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!!!

Custom smiley suns

My friend Beth just made these two quilts for two new baby girls that are about to make their debut into the world. The quilts are twins, the kiddos are not. Check these OUT!!!

Aren't they amazing? The detail that went into these quilts is awesome. Just check out the embroidery she did on the faces...look at those eyes!!!

The eye on the right only looks a little weird because I didn't take a great picture (OK OK I admit, I'm no photographer) and the quilt wasn't laying flat. Isn't that amazing? Do you see the awesome gold flecks?

Beth wanted the quilting to look like the rays from the sun just kept going...this is how it turned out.

The blue ink from the water soluble marker is still on the quilt, so let's see the back...

Those lines are 1/2" apart. These quilts took some time...but the effect was worth it. I loved the feel of running my fingers over the quilted ripples! Beth, thank you for challenging me, yet again. I hope I get to quilt for you again soon!

Next up is one of my own quilts. My husband and I took a quick trip to Reno last year for a backhoe rodeo...has anyone ever heard of one of those? The backhoe operators do obstacle courses while driving different types of equipment, including dropping tennis balls that are balancing on the bucket into trash cans, it was quite entertaining. Well while we were there I took the hubby to a quilt shop. Hey!! I watched backhoe stuff all day, he can endure an hour in a quilt shop, right? We saw this quilt as a kit the shop and we both immediately thought of Granny. Granny loves blue...her house is entirely decorated in blue, carpet, walls, appliance covers, tablecloths, etc etc. We both knew she would love it, so I got it!!

I did a little custom quilting on it. Very tight loopies in all of the light blue sections around the stars so that the stars popped out, loopies in the green areas, a sweet little flower in the darker blue cornerstones and the white centers of the small blocks...and my new favorite border treatment, curly cue feathers.

When I give a quilt as a gift I like to go down to Wally World and pick up a white cake box from the wedding section. I like the fact that they can open up the lid and voila, there is the quilt looking all grand!!!

I don't know why, but I always get nervous when I am giving a quilt as a gift. I was planning on giving Granny her quilt on her birthday, but they celebrated it early at the family reunion so there I am in my board shorts, blood donation tshirt, and my hair is nice and messy from swimming in the pool, but I still like this picture:

See...I told you she likes blue, blue apron, blue checked shirt, blue shoes, and in case you were wondering, her earings were blue to match as well! :)

I was asked why I gave Granny such a nice gift. Granny does so much for everyone else, she deserves something great for herself. She put it on her bed. I didn't think that it would fit as a bed quilt and that she would use it on her tv chair, but would you believe it? It fit the bed perfectly. The green inner border was right on the edge of the bed and the border comes down just enough so that it shows the pretty bed skirt right underneath it.

I love you Granny!!! I hope you & Jampers thoroughly enjoy the quilt!

Happy quilting everyone!!



Baby Quilts

Last month at our Guild meeting we had a sew-in. Basically what we did was we all brought our sewing machines, sat down, and sewed up some charity quilts. I love being able to participate in events like these. During the meeting, the Pres. read a letter from a quilt recipient. He was so grateful for his bright quilt that he sent us a letter to thank us for it and a donation of $100. WOW! It's so great to know that the people who recieve these quilts really understand the work that goes into making them!
This is the quilt that I made:

There are mistakes, I know. But hey, I finished piecing the top at the meeting!! I quilted stars and loops all over it. I just know that it'll go to some sweet little boy and hopefully he will love it to pieces!

I got to quilt another fishy quilt. This one was done as a nine patch with sashing. I used my water ripple pattern (freemotion) again with a light tan colored thread.

They say that you learn something with every quilt. This is definitely true with this quilt. The backing had some eggs on it that were labeled. They were cute and I liked the colors...but I didn't think anything else of it until I got the quilt off of the frame and I was taking pictures. Well the fishies were facing upwards on the quilt top, but the eggs on the backing were upside down...woopsie! Now I will check the backing to make sure that it is directional, especially if the top is too. It is a good idea, if it is directional, to mark the top left hand corners for me so that this never happens again. Luckily my customer (Annie, I love you) was completely understanding.

Next up is one of the most adorable little baby quilts that I have ever seen.

Isn't that CUTE? Those bears are applique'd on in MINKY! The customer asked for a overall pattern that didn't go over the teddy bears. So what I did was the stars and loops pattern, which is pretty great on a lot of stuff, and then outlined the large stars and teddy bears.
The backing was minky also.

Happy quilting everybody!
Nicole

More Custom Fun

Stunning right? This quilt intimidated me from the moment I saw it. In fact, I took so long figuring out what I shoudl do on it that I almost missed my deadline to get it back to my customer! Kris, I hope you love this quilt as much as I do!!  This quilt will be in the Marin County fair this year and I am so excited to hear what the judges think of it. Leave a comment telling me what you think!

This is my version of a curly cue feather...

The corner, I curved the feathers around the whole border, the corners all look like this. I had a lot of fun creating these feathers for the border. So much fun, in fact, that I used the same look in the sashing as well.

Here is a picture of the backing fabric so that you can really see the feathers.

The blocks got some micro loopies to make the blocks pop out, check out these itty bitty loopies!

Next up is Elise's quilt. Elise, Kris, my Mother-in-law Kathi and I all went to a quilt retreat, which was taught by Linda Ballard. This is Elise's finished product...someday I will have time to quilt my own quilt top that is in the same pattern but different fabrics, and I will share photos when I do.

I got to do some custom quilting on this lovely quilt as well. I chose some linear patterns, some curvy patterns, and some orange peel patterns This is the final result.

The lines were more difficult to create than I thought they would be. It's easy to get the ruler and do the lines themselves, but trying to stitch in the ditch that quarter inch to get to the next line was more difficult than I expected.

Orange peel. This turned out so neat! I didn't think that at my skill level I could do something like this, but confidence in yourself is more important than anything and I am learning! My fellow longarming friend told me how to accomplish this look, and while I will be the first to admit that it is not perfect, I still think that it turned out pretty darn good!

This border treatment is called Piano Key. Turned out so neat. Thank you so much to my friend Tenna for helping me come up with the design to quilt onto this quilt! Also a big thanks to Elise and Kris for believing in me so much to send me their beautiful quilts for me to add my own touch to.
Happy Quilting everybody.