Tag: fmq

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Texas Road Trip QAL-Customer quilt

So, today I’m going to share a customer’s quilt that I recently worked on.  It was put together beautifully and I loved that I had the chance to work on this…

I had the awesome opportunity to quilt a very talented quilter’s Texas Road Trip QAL quilt.  The design for the quilting was fairly straight forward and not that complicated, but the impact was really breath taking.  Straight lines and curved lines work separately to really make the quilt pop.  

These are some of the great swirls that this quilter chose for her design.  So gorgeous and free flowing.  I really loved quilting this because there were lots of people in our guild completing this quilt along at the same time, and I enjoyed seeing how differently they were quilted.  In the picture above, you can see a little snippet of a post it that I pinned to the next section as a reminder to stop quilting swirly loops and switch to straight lines 🙂

Another great detail that this quilter chose was to put a heart over the center of San Antonio–in hot pink thread.  It really was so much fun to quilt, and the swirly loops are really relaxing to kind of get lost in.  

And here’s a picture of the finished quilt:  
I absolutely LOVE the scrappy reds in the Texas shape and the scrappy low volume background.  Normally, I’m not a red person…but this quilt…WOW!  I just had to share one of my favorite quilts that I’ve longarmed for someone else.  I hope you get to enjoy some time sewing, or doing whatever makes you happy this week!  Until next time….
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My Finished Glam Clam Quilt

I am going to talk to you today about Latifah Saafir’s “Glam Clam” quilt pattern and my journey completing the quilt.  

I’m a member of the San Antonio Modern Quilt Guild, and we were fortunate enough to have Latifah Saafir do a trunk show AND teach 2 awesome workshops!  I was super excited…the clam shell style quilt has been on my quilting bucket list since I first started sewing, so this was a great excuse to get it done.  I immediately signed up for the workshop and picked my fabrics out after I got the pattern and templates.  I painstakingly cut out all of the pieces, labeled them, and organized them all into little ziplocs, until I would  attend the workshop.  I had the finished quilt in mind for a very special friend and was excited to gift her a really cool quilt.

About a week from the workshop date, my grandmother’s health was failing.  She passed away, and the funeral was scheduled for the same time as the workshop.  I missed the workshop and didn’t touch the pieces I’d cut for a few weeks after.  Once I started the quilt, I thought about my grandmother often.  I’m not crazy about piecing curves, but I must say that it was kind of a healing feeling to sit and sew without really thinking about anything.  It gave me a chance to think about relationships and friendships and how much people can impact your life.  

Quilting the finished top was even more fun that putting it together.  After doing a little bit of research, I found that many of the clam shell quilts are quilted with just an all over design, without much attention paid to the individual blocks.  I definitely didn’t want to just do edge-to-edge quilting.  

Latifah’s pattern is seriously so simple to follow, and her templates are to die for.  They are very mindful of how curved seams should be constructed, and here’s something even more awesome–NO PINS NEEDED!!!  I won’t lie…I didn’t believe that at first, but after sewing a couple together, I tried it without pins, and–life changing.

Here is a little more of the quilting–not really anything too difficult, but I felt it gave a better effect than an all over quilting design.  

Above is the top with no quilting or binding–I absolutely love how this quilt came together.  
And then this was the finished quilt after binding.  I shipped this beauty off to my friend in California and hope she uses it until the thing falls apart!  I must say, Latifah did an amazing job on the pattern and tutorial and I can’t wait to make my next Glam Clam quilt.  



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Longarming…my Love!

Since the last time I posted (I know…it’s been a while!), I have taken up long arm quilting.  Somewhere along the line, I had this idea in my head that long arm quilting was “cheating”, and if a quilt was quilted on a long arm, then it wasn’t really “your” work.  I could not have been MORE wrong.  

The time and skill that go into this type of quilting is ridiculous!  I also had no idea that there were multiple types of long arm quilting.  I just assumed that all “long arm” quilting was a computer program that you just pressed play, and BOOM! it’s done.  Once I realized there was a niche of long arm quilting that I would absolutely adore, I’ve been hooked ever since.  (And plus…there’s no more basting with safety pins on your living room floor!  You can’t beat that!!!)  

The category of quilting that I specialize in is free motion quilting.  That means no pantographs, no computer programs…just you and the machine.  Your hands and brain putting the thread and needle to work to create something magical that can’t be duplicated. 

Ruler work can also be seriously fulfilling, and there’s no limit to the  
amount of different designs you can create with straight lines. (collaboration quilt
for Janome)
Free motion quilting on a customer’s quilt (Valerie M.)

Free motion quilting on a customer’s quilt (Sarah J.) 
that was donated to a local charity fundraiser.

If you have any preconceived notions about long arm quilting, I would really encourage you to re-think them.  All it took was one time for me to know it was something that I would want to do for the rest of my life, and it’s really nice to have a break from piecing your own quilts to see the awesome talents your long arm clients have and the diversity of their work.  I never cease to be amazed by the quilts my customers bring me, and dreaming up designs to put into their quilts really challenges you to think outside the box.  I’m so glad I’ve started my FMQ long arm journey, and I really relish every moment I spend doing what I love.  


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Texas Tech Quilt

This is a quilt I recently made for my brother, who is a Tech Alumni.  Hopefully he doesn’t look at this blog ;).  It’s a little bit difficult to see in the photos, but I used red and silver thread to quilt the double T logo on alternating squares.  The other squares are filled in with the TT gun.  The border detail is random quilting in red.