Limeberry Tart is now sporting a Blue Ribbon indicating she won First Place in the Professional Pieced Quilt category at Queensland Quilters Inc 2106 Quilt Show. She had some pretty stiff competition in the Best of Show category and Congratulations go to Sue Duffy for her "Cudgery Creek" Landscape Quilt. The dilemma is now shall I send both "Limeberry Tart" and "Featheration 2Blu" on a road trip overseas next year.

Twelve months since my last post, but I can say that I was busy piecing!

Limeberry Tart is made with 14301 half inch hexagons.  From the time I started designing it to finished and dropped off at its first show was exactly 25 months.  So every spare hour for the last two years has been spent on her.

All the hexagons were thread basted, I found I could do this in the car as a passenger, on the numerous road trips we took to visit our two new grandsons.

I calculate, that on average, I  spent almost three hours everyday for those 762 days working on her.  Some days were more others day nothing!

At her first show I was very fortunate to win a ribbon. I entered it in the "Quilts Across Queensland" competition in the  2016 Royal Queensland Show  (EKKA as the locals call it).  It was awarded the Best Machine Quilting Rosette.

Last week she was hanging in the Toowoomba Quilter Club Inc Show during the Toowoomba Carnival of Flowers and I know she was admired by many visitors.

Next week it will hang in the Queensland Quilters Inc. 2016 Show and I have been informed it has won an award there as well.  Fingers crossed for her journey and I hope all the attendees enjoy viewing  her.

Laying Foundations

1500metres of Glide Marine thread, 13 hours and the foundations have now been  quilted on the Queensland Quilters Inc raffle quilt for this year.  The fills, the colours and the pattern fun is still to start.  It was only near the end of the base work that the ideas for the decorating came to me.

Webshop

My webshop full of yummy Glide threads, Magnetic bobbins, Bottomline threads and APQS  spare parts is now ready to order from.  Grab your coffee cup and head on over for a looksy.


http://www.busyquilting.com.au/shop/index.php



New library books and techniques

I purchased two new books in the New Year to add to my techniques library.  Then put the techniques into practise with the quilt on my frame.  Used quite a few tools and these are just for the border quilting.

My Daughter's Wedding Quilt.

I was able to finish my daughter's wedding quilt and have it on the bed she would be using when she visited between Christmas and New Year.  Based on Bali Fever by Judy Niemeyer .  Afew special touches in the actual quilting.

Dirranbandi Darling

I was asked by my local quilt shop to design a quilt that could be used to teach piecing techniques to a group of quilters that live near a small  isolated rural community.  As the quilt shop specialises in Reproduction fabrics I chose these for this quilt. I prefer to piece my own quilts in "clear" colours so was not a fan of the "dirty" colours of this top but they have grown on me during this quilt. This quilt will be hanging in Sew Creative Gatton from Thursday. Classes for it will be held in March 2014

The centre applique

Flying Geese and Half Square Triangles

Square in Square

Glide Threads and Magna Glide Bobbins

I have been an Australian Distributor of Glide threads for approaching two years.  It has taken a while but I now have all 196 colours of Glide thread in stock.  Filtec the American company who make the threads keeps adding more colours.  Each time they add new colours I have to purchase 6 cones to bring it out to Australia.   My shelves just have to keep growing.  Now that I have all the 5000m cones for $12 AUD each  I am working on stocking up the Magna Glide Bobbins as well.  These bobbins have a magnetic core so that ou do not need the bobbin brake spring in your bobbin case and they stop the overspin of the bobbin in the case. 

 I have been using these bobbins since I first picked some up a Houston in 2010.  Not exclusively, but when I weighed some empties and did some guesstimating there are about 250 cores in this container. At 120m per core that is close to 30km of thread!

Hot Pink , Neon Green and Black

Well they were the colours of Glide thread I used on this customer quilt.  SO much fun to quilt.  Almost Freehand...I chalked in some of the border marks so I wouldn't get confused with which centres had to be circled to matchup with the corners!   The centre was made of pieced blocks from a panel containg bright pink flowers. I din't get any pictures of it. But you can see the flowers outlined stitched on the back of the quilt.

Thread Choices

I have been reading Gina Perkes  book "Mastering the Art of Longarm Quilting" during my tea breaks from my Grandson.
Great book and in chapter devoted to "Gotta Love Thread" she state that it is not necessary to match top and bobbin threads.  I haven't been for quite a while so it is good to have this confirmed.
 She then goes on to say that she likes Light Grey, Medium Gray, off-white, tan, medium brown, taupe and black as her bobbin colours.  "These colors accommodate and blend nicely with just about any color".
Further on she says that she uses a fantastic product called Magna-glide bobbins.

So off I went to "the shop"
Magna Glide Classics  L size 132yds of 60 wt polyester threads
Light Grey
Lead Grey
Cream
Light Tan
Black



Maybe I need to ask Filtec to look at getting a Taupe  and  Medium Brown colour in Classics as well.

Rulers and non Ruler Quilting

I have a friend who is a fellow longarmer, who like me reads a few Quilters Blogs with her Morning cuppa.  We both saw the same post on  Green Fairy Quilts Blog, and liked the look of the ruler she was using.  Independently of each other we found a source for the rulers. She only bought the larger one,  I bought both!!!  So I am taking bragging rights.  Her second ruler should be arriving very soon.

Took them for a quick test run on the quilt on my machine, no ruler base, but I was able to outline SID a block very easily. I was trying to complete this quilt all freehand, but ruler work for the centre block only, will suffice.

All of these lines however, are freehand.  I love the control I have of my machine.  This is the fourth quilt I have quilted from this class.  Decided I would put a modern interpretation on this one.  So far only Glide Black thread.

Meg's Garden

I found out the name of the Applique quilt I was working on last week.  It is called Meg's Garden by Don't Look Now.  The customer put an additional border on hers to the pattern.
She was pleased when I sent her a photo last week.  I just need to trim it today and get it into the post.
So one last photo, I ended up using Celery a pale green Glide thread to fill the tree with tiny leaves.

Thank you GM for letting me play with your quilt.  The appliques stitches were tiny and fantastic.  I loved the way you fussy cut many of the Kaffe fabrics for your flowers.

Feathers in a Flower garden

Day Two of this customer quilt on my frame.  I finished quilting the Borders, backfilled behind them plus also played with some feathers beneath the tree.

 Hopefully these will stay in order.  After marking the sashing strip with soap to evenly divide the border, I then found two curved edges that would fit my idea. Marked where the edge of the template would need to be against the sashing with the blue tape.
Stitched in the ditch of the sashing, two arcs and the feathers in one direction with only one stop and start.

 Glide thread is really making the scalloped feathers shine.  The background fill stitching I will do with a matt finish thread.

I felt it looked too puffy on the outside and I needed to do something on the inside between the floral border so my Corrugated fill.
The only Piecing on this quilt is the brown sashing strip.  The rest of the quilt is appliqued.

This last picture was taken with theroom  lights turned off last night and just the side lighting coming from my Family room.  Now you can see the texture the quilting is giving to the top.

Lots more SID appliques and background fill today and I may be finished.

Threads and Paperwork

What started with three large boxes has now been sorted and filled onto the shelves.  Slowly getting enough boxes that soon I won't be able to see the lovely colours of all those threads. The new shelves we spent Saturday putting together are doing their job perfectly. The paperwork has all been done, so now I can get back to my machine.

 Life got in the way  but I the quilt is progressing.  Should have the border finished this afternoon and be able to start on the centre.

Day One Coffee Break

This quilt belongs to a long distance customer and I do not have an email address for her.  I have sent a message 6,700kms via the Quilters Bush Telegraph (she lives 1900kms away but this crow doesn't fly straight), that I will be putting photos of the progress of her quilt on my blog.  Hopefully she can enjoy the "Quilt Along".

Coffee Break on Day One, the threads are chosen and if you look closely you can see soap marks in the sashing.  I didn't realise there was a tree in the Hand Blanket stitch applique until I pulled it fully out of its bag this morning.

While measuring it and admiring the ladybugs a plan came together. It involved a bit of premarking before it gets on the frame, so the soap marks are it.  Which means I will be stitching the border areas first.  Since it is shouting a pretty loud story of how it wants to be quilted - I hope life doesn't get in the way of me getting on with it!

A kilometre of Threads

Almost 500 straight pins to stabilise the top but - The border of feathered cables is finished and the sashings are almost half way done.  I've used over a kilometre of thread already.  Neither of these two threads were ones I had chosen to initally use on the quilt!  That is how it goes  - sometimes the quilt says it needs  something different to initial thoughts so I go with the flow.

Still debating whether to go back and put a fill behind the cable with the same thread as the sashing.  Sititching in the ditch between the red border and the outer feathered border have made it look almost right.  I'll see how I am going for time later on.

I love thread

I love it when a new order of Glide threads arrives,  this box of colour is YUMMY! 

I now have every colour of Glide  thread in stock, so that the longarmers of Australia don't need to wait long to get their threads from across the pond.  Well short and domestic quilters can use it too, but I am only stocking the 5000m King Spools.

Also have most of the Magna Glide Classic Bobbins in stock.  I love the way the magnet works in the bobbin to get great tension.  Pity they won't work in my domestic machine.

 Not so nice is when you drop it  (:

But it is all sorted again and back on the shelves, waiting for someone else to love it more than me!

My Glacier Star is quilted

Started Monday 19th November will be bound by Monday 4th February, so eleven weeks in total. I have the patterns and fabric sorted to make another Judy Niemeyer pattern - they do say they are addictive!

The quilting on this was done in mostly Glide threads love the sheen it gives to the stitching.  7 Bobbins of thread used so close to 1500 metres of thread all up.

 The quilting shows a lot better from the back of the quilt on the sateen fabric.


I have added extra photos as I know a friend has been waiting to see this quilted.  :)

Hexie Quilt Finished

It was on my frame for 12 days but I was at the Queensland Quilt show for 6 of those days, but it is now finished.  10 bobbins used so almost 2000m of thread.  Each of the hexagons were SID, most of the inside pieces were also SID but I did give some of them wavy lines or outlined patterns within the fabric.

Now onto the next quilt a signature quilt in rows with a lovely stained glass applique rose in the centre.  I 'll look at it for a while.  I have some housekeeping to catch up on.