Lord of the Circle Lord

I did it. I broke down and bought a Circle Lord. In some ways I think of it as selling out. At least until I look closely at my freehand circles. Then I just cackle with glee. This thing makes even my quilting look good. No kidding. Have a look at some of the things just a super basic stripped down Circle Lord can do:



this was my first ever attempt to use the gizmo, too.

There won't ever be a replacement for artistically worked careful freehand quilting, but there is plenty of room in my repertoire for well made circles.

I'd write more, but I need to search the internet. I'm now in the market for a Dirty Dishes Lord.

Houston Quilt Festival

I know, everyone else has already posted fabulous pictures of the quilts on display. The winners were all breathtaking; so were most of the quilts that didn't even get a mention! The vendor booths were interesting - many of them had new tools and gadgets on display. There were lots of technique tutorials. The folk at Thimble Art were showing off their dimensional paper piecing technique, Fabric Fanatics had the best deals on beautiful batiks (some of which are pictured below!) big companies and individual entrepeneurs were side by side in booths. I bought some metallic thread for which I have high hopes, and found just the right blend of oranges and yellows in a thread for a top that's waiting in the queue; my buddy Beth and I spent a lot of time directing each other to various sights.

This is all completely normal.

What we did that's blogworthy this year is, we made a quilt.

That's right. We made a quilt while we were at the Houston show. You know how seeing all the beautiful quilts is well, at first it's just humbling, but then it makes you really want to get back home and get busy, right? We are both already aquainted with that feeling so we brought along fabrics for a donation quilt. We cut, pressed, sewed, (frog stitched :( ) and sewed some more. When we left Houston we left with an extra quilt top! I used the leftovers for a back and quilted it, and today Beth will be taking it home to sew on the binding. It was a most satisfying experience. We had plenty of spare time while we were there because we didn't have to pick up anyone else's dirty socks, cook dinner, help with vocabulary words or let the dogs in and out. We went with a simple rail fence block in a zigzag layout. almost (but not quite!) impossible to mess this up. I sewed on an entire pair of rows upside down and we didn't notice it until we were setting it out to admire the finished top. One bad seam in the whole top isn't too awful though.

I quilted it with a pointy, angular meander. It took almost no time. I've seen Beth sew binding. That's not going to take long either.

Capital Equipment Care

I was out of town for a while helping someone through a spot of maintenance. You can take your Singer to the shop; hearts are trickier. Don't ignore the clunks and dings.

Fall 2009 Online Quilt Festival

Welcome to the Fall 2009 Quilt Festival online! Thanks Amy, for hosting it. The spring festival was amazing! To see other quilts in the festival, go to Amy's list, HERE.

Here's my entry for the show. It is a quilt I started piecing about four years ago and finally dragged out of storage to finish up this summer. I stepped way out on a limb to quilt it with contrasting thread and it turned out surprisingly better than I thought it would.

Clicking on pictures takes you to the larger photo, and there are links to detail shots at the bottom of this post.

Thanks for stopping by, and I hope you really enjoy the rest of the quilt show!

Hot Summer Nights seems like such an obvious name for this quilt...

Detail shots can be seen HERE and HERE, and yay! another item on my current project list is completed!

Whadda Ya' Think Sharon?

Your lap quilt will look great with another row on it. These border ideas struck me as simple and cute. The pinwheels might take a while though.

At It Again

...again...

Millie shared a customer quilt with the world a few days ago. It really caught my eye. I fiddled around with it in EQ6 for a while and decided I liked it best just like it was. Didn't really want to do red and beige though. I showed it to Beth - you can see what's coming, can't you? - and she said it would look really good in black and white (she's been wanting to try black and white for a while now). This time though I was thinking icy winter colors (pale blue and grey). What a switch! So stay tuned for the latest breaking news as this one unfolds.

...and here's the EQ6 version of what I'll be working up.

All in a Day's Work

A customer emailed to tell me she would like a little help on a quilt she is making for a treasured relative. She had purchased and cut quite a bit of fabric.

She brought all of it over a few days ago, we opened up the project and had a look see.



About thirty nine patch variation blocks in several color combinations were cut but unassembled. The finished size of the blocks would be about 7". There were several largish scraps from some fifteen or so fat quarters.

My customer wanted a king sized quilt.

I explained that we'd need to add more fabric to what she brought me.



I drew up a block stretching sketch of a quilt for her



and we looked at some fabric choices.



She's very easy to work with, so this part was pretty painless.

So I put together all her blocks and cut a few more to make up enough to follow the sketch.



Setting squares alternating with her blocks formed up the center.



There was enough of her fabrics left over to make a nice color block border to tie the quilt together with.

Lots of borders were added to the center block work to bring it up to king size.



I whipped together a back, pieced from various reds and browns that coordinated with the top.



Sandwich, quilt and bind.



Not a day, but two weeks. Even still, why don't my own quilts move this fast?

This project was a daunting undertaking at the outset, but by the time I finished it I was really glad I had the opportunity. Taking a commission for a quilt where you get to go out and purchase the fabrics, design, cut, sew and quilt is really fun, but starting where someone else left off gives you the chance to try to see a quilt through someone else's eyes.

Love My Studio

I love my studio. It is on the second floor of my house and it feels like I'm playing in a treehouse with all the windows. In fact I spend so much time looking out the windows that I probably don't get as much quilting done as I ought to! But it's worth it, see?

Check One Off

...my current projects list. I finally decided what to do with these blocks and these blocks. One batch was a block of the month tutorial for beginners that i set up several years back. The other is the 1999 block of the month from Joann's. Voila! Used a bunch of leftovers for the borders, too. I miter corners as a knee jerk reaction anymore. This time I should have done the simpler long and short borders on the outer edge (beige) because it was a scrappy border to start with. I will be more vigilant in the future. Sometimes it's easy to get caught up in what's "more sophisticated" instead of paying attention to what looks best on the quilt.

Random Box Follow-up

Beth and I have received several requests for the pattern for this quilt. I've worked it up as a web pattern for you HERE. Free. Have at it. If you make this quilt and it wins ribbons in your local show, please credit me for the design and Peg at IvyArts for the inspiration since it was her quilt that inspired mine. Thank you all for your lovely comments and emails on both quilts. To the most common question asked on all of them, no, we haven't chosen another pattern to work yet, but it never takes us long to choose another and yes we will happily consider any pattern you suggest!

The Instigator Justified

Beth has finished her random boxes and they are BEAUTIFUL! Get a load of this:

she has used her signature colorwork - several coordinating fabrics with one color that reaches out and grabs you by the throat (or maybe pokes you in the eye - I guess it depends on her mood). This top is so lovely in person. I can't wait to see what she does for the back and the quilting.

Sure, I bullied her. I pestered her from the day she said she'd play along with me on this quilt until last week when I found out she was assembling the blocks. But LOOK! It was so worth it.
Ok, here they are side by side, Beth's and mine...




The benefits of seeing two quilts in the same pattern worked in totally different colorways are just too numerous to be believed. Go find a friend and try this for yourself. Pick a pattern or create one of your own and get after it. Comment me here when you do and I'll link your work in. I'd love to see it.

Texas State Fair

Congratulations on your First Place Ribbon, Vickie B! Your piecing and my quilting; it's a great combination!

Quilted, not Bound

There was probably a more exciting and dramatic way to quilt this than meandering, but I wanted to get it finished and on my bed rather than stare at it for weeks thinking up clever things. I meandered everything but the wavy striped focus fabric and the centers of the squares. From time to time, when I got bored (meandering reallly isn't very much fun compared to just about any other kind of stitching, it's just very fast - I'm so spoiled!) I doodled something; a leaf, a dragon, a flower, things like that. Gotta get the edge bound and then it'll be finished.

Finished Random Blocks

Assembly was sooo easy for this top. Nine blocks! I feel like I got away with something! It came out about as well as I expected. The palest grey is maybe a little too pale really, but it's for me so who cares! It has been really hard for me to decide whether to put borders on this quilt; right now I'm leaning towards a two inch solid black just because I like outlining things in black. There just doesn't seem to be any kind of pieced border that would add something to the quilt, for the most part it seems piecing would detract from the jumbled up beauty of the top. I'll set it aside for a day or two and then look at it again before making any real commitment.

On an unrelated note, my buddy, Scrappy, has a dilemma she's working out. A friend of hers asked her to work a top in progress (a row robin) into something beautiful. At first Scrappy was going to pull the rows apart but now thinks adding borders will be good enough to bring the top into a cohesive whole. I agree with her. Ok Scraps-me-girl, what do you think of this idea? It means lots of work for you, but it sure looks good in eq6. I know the rows aren't exactly right, but I just didn't want to put that much work into a sketch, so pretend.

Last Three Blocks

Ok Scrappy, I'm game. I don't have all day to quilt along with you, but I have this morning until around noon. These last three blocks on my black random boxes quilt need finishing (who am I kidding? They need starting). If I can end up with a completed top sans borders this morning I shall be a happy camper indeed.

You say your iron is already hot and you're ready to sew. I guess that leaves making the coffee to me. Cream? Sugar? I'll post an update in a couple of hours.

I know Beth was working on her tan and teal boxes yesterday. Got any pictures for us yet Beth?

11:00

Seven of nine is complete. Sewing like mad on 8 and 9.





11:55

Yes! Steaming right on through #8. Sewing continues on #9. How are you coming along Scrappy? Got your mom's top finished yet?

12:50

Hoo boy am I ever running late. But here's #9 all done. I'll assemble the top this evening.