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!

Ribbons

I entered 2 quilts into the Trinity County Fair this year. I've never entered a quilt into anything before and I was so excited to see what the judges said about my quilts and how I "stacked up" to some of the other quilters in the area. Well, now that I make a little money quilting, I had to enter as a professional. Yikes. I've only been longarm quilting since February and now I have to be judged right next to people who have quilted for who knows how long? I was intimidated for sure. Imagine my surprise when my friend who sat in on the judging called me giggling with excitement.
She started with the one that I knew wouldn't do as good as the other. This quilt is called "Glory Bound" It is the first quilt that I ever free motion quilted. I used my, now popular, stars and loops pattern and had some fun.
I entered the quilt under the professional division, in the large quilts class. It got 2nd place in its class, and 2nd place in its division! I was astounded! I did not expect to get much from this one and look how well it did!

Judges Comments: Beautifully done points ~ seams match precisely. Selection of fabric colors makes for lovely composition. Careful trimming would help keep borders straight and corners square. Nice even quilting keeps quilt flat and enhances design. When using stripes or plaids for binding, cut stright with pattern to look straighter.
Ok I can absolutely see what she means about the binding. The plaid didn't stay straight and instead kind of did a twist around the binding.
Ok, a close up of my first ribbons!

Sweet! Now for some really exciting news. I knew that this quilt would do ok, but it far exceeded my expectations! Check this out!!

 I entered this in the Professional Division, small quilts class. I got First in its class, First in its Division...AND Best Machine Work Overall! That means not only did it get the best it could do in its division, beating out all of the professionally quilted and made items...it also got the best machine work ribbon out of all of the quilts that were entered in the fair! WHOA!

 Judges Comments: Pleasing color selection placed on white makes for cool, crisp composition. Quilt design enhances piecing and is beautifully done.  More uniform quilting in center would eliminate bubbling. Quilt is straight and square, beautiful bindings!

I used a few straight lines in quilting

 Used my "signature" curly-cue feathers

 And made up my own little curly cue suns!

I don't understand what she means by bubbling in the quilting? I did use 2 layers of batting so that the quilting would be a bit puffier and stand out even more. I still love it and apparently so did the judge...

I'm still dancing in my seat. What a thrill to have hard work pay off.

Happy Quilting Everybody!

WHAT?

Oh my, I can't believe that it has been a MONTH since I last posted on here...lets just do a bit of a quilt show in this post...here goes:

 This trip around the world quilt was made by my buddy Maurya. She thanked me for quilting this by bringing me some homemade bread and jams...I gotta tell ya...it was fantastic eatin!

 This is my paisley rose quilting pattern.
These next couple of quilts are made by Nancy. She has a lot of babies being born into her life right now and so she is making up a bunch of quilts so that she has them on hand when she goes to see the wee ones. I put my stars and loops pattern on this map quilt...it seemed appropriate.

 Hey California!!

 This is also Nancy's quilt. I know most people would probably put the stars and loops pattern on this one seeing as it is outer space, but the first thing that I thought of was my swirls pattern, makes me think of all of the air swirling around and black holes...

 I think it turned out pretty good.

 This quilt was made by Connie...This quilt really makes me want a cupcake...

 She appliqued some cupcakes onto the backing too! I used my cotton candy pattern on this quilt and it turned out great.

 I used my swirls pattern on this pretty blue and yellow quilt as well.

Virginia made this quilt. I couldn't believe it when she left the quilting pattern up to me....do you see all of those yello points on there? Those corners are MITERED. yikes thats time consuming!

 The new pattern is called Arabesque and it has quickly become one of my favorites. It does take a lot more time that a lot of my designs so I charge a penny and a half for it, but isn't it GORGEOUS?

 This next quilt was made by Jill for her granddaughter. I used a soft pink thread on it and did my Hearts & Curls pattern...very sweet!

 We used wool batting on this quilt and I just LOVE the small amount of poof that it creates. The quilt is super soft and very lightweight. I now carry wool on the roll, so call for pricing if you are interested.

She asked me to write  Anya's name into the quilt, this is something that I can do, I just charge extra for it. Didn't it turn out well?

Allright, hopefully I gave you all some great eye candy to keep you happy until I can get back onto this computer and share some more with you! Enjoy! Happy Quilting!!!