Pam's Medallion Quilt

Hey there! How are you going? We are good. I finished quilting another quilt and this one I can show you! It is a fabulous medallion quilt for Pam (Uberstitch). She made it with her Round Robin Bee.

I had a blast quilting it.

Pam wanted to have white thread. That made me nervous. The white on the white parts was no drama at all, but the white on the black parts was scary. 

Quilting a Medallion quilt on a long arm is a bit different than quilting one on a domestic machine. So I had to approach this quilt different than the way I normally quilt quilts with my long arm. Instead of just beginning with the top left hand corner and going gang busters, I began by just stitching all the seams down. After all the seams were down I went back and filled in. There was a bunch of back and forth rolling on this quilt.

Here is the back...

And more back

More back! I love the back. It looks like a whole cloth quilt.

And even more back! This puppy is going to be awesome when it is washed. All that texture is going to be amazing.

Next quilt up is a king size Texas flag commission quilt...with a twist.

Have a great weekend!

Free Motion Quilting Workshop

Good morning everyone! I hope you are all doing well. I think fall is in the air, it is so nice and brisk in the morning and the leaves are just beginning to change color. It is gorgeous here in East Kansas.

As you can see above I have a bag packed for my Free Motion Quilting workshop this afternoon with the Kansas Modern Quilt Guild. I am really looking foreword to it. The back of my van is packed up with some spare sewing machines (just in case someone needs one) and suitcase filled with quilts and a big white board....I think I should find some extension cords too....

There is some good stuff in this big bag. Pens, pencils, folders filled with some neat stuff...rulers and there are zippers in there too.

I will have more to go on about when I return home.

This is one of the deer that lives in our backyard. As you can see she is well fed for sure. These deer are so brave. They are out all day long and just stare at you when you find them in your yard. She just  glanced at me and wondered off when I snuck out to take a picture of her.

I need to do a proper blog about Aurifil thread. I ordered big cones of it for my Long arm. Well actually the wonderful folks a Pink Castle Fabric ordered it for me. I need to fiddle around with the tension to make it work as well as I think it can. To do that I need to quilt one of my tops (not a client - I don't want tension drama if I don't need it with client quilts). I tried to use the white 40 weight on a quilt not long ago, but I had too much thread breakage to continue. I am sure it is tension related - but I switched thread to King Tut Cotton and it quilted like a charm. Normally I use a Polyester thread (So Fine) with my machine and my old Gammill LOVES it. I want her to love cotton thread though....to I am going to work with this some more.

I have been using it with My Bernina 820 for piecing and it really is a delight. I don't know if you know this or not, but my Bernina 820 is a real Prima Donna when it comes to thread. I have heard that other ladies have the same drama with this 820s. I LOVE how long a bobbin lasts with this thread and seams press so nice and flat.

I won this pack of thread from Aurifil a week or so ago and so far I have only used a bit of the orange. It is just so pretty. I think it is so neat that Pat Sloan's happy face is on the front of the box. That is big time to have your face on a box of thread...I guess that is the quilting world's answer to sport stars being on cereal boxes. Funny, huh? Quilting Super Stars!

OK, this is almost the last thing I have to chat about. I ordered some Long Arm Rulers from Quilters Rule. I imagined myself designing my own set of half circle rulers for Welsh quilting, but I found that someone named Ronda already made something similar. It is not exactly what I wanted...but good enough for now. Does anyone know someone who can make me a quarter inch thick acrylic ruler? Anyway, I look foreword to playing with these rulers!

OK, I need to go round up all my quilting gloves and finish packing the van. Have a great weekend! I hope you find time to make something wonderful!

Writers Block Quilt

Good Morning! How are you doing? I hope you are good. It is getting a bit chilly here in Kansas. I think fall may be on the way! Best season of the year in my opinion.

So, I want to show you the quilt I made with Julia Rothman's TYPE fabric. This collection will be with Windham Fabric. I really like Julia Rothman to begin with...but throw some text fabric in and I am a total sucker. As soon as I saw the fabric I thought circles! Circles are the new square, you know. I knew I wanted to make a bunch of reverse appliqué circles surrounded by a big liberated sawtooth boarder. I heard the other day on American Patchwork and Quilting radio that Modern quilters Never make boarders for their quilts. Well, I think that is crazy. Why not make boarders? Boarders are AWESOME! And boarders can be very modern. This sawtooth boarder is quite simple and surprisingly fast.

Here is the quilt before I bound it. So much lovely texture. I am writing a pattern for it, but more details to come on that later.

I named this quilt Writers Block. Little bubbles of thought, windows to gaze out of and the frustration of trying to make the thoughts flow are depicted in the circles, sawtooth boarder and quilting.

The circles all have different quilt motifs quilted inside them.

I did some Welsh inspired orange peels in this one.

There are are fun little circumference designs around the outside of the circles.

I am pretty wild about this bold scallop design. Wouldn't it be even more fancy with pebbles and straight lines? I have been doodling with that type design in my notebook, but I was afraid it would be overkill with this quilt.

This circle has swirls and paisleys.

This one is just swirls.

This one has some Welsh leaves.

This was a super fun quilt to quilt

Here is is all bound and ready to be shipped off. I think it will be in the Windham Fabric quilt market booth. So if you are going to quilt market, go visit my quilt.

One more thing and then I will stop going on about this quilt. I signed the binding. I think that is a fun way to label the quilt. You see I always forget to add a label before quilting.

This is what my sewing studio looks like at the moment. I have one of Pam's quilts up on the long arm. It is a fantastic medallion quilt. Look at all those AWESOME boarders! See Modern Quilters do too make boarders.

I also finally finished most of the wall painting for my basement. The carpet is still there...mocking me. I found a giant slate blackboard to hang somewhere, but I need my husband to do it because I am nervous about trying to drill into the concrete walls.

I am auditioning quilting for this quilt before I get started. I got this idea (and I was quite inspired by her snowball quilt quilting) of using plexiglass and a dry erase marker from Krista Withers. Krista is one of my very favorite modern quilters. She is brilliant. I wanted to find a different tape to use on the edges, so I don't look like a total copycat, but the man at ACE Hardware was determined I but this blue painters tape because it was such a great deal. So here I am copying Krista. 

The quilting tryout is kinda hard to see in the picture up there, so here it is against my design wall.

One of my quilts is on the cover of a book

Hey there! Have you heard about This book? Well one of my quilts is on the cover. Well, actually it is not my quilt...I just quilted it. Katy Jones made the quilt. It is the pink and grey dresden plate over on the far right. I quilted it ages ago...and I actually don't even have pictures of it. I think I may have some on Flickr. I lost a ton of pictures going from computer to computer to computer over the past year. We did back up files, but I have no clue where the external hard drive is that they are on. Alas, alack. It is a beautiful quilt. I quilted a massive king sized one for her as well. I wonder if the picture of that one are in the book as well?

Free Motion Quilting supplies for my workshop

Hey there! How are you? I hope you are well. I am going to be teaching a free motion quilt workshop on the 22 of September for the KCMQG. This post is a bit about the supplies that are required to make one of the quilted box bags above.

Here are the supplies all ganged together.

First you are going to need a sewing machine. It doesn't have to be fancy. I quilt on each of the domestic machines in this picture, and you can too. 

These are free motion (or darning) feet that are used for quilting. I went through my collection and found quite a few different ones. You really just need to bring one, but if you don't know which one is your quilting foot it should look like one of these. Don't feel bad if you don't know! That is why I am putting up pictures. The two on the far right are for my old Singer sewing machines, the rest are my Bernina feet.

This is a zipper foot. You will need this one to put in the bag's zipper. If you are bringing an old Singer,  you can use that narrow foot for the zipper.

This is a walking foot. It is really wonderful for straight line quilting. It is a bit expensive, but worth every penny. We will be finishing the bag with this foot. If you don't have a walking foot, just bring your main sewing foot.

You are going to need a fat quarter sized quilt sandwich. I just layered 2 fat quarters with a double thickness of cotton batting. If you don't have spare batting laying around, I can bring some with me so you are welcome to mine. I have bins of leftover batting and many opinions about various kinds of batting. We will discuss at the workshop.

That flowery side will be the inside of the bag. I want to see the quilting stitches, so that is why I selected a solid for the outside. We are going to block off sections of the fat quarter to practice different quilt designs. 

Zippers! You will need to bring a 16 inch or 14 inch CLOSED zipper. My favorite are the sport zippers. If you bring one of the 14 inch zippers I will show you how to make the zipper long enough. 

Thread. I love thread. I recommend that you select a nice cotton thread to begin with. My 2 favorite brands are King Tut by Superior and the wonderful Aurifil cotton thread. This will be a fun project to try a variegated thread with. I love variegations.

If you want to have a little handle on your bag (like the one on the bottom in the first picture) just bring an 8 inch piece of trim (ribbon, ricrak, leather, twill tape...whatever)

So, feel free to ask questions if you have any. If you are coming to the workshop you will have an email from me with a more complete supply list. If you want to use one of my sewing machines, just let me know so I can pack enough of them.

I think that is it. I can't wait to quilt with you on the 22nd!

"Type" by Julia Rothman for Windham

 Hey there! Look what I get to work with....Type by Julia Rothman. Isn't it great? Julia Rothman made this collection for Windham fabric. I loved Miscellany so much (Cloud 9 fabric) that as soon as I heard that Julia had another collection coming out I emailed Windham at once to ask to work with it. They said yes! So now I get to make a quilt and a couple other little projects. How exciting! I have actually already begun working on the quilt. The hint I am going to give you is "circles" Yep...I think circles are the new square. I think we will all be quilting with circles in no time. I am even working on an actual quilt pattern this time. I know... I am really on a roll.

What do you say we look a little closer at some of the prints?

Old School Typewriters. Aren't they cute? 

Paper and notebooks. This could easily be a shot of my desk right now. I have paper and projects all over the place.

And what project would be complete without glasses? One set actually looks just like my quilting glasses. I knew Julia was a lady after my own heart!

And these are the smaller scale prints. Paper clips and letters. Bravo! OK, I need to go get back to my sewing machine. I think I left it on because I was just coming upstairs to grab a glass of water.

** oh, a note on this printing. This little stack that I am working with is a first run printing. The real collection may be a bit different in tone.

Anyway, happy quilting!

Between Quilts

 Hey there! I know it has been ages since I have posted, but I was quilting away on secret quilts...or at least on quilts that I can't show yet. But....since I am between quilts I decided to take the day and go have fun with my sweet kiddos.

My husband took my middle son fishing, so I took the other two out to Weston, MO. We were just wondering around the town and on the way home I drove by the Red Barn Farm...just to see what was going on. I am so thrilled I did!

 They gave us baskets and pointed towards the hillside that was covered with apple and pear trees. As you can see from the pictures the trees were pretty heavy with fruit.

 We did have to sample some of course. It was funny...I went ahead and took a bite of one of the apples  to see how sweet and ripe it was, and the kids were stunned that they could eat the apples as we picked them! I said go for it! After all how many apples can you eat while you pick? They aren't like strawberries...I can eat my weight in strawberries!

 Our eyes were much bigger than our stomachs, so we have lots of apples for pies and apple sauce. Awesome!

The older fellas caught 4 cat fish. We will be eating them tonight...along with apple pie!
I think this was the best day we have had since we moved back to Kansas...and it was in Missouri!

I have more quilts to work on, but if you have one you want me to quilt just let me know! I am accepting quilts right now.

xo,
Tia