After 2 years I finally finished my son and daughter-in-laws quilt, they were patient with me but very glad it was finally finished.

I had everyone at their wedding and reception sign the fabric squares, then Katy picked the fabric and quilt block designs she liked.
 

I machine embroidered their names, wedding date and their chosen Bible verse in the center square.

Since there was some blank space in the blocks I filled in with either a machine embroidered design or an applique.

I made my sister-in-law this cowboy jack-o-lantern pillow. The embroidery is called twilling which consists of connected knots. It is similar to the old style candle wicking, but much easier than doing all those individual french knots.

For Christmas I made her a western table runner. I love the pattern I used for this table runner, it can be increased or decreased for different lengths and it is a quilt as you go so when you have it sewn together the only thing left to do is the binding around the edge. Its so fast and easy!

I found some vintage embroidered pillow cases that were in good condition except for some fraying and holes at the very tops of them. I really wanted to use them since the embroidery was so pretty so I re-purposed them into cute little girls dresses.

I am way behind and have not spent much time blogging lately. But I have been busy creating so here are a few of the projects I have completed in the past few months.

 This is a Queen size blue jean quilt and when you get this folded up it is VERY heavy. It was a bit tricky to get this monster quilted using my regular sewing machine.  My client loved it and was very happy with it.

  My next project was a t-shirt quilt for a lady who runs marathons for breast cancer. I love the flannel she picked for the back and binding, I loved working with it.

My current project is another t-shirt quilt. This one is for a guy using his college football t-shirts and I've added a couple pictures to this one and a block with his number and name.  I am ready to do the quilting on this one now.

Heritage Quilt

It's done!!!  A commissioned heritage quilt with the names of the original family members who immigrated to the United States. 

I've been working on this quilt for what seems like ages, I had to design the whole quilt first on graft paper for proper placing of the flags, pictures and lettering.  Then digitized my drawings of the countries, and set up the lettering in my embroidery software.  I learned a lot by doing this quilt, seems each quilt I do is a learning experience with several mistakes that I have to rip out and do over again.   I will be giving the quilt to her on Monday and asking to be able to show it in the upcoming quilt show in October.  

This was my first quilt to be basted and partially quilted on my friends long-arm quilting machine.  I learned how to roll the top, the batting and the back onto each of the separate rollers and get them all even which took a few tries since there is a seem down the middle of the backing fabric that needed to be right down the middle of the quilt back.  It was a bit intimidating at first to stand in front of the huge machine and guide it over the quilt!  Now I love it and can't wait to do the quilting on the next project!

Here are the yellow flying geese in the upper corner and I like how well they show up against the dark blue background. The borders of this quilt gave me a bit of a headache because the first time I sewed them on I only measured the top and the bottom of the quilt then cut them according to the average of the two.  Well, as I was basting the quilt and I got to the bottom there was a very ugly pleat appearing in the lower right corner!  Ouch, I could not have that on a quilt I was being paid for!!  So back home I went, and took out all the basting stitches and took both boarders off the quilt.  I remeasured the top, middle, and bottom averaging the three measurements, then re-cut and resewed the boarders back on.  Loaded the quilt back onto the quilt machine (I was actually getting better at it by this time!) basted it again AND YAHOO the boarders were a perfect fit with no ugly pleat!!    

Here is a closeup of the star quilting in the boarder which I did on my regular machine.  I don't have enough confidence to do anything this complicated on the big quilt machine yet. I took a stencil of different size stars and chalked the stars individually around the boarder and quilted each one individually, then I went back and made all the curlies between the stars.  A little tedious, but I love the way it turned out. 

Random blocks

Today I finished the first block of my barn quilt. The block is machine pieced with blanket stitch applique. I did the blanket stitch by hand so it takes me a while to do, but I take it to my sewing groups where I can chat with friends and work on the block. I have three more barns to do and then I will start on the boarders.



Here is my cute snowlady block that I appliqued on the machine. I made this block for the block of the month at one of my quilt guilds.

Crazy Quilt Pillow

I recently joined a crazy quilt group and found another type of quilting that pairs my enjoyment of quilting and embroidery together. Before you can participate in the groups round robin quilting, which is embellishing one quilt block for each member of the group, you must let them see something you have done to show you are skilled at embroidery and beading. I heard the horror story about why they do this and totally agree its a great idea as you don't want to spend time making a quilt block for your quilt and have someone do the embellishment on it with puffy paint and safety pins, which is NOT exactly the Victorian look you're going for! So here is the pillow I did for my first project. The wording and the cross I did on my embroidery machine and the rest of the stitches and beading I did by hand. Crazy quilting is a project you can bag up and take with you to do when you travel or wait in a doctors office.

The pillow is also an up cycled project which I made from upholstery samples and the lace, embroidery thread and beads are from my stash of sewing notions I have gotten from auctions, garage sales, and the good will.

Wedding Quilt

A few months ago my friend Ken and his wife Karen asked me to design a wall hanging for their nieces wedding. Karen wanted their engagement picture in a large heart with pictures of each of them as a child below. She also wanted the quilt to have the teal color from the wedding, to incorporate some camo and nature for the groom and have have the wedding date on the quilt. So I went to work designing the quilt and let my imagination got to work. I like to try new ideas and really don't let anything stop me, the original quilters of long ago made beautiful quilts from basically nothing but scraps so with everything available to me now I can do about anything.

I found the quote "When two heart unite the road is short and the burden light" and knew I had to embroidery it in the quilt too because what could be a better quote for a wedding. Finding the perfect fabric was so much fun, I mean what better excuse to go to all my favorite shops looking for fabric! The flowers I think I changed a dozen times before I was happy with the arrangements and then quilted around the flowers with metallic thread. Probably the most difficult part was making sure the embroidered words were all centered which involved a lot of re-hooping and measuring and piecing, but I love the way it turned out. I wanted to make sure the quilting motifs fit the quilt so it is quilted with leaves, flowers, doves and of course hearts.

Ken and Karen loved the quilt and gave it to the happy couple before their wedding. Here is what Ken said about it.

"Kathy, Here are some photos of Ashley and Nathan with their quilt. We decided to give it to them the night before the wedding and it was hung up at the reception. It was quite the talk of the evening both nights and the bride and groom loved it. We received a lot of positive comments about the quality of work and the uniqueness of the project, everyone loved it.............Thanks for all the work and obvious love you put into the project..........."

I love giving somthing that makes people happy just as much as I love quilting and creating!

Baby quilt

I was asked to make a baby quilt for a little boys first birthday. His brother has a baby quilt with his name on it, but little Gus doesn't have one. His mother picked out the fabric and I came up with the little animals and made a farm theme quilt. These designs were a learning experience because I finally discovered how to digitize pictures to make my own designs!!





I had some fun finding pictures of the farm animals and digitizing them to make the embroidery pictures. Actually I've become addicted to it and have so many new ideas now that I don't know where to start first!!

Another quilt finished

Yippee!! Finished this t-shirt quilt in plenty of time for Christmas. Kim should be here this afternoon and I can't wait to see what she thinks of it.






I even had some time to get my snowman paper pieced project done. This little wall hanging is a 14 inch square. There sure were some itty bitty pieces with some tedious work, but I love it! I've already started working on the little wall hanging for February. However, I think I'll make some doll clothes for my niece this afternoon.

T-shirt quilts

I finished this quilt last week and she picked it up Sunday.



I quilted her degree into this one, which is something new I've not tried before and I think this will be something I can expand on with future quilts. I like the way it looks.



I always have my little buddy with me while I'm sewing and you can see what happens with the scraps from the t-shirts. Ginger thinks they make a dandy place to sleep.


I'm currently working on this one to have it done for Christmas. My next step is the border which I found the perfect fabric for the border and back in Jamesport, MO. I was there for a quilt retreat and they have a lovely fabric store with beautiful fabric. I found flannel for the back along with some other fabric I just couldn't live without!!

To all my friends out there, yes I am enjoying retirement to the fullest!!!!!!!!!