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

Mixing work and play

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

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

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....

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

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

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