Mary's Quilt

Good Morning Folks! How are you doing? I hope you are good and not tired of looking at this quilt yet. I love it. I love Mary's piecing and I love how the quilting turned out!

The blue in the vines is my chalk marking pen. It will wash out. I am pretty crazy for feathery vines right now.

I did feathery vines in the white background and Welsh leaves in the blocks.

I love the back of the quilt. It is going to be so awesome when it is washed.

 

 So, I have been thinking....about straight lines. With my long arm I can do pretty straight horizontal and vertical lines, but forget it with diagonal lines. I have the rulers and a throat platform to attach to my long arm and I have tried to make them straight, but for this quilt I went with organic sketchy lines around the blocks. Personally, I love how hand drawn they look. I think I will make them my signature.

There are many many quilters who have computers associated with their machines and they do beautiful...dare I say perfect work. Not me. I am very human and so is my quilting. At this time in my life, I don't have the energy or desire to learn how to  use one of the fancy systems. I am very happy with my massive 21 year old machine. Maybe down the road I will have the drive to be more perfect, I will look into it then.

 I did two different types of leaves in the blocks. This set is a more traditional and the one above is kinda like a cocoon.

Mary's little red squares remind me of this quilt by Gwen Marston. I think it may be my very favorite Gwen Marson quilt. Her quilter went wild with the quilting, didn't she? I adore how exciting the quilting is. It is not straight or perfect, it is totally awesome though.

Happy Military Spouse Day if you are one! My husband is coming to take me to lunch...so I better get a move on if I am going to hit the post office first!

xo,
Tia

Welsh Quilting with my Long Arm

 First off, Happy Easter! It is such a beautiful day here in West Texas I can barely stand to be inside for this short moment of blogging. It has been raining and everything is so beautifully green and the wild flowers are amazing. It just smells divine outside. So, I have been quilting with the garage doors open. I have also bee trying out quilting Welsh style, but with my long arm instead of my domestic machine.

 When I learn a new quilting style I need to test it out on my smaller sewing machines ( my Berninas typically) and when I am pretty comfortable with the motions and techniques there, I will take the ideas to my Gammill.

 I absolutely LOVED quilting this quilt. It is a very simple design, just 9 x 62 inch strips of Grunge Basics (by Moda.). Four of one color and 3 of another. All I really wanted the focus to be on was the quilting.

 I wanted more practice on vines and of course more quilting with the Celtic style leaves and arcs.

 I really want to do one more...but I have some bags to work on first. I also have a couple Texas quilts to make.

I bound and washed this red cross quilt. I was nervous to put it through the wash, not because of the hand stitching, each stitch was incredibly strong. I was afraid of all that red not being colorfast and running all over the white. But it turns out I had nothing to worry about at all. It looks fabulous! No bleeding, and there is only one small area where the initial discoloration did not come clean.

I hope your Easter Weekend is going as well as our is!

xo,
Tia

Another quilt for John - Joel Dewberry

 Hey there! This is the third quilt I have quilted for John Adams. It is made with Joel Dewberry fabric and has the most wonderful red grunge fabric around as a wide boarder. This was a tricky quilt to quilt. It was tricky because there is so much going on in the body of the quilt. At first I wanted to outline quilt all the triangles in the Pineapple blocks, but after I loaded the quilt up onto the frame I quickly figured out that the quilting would be lost, so I went with one of my favorite swirls for the body of the quilt and focused on the wide boarder for quilting that would be seen. I have been mad for Welsh quilting lately so I wanted to tie that in with this quilt. I wanted to make the arcs into pineapples.

 I think they look like pineapples, I put the pineapple tops into the spaces beside the cross hatching, so it is more stylized and sketch like.

Sewing Tuesday at my House

 On Tuesday some of my wonderful friends came over to sew with me. I am always having such a great time that I forget to take pictures until everyone is packing up to go home or go pick up kids from school. My friend Martha is a fine Vegan cook. She introduced me to home grown sprouts. I will be growing them in my kitchen window as soon as I get them from the Sprout People. She had this fabulous blend of French garden sprouts.

This is Sharon's quilt top. She and I are working on another Welsh quilt. I just can't get enough of them right now.

 Sharon's quilt is grey, teal and red and white pin dots. It is pretty fabulous

 My quilt is more somber...but I plan to liven it up with some fabulous Welsh Quilting. I will be quilting this on the long arm...or maybe the Bernina 820 when it comes home again. I am beginning to get a back long with my long arm quilitng. It makes me so happy to go in and see all the pretty quilts to be quilted.

 This is an old hand pieced and hand quilted quilt. I picked it up at a local antique shop. I have plans for this puppy. I do wish the original quilter would have gone with another color sashing. The purple is a bit off for this quilt. I do love the blocks though. Well, I have some plans for this quilt.

 

I am making sewing bags, or quilted quilting kits. I think they are fabulous!

And finally this is what is happening in the quilting studio. I have LauraJ's quilt on the frame. This one is so very fun to quilt!

Have a great day and I will talk to you again later!
xo,
Tia

A Welsh Quilt

 Hey there! I sure hope you aren't sick of this quilt already. I think this is definitely one of my very favorites. It was finally not wildly windy this morning so I took it out for a couple sunny pictures.

 This was a new type of quilting for me and I know for sure I will be using this technique often in the future. I have another larger project in the works so I can quit it on long arm.

 For this quilt the quilting was done mostly with my Bernina 165 (a regular home sewing machine - a good machine, but nothing really fancy). I wanted to do all the quilting on my Bernina 820, but that machine is not working correctly and is actually back in Kansas to be repaired (again) or sent back to Bernina.
 I don't want it back unless it is working properly, right?

 I can't wait to translate this detail and style to my long arm quilting.

 Each corner block is quilted differently because I had too hard a time deciding on just one design.

 Did you know about all the meaning in Welsh quilting? The 3 center stripes have different quilting too...one is the path goodness, the path to wickedness and the path to fairyland. In the above picture are the paths to wickedness and the path to fairyland.

 Above is the path to goodness and more of the path toward wickedness.

 I love the back of this quilt...It is so nice to look and feel all that quilting. It crinkled up pretty well after the wash, but since I used wool batting it is not quite so wrinkly.

OK, have a great day! I think I am going to take this quilt over to the quilt shop and see if the owner will let me teach some machine quilting classes. It is a really small town here and the quilting teacher is very old and very set in her ways. I teach from my house of course, but I think it would be really fun to get out from time to time! Wish me luck!

xo,
Tia

Where does inspiration come from?

 Hey there! DO you like quilt books? I sure do. My husband gave me a Kindle Fire for my birthday and I have really enjoyed the book ordering power it has given me. One day I was on a roll with ordering books...or pretending to order books (I thought I was pretending anyway). I logged out of Amazon and thought all was forgotten, right? Well, a few days later the book on top arrived. I knew the book was only like .99 cents, so I didn't fret too much, but when I opened it up I was pretty much disgusted with the articles in this book/magazine.

 I flipped through it and was shuddering about how horrible some of the projects were.

 Not only horrible, but horribly dated. Who would wear a quilted hat like that? With a matching vest? Dreadful. So I was getting ready to pitch it in the recycling I found this article...."The Nature of a Curve" all about Welsh Quilting. I don't think I have ever seen such wonderful quilting! So bold, but whimsicle and almost magical. I knew immeidately I had to make a quilt so I could try it out myself.

 Welsh quilting and Amish quilting look alike don't they? Some say the Welsh influenced the Amish with their bold graphic designs and fabulous quilting. At first the Amish believed quilting was sinful...but then I guess they got cold and figured out how wonderful and warm a wool quilt was to rest beneath. The Amish also happened to settle near the Welsh when they came over the United States. Like quilters anywhere they rubbed off on one another. And what a great influence to share, right?

 With a simple circle template wonderful patterns can be created. The arcs, swirls and straight lines are so perfect for a simple quilt design.

 This page was telling about how these same quilt motifs are found all over ancient Celtic ruins. I find my inspiration from the world around me and so did these ladies.

 So, here is my very simple Welsh quilt. the quilting is finished, I just need to bind it. The quilting on the 3 white stripes in the center represents the path to goodness, wickedness and to Elf land.

 The wide boarders were so very fun to do and each red corner block has different quilting. I think quilting-wise I have really added a powerful element to my arsenal.
And to think that it all came from a dreadful little book that I almost threw away after ordering on a whim.

I used my little Bernina 165 to quilt this quilt. When I try something new (and fairly small - this quilt finished at 60 inches) I do like to use my regular sewing machine instead of my long arm. I like being very close to the needle and having absolute control of my quilting. I also used a Wool batting (from my favorite batting makers Quilters Dream ). The Wool really gives the quilting a definition and foundation to bloom upon.


Happy quilting folks!

xo,
Tia