Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Feeling very blessed this holiday season?

(I will explain…)

I do not have any good excuses for not getting this post done sooner.  I have been so busy, it is hard to sit down long enough to put my thoughts down, arrange photos and just think clearly.  I have had so much on my plate that has to get done. I have managed to finish a couple great quilts for my customers this month and I am anxious to share them with you. I hope you like embroidery, because here I go again…

Winter Wonderland

I love this quilt, and I really like it in Blue! I am going to have to finish mine some day. Hopefully sooner than later?  This quilt turned out so wonderful I can’t wait to share it with you.

So… here is how I started this quilt… The hard part is the planning. I had to come up with a snowflake that was not the average snowflake.

 

This looks much worse than it is…normally I would just make a dog blanket out of my practice quilt. But, I was lucky enough to have a customer that needed some snowflake quilted fabric to make stockings and I needed to practice some new snowflake ideas. Here is her doodle fabric. Some flakes better than others, and some were much easier than others, I filled the background with feather doodle and swirls. The best part, I learned something new, and I didn’t end up making a dog blanket, although my dogs would have loved the blanket.

I like to be a little different, and I am always seeing this quilt with standard snowflakes. Since the fabric used on the back of the quilt already had regular snowflakes... I dressed it up a bit, and ended up loving it! I think my customer liked them as much as I do. Here are a couple photos I took while I was working on the quilt.

 

The way my long arm is situated in my studio, when the sun is nice enough to shine here in Western Washington, it reflects so nice on the quilts and makes the them look so pretty.

This is my favorite block. I just love the snowball fight!

The part about this quilt nobody would ever realize by looking at is…This quilt is 100% cotton thread. WOW, talk about work. I had no idea going into this quilt how hard cotton would be to work with. I thought I would have problems getting my heavy quilting to work, but the I had no idea what problems would came from putting that much thread in one place. I usually do this detail with silk or bottom line thread. I used Presentia and Aurifill. I even used cotton in the bobbin. OUCH that is just way to hard, I love the way this quilt looks, but when I do mine I will be using silk thread and I will love it.

I love this shade of blue on this pinwheel. This block has to be one of my favorite.

The texture of the Quilters Dream Wool batting is so nice. This so soft and so nice, it is not a piece of cardboard that I quilted the crap out of. I know some people will think this is over quilted, I think it is beautiful, and I am proud to be the quilter of this quilt. I just wish it were mine. My version is done in red, and is still in the box with the 2 biggest blocks to get done. I better get busy.

This is the perfect snow family. Just look at them so happy in the snow.

This is my absolute favorite snowflake. I had such a wonderful time watching as the quilting came together and started to look complete. If my customer uses some beads on snowflakes to add a little bling to it to makes snow twinkle, it would be too cute.

I just can’t stop myself from grabbing all the photos and showing them to you.  

And here is the whole quilt. This photo is a little blurry, but when I do not have enough sunlight I can’t get the detail I like.

Meander anyone

A couple simple quilts to keep me sane. :)

Here is a little easier quilt.  I like an easy quilt after some of the more elaborate quilts. This customer had two of the cutest quilts. The more modern quilt above for her, and she did the cute little bright quilt below for her granddaughter.

Here are couple shots to show some of the simple quilting. She didn't want a lot of quilting. I panic when someone tells me not too quilted. Some times I wonder how to keep the quilting simple. I always like them in the end, but it might take me a while to come up with a quick plan that will satisfy my taste. Most people that come to me for quilting have seen my feathers or know how I like to quilt. She is a regular customer, and just thought that the light quilting was perfect.

Thimbleberries table topper!

Thimbleberries quilts always make a nice place to quilt a lot of feathers. I can't stop myself they just look so darn good with feathers.

Here is a closeup of some of the details.

Another one that shows some of the border.

Some of the echoing I did around the holly blocks.

Just look at the wonderful detail on this little topper.

The whole quilt all done and looking good. In this lighting it is really hard to 

see all the detail. But... you can see the whole quilt.

4 Star Quilt

This quilt was made with a bit of Breakfast at Tiffany's fabric by Fig Tree Quilts and the plaid 

to add a great accent and the big sold cream around the stars, with a big beautiful Border.

Just look at the feathers in this border. I love them. I hope you can see them, it can be a little hard to photograph this time of year. (No sunlight)

What a great open area to quilt in, I really like the feathers in these kind of spaces.

This is the detail while I had it on the frame.  A little bit of quilt in progress.

I did some continuous curves in her patchwork borders.

...and this is the hole quilt.

Mother Goose embroidery quilt!

All I can say about this quilt is WOW. This is a quilt from a co-worker at the office. I kept thinking it was going to be difficult to quilt and with the back ground fill... It was kind of easy.

 

This quit is so nicely embroidered. She should be proud of the final product. She did an excellent job, and this will make a very nice family heirloom even a son would be proud of. It started out as a gift for a family friend, and after a whole year of stitching she decided to keep it for her family. And I do not blame her. It took her so much time to stitch, and she has the ring of satin stitches that could be a little fragile and so beautiful. Great job Judy, I think you did a great job....and you finished it.

Mother Goose has such a beautiful feather in her hat. The darn thing looks like a real feather in person.

All the different colors in the cat's coat are not variegated stitches. She acutally used a couple colors for that affect. Talk about having the patients to crate the whole quilt and then still follow through with all the details.

This is one of those quilts that you are always happy to be a part of. I just can't believe she let me quilt it.

Always a pleasure!

...to quilt for Julie. She is the customer I would love to be. This lady finishes so many table toppers and little wall hangings, place mats and you name it. She puts together the cutest color combinations and the nicest kits. I just love all of them. They are so darn cute.

Here is a close up of the little clock wall hanging.

Here is the matching table runner. It is hard to see all the details, but it is really cute.

This was a beautiful table runner that had this curve to both ends, and she made matching placemats. The Stonehenge Christmas Traditions Cotton Fabric with the deep color is just beautiful, and it was so perfect with some of the floragraphics fabric. What a classy Christmas set for the table.

This is one of her cute little table toppers, made with some Strawberry field and some complimentary fabric. I just love the cute little thing. I bet she has the cutest house all done up in wonderful quilts. I know that I have quilted quite a few.

It is nice when I get some photos that show the detail.

This is the whole little topper. I made the green corners into the cutest little baskets, and the feathers all around.

A wonderful flannel Garden Bliss.

 

 Can you believe that I didn't get a photo of the front. I thought I had a couple, but I can't find them. This is a great shot of the back, that was a solid brown flannel. The front was so pretty in the Shaded Oaks flannel fabrics. I am going to have to look a little deeper to see if I can see find the front photos. This was quilted with the wreaths in the hexagons and the background fill was swirled with instead of the feathered doodle meander I have quilted on some of the others.

And now for the Blessing part...

This is a picture of my dog Breezy. She is a longhair dachshund. And she has become quite fuzzy. Her fur used to be long and silky. She is about 8 years old and the apple of my eye. I noticed about 6 months ago she put on about a pound or two and she was getting to be so needy, wanting to be held and it was slowly getting to be a little burden. I love being with her, but the dog has to still be a dog, and in my house that is still a good life? She had gotten to the point of wanting to leave with me and kind of bolting into the garage if I was not careful, so I decided it was time to go to the vet and see if their was anything wrong with her. I couldn't imagine what? but telling the vet she was fuzzy, gained some weight and recently had lost interest in her food,was all I had to go on.  In the back of my mind, I think I thought it was nothing.

This is my Breezy with her son Sam. She is recovering after her surgery. I will explain.
While we were at the vet. I had them so a senior work up. They drew blood, urine and what ever else they needed. Told me she looked really good, and this may be the new normal. WOW! I thought well while we are here, this little bump showed up, and it was on her shoulder (if dogs have shoulders).  I noticed it a few weeks or maybe a month ago. It looked like a bug bite that didn't heal or was maybe infected.  He stuck a small needle into it, put what ever he took out of the bump onto a slide and thought it might not be enough to see anything, and they may have to send it out or let it heal, but he would give it a try under the microscope and see if he could see anything. He came back and told me that my dog has a Mast Cell Tumor, it was an aggressive cancer and needed to have it removed. He would want to get the other tests back before to be sure she was well enough but the tumor would have to go.
I came so close to leaving with out even mentioning the silly little bump! OMG!! we call that a blessing. Now, you can see by the bite the vet took out of her, she is going to give cancer a run for the money. I need all the blessing we can get. In this house we are kicking cancers ASS! Breezy had a grade 2 tumor removed from her. And I will pray for no new tumors and keep trying to be proactive.

We ended up putting her jacket on her, and she left the incision alone. Stitches have been removed and we are still kicking Cancers ASS! Meet the new Breezy. :) we are taking it one day at a time.

When the holidays are here... So are T-Shirt quilts

This is how it starts...

One big bag of shirts, and then the stabilizing and triming and the planning to get the quilt done. This quilt in particular is for a performing arts child, and we wanted the perfect fabric for the borders and back I chose Windham Fabrics, Good Vibrations, I think it will be prefect. If it ever gets here. Still waiting on Christmas Eve? Wouldn't you know, I have the quilt finished and I have been waiting for the fabric for about 20 days.

A Tumbler Quilt

And the quilt that took Janet 30+ years to finish.

Here is a close up and the complete quilt. There are some fabrics in this quilt that have been used in reproduction 30's quilts. This was just a quilt top and now it is a finished quilt for her nephew. I just put a all over swirl on it, and got it to her in time for the holiday trip, she had time to bind and deliver it for the holidays.

Merry Christmas and Happy a Happy New Year. 

I would have shown some of the projects I have been working on, but I will have to show them later, I keep trying to get this posting written and it has taken me weeks. I didn't even bother with watermarking the photos because I just want to get the posting up.
Thanks for stopping by and reading my blog. Take time to enjoy your family and friends for the holidays.
Thanks - star