Finshed For Friday

Here ya go Andee!

Schnibbles #5 I believe! Oops I just visited Andee's blog and this is actually her eighth schnibbles! WOW!

Close up............

and the back.

VTT Inarco Statues

It's that "loverly time of the week'' again when we display our vintages treasures so follow the thread over at Colorado Lady's blog!

I saw these sweet little children in the Humane Society Thrift Shop in Ridgway, CO.

I was very tempted to buy them but they were about $6 each and I baulked at the price.

A month later I decided to check on them and they were still there but the price was only $3, I couldn't pass them up.

They are so very cute, I had to make room for them in the china cabinet.

I looked them up on the internet but didn't see much on them.

There were a couple on eBay though no more info available there.

They have registration numbers on them so perhaps I will eventually be able to get some more background on their vintage.

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Miri, Milk And Honey Quilts, just reminded me that the Blogger's Quilt Festival is online again and here's my choice.

I blogged about it already when I finally brought it to completion, my Stash New York Beauty.

Almost all the fabrics came from my stash, exceptions being the larger pieces in a couple of the border areas and the backing & binding, a beautiful Asian print.

Every block has a theme, African, Asian, musical, Monet, etc. and each block is quilted according to the fabric design, the quilting took several days on my A-1 longarm machine.

The blocks and the border are all paper pieced and the border was designed to reflect the identical fabrics from the adjoining blocks. I made bias binding to accommodate the curved edges on opposing corners.

It was so much fun to pick out the coordinating fabrics from my collection and then to watch as the blocks came together.

The process was a long one, the project began a few years back with a group of quilters in Montrose Colorado who invited me to join them as they learned the art of paper piecing meeting each Wednesday night through summer and fall to work on this project.

All the other quilters completed theirs within a year, every one quite different then the quilts were displayed at the Montrose Quilt Show that year. Perhaps I need to show mine this year to prove it is done, the finished quilt makes me very happy!

Finished For Friday, Donna's QOV

June at Quilts Of Valor maintains a list of longarmers who will quilt tops made by others for our wounded warriors. Most of the year I sign up to do two a month, sometimes I get more if I have time to fit them in. June pairs up quilters and toppers, this month I got lucky and my assigned partner is right here in town so we are saving about $20 on postage that we can better use for more supplies. Donna's friend dropped off the quilt top on Tuesday and I have it "Finished For Friday".

Litandlaundry is hostess for FFF and you can find on her blog a list of other productive and crafty bloggers.

This is Field and Furrows, one of many settings for the Log Cabin block, which came into prominence in the 19th. century after the Civil War and is thought to represent the log cabins built by the settlers heading west. This a scrappy version, Log Cabin quilts are perfect for scrap use, just divide your scraps into lights and darks and you can easily produce a very effective pattern.

I couldn't decide what to quilt on it so I resorted to the ever popular feathers meandered all over.

Muslin backing shows up the quilting very well, but most solids will work if you want to see detail of the quilting.

When quilting the feathers randomly it isn't necessary to keep the size consistent in fact I think it's more interesting to vary the size of the feathers.

I continue to experiment with lighting for quilt photography, the lighting is the big issue- do you strive for accuracy in color over clarity of quilting or the other way around? And I am sure you can do both with the right camera and lighting conditions-I am obviously not there yet, I need to find that tutorial!

Linda's Batik Quilt

Early hours of Wednesday morning this came off the longarm. I decided to stay up and finish it so I could get it mailed off priority to Colorado before noon. Linda is flying to TX Saturday and would like to take the quilt with her for her future DIL's wedding shower.

Linda's border treatment helps to frame the dark fabrics, notice the unusual effect in opposite corners.

It isn't easy to see the quilting with such busy fabric but I used King Tut thread in a variegated blue, quilting leaf wreaths in each block and leaves in the sashing. I decided to treat all four borders as one with columbines and hummingbirds and I notice that I forgot to take a close up of the border.

I experimented with different angles to see if the quilting showed any better...........

then turned on the flash to see if that helped but I think it only faded the colors.

Here's a close up of the backing and one of the leaf wreaths.

You see a little of the border design from the back- more experiments with lighting-I once read about a tutorial online about photographing quilts, I really should hunt it down and do some study on the subject, when I have time!

Keeping my fingers crossed that it reaches Linda safely on Friday.

Finally, I Think It's Fixed!

After a couple of weeks of intermittent tensions problems, something very unusual for my A-1 machine, today I put in a new hook, re-timed, fiddled with the tension and after about three hours and some screw driver and flashlight- holding assistance from DH, I seem to have it running the way I like! Something interesting, one final adjustment was to take it out of "cruise" and put it in unregulated and it appears to be running better. Not at all sure why it made any difference but I can deal with that! I might also add that the techs at A-1 are wonderful, helpful, and so patient!

This little quilt is another of Andee's that I slipped in while waiting for machine parts and other larger quilts to arrive. It's a fused applique that had not been stitched down and Andee asked me to just "quilt it all over" because she was done with it and didn't want to do anything more.

I told her I couldn't allow her to abandon the quilt so after quilting everything else with green thread I used a monopoly "invisible" thread to stitch down the edges of the applique and then outline the shapes.

Something about these "invisible" threads, I would never use the nylon because it turns yellow and melts but the monopoly retains the clear look and does not melt.

I have an enormous cone of Madeira monopoly but it will not run in my machine it's too fragile even taking all the tension off it. However, Superior monopoly works beautifully and that is what I used.

I hope Andee is happy with it, I think it is a much nicer solution than quilting some other design all over the applique pieces and hoping they won't fall off.

Now I have the "queen size batik wedding shower gift quilt" on and I have quilted the first couple of blocks. It will take a few days to quilt, there are sixteen blocks, sashing, and four borders one of which is nearly 10" wide.

With any luck it will be done by week's end.

Quilts, Finished For Friday

Two more from Andee, small ones that I did in between larger quilts, and while I am waiting for a new laser for my longarm that I need to quilt the racing car panto on June's quilt!

The quilt top that was lost in the mail finally arrived much to the owner's relief[and mine] but not until I lit a fire under USPS! The box had been mailed from CO. two day priority, insured, 4th. May, arrived in Phx. 5th and eventually delivered 12th! Very aggravating because it had been booked in for quilting to be completed in time for a wedding shower gift for a DIL to be.

I have been quilting others in the meantime but now I have one on the machine that I have to complete before I can load the shower gift quilt!

A baby quilt with all over peacock feathers in orange thread........

the back.

Schnibbles number ? five I think, quilted with trailing leaves and leaf border and green thread..........

the backing.

Now you might like to pop on over to Litandlaundry to see the other Friday Finishes.

Mother's Day

My lovely Mum, and me.

I have a collection of the cards given to me by our sons. This one Matthew sent me , maybe ten years ago.

Our Matthew is gone now from this world, and I am so very thankful that I have these reminders of him. I bring them out on special occasions and this is one of my favorites. A man of few words my Matthew but they were all the words that counted.

Finished For Friday, Andee's BOM Quilt

It's Finished For Friday and if you visit Litanlaundry's blog you'll see other crafty blogger's Friday finishes.

This quilt had to endure some delays because of the misbehavior of Miss Ellie, my longarm quilting machine but now it is done and off the machine and a QOV takes its place! This is another of Andee's Quilts, who made it in conjunction with a class at Zoe's Trunk, a wonderful quilt shop in Chandler, AZ.

By virtue of their design-no two blocks the same- these quilts take much more time to quilt because I just can't bring myself to quilt an all-over pattern when every block tells a different story.
Some are easy to quilt and the ideas come quickly while others require some time to mature, ideas rejected until the right thing comes to me!

These two have leafy wreaths........

I used an off white thread in order to avoid distraction from the block design,

that makes the quilting almost disappear on some blocks.

A feathered wreath in the center then some "Line Dancing"............

More feathers..........

feathers that are really hard to see!

I am usually thinking about the next block as I quilt and occasionally I skip over one waiting until I can come up with an acceptable option.

"Garden branching" here.

This goes back to Andee tomorrow for binding.

This seems to be the season for sampler quilts, I have had a few to quilt recently and there is another due to arrive from Colorado any day.

Vintage Thingies Thursday

Whew, well I finally got that BOM quilt off the machine [more on that tomorrow] after fussing around with it for days, and just in time because today is hooray, VTT and Colorado Lady is our hostess with the mostest!

So if vintage and antique interest you please visit Suzanne's blog to see the list of all the other VTT bloggers.

A couple of weeks ago while I was at the San Juan guild quilter's retreat one of the members gave me a very special gift- twenty five dainty vintage 30's Dresden Plate quilt blocks!

These are the smallest I have seen measuring only a scant ten inches across.

I was stunned to say the least but Claudia said that seeing that I had completed three other vintage quilts I was the only person she knew who would do the right thing with these blocks.

They were made by her grandmother back in the 1930's. Peggy Anna Kinney was born in New Jersey in 1898 and died in 1965 and I am very pleased to have this provenance so that I can put it on the label when I get the quilt done.

The blocks are neatly hand sewn as you can see from this photo of the back and they came with a stack of muslin blocks that are a bit small so I think I will have to buy some similar muslin to applique the blocks.

I was really moved that Claudia would give me such treasures but she said she has kept some to make into memory blocks for family and she knows she will never make a quilt with these herself. Her GM must have been a prolific piecer to have left so many blocks.

So these delightful pieces of history will go on my projects list, probably a good thing for me to do in the summer in CO. while I am away from my longarm machine.

Happy VTT to all!

Machine Troubles!

Occasionally these big quilting machines get out of sync-after all we are sewing at very high speeds, moving the machine around in all directions over multiple layers of fabric, batting etc, and this can tend to put them out. Sometimes there seems no obvious reason-mostly for me there is no one thing I can point to that may have caused the revolt and such has been the case the past few days.

I finished a quilt, took a day or so break then came back and loaded another one and lo and behold Miss Ellie was in a snit!

Many long arm quilters name their machines, we spend a lot of time with them and many quilters depend on their machines for a living so the machine may become like a trusted friend. I did not bother to name my first long arm but I decided to name the second, and rather unimaginatively I named it Ellie, simply because it is an A-1 Elite!

I have been tinkering around with the machine for three days, trying all the usual tricks of the trade from bobbin and thread changes to re-timing and calibration.

Thankfully I seem to have resolved most of the issue and was confident enough to begin another quilt this evening, however I would still like to fine tune a little more so tomorrow I will check in with the very knowledgeable and helpful tech at the A-1 factory.

For now at least we are operational and Ellie and I are friends again, a huge relief and with any luck I will have another finish to post with pics tomorrow.

Our little Button dog has been a bit under the weather and we made a visit to the vet Saturday, not her favorite place she always seems to get stuck and screams like a little banshee but no stick this time only some meds. to treat her colitis. She seems to be feeling better but not as quickly as I would like, so we may check in with the vet again tomorrow, don't we hate to see our furry friends ill? Meantime she is enjoying poached chicken and rice instead of her usual Evo diet and she is very partial to chicken!