New Year's Plans

What do you have planned for New Year's Day?? Will any of you be doing the Mystery Class put on by Cindy Roth of Longarm University or piecing the mystery quilt from Planet Patchwork? I'm planning to do both...at least, that's the plan for now. *fingers crossed* 

Every year, Cindy does a quilting mystery. You piece the pattern according to the instructions that you're given when you sign up. Starting New Year's Day morning, she posts quilting designs for each section of the pieced quilt. Its fun to try new things and it makes for a great sample to show your customers. This year's quilt is a cute little "Cabin in the Woods" artsy quilt. The instructions to piece this were very easy to follow. This is the class example, I'll post mine after its quilted.

Planet Patchwork is doing a "modern" mystery on New Year's Day. I have my fabrics chosen and ready to go. I really want to finish this one because I'm dying to quilt a modern quilt!

Let me know if you're doing either of these. It would be fun to check-in with each other as the day goes on.

Merry Christmas

I hope that you and those you love have a Merry Christmas...and if you were good, maybe Santa will put something quilty under your tree!!

Connie's Egg Money Quilt

This is the big one from a few days ago. She's made it home and Connie loves her.

This is a pic without the border. You can see some of the details a bit better.












Lots of pics from this one; hope you don't get bored. This is the fourth Egg Money quilt I've done and there's one more awaiting quilting. The biggest challenge with these is that these ladies all belong to the same guild. I don't want them to look like they have "cookie cutter" quilting, so thinking of new backgrounds and new ways to quilt the blocks is a must.

Those are pics of some of the blocks from the front. Below are pics of the back. It isn't as white as it appears in the first pic, nor is the blue as dark as it appears in the subsequent pics. The blue is much softer and really complements the quilt.

This pic is of the border. Shows up nicely in the background, but not so much on the front. Fabric was too busy. Lesson learned, busy fabric can have less ornate quilting, even if the border will eventually be scalloped!!

This is the corner quilting.

A block from the back.

Thanks for hanging in. Hope you enjoyed the "show"!!

Stunning Mornings

The mornings have been absolutely gorgeous here and I wanted to share a few pics. Yes, that is snow. But here in Sequim (or south of Sequim), it generally falls in inches--not feet. We LOVE the snow now!!

This view is from the room that will probably become my sewing studio. It will have a hide-a-bed couch and/or a Murphy bed in it for company, but will no longer be a dedicated sewing room.  More on that when/if it happens. This room looks out over the back of our house.  You can see the sun rising over the Olympics.

A couple showing our pond and the gazebo in back...the pond is starting to ice over.

I couldn't decide which one I liked better so you get them both. (I know, I know...they're practically identical)

The front while we were feeding this morning. This is our totem pole with the flag pole behind it. You can just barely see the color of the sun in the background.

Kate, enjoying her breakfast and wishing the sun would hurry up! A bit later, all the ponies were basking in the sun while they ate. 

Every day when I go outside I admire the Olympics and where we live and feel blessed to be here.

Thanks for looking. Sorry the pics aren't better quality, but I took them with my phone.

Another Log Cabin Quilt

The big one from the previous post is finished and on its way home. However, it hasn't arrived yet, so this one is next to post. It went home today!

Delores made the first Log Cabin for her son; her daughter saw it and wanted one of her own.  This is her quilt.

Same quilt (some different colors) and same quilting (leaf meander). Same thread color even, Glacier So Fine by Superior.

Now, here's the different part. Delores had a very difficult time adding the binding to her first quilt.  She brought me the binding for this one. I've never attached binding to a customer quilt. She wanted a complete finished quilt back with the binding attached front and back. She chose the decorative stitch on the front rather than hand sewing to the back...whew!! This is how it looked when finished.

I like how it turned out and plan on doing this with my personal quilts in the future.  Looks like I have a new service to offer my customers!

Sandy Hook

My Blog is a place for happy thoughts and fun pictures. However, the tragedy in Sandy Hook hits especially hard. I lost my niece many years ago, when she was four. She'd be in her thirties now.

My heart aches for the families of those children. Nothing can prepare you for the death of your child, especially under these circumstances. The suffering is just beginning for those who lost family and friends, including the shooter's family.

Please keep them all in your thoughts and prayers as you go about your normal, everyday activities today.

Almost done...

Lots of SID, big quilt...

Almost done....

Comment Moderation

I have been resisting this for several months, but now, I'm afraid its time. 

For some reason, people whose first language is obviously not English, have been posting comments to my blog. Usually Google catches these comments and they don't actually get published, although they do send me notification of them. Lately, however, Google hasn't been catching them. I first thought they were being deleted due to the "here is my blog" language with a link following. However, now that the links have stopped including offensive language, Google isn't catching them any longer.

Here's an example of one that sounds legitimate, until you click on the link and are taken to an inappropriate site. (Thanks for the heads-up Sara!)

"I was curious if you ever considered changing the layout of your website? Its very well written; I love what youve got to say. But maybe you could a little more in the way of content so people could connect with it better. Youve got an awful lot of text for only having one or two pictures.Maybe you could space it out better?Here is my web page : www.bhgalleries.com"

I have several options when allowing comments, including comment moderation, not allowing anonymous comments, requiring special characters to be entered, and not allowing comments by readers who are not officially listed as following my blog. I've opted for comment moderation, which just means that I have to approve your comment prior to it being posted. That will eliminate the spam and still allow comments. 

I hope you'll continue to comment; I really enjoy hearing what you have to say and I'm sorry that there are people out there who make comment moderation necessary.

And to make you smile after all the negative stuff...how's this??? Dash always makes me smile!!

Quilters are such Nice People!

A few weeks ago a new customer in Washington dropped a quilt by my studio. Dolores had sewn clothing forever and made one quilt--twenty years ago. She brought me a Log Cabin quilt made to replace the worn out quilt that she'd given to her son.

This quilt had some gorgeous batiks in it. Dolores chose Superior's So Fine Glacier thread to quilt it with and asked for an allover leaf pattern.

She wanted leaves and she got leaves...albeit blue ones!!

A close-up view:

Okay, that's the quilt stuff--now, "the rest of the story." While Dolores and her husband were here, we had the usual getting to know you conversation. I found out about her art and that her husband had been a large animal vet. He had her show me their business card with a watercolor of a gorgeous bull's head.  I also saw her Visa card that has another of her paintings on it. I asked whether I could commission her to do a watercolor of my horses, but she says she has to "feel it" or she just doesn't paint it.  Bummer...I was hoping for a trade. (sad face)

Today I dropped her quilt off and she gave me a gift...the painting below. She says its a print of her original watercolor. I was so touched I almost cried; it was such a sweet thing for her to do. The painting is about 12 x 18; now I just have to get it framed.

Isn't it gorgeous??

Barbara's Baskets -- Quilted

Here it is, the finished quilt (remember to click on the photos to see the detail):

Some close-ups of the final design. .

Sorry about the fold in the fabric; I didn't notice it when I took the photo.

And what post would be complete without a couple shots of the back?

I have no idea what that spot is in the upper left corner; the fabric wasn't discolored. *shrug*

What are your thoughts? Would you have chosen something different?

Barbara's Baskets Part I

Barbara sent me a quilt a while back. Its been here for a bit as we've gone back and forth with the design process. Often times, I'm given a quilt where the owner wants to be more involved and I've come up with a couple of methods of quilt designing long distance to facilitate the process.

This is the block we were working with (if you turn your head to the right when viewing, it will be on point):

One method is when the quilt owner sends along a sketch of the design showing what they want. This was Barb's sketch.

However, as you can see from her "flowers," she really didn't know what, exactly, she wanted in that area.  So after talking with her, I drew these suggestions to give her some more ideas.

Neither of these (or any of the others I sent) were what she was looking for.  She made the decision to have me quilt the "baskets" in the same manner that they were quilted in the book, "Passionate Patchwork" by Kaffe Fassett.  Barb had altered the Delft Basket pattern to suit her fabrics, adding a flange in the middle of the baskets.




From the basket design, we still had to decide on the sashing, setting triangles and border. I have a Kindle Fire and an app that allows me to take a picture and then import it into the app for so that I can draw on the photo. I sent her these pics with drawings of the quilt designs for those specific areas. There is one caveat that I always tell my customers:  My quilting is far better than my drawing! (you'll have to click on the first pic to even see it; apparently, they don't transfer to well to Blogger)

Barbara decided on the "leaves" in the sashingpictured in the top drawing on the left.  (I later told her that what she thought were leaves were my poor attempt at drawing feathers!)  She decided on the curved design in the setting triangles and piano key border shown above and right.

Stay tuned for the finished product!