What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It’s been awhile since I’ve hosted a quilt along, but I’m home for the rest of the summer before travel picks up again in the fall. So August is the perfect time for me to guide you through the process of making an entire quilt from start to finish. However, there’s only 1 problem – I need to know which quilt you’d like to make! Here are two choices up for consideration:

Click here to get my Beaded Lanterns free PDF pattern download

Choice #1 – Beaded Lanterns QAL

Beaded Lanterns is one of my free patterns ...

Want to see how I actually apply my quilting designs to a “real” quilt? Check out this week’s bonus video, tutorial, where I show you how I quilt two different designs on two different versions on the same quilt:

Get the Surplus Strips Quilt Kit!

Interested in making these quilts yourself? You can grab quilt kits with either the light or dark background. This quilt is made from my Dazzle Dots 2 fabric, which is also available in my online shop in both precuts and yardage.

Click Here for My Surplus Strips Quilt Kit

Already have fabric? Click here ...

This week for 99 Machine Quilting Designs I’m showing how to free-motion quilt several loop variations. They are one of my go-to designs! Click below to watch:

These 3 designs all come from my book 99 Machine Quilting Designs. You can grab the instant PDF download of this book from my Etsy shop and follow along with each video that I’m sharing all year long!

Click here to grab your PDF Copy of 99 Machine Quilting Designs

Bonus Video: Quilting Loops on a Real Quilt!

After watching my video tutorials each week, I’m sure you’ll want ...

How are you enjoying my year of machine quilting videos so far? Are you finding time to practice? I have another fun set of Walking Foot quilting designs for you to try – Shattered Lines and Wavy Shattered Lines. Take a look below:

Bonus Video – Quilting Shattered Lines on Bling

If you’d like to see how I quilted shattered lines on a “real” quilt, take a look at my bonus video below. I’m demonstrating on one of the versions of my Bling quilt pattern.

Get the Bling Quilt Pattern

• Click here to get the Bling PDF quilt pattern.
• Click ...

This week for 99 Machine Quilting Designs we are learning to quilt Triangle Texture, a design that’s great for modern OR traditional quilts! Watch below and let me know what you think!

Get the Surplus Strips Quilt Pattern or Kit
I recently combined 2 motifs – boxes and triangles on the gray version of my Surplus Strips quilt! You can now grab the kit to make this quilt with the gray or white background, or grab the pattern and choose your own colors. It’s fun to make and fun to quilt! 

• Click Here to Get the Surplus Strips Quilt ...

It got up to the mid 40s ...

Over the holidays I made some things for the house: two doorstops

and uh . . . . well, I don’t know what to call it, but it’s a little blanket wrapped around one of the handles on the fridge in the laundry room.

The blanket keeps the windowsill from getting dented when the door is opened.

I used materials I had lying around the house: double faced quilted fabric pieces cut from a discarded item, some plain white fabric of unknown fiber content from my mom’s sewing days, ⅝-inch grosgrain ribbon, 1-inch wide white bias tape and ⅝-inch Velcro strips ...

Wavy lines are literally one of the easiest designs you can quilt on your domestic machine. In fact, it’s my go-to motif when I’m in a hurry. For this week’s machine quilting tutorial, I’m sharing 2 fun variations to try. Grab a practice sample, and try this one out below:

That short and sweet video will get you started. Once you’ve finished your practice sample, I have 3 – Yes 3!! more videos you can watch, all showing how to quilt wavy lines on different full sized quilts. If you’d like to make a similar ...

This is the final installment of quilts I liked from the Houston quilt show – enjoy!

ASSORTED BEAUTIES

Maze of Vines and Roses by Judy Garden

La Vie en Rose by Judith Craddock, quilted by Louise Klare

Spiraling Into Cerise by Barb Sorensen

Litchfield by Bernadette Houghton, quilted by Ann Olson

I love the folk-artsy style of this quilt with its pieced diamond border and the positioning of the miniature shoo fly blocks in the four corners.

Knotty but Nice by Marque McKay, quilted by Karen Lambdin

Bertille by France Aubert

Interstitial Phases #3 by Timna Tarr

Waltz of Flowers by ...

I always spend extra time at the quilt show admiring the applique quilts, which is my favorite category. Having done a little bit of applique, I appreciate the time and attention it takes to build a quilt with this method, as opposed to piecing. The originality and creativity behind these quilts make them truly inspirational – enjoy!

Applique Quilts

BASKETS

Green Baskets by Diana Petterson

Basket Case by Nancy Rink

The use of black and white striped fabric for the handles is genius!

RIBBON WINNERS

Truly Madly Deeply by Karen Lambdin

First Place: Machine Quilted

Note the beaded piping along scalloped ...

I didn’t devote much viewing time to the displays of art and modern quilts because my interest leans more traditional. For example, I saw at least three quilts with a chair theme – yes, you read that correctly – quilts showing chairs – straight backed chairs. Okay by me if it makes the creator happy; I just don’t understand it. The good thing is that there is something for everyone at shows like this, and below are the pieced quilts I thought were noteworthy. Enjoy!

PIECED QUILTS

Laser Maze by Melissa de Leon Mason

Celtic knot-inspired

Honeybee Garden by Emily Parson ...

I enjoyed today at the Houston quilt show and have lots of pictures to share. Apologies in advance for some of the blurry photos – flash photography is not permitted.

I was surprised to learn that this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the show.

How wonderful is it that this creative outlet has not only endured but grown and evolved so profoundly? The explosion of print fabric options, tools and notions, thread, irons, batting, lighting, sewing and quilting machines would positively bewilder our quilting ancestors, and possibly render them green with envy if they ever found out about it ...

Quilting remains on the back burner this summer as I continue scanning and photographing family photos and mementos. I also started sorting through some of the stuff in our storage room, which resulted in the tossing of a few items, consolidating items into fewer boxes, and even selling some items to Replacements, Ltd.

I was pleasantly surprised when I unearthed this long-forgotten-about Barbie item, collected from my parents’ house after my mom died:

I don’t remember playing with it much, lacking both confidence and patience to invest time in it, despite the excellently detailed and illustrated instruction ...

There are times when a sewist uses a machine needle for a very short time and then has to change types. What to do with the partially-used (but not used up) needle? I’ve always simply put them back into their little plastic boxes, making sure they were as far to the left of the box […]

My Color Weave Quilt along kicks off Monday, Sept 16th and I’m doing something a little a little different this time around. I’ll be sharing everything via email rather than here on my blog. Lately I’ve been rethinking my social media strategy and looking at numbers. Because I get higher engagement via my direct newsletter, this will be an experiment to see if that format works best for a quilt along. Keep reading below to see how you can join in the fun….

Click here and download any of my free patterns to join my email list ...

The clearing out of our stuff continues, with this project infusing some much-welcomed fun and creativity into an otherwise tedious activity.

This is the culmination of a year of effort and collaboration with my local framer to showcase the seashells and sand dollars we collected on our honeymoon in 1982. These items have safely resided in a well-packed shoebox, backed with good intentions to turn them into something. I just could never figure out what. With those intentions now glaring me in the face, it was now or never.

I started with the desire to have needlework play a part ...

Yesterday I mowed half of the lawn in the morning and the other half at 7 p.m.  The rest of the day was spent sorting through the Cherrywood hand dyed fabric and grouping it  for my second destash sale this month at Wandaful Quilts.  I also moved the remaining 4 items from the #1 sale to the new ...

I’ve said many times that teaching machine quilting is my favorite thing that I do! Nothing beats the look of satisfaction on a student’s face when they realize that can indeed quilt their own quilts. That’s one of the reasons I’ve written so many quilting books. I use them as my textbooks in class, and they are great for “independent study” for those who can’t take a workshop from me in person.

Click here to get PDF downloads of my books and patterns.

My first book was published in 2015 and my latest volume came ...

My family and I recently took a fun trip to Washington DC. I’ve actually been a couple times before, but it was the first time all 3 of my kids have visited as adults. It was amazing and so educational! We visited as many museums as we could, took time to view all the monuments, and enjoyed riding bikes around the national mall – easy rentals were everywhere!

The best views of Washington DC are by bike!!

Because 2 of my kids are currently studying art in college, we spent a LOT of time at the art museums. I found ...