November Stuff

November is all about getting the Christmas quilts for clients done.  It is also about making an earnest effort to get my 2015 show quilts finished.  Both of these tasks are keeping me busy, despite having quite a few school closure/holidays this month.  My kids are older, and can manage to entertain themselves some of the time.  But as the temperatures are dropping (and those flakes start to fly) they don't want to be outside nearly as much.  It is hard to sew in the basement with the pitter-pat of 6 feet overhead.

Here's a rather poor (sorry) pic of a recent client quilt.  It is actually a lovely machine appliqued redwork quilt of birds  I wanted to keep it traditional, so the blank 4-patches are quilted with feathered wreaths.  These are free-hand quilted, so there are naturally some anomalies between each block.  The redwork blocks are always a quandary as to how to quilt them.  Sometimes I outline embroideries and backfill the background, but because these are machine appliqued, there is a LOT of detail...too much to stitch around.  I decided upon the pumpkin seed rather than my second choice (cross-hatch).  It makes the birds blur in  the photos, but they look fine in reality.

 This shows the birds a little better.

The border is simple, but pretty, and ties into the blocks with the feathered wreaths nicely.  I like this line of fabrics - they are really pretty in person.  Don't hold me to it, but I think that they are French General (or something like that).

 Right now, I have moved onto three edge-to-edge quilts.  It is so refreshing to do edge-to-edges when so much of my quilting is full custom.  It is always that double edged sword - the customs are where I learn techniques and improve my skills, but they are harder on the eyes, back and body.  I need a nice mix of both.

So...with that said, if you have quilts you might like an edge-to-edge on (AND you want them before the holidays!!) I can still take some of these.  Pass this on to your friends too.  Just drop me an email msolomo1@maine.rr.com

 I spent a couple days last week working on one of my next show quilts.  It's only a 40"x40", and still needs some "fixit" work, but most of the unquilted areas are now joyfully quilted!  That's a great feeling.  The quilting is very busy, but I am good with that.  The design of the quilting has altered the look of the original top (scroll to the bottom of this post for a before pic).  I also plan to add a good bit of bling.  I have held off adding crystals to most recent quilts, but this one is screaming for some.

I have one more bit of great news...actually a picture of the cover came to me while I was at Houston. On the first day I was home, this arrived in my mailbox!  I am tickled to have Autumn's Surrender on the cover of Quilter's Newsletter's next edition.  The article my editor wrote is great.  She did a fantastic job including several detail photos of this quilt (which really show all quilting details too!), as well as nice text about the quilt.