TraceyBquilting

It’s done!!!

2009-06-24T16:17:00.001+09:30

Isaac’s quilt is now complete & drying…..

This is the full shot…thanks to all the suggestions etc on what to quilt in the large white area.

In the end I decided to keep it simple and I used the amazing new feature on my Intelliquilter and created a tractor tyre tread that I could put on the path feature so it would curve/turn around the corners nicely. I also used the IQ to do the wheat motifs and then the no sew zone feature over the wheat to then stitch the tyre treads. Worked PERFECTLY!!!

Here is a closer shot

These are of the quilt BEFORE I coloured…I really think it needed the colour to make it stand out.

On another topic!! It was my eldest baby’s 16th birthday a couple of weeks ago. She is a Rubik’s cube nut & can do most of them in record time….this is the cake that her 10 yr old sister created! Not bad eh?

Until next time….happy quilting!

back again in one day…need help!

2009-03-19T12:02:00.001+10:30

Ok so I’m not sure even how many are even reading my blog these days as I’m so slack at posting.

But I do need some suggestions on what to quilt on this little quilt 60” x 60”? This has been made for my newest nephew that is actually turning one in June this year! It was supposed to be done earlier, but you know how it goes??

Now ignore the double wedding ring in the background please. The squares are all 2” & I think I’ll do CC’s in them. But what about the large circle type white area?

thanks for any suggestions…

cheers

A new year & finally I’m back again

2009-03-19T11:56:00.001+10:30

Yes it has been awhile here on my blog. I just can’t seem to get here on a regular basis between all the other things I do online???

Anyway I thought I’d share some photos of some quilts that I’ve been busy with. The first one is a customer quilt & I have two of these to do. Only one is just finished. It is called Tilly & Friends and the pattern is from my sister, Helen Stubbing’s book, Pajama Party

There are lots of different types of quilting on here using 3 colours of threads. I mainly used Rasant cotton wrapped poly for the pink & white BUT then I found a gorgeous lime green isocord that has a bit of shine to use as well. This thread is fantastic & lots of colours in the range as well.

I finished this amazing double wedding ring quilt in January for a customer who has made this for a wedding gift. It was lovely that there was a long deadline so no pressure!! She is a very organised customer – isn’t it nice to have these!! This was done with my Intelliquilter using feather motifs from Kimmy Brunner and a simple loopy pattern that came with the IQ in the corner squares. The rings were quilted freehand – it is so nice to be able to swap easily between IQ & freehand on my A1 that this went really quickly. I used white Rasant thread on all the white fabric and bottom line in the bobbin. The rings were quilted using ‘Mother of the Bride’ lilac Masterpiece thread.

I have also been busy quilting our Guild’s raffle quilts. They have made 2 single bed quilts for this year’s Cornish Festival with all funds going to a local nursing home again. The first one was done last year in October, so that they could get it finished & start selling raffle tickets for it. The second one only got done last week! The festival & exhibition is in May this year, so I just made it vbg… They are quilted similarly, but not exactly the same as the applique blocks are all different between the quilts. Each applique block was done by a different member. The motifs are done with my Intelliquilter and the rest is freehand. The swags are done with my 5” swag ruler You can visit this page to even see a video on how to use this ruler!

That’s all for now…will try to post more again soon!

Tracey

Toot toot!!

2008-11-07T11:17:00.001+10:30

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!

2008-09-27T11:02:00.001+09:30

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!!

2008-09-12T12:58:00.003+09:30

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!

2008-09-10T13:30:00.003+09:30

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!

2008-09-10T12:31:00.006+09:30

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

2008-08-18T10:41:00.003+09:30

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

Mixing work and play

2008-08-17T09:47:00.003+09:30

On my last trip to setup a new Intelliquilter on a machine in Qld - I decided it was time to bring the family as well & take a break to spend some time with my family. In 10 days we managed to visit Australia Zoo (Steve Irwin's zoo) and 4 theme parks!! Movieworld, Dreamworld, White Water World and Seaworld ughhh....exhaustion!

Here are some photos of the 'family' at the zoo and on rides vbg. They had a wonderful time, even if we were on the Gold Coast, Qld on the coldest day in 7 years! All I was looking forward to was the warmer weather that Queensland always promises compared to South Australia, where I've been freezing for months....

We did Australia Zoo, Dreamworld & Movieworld when the weather was quite nice. Later in the week we had to abandon one day due to the rain & freezing wind....shopping was the option LOL!

Just before we left, I did manage to get a few quilts done. Only one photo though mmmm must get better at taking photos won't I?

This quilt is a lap quilt made by a guild member, quilted by me freehand and will be raffled for our Regional Round Up day where we invite all the other guilds in the state to visit for a huge show'n'tell, guest speaker and 3 shops present in the country. Always a fantastic day with goodie bags and fun galore....

Hopefully this quilt will raise some $$ to help pay for the day. They usually get up to 300 quilters from around the state to this event every two years!

cheers until next time (see I've posted again yeahh!!! Not MONTHS after the last one.)

Tracey

Long time, no see or hear.....sorry

2008-08-10T17:04:00.002+09:30

Hi all
Yes I've finally come back to my blog. Has taken me a bit to remember my login, but I've finally got it and can post again.....

I do apologise for those that keep checking on me! I'm here, but have been very busy as usual. I will try to post a little more often to keep all my friends up to date on what is happening here on the farm and in the studio.

To catch up a little with the family.....
My eldest, Emma, did choose to leave home and attend an International High School in Adelaide (2 hrs away from home by bus). She is living with a lovely christian family along with a Japanese and Chinese student. They have 2 daughters of their own that also attend the same school. She only has to walk out their back door & across the school oval to get to class each day! I think it was meant to be in the end..... the grandfather of this couple is a Uniting Church minister and actually married our current local Principal & her DH years ago. They also babysat their kids as they were growing up. THEN our local deputy principle was also from the same area and Emma's host parents were his supervisor at Youth Group. THEN another teacher at our local Christian school used to live with her host dad before they were both married!! All this was discovered as we got to know her host family before christmas last year.....

Emma has now had 6 mths at her new, much larger city school. Academically she is doing great with merit awards for her results for the first 2 terms. This week she phoned to tell me she got a credit in a Science competition that they encouraged her to enter. This means she is in the top 18% of all Yr 10 students in South Australia & Northern Territory. Not bad we think.....

We have struggled all weekend to sift through lots of information to try & choose her Yr 11 subjects for next year. To keep her options open for university etc when she is still struggling to even know what path she wants to take. Seems like they are telling her that she needs to do the top maths & physics though as she is coping with these extremely well.

Onto #2 son who turns 13 tomorrow! He is just cruising with study & mates and loves his motorbike. Would love a new one, but we just keep working on his Dad's 30 yr old Yamaha 175DT with new parts etc to keep it going all the time. He loves coming home most afternoons from school & going for a ride. He is also learning lots about maintenance, motors etc and can do a lot of the mechanical work himself now - so good life experiences.

#3 will be 10 next month & is still the most stubborn girly girl of the lot! Loves playing netball, being with friends and adores being with her big brother & they rarely fight thank goodness...

Quilting wise, I'm struggling to do much for myself and only just keep up with a few customer quilts. Have been very busy teaching, selling quilting machines etc which takes up all my time. Have not been home much this year due to all this, but it is all good!!

OK - this is probably more than enough to bore you all....will try to write more often in the future.
cheers
Tracey

Breast Cancer Research Fundraiser

2007-10-26T17:44:00.000+09:30

Earlier this year both Helen & I were honoured & thrilled to be asked to be the designers of two beautiful quilts and assist in raising money and awareness for Breast Cancer Research. Below are 2 photos of the quilts. There is also a poster available from here which is being circulated everywhere in the hope that you can print it out and display it prominently to advertise the upcoming ebay auction of these two glorious quilts. Click on the photos & you will be taken to a high resolution pdf that you can print on your home colour printer with professional results. We thankyou for your assistance in this fundraiser!

The auction starts on Nov 1st on http://www.ebay.com.au/

For more details & hopefully a direct link to the auction when it starts visit http://www.completecraft.com.au/

These are using the Northcott/Monarch range of Quest for a Cure fabrics and the instructions have been published in Homespun & Quilters Companion magazine here in Australia. Many shops are providing these as kits with part proceeds of sales of fabrics going to Breast Cancer Research!
We are very pleased with the results and hope that you can help us out by letting everyone know about the auction and passing on the poster to assist in advertising!

cheers from a sunny day in South Australia where we are just starting to harvest our crops!

Tracey

What I've been up to....

2007-10-17T14:58:00.000+09:30

Hi all!

I’ve been very quiet lately with head down & bum on seat trying to juggle all my work to keep everyone happy. Not sure if I’ve totally succeeded with quilting mounting up to be done to deadlines!

Anyway, thought I would share at least one thing that I’ve been working on and achieved……My first E-book in conjunction with my sister, Helen Stubbings who is my partner in Wysistas!

This is a 6 part e-book that is FREE by simply subscribing to it via our website http://www.wysistas.com

I have been madly working on this and the new Downloadable Quizzles® that are now available on the site – boy what a drama learning how to do all this! Thank goodness for good help is all I can say VBG.

This has all come about due to our Quizzles® -Interactive Quilt Patterns on CDRom being reviewed by Alex & Ricky on www.thequiltshow.com that went to air this week! We are so excited and thrilled that they chose our patterns to review and demonstrate on their show that we decided to create the book as a thank you to all those that visited our site to see more.

So now, if you want to learn more, you can play with a Quizzle Trial right on the website to see what they are all about. They are intended for everyone, but aimed at new, beginner quilters with very detailed instructions and diagrams to assist them to create more quilt tops for us machine quilters to have to quilt LOL….(I sure have an ulterior motive here don’t I)

We are so pleased with the wonderful response already this week that I just had to share with a few more thousand friends’ right here….

Cheers from warm & sunny South Australia where our crops are almost ready to harvest.

Junior Debutante Ball

2007-09-01T16:14:00.000+09:30

Well it is finally all over!! We have spent the last 10 weeks traipsing into town so that my youngest, Sarah (nearly 9) could practise & learn to dance to partipate in a Junior Debutante Ball which was being run as a fundraiser for the Make a Wish Foundation for critically ill children. We had 22 young couples doing their debut & they were all georgous!

Here is a photo of my Sarah & her partner David. (Looks like the carefully prepared hair do was already mucked up by this stage after playing outside first!)

We were very proud of her as she & her partner had to answer questions on stage in front of 250 odd people & they spoke extremely well. They were also in perfect time to the music whilst their little group of 18 performed 'The Jive' for all of us. Quite a few were so nervous that they sped along & got themselves a little confused. They were aged from 5 yrs to 9yrs in this group, then we had another 26 older kids up to 13 yrs old doing the Tango afterwards.

It was a good night & lots of fun & raised lots of money for the Make a Wish Foundation.

Thanks to her Auntie Helen who made this dress for her daughter Tess, to wear as a flowergirl in a wedding last year. It fitted fine and was well complimented!

Back to quilting now....have been really good this past 3 weeks getting 8 customer quilts done! Haven't done this many since March with all my travelling and other business's to attend to. Feels good to get some quilting done & the cupboard cleaned out some....

cheers

Tracey

This'n'that

2007-08-23T15:56:00.000+09:30

Well I have had a wonderful week with my parents up here on the farm. Started off last Wednesday when they arrived and they got stuck into my poor neglected garden! They brought with them the power tools to trim, prune & totally clean up my garden that normally has to look after itself whilst I am quilting.....

I do hope that certain plants will bounce back as they have been pruned very hard LOL

Over the weekend, mum & I went off to Clare to attend a Rural Women's Gathering. We had a fantastic time with 250 other women from all across South Australia. We had Friday night games, fantastic motivational guest speakers & entertainment, informative & fun workshops & bus tours. Saturday evening saw us laughing all evening with a gourmet meal & listening to our own Fiona O'loughlin - comedian extroardinaire! Sunday was a full cooked breakfast in the vines and a lovely brisk walk on the Riesling Trail followed by a bazaar with lots of goodies to entice us. Lastly our final keynote speaker and farewells for another year....

This was the 12th annual Rural Women's Gathering and I have now attended 8 of them and was chairperson for the committee organising the 3rd RWG here locally with 300 attendees & 70+ workshops on offer. They are a fantastic way to meet other people, network & learn new things. I am still involved here on the Yorke Peninsula in our YP Women's Network that provides networking opportunities and training to women in our regional/rural area.

Back home again & very weary, we are greeted by my eldest, Emma - who lets me know that all the subjects that she has chosen to do at the school in Adelaide have been accepted/approved & so it seems she is definitely going! We still need to look into assistance for living away from home allowance to see if we are eligible for any at all.

So to answer you Lyn - yep she's going! Think this will be harder on mum than her!!

Better get back to quilting to pay for all this now...mum & dad left yesterday for home 7 hrs away. They are off again in 2 weeks to visit my sister, Helen, in Tasmania & their 3 grand daughters over there....
cheers

Black wholecloth

2007-08-16T20:41:00.000+09:30

Well I'm back from netball & might feel it later! Spent an hour chasing 9-11yr olds around the court....

I wanted to acknowledge the designers of the patterns that I used in my black sateen wholecloth in my previous post. The centre snowflake design was done by Linda Lawson and the swag/rose design is from One Song Needle Arts Company. Thankyou to those talented digitisers & designers for the fantastic patterns that are now available to us. The Intelliquilter allowed me to add extra swags & join everything together to create the frame around Linda's snowflake.

Better go to bed soon!
cheers

Lone star

2007-08-16T15:40:00.001+09:30

Well I did get that quilt finished!!

Here are a couple of photos....

Pretty good piecing considering this customer has not been a patchworker for very long! I do hope she will be happy with the quilting result....

Next is a couple of photos of a quilt that I did using my Intelliquilter. Just to see what it could do!

It is on black sateen using gold metallic thread from Superior. I only had one thread break on this quilt and designed the whole thing whilst sitting in my chair in front of the fire one night. Once the fabric was pinned on it only took 2 hours to quilt the metallic thread design (whilst I was on the phone as well) then a further couple of hours to do the background fill afterwards.

I was really pleased on how well it all lined up for me, especially when it was my first wholecloth attempt with this system....

off to play a mother/daughter game of netball now for the last training session for the winter season....wish me luck!

cheers

2007-08-14T12:01:00.000+09:30

Ok I think I've done this right now.....I've added myself to the MQResource blog ring! It must take some time for my blog to show up on the list on the webring so I'll have to check again tomorrow...

Absolutely must do some quilting now today so I can finish this lonestar quilt for a customer. Very interesting way to do her applique!! I think it is with glue as it is so rock hard that I'm frightened to allow my needle to go near it.

cu

Family decisions

2007-08-14T10:02:00.000+09:30

Hi again
We are going through a trying time with my 14yr old pushing us to allow her to live away from home and attend a new school in our capital city (about 2 hrs from here) The school is great - a public one (coz we can't afford the private boarding schools here) and they do have an accredited supervised homestay program for International & Rurally isolated students as well.

She has great aspirations in the IT field and our current school albeit a lovely Christian school locally, has only got 25o students from reception to Yr 10 (middle school) currently. They have achieved approval to extend their school to Yr 11 & 12 next year, but with minimal students still they will have limited skilled teachers & subjects to offer. They are all equipped for open access learning via internet/computers etc, but I am reluctant to rely on the discipline of my (sometimes lazy) eldest daughter to actually excell in those subjects when she has no peers to work with or a qualified teacher to push her into achieving the best she can do....

Is it just me? Am I simply being selfish in not wanting to let her go? Or am I worrying that she might fall in a heap in a strange environment. She may just flourish and attain great things....she is determined to do this however, so today I have to go into our school and announce this news to the Deputy Principal & then live with the consequences....

I think I've been chicken to do this up until now, but she is sooooo determined to go!

cheers
Tracey

An introduction

2007-08-14T09:37:00.000+09:30

Well I am finally succumbing to blogging!

My name is Tracey Browning & I live on a cereal farm with my DH & 3 kids 14, 12 & nearly 9yrs old. We crop approx 3000acres of cereals each year & sharefarm up to 800 sheep as well.

For a number of years (too many to count) I have been an obsessed patchworker & quilter. I have always been enamoured by the quilting designs just a little more than the piecing/applique design process and gradually realised that this is the way I wanted to go....

Back in 2000 I had the opportunity to purchase my first longarm machine second hand. It arrived early in Dec & 4 days later I wrote my car off & hurt myself enough so that I could not touch/move my machine for about 6 weeks. I nearly gave up on my dream as it hurt so much every time I tried to practice. I lost my self confidence in this period & if it wasn't for my very first customer (my middle child's kindy teacher) who threw a quilt at me & said 'just stipple it!' then that machine may have simply been sold.

That was certainly the start of my love affair with machine quilting & longarm machines. I now have my third longarm machine - the A1Elite. I tried this machine out at MQX in 2005 when invited over there to teach other longarmers about using templates/rulers with these machines. There were none in Australia at that time....long story short LOL! DH wanted to buy a new header(combine) and keep the old one. I was dithering & dreaming about the A1 machine all this time with him saying that I couldn't drive 2 machines at the same time etc etc. Once he purchased this VERY expensive bit of farm machinery & kept the old one (they only get used 6 weeks of the year as well) then well I just got tough & said if he could have 2 machines then so could I!! I have now gone one better as I can now use both my machines AT THE SAME TIME as I have installed an Intelliquilter computerised system on my APQS Millennium and can be running that whilst doing custom work on my preferred machine the A1 Elite.

I am now a dealer for A1 Quilting machines and the Intelliquilter as well as one of the largest suppliers of machine quilting books, DVD's , rulers & notions for machine quilting in Australia. I have also been publishing patterns in magazines both here in Australia, Canada, USA, France & Japan for nearly 9 years.

My latest, most exciting venture is with my sister, Helen Stubbings of www.hugsnkisses.net
being a new business called Wysistas that produces Quizzles(R) - Interactive quilt patterns on CDRom. These have recently been reviewed on The Quilt Show by Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson and are available in the USA from www.onwordboundbooks.com

Life is exciting and moving maybe a little too fast at the moment. But I'll try to keep my head above water so I can appreciate all that is happening right now with both my family & my business.....
cheers
Tracey