Great News.

And....good news for me....No, make the 'Great News',

I have had two quilts accepted for The Paducah Quilt Show. This is a juried show so first your quilts have to be submitted, it's a great thrill to have them accepted. It's more exciting to visit a show and know your own quilts are hanging there. The quality of workmanship in the American shows is so high that I am under no illusion that my quilts will ever win ribbons. I'll be shipping '1514 AKA The Horse' and 'Inner Circle Flower of Scotland' to the US very soon. I'm now getting even more excited about my trip with Linzi and Ellen...

Here is a link to the Semi finalists page for The AQS Paducah Quilt Week 2015, I can't believe that my name is along side all of those wonderful quilters....WOW......

3D Quilts, Mexican flowers....

I had a client bring me a quilt with 3D folded flowers. Eunice requested custom quilting but left the interpretation to me. Sometimes it's difficult to know how far to push the quilting level.

My main focus was to keep the definition in the flowers but not have quilting that was too expensive or over the top, I chose a simple feathered medallion motif in the centre and was pleased that the slightly A-symmetrical blocks gave an overlay effect. I emphasised the 3D flowers by outlining the petals and leaves which helped them pop off the quilt a little.

There were many thread changes to complement the flower colours and little feather motifs in the flower centres. The batting is 100% bamboo, I was a little nervous that the quilting wasn't showing up, that also curbed the quilting level a little but once off the frame the quilt relaxed and showed it's true colours...

Thankfully another happy customer.......

Celtic Basketweave in Machine Quilting Unlimited

Look what dropped through my door here in Scotland....

My article on Celtic Basketweave looks terrific in print. I'm loving this issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited, have already read it cover to cover. Check it out to see my article on Celtic Basketweave. Here in the UK it's available as a hard copy at  http://www.contentedcat.co.uk/News.html or from  http://mqumag.com/ both hard copy and digital straight to your laptop or device....

A Trunk of Treasure....

I was gifted a trunk of treasure yesterday....
One of our elderly neighbours is moving house, this trunk belonged to his Mother...

Fabulous trunk....

Boxes of tapestry yarn, embroidery hoops....

That white fluffy thing is a goose down stole lined with silk....

Boxes of cotton for lace making 

A pair of handmade lace cuffs with matching collar, rolls of  bobbin lace....

Books on lace making with patterns....

Lots of cross craft inspiration here...

Benjer's food supplement, I covered part of the label as I don't think it is now very PC

We all laughed as I read out the advert for Benger's food supplement but were amazed to hear reference to this very product while watching 'Call the Midwife' later that evening....

A mile of 'six cord' cotton on a huge spool.......

 Right in the bottom of the trunk was this box full of bobbins for lace making

 Look at all of those turned wooden bobbins with all those spangles, some bobbins are inlaid with pewter....

Some of these bone bobbins are in Christmas reds and greens...maybe Christmas gifts...

This bone bobbin is inscribed with the date June 3rd 1924 and has blue bands....made me wonder if it was a gift similar to a Christening mug...

What a lovely selection.....I feel a new hobby coming on.....

Weddings celebrated...

It's been a while since this quilt was returned to my friend and customer Liz. It's also been a while since the wedding. The quilt top was marked with a stencil and lead pencil before I received it so the design was already chosen. I carefully quilted the scroll design in the main blocks and chose a digitised design for the melons that didn't look out of place.  It was inevitable that I would miss one or two lines but I'm sure that most people don't inspect a quilt as closely as I do....

 I quilted a continuous curve throughout all of the rings before shipping off to Liz to bind all of those curves. The wadding was supplied and I used a green/gold thread, the shades of green fabrics chosen are so restful.

Phew, caught up....

It's already February 8th, where did January go?

I've had my head down getting through my customer quilts. I got caught up with those booked in and here from 2014, cleared that space and guess what it's filled again, not complaining at all.

I had a lucky escape with my rotary cutter last week...I was only cutting one layer of fabric with hardly any pressure when my blade broke

Luckily, no one was hurt and there were no nicks on my ruler either. This is how I store and dispose of my blunt and broken needles and my blunt and now broken rotary blades. I screw the top off for blades but just drop needles into the slot. How do you dispose of your dangerous  and discarded sharp items?

I was lucky to quilt a lovely summery quilt, my customer Katy requested snowflakes in lime green thread in among the rainbows, I was happy to oblige.

Hobbs 80/20 wadding with Metro thread, the quilting is a mixture of freemotion and digitised designs.

Katy asked for a 'half binding' treatment meaning that I machine stitch the binding to the front of the quilt so that she could finish with hand stitching to the back.

Snowflakes and Rainbows.....

This lovely log cabin quilt is a 'friendship' quilt, Nancy requested this lovely design by Anne Bright, it's Galavine, this pattern always stitches out so well. the wadding is a polyester provided by Nancy.

This wonderful Irish Chain style quilt belongs to Maureen, who left me to choose the design. I used Tickle Too it's an open design with feather shapes and swirls, it worked well.

Maureen decided to have a full binding treatment meaning I machine sewed the binding to the front of the quilt and also I hand sewed the binding to the back of the quilt too. Maureen received a fully finished quilt all ready to take home and put on her own bed, that's a real luxury!


I spent the afternoon working on a new project today....

It looks very organised here, it's an illusion!