All Things Bright And Beautiful!

My name for this eye catching quilt which has now gone to its new home DownUnder! 

 The lovely girlfriend of my nephew Wes so loved this quilt that I thought she should have it.

I know that it will be well loved and used so tomorrow it will be winging its way across the Pacific ocean as she and Wes return home to Australia. I doubt there is anything more gratifying to us as quilters than to have someone fall in love with a quilt, it blesses us as artists that our creations are to be well loved.

God's blessings go with them and may they soon return to visit us again!
Linking up with "Needlework Tuesday"

Talkin' Turkey!

This is Angela's setting for her Turkey Tracks blocks,  it is a bright, scrappy traditional quilt. Not sure how long she worked on this, there are a lot of little pieces, maybe a year or so I know it was quite a while!

With four separate pieced borders I was at first inclined to simply  quilt it edge to edge but after I loaded it on the longarm I changed my mind and quilted all four borders separately, though it's quite hard to see that.

The main body of the quilt is freehand peacock feathers

I really like the backing, the quilting actually shows, whereas the front is so busy no thread color would have been effective so I used a neutral.

 Before beginning this quilt I did some maintenance on the longarm above and beyond the standard, replacing both the original tensioner unit [nine years old] and the bobbin case -the latter only seem to last a couple of years before becoming unreliable. Now the tension is perfect no  bottom loopies, so I am a happy and confident longarmer again!

There is a little progress to report on my new bed quilt, the blocks are now sewn into rows and pinned on the design wall so perhaps I will get that together next week before our Boston family arrive for a visit.

Family Visit And a Quilt Delivery

We are so lucky this month to have nephew and his GF from Australia visiting the USA. Wes had to come for a friend's wedding in CA, and now he and Kristie are doing a bit of traveling around. Friday night oldest son and wife hosted a barbecue and we all enjoyed the reunion, it's been a couple of years since Wes was last here riding the bulls.

 And I was able to deliver Wes's quilt which will be going back DownUnder with him later in the month.

 Tonight it was my turn to entertain the visitors, not everyone was available there were some conflicting events........

 so the three pans of ribs were not all needed and I have enough to see me through several days and no cooking!

I also made a pavlova just in case Wes and Kristie were feeling a bit homesick!

 Grandson Daniel came came by to collect Wes and Kristie for a little partying and managed to find a piece of pavlova with his name on it!

Now there's just one piece left..............

must be mine!!

Next quilt on the long arm isAngela's Talkin' Turkey.

Blue Bargello

Donna's lovely wall hanging is quite large, 53"x81", and took longer than expected to quilt. I delayed the start because I was unable to use my first choice thread, Art Colors "Azure Sky" a Superior trilobal.

It refused to play nice with my machine, hard to believe really because these are some of my favorite threads and usually sew like a dream on my A-1 machine. Fortunately I had an alternative, Superior's King Tut "De Nile", 100% Egyptian cotton.

My machine is currently going through some tension issues and nothing I have done the past weeks has completely solved the problem although I can make it behave on and off. It's most frustrating so I have ordered a new tension unit and bobbin case to see if that might do the trick. I seem to be able to identify an intermittent odd noise too now so I'll call the helpful tech tomorrow and see if he can hear it, these guys are pretty savvy at diagnosis.
So here is the bargello wall hanging, quilted. I used a double matt, Quilter's Dream poly Select on the bottom and QD wool on top to give more definition and I am quite pleased with the result.

 I had chalked in diagonal lines every three inches to keep the diagonal quilting parrallel, and I needed to roll the quilt back and forth several times in order to quilt diagonally.

The picture below shows the true color better I think and also detail of the freehand quilting, it's a simple design that reminds me a bit of waves and fits the ocean like colors of the quilt.

The backing is also batik

Now I will get back to my new bed quilt, I have all the blocks laid out and ready to construct.