On the edge.....

Custom and heirloom quilting is very intense work so it's good to have some customers who make quilts that will have day to day use and need edge to edge designs that are quicker and more economical for my customers too. These first two quilts can be thrown in the washing machine and will be used, loved and dragged around.

 The fabrics in this quilt top have road signs and motor vehicles with tyre tracks, I love this tracor pantograph/edge to edge design for childrens quilts.

Betty appliqued star fish and whales on this lovely quilt, I found a pantograph with dolphins that worked very well, these two quilts have no wadding and fleece backings so are lovely and cuddly for children.

Anne pieced this lovely quilt top with Kaffe fabrics in a Chinese coin style, it works really well with the purple background fabrics and a shocking pink backing, I love this Chocolate Leaves pantograph, it looks well on many quilt types.....

These quilts all went home a few weeks ago....hope that they are already bound and being used?

Also in the post tomorrow is this small sample for Kevin at Fabric Focus in Edinburgh, Kevin used a 'disappearing nine patch' design, I quilted it with a designed called Chocolate Leaves,  pop in and take a look at all the fabrics, the charm packs and jelly rolls that Kevin has available.

An American Abroad....

Where has the summer gone, we are nearing the end of July and it already feels like autumn.There is a jet stream hanging over Scotland and the North of England giving us cold cloudy and blustery weather along with heavy rainshowers. I wish someone could just pull those clouds out of the way, our temperatures are hanging around 15C whereas down in England just below Scotch Corner the temperatures dramatically change to around 25C, darn it!

The Guys are managing to get the summer work done, still a couple of weeks late thanks to the weather.....

We still have the Aga on here in my kitchen, ocassionally it get's a little warm but I find it much more fun to cook on my Aga than on my electric cooker.  Only trouble is when the Aga is on all of the time it doesn't get a thorough summer clean, but my hands and nails are thankful for that.

I've been neglecting my blog lately, it hasn't been at the forfront of my mind so I'll shortly try to show a few of the quilts that have been  missed.

Believe it or not this is the first time I have quilted a Baptist Fan either on a customer quilt or one of my own, I used the open design for fear of missing the alignment, maybe next time I'll use the closed design and see how that one goes.  Baptist Fan looks wonderful on Alana's Civil War Star quilt. Alana is the American abroad although probably a token Scott by now after 30 odd years of living here surely...

The stars are really showing well on this last photograph.

Just in time my entry for Festival of Quilts 2015 is finished. I love it when a competition quilt will fit on the back seat of my car, I can drop it off at the depot and don't have to hang around waiting for a courier with a huge van to pick up. And Yes, I know that is another blog post to write too!

Singing the Blues....

It seems like ages since this quilt went home when in actuality it's only been two or three weeks This quilt fabricated from love is destined for a wedding gift from Mother to Daughter. The blue and white fabrics are timeless and fresh. It's a block sampler from patterns in Lynne Edwards book. I quilted all of the blocks in a different quilting technique and used an 'egg and dart' design with a circle template in the sashings.

I machine stitched the binding so that all was needed was for Mother to hand sew it down to the back, doesn't it look lovely and fresh.

Beavering away....

Well, here in Scotland we've had our summer, it came on Wednesday last week, now we are back to chilly and wet, when I say wet I mean WET!
We've had some pretty scary thunder and lightening storms, the kind where you just know you had better pull all of those plugs to modems, computers and cherished machines. Luckily everything survived this time

I've been working pretty hard on customer quilts during the week.
I usually don't like to show photos of the quilting on my customers quilts until they have gone home and I know they have been well received, there are a few reveals waiting in the wings.

Half binding added as an extra service

It's is always a pleasure to receive an email after personally giving the quilt back to a customer, it's further proof that they are thrilled and happy with your services and also the price charged.  The customers budget is always a consideration, there have been times in the past when I have upgraded from light custom to full custom but these days I try to stay within budget and time constraints, the blue quilt went home with Jean to finish the binding, thank you Jean.

This is a beautiful folded patchwork design, from another Jean, it's called Garden Party by Blackbird Designs. I was asked to do some light quilting on this one, there was a lot of empty space in those borders, I would have liked to do a full custom job but I'm pleased with the finished design and so was Jean so it worked out well.

I've been working hard on the weekends to finish up my competition quilt for Festival of Quilts in August, it needs to be ready to ship off in a couple of weeks so I'm now feeling the pressure. I'm not one of those people who work well under pressure, it wasn't a good idea for me to enter a quilt that I hadn't even quilted yet...the size changed, my chosen name didn't seem to fit anymore so there had to be a couple of telephone calls to change a few things before the catalogue went to print. Now guess what, the labels are already here so better get moving and get it finished and blocked.

It would be a nice thought to get started on the next competition quilt and have one ready for the next show season without any pressure, I'm guessing that isn't going to happen!