Aspen #1

I finished all the quilting on this piece. I put it on the long arm after all. Using it is so much easier than using the domestic machine. I am very happy with how it turned out and now need to get the binding attached. I think I will put a dark purple or a black binding on it. I will need to purchase some fabric if I go with the purple, but have black in my stash. I don't want to go out anywhere. My head is plugged up and I don't know if it is caused from the dust that is created with the material is cut into tiny bits or if I have a head cold. If I have a head cold I don't want to spread anything. I think I am just going to lay around today, will  watch an art program I think.

Here is a photo of piece ready to have the binding and hanging sleeve  added. I just went to Scrap Apple to get some material for binding.

Dec 30

The time sure has flown by. We had a great Christmas. All the girls and their partners were here. Season, my niece, and her husband came from Moab. Megan and Patrick flew from Brooklyn  to LasVegas. We missed being with the rest of the family though. Maybe next year we will all be together.  Candice helped me fix Christmas dinner. I decided to reproduce a pastel I did of aspens in fabric. I took a class from Noriko Endo that she taught at Scrap Apple Quits a while ago. I had only done one of them and thought I would be fun to do on this one.

I have loaded this on the long arm and am going to do the major thread painting on my Innova.  I really like this piece. 

Myrra Olesen's quilt

This quilt wash a challenge....in so much I had issues with my tension. I don't know what is wrong...maybe  I need a new bobbin case. The timing is fine. I can't see any burs of rough places along the thread path. It is very frustrating. My Innova has been wonderful with almost any thread I put in it. Anyway...it's done and I done with clients work until after the first of the year....(Maybe..haha). That is my plan anyway.  This is then third spiral star I have done in the last 3 months and I have loved each of them.

 You can dee pat of the problem I had in this photo. I would check the tension on a separate piece and then move back to the piece, quilt and then roll to see stitching worse than pokies in a few areas. So.... I picked it out and re-stitched.  I used glide on the top and superior thread's bottom line in the bobbin. I choose the bottom line to minimize the density of the back tracking.  I don believe from now on,  if I have issues, I will use the same thread in then top as I have in then bottom. By the time I had decided this, I was to far into then piece to start matching the thread. The would have looked worse.

Time to get the mess cleaned up and get my Christmas decorations out band up! We are going to and cut a pinion pine tree later in the week. 

Hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving! Ours was very quite and that was just fine. I am really looking forward to Christmas and some down time (well not so much down time just different work).

Laura Wise's Christmas Quilt

I got Laura Wise's Christmas quilt finished a few minutes ago. I used Mono-poly in the top and and gray bottom line in the bobbin. Both from Superior Threads www.superiorthreads.com.

Laura wanted minimal quilting. I chose to use monopoly on the top so the quilting would not do more than add texture. She brought her own batting as well as a quality flannel sheet for the backing fabric. It worked really well. I am very pleased with the  finished product.

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Wilma's Quilt

I got another client quilt finished today. It is a huge one. I have never done a pantgraph in the center of quilt before. Any time I have used them, I have simple done an edge to edge.  It worked pretty well. This quilt was so large 118 inches by 96 inches. It turned out pretty good. I think she will be very happy. I have another just like this to do for her and one more large custom. I need to get some of my own stuff done for Christmas. I have been working on my art quilts and doing some painting as well. 

Dixie Quilt Guild quilt

I was asked to quit another quilt for the Dixie Quilt Guild. I am not sure when this quilt will be raffled off, but it is finished. I am pretty pleased with how it turned out. I thought I would post photos before I go to bed. It has been a long but productive day.

Yesterday was a busy day for me. I got Pat Rimpau's quilt finished. It is a very sweet quilt I think. She decided on wool batting. I used Superior Thread's mono-poly, Magnifico in the top, Bottom Line and Sew fine in the bobbin. I am pretty pleased with the outcome. I think Pat will be too. She has not seen it yet. The bow tie blocks took a bit of extra work to get quilting. I used a needle and thread and drew the centers up so I could quilt around them with out tacking them down.  One of her borders was different from anything I have seen before. It was ruffled. She did not want anything much done in this area. I felt that it needed some quilting so I tried to hide the stitching I did with in the gathers. I worked pretty well. 

Great Basin National Park quilt

I have most of the quilting done on this art quilt. It measures 43 inches Wide by 58 inches long right now. I am pretty pleased with how it is going. I still have work to do on the leaves and rocks.  I used Superior threads www.superiorthreads.com monopoly to appliqué all the pieces on my cad red foundation fabric. The quilting in the sky is done with Glide in the top and Superior Thread's Bottom line in the bobbin.  The thread used for the quilting in the tree was Isacord in the top and the same bottom line in the bobbin as I used in the sky.  You know how us quilters say the quilt tells us how it wants to be quilted. Well this quilt spoke quite loudly telling me the trunk and rocks wanted to be stuffed. This quilt top has many layers  in the appliqué and the glue I used to attach the pieces to the back ground initially is still in the quilt along with the batting and the backing. I always start with a 70/30 batting for stability and then usually  put wool on top of that. This time I had the end of a bolt of polydown that I had purchased from Let's Quilt a couple years ago. This older batting has the feel of wool and quilts pretty much like wool too. The piece of batting was the perfect size for this quilt and I decided to use it (the new polydown I have purchased are not the same, the are more flat and stiff.) My Innova had no problem sewing through all the layers. I, however, had problems keeping all the layers all nice and flat. I ended up with to much quilt to and not enough back.  So I went with what the quilt apparently wanted and added some batting to take up the extra top. That is my story and I am sticking with it! lol! 

I will post a finial photo when it is all bound and the hanging sleeve is sewn into place. But for now it is time to go to bed.

Robbin W's quilt

I finished my latest client quilt. This one was kind of a challenge for me. I tried to make it more difficult than I needed. I had planned on dividing the white sashing and add more quilting than I needed. I ended up picking out what I had done and added the flower and leaf garland.  I am happy with the outcome and think the client will like the outcome. I hope anyway! I am glad to get this finished. Now I can put put my art quilt on and work on it for a couple of days before I load the next client quilt.

Martha's table runner

I had a very busy weekend and have a busy week coming up! Wish time would just slow down for a a week or so. I would rather be busy than not though. I finished this cute table runner for Martha. She wanted simple quilting on it, so that is what I did.

Cute Halloween table runner!

This past week has been a busy week. My husband and I purchased a used Pleasure Way RV and took a short trip. We had a great time for the most part. I will write more about that later and post some photos. Today I finished another wall hanging for Lorrie D. I am pleased with how it turned out, however. One of the red blocks lightly ran when I put water on it to get ride of making pen marks. I have decided I am not going to do take anymore quilts that have red in them unless the person can assure me that they have checked all the colors for colorfastness. This is the second quilt I have had issues on and it just makes me sick. I can not do custom work with out marking. The marks need to be removed. I don't have much luck with the disappearing pens. Anyway.... there are a lot of marks on this one and I just quite trying to remove any or to sprits to get the quilting holes to disappear. That said... I am very happy with the outcome and it is hard to see the bleeding. I think Lorrie will be very happy.