First quilts and Harry Potter

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

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

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?

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

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

       

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

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.