Randy and Whitney's wallhanging

This has been a busy month for me. I've got two cousins getting married, one in March and one in April, and 5 cousins' babies due by the end of the summer! So lots of quilts to be made for gifts. Here's the first one. A small wall quilt for a wedding gift.

I used my favorite landscaping book, Accidental Landscapes for this one. I've made a few of these landscapes before, but I haven't made the palm trees yet, so I was dying to try them out. They were a lot of fun to make, but I had made the mistake of laying everything down on the last landscape I did, and I had to keep stopping and starting my quilting to create the smooth lines of the waves.

So this time, I decided to quilt first and tack down the trees after. The trunk was sewn down at the end when I created the flange and borders, but I pinned it out of the way before I starting quilting. Worked like a charm!

The edges are loose, so they fray a bit, giving the trunk a nice realistic look. And the quilt wouldn't be complete without their family boat cruising across the horizon!

I quilted straight lines on the outer border and threw in a fun flower in the corners.

Doris and Jonnie's quilts

Doris brought me this beautiful table runner that she had hand embroidered. She had planned on hand quilting it, but the Dresden plates were too thick to get her needle through. She asked for crosshatching on the plate blocks and she mentioned that she loved feathers, but she left the rest to me.

I marked all of the cross hatching with my blue pen. I could probably have done it with my ruler, but I would rather have it all marked out in advance, rather than realize I was off later and have to pull out stitches.

 I outlined the plates and stitched around the center circle and just inside a few of the lines to hold it down.

See how small and intricate her embroidery is? Beautiful! Sometimes a quilt comes to me and it reminds me of how much faith my customers are putting in me. That someone has spent so much time on a quilt top and then brings it to me to finish can be a very humbling experience. A bit daunting too! Thanks everyone for all your trust in me!

Jonnie brought me this baby quilt and asked for balls to be quilted on it. In keeping with the whole sport theme, of course:)

This is always easier with a panto, but my circle rulers are great for marking off balls. I used my chalk pencil and cut out a football template and started spacing out the shapes. Then I quilted little loops to connect them all.

I think the footballs are my favorite.

Thanks Doris!
Thanks Jonnie!

2013 APQS GEORGE FOR SALE! Reduced! $5700 - SOLD!

I have received a great local opportunity to upgrade to APQS Millenium! So excited. Unfortunately, George has to find a new home before Millie can come to stay. 

This is a 2013 George. I purchased it new from the factory in July. It has been well maintained and is regularly oiled. Toothless (dragon) not included;)

It also comes with extras. I have the complete manual on CD and the set up instructions in print. I'm also including my Fabulous Fabric Glide, a set of needles and 10 bobbins. Not included in the photo is the Sidewinder bobbin winder, but it comes with the package.

Also included is the complete set of extra feet. The closed toe and the open toe foot, the closed 1/4" foot, and the open toe 1/4" foot for ruler work (this one is currently on the machine).

I'm asking $5900 OBO. Come over and have a look! I'll be happy to show you how to work it.

I also have the original box and packaging if George needs to be shipped. Thanks for looking!

Sharon's fish quilt

Sharon brought me another fish quilt from the class she had at Sewingly Yours. Arlene's was black and hot pink, but I love the colors Sharon used as well.

She didn't want tight quilting on this one. I think I like the green fish the best. So cute!

Thanks Sharon!

Sew-In Computer Printer Fabric review

I've been working on a wall hanging as a gift for my cousin's wedding. I thought it would be a nice touch to use their wedding invitation as a label. A while ago I had purchased this sew-in computer printer fabric from Joann's and it has been sitting in a cabinet ever since. Time to pull it out.

There are 4 sheets for printing. I can't remember the exact price. Maybe around $7-$10. Certainly not on the cheap side.

I read the directions. The main thing I hadn't noticed was the blurb about printer ink being water soluble. Hm, glad this is a wall quilt that will never be washed. If you are making a quilt that will be thrown into the washing machine, this is not the product for you.

Step 1: Print. I was a little worried that my printer might not be happy about the fabric sheets. The photo shows the paper being fed in from the top. No bending.  My printer has the lower tray, the paper gets sucked in, and rolls back out the same way. I'm happy to say that there was no issue. It fed in and out with no problems and printed just fine.

Step 2: Remove the paper backing. Are you kidding me?! This stuff is practically fused on. I was poking it with needles and trying to pry it off with my non-existent finger nails for ages. Fusible web products like Steam-a-seam and Wonder Under are a breeze compared to this. I did manage to get it off in the end, but the whole edge of fabric frayed badly in the process.

Step 3: Fuse to the back of the quilt. It did say on the back of the packaging that this could be easily done. So I whipped out my Steam-a-seam and went to work. The sticky web fused to the back of the photo just fine, but when I pressed it from the front to fuse it to the quilt, there was some discoloration. The nice light blue sky, looks a bit more stormy now. Not too bad, but not great either.

I checked to see if my iron had residue, but that looked fine. I think that the white printing fabric is not quite the quality it should be.

All in all, I give this product a 2 out of 5.

I think I'll be trying out the freezer paper printing technique that everyone is raving about. With some high quality Kona.

Snow days = 3 more finishes

My friend Sarah sent me this quilt all the way from Austria. She lives there now and she asked me if I could repair this quilt that her grandmother made. It was in poor shape and had a lot of large rips that couldn't be easily fixed. I thought about patching it here and there on the top, but as you can see, there is a definite pattern here and it would be difficult to match these vintage fabrics. Shirley suggested putting something on the underside. Brilliant!

(And, by the way, this snow pic is a tribute to Tamarack Shack. She lives in Canada and always takes these amazing snow photos of her quilts. We finally had enough snow for me to have a go at it. Of course, the second it stopped snowing and I brought the quilt outside, nice fat drops of snow were melting off of the trees! I managed to take 2 quick pics, but you can see that the drops show up nicely on the quilt, grrrr!)

I ended up putting muslin under the entire quilt and quilting 4 layers together. That way, any soon to be rips, would still be concealed.

I decided to quilt straight lines, even though some of the seams were uneven. There were a lot of very thin seams that looked like they could split at any time, so in the ditch wasn't really an option. I ended up creating a 1/2" channel around each seam, so even if they do open up a bit, all the blocks will still be firmly sewn in place.

Sarah did understand the fragile state of this quilt, but it holds a great deal of sentimental value to her. Hopefully it will now last many more years to come:)

The next quilt is Della's. She asked for a simple edge to edge design to hold this lap quilt together.

And Pat brought me this adorable little sea life baby quilt. I quilted it with my favorite wavy line pattern, only horizontally this time to give it more of an ocean wave feel

Thanks Sarah, Della and Pat!

Debbie's double wedding ring

Debbie has been working on this double wedding ring for 10 years! She finished it and asked me to quilt it for her. 

She really liked the quilting that Jenny Pedigo of Sew Kind of Wonderful did on her Mertro Rings.

The quilting on Debbie's is a little bit different because the patterns are not exactly the same. I got to use my straight ruler a lot and my new curved rulers from Renae Haddadin's website: Quilts on the Corner. These rulers are great! Love, love, love them.

Did I mention that this quilt was a king!

Thanks Debbie!

Two more finishes

Arlene made this adorable fish quilt. I love how the pink fish just pop out! It is quilted with a meander and the fish are outlined.

Jenny made her baby quilt using the same Cluck Cluck Sew pattern (Pow Wow) that I used on my lap quilt. She got these fabrics in a kit. Love the combinations!

This last pic is a sneak peak of an art quilt I am making for my cousin's wedding. I'm trying to reproduce the photo from their invitation. It was taken by the resort where they are getting married. I used Karen Eckmeier's Accidental Landscape technique for the background and Susan Brubaker Knapp's techniques for the detailing. Fingers crossed!

Thanks Arlene! Thanks Jenny!