What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

I had exactly one day to quilt Celestial, our latest Stashin’ with Stephanie quilt. So I needed a quilting design that was both fast, and would do justice to the spectacular diamonds throughout the quilt. I ended up with something I lovingly called the Wavy Line Special.

I followed the shape of the diamonds to quilt five wavy lines inside of each diamond in the quilt blocks, and seven inside each of the background diamonds. It was super fast and easy with just a little bit of rulerwork to travel in the diamonds.

The result was being able to quilt ...

This past week I got back to the blue and yellow table topper that I strip pieced at retreat. I wanted to use it to get more experience with doing some custom quilting. When we left off, I had finished the top and borders.

I loaded it on the longarm when I got the rulers that I had ordered. I found some yellow fabric for the backing, and pieced some batting to get a large enough piece from two scraps.

I knew I wanted to do some curves, but when I got the curved rulers I ordered, not one was ...

Singularity, our latest Stashin’ with Stephanie quilt design, featured large sections of negative space that were just begging for some fun quilting.

I know that negative space can sometimes be intimidating because as a quilter we feel pressure to do something super fancy in it. But I chose echoed swirls to fill the space with a fun, modern texture that looks great but wasn’t too difficult.

I love using quilting stitches that are very different in the background versus the piecing to help separate the two spaces. So I chose some simple rulerwork in the triangles to help accent ...

And it’s finished! This quilt will go to the youngest of our grandsons when he begins his pilot training. The design was originally called Metropolis II (by Heidi Pridemore), but I’ve renamed it to reflect our grandson’s interest. I quilted it in a design by Sue Heinz, called Road Trip, with one of her mandalas […]

Quilting with Rulers 5-Pack Kit: I am so excited to announce Intro to Rulerwork, a new course we have coming on May 2!

I lover rulerwork because it makes me look like a much better quilter than I am. You just need to learn how to keep your ruler foot in contact with your special quilting ruler at all times and you can recreate any shape perfectly every time.

In this 23-video series for both the longarm and domestic sewing machine, we will use five different rulers to teach you how to stitch-in-the-ditch, create perfectly straight lines, quilt arcs, circles ...

 Oh 2023 has gotten off to a great start!  3 quilts on and off the frame.  I am in such a quilting groove right now.  And I have two more to finish by the middle of Feb so, I do hope the quilting Gods stay with me just a wee bit longer.  Want to see what I've been working on?   So many beautiful and different things.  This is the part where I feel very lucky to be a longarm quilter. I love the quilting part, the final icing on the cake.  I get to work on so many beautiful ...

Did you make any gifts for the holidays?  I'm in a small but very talented quilt, Friendship Star in Crystal Lake.  These ladies are avid quilters and they make the most beautiful things.  For our Christmas Challenge we all got a fat quarter and had to make something as a gift. We have no idea who the recipient will be.  It's a bit intimidating for me, while I have the quilting down pretty well, everything that comes before is certainly questionable!  My first thought was a bag.  I've wanted to make the Dancing Diamonds bag for years ...

Time has slipped past me while playing with our new dog and having a fun trip to the Houston show, but I have two new quilts to post here, neither of which is my usual “stuff”. First of all, while I absolutely love free-motion quilting, I’ve been wondering what it is about quilting in the […]

 I finished Jeanne's little quilt. It is super sweet with the rainbow position nine patches and the background to match as it travel around the circle.  The pattern is Rainbow Nest by Editya Sitar.

The quilting...that's the part I love!  Lets start with the batting an the thread.  Two layers of batting, Quilters Dream 80/20 under Wool.  Look at that Applique, it has such definition with the two layer.  Almost looks like trapunto doesn't it?  Thread, well you know I like to use a lot of thread.  So I use Glide 60 wt top and ...

 Did ya miss me?  Oh my, it's been so long since I've had a stomach flu.  I think as you get older it may take a little longer to get through things or maybe we're just getting around all those germs again but it took me 4 days to get over that stomach virus.  Daytime TV is the worst and I'm hoping I don't have to watch any for a very long time!!  But I'm back to feeling human again and Country Jane, which is Country Quilters of McHenry's 2023 Opportunity quilt, is ...

I made a concentrated effort to get that Rose Charity quilt finished, again focussing in on minimal marking and keeping the quilt nice and soft. For this quilt I literally just wanted some embellishment as the fabric itself is quite striking and very patterned. So I mainly quilted in the black parts and just did a few line designs in the other parts to stabilise the quilt. This is what I like about these charity quilts. Not only are they a real surprise every time I open the packets from the Orange Tree Quilters group, they are also a real ...

Happy Monday Quilters!!!   If any of you know Lynn Schmitt from a different box of crayons, then you know she does the most fabulous BOMs every year.  They are saturated with color, with texture with all sorts of materials from quilting cotton, to silks to home dec fabrics.  And this is Kim Rogers version of San Marco.  If you know Kim, you know there's going to be a beachy vibe and this one did not dissappoint. She changed up the center medallion, the bird and the border and made this her own.  Wow, the silks shimmer and shine don ...

Well its been a little over a week and San Marco,  a BOM from A Different Box of Crayons, is not done, and the table is no longer clear!  But I can show a few progress pics.  I do hope to have it finished today or tomorrow for some Fresh off the Frame picks on Friday.  I will have a finish!!!  I won't be denied!

look at the shimmer of the silk, I'll have better pics the end of the week.

and the rulers, why why why do I have to pull out so many rulers when I ...

 Ok, it took me until Wed to share my messy unorganized design wall.  I really wasn't going to share for a couple of reasons.  One it really doesn't look like who I am as a quilter.  But then I thought, wait a minute, there were no little quilt fairies that put that stuff up.  But if there are quilt fairies, I must say I have a list of things they can do!! And number two the projects that I really want to be working on aren't there.....maybe this can be a goal for a future Design ...

 I just love the thought of "finished or not Friday"  no pressure, sometimes you have a finish and sometimes, like this time it's really close.  This is Friday morning and just maybe, if the quilting Gods stay on my side, it just might be finished today!!!!  I'll have more details on batting, thread and rulers used on the final reveal coming soon....

Jeanne's Spool Quilt - FMQ and ruler work all hand guided

This is a quilt made by Jeanne, she does fabulous applique and her spools, wow!!  I don't think there are two fabrics alike.  I ...

Hello!!!  Is there anyone still out there?  It's been so long since I've blogged on a regular basis, 2018 ish????  And to be honest I've been using a lot of social media, facebook and instagram.  I just can't get into tic tok right now but I hear there's a boat load of stuff on there for quilting and crafts as well.  How do people do it all?

I retired this year  (hehehe so I can quilt more!! )and there are a number of occasions where I sat down and wanted to find out what regular ...

Remember the third request for my brother and his wife’s baby quilt?

‘Please add a Flower of Life quilting design on this baby quilt.’

Some of you may be familiar with the Flower of Life design because its use in New Age imagery this century. With the name ‘Flower of Life’ only being just over 20 years old, the overlapping circle design itself is very much older and can be traced back to the 7th or 6th century BCE (wikipedia).

The request for this circle design came from a precious memory where the mother-to-be was taught how to draw ...

I love tea and drink a small pot of it almost every morning while reading my email. The tea cozy I use for the holiday season is over ten years old, and the one I use the rest of the year is even older, so I decided that it was time for a new one. […]

At 85″ x 85″, this Ribbon Weave quilt is much larger than I usually make. Thank goodness for the suspension system I purchased last spring! Wrestling something of this size through my Bernina 790+ would have been exhausting otherwise! If I’d thought through what I was doing, I think I’d have redrafted the design in […]

I’m still working — slowly — on the same quilt as I showed you previously. It’s slow going, since there are always (of course!) interruptions. It’s also quite a bit larger than my usual quilts, due to a lack of forethought before I started it. Thank goodness I have that wonderful suspension system to help […]