A Wonderful Surprise!

July 25th, 2015
Woo-hoo!  Our local quilt show, Kaleidoscope of Quilts, was held this weekend and I am one lucky quilter!  The quilt I call “My Thistle Garden” won many awards…Best of Show, Best Wall Quilt, and Best Machine Quilting on a Non-Computerized Long Arm!  I feel so proud and so grateful!!
 
MTG-at-GCQC
What a great way to begin the weekend!  Well, it only got better from there!  I taught a class on trapunto in the afternoon and for the first time ever, everyone decided to frame their wreath with a circle of featherettes.  Check out this shot of Gary Harvey’s block where he’s stitched his first round of featherettes surrounding the wreath:
 
Gary-Harvey's-Block-with-Featherettes
Can you believe that this was the first time he’d tried using a chalk triangle to create boundaries to make a freehand featherette?  His work is so symmetric it almost looks like it was created from a digital file!  He’s working on another row of featherettes that will fall between these now and I can’t wait to see what his finished block looks like!  When I asked if anyone else would let me take a picture of their block for my blog, everyone was SILENT!  Sorry I don’t have more pictures but you’ll have to trust me, they did some really beautiful work and it made my day.   Hope everyone else is having a great weekend!

A Teensy Bit of Time in My Sewing Room

July 21st, 2015
 
This week is pretty packed full of stuff, so I just don’t have time to sew.  I was able to do the test stitch out of a machine embroidery applique design because I could get some other work done as the embroidery machine stitched away.  This one uses the Appli-K-Kutz 8 1/2 inch feathered wreath die shape:
 
8.5-cabling-curley-cue-whole-thing
 
This next photo is a shot of it with only the outer plumes decorated with swirls.  I like that look as well:
 
8.5-in-one-sided-curley-cue
And here’s a tangential view of the whole thing stitched:
 
8.5-cabling-curley-cue-on-side
 

Playing Around with Featherettes

July 19th, 2015
 
This design was made by repeating 3 different featherette designs around a circular spine filled with the feather wave border design:
 
 
play-5
 
This is a shot of the basic framework stitched:
 
play1
 
In this next shot, you kind of get a sense of what hyperquilting adds to the outermost featherettes.  This shot has some of them hyperquilted and some of them still “naked:”
 
play2
Now all of the outer featherettes have been hyperquilted but the center-most section is still lacking any design:
 
play-3
I took the easy way out and just stitched basic plumes.  Here it is 3/4 of the way stitched:
 
play-4
 
and now all the way stitched:
 
play-5
 
Here’s to better mental health through free motion quilting!
 
play-7
 

Totally Fun, From Start to Finish

July 11th, 2015
I finished quilting my new wall hanging:
 
Tex1
 
Close ups of various parts of it:
 
 
Tex-1.75
 
 
 
 
Tex2
 
 
 
tex4
 
 
 
Tex3
 
 
 
 
tex8
 
 
 
tex6
 
 
 
tex7
 
 
The 3-dimensional texture of this is really very striking in person and it was a total joy to make.  I could see getting pretty hooked on this!
 
 
Tex1

Some Quilting and a Big sale at Craftsy

July 5th, 2015
 
 
I finally got a little time to quilt this weekend and I had a wonderful time working on this wall hanging:
 
BOP-wh1
Only the center panel has been quilted but what is exciting me about this is that I used unconventional textiles for the applique shapes and it creates an incredible 3-D texture once it’s been quilted.  I’m really struggling to get a photo that shows this:
 
BOP-WH-2
All of the appliques are either woven wool fabrics, wool felts, rayon felts, bamboo felts, cotton velvets, or cotton suedes.  Once you quilt around the applique shapes w/invisible thread, they really pop out:
 
BOP-WH-3
I couldn’t resist messing around with a little ruler work as well…I’m blown away by how much punch just a little bit of ruler work can add to the design!  I’ll get some other pictures up later, but it’s pretty cool to see this in real life!  Also, in case you didn’t know, Craftsy is having a big sale this weekend with classes at $19.99!  Click here to get the discount!
 
 CraftsyLogo