently don't fit into the cupboard! I really like this picture because you can really see the size of the quilting pattern in correlation to the size of the quilt. I spent quite a few hours on this beauty.

Cheryl actually sent me two quilts. This is the second one.

Yup, its another large beauty! She chose my new pattern "Wave on Wave" for this quilt and I think that it was the right choice.

 

I used a maroon thread. The quilting showed up very well on the back of this quilt as well.

 

This next quilt was made by my friend Kris. This is the second quilt in a month that I have finished up for her for a school auction. I sure hope that they are selling well, because she does a fantastic job on these quilts!

 This quilt has a bunch of pictures in it with children's names on them. If I had to guess I would say that the children took the pictures and then someone took the time to write the childs name on their picture, printed them on fabric, and here is an awesome personalized quilt. Priceless!

 

Thanks for reading my blog! Comments are always welcome and encouraged.

Happy quilting everyone!