What's Been Up Lately?

What have I been up to lately? Lots of different things!
This quilt was a trial to create a cute sabby chic quilt. I will show you later how it turns out!

 I quilted a couple of customer quilts.

 This one was a VERY complex applique sampler from Texas. It had lots of baubles and bits on it.

 

And this thread is for the second of these 2 from Texas! It is similar in style but fabrics are waaaaay different. I'll post pics as I go. It's a beauty!! And it is so fun to open a box of thread. Kind of like Christmas!

More Fun with Felt!

Do you remember my previous post about quilting felt? Kathy sent me a photo of my piece that I failed to photograph before sending! 

She also asked if I could complete a couple more pieces for her. 

I am excited to get started!

It sounds like  her online class is getting close to being ready. I am really excited to be able to help her and be involved in making such pretty things!! 
Stay updated on her progress at https://www.facebook.com/KathyHaysDesigns.
 

The MQG Challenge

The national Modern Quilt Guild held a challenge recently.  
AND I completed a quilt for the challenge!  
ON TIME!!! 

I rarely get an item finished that is my own...if I actually accomplish this feat, it is because it was entered a show or a challenge with a deadline.

This challenge used Michael Miller fabrics from the Petal Pinwheels collection. The rules were to use only fabrics from Michael Miller or solids. My design was inspired by an old upholstery fabric that I had seen a while back. I really enjoyed doing the hand applique and learning lots about doing applique on such a large scale!! 

Photo credit: Joshua Brawner

 I also had fun with the quilting. Since it was my own quilt, I used different patterns everywhere! I tried a few new things and used some old reliables. And then I used some Elmer's school glue to tack the binding down in back so I could take the photo in time!

Here is a link to the winners of the challenge! Congrats!!
https://themodernquiltguild.wordpress.com/category/michael-miller-challenge/

Fun with Felt

Holy smokes, it has been a while since I posted! Summer is such a crazy time with my boy home and I lose track of myself. I have been remiss in taking pictures of completed quilts, but I do have a couple of things to share over the next few days!

Our guild was graced with Kathy Hays as a speaker about a month ago, and she is working on some new ideas in felting. She is a local artist that teaches wet felting and nuno felting. There were some amazing and gorgeous art pieces that she had for her show and tell! 
Kathy also had a new project in the works - she brought about 10 small felted pieces that she wanted quilters to take and do their "quilty thing" with. I was one of the lucky people who got to participate! All of the felted items were unique and inspiring. I hung back to see which would be left behind and took the last one. Then I quilted my piece and sent it off without taking pictures! How silly is that?? Kathy has promised that we will get our pieces back when she is done with them. I will definitely share when it comes back to me! 

She had little 'scrap' pieces for us to use as warmups, but they were beautiful, too! Here is a picture of my 'warm-up' piece:

It is about 5" x 7". And, yes, I did quilt it on my longarm. I can't quilt worth anything on my sweet, little Pfaff. 

(I remember years ago, when I first got my longarm, Micki and I were joking about pinning a little thing on the big machine....I even made her pose for a picture. 

Haha...joke was on me.)

Family Tree, T-Shirt Quilts and a Textured Surface

I was again called upon to complete a model for my local quilt shop, Happy Apple Quilts! I am so excited when they call because it's another chance to get my name out and build my business in my new city! I sure do love longarm quilting as a profession!!
Here is the quilt they needed quilted:

It is a model using the Family Tree fabric line by Deb Strain for Moda. It's beautiful, isn't it? I took some after photos, but I can't find the blasted things! I am afraid that I may have deleted them.

Next I completed a bright and fun t-shirt quilt! Just an easy meander job, which is a joy between custom jobs!

Now I am working on a fun, textural quilt made by one of my fellow guild members.  Each block is made from a piece of fabric pressed and folded into tucks.

Music

For the month of May, my assignment for Small Wonders was to create a 12x12 with the theme of Music.
I have recently read The Painted Quilt and decided to try a technique that I read about within its pages. I drew/traced a guitar onto freezer paper, then cut out the shape with an exacto knife. I was careful to cut precisely so that I can use the resulting stencil or the mask.

 




Next I tried my hand at improvisational piecing for the first time. 





I was so surprised at how flat it ended up after pressing! I expected to have to quilt quite a bit of lumpiness out. Steam is really a miracle worker!! Love my Reliant iron for that! Check your local quilt shop!
The technique was to use Shiva paintstiks or oil sticks around the paper edge of the shape and then brush the color into the hole. I decided to try a test piece first. Thank God for putting that thought in my head!!! My paintstiks were all dried out and didn't spread well. And the color I thought would be perfect looked black and yucky!!! I couldn't find my oil sticks (studio is still a mess...won't be able to use the 'just moved in' excuse for much longer) so I went for the acrylics and just painted in the stencil. 

  After quilting, I used fusible thread and foil to add guitar strings, but I messed up a little...it goobered up in spots.

Caution: goobers ahead

I think I needed to leave the iron on longer to get the foil to stay better...
Overall, I really like how the piece turned out. I do wish the acrylic paint had kept more of the color variation it had when wet. I will have to dig for my oil sticks and try again on another little quilt!

Thanks for stopping in!

I'm So Blue

The April theme for our Small Wonders art quilt group was blue. Here is my submission. Blue made me think of my pregnancy and just after Joshua was born. There were blue onesies, blue blankets, blue toys, blue sheets, blue everything! And after he was born, I had the post-partum blues 
(turned out to be post-partum thyroiditis that was eventually diagnosed as Hashimoto's disease).

For each of these little quilts, I am trying to learn a new skill or try something that I haven't done before. I am really enjoying the play! And the deadlines help me so much with getting things done. 

I started with some collage on the longarm. None of the fabrics were fused-I just laid them on the base fabric and stitched around them with the longarm. 

I tried some handwriting on fabric to include in this quilt. I got started after viewing Deborah Boschert's tutorial. I really liked the process and will definitely include this method again in the future. 
This quilt has some machine quilting and hand stitching with floss and perle cotton. I also included some beading for a little sparkle. 
 

I manipulated the photo of Joshua to make it fit the blue theme. If you don't have photo editing software, PicMonkey is my absolute favorite website to use for this kind of thing.

  
It's amazing how the brain works in remembering things. As I look at the parts of the quilt, I can remember what was going on as I completed that section. When I look at the beading, I remember that my mom was visiting and we were watching The Day the Earth Stood Still (the newish version). When I was stitching the shapes down on the longarm, I had The Breakfast Club playing on the computer in the studio. 

This month's theme is music! I am sure you will be waiting eagerly to find out what I was watching as I worked on that one!