Exciting times....

I know I'm a little bit slack lately to post news and updates about quilts and quilting events. A week or two ago I loaded this customer quilt and had all of the stitch in the ditch ruler quilting and outlining done, (this is such a time consuming slow job). Just as I was about to move onto the fun part, the proper quilting, I heard that Janet Stone had won Best in show at The Houston Quilt Festival, this is the bigget quilt show in the world I believe. Why is this relevant, Janet Stone also designed the quilt on my frame, it was a block of the Month design available through The Quilt Show click here for the link . All of Janet's quilts are designed around the alphabet and may have a sheep or two somewhere, this one is no exception and is named 'A-Z with Ewe and Me'!

Carol made a beautiful job of the piecing and appilique. This will be a gift for Carol's Grandson, it truely is a wonderful heirloom.

Carol supplied the backing and wadding, I used various coloured threads to suit the blocks and border fabrics but used a white thread in the background of the alphabet and white glide Magnaglides in the bobbin. I quilted whimsical feathers throughout the white blocks and then different samples of quilting in the pieced blocks, they are sampler blocks afterall.

It is a fabulous quilt!

This huge quilt was brought to me by Jenny, it was too big for me to show properly on any of my beds so Jenny supplied the photos on her beautiful sleigh bed. I quilted it with this lovely digitised design called 'Chocolate Leaves', I love this design, it shows beautifully on the wide borders.

Show News! 

My quilt 'Interlaced' has won an award, Best Runner Up in the minature category at The West Country Quilt Show, in Bristol, UK. This isn't a true minature, it's around 20"x20" I never thought to enter it in a competition, as I was filling in the form for the quilt below I realised that this little quilt would fit this category. I designed and made this quilt as a project for an article in Machine Quilting Unlimited magazine earlier this year to show step by step instructions on how I design and quilt the Celtic Basketweave. This magazine is still available here  http://mqumag.com/backissues/ it's March 2015 issue

The list of contents for that issue is here  http://mqumag.com/…/u…/2015/02/MQU-15-03-March-Cover-TOC.pdf

And my quilt Subtle Differences has won more rosettes at the same show.
That's 1st Longarm Quilting and 1st Large Wallhanging, that is just fabulous, lovely red rosettes, that is a 1st place to my US friends

And Late News, it was announced at the prize giving awards that Subtle Differences also won, (insert drum roll here),  'BEST of SHOW' too....Woohoo!

What ever will happen next???

On the Edge...

I am very happy to quilt edge to edge or pantograph type designs on my customer quilts, not every quilt requires custom or heirloon type work. Utility quilts and especially childrens quilts are perfect for pantograph and digital designs.

I forgot to take a photo of the above quilt once quilted but couldn't resist showing the inside, the piecing was absolutely perfect and the seams so well pressed that I had to record this for posterity.  Of course it will never been seen this way again, it's not often we get to see the inside of a quilt is it?

Surf by Anne Bright suits so many different types of quilts, I didn't have a sample to show customers so quilted this one up just for that very reason, have to say it's still awaiting the binding to be added but it's nearly finished isn't it?

Another sample showing Dazzle but this one does have the binding on and even hand finished to the back.

Annette at Borderland Fabrics, in Jedburgh made this lovely Irish Chain quilt in such subtle colours that I knew imediately that I would quilt it with Sherryberry by Anne Bright, it's a delicate design just perfect for this nostalgic looking quilt, I'm sure this quilt is going home with Annette and not to the shop....

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.....

1930's Dresden revisited!

I had a heartfelt request to help my Client make this labour of love into a quilt.

Carole's Grandmother sewed the Dresden Plates with original 1930's fabrics, Carole appliqued the plates onto blocks and set them with alternate plain calico blocks and this lovely restful green sashing.

I used a mixture of freemotion quilting, my own digitised quilting designs and commercial quilting designs.

All of the blocks were stitched in the ditch first to stabilise the quilt, then the plates were outline, I didn't want to overpower the plates with quilting, the quilting in the dresden plates is freemotion, handguided.

I digitised the ghosted dresden plates to mimic the appliqued blocks and also digitised my own radiant corner frames.

 I love the way the radiant corners create that star accent at the junctions of the sashings.

I picked out a commercial flowery border design to mimic the flowers in some of the fabrics. Carole added borders to grow the quilt, when borders are added like this there is a tendency for the borders to be wavy with too much fabric. I was pleased that Carole had already chosen a piano key border, piano keys are a the perfect treatment for full borders. I traded that up to a beadboard border so that I had minimal travelling in the cream fabric and all of that fullness disappeared.

Carole and her DH kindly sent me photos of the quilt all bound and finished at last in it's new home....that's around sixty or seventy years in the making...., it looks fabulous Carole, thank you!