Lana brought me the most perfectly made t-shirt quilt I have ever seen.  She even pieced an inspirational quote in the border.  It says “there will come a point in the race when you alone will have to decide, you will need to make a choice, do you really want it?”  She made this quilt for a friend as a gift to her son. I used a design called Golden Curls. The minky backing is a dream!



Another stunner from Ruthie Windsong.  She made this quilt using Alison Glass fabrics.  She chose to quilt it with Dragons, I think it’s crazy cool!

After finishing 3 Patriotic quilts, one was custom, for Carole Lyse-Shaw who is currently writing a book about Modern Patriotic Quilts.  I am back to quilting for my number one customer Ruthie.  It was a very happy mail day last week when I received 3 of her beautiful as always quilts!  The first one was made with Cheery Lemon Fabric by Ciana Bodini.  I chose the cutest double feather clam design, it’s just precious!

The next quilt Ruthie made was a Churn Dash pattern using all Lizzy House fabrics, from several lines.  It had so many interesting elements, butterflies, stars, and dinosaurs it was hard to narrow down a design.  Ruthie came up with the idea to do rocks.  We found a great design called River Bed and I just love it, not just because it matches my nails too!!  Can’t wait to show you the next one, almost finished!

Every time I receive a quilt from Ruthie, my loyal and amazingly talented customer, I am just blown away by their beauty.  This is another original pattern she designed using the Rhoda Ruth fabric line by Elizabeth Hartman.  I chose a quilting design called Celtic Sea, I love how it turned out!  Can’t wait to see what she sends me next!

Every quilt has a story.  This quilt made its way to me via Instagram, she had seen the Rebel Quilt that I had done a while back and asked if I would quilt hers.  It’s one of my favorite patterns by Libs Elliott, she uses a code generating program to create her amazing patterns.   After I received this quilt was when I learned the story behind it.  I was quilting this for my customer’s birth daughter that she hasn’t seen in 16 years!!  Now that’s pretty special!  I used one of my favorite designs called Diagonal Plaid and I think it came out perfect! 

Peggy brought this quilt to me a couple of months ago.  She said “no rush” which was good because although it looked fun I had absolutely no clue what to do with it, all I saw was a lot of thread changes in my future.  In the meantime I did a bunch of other quilts both custom and edge to edge but this one was always in the back of my mind, however my mind was still blank as to how to quilt this!  Once I loaded it I decided to start with the fur, but how on earth do you quilt so that it looks like fur?  After staring at it for hours I just went for it, I did a stipple meander for fur, then pebbles for the football texture, the ideas were finally coming.  Next it was a crosshatch for the orange jersey and mask.  Then tiny straight lines for the black part of the jersey and helmet.  I am particularly proud of the crosshatch, I did it all by hand using my straight edge Quilted Pineapple Rulers which are a lifesaver.  Crosshatch is in itself and epic challenge and I am pretty happy with how mine turned out.  So next it was adding character to the face, check out the teeth!  Then what to do with the sky?  I had it in my mind that I wanted some kind of cloud design but I wasn’t confident on how to set it up so that my machine would stitch the clouds inside the borders and outside of the beaver.  I figured that out and look at the clouds!!!!  Next was the painstaking piano key inner black border, all done by hand with my mini straight edge ruler.  The next huge challenge was what the heck to do in the patchwork border.  I was totally stumped.  I thought I would do a different motif in the brown and the orange but it wasn’t sitting well with me.  In the end I found this Football and Stars design that I set up as an edge to edge inside the 2 black borders.  Well that worked, phew!  Last was the outer black border.  Originally I wanted to do a border design but in the end I decided another piano key border done by hand again was the right choice. 

This seemingly innocent cute little Beaver Quilt was truly a challenge of my quilting skills, I used every technique imaginable and learned so many more.  I am so happy to have finished it and I really hope Peggy is thrilled with my work!  It was a pleasure to bring him to life!

Ruthie Windsong brightens the world with her gorgeous quilts!  I was so thrilled to receive these last week in the mail.  I had seen them on Ruthie’s Instagram and was hoping she would ask me to quilt them!  The star quilt is her own design, she used all Alison Glass Sunprint fabrics, Stunning!  I chose a Baptist Fan design because I thought it made the stars look like they were spinning.  The other is a Scrappy Trip Around the World quilt the pattern and fabric choices blow my mind!  She gave me quilter’s choice on the design, it was the perfect opportunity for me to use the Modern Eccentric design by Anita Shakleford.  I think they are both incredible, I can’t stop staring at the back of the Scrappy quilt!

I met Frances because my mom, while shopping at The Pine Needle Quilt Shop in Lake Oswego, was admiring Frances’s beautiful Star quilt that she had just finished and needed it quilted, thanks mom!  You can see pictures below it’s red, yellow and black.  Frances is fairly new to quilting but you would never know it, her piecing is spot on!  When she called and said she had another quilt for me I was thrilled!!  We met at The Pine Needle and I really couldn’t believe one how big it was and how beautiful.  We talked about doing something more custom.  I have seen this quilted by several people and they always do something very geometric and modern in each block which looks cool but wasn’t what Frances wanted.  She was thinking more along the lines of free motion.  Eek, I think of myself as ok with free motion, my style is more organic free flow feather and pebbles.  But to be honest I have never done an all over free motion design with one style!  As always I was up for the challenge.  I came home, immediately loaded the quilt and just went for it.  I was so nervous and unsure of myself but like everything I do I just dive in and I don’t stop until I’m done.  I quickly realized that doing free motion swirls on a 84×96 quilt is like running a marathon!  I got in a rhythm and before I knew it the swirls were just pouring out of me onto the fabric.  Then I hit the center, eek there are about 24, 6″ blocks with very raised seams which are trouble for the hopping foot to go over.  The blocks were so small and intricate I didn’t want to plow over them with swirls, so I decided to stitch in the ditch the blocks!  It’s exhausting and takes forever but I did it and  I loved it!  As with every quilt I am wracked with nerves hoping my customer likes what I have done and something about free motion is so personal because it came from me not from my work on a computer.  Today was the big reveal, we met at the Pine Needle and the reaction was priceless, she loved it!!!!  The best compliment I could even dream of was when Frances said “I am so glad I met you”!  Well ditto for me Frances!!!!

To my surprise I was recently asked by Dawn White of First Light Designs to quilt her Metro Rings Mini Quilt.  Huge gulp!!  I have known Dawn for many years, she is a renown quilter and educator.  She works a lot with The Pine Needle Quilt shop teaching a variety of classes, her work is truly amazing, be sure to check out her blog First Light Designs.

I was up for the challenge but incredibly nervous to quilt for Dawn.  When we met we talked about design and she gave me some direction.  She pointed out that the seams on the white curved blocks don’t line up well, the nature of curved piecing.  I suggested using a ruler design that I like to do that might frame the block nicely but after quilting several blocks with this design I decided it only highlighted the uneven points.  Dawn agreed.  So after ripping all that stitching out, I searched and searched for a design that would be unique and would fill the space nicely.  I found this Acanthus flower and thought it was perfect.  Next was to fill the melon shape inside the rings, I thought the circles would fit nicely and worked well with the fabrics.  I outlined the wedge shapes with a ruler to add some interest.  Last was what to do with the green and black triangles.  Dawn requested green thread and that was a slam dunk!  I looked around for something original looking that would fit with the theme of the quilt.  In the end I drew my own design using my Statler which sounds easy but really isn’t, if it was I wouldn’t spend hundreds a month buying designs that have already been drawn and stitch tested.  Case in point, I spent more to quilt this quilt than I earned but the experience is priceless.

So not only was this quilt a huge opportunity for me to quilt for someone I really admire, it was an incredible learning experience and that’s about as good as it gets!  And the best part is that Dawn loved it!!

I have known Linda for many years, she practically lives at The Pine Needle Quilt Shop which is the best quilt shop in town.  Linda is the real deal when it comes to quilting, she’s brilliant.  When Linda asked me to quilt her Tula Pink Moxie quilt I was beyond honored!!  This was such an incredible opportunity for me to use so many different quilting techniques.  Many people think that having a quilting computer makes it easy when in actuality setting up or drawing your own designs and manipulating them to stitch the way you want in the space that you are working with takes great skill and time.  Unfortunately it’s hard to see in the pictures all the different designs I used but I just loved how it turned out and so did she!!