Colorful quilt

 A beautiful quilt by Devona.  She teaches sewing and quilting to kids, and wants to hang this one up to encourage them onward. I love the colors in it, so very pretty.

 The backing is black.  I have really mixed feelings about a high contrast backing where the stitching shows up so starkly as this one does.  Every little mistake shows so easily.  Because of all the white fabric and white stitching on the front, I had to use white in the bobbin, was not going to risk little black pokies showing through.  Since it was going to be such a riot of thread play on the back anyway, I went ahead and used the other colors from the front on the back as well....I think it turned out pretty cool.  But in a perfect world I'd just as soon not have the bobbin stitches show up like this.  .  

Devona just picked this up....another satisfied customer :)

Meeting cyber friends

I spend some time almost every day online researching quilting ideas.  There is one longarm quilting site that is a particular favorite of mine.....quilters from all over the world share their work, ideas, and help each other with questions and problems.  Many of these gals have become online friends of mine over the past years that I've been doing this.  Last weekend I got to meet one of these cyber-friends, Deborah.  She lives fairly close to one of my daughters and while we were visiting our family, I swung by Deborah's home to buy some micro handles from her that she wasn't using and I wanted.  What a talented and lovely person.  She has one of those stories that teaches you not to give up, she almost quit longarming a few years back, but then things turned around for her and now she's quilting for a national quilt designer and also is in the process of putting out her own book.  (She let me look at her drawings for her book....so pretty - I can't wait to buy it!)  She was a good sport and let me get a photo of the two of us :)

Happy Valentines Day

5 quilts

 A sweet quilt by a little girl taking a sewing class -- the next quilting generation!

 This fun quilt is going to an elderly lady in Germany who became a "grandma" to a returned missionary in our ward.  Lori did a great job on this...her quilts are always so fun and colorful.  I love how the quilting in the plain solid blocks turned out.

 This quilt is by Vicki.  I've told her she needs to design and market her quilts.  She makes them up and they are usually very cool.  It was a bit tricky to do my panto around those big 3-dimensional flowers, but we got 'er done!

Below is a fun baby quilt for Louise's grandson.  I don't know how she puts out as many quilts as she does, so prolific.  Louise asked for clouds between the airplanes -- sounds easy?  I really stressed over making a cloud that didn't look goofy.  

Another fun quilt by Lori.  I hope the quilting shows up here, I quickly had to take this photo before she left with the quilt -- didn't have time to make sure the light caught the quilting correctly.  

Lone Star Quilt

 A very pretty Lone Star quilt by Lynn.  She is such a great piecer, points all match, everything is square and flat- makes my life much easier!

This is my newest favorite back ground filler in the light areas.  It's a take off of McTavishing, and I think much prettier.  I gave the inside border and the stars some quilted borders to set them off a bit from the fill work.  If you look close at the solid black border I quilted diagonal lines and filled in every other one which I love the subtle effect that gave that border - the inside quilting and larger outside border are so busy I wanted something more peaceful in that black border - yet something that was interesting.  

This is your standard treatment of a lone star, it's used often because it's a great way to quilt it.  It is possible to jazz it up with various stitch patterns, but I thought there was enough going on in the quilt already without doing anything more than this

I did piano keys in this busy large border.  If it was a solid fabric feathers would have been pretty, but on this fabric anything swirly would have been lost.  A lot of work for me as well as extra money for the quilt owner that would have been a waste in my opinion.  A very pretty quilt, Lynn!!