Like minds....

It was Mother's Day here in the UK a couple of weeks ago. Being like minds my Youngest sent me a card of a line drawing he made up from headshots from four different photographs.

It's my family, he followed up by sending me a dxf file. Once we got it figured out and into the correct format I played with it and turned it into a quilting file. You could do this with digitising software or with photos and tracing paper, which ever method is a little time consuming but worth the end result.

I added a frame and some feather spines....

And then freemotion quilted in the feathers for the borders. added some non stitch regulated feather meandered backing panels and turned them into cushions all ready to be gifted....

Photographs taken in the morning light are always much more defined....I still have a couple more panels to finish.....

Blogger's Quilt Festival Fall 2012

Amy over at Amy's Creative Side is again hosting the Bloggers Quilt Festival....this is a twice annual event held to coincide with spring and autumn 'quilt market' to give those of us unable to attend a show all of our own. Thank you Amy for hosting this remarkable event, there is always so much eye candy, it makes your mouth water!

This year I am entering 'quilted cushions', yes cushions!

These were a birthday present for my Mother. 

Quilted Cushions 20"x 20"
Longarm Quilted by me

Small wholecloths


The cushions are around 20" square before binding with a 22" feather filler to make them nice and 'plumpsious'. The fabric is a shiny crinkled taffeta and is shot through with black, a bit difficult to photograph, the red tinged photos show the quilting a little better. I did draw in some diagonal guidelines to keep me on the straight and narrow and a few 'S' shapes on the one with the mini feathered wreath in the centre, but essentially these are freemotion hand guided by me, no computer, (maybe in the future). The blue cushion shows the difference if you spend more time and push back the background, then the feathers have more definition!

You can quilt anything on a 'longarm'!

Thanks for visiting my blog...come back often.

Thanks again Amy!

Delicious!

Ooooo...... look at that.....liquid chocolate.....

I have a friend who would love these????

Just teasing....lol....

Opulence!

So, I'm a tease, I think you all know it!

A couple of weeks ago I showed the back of these, well, mini wholecloths really. They are now of course cushions destined as a birthday gift for a special person, my Mum has her 83rd birthday next week.
Now, although these red cushions look perfect in my room I know they will look great in her room too.

The cushions are around 20" square before binding with a 22" feather filler to make them nice and 'plumpsious'.  The fabric is like a shiny crinkled taffeta and is shot through with black, a bit difficult to photograph, the red tinged photos show the quilting a little better.  I did draw in some diagonal guidelines to keep me on the straight and narrow, and a few 'S' shapes on the one with the mini feathered wreath in the centre, but essentially these are freemotion hand guided, no computer (maybe in the future, who knows). I threw in the blue cushion, (you have seen that previously), but it shows the difference if you spend more time and push back the background, then the feathers have far more definition!

I love these cushions and have a lot of fun making them in between bigger projects, you don't need to stress about them and they don't take up that much time. How much time, well, someone asked me that today and I think I may have given a rather conservative answer so next time I'll time myself?

Plumpsious!

I needed a birthday present and a couple of new cushions for my newly painted and cleaned kitchen.

I just love plump cushions, there are two with feathers, you all know I love feathers and two made from leftovers from a jelly roll, like them all but have already gifted one to a Very Good Friend....

Peace on Earth!

This quilt was supposed to be on my couch for Christmas...the fabric is Peace on Earth by Three Sisters for Moda ..... but hey.... Peace on Earth is not just for Christmas right, we want peace all year round don't we?

This fabric actually has very few seasonal designs in it so it really will be an all year round quilt, there are lots of raspberries, lots and lots of raspberries, and Nasturtiums, that's not Christmassy is it?

Well, you know I can't post about a finished quilt until it's exactly that, finished that is, that includes the binding and for some unusual reason I kept procrastinating about finishing the quilting and then the binding but now it's done!

The pattern is from Jelly Roll Inspirations by Pam and Nicky Lintott, it's the Peace Medallion. I changed up the borders a bit using a more colour co-ordinted print from the line and added another outer border to make it a bit bigger.

Size is 62" x 84", Sew Simple Poly Batting and Metro thread top and bottom.

 

Oh, and there are cushions...of course there are cushions...lol...it's been a while since I made cushions for this room so they are due. I used up most of the left overs and scraps, quilted fronts and backs, all the same but different.

I think it's a perfect match for my couch and room!

I'm linking up with Fresh Sewing Day , pop on over and see who's sewing!

 

A few small finishes!

That's two Christmas wallhangings, two Christmas table mats, two pillow shams, and three cushions with quilted fronts and backs....and a partridge in a pear tree....lol....all of the cushions and the pillow shams are made up from either orphan blocks or pieces left over from quilts you have previously seen too, well except for one quilt which is still being bound.

OK, they are not all finished, I still have the binding to hand sew down on one cushion but it will get done tomorrow!

How big is your machine?

That's a question that many Longarm Quilter's get asked....I think what's meant is 'what is the biggest quilt you can quilt on your longarm?'
Well, the frame on which my longarm machine glides has 12 ft rails so that means that one side of the quilt could comfortably be up to 130 inches (maybe slightly bigger), but the other measurement can be longer as the quilt is wound on the rails as you advance.....I don't know who would want a quilt bigger than 130" x 130".....but it could be done!


But today's more relevant question is 'how many quilts can you quilt on your longarm....lol...?

Answer for today is 'Eleven!'

Well...that's five on the first row....(the tops of two pillow shams, the tops of two cushions and a cushion back at this end).

And that's another six on the second row.....(two Christmas wallhangings, two Christmas table mats, a cushion top and another white cushion back at the far end). Of course if my piece of backing fabric had been a little bit bigger, I could have also quilted another cushion back to finish off .....maybe next time!

I'm having a bit of a tidy up using up some orphan blocks that you may recognise and finishing up some small projects, some of which belong to my GKids.  These small quilts are all loaded on the same cream backing fabric although I am using some smaller offcuts of batting that have been lying around waiting for just the right project.

It takes a while to load all of those little quilts but it would have taken alot longer if they were all on seperate backings.