Me neither – but Trudy brought me this winner to quilt back in February. I was so excited and just knew I was going to be having some fun. Finally it was this little quilts turn for quilting and yes I had some fun!
Be sure to click on the photo for an exploded view!
So whether you Hexi or not – I hope you enjoy this post!
Dee
Ronda has been working on a beautiful quilt designed by Lisa Bongean of Primitive Gatherings, while at Market in Houston last November the quilt was staged in Moda’s booth. Ronda and I trekked over there and took some photos of the quilting by Linda Hrcka of the Quilted Pineapple. We also were able to visit with Lisa and Linda both, as well as Lisa’s charming husband who was manning the booth! I was so enchanted by Lisa’s quilts and Linda’s quilting that when I attended preview night for the main show I made a beeline for the Primitive Gatherings Booth to make a couple of purchases. Log Jam will be made for my brother-in-law, he has a beautiful home in Island Park, ID and this quilt will fit in perfect. And for Cordeeaiybray I will be making Portland Rose. But we must get back to Ronda’s Words!
Ronda calls this quilt her “Words” quilt, it is actually “Words to Live By” and we should all strive to live up to this quilts expectations! I have been watching Ronda chronicle the making of Words on her blog and I knew I was going to have to step up the the plate and hit this one out of the ball park. When she dropped the quilt off we visited The Quilted Pineapple to see what battings were used, wool and bamboo were the soup du jour, Ronda had brought the wool and all I needed to do was add the Bamboo…. easy you would think right? Well I forgot the bamboo until she called to see if I remembered – I had started quilting and it was a bunch of feathers and I really did not want to perform the frog stitch on all of those feathers, Ronda said it was ok. So I quilted some more feathers and then had a skipped stitch and said OK – the quilt wins! I called Ronda to let her know I would be taking the quilting out and adding the bamboo – obviously this quilt would not be happy with out it!
Those stitches go in a lot faster than they come out! Threads were removed and needle holes were carefully steamed and the quilt was reloaded, but only after a VERY thorough clean of the machine and re-thread from scratch with several adjustments to be sure we had no more skipped stitches!
Now I was ready to quilt, stabilizing the quilt first means quilting the borders and any ditch work as well as outline the appliqués. Then the fun could begin. I referred to my photos from market and visited The Quilted Pineapple a lot! Some of Linda’s quilting was outright copied and sometimes I put my own spin on it! I hope you enjoy!
Click on the photo for a larger photo!
And with permission from Linda Hrcka a link to The Quilted Pineapple. Her quilting is PHENOMENAL! I hope you will take the time to visit!
Ahhhh – this beautiful “Glacier Star” (pattern by Judy Niemeyer) is done and will soon be on it’s way home!
Susie’s colors are just fabulous in this quilt. Susie always does such nice work, it is a true pleasure to quilt her quilts! To see the detail be sure to click on each photo to expand it.
Are you a quilt maker? What are you working on today?
Make this Monday memorable!
Denise
I just finished quilting this fabulous quilt for my friend Marilynn. It will be a house warming gift for a friend of hers. Marilynn and I were at a retreat this past summer and stopped by a wonderful little quilt shop in Castroville, TX. The shop is Fabric ‘N Friends and it is always fun to visit them when I am in the area. This quilt was among the treasures we found that day.
Today’s post was short and sweet – I hope you enjoyed!
Well not really, but we do have a double wedding ring quilt to celebrate. This is a pattern by Judy Niemeyer aka Quiltworx. It is called Grandma’s Wedding Ring. In the original pattern the “center” is a 4-patch unit, but Julie decided she would rather have one solid fabric, no problem. Julie had taken the wedding ring class from me at Pinwheels and Posies in Dickinson, TX. She lives in Austin, TX but has attended a few classes that I have taught. I must say, Julie’s work on this quilt was a delight to quilt. Her curves are smooth and her intersecting points when adding her corners were done very nicely. She loved Judy’s technique for assembling this quilt, I call it making apple cores! The arcs are paper-pieced and using rulers designed by Judy Niemeyer for the melons and centers insures you too will have a beautiful quilt!
I wasn’t sure how I was going to quilt this one when I put it on my quilting frame, but then some magic started to happen – I hope you enjoy! (Remember to click on the individual photos to see more details!)
I liked the feather design in this quilt so much, that I am now adding it to Ronda’s pretty cheddar civil war quilt – who wants to see?
All of these bring smiles to me – Shirley Temple “On the Good Ship Lollipop” can’t you just picture those curls? Or the very popular tune from 1958 sung the The Chordettes “Lollipop” but today it is “The Lollipop Tree” quilt made by Karla from the pattern by Kim McLean using those fabulous Kaffe Fassett fabrics.
Karla used a machine appliqué technique to apply her “Lollipop Tree’s” to the background fabrics. Her technique uses invisible thread and it is very difficult to tell it is not needle turned! I had mentioned a steady betty to Karla a while back, well, she could not believe the difference pressing on her steady betty made for all of those setting squares. Do you use a “steady betty” you might want to add this essential tool to your box of tricks!
Karla used 4 different fabrics for her background. Pink, tangerine, lavender and blue – I matched the thread colors to the background so help pop the color. At times it was very difficult to tell the difference between pink and lavender on the backgrounds. For the quilting in the large appliqué leaves I used a yellow, it just seemed to be the best blender. For the X quilting in the small setting squares I used a plum thread – it also proved to be a good blender!
Hope you enjoyed the sweetness today!
I may have mentioned that I host a longarm bee in our area (Clearlake,TX). We meet at Pinwheels and Posies monthly and usually have about 35 participants. Each month we have new members and it is such a fun bee. We have a few experienced quilters and several newbies. I love to see the newbies take the ideas they see at bee and bring back their show and tells the next month! This month we had a special treat, Kim Norton, from A Busy Bobbin was our speaker. I became familiar with her work through one of my students (who is also one of Kim’s friends and customers).
When I found out Kim had only been longarm quilting for 4 years I just knew she would be an inspiration to our group and SHE IS! Kim has a website at http://www.abusybobbin.com One of Kim’s sons is in the Navy stationed on a medical ship as a Medical Tech. Her other son is in high school. Kim’s husband is retired Navy and now works locally. He is very supportive of Kim’s career choice!
This is Kim – she lives about an hour away from our bee and she agreed to speak at our bee in exchange for a dinner prior to our meeting!
Kim began by telling us a little bit about how she started, she bought her first longarm with the intent of having a business and had her first customer quilt on the frame within days of receiving her machine. She now has 2 Innova machines so she can work leave a “custom” quilt on one frame and churn out other quilts on the other frame.
Kim loves templates and showed us how she uses these to design her quilting. Sometimes she uses them for marking, but usually she guides her longarm around the templates.
How does Kim keep the template from moving and how does she “ditch” around her appliqué?
This quilt belongs to Kim’s mom and it was a block exchange. Some blocks were pieced some were applique. To tie them all together with a common quilting theme she used one of her “Gadget Girl” templates to add and additional frame around each block, then custom quilted each block.
Ok Kim we see HOW you do some of these techniques – but we want to know where do the ideas come from? Kim uses her iphone and ipad to take photos of quilts that inspire her. She keeps these ideas in folders on those devices to refer to later. She also prints ideas and keeps them in a notebook where she can flip through them until “THE” idea jumps out. She also taught us that we all have the same tool for conjuring inspiration – in fact we are born with it.
SAS – STAND AND STARE – she explained her SAS technique is stand and look at the quilt, put hands on hips, cock her head to the right, cock her head to the left, repeat as needed!
Once she has some ideas in her head she uses a reusable auditioning medium to draw the design over the quilt to see if it plays on the quilt as well as it did in her head. She will also sometimes take a photo of the quilt and then using tracing paper audition designs over the photo.
This beautiful quilt was made by Kim’s mom – mom’s applique is beautiful! And Kim really knows how to make it shine. Kim used 2 battings on this quilt, a thin cotton against the lining and wool on top. Kim reminded us that if you are going to do dense quilting in the blocks you MUST quilt those little sashings too – keep your quilting density consistent.
And here is Linda’s Quilt – yes I have included this quilt in previous blogs – but now I get to share some of the secrets behind the quilting!
And of course the question we all wanted to know – how was the scalloping on the border on this quilt accomplished?
And now a little show and share
Then we all put our thinking caps on for “How Would You Quilt This!”
I also brought a quilt top for ideas. No photos because I was talking – but when I started to open it up Kim and Linda started chuckling – Kim had recently completed the quilting on this same quilt for the Peace by Piecing Quilt Guild. She shared how she quilted theirs and then Cindy G came up with some really fun ideas – I think I will be doing a combination of both ideas. But first I must finish this blog and get back to work!
I hope you enjoyed our meeting as much as I did!
Denise
