Toot toot!!

Yesterday I spent the day down in Adelaide (our capital city for South Australia) where the SA Quilter's Guild were holding their annual Quilt show in conjunction with the Quilt & Craft Fair.

I was thrilled to discover that my customer's quilt that we entered had received the special award of Excellence in Machine Quilting this year......

Here it is with me next to it. The lighting isn't wonderful sadly...You can see close up photos on a previous post on this blog when I'd just finished quilting it!

Two days before this happened I was also honoured to be asked to MODEL for a local Melbourne Cup luncheon on behalf of the Make A Wish Foundation....just for a bit of fun & entertainment to the 140 people who were attending to watch the BIG RACE...

The tradition is to get really dressed up and wear amazing HATS...here are some photos of those that dressed up...

They had lots of fun and we models enjoyed showing off some lovely fashions from a local shop...I believe quite a bit of $$ was also raised for the Make a Wish Foundation as well.

cheers

Spring is definitely here!

The weather is finally warming up....30deg C today. I can finally wear 3/4 pants and t-shirts again. I have been soooo cold this winter that I have really struggled with my weight loss as all I want to do is have hot drinks & something sweet with it! Now I'm back to drinking more water & nibbling on beautiful sweet oranges off our trees. I'm up to 32kg lost now (about 70.4lbs) so had better keep going. I have now joined the gym & trying to do more this way to keep me going!

This is the view from my studio today! Check out that crop....it is looking good so far, so fingers crossed we get some finishing rains when we need them & a better year this year! My DH & family don't like to get rid of stuff, so you can 'see' the museum pieces that are getting lined up along our machinery drive LOL

I have been getting quite a bit of quilting done whilst home this month finally. Here are some more pictures! This first one belongs to my sister, Helen Stubbings of www.hugsnkisses.net and is a project for an upcoming gathering weekend at The Patchwork Apple in the Adelaide Hills. Quilted simply to show off the fabric range and Helen's colourque' and applique' techniques.

 

Next is a lovely redwork quilt finally finished by a customer. It is really sweet! She says she still has enough red fabrics to make another 2 of these!

Finally another customer quilt that is a row by row quilt done as a kit from a shop. This quilt had some issues with friendly, waving borders due to all that piecing. To contain these I did a simply wavy line through the intersections and the rest was what I call simple custom that went reasonably quickly. I loved thinking up all the continuous curve style designs in the pieced blocks. These were inspired by Pam Clarke's Triangle Tango book which are available on my website .  Don't you just love that colourwash border though?

 

Hope you enjoyed my latest show!

cheers

I'm on a roll!!

Yes I'm back! Here are some more photos of a quick little quilt done for a customer a couple of days ago...

This golly quilt is for a gift and the only request was to put the golly head large in each corner. Simple custom work that went quickly due to the really well pieced top!!

cheers & enjoy

Found some more photos!

I knew I had more photos somewhere!! Here you go with another panto done on the Intelliquilter. I thought this one was soooo sweet..... Rasant thread on top, bottom line in the bobbin. Nuwool wadding....this was a kit from a shop purchased by my customer in 2004! Finished is GOOD....VBG Panto is 'Whoops a Daisy' by Karen Thompson of http://www.intelligentquilting.com/

Lastly here is a photo of my kids new calves that they are raising to sell & to eat! My son thinks he is going to make lots of $$ to enable him to purchase a new motorbike....will see about that! He is just 13 and LOVES his fathers old Yamaha DT175 ag bike, but has to 'fix' it everytime he wants to go for a ride (which is most nights after school and weekends, so well used LOL!)

I've been busy....some photos for you!

Finally I have managed to get some quilts done! It seems no matter how much I 'want' to quilt, there is always something else that has priority....

In the last few weeks I have been spending ALOT of time drawing up designs and quilting this special quilt for a customer. It has been a huge job, but I think well worth it. It was on/off my machine a few times to enable classes, maintenance and other stuff to be done, but finally it is finished yeahhh!!!

During this time I also managed to get quite a few quilts completed on my other machine with the Intelliquilter. Here are a few photos, but I didn't take any of a couple of the quilts that were completed ....

This first one is actually 90" long and only 38" wide and is intended to be a tablecloth. I used a very flat 100% Matildas cotton as the batting, King Tut variagated on top & Bottom Line in the bobbin. It really only needed a simple panto so that is what it got! It is by Quilter's Niche and called More Doodling.

This sweet lap quilt called Rose Trellis also received a panto using the Intelliquilter. This time I used wool wadding with a little more loft to it, King Tut variegated thread on top & Bottom Line in the bobbin again. Panto was from One Song Needlearts called Villa Rose Panto. It was the first time I'd stitched this out & we both loved it!!

Lastly, this is one that has been partly done on my IQ and the rest freehand on the A1 machine. I used Masterpiece and Rasant (cotton wrapped poly) on the top and Bottom Line in the bobbin for this one along with wool wadding from Mini Jumbuck. The design is called Fairy Kisses (designed by my sister, Helen Stubbings of www.hugsnkisses.net) and made by a lovely, busy lady in Tasmania. Hope she likes it!! It was hard to show all the quilting but there are fairies in the four outer corners, flowers in the courthouse step blocks and also in the centre of the quilt as well. The gorgeous backing fabric is from www.widebacks.com.au and was just perfect for this quilt!

Machine embroidered quilt

Gee - this is better! More posts AND photos from me.....

Found these pictures that I had taken of a customer quilt that I finished in early July. This lady had made this heavily machine embroidered quilt from patterns purchased. She had lots of problems and ended up redigitising some of them and changing others to make them work. There was a little puckering around some of the embroideries so we decided that McTavishing would be the way to go to pull in some of the excess and hide any creases caused by the heavy embroidery that obviously did not have enough tension or stabilisation when being executed. She had put in so much work and thought into this that I wanted her to be really proud of it!

Anyway...here goes....hope you like it! The main thing was that she was thrilled with it. The quilting didn't overtake the embroidery, but just simply finished it off.

Until I find some more quilting photos....enjoy this lot!

cheers