Some recent customer quilts

Here's photos of a few customer quilts I have done recently.  I was really pleased with how the one with the cube design turned out.  The customer wanted a design that would bring out the 'box' look so I ended up outline stitching around each cube.  It did make it look 3 dimensional. 

3 Customer Quilts

These quilts belong to 2 sisters.  I do quite a bit of quilting for them and always love their work.  I love the black house quilt.  The quilting doesn't show up but I used a leaf vine around the houses.  The pastel quilt with the little girls around the border turned out beautifully.  I decided to do curved cross-hatching in the girl's dresses.  It was a time consuming process but the finished look 'made' the quilt in my view.

Enjoy the pics.

Time to get back to quilting

I have had almost a month off from quilting.  In that month there has been more overnight guests, more events than I can ever remember.  We had a lot of family here for the Thanksgiving holiday.  And that was just the beginning.  There were holiday parties, birthdays, a wedding and great family times.  The last event happened today -- our 2nd grandson was born at 11:47 this morning.  It was so exciting to finally meet him.  I will post a picture soon.  We still have one more grandson to come in March.  Three grandsons in 3 months -- how amazing.
Tonight I feel worn out.  Tomorrow I hope to be back in my studio quilting with lots of energy.  Though it may take me a few days to get up to speed.
I have been thinking about setting one goal for my business for 2012.  It's to get better organized in my studio especially with my own sewing projects.  So to that end, I'm going to come up with a plan, steps to take and hopefully make some real progress in that area. 
Happy New Year to all my followers and fellow quilters!

Christmas Open House

It's time again for the annual open house here at my home.  You're all invited to come.  It's Thursday, December 15 from 10 - 2.  My address is 20578 SW Colville Ct, Tualatin.  My studio is open, lots of quilts are on display and lots of goodies to eat.  Come for lunch or just drop in for a quick visit.  Anyone bringing a quilt to the open house will receive a 20% discount off the quilting (but it won't be quilted until January or February).  I'm looking forward to seeing many of you.

Been too busy to blog

Life has been so busy lately.  The best thing that has kept me busy is my new grandson, Shaphan.  He is now almost 6 weeks old and absolutely adorable.  Such a good baby.  Because we live so close I've been around him a lot.  This grandma stuff is just the best role -- I love it!
I have also been busy quilting.  I'm in the thick of fall/Christmas quilting.  I've expanded my quilting hours so now I'm in the studio about 20 - 30 hours a week.  It's always busy in September, October and November.  I try to finish up by the first week of December so I can take about a month break.  It's good to have some time to work on my own stuff too during that break. 

My other preoccupation is my winter garden.  Rick, my wonderful husband, made me a raised bed and put it right in the center of the front yard.  Then he built a plastic greenhouse cover on a hinge so I can access it easily.  I have lettuce, spinach, chard, beets, radishes and carrots growing in it.  It's fun and I hope it works all winter long.  I'm posting a picture of it.

Wholecloth Quilting

It's done -- the wholecloth quilt.  It's a wedding gift for my daughter and her husband.  I hope they like it.  Here's my evaluation:  I like the basics of the design a lot.  The idea of random circles in the first border was fun and turned out well.  The center circle is interesting with all the filler ideas in each circle around the leaf vine.  It was hard to come up with 22 different ideas to fill those circles.  I love the fabric color.  It is a silver and has a shine to it that is really nice.  What I would do differently:  I think the quilt needed some other design introduced somewhere.  My daughter didn't want a quilt that was heavily quilted for their bed so that really limited me on what I wanted to do as filler in many areas.  I would have chosen to fill in the center circle around the vine and leaves with something very small.  The area in the center square would have been nicer with a small design too (in my estimation).  But all in all, I'm happy with the overall look.  It has made me think of some ideas for another wholecloth that might be show worthy.  I do love wholecloths even though they take a lot of time.  One of the pictures show my kitties who were constant companions in the quilting.  They chased every thread and binding piece; they continually walked on the quilt even while the machine was running, Tux took a liking to the pins on the magnetic pin cushion and Wolverine decided that he could carry my wrist pin cushion around the house (I found it under the dining room table one day).  Normally I don't let the cats near customer quilts and keep the door to my studio closed but since I know how much my daughter likes cats I thought they should help with this quilt!  :)

Wholecloth Quilting

This quilt has been kind of in my head for about a year.  I've had the grey sheets for many months.  I decided last week that the theme of this quilt would be circles.  It's for my daughter and her husband who were married last year (who says wedding gifts should be on time)! 
Just like my last wholecloth quilt, I don't really know where this one is going.  I know the theme is circles and I want it to look contemporary.  There is an X made in the center of the fabric so I know where the center is (though they rarely are perfectly centered).  You see, I'm just not the planning, tracing out kind of quilter.  I would rather challenge myself to be creative as the quilt progresses.  It is a huge challenge and it may be disappointing in the end but I also feel great excitement as I anticipate what might come next. 
So stay tuned and I'll post pictures as it unfolds.  I have two weeks to do this quilt before I must do the next customer quilt.  I'm excited!

Productive Day of Quilting

If I can get a lot of interrupted time (no phone calls, no kids to run here and there etc.) I can usually accomplish a lot of quilting.  Today was one of those days.  The phone didn't ring, my kids were all gone and I quilted from about 6 am until 3:00.  I finished the quilt you see right below this morning then did two small quilts.   These small ones are so cute.  I especially like the embroidered cat one.  It does reflect my life -- cook, shop, iron, quilt, sweep, etc.  The only thing that wasn't on the quilt was computing:)

Finally back to quilting

August is always one of the busiest months for me.  Everything is coming ripe in my garden and needs tending.  I work the Clackamas County Fair as a 4-H superintendent and that take about 10 days out of the month (many of them 12 hour days).  Our family also went camping and I spent 2 days with my oldest daughter.  So here it is the end of the month and I'm finally back to quilting. This quilt was started around the 1st of August.  I love the final look -- though I must say I was very tired of it after hours and hours of quilting.  One of the best parts of this quilt is the way the colors of each star block are placed in the quilt.  The fabrics are all batiks.  Beautiful!

Customer Quilt

I have done a bunch of easy all-over patterns on quilts lately.  They go fast.  Now I'm working on a quilt that will probably take quite a few days to complete.  Lots of quilting.  It is coming along beautifully though.  It was one of those quilts that I knew almost immediately what I was going to quilt on it.  Sometimes that can be such a dilemna but not with this one.  I'll post pictures when it's done.