Miriam's Quilts

2012..new quilts for the new year - we're off and running

2012-02-06T11:51:00.000-08:00

Colleen's quilt. Every time she brings me a quilt she swears it will be her last one, she claims she's just too old to keep making them. But, here she is again, with a very fun quilt for a granddaughter. The only directions she gave me was to make it really nice and pretty.

A whole cloth from Debbie. Used "Bayside" panto

Louise's quilt. This is a charity quilt that will go to one of the children of a policeman who was in the fatal shootings here in Utah a couple of months ago.

Shelley's baby quilt

Next 3 photos are Sheri's quilts.

The quilt above is Nancy's - the fabric is too busy to really see the pine tree panto I used.

The above quilt is Tenisha's with a square spiral panto pattern.

Sarah's quilts, used two new pantos on these: Plaza and Fascination

Last two quilts of the year

2011-12-31T12:15:00.000-08:00

I'm in the process of downloading a kazillion pictures off my camera onto the computer, and found the last two quilts I finished up before christmas.....which will have me all caught up for 2011!

This first quilt was an unbelieveably detailed quilt that was paper pieced by Vicki. She made it up using various other quilt patterns, and kind of "mashed" them together (using a musical term). She had been working on it most of the year and was sick of it - been there myself! But what a beautiful result.

sorry, these little stockings kind of jumped into here - they were supposed to be at the top. I have a customer's husband who calls each Christmas and buys his wife a gift certificate for her for quilting services. I try to come up with some fun little thing to put the certificate into each year, this is what I made this time around.

Back of Vicki's quilt

I thought I was all done, and a cute little gal called asking if I could possibly quilt an easy baby quilt before Christmas....ooookkkaayyyy. Luckily it was simple, and she was happy :)

20 quilts

2011-12-11T21:43:00.000-08:00

My gosh, I was surprised how many quilts I was behind on posting about...I thought my last posting of 13 quilts was a lot! Well, here we go:

These first 3 quilts are Devonna's

This Bear Claw is a custom quilting job that I think turned out really nicely.

Four quilts by Sarah:

Because of all the pictures I had to post this time I didn't include many close ups, especially if it was an all-over design, so if you want to see the quilting design better, click on the photo and it will enlarge it for better viewing.

A cute quilt by Gloria:

A custom quilting job for Agnes:

the back - almost looks like a panto pattern, but it's not.

2 quilts by Nancy:

this first is a semi-custom job that was fun. Panto of elk, deer and bears in the center - then custom words sewn into the first border, and custom leaves on the last border.

A sweet little baby quilt by a secret quilter :)

This next quilt was a whole cloth that was pieced together by a college guy (good for him!) He's a friend of my son and was finding it very expensive trying to get it quilted in Provo. Blake said he thought I would cut him a deal and help him out - which I did.

The next one is a unique quilt that I refer to as the "Beer Quilt". The center monogrammed squares are off of beer bottles (that came wrapped in fabric? don't ask me!) The woman who pieced it made it for a family member and she herself doesn't drink. She said it took her two years, asking every drunk she knew, to save these monogrammed fabric pieces for her. It was kind of cute, she was almost embarrassed to ask me to quilt it - kept saying that I might not want to do it! It's a beautiful quilt and I had no issues with quilting it for her :)

These last 6 quilts were made by me for a friend who lost her husband 2 years ago. She asked me if I would make her a memory quilt out of his shirts for her -- I told her she might as well bring me enough shirts that I could make one for each of her 5 kids as well - so here they are. I really had to push to get them finished by Christmas, but I made it.

this one had a bunch of pockets off the shirts:

She realized I was having problems keeping up with my work load, and said she'd like to finish the hand binding on the ones I hadn't already done. So 2 of the pictures here have the final binding finished, but the other 4 I managed to get it sewn on for her - then she'll finish the hand stitching part. Handed them over to her this past weekend. I'd like to be a fly on the wall Christmas day to see these given to her children :)

13 quilts

2011-11-16T18:54:00.000-08:00

The Christmas rush has begun. I'm seeing quite a lot more quilts this holiday season than I have in the past 2 years...hopefully a good sign. A friend who does craft shows says she's made about double on the shows so far than what she did last year :) Very good for sure.

I had to force myself to take a break and post these quilts, I was beginning to worry I'd forget who did which ones there were getting to be so many. I still have a pile to do in my work room and people are still showing up at my door with their arms full of quilts, so I assume I'll remain busy for the next month. Not complaining at all.

This beautiful quilt is by Nancy.

the next two are by Lynette

This next one was made by Agnes.

The next 5 are from Idonna.

Next 2 by Charlie

This one by Jone

And the last one I'm withholding the name because the recipient sometimes reads my blog and I don't want to ruin the surprise :)

it's hard to see but there are daisy's here and there between the piano keys on the outer border, the binding will be curved, so the daisys had to be spaced to work with that.

9 quilts

2011-10-26T18:49:00.000-07:00

This is a quilt I made for Blake and Sarah's wedding......which was a month ago and I just finally got it finished. They're lucky to be getting it this quickly, I had to literally shoe-horn it into my schedule, but I finally managed to finish it!

A cute baby quilt by Ages

Another cute baby quilt by Agnes...really like the textured blocks, different.

A third quilt by Agnes, a guys type quilt this time (Agnes is working at catching up on her UFOs).

This is the back...I really like the border design I came up with on this one, wasn't sure if I'd like it - but it's cool.

These next 3 quilts are all the same pattern, just different colors, by Sarah....getting Christmas quilts ready for grandkids.

A super nifty baby quilt by Kassie - she said she made it up....never seen a Dresden plate this large, it is unique. she's a young gal, kind of new to quilting and she's done some very fun things! Love it!

A second fun little baby quilt by Kassie - look at those cute ruffles (she had her baby last week).

Many quilts...group A (group B is after this so keep reading down.)

2011-10-15T12:49:00.000-07:00

I love, Love, LOVE this quilt by Nancy. I told her I want to borrow the pattern and make one of these some day.

We discussed how cool it would be if the green was trapunto, but neither she nor I really had much experience with that, but in the end, the way I quilted it - it looks like it was!! So, win-win!!

This has been the month for baby quilts - this one by Lynette

with "stars and loops" panto

Two quilts by Brenda, the same quilt pattern, but one done with a Christmas theme and the other with a Fall theme. "Holly Berries" panto in the center with two custom borders.

Here's the Fall one,

"Leaf Pile" panto with two custom borders

A fun Halloween quilt by Agnes which she plans to put on her table for the month of Oct.

I googled "bats" and found a picture that I was able to sketch off and use for the border.

Fun pieced backing for the halloween quilt. Some of my customers are real creative with their backs and left over fabrics :)

This is the Christmas quilt from above, somehow it ended up down here....don't ask me why.

Many Quilts...group B

2011-10-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

I had so many pictures I divided them up into two groupings, since my computer kept freezing up on me.

Two simple, enveloped, baby whole cloth quilts by Jone...

One with "Popcorn" panto

the second with "Daisy Bounce" panto

Jone's 3rd baby quilt (she's must know a number of expecting moms :)

This one done with all-over swirls.

Baby quilt by Sheri, with a cowboy theme

"stars and loops" pant

ANOTHER baby quilt, this one by Nancy

"Animal Crackers" panto

This customer was brand new to quilting when she made this for her mother. It was enveloped but never tied or quilted. I told her if she could sneak it away from her mom I could quilt it up for her (now that she knows a bit more about the quilting world....she realized it really wasn't compete!) There were some issues, and I had to work around things not being very flat or straight - but got it done fairly decently.

I had to stay away from the edges farther than I would have preferred to keep from getting puckers, I was happy it turned out as good as it did.

1 Ribbon and a quilt

2011-09-29T18:38:00.000-07:00

Louise stopped by to show me the 2nd place ribbon she (we) won at the Utah State Annual Quilt Convention. Very cool! My previous post on here are close ups of the quilting I did on this quilt.

Here is Karen's beautiful quilt. This quilt takes the prize for taking the longest to quilt of ANY quilt I've done to date. It's a large quilt to begin with, and seriously, I have maybe 3 weeks into this! Lots of designing, lots of measuring and marking, lots of stops and starts. Plus, Karen wanted the knots buried, so I ended up having to leave long tails of threads at the beginning and endings of stitches for her to bury later (we decided she would do that since I really couldn't spend any more time to do it myself and it would have cost her a fortune to pay me to put all that additional time into it.) The quilt looked like it had sprouted hair with all those lose threads hanging all over! The threads aren't showing up in most of these pictures since she took it home half way through and buried all the threads in the center, then brought it back for me to finished quilting the borders.

Turned out quite spectacular if I say so myself :)

3 quilts

2011-08-23T16:12:00.000-07:00

May I just mention, again, that I hate computers :) Froze up on me while loading the pictures and when I resumed, it put them all out of order. (I hate cars too, but since I don't want to be without either, I'll just deal with it.)

Here are a portion of the blocks from Louise's quilt (the rest are scattered later in the post). This quilt just screamed to be quilted this way...it's a bit of work, but I really enjoyed it.

Crystal's quilt

I really like how the border turned out.

Connie's quilt

the rest of Louise's quilt

5 quilts

2011-08-14T20:01:00.000-07:00

A custom treatment on a quilt by Crystal.

And here's 4 more quilts for grand kids from Sarah.

My creations

2011-08-05T08:56:00.000-07:00

This does happen once in a while - I actually make something myself. My niece, Landen, was married yesterday (it was completely wonderful and lovely) and I said I'd make her a quilt - she asked for something in black and white. I didn't have a lot of time to get one done and I ran across this pattern. It was originally a scrappy quilt with many colors, but I thought it might look really awesome in B&W. I love it! I would like to make another one, it was quite fun to put together.

My next creation is a shelving unit to put on top of one of my sewing tables. I had all kinds of junk piling up there, unorganized, drove me nuts -- and there was more stuff I was wanting in handier reach when I'm working there. A shelf of some kind was an obvious solution. Thought I might have to build one myself to get what I wanted....but then had a little flash of inspiration to check out D.I. to see if there was something cheap there that would work. Ta-da, the head board of a waterbed!

It's perfect - completely love it! Think I'll add another shelf in the middle of that center section, then it'll be finished. Much easier than building one from scratch and it completely meets my needs :)

8 quilts

2011-07-29T07:27:00.000-07:00

Playing catch up again

Next two photos are Sheri's quilt. She was asked to put this together for a male family member, it's made from shirts of his and she had sayings and images embroidered on some of the blocks of things he says and enjoys. She was wise to stabilize the backs of the blocks since most of the fabrics are knits, so that helped tons, but some were quite bulky and the intersecting seams were hard to quilt over in areas. She asked for simple and masculine, think it turned out nicely.

The next 6 photos are of 3 quilts that Louise was commissioned to put together for someone. They will all be wall hanging. Louise didn't care how they were quilted, so this first one I used a leaf panto on.

The second I did a pine tree panto.

The last, and larger one, had a farm motif and I didn't have any pantographs with that theme, so I ended up doing a simple custom on it.

Crystal is fairly new to quilting and I'm excited she asked me to quilt this since she kind of runs one of our local fabric stores. She wanted bear claws quilted as an all-over.

I looked on line and couldn't find a panto that I could buy with bear claws that I liked, so I had to be creative and invent my own. I'll have to do a posting sometime on what I did here, I'm quite excited about my little 'invention'.

The next two quilts are Sarah's - future Christmas gifts for grandchildren. Someone is being organized and planning for the holidays already! Did whirlys on the first...

and Chantilly lace on the second.

A wedding quilt for a daughter-in-law by Sue.

Did 'Water world' panto in the center and custom treatment on the two outside borders.

the back, you can see the border treatments better here.

the center panto pattern.

I keep thinking I need to keep up better with posting, but I never seem to. It finally reaches the stage where I'm afraid I'm going to forget who made each quilt (since I need these pictures to put on my customer's work-orders). So this blog is kind of feast or famine ----nothing, nothing, nothing, then many.

Actually piece a top?

2011-06-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

Having a dandy thunder storm. We're not supposed to plug in our longarm machine during thunderstorms, fear of power surges that could really mess up these expensive pieces of equipment. So, maybe I'll actually have some free time to work on a quilt top for my niece's wedding. Don't get much time these days to work on that end of a quilt, looking forward to it :)

Charity Quilt

2011-06-21T09:35:00.000-07:00

That time of year again when the fund raising quilts for cancer research which is hosted by the Utah state quilters are being finished up in preparation to be turned in. I donate my services and quilt up these quilts for my customers who participate in this. This one was assembled by Louise.

It's inventive how they work this whole thing. Every year some pink fabric is chosen and at the annual state meeting they sell fat quarters to those who are willing to make a block of their choice out of it. Since it is a fund raiser this fabric is not cheap. The following year these blocks are turned in and people vote for their favorite blocks. I'm not sure this is right, but I THINK the ladies have to pay for their votes - thus more income. Then these blocks are assembled into groups and handed out to ladies who are then willing to make sampler type quilts out of them. Then these quilts are turned in the next year and are auctioned off. All the proceeds going towards a cure for cancer.

I'm not a member of this state quilters guild. I did attend one afternoon a few years ago just to see what it was like - but decided my money was better spent attending the machine quilters convention each year. But there are a number of women in our local quilt guild that are faithful attenders.

3 quilts

2011-06-15T17:41:00.000-07:00

two baby quilts that customer just wanted done up quick and cheap - so meander it was.

A whole cloth with an oriental feel to it. Another quilt that needed to be done quickly in order to be ready for a wedding.

Used Asian Ginkgo panto. This is the 2nd time I've used this design and I've liked it both times, just has a nice look I think.

Some times it feels really nice to have several all over designs, something repetitious that doesn't take much thought once it's up and going. My next two quilts to go on are both involved custom jobs -- so a lot more work. But I enjoy those too.

2 family quilts

2011-05-26T12:41:00.000-07:00

A cute baby quilt made by Ashley for her sister-in-law who just had a little girl after 4 boys:)

An all-over panto with flowers, leaves and swirls - seemed to go well with the fabric.

A re-do. Ashley returned this bedspread to me to put more quilting on to it. I just added more in the white, red and yellow strips. I thought it needed more initially, but she needed to see it herself before deciding the same.

Hope this is ok?

3 quilts

2011-05-18T18:35:00.000-07:00

3 customer quilts that almost slipped through the cracks. This first one was an all-over feather panto.

A Triple Irish Chain that I did line dancing in the colorful squares and a feather wreath in the white open areas and a chain on the white border.

I was in such a hurry to get these photos taken that I didn't get this quilt flattened out very well. I have yet to find a good place to take pictures in our new house.

This colorful and interesting quilt had an all-over panto of swirls in the center with a custom border. She requested a varigated colored thread which was fun.

Quilt Hanger

2011-05-14T06:23:00.000-07:00

I recently attended HMQS which I was very excited to go since I've missed the past two years. I had a list of things I wanted to find while there...one of which was some kind of quilt hanging system that I could hang up the upcoming customer's quilt to be thinking of quilting ideas while working on the current one on my machine. There were a couple of different ones to choose from and this is the one I came home with. A metal plate that attaches to the wall with two super strong magnets. Then an inexpensive metal tension curtain rod that I just wrap the quilt top around and clamp with clothes pins and that rod sticks to those magnets great -- very strong attachment. Yippee.

1 quilt

2011-04-28T13:42:00.000-07:00

A very pretty quilt by Peggy. I'm not sure the pictures are going to do it justice - it was very pretty when she dropped it off, and at the risk of bragging ~ the quilting turned out great....really makes the quilt!
This is the first time I've tried this particular kind of feather, and it was fun! I'll be using this one again in the future.

Took about 2 days longer than I hoped it would, what else is new.

2 quilts

2011-04-21T10:22:00.000-07:00

Sheri's quilt

I tried to mimic the brown border on the very outside edge of the quilt - then ran a vine with oak leaves down the middle since the panto used in the center of the quilt had oak leaves.

Wall hanging - also by Sheri

This was made for a friend from Japan who came to visit awhile back and loved her trip to Utah. They didn't know until just recently if she was OK after all the problems in Japan...but finally heard from her and she's fine.

She didn't want a lot of excess quilting ~ so we elected to just put in a few 'fun' things like suns, clouds and birds to kind of tack down some of the larger sky areas that really needed more stitching.

4 quilts

2011-04-08T09:25:00.000-07:00

Here is a minor miracle - this is a quilt that I actually made....don't know when the last time was I managed this! Ashley asked me to make this for Kinsey over a year ago and I finally, FINALLY got it done. (Ash threatened me that if I didn't have it done by Kinsey's birthday that she was going out and buying something!) She wanted minimal quilting, pretty much just outlining most of it...had to do more in the green area because it was too large of a space to leave unquilted - went with the crosshatching because I thought it would give a even consistency but not detract.Notice the little upside down heart - I did that on purpose....there was a secret message there :)

A stunning bed runner by Carla --- love, Love, LOVE it!

the outside border has a seaweed pattern quilted into it and the light blue border, waves. Carla bought these fabrics in Hawaii and it will be a gift for her sister who lives there.

Those little squares are less than an inch wide, we didn't want any stitching over them to detract from the beautiful fabrics, so I just SID in a stair step path following the colorways up.

These next two quilts were made by two sister-in-laws who went together on a quilting cruise -- how fun would that be??! This first one was a mystery quilt ~ I really like the fabric, so fun and colorful. She wanted a multi colored thread with an all over treatment.

the back.

See the spiderweb pieced in the center - they have a beautiful spider pin that will be attached later.

Sarah's quilt

2011-03-31T17:23:00.000-07:00

Quilt I sent Janssen

2011-03-30T13:26:00.000-07:00

This is a baby quilt that I FINALLY finished and sent to my niece when she had a baby. Then I had to email her and ask her to take some photos for me because I forgot to before mailing it off :/ Thanks, Janssen :)

I'm very taken, lately, with the satin/minke combo for baby quilts - so tactually rich.

Dear Jane color ideas

2011-03-26T08:21:00.000-07:00

I've been researching color ideas for my upcoming Dear Jane/Sylvia/Hannah quilt (which ever one I end up doing). These are actually Dear Hannah quilts, I believe. That's one thing that I just noticed about that design, besides the blocks being smaller, is that the background was black in the blocks which I'm really quite liking - gives a richer look to the quilt. I like the second example the best. I also didn't want to be tied down to only a few colors in the entire thing since I'll be working on this for years I'm sure and don't want to get sick of the fabrics and colors I'll be using - and I want to have full freedom to use anything out of my fun fabric stash! I have two quilt tops I would like to finish up before starting this but don't know if I want to wait :)

Mini Samplers

2011-03-24T11:37:00.000-07:00

This is for you Packrat :) Here is a Dear Jane quilt. It's a replica of an old quilt that was made a long time ago (won't go into the history - google if you're interested.) A newer version with the same idea is a Sylvia's Bridal Sampler - which is taken from one of the Elm Creek Quilt novels.

Both have 6 inch blocks. Call me crazy, but this looks fun. I haven't decided which book of patterns I'd prefer to get...the Dear Jane gives you those neat triangle blocks on the outside border - but I have an emotional response to the other one since one of my oldest friends (since 5th grade) is named Sylvia....what to do :?

P.S. I just discovered there is also a Dear Hannah quilt as well. Those blocks are 4 1/2 inches, though - that's getting kind of tiny for all the piecing and applique, think I'd rather do the larger blocks for now.

UFOs

2011-03-19T06:43:00.000-07:00

Here's a Grandmother's Flower Garden that I've been working on maybe 3 years. It's all hand pieced - the project I take on car trips or work on while watching TV in the evenings. Finally to the part where the green intersections are going in - major accomplishment!

I have a hazy memory of when I used to think a UFO was a flying saucer. I now know the true meaning of those letters.....too well :) Until just a few years ago I would start a project (quilt as well as non-quilt) and finish it to completion before beginning another project, that was just my nature. Not so much any more, I've been brought over to the dark side and now have my goodly share of unfinished objects.

Here's one that is finally going to be finished up. It's a quilt for my little granddaughter that my daughter gave me a picture of, 2 years ago, and asked me if I could make it. After Ashley telling me that if I didn't get it finished by Kinsey's birthday (April) she was just going to go and buy her a bed spread! This is going on my LA on Monday!!! Yippee :) This is actually the first quilt of my own that I will have quilted in 2 1/2 years. I finally decided I just needed to schedule it in just like I do customer quilts. It will be finished on time.

I needed some new projects like I needed a hole in the head, but that's part of the sickness of quilting I've decided, we can't resist getting involved in yet another quilt. Our local quilt guild decided to do a Round Robin exchange and I hadn't been involved in something like that for awhile and it just sounded like fun, so I joined. This is our second month in this and this is the block I made for the woman's packet I got this time around.

THEN...being a glutton for punishment, I recently rejoined an online LA quilting group who had started a BOM group. Again, sounded like fun...I had some fabric that would make a really pretty quilt that would work perfect for this....I joined. Here are the two blocks I've made for that so far.

I currently have 9 of my own finished quilt tops that just need to be quilted...waiting for the time and the motivation to actually do them.

I can't throw fabric away, I keep pieces down to 1 1/2 inch square because they can be used in a quilt (I draw the line at that size though.....well kind of, I will keep strips smaller than that which can be used in a string quilt that I've started. Anyway, here is a Jewel Box quilt that I'm making from scraps. (those little squares are the 1 1/2 inch scraps.)

Each of these pizza boxes contain 2-3 quilt projects in various stages of completion. I'd really like to begin a Dear Jane quilt, and there's the one that Agnes brought to our guild meeting a few weeks ago that she's supposed to get me the pattern for. Will I live long enough to do them all? Absolutely not, but I firmly believe there are quilts being made in heaven :)

3 quilts

2011-03-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

Bobbi's Quilt

Katie's Quilt

Louise's Quilt

This was a sampler quilt so I only took a photo of one of the 12 different blocks. These used to be quite challenging for me to figure out how to quilt all the different blocks, it's fairly easy now - guess I'm getting more experienced :)

Cool Needle

2011-03-03T06:28:00.000-08:00

I just ordered this! There was an ad on my email this morning for this nifty needle and I'm so excited. Age has taken it's tole on my eyesight, blah!, and threading a needle is such a pain these days. I do have a couple of helpful needle threaders, but I'm especially excited for these needles in burying threads on a quilt while the quilt is still on my LA, and also to use with embroidery thread where there are 2 or 3 strands of thread. I hope they turn out to be as user-friendly as they look. I'll have to let you know :)

1 Quilt

2011-02-19T07:18:00.000-08:00

Devonna's quilt. She said she has 2 more just like this that she'll be bringing when they're finished. She's sending them back east to sell - I'll be interested to hear how that goes :)

Haven't taken off my chalk markings yet - but it does make it easier to see what has been quilted.

Normally I'd prefer to have the thread match the fabric on the back, but with all the white fabric on the front I didn't want little black bobbin pokies showing through on the front, so we elected to use white thread on the back. It actually is very awesome looking!

5 quilts + gift

2011-02-09T09:56:00.000-08:00

Do you have trouble with your sewing scissors? Someone uses them to cut paper (or a cardboard box, groan!) For years I used the orange handled Fiskars, they were fine, and if someone broke the rules and used them for something other than fabric, it wasn't a huge disaster....once they were dull enough that I wanted to swear whenever I tried to cut fabric with them, they got relegated to the craft box and I gritted my teeth as I shelled out money for a new pair for my fabric. It's been less of an issue since my kids are out of the house, and hubby has learned to ask if he's using the correct scissors. But...it was beginning to be time to invest in a new pair. My sister has a reputation for being a great gift giver, she lived up to it this year with a pair of Gingher scissors showing up for my birthday. I've never owned such a nice pair, and never really thought I would - I used them for the first time a couple of days ago and they slid through the fabric like a hot knife through butter.....what a dream :) Thank you, Carole, and if anyone even looks at a piece of paper with these in their hands - the consequences will be drastic!
Quilt by Louise

I love doing quilting like this, it's so beautiful.

Quilt by Kassie.

Quilt by Agnes

Two quilts by Devona

Quilt by Jone

2011-01-14T10:55:00.000-08:00

3 quilts

2010-12-29T06:26:00.000-08:00

3 quilts

2010-12-28T07:40:00.000-08:00

Table runner.

2 Quilts

2010-12-27T06:28:00.000-08:00

5 quilts

2010-11-06T08:57:00.000-07:00

Playing catch-up here. A number of quilts have gone through that I didn't take photos of (shame on me), but I did have these on my camera - so time to post them and get my book work caught up. This first one is a halloween quilt with fun halloween words quilted all around the outside in the yellow border. This is the ..... 4th? one like this I've quilted for Nancy. I'd really like to make one of these for myself some year, very fun!

These other 4 quilts are pretty self explanatory.

Quilts and excuses

2010-09-11T05:32:00.000-07:00

I really have been quilting this summer - not that you can tell by my blog! If you don't know, we have been building a new house and that has really occupied my attention, then add to it that, yes it is summer and yard work now has to be done, and getting our old home sold (done!), I'm afraid that documenting the quilts that have come through hasn't taken high priority - I've even had a number go through that I didn't even take pictures of. We're supposed to move into the new house the end of this month, so hopefully after we get settled, fall hits and yard work goes away, and my attention can refocus on the really important things of life (one being quilts!), I'll do a better job posting here! (BTW, I'm going to have a lovely new quilting room at the new house, I'll be sure to do a posting on it when I'm up and running there !)

I didn't take the time to try and get pictures of these quilts that show the quilting well. That sometimes takes me awhile and I just didn't have the time to do it. This is a really nice quilt that a gal made for her father who was just retiring. (I just noticed that if you click on this picture for a close up - you can see some of the wording I quilted into it.)

A very fun and colorful quilt for a wedding gift. The edges of all the inside squares are raw so I had to do custom so I could make sure not to fold over any of those edges accidentally.

Look at this - an actual picture where you can see some of the quilting!

Another quilt for a wedding gift (tis the season!)

Quilt show gripes

2010-08-15T05:23:00.000-07:00

I finally found some of my pictures that I wanted to include in this posting. Here's a few pictures of the quilt that I'm complaining about how it was displayed. Just wanted to prove how each block was worth being able see, and fairly close up! If you are interested in seeing more of the blocks go to my side bar and find 2009, Aug....it'll be the first posting there.

I recently participated in two quilt shows, one where I entered a quilt and one where I was a judge. Above is the quilt I entered in the local county fair. It's a very small fair, and there weren't probably more than a dozen quilts total. But....I was befuddled and a bit irritated (I admit it) at whoever it is that displays the quilts. This became an issue at the show where I judged as well, so I was quick to rise to the bait on this most recent one as well. Let me point out that my quilt is hung sideways for one, and then hidden behind another quilt display.

I realize that many times there isn't room to display all quilts at their best. But look at the other two quilts shown here on the wall - the tan one is about in the same situation as mine (but it was a whole-cloth that was tied, so no big deal), but the blue one has a much better position (which I can say about EVERY other quilt that was hung in the show - mine was in the worst place of any of them. Also, it's about 3 times farther back from the boundary rope as any of the other quilts.) I mention this, not because it's my quilt, but because of the difference in the quilts. The blue one above is a fairly simple denim quilt that was tied - pretty easy to see any details from a distance, and all parts of the quilt are pretty much the same. My quilt was INTRICATELY quilted, each block done differently (I'm still trying to find my close up pictures I took of it a year ago - not sure where they are filed on this computer!) Back where they have it stuck, you could barely see the quilting.

See what nice access each of these quilts have to people's ability to view them? Some of these quilts just got a participation ribbon, or were tied!

And here are the rest of the quilts in the show -- mine is farthest on the right.

This happened at the show that I judged as well. Someone else hung the quilts earlier, so the judges weren't involved in that.....but after we finished judging the show we went to the director of the whole thing and had the quilts rearranged. There were simple and small, nondescript quilts with full viewing, taking up whole large areas and then beautiful, detailed quilts that were folded into fourths and several quilts lapped over each other so you could only see small sections. What were the people displaying them thinking???

I did get "Best of Class" (whoopee, there were 2 of us in that division, and the other quilt was stippled!)

Perhaps I should offer to help display the quilts next year, I guess, instead of just gripe about it.

Quilts

2010-07-08T07:54:00.000-07:00

Two fun quilts from Sue. She's one of my really prolific quilters!

The backs turned out really fun on both of these quilts :)

Quilts

2010-06-24T05:33:00.000-07:00

Another beautiful baby quilt by Louise.
Darn, can't see the quilting - she brought me a picture of how to quilt it and it was very pretty.

The next 4 baby quilts are by Colleen. Every time she brings me a load of quilts she says these are the last ones, she's getting too old to keep making them -- then several months later here she comes with some more!

Wedding quilt

2010-06-06T19:46:00.000-07:00

Bobbie made this quilt for her oldest grandchild's wedding. I love quilts in these colors, they are so striking.

Because of time constraints I couldn't wait until a better time of day to try and get these photos taken before returning the quilt. Too bad the quilting isn't showing up well, it turned out pretty.

The bride likes zebra - check out this backing! Love it!

T-shirt quilt

2010-05-27T13:43:00.000-07:00

This is a quilt for a high school graduating senior boy. His mother paid someone else to put it together (she doesn't sew), and then it was brought to me to quilt and bind it. I discovered a good portion of the blocks were the backs of the T-shirts, which opened up some interesting spaces for quilting. The mom put together a list of her son's interests and I filled the empty blocks with words and images from the list. It was a bit challenging, and took a while, but it was much more interesting than just meandering over the whole thing (which was her original request.)

I had to take these pictures in the evening - the customer was coming over in a few minutes and I hadn't taken my photos of the quilt yet, so it's kind of hard to see. The boy was into dirt racing, so this block had the logo of Kawasaki, and the name Suzuki and the model of his bike.

This was a jersey from playing on a church basketball team.

Gives you an idea of what I did.

Garden Trellis Quilt

2010-05-18T13:23:00.000-07:00

These are such pretty quilts - this one comes from Vicki

Again, these white backings sure showcase the quilting beautifully!

Lone Star and Doggie quilt

2010-04-30T11:12:00.000-07:00

Here is the last of those 20 heirloom family quilts that were given to me to quilt. This family has patiently waited for me to do all of these, and now they can have their party - where I understand the quilts will be distributed.

Sue brought me four of these cute doggie baby quilts - she needed one done up here quickly and the other three I have a bit more time to get to. I took a number of pictures so I could remember how I did this first one when I'm ready to load the other three!

I needed to stitch down some pieces that were adhered with wonder-under. My husband was kind enough to point out a place where my stitching had wobbled a little bit, if he had any idea how tricky it is to keep a straight and even stitch when going around something with a longarm machine!!

Notice the sun and cloud in the sky, and the shingles on the roof.

She just wanted some easy all-over treatment on the borders.

Sunbonnet Sue & table runner

2010-04-21T18:11:00.000-07:00

An antique Sunbonnet Sue quilt - from that heirloom collection I've been working on - (only one more to go!)
Whoops -thought I got them all turned - guess not, oh well - you get the idea.

A fun summer table runner by Tauni.

Used "Leaf Pile" panto pattern.

Back

3 Panto Quilts

2010-04-20T04:08:00.000-07:00

My last 3 customer quilts have been pantos, which is kind of unusual for me - I'd say 75% of what I do is custom. Here is another from that family's collection of 20 that they brought me last fall! I just learned they are waiting for me to finish them all so they can have a 60th (?) wedding anniversary for the grandmother (who found all these tops that were done by HER mother) where the quilts will be distributed to family members. I only had 4 more to go - two are here, one is on my machine now ....so almost done! I've had to bounce back and forth between their quilts and other customer's in order to keep everyone happy.

Chantilly Lace panto

A very pretty top by Agnes. She didn't want anything fancy done, "just turn it into a functional quilt" she said! So I used my Square Spiral panto pattern for the first time and I really liked it!

The back.

Another by that great grandmother.

Oriental Cloud panto - again the first time I've used this panto as well. With this almost rare opportunity to do pantos I've taking advantage and used some I've never tried before. So far I've really liked them all.

5 Quilts

2010-04-07T08:15:00.000-07:00

This is a beautiful quilt by Louise. She brought me photographs of how she wanted this quilted, that I could kind of see the quilting on! Hopefully I got it close enough that she will be happy with it!

A sweet baby quilt by Jonie - used "Angel Wings" panto

Another quilt from Jonie, some teenager is going to love this! Used "Windy Meandering" panto.

And finally - my last two polyester quilts from the "collection".

This last poly quilt actually had thin enough fabric that I was able to do a panto on it - "Surf's Up".

I'm finally catching up - after being out of town twice in the past month as well as having the worst cold/flu I've had in my life....things are getting back to where I feel like I'm kind of in control again!

4 Quilts

2010-03-19T11:44:00.000-07:00

Finally some quilts! After 3 weeks taken up with a new granddaughter and being sick, I'm finally back at the longarm again. Here's a fun quilt of Sue's.

This is one of those quilts where the back quilting almost looks better than the quilting on the front. It's an odd thing, but happens every now and then.

Next is a baby quilt by Louise (in her signature colors!) Did an all-over with hearts.

Here is a first time quilt for this customer - it's going to be a wall hanging and she just wanted a med. density meander.

Another of the family heirloom quilts collection. I did a panto "Rosie" which I've used quite a bit and everyone seems to like it. I was worried that the fabric would move on me while I was working from the back of the machine (the fabric is thin and was stretching all over the place when I was ironing it and loading it on the machine), but it did fine.

30 Block Sampler

2010-02-22T10:16:00.000-08:00

This quilt took me most of last week to quilt. I wondered why it was taking so long, and then realized there were 30 blocks in it! Some of the quilting isn't showing up as well as I'd like - maybe if you click on the picture to enlarge it the stitching will show up better?

OK- I'm quitting - I tried to put these pictures back in line with each other and managed to delete some- and I don't know which blocks I'm missing now. I think I'll quit while I'm ahead!

Quilts

2010-02-14T15:58:00.000-08:00

Here are 3 quilts that I've worked on the past 2 weeks. The first two are polyester ones from the collection from the one family I'm still working on.

People always seem really intrigued with the quilting on the back when it shows up as well as these have. I'm asked how I come up with the unique designs. Well, I don't! The quilt top kind of tells me what to do (within the boundaries that the quilt owner gives me), and the back is always a surprise - I never know what it's going to look like until I'm finished, take it off the machine, and turn it over and look!

This 3rd quilt is a top that was just given to a woman who doesn't sew. She asked me to take it and turn it into a quilt for her. So I had to go buy the backing fabric, sew it to fit, quilt, make and attach the binding. She had simple tastes for the quilting design, so it isn't what I would have really chosen to do - but the customer is boss.

Quilts

2010-01-27T12:45:00.000-08:00

Here's yet another of the quilts from the family that found a stash made by their great grandmother (11 down, 9 to go.)

The back - turned out pretty.

Two quilts by another customer. She asked me to envelope this one for her before quilting. The next quilt pictured she already had enveloped. Quilts that are finished off this way previous to quilting are a tad tricky since you have to pin and clamp onto the longarm right on the quilt, no excess bottom fabric to use- it's difficult if not a bit impossible to stitch right to the edge. The quilter has to be a little creative and very careful.

This one had no batting in it, and the top was so busy and the bottom so furry that you can't even see the quilting :)

Quilts

2010-01-23T03:59:00.001-08:00

My niece, Janssen, just helped me figure out how to label my blog posts - really very easy, but could I figure it out - nope. (Look on my side bar and you'll notice how all my posts are now organized!) Anyway, in the process of doing that I realized that when I started posting my monthly decorations I started last Feb, and hadn't put my January ones on here. So here they are - I still haven't made table decorations for June, hopefully that will happen before I go into a nursing home!

Here's the customer quilt I've worked on this week - another large custom, so it's the only one I was able to finish this week.

Quilt

2010-01-15T15:33:00.000-08:00

For anyone who has wondered if I'm still quilting - yes I am. I actually worked all week on this beauty. It's been a few months since I've had a large, higher-end custom job and I've really enjoyed it. This was pieced by Louise, and as usual - it's a very pretty, well made top. Pretend like you don't notice that my Christmas tree is STILL up.

Quilts

2010-01-08T05:28:00.000-08:00

Here starts the quilting for the new year. After taking 2 weeks off (one to get those fabric play houses made, and then one when we were in Idaho) I'm eager to get back to my longarm. I was surprised last year that January was a busy month for customer quilts - I would have thought it would be slow after Christmas and all, but it wasn't. I'm already starting off with a pile of quilts that some of my wonderful customers said I could set aside until after Christmas because they weren't in a hurry for them (which let me finish quilts for those who needed them for Christmas!) I do have the best customers - people really are so nice. I had two new quilts delivered to me yesterday, so things are starting off well :) Here is another from that family heirloom collection I've been working on since Fall. I was told this one is called "Sunshine and Shadows". Out of 19 of those quilts this is the 9th one, so I'm half way through. I'm glad they've been willing to just let me slowly work through them, which makes it possible to bounce back and forth between their quilts and other customer's quilts - thus keeping everyone happy!

Used the panto "Surf's Up" on it.

This next one is another heirloom quilt - polyester, so I had to custom it with a guide again to keep it from moving on me under the needle.

Here is a cute little baby quilt for a first time quilter. I've probably had 8 or so people in the past year who have said the quilt they brought me was their first one. Many of these were young gals in their 20s, so it's nice to see that the art doesn't appear to be dying out!

She asked me to sew the baby's name "Tate" in the center bottom block. Fun when quilts are personalized like this. I did a loopy meander with stars.

Re-covered Canvas Bag

2010-01-05T04:50:00.000-08:00

This is for you Carole! My sister emailed me wanting to know what I was doing since I hadn't posted anything on my blog lately. That's because I hadn't done anything blog worthy. But then I remembered that I did do this bag over the weekend, so I'll post about it! I made some fabric bags for some of my favorite people as Christmas gifts this year and knew that I wanted one for myself for my church stuff. When I sat down to finally make one for myself I decided I really already liked the canvas bag that I'd been using, but it was just ugly! So decided to just re-cover it instead. Turned out to take much longer than I thought it would - as most of my projects seem to do!

One of the things I wanted to accomplish was to be able to have EVERYTHING in this one bag (was tired of hauling purse, bag, and scripture case to church each week!) So I put a divider in the center to give me a sense of organizational division of things, scriptures on one side - manuals, notebooks and binders on the other side.

Little pockets for pens, and mirror (I don't know about you, but if I get teary during a meeting I need to check the make-up before heading to the next meeting!) I added a clip to the left that I can hang my keys on as well as a case that carries my reading glasses (sigh, age does mess with your eyes!)

I used it this past Sunday and it was just what I wanted - instead of looking like a mother of 3 babies hauling around tons of things, I only had the one bag! Mission accomplished.

Fabric play houses

2009-12-31T09:12:00.000-08:00

I had a rough time this Christmas coming up with gift ideas - I finally decided to make these playhouses for my little grandchildren.....about 12 days before Christmas!! (I sooooo wish I had started 2 months earlier, there were many ideas I wanted to use on these fun houses, but just didn't have enough time!) This first picture is of the front door on Austin and Tayton's house. The little square on the door opens for a peek-hole. The mail box opens as well - I was going to put in a postcard from me and Grandpa - but didn't have time.

Each side of the house has an activity - at least that was the original plan. This side had removable velcro'd fruit on the tree and a fishing pond (you can see the pole on the right. Unfortunately, the fish as well as the pond are felt and the fish won't slide out easily enough for the magnets to hold (again, didn't have enough time to test drive these things before we had to be on the road with the gifts!). So I brought the fish home with me to redo in some silky-ish fabric that will slide out of the pond easier.

Here is Austin looking out of the face hole of the knight. That was a last minute idea, many of these things came to me as I was working on it. As you can tell, the boy's play house has a midieval theme.

That's supposed to be a doghouse on the right - but a dog didn't seem right for my theme..

So, I put in a friendly dragon - recognize him?

I made two of these play houses, my daughter , Tara, has 2 boys - and my daughter Ashley has a girl with another girl on the way, so here is the girl's version of the house. Here is Kinsey and me trying it out Christmas morning. This one has a princess theme.

The flowers on this side are velcro as well and the little watering can on the bottom left comes off to water the flowers.

I can't take credit for this idea. When I was little they had similar things to this - fabric play houses that went over a card table. That is the idea I started out with, then decided to try googleing it just to see if anyone else had done anything with this idea -- and yes they had. Someone figured out that a pvc pipe frame gave you more room, which is what I did - and the ideas for some of the fun side decorations came off of other blogs. Thanks to all those who generously shared their ideas for others to use!

Dec. decorations, last quilt.

2009-12-17T07:53:00.000-08:00

All year I've been posting pictures of my wall quilts and table runner/place mats for each month, these are the last ones.

And here is the last customer quilt I needed to have finished before Christmas! (This same customer was supposed to bring me two more but when she picked this one up she said the other two just weren't going to make it, so now I have a few more days to work on my own projects that I didn't know I was going to have. Things just seem to work out.)

I couldn't get the quilting to show up in my photos - the fabric is so busy, on the top and the bottom. A really fun quilt, though!

Decorations & Quilts

2009-12-10T04:36:00.000-08:00

Look who finally got their tree up! And it's only kind of up at that - only put on about half the ornaments and even though my good husband hauled in about 8 boxes of Christmas decorations for the house, I used about 1 box worth and had him take the rest back out to the cold dark garage. Two reasons: 1 = I'm up to my neck in making gifts (it took me forever this year to come up with ideas, and now I'm scrambling to get things made in time - and yes, I'm one of those people who generally make a lot of their gifts, it's an illness I know!) and 2 = it's just not as much fun without the eager, excited little eyes of children around. I never thought I'd understand older people who didn't want a Christmas tree, but I can kind of empathize I'm sorry to say. (It's not that they don't want one, they just don't want to do it, and then there's the taking everything down later to factor into the whole mind set!) But the house does look more festive and we do still have one younger set of eyes to consider - even though he won't be here until next week when his college tests are over!! Blake would be very put out if the tree wasn't at least up! Some time I'll have to tell the story of how one year I decorated the artificial plastic palm tree that sat in our living room for Christmas instead of doing a pine tree - he was not a happy camper!

Four more customer quilts that needed to be done before Christmas finished - only 3 more to go (unless someone unexpectedly shows up on my doorstep in a panic, which could happen I suppose - but sure hope it doesn't!!)

Quilts: Fleece & 2 Polyester

2009-12-03T04:43:00.000-08:00

With Thanksgiving last week I'm a little behind in quilting and pictures. But I have gotten 3 done that I need to get my "paper" work done on here! This fleece quilt is the 3rd one that Agnes has brought me to quilt from an out-of-town relative! I might have to start paying her a commission! They wanted it simple, so I just followed the lines and did a circle here and there if the space was too large to leave.

Here's two more polyester quilts from the "Family Heirloom" collection. Let me mention again how tricky it is to quilt polyester quilts!

Quilts

2009-11-19T15:36:00.000-08:00

The colors in this quilt are so beautiful - I don't think my photos do it justice. Myrna brought me the center section of this quilt and asked me to put borders on it to make it into a queen size quilt (she supplied the fabric). She said her mother has had this sitting in a closet for perhaps 30 years, and Myrna snuck it out to have it finished for a surprise Christmas gift. She specifically requested baptist fans quilted into it - I've never done those before and had to do some research - finally found a video tutorial on line that showed me how to do them with my circle guides. VERY time consuming, but they turned out great.

whoops, looks like my picture here is side ways, oh well. Here's the next one of those "Family Heirloom" quilts. Just simple squares, so I decided a panto would work well here. Used "Feelin' Groovy".

Panto design shows up well on the back.

Quilt shop gimmick

2009-11-16T04:23:00.000-08:00

I found the neatest quilt shop in Sandy, Utah. I'd heard there was a good one there and I finally thought to ask about it on my last visit and sure enough - it was really something. There are actually two buildings, right across the street from each other, each holding different kinds of fabrics. I was amazed at all the wonderful choices and selections - soooo fun. Anyway, as it so happened I happened to pick the "crazy day" of the month to be there. Hoards of women were coming and going - what was going on? Evidently they have sampler block kits available once a month - here's the gimmick: you buy your first block (about $4 or something like that), then are assigned a time you come back next month for the class to learn about how to make the next block. If you attend your class, at the correct time, with your previous block finished - you get your next block free! If you keep up with it you will get all your blocks for a complete quilt for nothing more than the original $4 you paid for that first kit. But if you don't attend at your correct time, or finish your block you have to pay for the next block. Then at the classes they not only show you how to make that month's block, but also demo and show new items that have come into the shop. They said they had classes every hour for 2 days, completely full of women and then also had "over-flow" classes the next Monday for those who couldn't make it on the weekend. What a smart idea - all those hundreds of women coming through the shop (I peeked into the room to see what it was like in there and it was clear full - maybe 40+ women). They said they have over 1,000 women signed up. I talked to a lady there who said she has never had to pay for another block, but usually always spends about $25 when she comes for the class on something she see there. Very smart business idea - if I didn't have to contend with snow covered mountains to get there during the winter months I would have been really tempted to buy my first block kit!!

Quilt: Grandma's Dream

2009-11-12T09:19:00.000-08:00

This is the only quilt I'll get done this week - took me 3 long days to quilt it. It's huge, 108" x 103", and all those little squares are 1 1/2 inches! Louise was commissioned to piece this for someone and then it was brought to me to quilt it. (Louise said it should have been named "Grandma's Nightmare"!) She told me how many hours it took her to put it together and I can't remember now what it was, but tons and tons of hours. It is a beautiful quilt though, a real keepsake.

quilts: T-shirt, Bulls Eye, Princess 1 & 2

2009-11-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

This is the first T-shirt quilt I've gotten in. In a perfect world the T-shirts would be stabilized on the back, these weren't so I wondered if I'd have problems with them shifting and pleating as I was working from the back of the machine where I couldn't watch constantly to make sure it didn't happen. But no problems - turned out great. Sherie requested a sports theme panto, sort of hard to tell here, but there are basketballs, footballs, baseball gloves, and "Go Team" banners.

The next 3 quilts came from a woman who lives in a different city. Up to now all my customers have been from my little community - my reputation must be spreading, kind of exciting! Actually she's a relative of one of my good customers here in town - word of mouth advertising is the best! This is a Bulls-Eye quilt - it's the 2nd one of these I've done. I find I rarely do the same thing twice, though. Unless requested from the customer I will usually try something different in each quilt I do. So this one is not quilted the same as the one I did for my daughter earlier in the year.

The only thing the customer requested was circles in the border.

Here are two darling princess quilts. I was told to do whatever I wanted. I treated each one differently. Princess quilt #1

Used a loopy meander with hearts in the back ground. A bit hard to see in the photo.

Princess quilt #2

Used a swirly version of McTavishing in the background here.

I showed the two princess dresses in each to illustrate how I did them both a bit differently.

This week's quilts

2009-10-29T14:27:00.000-07:00

Some how I forgot to put this picture on in the right order - the description of this top is at the end of this post.

This is a quilt our local guild made for a fund raiser.

Used a panto called Water World. I almost don't like to say the names of the panto patterns because the names seems to influence people's choice more than the actual pattern at times. These are beautiful swirls that don't have to be on a quilt that has a water theme!

A fun baseball themed quilt for Agnes's grandson.

This is a freehand design called Triple Triangles that I used on the above quilt.

The next two are more from the "Heritage Quilt Collection". Nine of these quilts are made out of polyester fabrics. This is new for me to quilt a polyester quilt top, wasn't sure how it would go. It was tricky! I was asked to treat these with an inexpensive all-over quilting design, which I tried on this first one. The diagonal strips made it even harder - the fabric kept bunching and moving and stretching when I went different directions. I actually unpicked my first attempt and decided to try a large simple meander and it was a bit easier but still hard. The top is busy enough that it turned out fairly OK, but I'm not totally pleased with it.

I was hoping this next polyester top would be easier since the strips aren't sewn on the diagonal, and it was somewhat better, but still difficult . Again I ended up unpicking my first attempt at an all-over design because the fabric was stretching with the direction of my stitching and not looking good. Finally decided I just had to do a light custom where I could carefully deal with a section at a time, design the stitching so I had less stretching of the fabric and use guides to hold the fabric down as I stitched. It worked much much better. I thought these would go pretty quickly, not so. (This is the one where the photo of the entire top is at the top of the post.)

The back looks pretty.

Family Heirloop Quilt #3

2009-10-23T10:45:00.001-07:00

The previous 2 quilts I did for this family I had done feathers on and had decided on the next one I would do something different - well, this one already had feathers penciled onto the center tan strips to be quilted! So I wanted to go with the piercer's original vision for her quilt, so I did feathers again! It did turn out beautiful.

Marathon Projects

2009-10-23T05:35:00.000-07:00

I was over reading "Quilts on Bastings" blog (a longarm quilter from Australia who I noticed was visiting my blog, so now I read hers!), she posted a quilt top she was hand piecing and had been at it for years and asked if anyone else had a long-term project like that. Here is mine. This will eventually be a Grandmother's Flower Garden, it is all hand pieced so that's why it's been in the process for ......maybe 3 years, can't remember exactly when I started this. I wanted a hand project to take to quilt guild meetings because I don't like hauling my sewing machine to them (too much work and effort!) I decided on doing this. I have the 39 flowers finished and I'm now putting a white border around all of them. With all our car trips this past summer I made some good progress with this, but I still have a few years ahead of me with this one. I'm already on the lookout for my next hand pieced project for when this is finished - thinking maybe a cathedral window quilt top.

Packrat asked for it!

2009-10-22T06:58:00.000-07:00

This is for you Packrat. Need I say more after looking at the photo? I think the blocks themselves turned out pretty, the sashing is just ugly. It's just too much - if I'd used white I think it would have been much prettier (I'll admit, I was just trying to use up my leftover fabrics!)- but after seeing Vicki and Louise's treatment where small diamonds made the divisions, and white surrounded the blocks, theirs were just much more pleasing to the eye. ALSO - somehow I ended up with a nasty white fabric in this - it just stretched and waved in the piecing process - the rest of the fabrics were good, but the white was a mess to work with and I was mad after I finished each block! I'm actually tempted to take this apart and redo the sashings. Do I have the time - no - so who knows if I'll ever actually do it, but I'll consider that before I quilt it up.

Quilts: Buggy Barn & Sampler

2009-10-21T14:06:00.000-07:00

Here's what I've worked on this week. Sue has had this done for awhile and has finally decided to get it quilted up. We went with a panto pattern with separate border treatment, I think custom would have been lost on the busy fabric. Panto pattern was : Stars and Loops, turned out much cuter than I thought it would - I like it a lot!

Our local quilt guild all made the same sampler blocks - this is the end product that Vicki created. (Much prettier than mine - I wasn't very happy with how mine turned out!!) This is the first time I've done an all-over treatment on a sampler quilt like this and it worked out great.

Here's the back where you can see the quilting better.

100th Customer Quilt plus others

2009-10-17T10:51:00.000-07:00

Here it is - a mile stone....my 100th customer's quilt I've done, how cool is that!

Here's the 2nd quilt of what I'm calling "Family Heirloom Quilts" that a family located a cache of tops pieced by their great grandmother - only 17 to go!

Here is a really cute outer space quilt for a little grandson of my customer, lots of pictures because there are a number of different sections done differently.

Agnes is getting ready for Halloween with this fun wall quilt and table runner!

Nice to have my computer up and running semi-normally again, finally able to catch up with these!

Family Heriloom #1 & Halloween Decorations

2009-10-01T13:13:00.000-07:00

I'm being part of a really cool experience. A family in my community discovered they had a treasure trove of quilt tops that were pieced by their great grandmother during the depression. The family is thrilled and everyone wants one of them and I was asked to quilt them!! I'm not really sure how many there are, originally I was told 12, then when they dropped off the first 6 I was told there were 10 more, then later someone told me there were 20, so I'll just keep quilting as long as they keep coming in and count up later!
Most of them look pretty good. This woman enjoyed the art of piecing quilt tops, but never got to the tougher part of getting them quilted evidently. This first one, though, had a few issues - the design goes on the diagonal but the fabric wasn't cut on the diagonal - so I had a dickens of a time getting it to lay and roll straight on my machine. After the 3rd time of trying to load it this first photo is the best result I could get, as you can see the top edge isn't straight. When I tried to straighten it, I got horrible sagging on one side that I just knew there was too much fabric to try and "quilt in". So I had to make the compromise of having an un-square quilt instead of pleats and puckers in the quilting process.

Even at that the quilt still didn't lay very flat, but I was able to work with it enough that I think it turned out pretty great.

I'm really looking forward to working with the rest of these quilts from the past!

Look at this!! I actually have my Halloween decorations out on Oct. 1st!

Cute little girl's quilt

2009-09-29T16:21:00.000-07:00

My customer is making this for her little granddaughter, this quilt just screams "little girl" to me! One of those quilts where the quilting shows up much better on the back than the front.

September decorations

2009-09-23T11:42:00.000-07:00

Here it is, almost the end of Sept. and I'm just doing this post on this month's decorations. I was late getting them out to begin with (because I was out of town), then I've either been too busy or just plain forgot! But here they are, barely before I need to get out October's. September to me means back to school. I had to hunt for several years before I found the pattern for this wall quilt. My table centerpiece consists of flowers in my oldest daughter's old lunch box (Strawberry Shortcake). It's one of those old metal ones that is faded and scratched up - I love it - makes me think about Chelsea each year when I pull it out (as well as all the other long discarded lunch pails from all 4 of my kids - sweet memories.) I planned to re-do the floral arrangement, just needs some freshening up - but it didn't happen this year. Don't have place mats for this month, another item that hasn't managed to get done......I just have some generic fall colored ones I bought at Walmart or some place like that, they'll do until I find a pattern I like or come up with an idea - then find the time to make some custom ones.

Here we go again

2009-09-21T08:01:00.000-07:00

Here we are with our 2nd pile of dirt sitting in the driveway this summer. I could have sworn I ordered a half load this time, but it sure looks about the same size as the first full load I got back in the spring! The price was less, but I'm still looking at all of this dirt and thinking how many wheelbarrow trip to the back yard it will take to move it all!! You can see the depressions in it showing that we've already made a small dent! Our initial intentions were to fix the front yard this year, but we ended up with so much dirt that we had to begin on the back as well in order to get rid of it all - well, wouldn't you know that we ran out of dirt before we finished all the areas that we pulled up sod out of! Next spring I think we'll be neck deep in building our new home, so we decided it would be in our best interest to finish up with this now so it won't be something we'll have to deal with when our attention needs to be focused on other things.

I could have sworn I took "before photos", but I can't find them. It's difficult to appreciate the improvement we've made this summer without seeing how pathetic it looked before. We have some lovely mature trees, but they were all boxed in at their base with railroad ties. The roots had grown up within the box so solidly that you couldn't plant anything in the dirt - so it just had to remain bare. This is the NEW look! We've had water features at other homes, and just decided to go easy this time and do a dry waterfall.

Against the house used to be so ugly. The ground around here is very rocky and this area had never been cleaned out and nice soil brought in. It used to have red lava rock covering the entire surface and a few flower boxes sitting on top of the rock for flowers, very bare and sad looking. This is a huge improvement - took me one whole summer just to get out the lava rock that had been there for years, then to pry out the boulders (yes boulders) underneath so that I could get in enough soil to plant things. Not sure it was worth all the work, but it does look much better.

Things are still kind of bare - I'm just now in the process of moving some plants from the back yard to the front. I actually bought two bleeding hearts that look really sad here, don't know why they haven't done well.

A dry stream, again, still waiting to get some more plants transplanted.

I am still quilting - I've been so busy with all the quilts that have been coming in that I've only taken the time to just take a picture of the fronts so I can put them on the work orders. I missed taking the picture of one quilt that was really large and neat - customer came over earlier than I was expecting and I hadn't photographed it yet. That does happen some times. These were all quick all-over freehands or pantos - decided to do these up quickly and back to the customers before I got going on all the custom quilts that are waiting to be done.

Close up of applique blocks

2009-08-23T20:19:00.000-07:00

I FINALLY took pictures of my quilt that I ribboned with at our local show. Been meaning to for some time and just never managed to get it done until today. There are 22 pictures here - so if you go cross-eyed looking at them, imagine what I was like after quilting it all!! I'm really tickled with how these turned out, and I completely hope that a year from now I will look back on these and think "ewwww!" That's what I think about my projects from a year ago, so hopefully I'll continue to grow in my abilities and next summer be so much better than I am now. Some day I hope I can actually take a class on longarm quilting - I'll probably learn I'm doing everything wrong!!

Mucho baby quilts

2009-08-21T14:05:00.000-07:00

I had 5 baby quilts all show up at my door on the same day - that was unusual! Just took the last one off my frames so time to photo and add onto the blog. This first one is called "Chinese Coins" - why in the world the quilt pattern is called that I've never been able to figure out. Never thought to use it as a baby quilt pattern, but it's quite cute. I put a leaf vine down the center strips

And the customer wanted the word "baby" quilted around the outside edge.

The other 4 quilts all came from one customer. The fabric is so busy that even though she requested my least expensive treatment of freehand all over, I ended up using a panto pattern on 3 because I couldn't see where I was quilting, the thread blended into the busy fabric so well I was going blind trying to see where I had been. I'll just charge her my lower rate - she'll get a nice little deal on these :)

New baby grasses

2009-08-20T07:10:00.001-07:00

We have a very large, and previously awful, back yard. At one time some previous owner had done a nice job with it - but subsequent owners and time had let things die and deteriorate to where by the time we moved in I was at a loss at what to do with it! It literally took me 4 years to figure out what to do. This summer we finally moved many many railroad ties and brought in a sod cutter and began the time consuming task of redesigning the yard. There was a huge garden space on this side of the yard - I never used it because there is also another garden space on the other side of the yard that I found easier to deal with. I decided to cut this area in half and put grass in some of it - the sod we cut out was moved over here, which has come back nicely. My husband started calling around about buying sod or having seed sprayed on the remaining area. Naturally, the quotes came back in the hundreds, excuse me? I know how to sprinkle grass seed! $8!! Takes a little longer - but my little baby grasses are coming along just fine! (Yes, there is a Tee Pee in the right side of the photo! That belongs to our neighbor, fun eh!) We still have many railroad ties, over grown bushes, and dying trees (inadequate sprinkler system is one of the issues I'm dealing with!) But for now I'm enjoying watching my grass grow!

I have many flowers that I want to transplant to the front and new areas in the back, but my gardening guru neighbor advised me to wait until they finished blossoming, so I'll take pictures when I've done that.

Haven't posted many quilts lately - not that I haven't been busy quilting away, just haven't taken the time to photo and download! Here are two from Monday and Tuesday - I have 5 baby quilts that I'm throwing on and off my long arm as quickly as I can the next day or two.

Fun panto called: Plumage - first time to use it - I like it a lot.

This quilt was done with a freehand loopy meander and paisley design. This quilt was made out of the leftover fabric from a wedding reception (to be given to the bride and groom). Looks like it was a very colorful reception :)

Thought I was done :(

2009-08-06T06:49:00.000-07:00

We have a spare bedroom in the basement called the "Blue Room" - aptly named since it has blue carpet and blue wallpaper. We recently up-sized the bed in there from a double to a queen (after many complaints from our visiting married children!) Well, now the blue bedspread that had been on the old bed no longer fit the new, larger bed so I decided to make something new - and wanted to tone down all the blue so went with tans and whites. Well, we were now getting complaints that the new bed was too hard, so just the past week I finally went out and bought a new mattress pillow topper, very lovely, gave the bed a nice puffy rounded look to the top. Unfortunately - the new quilt I was just finishing up (as of yesterday) now no longer fits the bed!!!! It's too short! This photo keeps loading sideways, no idea why - but it's a better look at the quilt design.

See how off the quilt size is now! I'm really bummed! I'm going to have to add at least a foot to it - and here I thought I'd managed to finish a project - drats. I've also quickly determined the pillows I thought I'd use on the bed really look awful, so now need to make pillow shams to match the quilt and get some better accent pillows, best made plans, sigh!

This was a fun quilt pattern to make, though. I usually make very detailed, involved quilts with lots of applique or hand work on it - just to sew an easy pattern that worked up so much more quickly was a treat for a change. Apparently I get to enjoy it a bit longer now.

Fashion hazzard / 3 small quilts

2009-08-05T07:44:00.000-07:00

This is what my left shoulder looks like most of 3-4 days of the week! We are taught to put snipped off threads onto our shoulder instead of looking for the garbage can, or dropping them on the quilt or floor. It's actually quite smart, very easy, quick, and convenient. But ask me how many times I've left the house with that sitting there!! I've always caught myself before I've actually walked into a store, but I've answered my door many many times and gotten very odd looks - walked to the mail box and gotten the same reaction from those passing by - my neighbors have gotten used to it now! I usually always have 3 safety pins pinned to my top - I use them to mark the top of the quilt top - quilt bottom and batting, so I get all three going in the same direction when I'm loading them on my longarm machine. As I get each piece loaded I take off the safety pin and pin it to my shirt. Those I completely forget about and go all over town with them on. Not as many double takes with the pins, but I have had people ask me about them. Cute little baby quilt I finished this week.

Another cute one (aah, pink - my favorite color!)

This was a first - two pieces of upholstery fabric someone wants to use as a throw over a sofa. Wasn't sure if that heavy of fabric would make a difference to my machine, but no problem. Not a very cuddly quilt - but to each their own.

This is the back - you can kind of see the panto design I used "Asian Ginkgo". You can't see it at all on the front because the print is so busy.

My quilt did well at show

2009-08-01T11:59:00.000-07:00

I'm happy, my quilt did well at our little local UBIC show. It got a blue ribbon as well as a nice big purple Best of Show. There were more quilts entered this year than last, so as you can see in this picture they had to kind of double hang most of them - so only 12 of my 20 blocks could be seen which was a bit disappointing since each block was quilted differently and I really worked hard on them! But it's nice that more people came out with their quilts to participate this year. They did a few things differently this year, there were a number of "People's Choice" ribbons, one for each category as far as I could tell - last year there was only one and I managed to snag it. But this year this cute little quilt got it for the quilt section - I don't know the woman, but she was in the "senior" category - I'm sure she was really thrilled! (I wouldn't mind making that pattern - it's very fun!)

I still plan on posting photos of all the quilting on my quilt - I put so much work into it that it would be nice if a few people got to see all of it! I'll need to spend some time with my camera and side lighting to get good shots, hopefully soon. Don't think I'll enter it into the fair this year though, did that last year and it was such a pain to drive the 30 miles to take it there, go back to see how it did (I'm just human - had to go and look!), then again to pick it up. Yea, I know, I'm a wimp!

Baby quilts galore!

2009-07-30T09:49:00.000-07:00

I've had 11 customer quilts waiting for me to get to them, 7 of which are baby quilts! The first 4 came from the same customer and I was able to get them finished in a little over a day because they just wanted simple treatments and the quilts are relatively small. This first one is a Log Cabin design that a panto showed up very nicely on. Used "Good Night Moon" panto - never used it before, but it turned out fun and seemed like a fun one for a little baby boys quilt.

They had fluffy batting and minkee on this one and wanted open quilting so it would remain soft and puffy. I had another panto I'd never used before, "Puzzle", if you look at the green you can see the stitching design. It worked up very quickly and is so cute, another fun one for a little boy.

This was a VERY small quilt, but really cute.

A meander stitch with stars thrown in here and there - the backing fabric had stars on it so it tied in well with that.

With all the circles on the fabric I did a loopy meander for this quilt.

Mystery Quilt

2009-07-25T18:46:00.000-07:00

This quilt is a mystery quilt that a bunch of us did in our local quilt guild a few years ago. I'd never done a mystery quilt before, didn't even know what one was before this. It was so fun! I finished mine - expanded it into queen sized and gave it to my niece, Merrick, when she got married (hand quilted it, since this was before I'd even thought of getting a longarm). This one belongs to Juanita and I quilted it for her last year but didn't take a picture of it. She had it at the last guild meeting - so I finally got my picture for my notebook (and this blog.) Better late than never!

Quilting threads - top and bottom

2009-07-22T04:45:00.001-07:00

Here is a photo of the back of a quilt I entered into my first show last year. That white thread on the back cost me a blue ribbon, I got a red one. The judges were beyond complimentary of the quilt - just didn't like the white thread on the back. I had thought long and hard about that choice while quilting because the front was white fabric and I didn't want to risk having green thread from the back poking through onto the top - I figured it was the lesser of the two evils to have white show on back rather than green show on front. WELL!!!! This topic recently came up on a longarm internet chat site and I just learned I was right and the judge was wrong! These are world class quilters who enter their quilts into national and international quilt shows (and sell "How to" quilting DVDs and teach in national shows that were sharing their knowledge on this chat site.) They said that with hand quilting you have the same colored thread on the bottom as you would the top - machine quilting isn't any different. They refuse to use different colored threads top and bottom for the same reason that I didn't on this quilt and they have had to educate their customers to this. They said in the national shows none of the judges ever comments on this topic and the backs of their quilts many times looks like a crayon box exploded on it from all the different colors back there! The only time this seems to be an issue is small shows and fairs where the judges aren't educated in this matter.

Well, that would be here! I'm soooo glad to have finally heard the official word on this. I panic when I get a customer quilt where I'm dealing with a white top and a red backing and wondering how am I going to do this and have it look good on the top and the bottom. Now I know. I will continue to try and use different colors, top and bottom, when I can and it isn't a big issue, but if it's going to pose a problem - I'll educate and then do what needs to be done so the top looks wonderful.

Class sampler #2

2009-07-20T07:30:00.000-07:00

I quilted this same sampler for Louise who taught a class on it awhile back - now here's one of her student's finished quilt! Darci is in high school and I think this is her first quilt - she did a great job on those blocks!! I'm not going to post pictures of all the blocks because I did that when I posted on Louise's quilt, and I did this one very similar. Did have to make some changes because of the different fabric choices the stitching wasn't showing up as well in some areas.

It's a striking quilt I think :)

Works in Progress

2009-07-17T03:46:00.000-07:00

This is the project I was working on when my sewing machine died. It's called a String Quilt and you use thin scraps. I had bags and bags of little strips and snippets of fabric that I just knew I'd come across a quilt idea some day I would be able to use them on (I don't throw away any fabric unless it's under 1 inch square). I'm still looking for some way to use the small non-strip pieces, but this was my answer for the strips! I'm loving it - you happily sew along and don't have to think about matching anything! (They are all sewn on a 6 inch square muslin piece on the back) I'm almost finished with one side border of this quilt I hope to have finished in 1 1/2 weeks so I can enter it in the UBIC arts and craft show. Last year was the first time I'd ever participated and my quilt got a number of ribbons (my favorite being the People's Choice - I thought that was so cool!) I always have really good beginners luck though, so I don't expect this year to be the same, but got to thinking I really should have something in this show for advertising. So here I am cramming at the last minute to get this ready. I really need to get it on my longarm this Monday since I have quite an involved idea for the quilting I want to do and have no idea how long it will take - then the binding, so here it is 5:00 a.m. and since I can't sleep I might as well be working on this!

Pinwheels

2009-07-15T08:27:00.000-07:00

As usual, I never think to ask the customer what the pattern name of the quilt is. I need to go through my order forms and highlight that area or something so I think to do it!! This quilt has a type of pinwheel design on it - as usual, I try to quilt whirly patterns on them so the pinwheel has a feeling of motion in it. Well guess what! The pattern on the fabric, and even the color, made it so that little of the stitching actually shows up! (About a year ago I did a similar quilt in tans and browns, the fabric was patterned, yet the quilting showed up very nicely - but these bright reds and blues aren't giving me the same results.) I've learned to combine straight or geometric quilting next to swirly quilting because they off-set each other so beautifully - thus all the straight lines in the white areas.

BUT!!!! If you look on the back the quilting shows up wonderfully!!! (Minke backing again, love it!) This is so pretty (I'm allowed to think that, even though I did it aren't I?) It's actually much nicer in person. So, I'm disappointed that all these pretty quilting patterns aren't showing up on the front - but what can ya do?

Paisleys again

2009-07-10T18:02:00.000-07:00

Another fun little baby quilt I was able to use my paisley meander on. It was an easy design choice with that paisley border!

Christmas in July!

2009-07-10T12:20:00.000-07:00

Jane must be one of those really organized people who actually do make Christmas gifts in July! I used a panto pattern called "Flurry" that I've never used before - turned out great!

The minke backing is luscious - and with the quilting it actually looks elegant I think.

stacks of quilts

2009-07-09T09:23:00.001-07:00

This is a stack of my own quilt tops that never make it onto my longarm! Currently I have 9. I have one that I kind of would like to enter in the UBIC quilt show in a month or so, but it won't happen because I'll never get it quilted by then - customer quilts come first. Here are customer quilts waiting to be done - can you think of a better use for pianos than to hold quilts?

My quilting anniversary!

2009-07-08T15:42:00.000-07:00

I was just catching up on some paper work and got to wondering when I'd started longarm quilting for customers - surprise, it was one year ago today! I have 72 customer quilts under my belt so far, business has picked up very well and my ability has bloomed way past what I originally thought I'd do with this machine. Still much to learn, but that's half the fun! It'll be fun to see what this next year produces!