Another Quilt For John

 Hey there! I have finished another quilt for John. He wanted very simple quiting for this quilt. So...this is me doing very simple quilting.

 Some simple zig zags in the bars, and the rest with my favorite determined meandering. This is really fun fabric too. Stanley certainly approved. Again, John is a great piecer. Not a block out of line on this quilt.

Here is a bit of the back, with a print back the quilting is hard to see, but I think it is wonderful.

I have a massive Dresden plate quilt to load up onto the frame next for Katy.

Have  great day and keep warm if you are in the Northern hemisphere!

xo,
Tia

My Bee FF quilt

 I took my BeeFF project out to work on a bit during a quiet moment this morning. I have really enjoyed the slow thoughtful time I have been able to spend with this quilt. I am hand quilting it in a quilt as you go method. As you can probably see many of the blocks are different sizes. I am adding boarders to the smaller ones because in the end they will all need to be the same size. I have big plans for the final boarder of this quilt. My wonderful BeeFF group helped me out with these blocks. I sure hope we stick together for another great year of quilting. SOme of our members are onto bigger and better things or at least cutting back on all their swaps. I totally understand that. I did the big cut back a couple years ago and I am very happy I made that decision. It is hard to never take time to sew for your self or just for your family.

So, I am loving this applique. All the wonderful little stitches made by friends are each a treasure. When you see something so obviously hand made, do you ever wonder about what was being thought about while it was being made. I do. I love holding old hand made items and imagining all the lives that have touched and have been touched by them. This quilt is going to be one of my magnum opuses when it is finished. Maybe I will try to find a show to enter it into?

OK, I am off to bed. This has been a very busy and wonderful weekend.

xo,
Tia

Some art for Lady June

I am having this made into a bumper sticker for my Long Arm. Her Name is Lady June. As soon as Sharon first saw my Gammill Supreme she said it needed some nose art. I agreed! Sharon had this whipped out in no time. I wish I was as fast as she is.

A quilt for John

 I finished quilting this quilt for John (aka Quilt Dad) on Friday. The temperature finally dropped below 80 (to 34F that is how it is in Texas. Nice and warm one day and mighty cold the next...no time to prepare), so it actually felt like fall in my quilting studio. I will need to find some sort of heater for winter use for sure. I was decked out in gloves, a wool toboggan, one on my Dale of Norway sweaters and long Johns...oh and my daughters furry house shoes. Quite a sight to behold.

 John made this quilt for Quiltmaker Magazine out of the block he did for Quiltmakers 100 Blocks Magazine.

 John wanted it quilted fairly simple. I find circles so soothing and I wanted the chevrons to be quit simple as well so the focus was on the blocks and not the quilting. I am very happy with how this one turned out. Sharon came over and we were admiring the fabric as I was loading it up onto the frame. I was thinking about how to quilt it and Sharon suggested modernized poppies (basically 3 circles inside one another), so I took that and made this design. It has a bit of a flow to it. It is so nice to have an artist across the street. Sharon is brilliant.

I have 3 more to quilt for John, he is a great piecer. I will show them as soon as I have them finished.

I have ordered some Spare parts for my Lady June (my massive Gammill) and I hope that they will come in Handy eventually. I was having some tension issues with her, but the folks at Gammill were so very helpful. I have had to become somewhat of a sewing machine mechanic. My husband wanted to have that job, but most of the time I have issues I can't wait for him to come home from work, so I just grab my screwdriver and go to town. It is so satisfying to take it apart and fix the problem (in the last case it was a thread jam in the rocking finger) and then go back to awesome tension. I love my long arm.

Anytime I get a new machine I have tension issues at some point. They drive me crazy, but it is so wonderful to figure what the problem is and be able to fix it. Speaking of sewing machines, my Bernina 820 is STILL in the shop. It is making some sort of alarm sound that no one can figure out what it means. That is something I love about my older machines. When they develop bad tension I can sort them out fairly easy. But when my fancy computer ones mess up there is nothing I can do but go to a professional.

OK, have a happy weekend and I will talk to you soon.

Zig Zag Quilt

 Good Morning! How are you doing? I sure hope your Thanksgiving was a good one. I finished a quilt last night. This was a pretty quick quilt as I started it on the 17th of November in preparation for a book review (Little Bits Quilting Bee) for my other blog. Nothing like a quick quilt that is a thrill to quilt. I used a silver thread for the quilting (both top and bottom thread are silver). I love how the silver looks on the front, and on the back it looks like a whole new quilt.

 Despite having my Bernina 820 back from the shop, I am still using my little featherweight. A word of advice to you...never buy a fancy schmancy computerized sewing machine and go move to the middle of nowhere where there is no support for it. Because when it is out of sync...there is nothing you can do but drive 8 hours to have it repaired...again. But DO have some great old machines that just require a bit of oil and will run until the Apocalypse.

 As soon as this quilt came out of the dryer it was instantly put into family quilt circulation. The quilters dream cotton batting I used has such a glorious feel to it after being dried.

 So, here is a full sunny shot from this morning. It is crazy windy (as usual) so the quilt is flapping a bit...and I didn't center it.

 I love these little feathery clam shells I used to quilt the background. They are so very fun to quilt with my Gammill. They appear like magic as the long arm passes over the quilt top. I wanted something minimal in the blocks and I wanted a bit of puff after I had washed the quilt, so I made little pea pod looking designs in the individual triangles. I love the sketcherly look and feel these quilts have.

 By the time I came back to the boarder to finish the quilting I did not want the vine I had originally thought I would use. What to do what to do???? How about loops. Na. Maybe double loops? They look a bit like babushkas or toes, but I like them.

 And because the backs of quilts are so very important....Here is the back of this one. I may like it better than the front.

 I think the texture is fabulous. Especially after the wash. There are parts that aren't perfect, but I am human and not a computer...and given how frustrated I am with computerized sewing machines at the moment that is fine with me.

I have done a couple other quilts...but I can't show pictures of them yet. They are going to be in books, so I will show you pictures later...or point you to the books ;o)

Have a great weekend, I think I will be driving back down to Killeen to drop off my Berninas.

xo,
Tia

My quilts in the Cloud 9 Booth

 Hey there! I bet if you read my other blog you are bored of my cloud 9 quilts, but I need to do a quick show of the quilts here too. I made 2 quilts for Michelle Engel Bencsko  of Cloud 9 fabric. I made the giant  hexagon up on the wall out of the wonderful Miscellany collection and the little brown and yellow flying geese quilt out of Across the Pond.

 I must say again how much I love the Miscellany quilt. I will be making one for myself for Christmas...Well, I will start it over Christmas break, who knows when it will actually be finished.

 It was such a thrill to both meet Michelle and Gina and to see my quilts in with all the glory of Quilt Market. Here I am with Gina and below is a picture of my with Michelle. I sure hope I get to keep sewing for these brilliant ladies! They make superior fabric to create with!

A quilt for Katy

 Katy sent me this quilt to quilt up for her and pass of at Market while I was there. I love the blue, I love the stars, I love the Happy Zombie fabric.

 I quilted it quite simple. With a stipple as the background and each star has some little melon curves inside the lines. And some pebbles because I really do love pebbles.


Katy has great pictures of the quilt all finished over on her flickr stream. She is so clever and she is the Features Editor for Fat Quarterly.