Fabric Pine Cones

Yesterday felt like a crafting day and I finally found time to make a project that I found on YouTube  last winter.  It one is on how to make fabric pine cones and here is a link to the video.     This summer I found the Styrofoam egg shapes and I had all the other supplies in my stash.. This project reminded me of crafts I made as a kid so it was fun to play with glue again!

  I used brown batik fabrics and cut 45 2" squares.  

We woke up to a fresh blanket of snow...about 4 to 6 inches.

The YouTube video is easy to follow but here are a few pictures of my supplies.  The only thing that's not in the picture is a thimble which I used a lot pushing the pins through the fabric into the Styrofoam.

I made 4 pine cones and they now hang in my house off a string of garland....that is where I cut the garland from to add to the tops!

Butterflies Quilt Done!

Back in October I shared a post here on my Butterflies quilt and this week I was able to quilt it up and even get the binding on!   The pattern is by Laundry Basket Quilts and I used batik fabrics from my stash. I think a lot of them were from the Paint Box Batiks and Over the Rainbow batiks collections.   Once I had the blocks done I debated about appliqueing the butterflies down or just quilting them down.  I know I would be happier if I did machine appliqued so took that extra time to do just that and I’m very happy I did. I used a smoky invisible thread and a blind hem stitch.  I also started to hand embroider the antenna on but stopped, picked that out and borrowed a brown permanent marker from a friend to draw them on.  Very happy I did that too. Seems I’m starting to learn to listen to my gut about where to take short cuts and when to spend the extra time on my quilting projects. 

For the quilting I SID around the butterflies and their body and added the feather details to the wings at the same time, only one start stop on each butterfly.  I wasn’t sure at first how to quilt the background…should I just use a meander, loops, swirls….or pebbles!  I have been pebbling a lot of quilts lately and that can take a toll on my back ( which I’m paying for today)  but this was a small quilt and I knew it would really make those butterflies pop off the background if I did.  So I listened to the inner voice again even though I didn’t want too at first.  I used Quilters Dream Blend batting and a light beige So Fine thread.

 You can really see how the pebbling make the butterflies stand out in the next picture.

 Here is a close up picture of my machine applique to show you the stitch I used. I prefer the blind hem stitch as it works great on curves.  I used to use as zig zap stitch but it can look messy on tight curves.

 

 I haven’t made that many quilts for myself this year, my ‘Year in Review” will be quiet short so I’m hoping to finish up a few more in the next week or two.

My First Longarm Student!

Now that I am finished my client quilting for the year I as able to spend time this weekend trying something new…teaching longarm quilting!   Since I have never done this before it seemed to make sense to start with a private lesson to find out if I would enjoy this or not.    My friend Wendy, who owns Fabriculous Quilt shop in Swan River, Manitoba, just opened an APQS rental business and asked for a private class so she could see the full potential of these machines.  She had only quilted pantographs up to this point so it was time to get her to the front of the machine!   She had quilted on her domestic machine so I knew she would be able to transfer those skills over to the longarm. So we started with the designs she knew and then added a few new designs to the mix, plus some SID ruler work.  She did amazing and it was so fun for me to see her enjoying this process.  We used the Lucey machine for quilting the quilts and on the Millie we loaded solid white fabric for practicing on.  It was so nice to have the two machines going…as I could go play on the Millie while Wendy was concentrating on what she was doing.   I have a 2008 Millie so it was really fun for me to try the newest machines.  There are some new features that had me thinking an upgrade would be nice but I love my machines so it is just a passing thought at the moment.

Here is Wendy’s first quilt off the machine!    The giraffe is made from Minkie so that was a good lesson on SID around a high loft fabric.  She meandered in the gold fabrics and did L’s and E’s in the teal stripe.  She will be kitting this quilt for her shop and proudly displaying the first sample she quilted on the longarm.

You can see all three machines in this next picture.

I was very lucky to have my friend Phyl drive down to Swan River with me as she just bought a Bernina sewing machine from their shop and Wendy’s husband George was helping Phyl with her questions about the embroidery features.   That as fun to see all the designs they were stitching out and George even took my Tamarack Shack Logo and put the file in Phyl’s machine.  Looks like Phyl has a bartering tool for when I quilt her quilts!

So for Wendy’s second project she wanted to be challenged so we put a curved table runner on the machine and got out the curved rulers!    The one thing I learnt as a teacher is it is good to have a sense of humour at this stage   I told Wendy it took me 20 years to make nice feathers so if she does it right away I will not be happy! LOL!  I said they will look like big toes and saggy hot dogs so do not be too critical of how they turn out and no ripping out!  I also told her to keep this runner and look at it again this time next year to see the progress she has made as quilting is not about being perfect, it is about making progress in your skills.  Now saying all that Wendy did great and could see the improvement from the first feather to the last set of feathers!  But of coarse like all quilters she has to point out all her toe shaped feathers for the pictures!  We had a lot of laughs working on this one!

Thanks for the great weekend Wendy and George!   It was more fun that it should have been and I think this experience has given me the confidence to pursue the idea of teaching longarm quilting in the future!

Patio Quilt

This is Kerri’s Patio quilt and the pattern is by Happy Zombie which you can find here.  The fabrics are by Mixologie and were purchased at Road 17 N in WInkler.    Kerri selected  a few pantographs that she liked and left the choice up to me so I picked Gatsby.    She sent a grey Fireside backing and I paired that with Quilters Dream Blend batting to make for a snuggly quilt!

The ice is getting a bit thicker so I have been venturing out more.  There is now a large pressure ridge across our bay so the water was seeping through that and freezing quickly the last couple of nights.    Made for a nice picture, it looks like a road!

There are also a lot of interesting ice formations from the wind and a lot of hoar frost crystals.  I spent some time taking pictures of those this morning.

The hoar frost crystals grew different this year and have multiple parallel layers where as in the past they intertwined more.  The frost crystals are the size of a quarter.

Catawampus Quilt

This is Lynn’s Catawampus Quilt and the pattern is by Freckled Whimsy, you can find it here.    The fabric line she used is called Felicity by Cynthia Coulter.  She asked for custom quilting so I quilted a free hand feather motif in the white areas and since the square of print fabric were all different sizes I just highlighted the diagonal design by added three lines.  Quilting diagonal lines on a longarm is a bit of a pain but so worth it on this quilt!

The ice is finally 4 inches thick so safe to walk on by the shore. I had my son out there with me just in case!

I wanted to share a tip with you about how I marked the feather motif without really marking it!  There is a great tool called the Clover Hera Marker and what it does is just leave a indent in the fabric, no ink!   Here is the tool and the ruler I used.  I marked two diagonal lines first to find the center and to use as a guide to keep my feathers contained in that quarter section.  Then I did two more lines, horizontal and vertical, to use as my center guide for my feathers.

So I now have lines to use as a guide with no worries of having to remove later!  Love this tool.

I then free hand quilted the feathers making sure I did the same number of plumes in each section so they balanced.

You can see the colour of the fabrics so much nicer in the indoor pictures!  This is my last custom quilt before my December break.  I have two more quilts to finished and then I can work on my own projects!

Zentangled Garden Quilt

This is Robin’s Zentangled Garden quilt and the pattern is by Jean Boyd.   I love the fabric that Robin used in the framed sections and since it was so bold I quilted it with straight lines.  I used two stencil designs in the dark green squares.  The background is all larger scale pebbles and on the open ‘negative space’ area to the right I added a echo swirl design to break up the space.   I then did a diagonal piano key design in the outer border and on the one side that had the extra green border insert I just continued the diagonal line across it.

I used black So Fine thread in the outer border and light green So Fine thread on the rest of the quilt.   Batting is a Hobb 80/20.

The other night Tim and I covered one of our spruce trees near the lake with white lights.  The light reflects off the snow in the tree and glows in our yard!