Karen's Quilt

I had the privilege of quilting this beauty a couple of weeks ago.

Karen was kind enough to take a chance on a new quilter and sent me her AMAZING quilt.

 It is beautiful, isn't it?!

She gave me some initial ideas for the quilting, and then let me go from there.

I thought some wavy lines would create some movement, and some pebbling would be fun to offset the colored rays a little bit.

This quilt was so much fun to quilt!  Karen's piecing is perfect!  Every intersection is perfect.  I also love the fabric she used.  I need to ask her what they are!  The dots on the fabric are shimmery--so cool.

The back of her quilt is amazing as well!  I love all of the colorful pieces.

The quilting looks really amazing on the back!

You can see the shimmer of the fabrics in the picture above.  Love it!

 I love that she turned these blocks and put one full circle into the quilt.  It adds a lot of flair to the quilt!

She also pieced in a half-circle too, a little farther down the quilt.

I quilted it all freehand, except for the quilting in the ditch, which I used a ruler for.

 I used Superior Sew Fine #50 thread, which allowed me to quilt pretty heavily without it getting too thready.  The batting is Hobbs 80/20.

It rained almost non-stop for two weeks here, so we took most of these pictures up on our covered front porch.  I have to give credit to my daughter Megan that held the quilt up.  I don't understand why she thinks that taking a million pictures of a quilt that she has to hold up is crazy!

 Thank you, thank you, thank you Karen for letting me quilt your AMAZING quilt!  I love how it turned out!

Customer Quilts

I can't believe that the summer is almost over and school is starting soon!  My kids don't go back to school until September 3, but with stories of everyone going back, the summer does really feel like it's over.  Sometimes the anticipation of it gets so bad for me, I almost wish that we'd go back sooner....almost!!

I've been busy trying to finish a wave of quilts so I can spend some time with my kids and get them ready for school before it starts.

I quilted these two cute quilts for a sweet lady named Gay--my husband's aunt.  She was my very first customer, and started bringing me quilts when she heard I had gotten a longarm.

She is adorable and makes adorable quilts.  This quilt is for a great-grandchild of hers.

Gay doesn't like heavy quilting, and she likes PUFFY quilts, so that's what I gave her!  I found the highest loft poly batting I could find, and then doubled it on this quilt.  It's a seriously puffy quilt.

For her blocks, she painted pictures of little animals with fabric paint.

I stitched around each animal, then around each block, and did some loopy-loops in the inner borders.  I stitched in the ditch in the outside borders and left them plain.  Simple!

I think this little duck is just adorable!

It's such a fun, happy quilt!  It will be a super soft and cuddly quilt for a lucky baby!

This second quilt was made by Gay as well.  Like I said, she doesn't like heavy quilting, so I tried to keep it simple.

It's whimsical and cute.

I crosshatched each block, and quilted some fun designs in the borders.  Simple, and cute.  Now that I've had time to rethink it, I probably should have done something else in the outer border.  Something a little more whimsical, like hearts or something.  Oh well, I still like that outer border, and I'll be using it again.

And, a view of the back is always fun to see!

This was a BIG quilt.  88 x 110.  And, I just noticed that I missed a line...oops!  I'll have to get it back from her and fix that!  Luckily, she's local!

I have lots more pictures of finished quilts--I'll share more in another post!  Thanks for taking a look!

If you're interested in having me quilt a quilt for you, I'm offering 50% off through September, and I'll ship your quilt back to you free!

Flowering Lonestar Pattern Giveaway Winner!!

I promised a winner for Melissa's Flowering Lonestar Pattern, and I'm a week overdue!

I asked my daughter to pick a number between 1-41, and Barbara is the winner!

Barbara, congratulations!  I'll be emailing you!

Thanks, everyone, for participating!

Cherry Season

So a couple of weeks ago it was cherry-harvest season around here.  We have two little sour cherry trees that are super mass producers!  They're only about 5 years old, and have been giving us mass amounts of cherries for about three years.

I love the little sour cherries that these trees produce!  I think the variety is called Montmorency.  

These cherries are perfect for baking, especially for cherry pies!  They're different from the dark red sweet cherries that come out in the grocery stores.  They're pretty tart, so they're really only good for baking, actually.  Although, I think each year they get a little less tart.  Either that, or I'm just getting used to them!

I especially love them because they're so so pretty!  They are so bright red.  When they're ready, I can see the red color bursting from the trees all the way from my kitchen.

As you can see, the birds really like these also!  We haven't found a way to keep the birds out of them yet!  If anyone has any ideas, I'd love to hear them!

Even with the cherries that the birds eat, we still get about 12 gallons of cherries every year, so I don't TOTALLY mind sharing with them.

This was our second picking!

I had some little helpers with me, but they actually just end up dropping half of what they pick!

They're cute though!

My family's favorite way to eat sour cherries is to make a cobbler from this mix.  The store is just down the road from us and it is so good with lots of different kinds of fruit, but the cherries are my favorite!

I thought I'd post some yummy cherry recipes on the blog soon!

Flowering Lonestar Pattern Giveaway!

Melissa of Sew BitterSweet Designs is launching her new Flowering Lonestar pattern today!  I was lucky enough to be a pattern tester for her.

I absolutely LOVED sewing this quilt!  It was a simple pattern, easy to understand, quick to sew up, and is a stunning quilt design!

I posted about my experience with her pattern here.

Go over to Melissa's blog today to see her post introducing her pattern and pictures of all the different quilts that were made using her Flowering Lonestar pattern.  They are all so different, and amazing!  I I love how changing the fabrics can make such a huge difference in how the quilt looks!

This is Melissa's quilt, which I fell in love with, and was the reason I offered to test her pattern for her:

Photo courtesy of Sew BitterSweet Designs

Melissa is so sweet and has offered to give one of my readers a copy of her Flowering Lonestar pattern!

To enter the giveaway, just leave me a comment!  Maybe let me know what fabric you think would look awesome with this pattern!

My followers get a second entry--just leave an additional comment and let me know how you follow me--Google Friend Connect, Bloglovin, email, etc.

Melissa's followers get a third entry--leave a comment saying how you follow her as well!

I'll draw the winner a week from today, which is Monday August 11.    Good luck!

       Show and Tell Tuesday