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!

Quilts, what else?!?

So, in my last post I promised photos of the quilts that I was giving to my hubby and daughter for Christmas. Here they are!

As you can see, chaos ensues on Christmas morning. I am one of 7 children, and now some of us have our own children, so there is a lot of presents to open and wrapping paper littering the floor! It was near impossible for the kiddo to settle down enough to take a picture...but she really loves it.
Here it is on her bed, in her new big girl room!

It is made using Me & My Sister Designs fabrics. They are my absolute favorite, so bright and cheery! Close up!! I quilted Plummage on this quilt. It is a lovely feathery pattern that looks awesome on everything!

Next up was my husband's quilt.

Isn't he handsome? :) I made him a flannel quilt. He loves it so much that he actually said to me "you should always make flannel quilts...always!!" Well honey, I'm glad you like it!
You can see more of the quilt design here. It is an irish chain pattern and I quilted my arabesque pattern on it.

I also really enjoy making sample quilts for our local quilt shops. One of the shops kept me busy during my Christmas break by having me make two! I took them with me to my mom's place for Christmas and made them there while showing my mother a thing or two about quilting. Here they are! This one is called Garden Shuffle and is made using a bali pop.

I've recently discovered just how much I love using batiks! They are gorgeous!! Just look at this border fabric!! I especially love the accent fabric that also matches the binding. I quilted my fantasia pattern onto it and I think it turned out great!

I made a hanging sleeve for this quilt since it will be hanging in a quilt shop for a while. I didn't have enough of the gorgeous backing fabric left to make one so I used the large border print for it.

I make my labels using my fancy domestic sewing machine. It has the ability to do some great patterns on it as well as 3 different alphabet fonts! How do you make your labels?

This is the second quilt that I made for the quilt shop. When I first saw the pattern for this quilt I didn't think that I would like the finished result very much. I liked the pattern but there are so many different types of flowers and it is so bright... but now that it is finished, I love it!! The colors aren't just bright, they are vibrant! It all works really great together. This is called Botanica II in Spring by Henry Glass Fabrics.

Check out this backing fabric! It is definitely bright on the back as well!

Picking out a quilting pattern and thread for this quilt was difficult. I have a lot of flowery patterns to choose from, but there are dahlias, wildflowers, crocuses, and tulips in this quilt, so picking one flower was hard. In the end I chose my "Sunday" pattern. It has a flower in it but is mostly some pretty scrolls and loops.

That's it for now! I hope you enjoy reading my blog. The best part for me is when you leave a comment telling me what you think!!
Happy quilting.

Christmas

I've given away a couple of quilts as Christmas gifts so far this year, and tomorrow (Christmas day) I will be giving away two more. I love giving a quilt as a gift!! It always means so much to me to give a quilt to someone. It is something that I have worked so hard on, putting a lot of time and effort into it to make it just right. Here are a couple of the quilts that I have made for Christmas this year.
This first quilt was a joint effort. Back in 2011 I participated in the Back To School Sewing event with Quiltmaker Magazine, see link here... http://www.quiltmaker.com/blogs/quiltypleasures/2011/09/introducing-nicole-brouillette-a-back-to-school-sewer-for-quiltmaker/
The ladies that participated in this with me are all really close still, we talk on Facebook almost daily. One of them, Carole,  recently learned that she has breast cancer. I couldn't get it out of my head. I wanted to do something for her!! So I was talking to Valerie and we decided to get together with all of these other ladies and make Carole a quilt. We each made a row of 6 - 12" blocks, everyone sent them to me, I assembled the rows, put the borders on, quilted and bound it, and sent it off to Carole, all without her knowing a thing! This is the finished result:

Isn't it great? I used a pattern called Tickle on it:

Thanks to USPS tracking, I knew exactly when she would be receiving it in the mail and it was so exciting to see her reaction to it on Facebook. I hope that the quilt brings her comfort when she needs it.

I gave another quilt to Jenny. I went to high school with Jenny, and we were friends in Drama class. She is always so nice and friendly to everyone. Recently she became my step-sister-in-law! Jenny has Cystic Fibrosis and makes frequent trips to the hospital to help her lung function. I wanted her to have a small quilt that she can take with her to the hospital to keep her warm and comfy. She really seemed to love it when I gave it to her.

It was my mom's 50th birthday on the 11th of this month. Admittedly this is not a Christmas gift, but it is Christmas themed so I thought it would be ok to post it anyway! Mom is currently building a log cabin house and I thought that this quilt would fit perfectly into the theme of it! She loves it and has been showing it off to everyone that has walked through her front door! (PS I originally made this quilt to be used as a sample in my local quilt shop, that is why the picture is inside of the quilt shop)

 

I made this next quilt to be given to one of my husband's customers as a thank you. It was a surprise for her as well. I got the sweetest voicemail from her saying thank you.

 

This quilt was made with a jelly roll and I used a new-to-me method called "tube quilting" It was a lot of fun to try new things! Due to my very talkative and inquisitive child, I knew that Mary's favorite colors were pink and green and she loved polka dots so I knew this line of fabric would be perfect for her. I used my plummage pattern and a wool batting and I think it turned out just great!

I have two more quilts to give as gifts tomorrow morning (christmas!!!) They are going to the two most important people in my life, my husband and daughter. I'll share photos once they have opened them!

Merry Christmas everyone!!! And happy quilting.



All in one place!!

This is proof that sometimes all it takes is one happy customer to grow your business! Maurya has had me quilt a few of her quilts for her. She is really great at sharing her love of quilting with those around her. In this case, three of her co-workers worked on quilts to give as gifts for Christmas and she referred all of them to me for the quilting! This first one was made by Melissa. It is a beautiful modern quilt! I love all of the batiks in the quilt!



 

I used my Arabesque pattern on it and it showed up really great in the solid cream background fabrics and didn't take away from the gorgeous batiks that she so carefully chose.

The texture that this quilting pattern creates is awesome! I love running my fingers over it.

This next quilt was made by Anne. She actually made one for each of her daughters, but somehow I didn't take a picture of the second one...doh!

I put a great butterfly pattern on it and it really showed up great on the minky fabric that she used as backing!

The next quilt was made by Wendy.

The batiks are gorgeous and the fabrics are cut large so that you can really see the patterns in the fabrics! I love this quilt!!!
I put a new leafy pattern on this quilt in a chocolate brown thread. This pattern is a penny and half per square inch, and I can't wait to use it again!

Since there were so many quilts from one place, I decided to make a "work call" and deliver them all at once to the ladies. It was like Christmas for me, all of those ladies spread out their quilts on the table in the conference room and admired their quilts and each others quilts. Fun all around. Thank you all for letting me work on these quilts for you! Let's do it again!
I have some more really great quilts to share with you all, but I want to wait until the owners get their quilts before I share them with everybody else! Stay tuned...and Happy Quilting!

Christmas Time

The Christmas rush is in full swing around here! I've been really busy quilting, but I wanted to take a moment to show you some of what I have been up to!
This quilt was made by Gloria for her sister.

She used some pretty batiks with a lot of tropical floral prints on them which gave me the perfect chance to try out my newest pattern "Caribbean"



 I used a light purple thread which showed up really great in the lime green sections and on the dark purple backing!

This next quilt was made by Becky. She used those adorable Dr. Seuss fabrics! When I first looked at the quilt the circles all over the fabrics jumped out at me so I quilted a large pebble pattern all over it.



 This next quilt was made by Carol.

She told me that she has pieced this quilt a few times, never finding quite the right balance of fabrics. One day she was looking through a quilting magazine and she saw these applique flowers, she knew that she had to put them on this quilt and I think that the results are stunning! It made an ordinary log cabin quilt extroardinary! I quilted Plummage, an all-over feathery pattern onto it using a yellow thread and I think it turned out great!



Allrighty, back to work! Merry Christmas and Happy Quilting everyone! 

From a jelly roll!!

I had the opportunity to quilt both of these quilts recently. Believe it or not, they were both made with jelly rolls! I love the pattern on both of these and really enjoyed working on them!
First up is Sandi J!
The entire center of this quilt was made with jelly roll fabric. The only thing on this quilt that wasn't part of the Jelly roll is the outer border and the backing fabric. Isn't that awesome? I loved getting to do some fun custom quilting on this one.

 I had just returned from the Machine Quilters Expo when I started on this quilt and I got to use some of the new techniques that I learned! I used some dense background fillers here...

 

I got to make my own templates for the flowers and inner border here, along with a fun and stunning feather for the sashing!

I can't take all of the credit for the ideas of the custom work that are on this quilt. Sandi gave me the book that she had gotten the pattern from and asked me to recreate it on her quilt. Of course, I made my own tweaks to it, and I really love how it turned out!

 

This next quilt was made by Flo. She told me that she took a class to make this quilt at a shop in Arizona. When she asked for the class supply list so that she could buy materials they informed her that she would be recieving her fabrics in the class, and that everyone would have the same fabrics. She is a braver woman than I am!! She had no idea what it would look like until she arrived for the class. This is what she got.

I freely admit that I checked the selvage edges on the fabric to find out the name of it...isn't it beautiful? I love the colors and the patterns of every fabric!
I quilted my Clematis pattern onto it using a slightly metalic looking light purple thread.

I love quilting this pattern. The flower is beautiful and then it has those little swirly's all over the rest of the quilt. Wider view...

That's it for now, I'd better get back to work!
Happy quilting everybody!