Happy Halloween

*giggle*
I'm such a kid at heart!

Morning Mist

Bloggers' Quilt Festival Fall 2011

It's Bloggers' Quilt Festival time again and I would like to welcome you to my blog if you are not a regular reader.  My blog is mainly eye candy of quilts that my clients bring to me to longarm quilt plus I manage to find time to make a few of my own.  This time I thought I would go back in time and share with you a quilt I did in 2004.  Long before I purchase my longarm I spent a lot of quality time with my Janome 6500 and even wore out a few part on the machine and me! Hence the purchase of the longarm.

  This is Celtic applique wall hanging  from the book Celtic Quilts by Beth Ann Williams.  I was addicted to Celtic applique at that time and made quite a few wall hangings using this technique. Then I was asked to teach this method at our local fabric shop, my first time teaching!  I couldn't believe I said yes, the thought of teaching a class scared me I too death but I was so glad I did it and I gained so much confidence through that experience.

 I think I would quilt this quilt a bit differently now, like quilt a design in the borders, can't imagine leaving them unquilted now :)   But that is part of growing as a quilter, learning new skills and approaching each quilt with those new found ideas.

That's also what I love about quilting, the design possibilities are endless. There is so many techniques and designs to try and I want to try them ALL!!

Thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of the festival!

21 Strip Salute

This is Jackie's quilt and she used the pattern '21 Strip Salute'.  As you can see I'm starting to lose my favorite photo spot due to all the shadows from the sun rising in the southeast this time of year. *pout*

While Jackie was working on this quilt she realized that mixing batiks and regular cottons was not a good idea. The Stonehenge had a lot more stretch than the batik so squaring it up for the borders was a bigger job than usual.  Her time and effort in making sure her borders were done right was greatly appreciated as I had no problems quilting it on my machine. I hear she had a good teacher helping her...thanks A!

Jackie picked Tickle for the center panto and left the outside border design up to me.  The batik fabric has a rectangular print so I decided on quilting a free hand square swirls using a brown variegated Lava thread.

Her backing was Stonehenge as well.

Crazy Quilt

This is Marg's Crazy quilt and she has been working on this project for a few years so was very happy to see it finished.  She used a foundation for piecing her blocks and hand embroidered all the seams. Like most Crazy quilts some of the fabrics are scraps from making clothes, some are special pieces from friends and I even saw a few of her hand dyed fabrics in the blocks as well.

We decided on very simple quilting design and picked the Happy Times panto using a light beige So Fine thread.

You can never go wrong with wool batting as it shows off the quilting nicely!

Wisteria

This is Sheri's quilt and I had to tease her that she has mastered this pattern as this is the 4th Hopscotch quilt she has brought.   She promised the next one she brings me will be different :)  I have made one of these quilts and it is a great 'go to' pattern so I know why she likes it so much.

I wanted to take a few pictures by the tamarack trees as they are a beautiful yellow right now.  Most of the trees have lost their leaves here and the only yellow in our landscape now is from them.  So there is a reason I called my business Tamarack Shack as my yard is lined with tamarack trees.

I used a new panto on her quilt called Wisteria by Urban Elementz.

Mystery Quilt #11

Yes we are up to #11 on the Mystery quilts, can you tell this was a popular project with our guild members?

This is Val's quilt and it is a birthday gift for her granddaughter. She had asked for a panto design but when I saw it had so much potential to show off some quilting in the border fabric I convinced her to let me do light custom quilting. All I had to do was draw out Desley's feather plume border design and she agreed!  I have been wanted to try this feather border design since I saw it here on Desley's blog.

I then adapted the border design to fit in the star.

Val had taken my Free Motion Class a few weeks ago and did amazing with her free hand loops so I had to quilt loops in the smaller border to celebrate her doing so well in my class.

I need to design a motif for the centres in the outer border and came up with a curly heart with a few feathers.  Instead of trying to backtrack on this design I tried to echo a 1/8" along the design to give it a different effect as I was using variegated King Tut thread.  That was a bit tricky but created a nice effect.

Feathers!

I finally did it!!!  I got up the nerve to meander feather a clients quilt and I am really happy with the results!

I have done a similar design on one of my own quilts with backtracked feather but I wanted to learn how to do this with an open design feather. So I put a piece of blue fleece on my machine and practised. I'm glad I did as the two styles of feather quilt out very differently and I kept wanting to quilt the open style backwards.  But I got the pattern in my head by the time I was finished the fleece.

So once I took off my practise piece I put Rae's Popsicle Sticks quilt on and just went for it. I used a soft purple King Tut thread on top and a purple Bottom Line in the bobbin. It quilted up beautifully on the batik fabrics.

I dyed the backing for this quilt too. Rae brought over a piece of white tone on tone fabric and she asked for a light purple.

Mystery Quilt #10 and a Look Back

This is Phyl's Mystery quilt and her autumn fabrics are good representation of the fall colours we are surrounded by right now.  I used a brown variegated Lava thread and the Curlz panto, the same one I used on the guild Bargello quilt but this time I see a windy design to go with her autumn colours and leaf print fabrics.

I thought since I am up to number ten on quilting the guild members Mystery quilts I would do a recap of all the quilts to show you how different one pattern can look done up in different fabrics. 

*edited to add a reminder that the pattern we used is called Stars for Audrey and it is not designed as a mystery, we just turned it into one*

Alene - Feather Curls

Maxine - Plush

Rae - Custom

Lynn - Taro

Evelyn - Custom

Eileen - Starlight

Marg - Whirlygig

Sasheen - Spiral Squares

Yvonne - Hollyberry

Phyl - Curlz

Sampler Wallhanging

This is Norma's Sampler wall hanging that was a guild project a few years ago.  It was great for teaching our guild members techniques like paper piecing, hand appliqué and foundation piecing. They also had a choice of a few different appliqué and paper pieced blocks to make.

This was also a great way for members to use up their scraps.

Bali Pop Quilt

This is Val's Bali Pop quilt and she found this pattern on a blog tutorial over at 2nd Avenue Studio, you can find the Bali Pop tutorial here.
  I quilted it using a brown variegated Lava thread and the Mimosa panto.

Shades of Fall

This is Val's Sampler quilt and I love how the colours blend beautifully with the colours in the yard right now.

My neighbours have an old wooden boat that they fill with flowers in the summer and I have been waiting for the right quilt to come along to use it in my pictures. 

I used a medium green So Fine thread and a panto called Ground Cover.