I finished another of my own quilts yesterday. I pieced this at retreat several years ago & it’s been patiently waiting in my closet to be quilted.  The pattern is County Lines & I’ve actually quilted several of these for the shop owner Carolyn Vagts of The Village Quilt Shoppe in Lake Orion & for other customers. It’s a lot of fun to see all the different fabric choices. I choose dark blue brown combinations with a dark brown sashing. It makes a pretty good sized quilt. This one is 82 x 104. I hope to make another using all Asian prints.

I try not to work on Sundays but today I will be putting together a couple of quilt backs getting ready to load them for Monday.

It’s cold but sunny today in Mich. I got out to the quilt shop today to pick up a couple additional pieces of fabric for borders & binding. The potholes are out of control! I think I might have to stay in as long as I can this week & hope they get some filled in before I hit the roads again.

Happy Sunday everyone!

Keeping up with my out of the closet series, I just finished another of my own quilts this week. This is a 2011 Debbie Caffrey Mystery Quilt called Undercover in Cincinnati. Her mysterys’ usually require 3 to 4 different fabrics with high contrast. I choose a Laurel Burch Horses print & then choose a dark, med & light batik to go with it. I was pretty happy with the end result. The star & churn dash show up pretty well. The batting is Hobbs Wool. I quilted it with Janet-Lee Santuesanios’ Curly Bubbles design and taupe Isacord thread.

Ye-haw, I like it! One more done & out of the closet.

Looking for ideas for a new quilt?  Missouri Star Quilt Company  has video tutorials on some fun fast quilts. I have to admit, I didn’t think there was a different way to make a 9 patch but I was wrong.  I learned a few new things and the videos are short enough that I didn’t lose interest. If you need some ideas or just some mojo check it out!

Stay warm & quilt on!

I’ve added a link on the right to my Pinterest boards. I’ve tried to save some fun links to tutorials & other fun ideas. Most of my pins are quilt related & many are others quilts that I wanted to look back on for design ideas or just to enjoy. There are so many sources out there now. It’s hard to keep up with it all. If you are looking for something new to make or just want to browse you will need to become a member of Pinterest first. I have pinned some tutorials on binding, how to make a disappearing 9 patch, book covers, hexes & even ideas on storage & studio set ups. Feel free to follow my boards. Its a great way to organize some of the many ideas for future projects or just keep some eye candy for inspiration.

Happy Quilting!

We had a couple days without snow this week & temps above 20 degrees. Like so many other states, it’s been a record Michigan snowfall this year. A hard winter will make spring ever so sweet. Yesterday it actually felt like spring, the sun was shining & we could see the driveway & parts of the street without snow. Today we are back to winter wonderland with overcast skys’ and snow falling. These snowy days makes it easier to stay inside & do what I love.  There are less temptations to draw me away from the fabric.

There was one temptation though…..yesterday I went to the Grand Opening of The Village Quilt Shoppe. They recently moved to a new location. It will be a nice new beginning for them. The shop is bright, has a nice private classroom & is full of quilty goodness!  Congrats to Carole and Carolyn Vagt’s on the new location! While there I saw a few customers & picked up some wide quilt backing for a couple of my own quilts. It was nice to see Carolyn, she stays busy being editor of Quilters World Magazine so not at the shop daily anymore.  It’s a treat to see her when she’s in town.

On this snowy Sunday I think I’m going to start a pot of soup, turn on the Jessie Stone marathon & get busy quilting!

Hugs!

I’ve added a few new colors of thread for the new year. I’ve had a lot of recent requests for blue thread so you’ll see some additional shades of blue & a couple new colors from Glide, Tango & Robins Egg. Aren’t they pretty?

The answer to this often asked question is “YES”. I would not ask for it if it was not needed. When backing fabric is loaded on a long arm quilting machine it needs to be clamped on both sides. The clamps vary in size but even the smallest works best with 4″ excess to attach to. When I do not have this amount of excess fabric my machine head & needle plate area hits the clamps & causes havoc. It can cause wobbly stitches, stop the machine from working & is annoying as heck for your quilter. I want those things out of my way when I’m working.

I worked on a quilt today that I received that had only 1 1/2 to 2″ of backing fabric for me to clamp to. I have stitched into my nice featherweight plastic clamps twice today!! I actually sewed them to the backing fabric because they were too close to the quilt top & covered by the batting.

I’m showing a photo so its easier to see why the 4″ is necessary. I know its annoying to have a quilt top that is 39″ wide and how it would seem easier to just use a 42″ wide fabric for your backing. Don’t do it!

Please think of your quilter & your quilt & give the asked for amount of backing. A happy quilter makes a pretty quilt! Just add 10″ to the length & width of your quilt top & its easy math.

I’m making some changes on my website which I hope will make things easier to understand and make uploading photos easier.

I am also back from retreat.  I had a great time! If you have never gone on a retreat, grab a friend and go. I finished 2 1/2 quilt tops. It was so nice to set in a room full of quilters and be able to see what they are working on and share ideas. They always have a great variety of works in process. I also picked up some new hand dyed fabrics from Sue Cortese,  http://www.selcfabrics.com. She makes some really beautiful fabrics & is so nice to bring them along for us to pick through.

Ok, so back to work….I’m an amateur at this web work but I hope to get the basics done today & then fine tune.

I’m heading to retreat on Thursday 1/28 and will be home Feb 3rd. If you call while I am away you can leave a message. My husband, Mike, will also take a message for me while he’s home holding down the fort. Retreat is a great time to get some piecing done & rekindle my quilting mojo. I wish I could say I’m heading for a tropical island but will be in northern MI hunkered down with my featherweight & enjoying the company of good friends.

Here is one of the quilts I will be trying to finish at retreat. Its from Edyta Sitar’s Laundry Basket Quilts I started this about 1 year ago & haven’t had it out of the box since. Time to get it done!  Have a good weekend friends !!!

I hear this question a lot when meeting with customers. “I have some fullness in my quilt & I don’t know where it came from or how to correct it?”. First let me say, I not the quilt police and I don’t teach piecing. You’ll find many of my quilts are simple in design. I do see a lot of quilts & yes some have some issues with fullness. It’s not uncommon. It usually shows up at it’s worst in the borders. Thats where I see the biggest exaggeration of fullness.

There are lots of ways fullness can occur. Fabric stretches, seam allowances shift under the pressing foot & alter the size of blocks.  One thing I like to ask people is, have you checked your pieces for size? Most of the time a person can track the problem back to the inner portion of their quilt. Have you squared your blocks & checked your seam allowance?  Accuracy from the beginning of the quilt can make a huge difference in the final result.

Check to make sure your pieces are the size they should be.  I ran across a great tutorial on ‘squaring half square triangles’.  Checking that a 12″ block is really 12″ is a good start but if it is off then you will be looking back to the starting point anyway, so why not begin there? This link takes you to Ambers blog. You will find her ‘Tutorials’ tab & scroll down for her Squaring half square triangles link.

http://www.bloglovin.com/framepost=2170938073&group=0&frame_type=b&blog=2314945&link=aHR0cDovL2FsaXR0bGViaXRiaWFzZWQuYmxvZ3Nwb3QuY29tLzIwMTQvMDEvdGhpbmdzLWktd2FudC10by1kby5odG1s&frame=1&click=0&user=0

Now I’m going to go watch Amber’s tutorial & measure some of my own piecework.  We are getting more snow again today so it’s the perfect day for sewing.

Stay warm!