Back from Vacation - Doll Quilt

I am finally back from vacation. We had a great time and I will post some photos in the days to come. Everything is so far behind and I have so much to do to get caught up at home so I am just going to post my doll quilt and cover more in the days to come. Here is the doll quilt. It is about 20 24 inches. I made it from some of the blocks that we traded at guild last year. I added a plain border with simple blocks in the corners. I had fun quilting it - it is so small that it was very easy to quilt.

You can see the quilting better from the back. It has a crinkled, old-fashioned look. I tried to use spray adhesive to baste it and it got all globby on the borders so after the quilt is done, I had to wash it. Actually, I like the look of quilts after they are quilted much better than new fabric.

I hope my trade partner feels the same and likes it as much as I do.

Quilt accepted at Nashville

We found out the the guild raffle quilt was accepted at Nashville. How exciting is this! This will be the second year that a quilt that I have quilted is hanging there. Last year, 2 quilts that I quilted for Jan were accepted. I know I have posted photos before but just can't resist posting them again.

We are leaving in the morning to fly to California. On Sunday we are going on a cruise with my family. There will be 17 of us, including my son and his wife and two children who live in Sweden, my daughter, her husband and son who live in San Francisco. Also going are my sister and her husband, her daughter, husband and two teenagers. Lastly, my kids father and his wife are going. We are going to have so much fun for 7 days going to Mexico.

The following week, my sister and I are going to Las Vegas, while my poor husband comes home to go back to work. In Las Vegas, we will be sewing with Mary Ellen Hopkins for 5 days before I come home the following week.

I am not taking the computer on the cruise but may have time to post from Las Vegas. I am planning on taking lots of photos.

Guild Meeting and Quilt Show Entry Deadline

Today was guild meeting and since the President is on vacation to Florida, this was my first time running the meeting. We are gearing up for the quilt show and one of the topics was getting volunteers signed up to work at the various jobs for the show. My responsibility for the show is the Guild Demo Area. At least I can offer people the opportunity to sit down and sew for 2 hours. I made a poster for signups and about 1/2 the time slots are full.

It was also garage sale day at the guild meeting where members could set up tables and sell things they no longer want. I tried to resist but ended up with a tote bag that my friend Jan makes and a lime green wristwatch. It was fun.

It was also the last day for entries to be submitted for the quilt show. I decided to enter 3 very different quilts. Fortunately, they do not require that they are quilted before entry - of course they need to be quilted before being shown.

First is my color rainbow. It is huge! When I quilted Mary's it turned out to be 90 x 114. I made the center of the quilt in February at Retreat but kept putting off getting the borders on. There are 5 separate borders. First one is the black background to float the center, then one of the light fabrics, one medium and one of the darkest. It is then finished by another border of black. Got it done just in time to take the photo to put in with the entry form.

The second one is the black and white 4 patch kaleidoscope that still isn't quilted. I hope to get that done before leaving next weekend on the cruise.

Last is a wholecloth quilt. The fabric was dyed by a friend Susan Rice who is a member of my Allatoona Quilt Guild. This one is about 44 inches square and is beautiful, even before quilting. I also have a large queen sized piece that I want to quilt but will do that some other time.

We will find out in August of the quilts are accepted as it is a juried and judged show but hopefully these will make it in.

Another Postcard Workshop

I taught another postcard workshop last night. We also got the first rain in a long time - right when we were arriving at the workshop and a real downpour when we left. Since we are behind more than 12 inches in rain, I am not really complaining. Of course, it does feel like a sauna with the 90+ temperature and the rain. This workshop was for the night group that is part of the ECQG. We are still making postcards to use for publicity for the quilt show coming up in September. Many have already been sent to the press but now we would like enough to send to all the quilt guilds in Georgia and some for Alabama and Tennessee. Lots of quilt guilds.

Here are the cards that were completed during the workshop. In addition, several people took theirs home to finish and turn in later.

Everyone always has so much fun learning to make postcards - I love to teach it and share the postcards that I have received from others. I have over 200 cards from all over the world and they are real treasures.

Been Quilting

Sorry I haven't posted recently but I have been quilting and quilting and quilting. The above is Mary's Color Rainbow that needed to be quilted in time for her to enter it into the ECQG show in September. The deadline for entry is June 30. Fortunately for me, the quilts don't have to be quilted for entry. My color rainbow is going to be entered but I just ran out of time to get it quilted.

I also finished 3 other quilts that are going in the show along with a wedding present quilt. All required custom quilting and that takes me quite a while to do each one. Pictures of them are posted on my webshots which is listed on the sidebar.

I did call today to the Gammill dealer to order the table modification that will allow me to sit down to do custom quilting. I finally decided to spend the money. I should get it in after I come back from vacation, in time to start quilting the rest of the quilts for the show. It won't help when doing pantographs but will with custom. It seems like most of my business is custom anyway.

I also signed up for a class with Jamie Wallen at the Gammill Dealer. I think it is the week after the quilt show. He does beautiful work and I love taking classes from some of the best longarm teachers. The last class I took was from Nicole Webb and I learned so much.

Quilt Show Ribbons

We had the monthly planning meeting for the quilt show yesterday and had a very interesting discussion. First, here is a photo of one of the 5 ribbons that I pieced for the show. We were given a little kit with the fabric to make 5 ribbons and the ones I made were some blue ones. The next step is that the committee will take these pieced blocks and turn them into the ribbons.

At the meeting, I suggested that since we have a two person category for quilts, we should give out two ribbons for this category. In other words, each of the two people would receive their own ribbon. I thought this was perfectly reasonable but some others did not and it caused a lengthy discussion - was very interesting to hear all the viewpoints about this issue. I am not sure what other quilt guilds do and if they have the same type of category. Typically, the two person category has quilts that the piecer has paid someone to quilt for them. Of course, it also includes quilts that are pieced by two people or appliqued by two. The quilt is almost always entered into the quilt show by the piecer who is almost always the owner of the quilt.

It just makes sense to me that two person quilt means two ribbons. Fortunately, after much discussion, the group voted to offer two ribbons for this one category.

At the last show, the two person category only had one person's name listed on the label hanging next to the quilt, although the second person was listed in the program. This oversight has been corrected and both names will be on the label this time. At the last show, a quilt won first prize for machine quilting and the quilter's name wasn't on the quilt. Fortunately, the piecer immediately asked that the quilter's name be added to the label and a new one was made. That issue is being resolved this year by stating that only a single person quilt is eligible for the machine quilting award. Not necessarily the solution I would have suggested but it will work.

The quilting world is changing and it is hard to keep up with everything that might come up. The two person category is the largest category in our show. I might add that this is a judged and juried show and has an excellent reputation in the Southeast - it is a great show.

I wonder what others think about this issue. I know that my view is colored by the fact that I am a longarm quilter and quilt for others. At the last show, quilts that I quilted won three honorable mention ribbons. Two were won by one of my favorite piecers/customers and she gave me one of the ribbons. I loved her for that (and for many other things). I am not interested in sharing any money if it is awarded - I got paid for my quilting and that is enough for me. On my invoice, I ask that if they show the quilt in a show or at a quilt shop that I get recognition as the quilter. I just want everyone who contributes to a quilt winning an award to share in it. Let me know what you think.

House Block Exchange

Well, we did the house block exchange on Monday. 15 people completed the blocks so we got one of our own, 11 made by others and didn't get 3 of them. The photo above is the group that I did receive. It is interesting to see how people interputed the challenge of using black and white backgrounds (I got 7 dark and 5 light backgrounds), use of the yellow focus fabric in each block and the house pattern everyone chose. They all go together well. There are two that are a little different from the rest - the log cabin (bottom row, second from left) is not out of the same bright colors as the rest and the 5 little houses in a circle (third row, second from right) but they still look good when added to the rest of the blocks.

These three are blocks that I did not get in my 12. I like them but we could only get 12 blocks, not all 15 since we only made 12.

The size seems to be very good - they were supposed to be 10 inch blocks, measuring 10 1/2 inches when swapped. The circle of houses is slightly larger but easily cut down. Size of blocks can be a problem with swaps but not this time.

Next step is to decide what to do with them - I think I will get some of Sharyn Craig's books out and look at some of her inventive settings before deciding. The goal is that we all complete the quilts by the December meeting and then put them in the Bullock Hall Quilt Show in the Spring.

I won a prize from the FabShopHop

I have played with the FabShopHop for years. I usually start out great but get tired of searching for the bunnies so never am eligible for the Grand Prize. A couple of weeks ago, I got an email saying I had won a second prize worth more than $25. I forgot all about it but got a package this week and in it was 4 one yard cuts of white on white or white on beige fabrics.

They seem to be very high quality fabric and I am sure I will use them for something soon. So my recommendation to you is that you check out at least a few of the shops in July when they have their next shop hop. It is fun to visit new internet shops and you don't have to buy anything.

House Swap Blocks Finished

I finished up my 12 swap blocks for Monday. Again, the "rules" are black and white background, any house block and must use the bright yellow print somewhere in the block. We only had a fat eighth of the yellow but I was able to cut enough for the door and windows.

The block pattern I found was from a Little Quilts book that I won as a door prize during my guild retreat earlier this year. Our blocks need to be 10 inches and the pattern is for a 8 inch house. I added an inch of extra sky and an extra inch of lawn/garden to bring it up to the right size. I like the looks of the smaller house - I know Lynda did the same (I think her house is actually 6 inches) but not sure what the others will do.

We are swapping out the blocks at our Monday meeting - I can hardly wait.

Redwork Quilt

On the Pat Sloan Yahoo group we have been talking about redwork quilts. I made one a few years ago. Actually, I made the center of the quilt and since it was a round robin, others added the borders, while I added borders to theirs.

I think it turned out very nice. I wasn't very happy about the last border with the celtic type stitching but decided to leave it and finish it up. I did several round robins with this group of women and almost all of them did very good work.

It was quilted before I had my Gammill and was done very nicely.

Here is the center block. The designs came from a pattern pack that is still available at Tiny Stitches where I work. I bought them from a different quilt shop several years ago and was surprised to see they are still available. I think the pattern pack has about 9 different designs but these were my favorites.

I really enjoy redwork - perhaps I should get some ready to take on the cruise to Mexico next month. We will be on the ship for 6 days so I need handwork of some sort to take. I purchased a kit for a Christmas Redwork quilt a couple of years ago at the Nashville Quilt Show and think I will try to find it in my closet of kits and UFOs and take it with me.

My sister called this morning - she wants to go to a Mary Ellen Hopkins seminar in Las Vegas right after we get back from the cruise. I have been trying to decide if I want to go - that isn't correct, I know I want to go, but can't decide if it is smart for me to take the extra time and money to do it. We have been to this seminar several other times and have always had a great time and I think she talked me into it.

Stashbusher Topic of the Week - What kind of quilter are you?

Are you a machine quilter, hand quilter or a send it out to be quilted quilter? What is your taste in quilting? Stitch in the ditch, outlining, heavy detailed quilting, all over quilting?

The above is the Stashbuster topic of the week. I have only quilted one hand quilting project and it was a small angel wallhanging that my daughter has hanging in her 4th grade classroom.

I also have not done any machine quilting on my domestic sewing machine. However I do have a longarm quilting business so I quilt almost every day. I like quilts that are heavily quilted however that is not what most customers are prepared to pay for. I love doing simple allover designs for customers but have developed a following for custom quilting.

I love custom quilting - it is so much fun to look at a quilt and be able to quilt it to enhance the piecing/applique by quilting the top. I think my favorite quilt that I have quilted is the Guild Raffle Quilt for the East Cobb Quilt Guild. You can see it at my webshots or at ecqg.com . I also recently finished quilting a wonderful Home Sweet Home quilt that is also in my webshots under Customer Quilts 2007.

For my own quilts, most of the ones I make are samples for Tiny Stitches so I usually need to get them done quickly. Therefore I usually just do a panto on them.

House Swap Blocks

My Piecemakers Bee is doing an exchange of house blocks. Lynda is going to be out of town on Monday when we are actually doing the swap so she brought them to me to take.

The rules are simple. 10-1/2 inch block using black and white as the background, with bright colors for the house. Any house pattern is acceptable. Each block will include some of the bright yellow paisley fabric (we each received 1/8 of a yard) and are making 12 blocks.

I plan to work on mine tomorrow. Thank goodness for the last minute or I wouldn't ever get anything done!

Borders on

Well, I have the borders on the quilt. I still need to quilt it. I bought backing today - Black with white polka dots! The quilt is slightly too wide for Minkee or I would have used that.

I am working on quilting Mary's Color quilt we made during our February quilt retreat. She wants to enter it in the guild quilt show so I need to get it finished for her. I also would like to enter mine but still have to put the borders on it. The deadline is June 30 but it doesn't have to be quilted by then, just finished enough for pictures to be taken.

I have several other quilts that need to be done for the show so I guess I better get busy quilting.

Magic Happens

Here is the 4 patch kaleidoscope quilt put together before it gets turned on point. I was downstairs in the longarm studio cutting it when the electricity went out. It was out for about 1 1/2 hours throughout the neighborhood. No idea what happened but it came back before it got real dark. Of course, since the longarm is in the basement it was very dark. Fortunately, my hubby found a flashlight and came down to give me enough light to make it upstairs.



The pattern I am following for this quilt is kind of like Simply Squares. You put the setting triangles into the quilt as squares and then cut them at an angle to put the quilt on point.

Here is the quilt after being cut and resewn. I need to add a small inner border of the black fabric used for the sashing and then an outer border of the original fabric. I really love this quilt. You can't tell by the photo but the setting squares are black polka dots on white.

Here is a closeup of some of the blocks. It is fasinating how the different blocks turn out. Makes you look at fabric in a whole new way.

More felting fun

We found out that you can even felt cotton fabric. This piece was put together only using the embellisher. There is no actual piecing, just needle punching.

Here is just felt attached to felt. I used felted wool but it is attached to craft felt using the embellisher.

This last piece is craft felt attached to craft felt. We were just trying out different techniques and supplies. The first piece used fusible to attach the design to the background and the second one eliminated the fusible. We just laid it on top and ran the embellisher to attach it.

I need to make some fabric inchies so will pick up more craft felt tomorrow to play. I have to have them done for a swap right away so plan to work on them tomorrow. I need to make green ones and don't have any green felt.

Embellisher Class

I took a class at Fiber on A Whim today on the Embellisher. My friend Sharon was the instructor. I broke down and bought the Janome Embellisher a couple of months ago and finally took it out of the box last night to get ready for the class today. It is a very simple machine. It doesn't use thread but has 5 needles. My hubby calls it a fabric stabbing machine which is pretty accurate. Most of the class had Babylock machine but one other person had the same one I have.

Here I am at the machine. Sharon was very organized and we made several samples testing different techniques. I have photos of a few of them here and will post a couple more tomorrow.

This was the last piece we did. We used a sticky backed water-soluble stabilizer and put lots of stuff on it. Started with roving, dyed scim and yarn. I had a piece of netting that I used as a base.

The piece above is just cheap craft felt. This is actually the back of the piece.

Here is the front - It has an additional felt piece in the center that was felted and then scrim added to it.

What fun this machine/technique is. My Embellisher also has a one needle attachment for doing more precise work. I can't wait to play more with it - just what I need, another obsession.

Cool Ties for the Troops in Iraq

The Allatoona guild met today to make cool ties for the troops. We started at 9:30 and were finished, including lunch by 12:30. We made 118 ties and will get them in the mail tomorrow. This time we are sending them to the son of one of our members who is with Military Intelligence. He can distribute them to the soldiers around him.
Barb had the group organized well. We had people who sewed, turned, pinned, trimmed, filled and finished the ties. She had them all cut out so it went very quickly. I had enough WaterSorb left from last year to do this batch. Will have to order more if we do it again.

Barb also made sloppy joes for lunch for everyone. There were a couple of cakes and a big box of cookies also. Plenty for everyone to eat.

I had eight little door prizes left over from the bus trip so we gave them away to people who showed up today. One of the members had her 11 year old daughter helping so she did the door prizes and even won one herself.

We do a community service day on the 5th Tuesday of the months that have one. Next time we will be working on Quilts of Valor for wounded soldiers - our community services days have been very successful this year.

Barb also purchased small beads and put them on safety pins for each of the members to pin onto their name badges. Just another little incentive for everyone to help.

Tomorrow, I have signed up for a class at Fiber on a Whim using the Embellisher. I guess I will have to take mine out of the box and plug it in to make sure it actually works before I go. Finally something to do with all the wool roving I have collected over the past couple of years.

Guild Challenge/Gwen Marsten Workshop

When Gwen Marsten was here last month, she taught two workshops. I posted a few pictures from her liberated string workshop. She also taught liberated stars. For that one I used my usual lime green with some of my extensive black and white collection. They turned out to be 6 inch blocks and I think I will use them in my guild challenge. They are going to go in the border if my idea works out. I have 9 competed blocks and will need 7 more.

These are a lot of fun to make. I only had 3 lime green fabrics with me but will use some different ones for the rest of the blocks.

In the center, I am going to fuse a vase of flowers and use jumbo rickrack for the stems, along with buttons for the center of the flowers. That will take care of the embellishment part of the challenge. For the stripe, I plan to use that in my sashing or perhaps in the background of the applique block.

I drew up a preliminary plan in EQ6 but have other things I need to get completed before I can spend more time on this project.

I also found time to put the sashing on some of the four-patch blocks but hubby called from work and wanted me to go to lunch with him so that took a chunk of time out of my day. Tomorrow the guild is making cool ties for the soldiers in Iraq so I will be busy again.

Four Patch Fun

I found a wonderful fabric that I wanted to make something from. It turns out that my sister has a pattern that uses the exact same fabric so I am going to make a quilt from her pattern. It is a four patch, set on point with sashing between each row.
This is the focus fabric. It is black and white with a little silver highlights and has a 24 inch repeat. The repeats are lined up on top of each other and then I cut 4 1/2 inch strips, cut into 4 1/2 inch blocks.

Here are nine of the four-patches laid side by side. It probably would have been better if I had separated them for the picture but if you look close, you can see the different blocks. So far, I have made 40 blocks and am getting ready to add the sashing to them. I had so much fun playing with the positioning of the 4 blocks that make up the four patch. Once it is put together you cut diagonally twice, sewing the cut off piece back in a different position and the quilt is magically put on point.

I need to quilt a quick quilt for the shop tomorrow but hope to get the sashing on this one. I can't wait to see how it turns out.

Bus Trip to Mary Jo's

The Allatoona guild took a bus trip to North Carolina on Wednesday. We had a great time. We left here at 8am and got to Mary Jo's just after noon. The bus was leaving to come back at 5pm so we had around 5 hours to look and look.

Since I work in a quilt shop, I really didn't need much fabric but did buy a few things that we don't carry in the shop. I got a few black and white prints (my favorite backgrounds), some sewing motif fabrics (not sure what I am ever going to do with my growing collection), a wonderful ethnic fabric that would make great borders and a lime green and brown floral that I just couldn't resist.

Mary and I also had lunch at Longhorns - always good. Some of the members spent the whole 5 hours in the fabric shop but we decided to take a side trip to LongCreek Mills - a thread shop. The bus made two trips there and it was only about 10 minutes away.

The thread above is what I finally decided to buy. It is cotton quilting thread and hopefully my Gammill will like it. I haven't tried it yet as I just finished quilting a very labor intensive custom quilting job for a customer. The thread was so inexpensive that it was hard to believe it could be any good.

We got back to the mall where we left our cars before 10pm and had a great time. I think everyone had fun. We didn't plan or want to make money on the bus trip and the break even point was 40 people. We actually had 42 people pay and go so I was able to purchase a whole bunch of little door prizes that we gave away on the bus. We played a game with prizes also and everyone enjoyed themselves.