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This is another of Lori’s quilts. This one is from a pattern by Carrie Nelson of Miss Rosie’s Quilt Collection. I have seen it done in pastels and in muted florals and it is quite lovely. Lori’s fabric choices have more drama, darks, jewels tones, very deep rich colors. Lori also wanted Suzanne Earley Feather Meander on her quilt.

Machine Quilter Innovations Quilt Show - Tacoma, WA

My friend, Debbie, finished piecing our show quilt and I have labored over the quilting design and I finally have one that I like. So I loaded it, did the top border (piano keys and surrounding feathers) and got stuck. When I drew the design on paper, I didn’t think about the tool(s) that would be used to make the long low arch from one corner of the design to the other. Hmmmm.



Well, it is actually 4 long low arches on each side, so 16 low long low arches. It eventually joins up and makes a cool diamond. But the arch is like 30” long. I drew half of it on paper using a light box. Then I made a stencil for the half arch from the drawing.


I dusted the quilt stencil with chalk. Alas, the quilt is so light that the white chalk does not show. I tried poking my blue marker through the stencil holes. Tedious, nevermind that I was afraid that pulling the pen out of the stencil would pull the tip off the blue pen and have ink all over the quilt. DRAT.



So I chose a very low tech solution. I had just bought a new computer desk and had the box in the garage. So I dusted the stencil on the cardboard and then drew a pencil line for the innermost line in the arch. I cut the cardboard at the first arch and used it to draw the arch first line on the quilt using purple (fade-away) pen. That worked great. With the first arch in place, then I could just use a ruler and my hopping foot to quilt the other 3 lines.

The San Diego Quilt Show

I dropped off my Asian Flower Garden (AFG) blooming 9 patch quilt at Rosie’s Calico Cupboard after work today. They had a huge U-Haul truck in the parking lot just to move the quilts to the show. It was all very organized. I heard that they have 300 entries for the show.

Update: I picked up my quilt from Rosies and alas, no ribbon. But I have had 4 or 5people comment that they recognized it from the show.

Coming Soon: The San Diego Quilt Show

I can’t believe that I don’t have any last minute prep for my quilt to go to the show. It is labelled, bagged and folded with the “right sides out and upper right corner displayed” per SDQS instructions. It will be dropped off at Rosie’s Calico Cupboard between 1 – 6PM tomorrow, be in the show Thursday – Sunday and must be picked up on Sunday 1 – 4 PM at Rosies.
I bet it will be a madhouse. This is my first entry for SDQS so I’m a bit excited. This not a judged show though the general public can vote for their favorites. Viewer’s Choice awards through a Third place ribbon. This will be my Asian Flower Garden (AFG) quilt’s third show. As soon as it comes back it will be packed and shipped to Machine Quilters Innovations in Tacoma for a peer-judged show. I plan to put AFG in every show I can.

Making a quilt for show takes many hours of work. My AFG is a Blooming Nine Patch from the Blanche Young book named Tradition with a Twist. It is an easy pattern, just 9 patches and 4.25" blocks. This quilt has so many seams, it uses a LOT of fabric. I think it is 7 yds for the front. I started piecing the quilt and got 7 rows done. But two of the fabrics read as solid and I anted “bloom” so three or four rows had to be ripped out so I could replace the fabrics. Then I just ran out of time and asked for help.

I am not a great piecer but, my friend, Debbie Heaton is. She has been in the sewing industry for over 30 years and her piecing is impeccable. Plus she has a keen eye for color. So Debbie pieced AFG. Then Marilynn Hersey did the binding by hand. Both the piecing and the binding got high marks at MQS 2008. So I am hoping that AFG does well at SDQS.

Bev's Quilt

This is for her son and daughter-in-law. I seem to be getting quite a few of the black-white-red quilts. This one has a lot of fabrics with circles. I OK’d, in advance with Bev, to be the guinea pig on my new Circle Lord 7 Treasure of Buddha template. I think that the circles will look great. I decided that Black Superior So Fine thread was the way to go because it would have a smaller footprint than the black Signature cotton. I considered the King Tut Rosetta Stone (black, white,silver) but that would just make a scrappy quilt chaotic.

Signature Quilt for LQS

Our local quilt shop (LQS) is called the CraZy 9 Patch. Her signature quilt is a stack and whack 9-patch with coordinating fabrics. The original quilt was done when the shop first opened in 2004. The longarm quilter on that one really wowed us rookies with her style. The quilt was, well, still is, beautiful. But after 4 years, the quilt shop owner wanted an update.
This one uses some wonderful woodsy colors, beiges, browns and dark browns. I chose Signture cotton Fawn thread because it has a red tinge to it similar to the red tones in the fabrics. I usually take my que for quilting from the fabrics themselves. But a stack and whack has so many different fabrics, it is hard to choose. They were very organic, lots of wispy leaves. Martha is the owner of the LQS, and her only guidance for quilting was “No circles”. Hmm, I wonder if she knew that I just got the newest Circle Lord template called the 7 Treasure of Buddha which is pretty much all circles. OK, I‘ll save those 7 Treasures for another quilt. So wispy leaves it is in the quilting. I used Signature cotton thread color Fawn top and bobbin. The batting is Quilter's Dream Puff.

What's Black, White and Red?

Well, it’s a modified log cabin quilt with cats wearing red Santa helper hats, what else? This was a busy quilt with several b & w fabrics. The little spark of the cats in red Santa hats really made this fun to quilt. Allison made it for a neighbor kid’s wedding present. Their colors are black/white/red. Ali noticed a customer’s feather meander quilt as I was dropping it off at the LQS. She loved the puffiness and flow of the feathers. I love that Suzanne Earley Meandering Magic book, it makes it so easy. She changed her mind from white thread to black. I used Signature cotton black top and bobbin. The backing is pieced from scraps of black/white/red. The batting is Quilter’s Dream Puff.

Wild Irish Rose

This is like two quilts. The inner part is a double-Irish chain. The border corner stones were giant-sized 9-patches flanked by 3 3-inch borders (green-burgundy-green). I put flowers or continuous curves (CC) in the 9-patches.

I did change threads. I just thought that the Signature cotton Cranapple was perfect for the CC in the burgundy but was too harsh for the green parts of the chain. I know, I shouldn’t over-think these things. But there it is. So I used Green Sage PermaCore for the CC in the green/brown parts of the chain. The big blank sections were perfect for the freemotion no-start rose. The customer wanted wool batting. She had seen a king folded-flower quilt with Quilter’s Dream wool batting that I did for one of her friends and loved the puffiness of the wool. It really does show good quilt definition.

Sea Turtles

This all-batik quilt was huge, built for a California kingsize bed. It was 112 inches wide and 108 inches top to bottom. I used 3 different battings. I put Warm and White on the bottom.



Then I windowed in a piece of Soft & Bright inside the inner border. I used some QD puff trapunto on the two big turtles and the orange fish. I also used Jodi Beamish Waterworld as filler inside the turtle area. Michelle Wyman’s Simply Seashells seemed like the perfect complement ot he turtles so that is what I put in the 20” borders.




I used PermaCore Brazilian Blue thread top and bobbin.

Going Around in Circles

OK, I cannot tell a lie, this one was a wooly booger to get quilted. The quilt was 2 inches bigger through the center than it was on the top and bottom.



I double-batted it (Soft & Bright and QD Puff) to help fill in some of the mountains. I used King Tut’s Oasis thread and quilted swirls very tightly to nail down any puckers who showed their heads. Even I was surprised at how well it turned out.

Night and Day

Update: The book is out now and the one I quilted is on page 93. It is a thrill to see my name in print. Silly really, but just fun.

I also wanted to post a photo that I got in October 2008 after this post was written on Sep 10th, 2008. Eleanor Burns is a local celebrity. Her retreat is in Julian which is right up the road from our little town of Ramona. Now Eleanor has her own fabric store, Quilt in a Day, over in San Marcos which is about 35 miles from the retreat center. People attending her retreat have to pass through our town to go to the retreat plus our LQS, the CraZy 9 Patch, is the closest fabric store to the retreat center. Occasionally, Eleanor drops in to see what fabrics The CraZy 9 Patch has in stock. That way she can advise her students. Eleanor tries to fly below the radar when she does these LQS visits. She is on a particular mission.

I was in the produce department at our local supermarket once and chatted with her, not realizing who she was, at first until I saw her signature red fingernail polish and then she smiled and her smile is unmistakable. She really is a sweet person.

I quilted this quilt for Lorna and she let me display it in my longarm booth at the Ramona Quilt show in October 2008. Eleanor usually stops by our show every year. You can tell when she is there because people stop talking and start whispering "Is that Eleanor Burns?" LOL. I was disappointed that I had not seen her during our 2-day quilt show. Then 10 minutes before the show was over, I heard the hush and knew she was there. She apparently knew that Lorna's quilt was hanging in my booth because she made a beeline to my booth. And I got this wonderful photo with Eleanor.


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I just finished this beauty. It is called Night and Day and will be in Eleanor Burn’s book of the same name coming out soon.



I did lots of ruler work in and around the stars. The Circle Lord 12-inch Spiral template was the perfect tools in the octogons and the Cable template in the borders made a clean border.

I wish I had Eleanor’s talent or talent pool. She keeps coming up with challenging and beautiful quilt patterns.

4th of July in Poway Park

4th of July Celebration at Old Poway Park
Every year Poway, CA puts on an old-fashioned 4th of July Celebration. There are bands, games for the children, including face-painting, and food, food, food. Oh, and the guild, the Friendship Quilters of San Diego (FQSD) have a quilt show in the Fellows Hall. We had great attendance at the quilt show. Most of these folks do not quilt, they just come in to see the quilts. Well, it doesn’t hurt that Fellows Hall is the only air-conditioned spot in Poway Park. So maybe they come in to cool off and look at the quilts. This is also the ideal spot to sell tickets for Opportunity and raffle quilts. FQSD had a red, white and blue quilt for raffle. Lee Mary and I took the Back Country Quilters Opportunity quilt to the event to sell tickets also. I also entered my Asian Flower Garden quilt, recently returned from Machine Quilter’s Showcase (MQS) in Kansas City. There were three categories, Whimsical, Patriotic and overall Viewer’s Choice. I was so surprised that my AFG won the Viewer’s Choice blue ribbon. Then as we were breaking down the quilt show, the park announced the winner of the FQSD raffle quilt. I won that red, white and blue beauty. What a great day and a lucky day for me. I went straight to the store and bought a lottery ticket. They say these things come in 3’s. Alas, I did not win the lottery but I came home with my first ribbon for quilting and a patriotic quilt. It was a very good ay.

Where have I been?

I was pretty faithful about posting photos of my work and quilt techniques. For me, this blog was like an online journal. I could look back and see what thread I used on Sally's quilt or what motif I used in Mary's wallhanging. Then things got complicated and the blog updates fell by the wayside. I will try to do better...for myself nobody else. So there will forever be a hole in my blog. Deal with it.