My friend and customer, Andrea, dropped off a quilt yesterday, and I
started quilting right away. The backing was Minky, which is a slightly
furry fabric that makes a really soft and warm quilt back.
Andrea picked out the quilting design called "Holly's Hearts" by Urban Elementz and it looks really great on the quilt!
Andrea decided on white thread for the top and a variegated thread in pastels for the back. The Minky is so
fluffy that you can barely see the thread itself, although the pattern
really stands out!
This quilt measures 60" by 60" and the fee for the quilting was less than $60. What a deal! If you are interested in having a quilt professionally quilted by me, click herefor the details.
I have been wanting to make a scrap quilt forever! I've been buying
fabric and quilting since the 1990s, so you can imagine the amount of stash I have. I've been looking at scrappy quilts to find a pattern
I liked, and I came across this one that I found at A Little Bit Biased. As you can see, it is finished and ready to be listed for sale at my new Etsy shop.
The reason I put off making a scrappy quilt was that the directions
usually start out with "Cut out 578 2 inch squares." Oh, my! I could
not imagine doing it! But I liked this quilt so much that I dragged out
my bins of fabric and started cutting out 2" squares for the
nine and sixteen patches, and larger squares for the star points and
background. It took a few days, and I was very methodical (obsessive)
about the colors I chose.
The picture to the right is the stacks of all the colored squares I cut
out. Each small stack is 4 squares of that color, and I did nine stacks
of blue, nine stacks of yellow, etc., so altogether, there are 312 of
the 2" squares, and 80 of the larger squares. And this does not count
the white squares that I cut out for the background. So, all together, I
cut out 624 of the smaller squares and 160 of the larger squares, plus
sashing, so the grand total was around 900 pieces. Whew!
So many steps went in to piecing the blocks, including making all the
half-square triangle blocks for the start points. The picture above
shows the 160 blocks I made for the star points, which then had to be
pressed and trimmed to the right size, as show by the pink ones on the
right. I really wish I had kept track of the hours I spent making this
quilt. It has to be over one hundred!
This little pile is just the 16th of an inch that I trimmed off of each edge to make the blocks come out perfect!
After all that cutting and sorting colors into order, it was such a rush
to finally make the first block! I won't even go into any detail about
how I arranged the colors, but suffice to say that the colors are in a
certain order, and there is no block where a color is repeated, or near a
like color in a block next to it in the quilt. I have heard other
quilters say that, when they make a scrappy quilt, they put all the
pieces in a bag and choose them at random, but I am too obsessive for
that!
It was fun doing the sashing, too, and I put it together as I went so
that I could be sure there were no like colors touching in the sashing,
either!
Many hours and many days later, the quilt was ready to go on my Tin Lizzie Ansel 26
long arm quilting machine. I chose a digital quilting pattern called "Feathers Around"
and I love the way it came out! I did the pattern a little bit smaller
than I usually do for my quilts, because I wanted it to have a more old
time-y look. I quilted it with white thread. The backing for the
quilt is white, too. I love the way you can see the quilting on the
back.
All that was left to do was bind the quilt, and after considering a
white binding, I decided to piece the binding using a lot of the fabrics
I used in the quilt top. Every 12", the binding changes to
another color.
This quilt is done and ready for a loving home! It measures 57" x
70" and would be a great quilt for a child or an adult that likes a
little whimsy in their life! Click here to see the quilt and buy it!
I have the next quilt in my mind already and have purchased fabric for
it, so please favorite me on Etsy so you can see my creations as they
get listed!
Over a year ago, I got the idea to open an online shop on Etsy to sell
quilts and other handmade items. I made some quilts to sell, and
stopped at Hancock's at Paducah to buy fabric for a sweet little jewelry
holder that I wanted to make.
I bought enough fabric to make 60 of these items and started sewing. Many, many days later, I was finished, but never pulled the trigger on
the Etsy shop. I sold a few of the pouches at a flea market last year,
but the rest have been set aside for the day that I might get around to
opening my shop.
Well, today was that day, and my shop is open! So far, only the jewelry
holders are listed, but after Thanksgiving, I plan on doing my
photography and listing my quilts.
You can visit my shop by clicking here. There are nine different colors to choose from.
I told my sister, Diane, about my new shop and she posted it on her
Facebook timeline, and a few minutes later, I had my first sale! I'm
very excited!
I saw a quilt that was similar to this on Pinterest, and I had the day
off today, so I decided to make a little quilt out of some of my stash.
It took me all day, and I quilted it on my Pfaff domestic machine, not on the long arm.
I think it came out pretty cute!
My original idea for this quilt was to make it in all blues, greens and
teals. But when I went to the quilt shop and saw all the beautiful
batik fabrics, I decided to use more colors. I asked the store clerk to
cut 1/8 yard of every batik in the store! I brought them home, folded
each piece into a small square and laid them out on the floor. My husband, Bill, and
I kept rearranging the squares until we were happy with the colors. I
paper-pieced the blocks, and after I assembled them, I decided to add
the piano keys border. I quilted it with an original design on my
Gammill Classic long arm quilting machine, which I owned from 2001 to
2004. This quilt won second place in the 2003 Heritage Quilters Guild
Bi-Annual Quilt Show in the "Large Quilts" class. It now has a place of
honor on a prominent wall in my living room.
I call it "Sunset on the Coral Sea." The coral is in the center, the
beach is on the bottom left, the waves are crashing in from the right
bottom corner, the waning sunset is on the top right and the night sky
is coming in at the top left.
This
was the first quilt I took in with my new business, and it was a big job! Here are a few photos that show
off the long arm quilting pattern, called "Holly's Hearts", which I purchased from Urban Elementz. It's quite lovely!
I am so excited! Okay, it's not totally new, but it is new to me! I contactedPark City Quilting
in Janesville, Wisconsin, and they had a used Tin Lizzie Ansley 26 with
a Shirley Stitcher and a Phoenix frame. After visiting up north with
my husband, Bill, and trying out the machine, I decided to buy it. It is being
delivered and set up sometime in the beginning of June.
The Shirley Stitcher is the one with the larger display screen. It measures 7" diagonally. Here is a video that explains how the Shirley
Stitcher works:
I still can't believe that I will be able to start taking in quilt tops
again so soon! And here is a fun little side note: It turns out that
the owners of Park City Quilting - John and Sabrina - used to be the
owners of the Gammill dealership Quilt Central in Janesville, and
they are the ones who sold me my used Gammill Classic long arm quilting
machine back in 2001! Small world! They are now dealers for Tin
Lizzie and have nothing but confidence in the machines they now sell.
They convinced me that I am making the right decision to invest in a Tin
Lizzie.
