Think Spring

It was a frigid 1F this morning. Today seems a bit late, but then rather appropriately cold day to show the table runner (17"x44") I made for my mother-in-law for Christmas. It was from a Moda pack of charm squares Lisa gave me last summer. I had originally wanted to do something for myself with them. I really love the butterflies and tulips, but it was crunch time in December and I really needed a Christmas present too.
The quilting is overly simple, almost insultingly so. I should have done it on the longarm, but wanted to use the varaigated King Tut thread I had, and had never tried this on the longarm. Blah, blah, blah, long story, I opted to simply stipple it on the domestic machine. Only a good quilter would know what it could have been.

Not sure if my feeble embroidery shows, but under the birdies (which my MIL loves to watch), it reads "Think Spring".

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I have had a steady stream of quilts to finish up in late December and this month. I did this one, despite not having a good picture of it. The T-shirt quilts are challenging, kind of like quilting a slinky. Once you get it pinned to the leader, it just pulls back in. I wanted to scream ! Takes a bit of TLC to get to lay flat and square. On the plus side, I did not have to do anything complicated for the quilting so it did quilt reasonably fast.

The rest of these are quilts I have done for other people. The brown one was tedius, and made per the customer's request. I tried my darndest to talk her out of parallel stripes, but she didn't want to budge. They weren't easy. I'm not sure what is up with the raw edge "bits" down that stripe, but I think they are supposed to get scruffy when it is washed. It does have an interesting texture :-)

Here's a fun child's kaleidoscope quilt all in jungle animals. It quilted up cute with the gold thread and the swirls. The backing is purple so the quilting shows nicely.

And another quilt belonging to the lady who owns the brown stripes quilt...She requested this swirling cloud all-over pattern that I freehand. It is in a variagated rainbow thread.

My week has been crazy. My class started Monday. It always takes a couple weeks to get the students engaged and really working, but my schedule has resumed. No more lazy holiday mornings. I started an online class running for the next 3 weeks "Quilt Wisperer" taught by Carla Barrett aka Feathered Fibers. It'll be humbling I am certain, but I hope to look at quilts and how I may quilt them differently. If you look at some of her quilts, you'll drool for sure though!

I have also made up a sample of some things I can quilt for a local quilt shop. They won't refer me to clients until they see this. Nothing like buying and "wasting" 8 yards of fabric just to impress/show one person! OK, sarcasm aside, it was a pain to squeeze this into the current schedule, but it will come in handy to show clients what the many patterns can look like on ugly tan fabric. To better show what I am up to as a longarmer, I have also pieced some swap blocks into a top and have quilted away at this for the last 2 days. It has different quilting for each block, and pretty sashings and a feathery border. I will show this to the shop too (when it is off the frame!!). That is tomorrow's task: finish it. Then I have 2 Crayola Challenge quilts to quilt, one which I have, and one which is due to arrive Friday. Can you say "They both must be done by next week"??? Yikes!

Time to run and do kid pick up, dinner, and all that other yucky stuff which fills my days.