Calendar Bears and a Northern Shop Hop quilt

Today I am sharing two quilts made by Noeline. First is 'Calendar Bears', designed by Michelle Ridgway , put together as a BOM by The Country Yard.

As usual Noeline's stitching is so beautiful, tiny, neat, precise stitches. She asked for minimal quilting. I did have free range on the border though.

    I used Glide thread colour 'Linen' for the straight lines on the blocks and the feather border.
       A snap shot of the back lets you see the feather on the border better than the front view.

Noeline's other beauty is last years Northern Shop Hop quilt from The Country Yard, called "Love in Paris".

Noeline chose to have the extra borders, taking the original ( which I quilted *here*) from 48" x 48" to 61" square. Making this a nice topper for Noeline's bed, she tells me it's a keeper! Noeline liked how I quilted the shop sample, so I went with that, but of course hers being slightly bigger I had to expand on that original design of mine.

I quite like how the cross hatching takes your eye to the outer edges. Most of the quilting is the same as the shop sample except for a few touches here and there to make it an original for Noeline.

Cross hatching and feathers and swirls help keep this quilt have a romantic feel, it is "Love in Paris" after all!

Because I quite like to see the back of the quilts just like you do, here are a couple.

                         Thank you to Noeline for 'letting me loose' on your quilts!

Now I don't want to freak you all out with words like: "Christmas is only ......... days away", but the Christmas clock is ticking and the closer the time comes the more you lovely quiltmakers start to panic about getting your quilts finished. If you are planning on commissioning me as your long arm quilter
 a) - I would be delighted!
 b) please don't leave it until November to get them to me!
 The sooner the better, if you have them to the flimsy stage get them to me, if you only have borders to go, go ahead and put those borders on. P.S here is a great link on how to attach sashings and borders:http://quiltville.blogspot.co.nz/2005/06/border-hints.html

So with that bad word out of the way...........happy patchin'!!

Circles, pebbles & gingerbread kisses!

                  The long awaited sharing of the stunning black clamshell beauty is over!

True to form I have shared sneak peeks over at Facebook, sometimes it takes several days or a week or so to show you all of the quilt, this is due to the quilt being returned to it's maker.
This large (85" x 85") stunning quilt was made by Marilyn. Marilyn sure makes some lovely class samples! Marilyn's brief to me was to stitch in the ditches around the clam shells, but no quilting ON the clam shells. Then for the border Marilyn wanted circles and pebbles using a variegated thread. Sadly the photo's don't show up the fabulous thread, but I did take a photo of the spool of thread! From there you will have to trust me that the thread is lovely, it works so well with all the colours in the clam shells.

I worked at getting a variety of circular designs, each slightly different. When you are quilting on a domestic machine ( I used my Bernina 440 for over 6yrs before purchasing my long arm machine) you could easily see what you had already quilted. On a long arm machine you need to roll the quilt back and forth, even then you can only see approximately 26 inches of the quilt at one time, so I took plenty of photo's as my guide.

         Some circle designs took on a life of their own! Like this one, a bit like a face I thought?

In the background of the circles I quilted what felt like to me was 'movement'. Simple back and forth meandering, it feels like slow moving water, or moon light.

Marilyn's Clam shells have an explosion of  fascinating designs, piecing and embroideries..............................

Marilyn decided on a black batting which was a wise choice as we can run the risk that when the quilt front and backing are black, white batting's can 'beard' through. Marilyn pieced a pretty backing from a William Morris fabric framed with a beige then black solid fabrics.

If you would like to take classes with Marilyn please contact her through her website *here*.

By the way, Simon was on hand when the photographing took place.......................................

Next to share with you is Kerryn's delightful 'Christmas Inspirational Stitchery Quilt'. Made using Michelle Ridgway's Gingerbread stitchery booklet, Anni Down's " Under the Mistletoe" fabric,   Cottage Garden and Aurifil threads.

The Country Yard has put together inspirational packs which include fabrics, thread and Michelle's booklet to get you spirited along on the Christmas journey!

Kerryn adores her stitcheries to have cross hatching, to secure, to add extra texture all without taking away from her lovely stitching. For these times I always use a very fine thread.

My collection of Glide threads are growing, I have many threads I love and use often, they work well through my machine, life is too short to be fussing with 'headache' threads!

The sun going down photo, see the textures...................a pretty ribbon border on pretty fabrics!

Thank you for stopping by, enjoy the week to come.

Feathers, cross hatching and stitchery.

Hello poppets! Two quilts to share with you all, first is Janette's simple yet effective quilt.

No intricate piecing going on in this quilt, a square of lovely tone on tone taupe floral fabric, sashed then a border attached...........an absolute playground for the quilter!

Janette wanted fairly dense quilting to create textures, so I let loose with my hand guided fabulous fancy filigree free flowing feathers! Say that fast ten times!

I don't mark spines or feathers, I just turn the machine on and quilt! Usually with some good music going.
For the rich ruby red sashing I quilted a rope. The brown border was framed with more feathers.

                    So much fun to let loose with this type of custom quilting, thank you Janette!
Next is a sweet soft quilt, featuring stitchery and simple piecing, made by Kerryn for a shop sample at The Country Yard.

Kerryn used Michelle Ridgway's Alphabet stitcheries for babies. She has created a beautiful soft quilt that will surely become a treasured heirloom.

Wanting to keep this quilt soft and not too 'heavy' looking and also a classic timeless look I opted for cross hatching over the stitcheries, whenever I do this I always use a very fine thread so as to not detract from the stitchery.

The feature fabric was quilted with a simple meander and the sherbet coloured squares I quilted orange peel, the borders received swirls. What a soft pretty quilt for a boy or a girl and a cuddly flannel backing. Thank you Kerryn!

Speaking of The Country Yard I have finished a redwork stitchery for a sample. The design is by Wildcraft Farm. I used Aurifil 12 weight thread.....in red!

For a change I decided to staple the bordered stitchery onto an artist canvas. I am quite happy with the finished result.

Part of my fancy high tech storage system for my Pantograph patterns (all over quilting) I use long cardboard rolls. I cut these to about 30cm in length for storing my patterns neatly. I bought one home from a fabric shop the other day and lay it on the floor ready for when I had time to cut it up. I snapped the 'Supervisor' thinking he could stuff his face into the roll!

"Surely I can fit in here?"