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Check out my new website at ineedlefabric.com.  Here's my beautiful logo designed by Katie at reddragon233@hotmail.com.

I'll be sharing quilts and fabric creations, tips and tutorials, reviews and how to's.

Maybe you're looking for a longarm quilter or a one-of-a-kind handcrafted gift. You'll be seeing these on the Store page.

Or maybe you're looking for a first time project you want to create yourself. We'll be offering beginner kits and patterns in the future. What would you like to learn about?

Let my fabric obsession become your prized possession! 

Sneak Peek

I promised a sneak peek at the 2 quilts I'm working on for QBB, quiltsbeyondborders.wordpress.com to take the place of the twin quilts that they're auctioning at the Houston Quilt Festival.

I'm a sucker for Halloween fabrics and have quite a few focal fabrics. So what if I do long wide strips of all the accents with some eye-popping color combination skinny strips between them... ah ha!

This one's ready to go on the longarm and get quilted.

For number 2, I discovered Marianne Haak's blog: thequiltingedge.com  Her work is fantastic and she uses a technique of doing quilt as you go. She mentions Sharon Pederson's book More Reversible Quilts so I got the book and #2 is my experiment with quilt as you go in Halloween fabrics.

The purple with the green dots will be the sashing between the blocks.

 

Cool news about the twin quilts!

I sent the twin quilts to Quilts Beyond Borders, http://quiltsbeyondborders.wordpress.com/ and they asked if they could auction them to raise money for their charity.

 

 

They'll be on display at their booth at the Houston International Quilt Festival (Oct 31 - Nov 3). That's so exciting! If you're at the show, please check them out and take some time to learn about QBB.

 

I did plan on them going to kids so, of course, I'm working on 2 more quilts to take their place. Stay tuned for some sneak peeks of the works in progress.

what's on the longarm today?

Today is "whatcha workin on?" day

this is my friend, Susan's, beautiful prairie companions quilt top.


As you can see, I'm quilting seedlings and hooked swirls in alternate rows. I'm using Superior's Omni thread in Rusty on the top and a similar color of Superior's So Fine in the bobbin. I almost always use so fine in the bobbin so there's less bobbin changing. This is a big quilt; I've already used 6 bobbins and I'm just over halfway finished. This is about 108 x 120 so it's the biggest top I've ever quilted.

Previously, my daughter's birthday quilt, "Katie's Choice" won that prize. Yep, I name all my quilts. You spend so much time with them, you become close. It also helps me remember them & I add the name to the label. I might share this one next.

Here's a detail shot:

I like the way the Hobbs poly shows quilting definition. This isn't a real busy quilt so it's nice to have the quilting visible to really add zing to the top.

quilting detail - the twin quilts

For those of you who want to know about the quilting part (that's when you sew the 3 layers together -the top the batting in the middle and the backing), here's some detail on the quilting designs. For the green and gray one (the one I think of as more boyish), I quilted hooked spirals in the green border, circles in the skinny border, wavy lines in the gray and peacock paisleys in the jelly roll part.

sketch of peacock paisley

In the more girly quilt I did seedlings and hearts in the jelly roll parts around the panel and meandering hearts in the bottom bird print area. Here's a closeup of the back so you can see the meandering hearts quilting design.

sketch of seedlings

I used an oval ruler for the arches in the border. Ruler work is a little tricky so I'm still getting the hang of it.

Ah ha! here's the rest of the jelly roll part on the back:

I had a lot a fun with these 2 quilts and I'm pretty happy with how they turned out. You can see the complete quilt tops in my previous post. It always helps me to see how other people quilt their tops so I hope this helps you and gives you some ideas.

When a jelly roll race quilt doesn't finish the race

When the jelly roll race quilt doesn't work, cut it apart and make TWO quilts.  These are the twin quilts I'm sending to QBB tomorrow. Just finished the labels this weekend.

I wanted to do something a little different when I finished the jelly roll race top (a good example is the orange, pink & black quilt at the top of my blog). see? ah, very nice. BTW a jelly roll is a roll of 2 1/2" strips from a single fabric collection so they all play well together.



 

This time I cut it in 4 big pieces and flipped them to make a giant pinwheel. Well, it looked more like a giant swastika, NOT the look I was going for. My lqs (local quilt store) quiltbaskettucson.com had the cute panels on sell from the Flirt fabric line that went with the jelly roll. So I ripped the 4 pieces apart and designed 2 different quilts. Can you find parts of the jelly roll in each quilt? Can you find the machine embroidery I added to each top? And yes, I'm having way too much fun with machine embroidery too - more on that story later. Also "how did you quilt that?" at a later date too.

How it all started

I used to be a hobby hopper.  I've tried my hand at knitting, crochet, needlepoint, cross stitch, picture taking, piano playing, jewelry making and then did tole painting for a while.  When I switched to stained glass, after a friend suggested taking a class, I stuck with it for 3 years and thought I had settled in.  Now I QUILT and I love it!

My daughter says I've found my niche.  It's actually partly her fault. She and another friend wanted to attend the Quilt Fiesta and I said I didn't need another hobby (Oh, and I work full-time too!).  When I saw those beautiful machine appliqued pieces, I was a goner.  I HATE hand sewing (maybe that's the reason for all that early hopping).  But machine applique; that's something I can get into.

Well, I've now been quilting for 4 years and am truly addicted; and like most quilters, I'm excited to share my addiction with you.