Pumpkin Patch

This year we had a pumpkin patch just down the road! 

So we got to see the pumpkins change from flower to fruit.

I thought that this fabric from Dinara Mirtalipova - Mischief Night really did capture the pumpkin patch perfectly. It made just the right border. The pumpkins we so fun to trace around! This variegated Fantastico thread was just what I needed to create beautiful texture.

Dinara Mirtalipova - Mischief Night brought to life with Fantastico # 5023 Orange Marmalade

The pumpkin patch quilt just off the 6 foot New English Quilter frame machine quilted with the straight stitch JUKI TL98P

  I created pumpkins in all sorts of shapes and sizes for the middle.

 And raw-edge appliquéd them to the black pieced background.

The fun part was adding all the detail with free-motion quilting using lots of gorgeous threads from various Superior Threads ranges. The light-reflecting tri-lobal polyester in the Magnifico and Fantastico ranges really made the pumpkins shine.

While the bold matt line from the King Tut100% extra long staple Egyptian cotton gave just the right texture for the vines and leaves. Of course the Superior Metallic was just super for the spider's web. All these threads were designed to go at high speeds for machine quilting. So I didn't need to worry about thread  shredding or breaking. 

Happy Halloween!

I hope that you enjoy your pumpkins as much as I do mine!
The pumpkin patch down the road has long since been harvested and ploughed under but my pumpkin patch art quilt is still here looking lovely.

This Juki Exceed 600 was brilliant for the piecing, appliqué and binding! 

First Time

Here's Veta's Bunting quilt on the frame. It was her very first time machine quilting so we used a pattern that is easy to move around the quilt with. Veta used this mussel shell and scallop design as an over all pattern. 

First she doodled the design on paper. Once she was comfortable doodling the design, we moved to the frame. We chose a pale blue from the Masterpiece range of Superior Threads. 

Against the stripy background fabric, the pale blue thread 'read' white and just blended in creating a subtle texture.

Once all the background was quilted, we went back and quilted lots of different designs in the bunting flags. This gave Veta the chance to try out different designs and threads. It was almost like a machine quilting sampler.

Not bad for a first try!

Like Christmas

Source: 01varvara.wordpress.com via Martha on Pinterest

Whenever a Superior Threads order comes in it feels like Christmas! There's the big box to open and all the lovely threads to unpack and admire. Then there's the thread orders to post on. It makes me glad to think that the recipients will be just as delighted to open the box as I was to pack it.

Last week I sent out several large orders to girls who are taking advantage of the bulk buy discounts. Emailing back and forth about the arrangements gives me a chance to catch up with my customers. Karen was stocking up on lots of threads from the So Fine! and King Tut ranges. Karen bought a JUKI TL 98P  to go on one of the first NEQ2 frames in January 2011 She's been machine quilting on a frame for over a year now and is doing some lovely work. Karen likes using pantographs and her feedback helped us to design a better stylus. A few weeks ago Karen bought a new JUKI HZL Exceed for piecing. She's thrilled to bits with it!

the NEW Juki HZL Exceed - a dream to piece and appliqué with 

Karen's been reading lots of blog posts about machine quilting off the frame, sitting down at the sewing machine. So she decided to give it a try. Karen made me laugh when I asked her how it went. With her permission I've quoted her:

"I tried sit-down-free-motion quilting for the first time this week. It was awful! It made me really appreciate my frame. All my lines were jerky! Now I know why I bought my frame. It's so much easier to free motion quilt using the frame! My stitching on the frame is much more flowing and such a better quality. I'll be sticking to machine quilting on the frame for now on!" 

It's nice to have happy customers!

ice cream and cake

Our daughter Ellie turned 12 on Friday. She wanted cheesecake this year so we put some berries on top. We already ate the cake with the # 1.  I wanted a picture because once they were finished they reminded me of those tests for colour blindness...you know the ones with the different coloured circles. Everybody thought that was a hoot!

Several years ago I made a cake and ice cream quilt. I was relatively new to machine quilting and I was enjoying piecing stripy quilts using fabric chosen around a common theme.  I cut and pieced the fabric in simple stripes and quilted each stripe differently and in keeping with the theme.

 It ended up being like a machine quilting sampler. It was a fun excuse to try new things and find out what worked and what didn't. I learned a lot and the kids still enjoy snuggling under it, particularly on special days.If you click on the photos you'll get a better view of the stitching.  It's been  machine quilted on fleece and looks pretty good considering that its been well loved for at least 5 years.

'La Mer' DVD Pre-Order

This DVD is for everyone with a short to mid-arm frame, who wants to become more fluent at free-motion quilting. I’ll be demonstrating a no-mark method for learning line designs – a technique based on ballroom dancing, using line designs inspired by the sea.

The La Mer DVD will help you:

• create a bold and flowing line of stitching
• machine quilt line designs with confidence
• get the most out of your frame and sewing machine
• overcome tension problems
• find the best needles and threads
• master trouble shooting techniques to get you, your frame and sewing machine all working together smoothly.

Ladybird Ladybird

When my daughter Ellie was 3 years old, she developed a liking for ladybugs. We went on ladybug hunts and collected them in jars and later released them in the garden. We found some fantastic ladybug books and I began to collect bug fabric for a quilt.

This book is so cute. It's about a ladybug mom with five little ladybug children, she goes off to the shops but forgets her purse. They follow after to bring it to her. It makes a great present for little girls but my sons have enjoyed the book as well. I used to give the book and a little purse with chocolate money inside as a child's party gift. It would make a fun present for children and grandchildren too. I've made a link to it on Amazon on the sidebar.

Another good book was Ladybird Moves Home by Richard Fowler. This book has a cardboard ladybug that slips through a cut in the pages. The kids love to slip the ladybird through the openings in the pages. Again I've got a link on the sidebar.

The bug fabric collection generated three quilts. The top quilt here, is the simple machine applique with various bugs in jars. This is the quilt featured in yesterday's post that's been machine quilted with loops and daisies. The quilt underneath is a stripy quilt with a ladybug theme. Each strip was machine quilted in a different pattern. So it became a stripy machine-quilting sampler.

Lastly, there was this red, yellow and green 'traffic light' quilt, a present for a family friend. It was fun working with such bright colours featuring spots and bugs and flowers. Click the photo to see a better view of the yellow daisy and loops machine quilting pattern.

Have you ever noticed that books and quilts are like family fossils? They record the various likings and interests that we have explored over the years. Now Ellie loves horses but we still enjoy the books and quilts from the ladybug phase of her life.

Coming up Daisies

Loops are one of my favourite machine quilting moves. There are lots of reasons for this. First of all, you get to cross the lines. Lots of people give up at free-motion quilting because stippling is so hard. You know that classic meandering stitch that has curves like puzzle pieces. Keeping track of all those directions at once, while never ever crossing the lines can be so frustrating! If you've spent hours stippling away getting stuck in corners and trying your darndest NOT to cross over any lines, you'll find loops liberating. Because with loops crossing is OK. Good even! Loops are liberating.

Next, loops are a great way to maneuver round your available space. Loops help you to move in any direction. You can loop up or down, right or left. Loops make it easy to gracefully change directions and keep your line of stitching bold and flowing.

Finally, although loops look great just as loops, they're fun and easy to add a shape to. Here I've added daisies. In this early quilt, I wanted the daisies to imitate a daisy chain, the kind that little school girls make sitting in the grass during break time. I began without the loops but later when I added the loops I thought that the pattern looked more graceful. When I'm quilting daisies, I create the lines and loops and flower petals first. Then I go back and add the centers of the flowers.

Click the photo for a good close up of the stitching. As you can see, I'm going for an informal pen and ink kind of look here. I used a black MasterPiece thread to get this line drawing style. I went back and drew the center of the daisies with a yellow King Tut. The variegated shiny thread that is the 'lady bird' trail above is a Rainbows, Jester #801. I love how it shows up against the black.

Bluebells from our garden.