The Secret Life of Mrs. Meatloaf

A quilt for Autumn

2012-01-28T07:18:00.000-08:00

Barb had me quilt this leafy wallhanging for her. She says she has a spot in her house where she hangs a quilt that she changes with the seasons.

I used gold metallic thread in the darker parts of the quilt and it is very sparkly in person but doesn't show real well in the photos.

I was excited to hear that my miniature Itty Bitty Boutis won a 3rd place ribbon at Road to California. The quilts are gorgeous - check out the winners at: http://www.road2ca.com/2012winners/road/winners.html

Rita's quilt and some big artichokes

2012-01-21T07:15:00.000-08:00

This is Rita's quilt, made as a Christmas present for her Mother-in-law. What a nice gift! It's a big quilt and Rita did a nice job on the piecing.

It's a busy design, so it's a little hard to see the quilting.

We bought artichokes for dinner last night and they were so huge that Peter wanted to pose with them, just to prove his head is a little bigger than they are.

Oklahoma City Winter Quilt Show

2012-01-15T07:39:00.000-08:00

We had a great day for a trip to Oklahoma City yesterday, it was sunny and mild and we zipped down with little traffic - It's about a 2 1/2 hour drive from Wichita. The Oklahoma City Winter Show has lots of vendors and a small judged show. Although small, there were some really nice quilts entered.

This hand quilted beauty won Best of Show:

This pretty quilt combines embroidery and beautiful quilting, it won Best Traditional quilt:

My quilt, Tree of Life - with Bugs, won Best Innovative Quilt. Yippee!

Joe and Amy Hunter are our Innova dealers and Amy is also a very talented quilter. Her quilt won Viewer's Choice:

I enjoyed seeing several of Charlotte Hickman's quilts including her Daylilies:

My friend Carol Elmore was at the show doing quilt appraisals and her husband Ron was helping. Ron is a quilter and entered one of his quilts in the show. He makes log cabin quilts and I'm amazed how much variety he creates with that one block.

If you have every shipped a quilt you know how nerve-wracking that experience can be. Here is a post on Ann Fahl's blog that I suggest you read: http://www.annfahl.blogspot.com/. She has a scary quilt-shipping story and some good tips on shipping your quilt.

And thanks to Mayleen, who is always impressed (not always favorably) by Peter's wienie recipes, here is a website to check out: http://www.hotdogprofits.com/blog/wierd-hot-dogs-woah/,

Quilts and wienies

2012-01-13T16:41:00.000-08:00

I finished Julie's version of the Joy of Life wallhanging. She used machine applique, and did a very neat job of it.

I tried to keep some puff in the quilt, rather than quilting it into submission which is my usual method!

Tomorrow we are headed to Oklahoma City for the OKC Winter Quilt Show, so I should have pictures to post soon.

In the meantime here is a photo that I know Mayleen especially will appreciate: Peter's latest wienie recipe! He calls it " Wienie a la Pork-u-pine. Bon appetit!

Folk Art Wedding for Karen

2012-01-07T13:13:00.000-08:00

This is the last of Karen's tops that I have quilted for her. This is an older pattern of Robyn Pandolph called Folk Art Wedding. It has about a million itty bitty little pieces which Karen has appliqued beautifully.

She had already marked it in pencil for hand quilting - that made it really handy for me to do the crosshatching. I did quilt between her lines to make the crosshatching smaller.

It has been amazingly warm here in Kansas, up close to 70 degrees this week.

What I did on my Christmas vacation

2011-12-31T15:18:00.000-08:00

I finished Ann's quilt! It took a long time to quilt, but that was my choice Ann, so don't feel guilty. I used two cones of Superior Bottom Line thread - that's 6000 yards and a lot of that ended up in the garbage can. I swear I ripped out more stitches than I put in.

This is the first time I have used two batts, a thin cotton and Hobbs wool. I like the way it looks but it sure makes for a heavy quilt.

The cross hatching in the center took especially long. I drew the design first and didn't have a ruler that exactly matched the curve I needed. I had read about someone who made their own templates using three layers of kiddie craft foam that are glued together. That sounded like a great idea so I bought some and cut a template - I could cut it with scissors and it was like cutting through butter. Unfortunately, it was about as useful as a template made out of butter; it was so soft that the foot kept mooshing up against it making a wobbly line.

I was afraid I was going to have to do something different in the center and it was really my favorite part so I hated to change it. Peter suggested trying 1/4 inch balsa wood so we tried that. It also was soft and easy to cut with a craft knife but held up a little better when I used it to quilt. Still, I killed a few but it was for a good cause. (I named them too) It's not a technique I recommend!

The quilt is so heavily quilted that from the back it looks like a wholecloth quilt.

Christmas Craziness

2011-12-23T06:02:00.000-08:00

In the midst of Christmas Craziness I haven't had time to post. Now the shopping is done, the presents are shipped and I'm back to trying to finish Ann's quilt. I promised it to her before Christmas but I will be lucky to finish it by New Year's at this rate. Here is a picture of it on my machine before I started the background quilting- I always forget how long it takes to do heavy background quilting.

Ann invited me to join her group to do some dyeing at her house. She had everything set up and totally organized (her Nurse genes were showing) I tried to take pictures of the group and in them Ann was always blurred, always in motion! I ended up with some nice fat quarters that I will use and a few real dogs that will make good rags.

Carol and Ann at work

Speaking of dyeing, I mentioned that Sheri's beautiful Storm at Sea quilt bled when she blocked it. Many thanks to Vicki Welsh who responded to my request for suggestions. She referred us to one of her previous posts about hand-dyed fabrics bleeding; http://vickiwelsh.typepad.com/field_trips_in_fiber/2011/08/color-fastness-of-hand-dyed-fabrics.html and as an experienced hand-dyer had some really helpful ideas.

Sheri ended up soaking the quilt in her whirlpool tub in hot water with Synthrapol. It took several long soaks but the quilt came out 99 % clean with just a few very faint shadows from the blue fabric bleeding.
Thanks again, Vicki! Here's a happy Sheri with her finished quilt:

I love metallic thread!

2011-12-10T15:32:00.001-08:00

This is Charlotte's quilt for her shop's Saturday Sampler. You can see her newsletter here. Charlotte likes traditional style quilting, with cotton batting and light colored thread. When I asked her if I could use metallic thread on this quilt she turned pale green but told me to do whatever I wanted. What trust!

I love the colors of this quilt and wanted to use gold thread along with purple, green and blue. It's a bit over the top but I like it and I think Charlotte does too. The metallic doesn't show up real well in the photo but does in person!

I have been putting a four inch hanging sleeve on my miniature Itty Bitty Boutis before sending it off to Road to California - this was a last minute request from them. It seems a bit crazy to me on a miniature quilt - my quilt is about 18 inches long, but some miniatures are only 8 - 10 inches and a four inch hanging sleeve will just about cover the back of the quilt! But - it's their show so I obliged.

Winter Wonderland

2011-12-09T06:19:00.001-08:00

I finished Karen's Winter Wonderland quilt in time for Christmas. (This is a Karen from my guild here in Wichita, not the Karen from Texas in a recent post) She does such a nice job on the embroidery that I really hate to quilt over it, but if I don't it will look saggy baggy and awful. I usually just do cross-hatching or straight line quilting over the embroidery, but I really hated to quilt over those cute fat snowmen!

I decided to quilt around the snowmen and put the straight line quilting behind them. Once I get quilting my brain tends to drift off and I find myself thinking about what's for dinner, quilts I want to make, errands I need to run etc. and sometimes that gets me in trouble. I found I had quilted right over this poor little guy - doesn't he look like he's been run over?

I picked out a few stitches and here he is all plump again.

One more quilt to finish and I'm on vacation!

Sylvia's quilts

2011-12-05T16:25:00.001-08:00

I think Sylvia told me she didn't make these embroidered blocks, just set them in this cute quilt. I love the zig-zag border.

Usually I think clowns are scary, but these clowns look pretty friendly.

Sylvia also made this wallhanging from a pattern by Edyta Sitar.

It's suddenly COLD and nasty here in Kansas, I guess winter is coming. Hard to believe that
last July when we were having weeks and weeks of temperatures over 100 degrees I looked forward to this.

I get to meet Karen, at last!

2011-12-03T15:30:00.001-08:00

I have quilted four quilts for Karen over the last few years and I finally got to meet her! She lives in Texas, our connection is through her cousin Lynn who is also a quilter. She came by to pick up her quilt and meet me - I'm so glad she did!

Not so happy is the story of this quilt, Really"Wild"Flowers: Second Season by Sharon Schlotzhauer. I met Sharon in Colorado Springs where we were both members of Piecing Partners Quilt Guild. Sharon and I both started entering shows at about the same time and I have kept an eye on her and her quilts since I left Colorado. She has been winning many ribbons for her beautiful quilts: her Really "Wild" Flowers quilt has won awards in Knoxville, Road To California and Houston. Sadly,it also disappeared in Houston after the show was taken down and before it was shipped home.

She told me she is heartbroken to lose her quilt, she felt it was the best work she has done. I always worry about my quilts when they are shipped, I figure that is when they are most vulnerable and I breathe a sigh of relief when they reach their destination. It's frightening that this quilt was lost in Houston, where they take such care with the quilts. The quilts we enter in shows have so many hours of thought and work and love in them, they are practically members of the family by the time they are finished. I can't imagine how awful it must be to lose one.

Anyway, keep a watch out for Sharon's quilt: it is listed on the Lost Quilts site http://lostquilt.com/and there is a lot of talk about it now on the Internet.

Here's more bad news: Sheri's beautiful Storm at Sea quilt from several posts ago bled when she wet it down to block it. This was after prewashing all the fabrics twice with Synthrapol. The Cherrywood website suggests washing it again, more than once if necessary with Synthrapol. Any suggestions?

Lots of feathers

2011-11-30T14:22:00.001-08:00

This is another of Karen's well-made quilts. It is really square, although in my photo it looks a little goofy. Her colors seem wonderfully adventuresome for a reproduction quilt: the green in the border is a bit muckier in person and the pink is brighter.

She asked for lots of feathers and I was happy to comply.
I have one more of Karen's quilts to do but it will have to wait until January.

A funky Karen Stone New York Beauty

2011-11-26T16:44:00.001-08:00

Susan says she started this quilt 15 years ago in a class with Karen Stone, in fact, one of her border fabrics is autographed by Karen Stone! (I tried to quilt around it). Usually when I quilt a scrappy quilt for someone I will see lots of familar fabrics, some that I have in my own stash. But not in this quilt! It was made about 5 years before I started quilting. The fabrics are almost vintage according to Susan, and definitely funky, but somehow they all work together.

Susan didn't want everything SID, so it was a challenge to find other things to do with all those scary little points.

Here is Rohrschach, the wildest and craziest of our four rescued feral cats. He loves to have access to his crunchy bowl all day long. but freaks out if while I hold the door for him I happen to be holding my purse. Oooh - so scary!

Storm at Sea - finished!

2011-11-20T15:10:00.001-08:00

Sheri's quilt took longer than planned: I always forget how long it takes to do lots of SID and background quilting. (Picking out stitches added time too) Sheri spent a lot of time on it too, and said she put in plenty of time ripping out seams and resewing. Her top was nice and square and she took the time to serge the edge which I really appreciate.

It turned out pretty, front and back.

Storm at Sea

2011-11-14T10:18:00.001-08:00

Here are my friends Jackie and Sheri in front of my quilt Wild Child at the AQS show in Des Moines last month. My quilt didn't win a ribbon but something interesting has developed because of it being exhibited there. I can't say more just yet...

Sheri brought me her beautiful pieced Storm at Sea top to quilt for her. It's a challenging pattern to piece and also it is challenging to come up with an idea how to quilt! I did what I usually do when I'm trying to come up with ideas; I hung the top on my design wall and took a picture.

Once it is printed out on regular computer paper I can easily draw and erase on it. I made templates out of two thicknesses of freezer paper and I was ready to quilt! I should have paid more attention to my drawing - I quilted an entire row wrong and spent about four hours this morning picking thread out. If I can manage to follow the pattern it will be pretty - here is the back of the quilt. (There is a mirror on the table beneath the rollers)

This is Miss Rosie curled around the frost-blackened basil bush - it sure looks uncomfortable to me!

Aunt Grace's Garden Party

2011-11-06T07:14:00.000-08:00

This is Ruth's quilt that she has been waiting for me to finish for her. It has been hanging at Charlotte's Sew Natural as a shop sample where Ruth has been teaching the class with this as a BOM. It was a pleasure to quilt because she is a careful piecer plus she decided to use a wool batt - my favorite! This is Aunt Grace's Garden Party by Judy Rothermel.

I also finished up a little wallhanging for Marsha the Thimbleberries lady.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

2011-10-30T12:22:00.000-07:00

I'm including my favorite quilt in the quilt festival; The Secret LIfe of Mrs. Meatloaf. Several years ago I made a quilt featuring my cat Sam, it was called My Cat Sam and What He Dreams About at Night. In it, Sam was surrounded by pictures of birds, mice, fish and his sister Mrs. Meatloaf (he loved to chase her around). Once I finished his quilt, I realized that to be fair I needed to make one for Mrs. Meatloaf.

Now, Mrs. Meatloaf was a very soft, affectionate kitty but she was definitely lacking in brains and personality. I figured that in her dreams, she had a personality and the name for her quilt came to me in a flash. Sometimes I struggle and struggle to come up with a name for a quilt but this one was easy. Once I had the name it inspired the quilt and I tried all kinds of things I had never tried before: embroidery with fat thread in the bobbin, Angelina fibers, glitter, beads, and three-dimensional flowers.

Here's a picture from the quilt label of the real Mrs. Meatloaf looking at her quilted self. Mrs. Meatloaf has gone on to Kitty Heaven, so I treasure her quilt.

Check out the rest of the quilts at Amy's blog: http://amyscreativeside.com/2011/10/28/bloggers-quilt-festival-fall-2011/

Joy of Life

2011-10-28T14:16:00.000-07:00

I just finished this cute quilt for Mary - she is teaching it as a BOM at Charlotte's Sew Natural in Newton. The pattern is Joy of Life by Australian designer Rosalie Quinlan.

It took me a while to figure out what to do with it - the background is sort of randomly organized and that made it tricky for me but I do like the way it turned out. Thanks Mary, for using wool batting - my favorite for making the quilting really stand out!

On our way into Newton the other day, Peter and I waited for a train loaded with wind turbine blades - well over 50 of them. They are probably each about 60 feet long; that was a slow moving train. If it's one thing we have plenty of in Kansas - it's wind! (and grasshoppers, and sunflowers, and quilters, and...)

Finally - it's Karen's quilt!

2011-10-23T16:25:00.000-07:00

Karen has been waiting so long for me to get to her quilts; here is the first one. Isn't it a wonderful quilt? Her workmanship is amazing - I can't imagine piecing those blocks with the circles. Her applique is also excellent.

She says she found the pattern in Quilters Newsletter Magazine in a 2003 issue and the block is known as Wagon Wheel, Rising Sun and Clog Wheel. The fabrics are from a collection of Cocheco 1880 reproduction fabrics - the colors are so wonderful. I'm not usually a big fan of reproduction fabrics but I do like these.

Karen sent me more detailed information about the pattern: It was in the November 2001
issue of Quilters Newsletter and the pattern is 'Ezekiel's Wheel' by Cindy Vermillion Hamilton.

I recently read the categories for MQS and discovered they have changed the Miniature category: wholecloths are no longer eligible. Well dang! That's all I have time to get finished between customer quilts - I don't know what I'll have to enter this year.

I love this quilt!

2011-10-14T06:39:00.000-07:00

At last I can post a picture of the Prairie Quilt Guild Opportunity Quilt that I have been working on since last January! My committee tried to keep it under wraps until it could be presented to the guild, which we did this week. The drawing for the quilt will be at our quilt show this June.

The pattern is Applique Affair by Edyta Sitar which we made larger by doing different borders. I designed the borders but fortunately did not have to applique them because they have about a zillion pieces in them. My friend Siriporn Hollar did the quilting - and it is gorgeous! I keep the quilt on my guest room bed so it doesn't get creases from being folded. I must say, it looks REALLY nice there - I will have to buy some tickets!

I did make this quilted bag from the quilt scraps to use as a prize for the guild member that sells the most tickets. I found the pattern in an old issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. After starting the applique I realized it was a pattern by Edyta Sitar - how appropriate! I quilted it on my sewing machine and whined the whole time that I wished I had done it on my longarm. It's so much easier to see what you're doing on the longarm and much easier to get even stitch length. You'll notice I didn't include any close-ups of the quilting.

And finally...

Have you ever seen a pregnant grape?

Eventide again

2011-10-06T16:59:00.000-07:00

Here is Carrie Nelson's Eventide again; this is Leslie's quilt. She says she got stuck in the middle of making this and got mad at it so she put it on her "hateful" shelf until she could face it again. It is a pretty quilt, I'm glad she finished it!

I was trying to bring out the big stars which kind of get lost in all the scrappy-ness.

This is Jackie's first quilt! I can't believe she decided to piece circles for her first effort as a
quilter.

The other day my friend Madeline came by in her old 1942 Chrysler so I could admire it. It's in primo condition inside and out. I'm not up on old cars but Peter said that not many were made during the war years, so this is probably very collectible.

A big one from Edith

2011-09-30T18:41:00.000-07:00

Edith brought me this huge quilt top which is mostly white space to fill up! Her piecing is very precise so I could do pretty much whatever I wanted. I think it is a pretty quilt and tried to design it so it would look good on a bed. The circles of feathers will show as scallops on the draped sides of the quilt as it lays on the bed.

I also finished a quilt for Debbie but forgot to get pictures before I got it back to her! Sometimes I get too busy and my brain just can't keep up.

Today is the first day of the local Quilt Shop Hop. Peter and I checked out the shops in Wichita, Newton and Salina. We drove to Salina (about an hour north of us) partly so we would have an excuse to stop in McPherson and eat at the Main Street Deli. I meant to take a picture of the coconut cream pie we shared for dessert, but it disappeared too quickly!

Salina has lots of beautiful old homes and Art Deco touches on the businesses downtown, like this:

I entered the Northwest Quilting Expo this year for the first time and just heard that my quilt, Woodland Tapestry won a blue ribbon. It's a wholecloth quilt; Superior Masterpiece and metallic thread on Cherrywood hand-dyed fabric.

Celebrity turtles and dancing chickens!

2011-09-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

I call this little quilt Faberge' Turtles and it was made for the IQA Celebrity Mini Quilt Silent Auction, to be held at Quilt Festival in Houston this November. I don't know that I qualify as a Celebrity but I was happy to be asked to make a quilt for the auction! I just barely got it in by the deadline which is today - it's being delivered there today according to UPS!

I made the turtles like the ones in my quilt It's Turtles All the Way Down, using silk and velvet and metallic thread to make them gleam like little jewels.

It's Turtles all the Way Down

At our last Prairie Quilt Guild meeting our speaker was long-time guild member Carla Anderson. She had examples of her quilts both hand quilted and machine quilted. Carla is a very talented, award-winning longarm quilter.

Since it was my last meeting as President, the board presented me with a quilt they had made for me. I absolutely LOVE it and it was quilted by Carla who has served on the board this year. Here it is being presented to me at the meeting; that's me at the podium, Vera and Evelyn doing the presenting.

Vera, the Past President planned the whole thing and even played music and had the board come up and do the chicken dance. It was crazy! As soon as I get a hanging sleeve on it, I plan to hang it in my studio.

Don't you like these chickens? This one is obviously a quilter.

Here I am: Chicken Prez!

This is me and Peter as chickens:

They even put Captain Quilt on it:

Thank you Vera and board members - it's a very special quilt and a wonderful remembrance of my year as president!

Thimbleberries and a quilt room tour

2011-09-18T07:55:00.000-07:00

Here's a wallhanging made by Marsha the Thimbleberries Lady that I just finished quilting. True to form, it is well pieced and made with Thimbleberries fabric!

note: Marsha has confessed to me that this is actually made from Kansas Troubles
fabrics, not Thimbleberries

Last weekend was the Quilt Room Tour put on by Prairie Quilt Guild every other year. It's so much fun to visit Guild member's homes and get a peek at their sewing areas, rooms or even separate buildings in some cases. With permission from the hostesses, I have some pictures to post.

Lynanne has a separate building that she shares with her husband's shop. She is a doll maker in addition to being a quilter, and her studio is full of her creations.

She keeps several old sewing machines set up facing each other to use when sewing friends visit: they can sew and talk face to face.

Jen is a pattern designer and has a super organized studio. She says she moved boxes of stuff out before the tour! She also collects old sewing machine and has a great way to display them.

Susan has a beautiful sewing room in her new home. I took a picture of her at her machine and neglected to get pictures of the beautiful view she faces as she sews and the many gorgeous quilts throughout her house.

Kathy with a K has adopted a sewing area for herself in the basement family room. She says she asked for two big foldable tables for her birthday so she would have a large area to work on.

Kathy also had some wonderful family quilts like this yellow quilt that she uses as a topper on a bed.

Cathy with a C has a new house with a fabulous sewing room. Here are my friend Betty, Peter and myself posing on the porch of Cathy's house which has been decorated with quilts.

She had some good ideas for storage in her sewing room. All of her fat quarters are stored in these little canvas units (she says they are available from Walmart - on line only) I like the way she put a colored button on each one showing what color fabrics are stored inside.

Her ruler storage is hidden by a swinging design wall.

Open

closed

I was so impressed by her collection of old quilts which she says are all family quilts. Here is an old red and green quilt - the green has faded to beige.

And this one I would have liked to fold up and take home with me. The quilting on it was amazing and it was in excellent condition. She is lucky to have such beautiful quilted family treasures! There was one more location, but we ran out of time and energy to see it.

It's Shop Hop time again!

2011-09-11T08:17:00.000-07:00

It's Shop Hop time again! I quilted this for Charlotte's Sew Natural for the Central Kansas Quilt Shop Hop - you can read about it in Charlotte's newsletter here.

Once again they had special Shop Hop fabric designed, this time by Jason Yenter and it features a Kansas theme.

This quilt I just finished for Julie. It's one of several Christmas quilts I have done for her: she must have the best decorated house at Christmastime!

She says she has lots of fun embellishments to add now that it is quilted - little jingle bells and buttons and so on. Should be really cute!

Peter accompanied me to the Kansas State Fair one day last week when I was there to judge quilts before the Fair officially opened. What is it about big machines that fascinates most men? Peter had to have his picture taken with this shiny new combine. It was so huge it makes him look tiny when he stands next to it!

He found out how they got the new tires to look so shiny after he posed with his hand on one: they oiled them.

Quilts for grandchildren

2011-09-02T09:46:00.000-07:00

Evelyn made this as a wedding quilt for a grandchild (who has been married for 6 years - but who's counting!). She thought she would like it quilted with some little circles and since the colors reminded me of the sea, I put little bubbles around the dark blue frames and some sort of kelp-like stuff in the borders. Evelyn is a very neat and tidy piecer: the back of her tops look as good as the front!

Sylvia makes the cutest quilts for her grandkids. She doesn't mess around with easy patterns either! This quilt is small but has many little bitty pieces. I love the red vintage cowboy fabric in the star centers.

Wichita recently broke a weather record for the most days over 100 degrees in one year: 52 so far this year. That broke the record set during the 30's. There are other parts of the country with hotter temperatures, drought, fires, floods, hurricanes etc, so I really shouldn't complain!

A strange alien garden

2011-08-31T06:17:00.000-07:00

Kay brought two HUGE tops for me to quilt for her. She is another one of those over achieving quilters that only makes big quilts with a million pieces in them! This is Tonga Rhapsody which is a BOM being done by Charlotte's Sew Natural in Newton.

At first I was overwhelmed by the bright batiks and busy blocks and couldn't figure out what to do. I ended up ignoring the piecing in the sampler blocks and doing a different curvy design in each one. I drew the design with chalk on each block as I advanced the quilt.

I like the way it turned out and I'm glad I didn't wimp out and do an edge to edge design.

I have served as president of Prairie Quilt Guild for the past year and last night was my last board meeting as president. Traditionally, the president makes gifts for the board members that have worked so hard all year. I made 16 of these cute pincushions (from a pattern called Pinballs by Vanilla House Designs) for my board members.

Don't they look like a strange alien garden? I had to visit every thrift shop in Wichita to find all the old candlesticks!

To beat the heat I have been taking my walk early in the day; when I leave the house the stars are still out. This little guy gets up early too.

Who is that masked man?

2011-08-20T07:16:00.000-07:00

This quilt of Ann's is a beauty! It's big and has about a million little pieces in it - just thinking about all that piecing makes me a little queasy. But Ann is a precision piecer and does wonderful work. I love the border print she used around the edge.

I'm not usually a fan of civil war reproduction fabrics but I love these fabrics - in fact I realized I had bought the same fabrics for a quilt I started three years ago. This is how far I have gotten on it:

Peter and I drove to Manhattan to see quilt appraiser Carol Elmore and have her appraise a quilt for me. It was foggy when we left home in the morning and the sun broke through as we were driving through the Flint Hills. I saw this:

And realized it was HUNDREDS of orb spider webs wet with moisture from the fog and glistening in the sunlight.

It was beautiful, but I wouldn't want to meet the hundreds of spiders that went with them!

From our most recent Prairie Quilt Guild meeting: who is that masked man?

It's Captain Quilt (aka Peter) He's everywhere, he's everywhere!

An elegant quilt and dead tastebuds

2011-08-06T07:35:00.000-07:00

This is such an elegant little quilt! Merilyn made it as a sample for our local Wichita quilt shop, Material Girls. She said the fabric also comes in red and cream but I think the taupe and cream is beautiful.

Merilyn didn't want heavy background quilting so the applique blocks are really just done with SID quilting.

This is from a few days ago:

Fortunately it has cooled down - to only 100 degrees and we have had a good rain. This morning it was 72 degrees out, the coolest it had been in weeks. It felt heavenly! But at the Farmer's Market this morning I heard a little girl complaining about being cold to her mother, so I guess we all have our own personal thermostat.

This was Peter's breakfast recently: I think his tastebuds are dying. (That's a sliced cold wienie on his popcorn)

Stippling and the Tomato Man

2011-07-30T07:28:00.000-07:00

I just finished this quilt for Judy, I think it is probably the 12th one of this pattern that I have quilted. Luckily, I do like the design! Judy wanted heavy quilting which is time consuming but really my favorite way to quilt. She is new to quilting and did a nice job on this rather complicated design.

Some people are tired of stippling, but Judy requested it as a background pattern. I like it too, although I do think it was overused for a while. Anything gets tiresome if it is used everywhere, whether it is stippling, McTavishing, feathers or the current favorite: curved crosshatching.

It's been so hot here for so long that no one has been able to grow tomatoes in their backyard. I have three big healthy plants that I keep watering but it is so hot that what blossoms they manage to produce just drop off. Peter and I have been driving in to Wichita early every Saturday morning to go to the Farmer's Market. We have to get there early or the Tomato Man runs out of tomatoes. Here is the line at his stall.

As we left the Market the line had more than doubled but I had my bag full of tomatoes safely in my hand. We eat them at just about every meal - YUM.

Cool quilt

2011-07-22T04:59:00.000-07:00

Annette's quilt looks so cool - I mean in temperature. I'll take cool however I can get it in this heat wave! She wanted an edge to edge design in the center and something pretty in the borders.

The inner kitties get their outside fix by going out on the porch. Here is Lily on the porch looking in at Elsie in the house.

My committee and I finished the top for our guild's Opportunity Quilt and it is gorgeous! It goes to my friend Siriporn for quilting - I can't wait to post a picture here, but we keep it under wraps until we can show our guild the finished quilt.

A birthday quilt and a hot program

2011-07-18T04:56:00.000-07:00

I finished this big quilt for Carol. She started it years ago for her daughter and wanted to finally get it done for her 40th birthday this fall. She wanted me to do simple custom quilting so I tried to not use my rulers so much - but I have a hard time putting them down. I just like the way the quilt looks so much better with some stitch-in-the-ditch and straight line quilting.

Jeez, it's still really hot in Wichita! I hope our air conditioner doesn't conk out or we will have to move into the studio with all four cats. Mr. Rohrschach refuses to come inside during the daytime, even in triple digit temperatures. He hides behind the rain barrel in a spot that stays shady all day long.

Our speaker for Prairie Quilt Guild last week was David Taylor and he was wonderful! He had everyone laughing and admiring his amazing work. I recommend him highly as a speaker and a teacher! Here is one of his quilts, front:

and back:

That's a lot of quilting! At the end of his talk guild members swarmed around his quilts to admire them up close.

I also took his workshop and picked up some interesting tips and information. His style of hand applique is different from traditional applique. I'm determined to try and finish the class project using his method- it certainly works well for him!

111 degrees in Wichita yesterday

2011-07-11T14:53:00.001-07:00

Still hot

2011-07-08T16:07:00.000-07:00

It's STILL hot , but after all this is Kansas in the summertime. How did those pioneers survive in their long sleeved dresses, long skirts and petticoats?

I finished this quilt for Emma Creek Quilt Guild, it is their Opportunity Quilt. It is a Lori Smith design with added borders to make it bed-size. It will have a curved edge, so I designed the border to compliment the curves. I think the curved cross hatching looks nice here.

Peter and I are working off calories by scratching our mosquito bites. Fortunately for you I did not take a gallery of pictures of them as documentation. Kansas has several mosquito species and one of them is huge and hungry. Today I wore one of those mosquito repellent devices with a little fan in it - and it worked!! I love that thing, I'm going to wear one around my neck for the next two months!

Little quilts and Final Friday

2011-07-03T07:47:00.000-07:00

Leslie brought me three little quilts and I only remembered to take pictures of two of them. She said they had been sitting around for years all finished and unquilted. The one up above is a small signature quilt. Leslie likes dark quilting thread so it is a little hard to see the quilting.

This flying geese quilt is miniature size - very cute.

The Wichita Art Museum contacted Prairie Quilt Guild about doing a demonstration at Final Friday; a monthly art walk through Wichita art galleries. They were honoring Kansas Arts as part of the 150th birthday of Kansas as a state. This is ironic since our current governor apparently puts little value on the arts. I'd better not get started on that subject - this is a quilting blog!

I asked the board of the Guild for someone to demonstrate hand quilting and the two Paula's volunteered. Here is Paula on the left doing hand piecing and hand applique and Paula on the right doing hand quilitng.

I thought we should also show machine quilting, so I brought my sewing machine with me and made a small quilt to demonstrate machine quilting. I got my machine all set up and started to quilt and I heard "thump thump CLUMP, thump thump CLUMP!" Something was clearly wrong but I couldn't figure it out. My machine is going to the repair place and I guess I just proved one of the advantages of hand quilting!

We are having a heat wave and I am ready for it to end. I don't like it when it doesn't cool down at night - I find it hard to sleep even with the air conditioner going. We have lost our bedtime cat companions too - they aren't in the mood for snuggling.

Yes, my wife quilts

2011-06-19T16:39:00.000-07:00

This is Rita's quilt which will hang in my LQS, Charlotte's Sew Natural, as a sample. Rita hasn't been quilting that long and did a really nice job on this quilt. I think it is the first time she has had custom quilting on a quilt so I wanted it to be pretty. I made templates for the designs in the setting triangles and quilted feathered wreaths around the sampler blocks.

I love the Japanese fabrics Debbie chose for her wall hanging and I love the way it turned out !

At MQS we saw a quilter's husband wearing a shirt like this. We asked if we could copy the
idea because Peter REALLY wanted one like it to wear to guild. Can you see the stray threads glued all over it?

I did the lettering and outline stitching, Peter glued the threads on. He was especially pleased when he wore it to Charlotte's and Mary started automatically picking a thread off!

Hot here today and we had our first corn on the cob for the summer - yum! Can't wait for the first real tomatoes.

More of Eddie's quilts

2011-06-04T16:19:00.000-07:00

Here are the rest of Eddie's quilts. This one had lots of room for quilting - of course I chose feathers! They are fun to do and so pretty.

This one didn't need a lot of fancy quilting. I paid attention to the borders and did an edge-to- edge design in the center. The fabric is so busy that any fancy quilting would have been lost.

It's really easier to see on the back!

Hot and humid here now. I'm trying to get the garden mulched and Peter is working on repairing the backyard fence which is suffering from the strong Kansas winds!

Quilt shops and a baby owl

2011-06-03T16:45:00.000-07:00

I've been working on three quilts for Eddie - here is the first one. Eddie believes in making BIG quilts!

I was stumped for awhile on the border, it is a very wide border and I didn't want to do a single line of feathers - the feathers would have been huge. So I tried a double border of feathers- what do you think? It's hard to see on the dark blue fabric.

Last Saturday I met my friend Siriporn at Material Girls, a local quilt shop in Wichita. She quilts a lot of store samples for them and I really liked this one. I made her pose next to it!

On the way home I stopped at another quilt shop - Picket Fence, and saw this cute little guy.

Shop owner Lisa said she found him that morning while she was on a walk He was in the middle of the street being attacked by grackles so she picked him up (he bit her) and put him in a pet carrier. She was taking him to the raptor center for care. We had a storm the night before and he must of been knocked out of a tree. They think he is a screech owl. I hope he makes it!

It's a deedle-deedle night

2011-05-19T15:50:00.000-07:00

Thank you Desley for the book I won! I know I will enjoy Karen McTavish's Quilting for Show. It will be exciting to receive a package from Australia - I don't think I ever have before. Desley shows her beautifully quilted work on her blog Addicted to Quilts, you can see it here.

In answer to a question by Desley about my quilt Wild Child, yes the borders are done with trapunto and the color surrounding the trapunto is all thread. I used Glide thread for the first time and really liked it. It is a 40 wt. trilobal polyester and the colors really glow.

It has been unseasonably cool this spring but today is more like usual: it's warm, humid and we're under a tornado watch. We keep a weather radio next to the bed and when it updates it makes an obnoxious sound: DEEDLE DEEDLE DEEDLE. Tonight we expect to have what we call a deedle-deedle night with updates coming every time we drop off to sleep.

Back from MQS

2011-05-17T03:05:00.000-07:00

In past years I have attended MQS to see the quilts, buy stuff and take classes, but this year Peter and I worked as vendors in the Innova booth. It was a different side of MQS - fun but very tiring. Definitely hard on the feet!

I was asked to bring a couple of my quilts to help decorate the booth. In this picture you can see Ann's quilt on the right. Lots of people admired your quilt Ann!

Mary's quilt was hanging aroung the corner - it was also much admired and photographed! My thanks to Ann and Mary for letting me borrow their quilts.

Peter's birthday always falls during MQS - this year Amy and Joe, our Innova dealers, surprised Peter with a birthday cake.

My quilt Itty Bitty Boutis won a second place ribbon. Renae Haddadin's quilt Golden Snowflake won first and I really can't complain - her quilt is stunning!

My new quilt Wild Child didn't win a ribbon but doesn't it look pretty hanging at the show? The lighting was just perfect to show off the trapunto.

There were so many beautiful quilts. Claudia Pfeil won Best of Show for The Magical Mermaid's Castle - I loved her mermaids! She uses thousands of crystals on her quilt; it must weigh a ton.

I had fun meeting Terri Doyle, another quilter that has recently switched to an Innova longarm. Here she is standing next to her blue ribbon winning wholecloth, Secret Garden.

Some of my favorite quilts at the show were made by Janet Stone, who is from Overland Park. When I asked her if I could put pictures of her quilts on my blog she said I could, as long as I said nice things about them! That's easy to do since I love her whimsical designs and amazing workmanship.

Her quilt Mutton But Letters won Best of Show in the Just for Me category.

Just look at her 1/4 inch crosshatching in the blocks - the stitches are perfectly even and the lines are straight and accurate. It's hard to believe she does this on her domestic sewing machine! That is incredible workmanship!

Here are her other two quilts which both won blue ribbons. Nouveau Quattro Alfabetico:

and Red Letter Daze:

I had a great time but it is good to be back to my own cat-covered bed.

May-bees and wallhangings

2011-05-07T14:31:00.000-07:00

Ann brought me two little wallhangings: the one above is a Schnibbles pattern. It is very cute but it looks like way too much piecing for me!

The other is a folk art kind of a thing.

I finished my own quilt for MQS at the very last minute and didn't have time to even get a picture of it - I will have to do that later. The weather is heating up just in time for the show in Overland Park.

Last week end Peter and I were eating lunch and noticed our neighbor and his kids out in our driveway staring up. They kept staring up as they moved into our backyard. When we went outside to see what was going on we could see a cloud of bees swarming out by our fence. They congregated near my garden cart and started landing on it.

We all stood around and watched them for a while and then I went in and looked up beekeepers in the phone book. I called some guy and asked if he was interested in removing them - he told me one of two things could happen: they might stay there or they might leave. Oh really! That was so helpful. They did end up leaving after about half an hour, off they went over another neighbor's roof. I hope they found a nice place to live!

Good excuses

2011-04-27T08:28:00.000-07:00

It's been a while but I have good excuses. My computer had a virus and had to go to the computer hospital over the weekend. One of those pesky windows popped up that looked like an official Windows thing and it told me the computer had 101 nasty viruses so I should click on the window to fix it. I figured it was bogus and clicked to close the pesky window. At the computer hospital they told me that if you click ANYWHERE on that window it activates the virus. You should hit ALT F4 to close it instead. There - I saved you $100. I'm going to tattoo ALT F4 on my arm so I don't forget!

I'm also working like crazy on a quilt that I entered in MQS. They are the only national show that I know of that lets people enter quilts while they are still unfinished - so that's what I did. I figured it was the only way to get me to finish it! I have been working night and day (really!) to get it done. The end is now in sight, I think I will be able to finish the quilting in time to wash it, block it and bind it before it has to go to Overland Park for the show.

All my customer quilting was finished up at the beginning of the month so I would have time for my own quilt. This quilt by Marsha the Thimbleberries Lady was one of the last ones I did. She really does seem to have an unending supply of these.

Her friend Debbie brought me this cute quilt from a pattern by our fellow Guild member, Debbie Wiesner. She does a nice job of quilting on her sewing machine but wanted me to do this one because she couldn't figure out what to do with it.

This is one of those fusible applique quilts that drive me crazy to quilt. It has umpteen-zillion teeny weeny pieces fused down and I have to quilt around every single one because they start to peel off. This was "commissioned" by a lady that wanted to give it as a wedding gift. She found someone to make it and then me to quilt it. The woman that did the applique did an excellent job - all those little pieces would drive me crazy! Although it is an attractive design and I know these kits are really popular - they leave me cold. It's more like an artsy craftsy project to put it together than a quilt. JMHO.

I got some really exciting news last night - my newly finished miniature quilt won an award at the AQS Show in Paducah - here is the link to the winners! http://www.americanquilter.com/shows_contests/paducah/2011/quilt_contest/quilt_winners.php
I would love to see it there but I think I would need a boat to get there today, with the Ohio River flooding.

Julie's quilts

2011-04-09T07:23:00.000-07:00

It's hard to stay inside and quilt when it is so beautiful outdoors! But I did finish two quilts for Julie - this pumpkin quilt...

And this cute redwork Bunnies Love Chocolate quilt:

I went to the MCC Sale in Hutchison yesterday and today is our Longarm group meeting so I should have some more pictures to post tomorrow.

Spring quilts and Wichita weirdness

2011-04-02T06:59:00.000-07:00

Sylvia made this quilt out of some tea towels that were a wedding gift years ago. She said she had never used them, they just stayed in a drawer. She did a wonderful job of choosing fabrics and designing this little quilt.

This cute paper pieced dog wall hanging was made by Susan. The same designer also made a paper pieced cat wall hanging which I own the pattern for but have never gotten up the courage to make. This turned out so cute that I may have to dig up that pattern and try it.

It's so pretty and springish out - the trees are leafing out and flowering, bulbs are blooming and the temperatures are warming up. Our neighbor Mary is one of those people whose yard is always incredibly neat and tidy, I swear she vacuums it. She was the first in the neighborhood to mow her lawn yesterday. Meanwhile, Peter is cursing our lawn which is starting to grow, that means it's time for his least favorite of chores. Gotta keep up with Mary!

On a visit to a Wichita shopping mall I saw this store:

How about a red car coffin? Is this a new trend or just a Wichita weirdness?

Happy NQD

2011-03-19T17:03:00.000-07:00

At the last meeting of Prairie Quilt Guild, Debbie Maddy was the speaker. She brought 6 or 7 suitcases jammed full of quilts (she drove here from Texas) and when I saw the piles and piles of quilts I was sure her program would be hours long. But she zipped right through her program and it was great fun to see all her quilts. Her specialty is making traditional patterns easier using half square triangles.

We also had our Guild Challenge, the theme was 'What Goes Round, Comes Round.' There were three fairly hideous fabrics that had to be used and there had to be one circle at least 4 inches made from one of them. These are a few of my favorites up close:

This next one is sideways, I couldn't get it turned around the right way.

Mine is not one of my favorites, but here it is:

Today is National Quilting Day and appropriately enough, I spent the day working on a quilt. I'm on the committee for our Guild's Opportunity Quilt and today was a work day to get the packets ready so we can hand them out to the people making blocks for us. It's a secret for now, so it will be a while before I can post any pictures. I think it will be gorgeous!

Quilts and guitars

2011-03-14T17:37:00.000-07:00

This is a quilt that I quilted months ago but I couldn't post it until now. Lori made it for her friend Michele out of some beautiful indigo fabric that Michele had shared with her. Michele loved the fabric so much that she didn't want to cut into it and use it but Lori found a pattern that showed off the fabrics and made the quilt which I then quilted. At our last Guild meeting Lori showed the quilt during Show and Share and then gave it to Michele. She said Michele is always doing nice things for people and wanted to do something nice for her. It turned out really pretty although it is so dark that it is hard to get a picture of.

This quilt is made by June. It's a civil war pattern designed by Judie Rothermel and I love June's fabric choices. Instead of browned out civil war reproduction fabrics she used Japanese and ombre fabrics. It was killer to quilt because it is huge and has about ten zillion pieces in it but I liked the way it turned out.

I delivered the quilt to June at her home and she and her husband Charles gave us a concert on their guitars. June does the pickin' and Charles strums the chords. Pretty cute.

At the garden show

2011-03-13T18:25:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the Wichita Garden Show and Prairie Quilt Guild always has a display of garden-related quilts. Peter and I spent one morning sitting at the display trying to get people to vote for their favorite quilt. People are so funny - they'll say "I don't know anything about quilts" so we try to convince them to just vote for the one they like best.

We had time to wander around and look at the exhibits. They have a show for flower arrangements and I checked that out. I'm afraid my tastes are old-fashioned: I like poems that rhyme, paintings that are representational rather than abstract and flower arrangements that show off the flowers. You really see some wacky things at flower shows - how about this:

or this:

I like these better.

Then I walked through the garden exhibits. The theme was Gardens from the Movies so we had Avatar:

Up:

The Karate Kid:

Jurassic Park:

and my favorite, The Secret Garden:

The Extension Office did a cute one from The Hobbit:

An icebox full of quilts

2011-03-04T17:01:00.000-08:00

I love this quilt that Ann made for her son - her piecing is wonderful and I love the Japanese taupe-y fabrics. She likes me to use wool batting which I also love - it makes the quilting really shine through.

Today I gave Donna, a new Innova owner, some help with her machine. Actually, she didn't need a lot of help since she is an experienced machine quilter (with her sewing machine) and is smart and not intimidated by her new machine. She had quilts all over her house and I asked her if I could take a picture of some of her quilts in an old icebox - isn't this a wonderful way to display quilts?

Peter and I spent the morning at the Wichita Garden Show - more about that later...

It's Spring-ish

2011-03-02T17:12:00.000-08:00

I finished Sheila's Christmas quilt - I don't know the designer but it is a cute pattern. She gave me a roll of Dream Wool to use as batting and I really liked it. I dislike using Dream Cotton on the longarm but I really liked the way the Dream wool quilted up. Sheila used Texture Magic on the snow and on the bunnies.

This is Marsha the Thimbleberries Lady's quilt - I think it is actually Kansas Troubles fabric. She does stray from Thimbleberries every now and then.

It's feeling Spring-ish. The weather has warmed up, the robins are back and the grass is greening up a bit. I'm hoping it stays like this next week so we can actually hold a Guild meeting: the first for the year since the first two were cancelled due to weather.

It's a challenge

2011-02-22T07:21:00.000-08:00

Last week the Challenge Committee for Prairie Quilt Guild met at my studio to have all the quilts judged for entry in the AQS Guild Challenge at the Knoxville Show next summer. The Guild entered the Challenge for the first time two years ago and won Honorable Mention. This year it was decided to bring in a judge from outside the Guild to choose the quilts for entry in the show. The quilts were really wonderful and creative, it took most of a day for Carol Elmore to judge the 38 entries. I can't show the winners because they won't be announced to the Guild until April. At the March meeting the Guild membership will do their voting for the quilts they like best, so there will be lots of winners!

Peter and I spent most of Sunday getting tax stuff ready for our tax accountant. I dread that job all year long!! We see our accountant on Thursday and that part is no problem, it's the preparation that is the killer. I always vow to be more organized in the coming year but it never works.

I was excited to learn that my miniature quilt Sugar Plum won a ribbon at Road to California in January. I have been waiting until they posted the winners so I could include a link; ttp://www.road2ca.com/2011winners/road/winners.html. The quilts look spectacular - I would love to attend that show someday.

Enough already

2011-02-10T16:44:00.000-08:00

More snow, even more than last time. A foot of light fluffy sparkley snow. It was pretty, but enough already! I had to cancel another Prairie Quilt Guild meeting! I will go down in history as the only President of the Guild to cancel two meetings in one year.

I had plenty to do. I finished this quilt (at the top of this post) for Catherine - it's from a pattern in McCall's Quilting by Rebecca LoGiudice and has a lot of hand work. Catherine said she had fun making it her own by adding the little details.

The weather is looking up - 60 degrees next week. I'll have to dig out my shorts!

A short road trip

2011-02-05T17:20:00.000-08:00

Last Saturday it was 70 degrees. In the past week the temperatures dropped to below zero and a nasty blizzard blew through. Here is my deck in warmer times:

Here it is last week after I shoveled a path to the studio.

I think we only received 5 or 6 inches of snow but the wind blew it into big drifts. Rosie had cabin fever and was determined to go outside in single digit temperatures. She came back inside quickly. Rohrschach however is apparently a Snowcat and stayed out for long periods before coming in to warm up.

Today I guess we had cabin fever and decided to make a short road trip to the little town of Alden, home of an amazing shop called Prairie Flower Crafts. They were having a Superbowl Sale this week - about the only good thing I can think of associated with a football game. Alden is really tiny - this is basically the main street with the shop on the right and the grain elevators at the end of the street.

The shop was started in 1970 in the old Alden Mercantile and eventually it took over the whole block of buildings. It is a maze of rooms filled with fabric going back many years; it's kind of a trip through the history of quilting fabrics!

It's a cool old building, with wood floors and high ceilings and many of the original store fixtures. This is the entrance room which has craft items and knick-knacks in addition to fabric:

This room is the brightest of all (It's really kind of dark everywhere else) and has Jinny Beyer fabric dating back a few centuries, well, decades anyway. Also a nice selection of Liberty cottons and a huge range of imported Japanese cottons. The older fabrics have the old prices on them - I bought some Jinny Beyer fabric that was $7.00/yard,

This is the flower room, with flowered fabrics and baskets.

In here are kitchen and food fabrics with cool old shop cabinets.

Here is a room full of solids:

In here are Christmas fabrics, fabrics sorted by color and black and whites.

Another old store fixture;

I bought a few things and enjoyed my trip through the history of quilt fabric! They do have a website: http://aldenfabric.com/. The lady that owns the store is getting along in years and I hate to think of Alden without her shop!

On the way home we stopped at a cafe in Sterling for a hamburger:

Then admired the wintry Kansas landscape;

There were lots of Red-Tailed Hawks, Marsh Harriers, camels and ostriches.

CAMELS AND OSTRICHES!!!!!!! Yep - there is an exotic animal park outside of Hutchison where we saw them in the field.

I have been finishing up a quilt for our guild challenge, but I can't post pictures for a while - we're supposed to keep them a secret...

Quilting, not blogging

2011-01-31T17:34:00.000-08:00

I have been quilting, not blogging, the last few weeks. I just finished this quilt for Pattie and she is waiting to see it finished for the first time online. We are having nasty winter weather so I may not be able to get it to her until next week. I hope you like it Pattie! I think it turned out really well - if you don't like it, just let me know and I will find a home for it! (at my house)

I love this kind of pattern that allows room for quilting.

Pattie requested echo quilting in the center.

This is probably the tenth one of these Queen and Her Court quilts that I have quilted. Fortunately, I like the design! I did two in a row for Teresa (this is her quilt) and her sister Rayna, whose quilt I forgot to photograph. They were quilted similarly but not exactly alike.

I used a light pink thread on Teresa's quilt and I like the way it turned out.

This is Julie's Hop to It quilt. I did one a while back for Mary, and this one is similar but I tried something different in the borders.

We are preparing ourselves for ice and snow tonight and the next day or so. Very cold temperatures also - but we really can't complain. It is winter and so far we have escaped the heavy snow that other parts of the country have received. I'm feeling a batch of cookies coming on - something about cold weather makes me want to make cookies!

Timing is everything

2011-01-17T16:57:00.000-08:00

We didn't make it to the Oklahoma City Winter Quilt Show and I'm really sorry we didn't because my quilt Indian Summer won Best of Show! My friend Carol was there appraising quilts and she called to tell me I had won. I think I probably squealed rather loudly in her ear - I hope she has recovered, but it was very exciting. Lynn and Ron took a picture for me.

I was home learning how to time my longarm machine. Peter was the one actually doing the work and it was a learning experience! It is one of those jobs that really needs sharp young eyes (we used lots of extra lights and magnification for our blurry old eyes).

I have stacks of quilts waiting for me to get to them so I will be staying busy. The snow is finally melting, just in time for the next round of storms. I had to cancel both of our Prairie Quilt Guild meetings last week - I was hoping I wouldn't be faced with that decision. It was snowy and very cold, so it seemed to be the best thing to do.

It's cold and snowy and really that is the best excuse to stay inside and quilt. Not that I need an excuse!

Eventide

2011-01-07T16:35:00.000-08:00

This is Ann's latest quilt - it is a Miss Rosie pattern called 'Eventide'. The color in the photo above is a bit washed out, the quilt actually has more warm beige than the white. It's a beauty though! That Ann is a busy quilter, she is bringing me another top next month.

I adjusted the contrast in the close-ups which makes the color really wacky.

If the weather holds, Peter and I plan to drive down to Oklahoma City next week for the Winter Quilt Show. Anyone else plan to attend? I have a quilt entered, and Lynn and I entered the quilt we worked on together. It is supposed to get COLD next week with some snow, so we'll have to wait and see what the weather is like. My quilts definitely travel more than I do!

A post for 1-1-11

2011-01-01T08:58:00.000-08:00

I guess I have had a vacation from my blog as well as from quilting for customers. We had a quiet Christmas and I had time to finish a new miniature quilt to enter in MQS this year. I'm going to save pictures of it to post closer to the show. This last week I have started in again on customer quilts. I did several small challenge quilts for guild members but I can't post them because we are supposed to keep them a secret until we turn them in.

The quilt at the top of the blog is Barb's, she used a pattern by Cleo's Designs and did her own larger version of it. Cleo is a member of our guild and has had real success with her patterns. They are designed to be done with fusible applique. This is her website if you want to see her patterns. She is also a wonderful gardener, so you can see where she gets her inspiration. http://cleosdesigns.com/.
I like Barb's version a lot. She said she had a spot in mind for the wallhanging so wanted it to be just the right size.

I looked back at my January post from last year and realized I haven't completed ANY of the three projects I said I wanted to finish in 2010. Pretty pitiful. I'll just have to try again this year!

My friend Sandy sent me this cute aromatherapy Ladybug pillow. (It has lavender inside) I like that it comes with it's own little t-shirt to wear so you can wash the t-shirt and keep the pillow clean! No thanks, that's like putting plastic down all over your furniture and rugs to keep them clean - but then you have to stare at plastic instead of nice furniture and rugs.

First quilts and Harry Potter

2010-12-15T05:31:00.000-08:00

Karen did the embroidered baskets quilt from several posts back and this is another of her embroidered quilts. This is a pattern by Crabapple Hill.

Yesterday was a meeting of Prairie Quilt Guild and it was the first time we have had a December meeting in several years. The last few years the December meeting had to be cancelled due to bad weather. We had a fun Christmas party meeting, with Christmas music, Christmas cookies and decorations and a program about the 20 small Bees within the larger Guild. We also had a guessing game of first quilts - all the board members displayed the first quilt they had ever made and we handed out a list of board members names with a clue by each name. The guild members were supposed to guess who made which quilt. It was just for fun, there were no prizes but I think people enjoyed it.

My first quilt was this little block that was all made by hand; hand pieced, appliqued and quilted. My clue was " This is the best hand quilting I have ever done". It's also the ONLY hand quitling I have ever done as I am a confirmed machine
quilter!

I got caught up on my customer quilting so I finally allowed myself to go see the new Harry Potter movie. We went to one of those huge theater complexes that had the movie playing in four different theaters at different times. We chose an afternoon showing in one of the smaller theaters and were the only ones there! It was great to have a private viewing - we could be obnoxious and rock our seats wildly, comment loudly on the movie while it was running and other bad behavior.

While we read of heavy snows in many parts of the country it remains sunny, cold and DRY here in Wichita. I'm sure we will get our turn!

Good quilting weather

2010-12-06T15:37:00.000-08:00

I just finished two big quilts for Eddie - she makes nice big quilts for her grandkids. She is a very precise piecer too, I can vouch for her accuracy on the one-inch squares in the Irish Chain at the top of this post.

I really like the way this one turned out, it's such a bold graphic design. Hopefully her grandson appreciates it.

Before and after

2010-11-30T11:17:00.000-08:00

I'm amazed no one found the problem - or at least no one left a comment that they did. That makes me feel a little better because I always check the quilt over for problems before I unpin it from the machine, and I was kicking myself for missing it.

Here is the problem block, it's the one with the pink flowers.

Here it is after I fixed it in a photo taken in very different lighting. You can see I left out the crosshatched triangle on the left side of the block.

Blogger is misbehaving, I'm having a terrible time getting the pictures where I want them!

Now go back to the photo of the whole quilt on yesterday's post and your eye will find it like a magnet!

What is wrong with this picture?

2010-11-29T06:48:00.000-08:00

Barb brought me this beautiful applique top to quilt. She says she finished the blocks years ago and only just finished the border, which she designed herself. The blocks are a Piece of Cake design. I was inspired to do a lot of quilting but did not finish the quilt without some mishaps.

I started the piano key border (the straight lines along the edge of the quilt) at the top and then I quilted all the way down the quilt and did the piano key border at the bottom. I like to do the piano key border along the side going up the quilt, it is just easier for me to use the ruler that way. When I finally made it back up to the top of the quilt I found that I had started the top with half-inch piano keys but forgot that by the time I reached the bottom, so had done three-quarter inch piano keys at the bottom and up the sides. DUH! I had to take out the stitches on top and redo the border there.

Once I finished the quilt, I pinned it to my design wall to admire it and found another dumb mistake! It has to do with the crosshatching, can you find it? Once you see it, your eye is drawn to it like a magnet and you wonder what kind of idiot quilter made that mistake! I'll post the corrected quilt tomorrow.

So I got to work on my stitch ripping skills and I have to say that the perfectly even stitches that my Innova makes made the job easier than usual! Maybe they should put that in their ads?

Spam for Thanksgiving

2010-11-23T04:30:00.000-08:00

This is Karen's quilt with all the embroidered baskets. I left it on my design wall to enjoy until she picked it up, it is such a cheerful little quilt!

Her embroidery is really well done, such tiny even stitches.

Linda wanted gold metallic thread on her quilt.

It is very sparkly in the right light.

Our email address book was hacked this week. All of our friends received a Viagra ad thanks to some cheesy spammer. I changed our email password and we took the computer in to be checked. It was clear of viruses and malware so I think it is safe to open our emails once again!

I'm still madly trying to catch up after my three weeks without a longarm machine. As a result, Dood now feels like home so it was a good way to get me acclimated to a new machine!

Happy Thanksgiving to all - I plan to use my new turkey platter for the first time.

Open Studio

2010-11-12T12:41:00.000-08:00

Another quilt from Marsha the Thimbleberries lady. She does such a nice job on her piecing, it really makes my job so much easier!

Our speaker at Prairie Quilt Guild this week was Jane Hardy Miller, the author of the French Braid quilt books. She was a fun speaker and brought many quilts with her, including a few from her upcoming book. Here are a few of her quilts, I didn't post the ones that haven't been published yet, you'll have to wait until May when the book comes out to see those.

Tomorrow we are having an open studio for the local longarm group to come see my new Innova. Peter and I are Sales Reps in addition to being happy Innova owners, so we wanted people to have a chance to try the machine. It will be fun to have some longarm chat and cookies!

A basket quilt and some tomatoes

2010-11-08T16:30:00.000-08:00

I finished a quilt for Ann, she always does such a beautiful job. This was a pattern I had admired but resolved never to attempt since I am a piecing spaz. I did a lot of quilting on this one even though this is a busy quilt.

I love basket quilts, I will have to make one someday, despite my piecing problems!

We finally had a freeze, so I can stop obsessing about watering. I went out and picked every tomato left on the vine and they have been ripening up like crazy. I made tomato sauce for the freezer and tonight we are having BLT's for dinner. Yum.

I love my new Dood!

2010-11-01T16:55:00.000-07:00

I'm getting along just great with my new Innova. I finished up Mary's quilt (she had to wait for a month!). It was started on my old Gammill and finished up on my Innova. I really love the new machine - it feels different; like getting a new car and having to figure out where the windshield wipers and lights are, but it is already starting to feel like home.

This is such a striking quilt - it is a Jinny Beyer design, I think it is called Around the World. I used bright thread in Mary's quilt: something different for me, I usually stick with thread that matches or nearly matches the background. But I thought this quilt would benefit from contrasting thread - I used five or six different colors of green, purple and turquoise.

It's getting cold here in Kansas, time to pull out the down comforter. I picked all the remaining tomatoes no matter how green they are and I'm ready for the first freeze. I have to admit, I don't mind giving up on watering everything!

Dood Day!!!

2010-10-28T07:23:00.000-07:00

My small group met and we had a birthday party for Kelly. I gave her a little quilt I had made for a guild challenge. She liked it, and said it will look great hanging in her sewing room.

My new Innova longarm machine was delivered and set up yesterday. Yippee! I am so excited that I got up early and went right out to the studio to play. This machine does not look like an Arabella - it looks too modern, so I decided to name it after my Dad who was a scientist. That seems more appropriate for such a high tech looking machine! I'm calling it Dood, which was his family nickname. Apparently when he was a baby before he learned to walk, he scooted around the floor on his bottom using his hands to pull himself. His parents thought he looked just like a doodlebug and called him that. Eventually it was shortened to Dood, and I can remember my Grandmother still calling him that as an adult.

While I was waiting for the arrival of Dood I had lots of free time so I totally cleaned and re-arranged the studio. My Gammill had a 14 foot table and I decided to switch to a 12 foot table for my Innova, which gave me a little more room to work with. Peter says women must have a gene that men don't have: a gene for re-arranging furniture. He just doesn't get why anyone would re-arrange their furniture once it is in place for a few years.

I decided to move all my quilting books and magazines into the house, since that is where I usually look at them. That meant I first had to start moving stuff around inside the house to make room before I could bring the shelves in and start hauling books. (I didn't make Peter move anything except the big stuff I needed help with!) It was a long process. Before I started moving I made a little scale plan of the studio and cut out the furniture to scale so I could play with it and find the best arrangement. This is another thing that just makes Peter shake his head in amazement, but it really saves a lot of time. It's also fun, kind of the grown-up version of playing with a dollhouse.

I put Dood on the short end of the studio.

This machine is smaller than Arabella, I chose a 22" machine. Since I do mostly custom quilting, I quilt mostly at the front of the quilt. I feel like I lose control if I try to quilt further away from me. I don't do pantographs and seldom do freehand edge to edge designs, so I think this will suit me.

The sewing table and ironing area got moved closer together, which is more convenient. I spent several days refolding my stash. I started this over a year ago and had gotten stuck halfway - it looks so much better now!

The cutting table is now near the design wall (which has Mary's still uncompleted quilt on it). This is an improvement, because we use the design wall for photography and it's real easy to wheel the cutting table out of the way for that purpose. The sewing table used to be in the way and that was a pain to move.

This is my Mom's old dining room table which gets used mostly to hold piles of stuff. Since I just cleaned up there aren't any but they will soon start reappearing.

I think I need to finish this up so I can go out and play!

Wonderful quilts, none of them mine!

2010-10-17T09:08:00.000-07:00

I wish the quilt above was mine but no, it was made and quilted by Carla. She did a program for our longarm group and showed many of her own quilts. There were so many wonderful quilts but I only managed to get good pictures of a few, peoples heads and things like tables and boxes kept getting in the way. This is another of her quilts:

Prairie Quilt Guild had a meeting last week with Edie McGinnis as the speaker. Edie worked for the Kansas City Star for over 20 years and has published many books. She is a long time collector of feedsacks and feedsack quilts and brought many examples of them. I learned a lot about feedsacks from her talk and she had our guild laughing - she is a hoot!

This is the first quilt she made from feedsacks:

I like that she used white feedsacks for the backing:

More of her quilts:

This one is definitely not made from feedsacks, instead she used her collection of Daiwabo fabrics. She says this is her best quilt.

I'm stilll waiting for my new Innova quilting machine. Hopefully I will hear this next week that it is ready to be delivered. In the meantime I have been getting lots done! I have cleaned and re-arranged the studio in anticipation of the new machine, finished the top for my guild challenge quilt ( I can't show it because it's supposed to be kept secret!), marked the top for a new miniature wholecloth and have actually cooked dinner a few times. My next job is to sort through my old quilting magazines and donate the ones I don't need to our guild library sale.

Here are Elsie and Lily pursuing a cricket - it finally disappeared down a crack leaving one leg behind.

Disappearing nine-patch

2010-10-06T17:17:00.000-07:00

I won't have any pictures of quilts I have quilted for a while - it will be a couple of weeks before my new Innova arrives. These are pictures from my small group, we don't have an official name - we just call ourselves the Little Sewing Group. When I first moved here these ladies invited me to join them twice a month. We don't all quilt, some are knitters, or crocheters or embroiderers, but it's a good excuse to get together to sew and eat and talk.

At our last meeting Evelyn showed us how to make a Disappearing Nine-Patch block. It's really fast and easy (even I can piece this!), you make a nine patch, cut it into quarters, move a couple of the pieces 180 degrees and sew it back together. We met again today and got to see the finished projects. Although we all made the same block, it's amazing how different they look in different fabrics and different sizes.

Up above is Betty's project - she is obviously an over-achiever since she was the only one to make something bigger than a table runner.

I only had enough of the Japanese fabric to make two blocks, so I made a short table runner.

Kelly made three blocks in three different sizes. I couldn't get the third picture to go where I wanted it to, so here are two of them.

Madeline made small blocks.

Dee made a Halloween runner.

Evelyn, who showed us the block, finished two table runners.

Virginia is hand quilting hers, it will be a doll quilt.

I have lots of projects planned for my vacation from quilting. Maybe I'll get them done, or maybe I'll just spend the next few weeks lying on the couch, eating chocolates and reading trashy novels!

Going, going ... GONE!

2010-10-03T15:55:00.000-07:00

I really tried to finish Mary's quilt before today but I just couldn't get it done. I did get enough stitch in the ditch finished to stabilize it and basted horizontally every four inches or so just to be safe. While it was on Arabella (her last quilt for me) I noticed that the colors are very similar to those in my Turtle quilt, hanging behind the machine.

This morning we got up early, cleaned the machine, cleaned out underneath the machine and cleared a path out to the driveway. Here she is before we started cleaning up:

Here she is all ready to go, I found about a million pins and many dust bunnies underneath her!

Luckily, her new owner Melisa, is very nice and very excited to have her own Gammill longarm machine. Melisa, her husband Larry and daughter Lauren showed up about 11:00 this morning with a 16 foot trailer, all ready to take Arabella to her new home in Oklahoma. Peter gave some tips on maintenance,

And then it was time to start taking her apart. We removed the rollers and wrapped them in old batting scraps to protect them and the canvas leaders.

She is on casters, so she rolled right out the door onto the little deck and then...

Oops, Houston, we have a problem. The opening in the deck railing was too narrow to let her through.

Larry is a handy kind of a guy, so he removed the deck railing and onto the trailer she went.

She's well packed up and ready to go and Larry even put our railing back for us!

Bye Arabella!

She's GONE!

Can't wait for my new machine.

The Thimbleberries Lady strikes again!

2010-09-22T09:18:00.000-07:00

Marsha the Thimbleberries Lady brought me this cute throw to quilt. One of the most recent quilts I did for her that wasn't a Thimbleberries pattern (gasp) was a finalist in the Schnibbles contest. You can see all the finalists here, including Marsha's. Her quilt is the third from the left in the third row.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/martingaleandcompany/sets/72157624963296232/

I haven't mentioned to Arabella (my Gammill Classic Plus longarm machine), that she is for sale - I'm afraid it might affect her performance. I've decided to sell her and buy a new machine made by Innova. It is hard to give her up since she is the one that taught me to quilt with a longarm but I'm very excited about my new machine! I'm advertising in several places and chomping at the bit to get her sold.

Yikes!

2010-09-17T06:50:00.000-07:00

It's been a while - not because I have been especially busy but because life has been kind of uneventful. I did go on a Garden Railroad Tour last weekend where I saw this in Nancy's backyard. Nancy is a friend from Prairie Quilt Guild and her railroad was our favorite of all that we toured. She made her husband put a quilt block on the barn - it was really cute.

I did a program for the MO-KAN Machine Quilters Guild in Overland Park yesterday, so I had piles of quilts out as I was getting ready to go. Elsie thought it was cat heaven, she would like us to leave a large pile of quilts on the dining room table all the time since it makes the perfect cat perch!

We had to call a plumber to fix a few leaky faucets and to find out why one of the pipes in a downstairs closet was leaking. Ahh, the joys of owning an old house! The old cast iron pipes had rusted, so the plumber had to cut a four foot section out and replace it with PVC pipe. Here it sits waiting for the junk man to pick up.

Next month I will begin serving as President of my quilt guild. Fortunately I will have a wonderful and very experienced Board which will make my job much easier. Traditionally, the President makes nametags for the Board so I just finished seventeen nametags that I will hand out at the first Board meeting. I still need to make more for Committee chairs, but that can wait a few weeks.

Wednesday we had severe thunderstorms all over south central Kansas and for a while a real nasty one was headed our way. They were warning of golf ball sized hail and sixty MPH winds. It ended up missing us but south Wichita saw these... YIKES! This picture is from the Wichita Eagle website.

Give the Central Kansas Shop Hop quilt a hand!

2010-09-04T08:16:00.000-07:00

All of the quilt shops involved in the Central Kansas Shop Hop (this year it is October 1-3) make a quilt using the theme fabric. Charlotte of Charlotte's Sew Natural in Newton asked me to quilt hers and that is the quilt in the picture above. The theme fabric is the lighter background fabric in the quilt. It was designed especially for the shop hop and has the names of the local towns involved printed on it.

I tried not to do too much quilting in the center four patch of each block so the neat kaleidoscope effect would show through.

When we dropped the quilt off at the shop, Mary gave me a Cotton Picker, which she says is wonderful for removing little threads from your quilt. Peter is the Head Thread Picker at our house, so he gets to model it:

He decided to make a little stand for it. He scanned his hand, then glued the picture to some foam board and cut it out. It's goofy looking - I like it!

Here it is all dressed up.

You asked for it

2010-08-31T14:00:00.000-07:00

Anyone else old enough to remember that old television show? I thought I would show how I did the border on the quilt in the previous post because Vivian - You asked for it!

I rarely use commercial stencils because I like drawing my own designs. That is what I did in the border of Mary's quilt. I used the length of the block as my guide for the size of the design; that way I can mark the border while the quilt is on the machine, as I go. I measured the length and width of the area and then doodled around until I had a design I liked.

Since this design was fairly complicated I used template plastic and then cut it out with scissors. It probably took less than an hour to end up with this- which is half of the total design. I just flip it over and trace out the other half. I actually try not to mark quilts for customers because it is time consuming, but sometimes it just seems like that's what the quilt needs! Besides, if I have the time, I think it's fun.

Sometimes if the design isn't too complex, I will draw it on freezer paper; I make a double thickness by ironing two pieces together. (shiny sides together - I learned to do that in a workshop with Kim Diehl) This works well but doesn't hold up as well as the template plastic so I only use it on simpler designs. This one I tried first with freezer paper and then decided to use template plastic.

I have also used manila folders.

It really helps to use a good marking tool - I love this Bohin marker that I bought at MQS this spring. It has a small point which makes it possible to mark very accurately. So far it has come out easily with a slightly damp microfiber cloth.

I keep the templates I make and reuse them on other quilts. Hope that answered your question and wasn't TMI!