IQ Patterns- floral

My blog has been added to the http://www.quiltqua.com/ website... check out their site- there are lots of links to quilting related blogs, patterns, tutorials, and such.

This quilt is a good example of what the Intelliquilter can do. The "here kitty" border was a purchased pattern- I had this quilt in mind when I found the pattern. I separated out the kitty, and repeated that in the border corners.

This is a baby quilt I made lately- found this fun car fabric at The Crafty Corner in Worthington. Thought it would be great for a boy's quilt. I used the square spiral quilting pattern on it.

Those corner blocks ended up too small, so I had to improvise & add the tiny white border to make everything work out. A nice happy accident- I like how the second white border looks.

In January I added an Intelliquilter to my longarm machine. The Intelliquilter is a computerized system that has a touch screen mounted to the head of th longarm, and drive motors attached on the rails of the longarm. After you set up what pattern you want on the quilt, & tell it where to put it & how big it should be, the Intelliquilter actually moves the machine head & stitches out the design. Here are a few pictures of the first customer quilt I did with the new IQ. Are those snails just the cutest thing?


The Intelliquilter can record patterns that I create, or there are hundreds & hundreds of digital patterns for sale online. There are so many new exciting patterns to try- it's hard to decide which one to use. One of my favorite designers right now is Anne Bright- check out here website & click on "digital patterns" to see some great patterns available for your quilts. If you click on the "edge 2 edge" designs, there are about 20 pages of patterns available.
http://www.annebright.com/

This is a border from a quilt I did lately, with Anne Bright's pattern called "Jamaica." It is one of my favorites.

I see I haven't posted since December.... oops. I guess things got a little busy.

Here's a quilt that I finished lately... doesn't this quilt have delicious fabrics in it? This quilt got stitch-in-the-ditch around all the pieces, and lots of creative quilting in all those diamond points. It was fun once I got started. The biggest hurdle was getting it loaded & just taking that first stitch.

What I've been up to....

Yesterday was the classic blizzard snowed-in day, so I decided to give soap-making a try... here's a picture of the bars just cut up...

I have been wanting to try this for a while & yesterday was the perfect day for it. I was a little leary of the whole lye- thing, but it went fine & was pretty much uneventful.

This batch is vanilla scented. The bars have to cure for 3 weeks before using.

The weekend before, I started on this baby quilt- it's all frayed-edge applique, if you can even call it that. The squares are just laid down & I quilted 1/4" from all the edges to hold them down. I'm going to wash it to fray the edges & hopefully it will be a nice snuggly quilt.

And lastly, here's the picture from our front window, after the raging winds have died down today. I have a feeling C will stay busy with the snow blower this winter. Do you see the snowman little C & I made a week ago? It looks like it's got it's arms up calling for help! "I'm drowning!"

Some quilts...

I haven't posted in a while... the kids have had the flu, and I haven't left the house for a week....

I thought I would post some pictures of quilts that I've worked on in the past few weeks..

Here's an Irish Chain, quilted with a pantograph pattern called "Rhapsody":

A picture of the back, that shows the pattern well:


This one is custom quilted. She wanted traditional feathered wreaths in the open cream colored areas.

Another custom quilted one... she wanted feathers in the open columns. I also crosshatched the borders, and stitched in the ditch in the basket blocks.

Christmas stocking

I'm working on stockings to hang on the mantle... here is the first one. I am hoping to make one for each of the kids & embroider their names on the cuff. We'll see if that gets done. They're taking a bit longer than I had hoped.

And the winner is.....

Roxanne Ashland! Her name was picked for a $25 off gift certificate from the craft show. Thank you to everyone who came out to the Boyden craft show last Saturday. I had never done anything like this before, so I didn't really know what to expect. We started at 9AM, and it stayed pretty busy until around 2, things really slowed down after that. I think everyone there was happy with the turnout. I had some quilts hanging that I had made- including the B-H t-shirt quilt. That got the most comments. I had quite a few non-quilters come up & ask about what I do.
It was a busy Saturday, though, and I am happy to be back at home again. That day I had the craft show from 9-3, a wedding to go to at 4, and a family get-together at 6:30. We got home after 11. Yikes~ that's enough for one day.