News from last weekend - some lovely quilty content

As many of you know, last week I was at the Abbotford quilt show, Quilts in the Valley at Tradex.

It was my last show with my shop, Threads in Motion, which is now in the final stages of closing down. It was a great weekend! I got to spend a little time with some of my quilt show friends from The Secret Workshop, To be Quilting, Longarmsupplies.com and others. I finally got a chance to meet Rhonda of Quilt Nut Creations and Quilted Cats Hideaway - We've been corresponding for well over a year, so it was nice to finally meet in person!

The show was busy and fun. Beautifully hung in a great space! The guild had arranged with both the Mission and Abbotsford museum societies to show vintage textiles and quilting/sewing related artifacts...there were countless sewing machines (both those belonging to members' private collections and the museum societies), many lovely quilts, and other related notions, publications, etc. I could have cheerfully spent the whole weekend at that end of the building combing over that display.

The second morning of the show I had a chance to walk around and have a good look at the quilts before things opened. I was really pleased to find a blue ribbon on the above quilt of Lois Brown's! It is a first prize for best in category, Commercially Quilted. How lovely!

Later in the day they announced the winners for the Canadian Quilter's Association ribbons, and Lois's name came over the loudspeaker again! I was thrilled! We got to have our picture taken together in front of her lovely quilt - and she gave me the blue ribbon.

I really can't express what that means to me.

I've been quilting for quite some time now, and this is the first ribbon given to me from a customer. Thanks so much Lois, you touched my heart.

I wish that I hadn't had to close all those beautiful, perfect appliqué stitches into the quilt...Lois is a master at hand appliqué. If you get a chance to see her work, you should take advantage of it!

Happy weekend,

Lisa

We're home

I thought I'd do a few posts here for catch up... took a few more photos to share with you while we were in Manchester, but was busy enough to not get a chance to post during our last few days.

I only took a few photos at the show itself, of friend's quilts. It was different this year to not have a quilt of my own in the competition and makes me think that I'd like to really focus on getting one done for next year.



The conference itself was really well run. I don't know how Mary and Janet-Lee do it! There are so many little details and changes that happen during the conference itself, there really is no way that they could plan for every eventuality. From what I saw of them, they handled all the unexpected with grace and humour.


I took a couple of pictures in the Armory (one of the show halls) that I wanted to share. The hall shot is taken from the end of one of the rows of quilts. You can see that they are hung really well, and that the lighting shows off the quilting beautifully! There were a couple of special exibitions in this hall, one of which was these amazing paper pieced dog quilts. Unfortunately I can't find where I scribbled down this woman's name - if someone out there remembers, could you send it to me?


There were at least 5 different dog quilts, all with the breed portraits sorted according to type. Imagine how excited I was to find our dog in the Sporting Group, even though she is a Canadian breed, only recently embraced by the AKC? What a lovely portrait...it looks just like our Breezie, as she looked when she was younger.


Beautiful, isn't it?


I've got some more photos to share, but I'll break it up into several different posts.

Hope your day is good,

Lisa

Cora, finally done

I finshed it last night, got the binding on and everything.

This is by far the largest quilt I've made for us! I've made larger ones for customers (some with the piecing and all - the largest one that springs to mind was one for a lady in Germany a few years ago, a huge red and white lone star about 100 X 120").

This quilt finished 97" square after the quilting. It did 'take up' a little, but it's quilted pretty heavily. I keep going in and petting it.


Here's a little shot of it right after trimming, before the binding went on...





Yummy texture, eh? Gotta love cotton batting. It's going to be wonderfully rumply after it's washed.







And a little shot here of the top edge of the quilt after binding:









Don't bright colours just make you happy?






And a little arty oblique shot, just 'cause I can't help myself.






Happy stitching,

Lisa

for the love of squares

That just might end up being the new title for this quilt. It's all about squares. Squares next to squares, squares within squares, square borders...

Yep. This is becomeing my ode to squares.


And if you ever wondered what I use for marking - - for the most part, just good 'ol chalkboard chalk. It goes on easy, shows on most fabrics, brushes off with the lint brush. If I'm feeling picky and need some VERY precise markings, I sharpen it with a pencil sharpener. It dulls quickly, but that's okay. Mostly it's only needed for basic guidelines, anyway.

Hope your days are full of colour,

Lisa

Whaaaat? Can this be? A quilty post?

Ooooh, how I love fancy, closely stitched feathers....And continuous curve....


Ah, working on one of my own quilts. You may remember last May/June I was part of a group of test piecers for this quilt pattern....hey, it's getting quilted less than 12 months after it was pieced. For me, that's a GOOD time frame.

This may well be a late night.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

What I've been up to

Okay, so it's my first attempt at a photo collage. I can see already how I could make it better.

Oh, and the bottom left corner...

An 'on the fly' fix for a customer who didn't see that this one block unit was rotated. (Nothing like getting most of the way through the first pass of quilting and finding one of these little guys.) Thank goodness for zippered leaders! I zipped it off, unpicked the unit, sewed it back in with my domestic machine, zipped the quilt back on. What could have taken well over an hour to do was done in 1/2 hour. Did I say thank goodness for zippers?

I don't use them TOO often, but when I need them they make a huge difference.


Happy stitching,
Lisa

Another week in review - Heartstrings

I promise I'll break this review into smaller posts...but I thought you might like to see the kind of quilty mayhem my room has been this week.

This photo was taken at what was by no means the peak, but it was at a good point. It was a point at which I felt like, "hey, I DO get stuff done around here!"

The photo of my space is taken from behind my quilting machine...a vantage point that I often have, but most visitors here never get.


I spent some time this week outside of my regular work doing some charity quilts for an organiziation that's close to my heart, the Heartstrings Quilt Project. I was sent three quilt tops earlier this year from one of the other members, Sue, and they have been waiting for me to quilt them...at long last they are done! This first one was quilted with a pattern called 'popcorn' by Jodi Beamish. Look at how Sue carefully placed these blocks to give make two hearts...so pretty, so subtle. This quilt will be donated to the Support Services area of the Kelowna Cancer Clinic.


In that same package Sue sent two other quilt tops (pieced by Sue and Joan) that are destined for the Canadian Quilts of Valour program. Both are wonderful, aren't they? This is another charity that has spoken so deeply to me. With family in the military it's often present in my mind the real danger that our soldiers are in. Quilts from this project go both to wounded soldiers and to families of fallen soldiers.

At what point do I mention that Sue and Joan are in the US? It takes generous hearts to give over such a distance.


The pattern I used to quilt these is 'Maple Syrup' by Jodi Beamish...she generously donated the pattern for this purpose.

It was a bit of a blue week for me. I was a bit lonely, feeling like our move is never going to happen, like I'm not getting anything done. Working on these quilts made me feel so much better! I hope they will bring joy to someone. Someone who can feel that there are legions of caring people out there, some who took the time to make something just for them.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

Just a quick note

I just had a peek over at Digiquilter.com and saw that Jodi has got almost my whole catalogue of designs up in digital format for computer operated machines...including my two newest patterns, Bombay Blossom and Mums.

A week in review...

Believe it or not, I've been writing blog posts all week - in my mind. At one point I came quite close to posting a photo of my studio in all it's quilty mayhem - I finished several quilts this week and there was a point at which I had 3 finished quilts waiting to be boxed and mailed, one finished quilt hanging to be photographed, and two out in different areas in the room with thread proposals on them waiting to be photographed and emailed to the quilt's owners. Somehow I opted to just keep working instead.

Today I've got my machine part way through my 'large maintenance routine', waiting for the WD40 to drip out of the bobbin area. Every month or so I take a day to check the timing on the machine (99% of the time it is fine), clean out the excess oil from inside the machine head, clean all the wheels and rails thoroughly ( I use q-tips with rubbing alcohol on them on the wheels) and clean out the bobbin race really thoroughly with WD40. It's amazing how much gunk gets in there, even though I wipe out that area frequently with my stiff brush and oil often. Once the WD40 has dried completely, I'll re-oil the bobbin race, let it run for a while, then stitch out some test bits to make sure there is no yucky stuff in the oil, no residue left in the race, and then I'll be ready to go again.

This week I did a bit of playing with my new-to-me knitting machine, and have consequently ordered some parts for it (!).

I did finish a hand knitting project I've been working on for over a month, a fan-and-feather stitch shawl in a lovely, soft merino wool I bought on Etsy. I'd give you a link to the specific store, but it seems to have temporarily evaporated! The photos, sadly, do not do this hand-dyed yarn justice. It's far more plummy/purply/raspberry/rhubarb than the photos here would suggest.

I also crocheted a couple of child-sized hats for a charity my Mom works at...and I realize now with our long weekend they'll not get to her until Wednesday (sorry, Mom. The holiday/post conflict completely slipped my mind).

I got a little bit more work done here and there on Blossom Lady, mostly just filling in the background with a nice dark indigo blue (their name for it is 'Midnight'), and deepening some of the shadows in her garment.

Now that there is some real contrast going on the areas that I was already working on seem quite washed out...time to go put some BOLD contrast in this baby. Unfortunately I spilled one of my ink pots on my work space and now have to wait until it is THOROUGHLY washed and dried before I dare to put the piece back on it. Of course I spilled the darkest colour. Of course I lost more than half the little dye pot to my clumsiness. Blargh.

Well, off to check on my machine and put it back together. It always runs so much happier after this little wee pick-me-up.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

PS - I was floored by an unexpected and generous hearted gift this week. Thanks so much, Tracy. You really touched my heart. Thank you.

:)
L

Housekeeping

I got some rather diminutive parts in the mail today from Linda Lang over at www.longarmsupplies.com

While I was working the other day, I noticed that the pigtails (both of them) had deep grooves in them from the path that the thread has taken through them over the past 6+ years.

I tried to capture it in the photo at left, but my camera was much more interested in focusing on, well, anything but the pigtail. Can you see the groove? It's only about the depth of two pencil lines (done with sharp pencil), but on a piece of metal that small it makes a difference!

Two minutes with a screwdriver (not the beverage kind) and all is well, I'm back in business.

Thanks, Linda!

I also got something not-so-small in the mail today...a Passap Duo (pinky) knitting machine. And a TON of books with patterns for knitted clothes. OH! How I love those 60's and 70's fashions! I'll share some of the more hilarious photos with you in a later post. For now, though, back to quilting!

Lisa

New patterns released at Willow Leaf Studio

I just got a note from Jodi saying that my two newest patterns are available through Willow Leaf Studio (link at left). The first is 'Bombay Blossom', and it's based on one of some lovely hand carved wooden tsaps that my parents have had for years, originally from India.

The second is called simply 'Mums', and it's some sweetie pie flowers that I often am called upon to do freehand on customer quilts. The nice part about this is that now you can use them too.

Happy stitching,

Lisa

The first of several

I thought I take you through a few smaller posts, rather than do one big marathon post.

I lifted my head to discover it's been 8 days since I last posted! I won't bore you with the details, but I've been quilting a LOT and preparing for our move (no, we don't have a house yet, I'm still in the paring down stages).
Janet graciously granted me permission to share this quilt with you.

It's one that she has designed and made for her son and daughter-in-law, for their first wedding anniversary. She used fabrics and motifs of tremendous significance to them, and had to design it partly around the availability of fabrics. She only had limited amounts of several of the fabrics in this quilt and had to make the best of it....I think she did, don't you?

She had lovely, clear ideas of what she wanted from the quilting.
The braided cable in the blue bands was done with a minimum of marking (a chalk centre line) and the Sew Clear Wave ruler from Willow Leaf Studio. Those of you who were at MQX this year would have seen us demonstrating this (among others) - and yes, it was as easy as it looked! I used the larger (9") wave as the base for this braided cable.

The Celtic knot that Janet hand appliqued is a replica of the one on the couple's wedding bands.
Beautiful and elegant, it makes the perfect focal point for this striking, original quilt.

Happy stitching!

Lisa

More fun with 'saved' fabric

I had a little time this morning while expecting a customer, so I popped the 'saved' fabric from the other day on to the machine and got going.

I love doing these little pieces. They go on and off the machine so quickly, it makes for a very nice completion rush!

I started out with yellow thread, just stitching around the shapes and adding some pebbly bits for texture..

Next a light celery green thread, more shapes, more pebbly bits, plus a few 'ghost' flowers for interest's sake.
Last of all I did some darker green thread. I'd thought originally that my darkest colour on this would be a deep purple pushed into the darkest shadows for some colour tension, but it didn't really need it in the end. The darkest green was sufficient. Any purples that I auditioned looked almost black on the fabric surface, so I nixed that in a hurry.

The final shot here is of the fabric before taking it off the machine. You can see where I used the darkest green to stitch a vertical line...that's my cutting line. I want to use part of the fabric to make a journal cover with a flap. The flap will have an uneven edge, so a cutting line is stitched for that, too (top left hand corner), to make sure that it will be a nice marriage between the cut edge and the fabric motifs.


There. Whew.

Now, the next fun bit, making the book!

Lisa

Last night

We had a town day yesterday, ran around and did all of our errands, got the house measured for the new windows, had lunch at the cafe, and generally had a nice family day together.

Oldest made us dinner last night, from his new (birthday gift) cookbook. It was the first time he made dinner for all of us and it was really, really good. He made chicken quesadillas and a Caesar salad! There are even a bit of leftovers, so we can snack on them again today.

Our intention last night was to go and see Harry Potter in the theater - but no go! We got in, comfortably installed with our snacks, only to learn that the projector was not going to work. They tried about 4 times to get things to run (much to the delight of the kids who thought the sound track slowwwwing dowwwwnnnnn was an absolute riot) and in the end gave us passes (or refunds) and sent us on our way. We brought our snacks home and watched "Bridge to Terabithia" together instead. I'd read the book, and the movie was really wonderful. Well worth seeing. The boys are still talking about it this morning.

Thought you might like to see a little tidbit of another quilt that I finished this week:


It's a biggie, too. Marilyn called it a confetti quilt...I'm not sure if that's because it uses many small squares, or if that's the actual name of the pattern. I've not seen this layout before, but quite liked it. The quilt has a lovely homespun quality to it.

Man, I love scrappy quilts.


Happy stitching,

Lisa

A beaut

Here are some photos of a quilt I was lucky enough to work on recently. It's by Lynne ( Hi Lynne!) made from a Judy Niemeyer pattern called Arrowhead Crossing made using primarily batiks.

I asked Lynne about posting pictures of her quilt and she graciously gave her permission.

Some of the photos I've got here are progress photos...I tend to take many 'working pictures', especially while working on something as complex as this. As you can see in the first photo, the border has many pieces - but they do follow a set repeat pattern. The second photo is of the underside of the quilt while working. I'll often take photos as I go so that I can refer to them rather than roll and unroll the quilt.

You may notice the white lines on the quilt top. Wherever possible I mark with chalkboard chalk as it is really easy to remove the marks and they generally stay in place long enough to get the stitching where I want it - and it will always come off with a quick pass of the vacuum's upholstery attachment!

I've included here my reference photo for the corners as well. I wanted to ensure that all four of the corners had good continuity to them. The roses were incorporated into the design at Lynne's request, and had to be sized carefully to fit. They were stitched freehand, along with the other background work.

The first pass of the quilt was done all in dark burgundy thread. This included doing the outer border, the lion's share of the 'Stitch in the Ditch' (SID) and 'Continuous Curve' (CC) work. This was primarily done with the aid of rulers (you can see one of my 'Sew Clear' rulers in the photo at left). The second pass of the quilt was done from bottom back up to top, doing all the background work with a lovely variegated Signature cotton thread.

The last few times over the quilt were with different colours chosen to blend for the CC work in the flying geese, or the compasses.

The final quilt is very striking. Lynne requested a wool batting which looks amazing in the end. It really shows all of her tremendously accurate piecing and allows the quilting texture to show, adding a subtle dimension to the whole piece.

Big and beautiful, I hope this quilt can be something to snuggle under and enjoy for years to come.

Thanks for the chance to work on it, Lynne.





Happy Stitching,

Lisa

Gotta love this business

Only in the quilting business do we get the opportunity to enjoy Christmas at many times of year!

It's bright and sunny outside, the lilacs are budding, the tulips are blooming, it's 18 degrees Celsius and I'm here in the basement quilting snowflakes into this sweet Christmas quilt.

This one is done using Flurry, with a wool batting. I was listening to a wintry book while quilting...and was very relieved to walk upstairs into the sunshine!


In amongst all the customer quilting I'm doing to catch up (don't worry ladies, things ARE getting done) I've been taking a few minutes here and there to work on my artist trading cards. I'm determined to have a few to trade for the last Sunday of the month - if I'm here, that is. I might be away again. We'll see.

I've also been playing with inkwork on the cards that I stamped the other day. They're coming together - some nicer than others. I made one today that's a fir cone out of torn handmade paper mounted on a different colour handmade paper, painted with fibre dyes. Once all the inkwork is done on them I'll post photos. While Mom and I were in Kamloops I picked up the most recent copy of Cloth Paper Scissors and my head is now busting with ideas for ATC's. There's a great article in there about altered recipe cards that's got my head spinning with ideas, too. I did a couple quick sketches and hopefully will get some time to work up some cards based on those ideas at some point during the next few days.

Back to the machine...more glorious quilts to work on!

Happy stitching,

Lisa

Stars quilted

I managed to get Stars done today.

Y'know, 3 years ago I thought it would be good to have the goal of making one large quilt each year out of my scraps. I made a quilt that year...it took me from Jan 1 to December 31 - no joke. I put the last stitches in the binding on New Year's Eve.

The following week I started Stars. The idea was to string piece all these pretty stars out of my scraps, the colour wheel concept kind of evolved out of that part of the process. It sat for months at a time, stalled. Mostly due to lack of time, never due to lack of scraps.

About 5 months ago I pushed and finished all the blocks and put them on the background. I've never been completely happy with the machine applique on this... it sat on the design wall, partly to cover the wall and partly to remind me that it needed to be quilted. I had lots of big ideas for the quilting, but never did any big drawings to go with it. One night I sat down with DH and after a lot of drawing on photocopies of the quilt photo, came up with the geometric groundwork for the area around the outer circle. I don't think I knew what I was going to quilt on it (motif-wise) until I put it on the machine yesterday. Then it started to come together really fast.

I'm still not happy with the machine applique. I'll trim and bind it, then wash it, then remove the machine applique and hand applique all those stars down instead. At that point I'll probably put it back on the machine and stitch in the ditch around that outer circle of stars.

That's the plan, anyway. The pesky part is that I have to wash it first as I used glue pins to hold it on the background while I stitched it on the machine. There are parts in the points that I'll not be able to force a needle through until after it is all washed.

For those who are interested, the quilt pattern is from a book called "Great Expectations" by Karey Bresenhan for That Patchwork Place. The quilt I made is the antique one featured on the cover (all in pastel colours on white). I used Hobbes Black 80/20 Heirloom Batting and Countess cotton threads in many bright and wonderful colours. My quilt finishes to about 75" square.

Am I going to make a third large scrap quilt? Probably. Goodness knows I have enough scraps. I've got one started here - mostly pieced, in fact. The thing is, I'd have to make two this year just to catch up to my original plan of doing one each year. Fat chance!

Happy stitching!

Lisa

This one's just for fun

This is a 2 year old UFO I've had hanging on my wall for the last 5 months saying, "quilt me, quilt me!"...well, no time like the present.

It's so much fun to do all these big loopy freehand feathers after all that tight template work. This one's just for us, just for fun.

G'night,

Lisa

Fin!

It's done. I put the last stitches in it a few minutes ago. Whew!

Just for fun, I've posted 'before quilting' and 'after quilting photos. I've always loved how a quilt's surface is transformed by the quilting process. I think it's one of the things about this craft that got it's hooks so deep into me.


I have the box, I have the address, now I just need to send it away...

The quilt will be at MQX, for those who might be interested, or may be there. I'll be at MQX this year as well, with Jodi in the Willow Leaf Studio booth. Come by and say hello!

Time to start something new!

:)
Lisa

Customer Quilt

I thought I'd post this one today, it's about to be picked up. It's for a lady in Slocan who has been a wonderful customer ever since I started this business. The quilt is designed by Pam Bono, the panto used on it is Rhapsody, by Jodi Beamish. It was done using Aurofil thread.

The big challenge this weekend is finding space for everything! I have so many quilts 'in progress', but at BIG stages, that it's hard to keep things organized so that we can move around in here. I'll be dying the fabric for the Bacchanalia binding in the next bit, as soon as I can find my ironing board!

Oh, and anyone dropping by here today is hereby warned about the PIRATES! Cap'n Jack McKee and Scurvy Hans...they're building a blanket ship in the living room as I write this...

:)
Lisa