Jordan

Those of you who know me, or have visited my home, know my daughter Jordan. She is a hilarious, talkative, adorable 4 year old. She keeps getting bigger, and so quickly!!! So, my husband and I have decided that it is time to move her from a day bed to a twin sized bed, so you know what that means right? A new quilt. Being the novice mom that I am, I asked her opinion as far as what she would like her quilt to be. I pulled out a bunch of quilting magazines and books and we looked and looked...and looked. In my mind I was going to do a simple quilt, a take 5 or Just Can't Cut it, the kind that take a day to piece. Jordan had something else in mind. She wanted pink, I wanted purple...I swear she had different ideas on everything. Why did I ask her what she wanted? The world will never know...but the quilt turned out great!

 Jordan and I decided to pick a block out of Quiltmaker's 100 blocks magazine, so I made 25 of those, then I decided to put them on point, and added 2 borders. The quilt grew and grew!! It ended up being 82 X 103"...very large for a twin bed, but hey, it will be big enough for when she moves up to a queen sized bed, right?

 Look at that happy face!

I quilted this fun feather pantograph on it. It's called fantasia and is just beautiful on everything!!

Speaking of Quiltmaker's 100 blocks magazine...
I do pattern testing for that magazine. It is a lot of fun, they send me the instructions for a block, then I make it, making sure that all of the instructions are there and correct. It is so much fun when I get the magazine and see my name in print there.

 For this issue I also got to make a quilt for the magazine! What a thrill! They sent me the fabric for the top and I got to design a quilt based on the blocks that I tested. Mine is #8.

I used an all-over feathery pattern on this quilt as well, called Plummage. It also looks fantastic on every type of quilt.
Happy quilting everyone!

MQX

Machine Quilters Expo...

I learned about  MQX about 4 weeks before the event. As soon as I heard that there was a conference just for us longarm quilters I was determined to GO! I immediately went home and signed up for classes. Originally I only signed up for about 5 classes but I ended up taking many more than that. I learned from some amazing teachers like Gina Perkes, who taught me how to design my own motifs. Kim Brunner

She taught Twirly Whirly Feathers and spoke at the banquet

Linda Taylor,

I took her Beginners Longarm Freehand Basics. The techniques taught in this class were amazing, and far beyond the basics. I learned a LOT.

I took 2 classes from Jamie Wallen

He taught mystical cotton tracks and mystical feathers. It was amazing! Just look at this sample that he brought, and this is just one sample of many! There were many many more!

Someday...:D
I met up with a friend in Jamie's first class too. This is Marsha, I actually bought my machine in her quilt shop!

I also took a class from Karen McTavish. Her class was about how to come up with ideas for custom quilting. She was a rocker chick/quilter.

I also took 2 classes from Angela Walters. She has accomplished so much in such a short time, and I learned a lot in her class.

I took her class right before banquet, so she asked me to save her a seat since she had to put all of her supplies away first. Here we are at banquet:

Here I am with my new friends. Thats me on the left, next to Lana from London, then Shannon from Washington, then Angela! We all had such a great time at banquet! We were, by far, the loudest table there and definitely had more fun then all the rest, even if we were the only table not to win any door prizes!! In fact, we had so much fun that we decided to hang out a bit after banquet!

I learned so much in my classes, and I had SO much fun making new friends. I know that I will go back next year and I hope to bring a bunch of people from my area with me.

I have actually been able to accomplish a bit of quilting as well. My little girl is growing up...she is moving up to a twin sized bed, so she needed a twin sized quilt! I just finished the binding on it last night and here she is all snuggled up with it on the sofa.

She wanted a pink quilt for her room, and I wanted her to have a purple quilt. I thought that this was a nice compromise. Her room is painted in similar colors. Now all we have to do is put all of the baseboard and chair rail into her room and she can move back into it and out of my piecing room! I love this kiddo!
Until next time...Happy Quilting!

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!