My Aunt Barbie Has an Exhibit at HMQS!!!

Coming to the Home Machine Quilting Show is a big event for me every year.
I've been teaching in Salt Lake City twice a year since 2008, so I've made good friends and taught a lot of students.


This year I was excited to see an exhibit featuring my Aunt Barbie, known to the quilting community as Barbara Walsh, with six beautiful quilts!

Rather than retype all of the information on the cards displayed with each quilt, photographs of the cards are here as well as the pictures of the quilts.





This is one that I quilted for her.




















Aren't the feathers pretty?

















Congratulations, Aunt Barbie -- beautiful work!

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Location:Salt Lake City UT

All Done!

It's always a good feeling to finish something -- now I have both quilts done and ready to give to the girls at an opportune time.


To take this photo, I had spread the quilt out on my bedroom floor, then climbed up on a bench and took the picture with my iPhone while perched precariously on said bench. The bench is padded, so I was sort of trying to keep my balance at the same time as I was leaning out to get the best perspective.

There's probably a better way!

Leaving this afternoon for Salt Lake City; I'll be teaching at HMQS on Friday and Saturday and then at the Nuttall Sewing Centers (I believe in Riverton for a couple of days and then in Ivy Place) Monday through Wednesday. Then I fly to Pittsburgh for Quilt Market -- will I see some of you there?

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Location:Palmdale CA

Sunday Was Binding Day -- and Dan's Biirthday!

Champagne, check; orange, check; juicer, check; champagne glasses, check; guess I had everything to make mimosas to celebrate Dan's birthday.


Even strawberries for a colorful garnish! We're proponents of just enough orange juice to give the champagne a little color....

Then it was on to binding Lauren's quilt:


I used the striped fabric and I'm cutting it on the cross grain; in other words, selvage to selvage across the width of the fabric. Seven strips were needed.


I line them up with some overlap for two reasons: 1) Easier to see where the corners are, and 2) I don't have to trim off the selvages before I make that diagonal seam to join the binding strips together. Here I'm using the laser guide so that I can follow that line instead of taking the time to mark the fabric with a diagonal line.








Trimming the diagonal seam to 1/4", pressing the seams open and then pressing the binding lengthwise and I'm ready to machine stitch the binding to the front of the quilt and then enjoy about 3 hours of handwork! Stitching binding to the back of a quilt is the only handwork I ever do and I think it's kind of fun. I'll be able to get in an hour on Sunday and maybe another hour on Monday, so the plan is to finish on Tuesday and get the quilt into the washer to remove the water soluble marker.

I haven't finished a quilt in so long that I've lost the little calluses that I had from using a hand stitching needle. Bet my fingers are going to get really sore!

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Location:Palmdale CA

Breakfast (aka Food Porn)

I got up REALLY early this morning, around 4:30, so decided to make a more time consuming breakfast than a plateful of scrambled eggs. There was leftover broiled salmon from last night and some cut up chives that I forgot to use as the garnish.


Using the recipe from one of my all time favorite low carb books, I whisked up 6 eggs, 1 c. heavy cream and 1 c. shredded Swiss/Gruyere blend, seasoned with a bit of Trader Joe's Everyday Seasoning (mix of salt, pepper, garlic, paprika and some other seasonings in a small bottle with its own built-in grinder), folded in the chives and poured the mixture over the salmon in the pie plate. Baked at 350 for 40 minutes.


Dan liked it, too.....


To totally ruin my clean eating goal, I had baked some Raspberry Cream Cheese Muffins last night (recipe is on my Pinterest board called "Foodie Things"), so had to round out my breakfast with one. I think I should get major good behavior points for not heating it up and buttering the heck out of it!

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Location:Palmdale CA

Final Border

Ran to Bolts in the Bathtub, my local quilt store, to buy a cone of Isacord, color #2220, a 40 wt. polyester embroidery thread that almost matched my bobbin thread. Isacord is made by Mettler and has the same color numbers as Poly Sheen, so since I like to support my local quilt store and Mettler, it's a two-fer....

I removed the lid of the machine and attached the two cone thread stand so I could sew with the large spool and keep my bobbin thread handy, too.


I decided to go with the smaller stencil and do echo stitching around the scallops. So I started stitching the butterflies and flowers with my preferred free motion foot -- the open toe foot. I like this one for maximum visibility; I see better through air than through metal or plastic.


After the stenciled stitching was finished, I put on the echo foot and started stitching rows outside the scallops, using the side of the foot as a guide to keep the scallops at an even distance.


When the foot was "cradled" between the stitching lines that made up the point of the scallop, it was my cue to pivot into the next scallop. This is a really useful foot for this. There are concentric circles on the foot, spaced at 1/4", 3/8" and 1/2"; using the outside of the foot like I am for this border is just a touch larger than 1/2", allowing me to be able to do just two of them to get the effect I want for this border.

The echo foot is also handy if I am stitching over a block with a lot of seam allowances. It glides better than the metal free motion feet do.


And here's how the stitched border looks! Now all I have to do is the binding -- I have more of the pink and white striped fabric for that.

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Location:Palmdale CA

Time to Finish a PHD (Project Half Done)

Early last year I posted pictures of quilts I was working on for two young friends of mine, Samantha, who is now 10 years old, and her sister Lauren who is 18 months younger. Predictably, there's a lot of pink and they definitely reflect the different personalities of the girls.

I had intended to give the quilts as holiday gifts in 2012 and finished Samantha's quilt a year and a half ago, but got bogged down on Lauren's. When you have sisters who live in the same household, you either have to have two quilts or zero quilts! So I've been carrying around Samantha's quilt as part of my trunk show for quite a while.

This obviously has to change -- I need to give the girls their quilts before they become teenagers and start loving purple and black instead of pink!




The center of Lauren's quilt -- Using variegated rayon thread, I stitched freehand flowers randomly all over the pieced area of the quilt. Lauren professes not to like math, but says she finds it "interesting", so I gave her some things to contemplate when she looks at her quilt. Some of the flowers have four petals, some five, six or seven. Each petal may have two to six layers depending on the size space I wanted to fill.

These math exercises should be at least as effective as counting sheep before sleep overtakes her, right?


Closeup of the flowers...


Small tendrils fill the spaces between the flowers and keep the quilting density even.


I used two different variegated pink rayons from Sulky to stitch all the flowers.


Now for the borders -- for the two inner borders I used HW146 from the Stencil Company (www.quiltingstencils.com).


Mirror imaged the hearts, using the lighter of the two rayon threads in the top of the machine and Mettler Silk Finish (100% cotton) in color #805, a medium value corally-pink.


For the outer border, I'm trying to choose between two designs. Lauren loves flowers and butterflies and this stencil fills the space well.


I like this one better, but it doesn't fill the space, which means that I would either have to cut the border smaller after I stitch it or figure out how to make it wider. This quilt is already smaller than her sister's, so cutting down the border doesn't seem like a good idea to me. I decided to use this design and then echo the scallops until the space is filled, maybe twice at roughly a 5/8" interval? Although, if the echos are 1/2" or less, I could use the echo free motion foot and not have to mark it. Tempting....

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Location:Palmdale CA

It's in the Capable Hands of FedEx

The last thing I had to stitch was the straight lines in metallic threads in the star. I used the yellow Mettler Silk Finish (100% cotton) #922 in the bobbin and two different top threads.


For the 90 and 45 degree lines, I used Mettler Metallic in Silver #0511; for the shorter lines, Sulky Sliver Metallic in #8020, a variegated stream lame (it's flat and looks like Christmas tree tinsel) in red, blue, gold & silver. Added a nice touch of color to the star and it will look even cooler when Josephine gets out her Easy Glitzer and puts some Swarovski crystals on there!


I couldn't really get great pictures of the final, but here's what I have:




Taken upside down, of course! Haven't yet figured out how to move things around in BlogPress.

So I took the quilt to FedEx yesterday afternoon and shipped it to Josephine at Asilomar where she is taking a class. She can then bind it and add those crystals.

And I have one project down this year -- hooray!

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Location:Palmdale CA

Yesterday Was Feathers Day

Yesterday I did all of the freehand feathers in the white areas of the quilt; freehand meaning I didn't mark them with a stencil first.


I usually draw, with air soluble pen, an approximation of where I want the spine to go, although you can see I don't always follow it once I start the stitching! I stitched it bottom to top and then again top to bottom so that the spine is doubled.


Then I start stitching in the feathers, building them from the bottom one side at a time. I usually do the right side first because I think it is the hardest -- a little more difficult to see around the foot.


I stitched all the feathers on the right side, then stitched all the way down the stem again so that I can start the left side. This also gives the stem a really nice definition when I'm done.


This what it looked like when I finished the first few.


And this is how I filled those white spaces on either side of the stars.


As a whole I really like the way this is turning out -- too bad I don't get to keep it! I need to do something like this to add to my trunk show. Guess I'll just stick it on my list for this summer's sewing!


Another shot of how it looks now that both sides of the stars are filled in. I still have a little cleanup to do and then I'll finish up the big blue star.

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Location:Palmdale CA

Finished All the Borders, Now for the Freehand Feathers

Started marking the stencil for the final border. Again, since Josephine isn't washing the quilt, I had to be a little more creative with the marking.


I like the Quilt Pounce marking pad from Hancy Mfg. I use the white powder that irons off, not the wash out one. The powder that irons off seems to last a lot longer while quilting instead of rubbing off on my clothes.


The design quilted up really nicely and fits the border perfectly. Now on to the two 2" wide red strips at the top and bottom of the quilt.


These two red borders are only on the top and bottom of the quilt and don't go all the way around. I chose to treat them as one 4" wide unit rather than as two separate strips. This stencil is from The Stencil Company (www.quiltingstencils.com) and is HOL-486-03.




I like the geometry of the squares because everything else on the quilt is curvy. Going for balance here.....used the same red Mettler threads as in the straight stitching in the red stripes.


Love the way this looks. You can see the chalk marks on the fabric where I used the Pounce Pad, but I found that it rubs off pretty easily with the side of a Batt Scooter, so I keep an extra in my work room.




Today I'm going to stitch freehand feathers in all of the remaining white areas. I'll use Mettler 50 wt. Silk Finish (100% cotton) thread in the top of the machine and the pale yellow thread in the bobbin that I used when I stitched the cables you can see at the top of the photo. I like color #887, which is a soft white rather than a brighter white. I never use what I call "white white" because I love the look of #887 so much.

I'm stitching the feathers freehand rather than using a stencil because the spacing of the stitching areas vary from stripe to stripe. It would be really difficult to find a stencil to fit, so I'm just going for it!

Hopefully I can get all these feathers done today, finish up the blue star tomorrow and get it FedEx'd out to Josephine sometime tomorrow afternoon.

-Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Palmdale CA