What's on the longarm; shhh it's a secret!

A beautiful quilt for a beautiful young woman!  This will be my first one with mostly ruler work and I did stitch in the ditch on all the blocks first.

I really like how it's looking. More detail later.

My very first quilt & a sad goodbye

This is a picture of the first quilt I ever made along with a couple of close ups.

My friend and I took a class at our local quilt store, Bella Quiltworks. It's fitting that I post about it today, because they are closing for good this Saturday.  :(

Joelee, the owner, taught that beginning class. She's retiring and we'll really miss seeing her and the great ladies who worked there. It was a fantastic place to escape to on our lunch hour!

I machine quilted this on my Viking Sapphire with King Tut variegated thread. I used a stencil to mark a cable design in the border. This was my first step towards the wonderful longarm machine I have today!

Longarm Quilt #35 Autumn Wedding Quilt – using a panto for free motion & other firsts

My friend, Susan, had me quilt this as a wedding gift for a relative so I was REALLY nervous.  But, of course, I had to incorporate a lot of firsts - making a stencil, using pounce chalk and learning a freehand design from a panto.

It’s a small quilt using the Potato Chip pattern from our LQS, thequiltersmarket.com. I wanted some fancy custom quilting since it was for a wedding. I used a really pretty stencil from Urban Elementz called Dusty Miller for the plain blocks because I knew it would really show.

I knew the quilting wouldn’t show much in the blocks with the print fabric so I found a simpler design in my Quilting Dot to Dot book from goldenthreads.com by Cheryl Barnes. I drew the design onto stencil plastic and cut it out with a stencil burner.

The Homemade Stencil Block

The Back

I used the Aloha sashing pantograph, also from urbanelementz.com for the borders. So I used 3 different designs that had a similar "feeling". 

I didn’t want to turn the quilt to line up the panto, but I thought I could get the design into my muscle memory and quilt it freehand. I used my trusty plexiglass on top of the panto and traced over and over (and over) with a dry erase marker. (For more details about this technique, see my 8/26/13 posting.) Then I drew it on plain paper until it was in my head and it worked!

The freehand sashing!

A view of the back

I still remember taking a deep breath before quilting every block! But looking back, I'm really happy with how it turned out.

Way back: Longarm quilt #2 - This One's For Daniel

This is the very first quilt I did on my Longarm for someone. It was for my first grandson – a shower gift before he was even born!

Somehow, I only got one picture of it. :( 

When I got my longarm, I practiced on muslin, then I did a panel that I call “Is there something to do?” that I blogged about back in August.

Danny's quilt is also the first pantograph I ever did. A pantograph is a quilting design that's drawn out repeatedly on a really long roll of paper that sits on a shelf at the back of the longarm machine. You look at the paper and use a laser light attached to the top of the machine to trace the design. As you move the machine, it sews the design on the quilt. Maybe I should add a picture of the setup, huh?

The panto I used for this quilt is called double bubble and I had trouble doing nice round shapes. It makes me so nervous trying to trace the panto that I don’t do them often.

I also prefer to quilt from the front so I can see what’s going on with the quilt. You can get a little off on the panto as you’re moving across the quilt and you’ll have overlap (yes, I’ve had this happen).

This was a kit that I bought from my LQS thequiltersmarket.com . The small faux 4-patch pieces were blanket stitched on with a variegated thread. Overall, I think it turned out cute.

TIP: A different way to use pantos - Trace around a panto design many, many, many times to get muscle memory and then do the design freehand. This seems to work much better for me. I talk about this next time!

Longarm Quilt #62 - When variegated thread is perfect!

This is a really fun 1-piece (I guess that qualifies as a wholecloth) top that made up quickly into a super cute baby quilt. Just popped the 42x52 piece of fabric on the longarm with batting and backing and started quilting.

I used King Tut variegated in Cleopatra on top. See, isn't it perfect? It has all the bright colors of the quilt!:

I used So Fine Ferrari in the bobbin. Ferrari is this bright neon green that I seem to use a lot! I freehand quilted it with a design I call palm frondish - it kinda reminds me of palm branches and is sort of jungley (I'm sure that's a word) like the African animals. I get a lot of quilting ideas from books and this one is from Dawn Ramirez, Pajama Quilter. She has such a friendly, relaxed way of teaching that it just helps a nervous, new longarmer feel more confident. thanks Dawn!

Sometimes it's hard to tell where the quilting lines go, so here's a sketch on top of the photo to give you an idea:

It's such a great allover design cause it's so easy to meander around, fill in all the tiny places and change direction easily. In this pic, you can see how the thread color changes look on the quilt:

I tried to angle the light so you can see the texture of the quilting:

Of course, I had to use more brightness on the back - a blue with crazy green dots.

That's a lot of pictures, but it's such a fun, happy quilt; maybe it will bring a smile to your day.

Longarm quilt #88: Baby quilt finished just in time - my own design!

The baby wasn't due til February so I thought I had a little time. Then the ladies at work told me on 1/16 that the shower was 1/27 - aeeeeieiiiiiiii!  I kinda had an idea of what I wanted to do - random rectangles and squares and not symmetrical. So you know what I've been doing the last 2 weekends; and I was madly sewing on the label yesterday afternoon.

The focal fabric is from the Les Monsieurs collection by Tamara Kate kayajoydesigns.com (she has some great stuff!) that I bought a few months ago with no project in mind. I have a hard time finding boy fabric that I like so thought I'd better snap some of this up from hawthornethreads.com.  See, you never know when buying that random fabric that's calling to you is a good idea! I already had the other fabrics in my stash and all the little pieces are from my scrap baskets so I'm proud of reducing my stash.

Here are some closeups of the quilting. I used 3 different thread colors: white, black & teal.

I really like how this section turned out with the sky fabric above the rocketship and the little patchwork section beside it:

For some parts, I used the fabrics as an idea for how to quilt that section.

I used a snuggly flannel for the backing, hobbs 80/20 batting and a teal So Fine thread in the bobbin. I added the blue outside borders after sending a pic to my daughter. She's a wonderful artist and it definitely gave the quilt a warmer feeling for a baby.

Let me know if you have any questions. I learn something from every quilt I make. I'm happy with the quilting, but I'm still learning what thread colors are best. I don't know what color I would have used if I had to stick to just 1. I only used 3 bobbins, but switching the 3 different colors added a lot of extra time and I did stitch in the ditch around all the dark gray sashing before doing the fancy quilting. Could I have gotten away without SID first? Would a long wavy quilting line in the sashing been an okay substitute for SID? I may need to try this design again to see if no SID would work. I am super proud of my design and love how this turned out.

A Christmas quilt in process

I saw this charm pack (that's 5 inch squares) called Aspen Frost that just appealed to me. I was doing my birthday discount shopping at the quilt store and couldn't resist.  I think it will make a really nice throw for the couch during the holidays. It's a simple pattern that I just made up.  Sometimes I get such a great feeling of accomplishment seeing all the pieces come together so nice and neat.

longarm quilt #44 A Fun Project on the Longarm - Tootie Fruitie

This is a really cute little girl quilt I did for my greatniece a couple years ago:



I got the idea from watching Linda Taylor's quilting show on the web. Pam Clark was a guest and she quilted the background and then added the applique all with the longarm. I fussy cut the flowers and used loops and zigzags to attach the shapes.

I used King Tut thread in Harem and peach So Fine in the bobbin. The Harem variegated thread had the perfect colors to go with the flowers. I also added those crazy 3-d strips to the sashing with the longarm.

I took a 2" wide strip, folded it in thirds and sewed it down the middle on my DSM. Then using a scribble stitch with the longarm, I added folds and "ruffles" to add some dimension. It would also be cute with buttons. I used Hobbs Polydown batting so all the different background quilting really showed up and added more fun dimension.  A little different view:

By the way, I keep a list of quilts with notes so I can look back & see what I've actually accomplished and that I'm getting better with practice. I'm really happy with how this turned out; I may need to do another one like this soon!

What I'm working on today - a sneak peek

I got a special request from one of favorite people to see this secret collaborative project that I'm working on. My honey
  
:)  is helping me create a special quilt for one of his friends.

This is a picture of pieces of it stuck to my design wall. He picked the design, helped me with the placement of the stars and is drawing up a really cool design for the quilting. I'm sewing on some of the stars this morning and then I'm off to a class on machine quilting on your home sewing machine.

Even though I have a longarm, I want to get comfortable with quilting on my regular machine for small projects. Quilting on a longarm is very different that quilting on a sewing machine & I'm much better on my longarm.

Eye Candy & Encouragement

Isn't this a great quilt! I love the pink and orange batik on the back. The front has 2 long pink ruffles.

This is one of the first quilts I made and I quilted it for beautiful Hailey on my regular sewing machine. It didn't take long to decide I needed a longarm. I call it "Grammy, let's be butterflies."  I quilted it with loops and flowers and a swirled vine. It just makes me think of Hailey and smile. Even when she was little (she's a big first grader now), we would play and climb trees and have tea parties.

Hopefully as we look at my projects over the past 4 years, you'll see that my quilting has gotten better and you will be encouraged to persevere!

First Free Motion Quilt on the Longarm Machine

This is the third quilt that I quilted on my longarm machine, way back in 2010. I know it's the 3rd because I actually keep a list. Because I work full time, I was getting frustrated with my lack of accomplishment so I started a list. The list is kinda long now, but lately I've been distracted with my embroidery machine (we'll save that topic for a later blog). 

Anywho, the quilting on this was all done freehand. I had to figure out how to move from one area to the next without a lot of stops and starts. I have a big piece of plexiglass that I draw on with a dry erase marker. I can put the plexi right on top of the quilt and draw designs to see how they'll look on the quilt and to figure out how to move from each design. I put colored tape around the edges of the plexiglass so I don't slip and draw on the quilt top - that would be a bad thing :(

The quilting isn't that great, but I figure you have to start somewhere; and I get better with each one. I used yellow variegated thread and the backing fabric is black with tiny white dots, like stars.

Star Light, Star Bright

 

I recently sent it to Quilts Beyond Borders, quiltsbeyondborders.wordpress.com to find a wonderful new home. Let me know if you have any questions about the quilting.

What I learned about quilt pattern decisions

Wow, I'm super happy with how this turned out! It's going to look awesome on Susan's bed. I think the quilting really makes it pop. This proves that a simply pieced top with two basic colors (rust and gold) can be the perfect choice. I tend to be attracted to fancy, busy patterns, but now I realize they can overpower a room.

quilting detail - the twin quilts Part TWO!

I can't believe I forgot to talk about the embroidery part and the feathers! Here are the twin quilts again.

I quilted feathers in the red areas on the green/gray quilt. I can't even see them when I zoom in - probably cause I used Superior's So Fine thread.

I also quilted this one first. I wasn't sure how to handle the machine embroidered area and on the first one I did wavy lines in the white around the embroidery. It didn't thrill me but it was okay. In the embroidered hearts on the red quilt, I did one-way hatching right thru the embroidery with So Fine white and I was surprised with how good it looks.

If you're not into quilting, this is probably way too much detail; but if you quilt, maybe this is helpful. I study other people's quilting blogs, especially longarm quilters. I always learn a lot from their sites and everyone has great ideas. If more detail would interest you, please let me know. thanks

My Quilt at Houston International!

The picture at the top of my blog shows two quilts that I made for the charity, Quilts Beyond Borders. The pink, orange and black quilt is for a young lady "graduating" from an orphanage in Russia. The green one with the orange ribbon will be on display at QBB's booth at the Houston International Quilt Festival and auctioned off for their charity!! I feel so honored. Here's the link showing some additional pics and info (it's the August 20, 2012 post):  http://quiltsbeyondborders.wordpress.com/2012/08/.  Check out all the links on Carla's blog that describe her cool charity. Maybe you'd like to make a quilt to bring a smile to one of "her" orphans.

Giraffe Love baby quilt for charity auction