Spring Quilt Show Edinburgh...2014

 Last weekend was the Spring Quilt Show in Edinburgh....I only had a couple of hours to run around and buy a couple of things I needed and spend sometime looking at the exhibits.

One of the 'Featured Artists' was my good friend Rhianon Taylor The Nifty Stitcher I took a few photos of her quilts and had a bit of a chat, then had to dash off to Borderland Fabrics Jedburgh, for a 'sew in', and a 'lock in' with a curry....

The hummingbirds are my favourite....

Rhianon had a wonderful exhibition.... I promise Rhianon next time we will have time to sit and chat and have coffee....

Cover girl....Flower of Scotland Machine Quilting Unlimited

I was going to post some customer quilts but events of the day took over.....

The Postman only rung twice.....but with special deliveries.....

Deliveries....of fabric for planned up coming quilts.....that's always exciting...

And then this....I'm calling this one my magazine....I know there are many wonderful contributors but there is only one cover and that is all mine.....lol....you can get your own copy from The Contented Cat here in the UK or direct from Meander Publishing in the USA at  Machine Quilting Unlimited either hard copy or download, it's really easy to order over the web.

You can see the original post for my Flower of Scotland quilt here, Inner Circle Flower of Scotland

Then my purple wholecloth Flourish arrived back from the USA too, it's been away since last July . After winning a 'blue ribbon' for Best Machine Workmanship at The World Quilt Show 2013 in Manchester, New Hampshire, the winning quilts went on tour of the Mancuso Quilt Shows for 6 months....great to have it home again....you can read my original post here, Flourish...

All in all quite an exciting day.....

Not all hearts and flowers.....

Valentines Day is not all about hearts and flowers....how about this little quilt for a bit of romance.....

I've had this fabric by Robyn Pandolf for a few years now and intended to make a quilt similar to this with it. When I came across this beautiful digitised panto design, Sheri Berry by Anne Bright I knew it needed a quilt and fabric that would show case the design as a sample for my customers.
Hobbs 80/20 batting with white Metro thread. I mitred the borders and intended to add a scalloped border but instead used a serpentine border as seen on the vintage quilt below....there is also a wonderful tutorial by Margaret Solomon Gunn in the January issue of  Machine Quilting Unlimited.  That's all bias cut binding but my Serpentine Border is more curvy this the vintage quilt.

A vintage quilt.....

Isn't it nostalgic, it reminds me of the Eiderdown toppers we used to have when I was a kid, I still have one of those in the loft......I like this modern version.

At 50x60 inches it looks great as a topper on either a single/twin or double bed or could also be use as a lapquilt or large crib quilt.....love it.....

Comments and Emails
Can I make a plea to those of you who ask me a question via the comments link....sometimes I would like to send you a personal email, but some of you are on no-reply which means you don't leave me an email address.....so if you would like to ask me something please use the email link on the top left or to kay@borderlinequilter.co.uk......thank you.

Samples and Samplers..

My customer Christine recently picked up her first quilts...yes, that's right her first quilts.

This sampler quilt was pieced as a class project.  Christine chose to have this one custom quilted. This is often a good decision as then I can use the quilting as a tool and place some extra quilting where it is needed and it really show cases the different blocks in a way that a pantograph would not.

I chose different fills to compliment the block piecing, I think it turned out great and my Customer was really pleased too.

I chose Metro thread in Khaki Sand, unfortunately the backing fabric is very busy so doesn't show the quilting to the best advantage.....my customer brought her own wadding and chose the option of having the binding machine sewn to the front of the quilt so now all that's needed is to sit in an easy chair and hand sew the binding to the back of the quilt. What a great time of year to be able to do that!

This one is all freemotion hand guided by me....

I also quilted a pantograph with Quilt Path on this lovely purple and cream quilt for the same customer. Christine chose Wildflower with cream thread and also had the binding machine sewn to the front of this one too...it looks great....

In December I took delivery of my prize for winning Best of Show at the West Country Quilt Show, Janome followed through with their promise and delivered the 'quilting package' with the extended base that gives a level machine bed and also extra feet including the walking foot....I hadn't even opened the sewing machine box until the quilting package came....I'm strange like that...lol.....so it was like Christmas to open the boxes and take a look.....Thank you Janome and the West Country Quilt Show....

Samples...

I've been away, well only away from the Internet, no connection for six days, not even for emails, so sorry if you had to wait for a reply. I've had exasperating conversations with Call Centre staff in India, I know they needed to ascertain whether the problem was with my equipment or the telephone company's line but given the fact that next door and  most of the town had an internet problem then it seemed kind of clear cut to me, (of course the towns problem was fixed within a day). After numerous phone calls I was totally shocked when one staff member told me to take a screw driver and open up the telephone socket....that was the last straw.  I think they have me flagged as a nuisance caller but if they got there act together and upgraded our line I am sure the problem would clear. I've been told we will have fibre optic broadband here in the valley in 2015, I'll believe that when it happens.

In between customer quilts I've been quilting up a few new samples to help show customers all of the different pantograph designs available out there in quilt land. I would never ever be able to show all of the different designs but hope that I can at least enable other quilters and piecers to know that there are thousands available and that they could even look out some designs for themselves if they wanted something different....

So, I don't need fancy quilt tops to distract or confuse just plain easily pieced tops....here are a couple of tops made from around half of a left over Layer Cake, it's Falalalala by French General for Moda with some additional yardage added.....I realised that this easily made top could be split into two different samples by pulling out most of the plainer blocks and leaving the red/green blocks.

I think this is called the 'double cut layer cake' block, I used Glide thread and Simply Cotton wadding, these are digitised designs quilted with Quilt Path....I intend to quilt 'all over designs' with my computerised system but still do custom work freehand as that is my passion.

For the green quilt I chose Green Tea Leaves by One Song Needle Arts

For the red quilt I chose Feathered Leaves also by One Song Needle Arts

We've had some wonderfully colourful morning skies lately.....

Crystallography.

Crystallography is the scientific study of crystals, crystal formation and light refraction.

This quilt was made for my customers Son who is studying crystal formation. Rather than quilt motifs in the negative space I was asked if I could quilt a design radiating out from the centre, I was emailed one or two crystal formation drawings to help a little.
Sometimes it's still difficult to know if I've understood the vision that my customers can see and other times the slight diversion of my thinking can add a little more to the finished design.

Some of the colours are off in a few of the photos as the quilt was picked up early one morning along with the green and blue applique quilt in the previous post and was given as a Christmas gift.

All stitched in the ditch with Superior Monopoly, all other quilting was Glide thread and 100% Simply Cotton wadding.

On a Lone star quilt there is a lot of negative space....depending on budget this can be a wonderful opportunity to really go wild and enjoy the quilting....this design needed a fair amount of marking, I only use a purple air erasable marker or white chalk on customer quilts....

All freemotion, hand guided, with a fair amount of ruler work, except for the stars in the border, where I used a template.
I think the look has an Art Deco feel about it, the photos speak for themselves....