Quilts of Valor + "New" Pantos

I promised myself I would get a blog post up this week!!!  I'm so frustrated with myself for not being more on top of blogging!  BUT the good news is as long as I can work in the time to actually write the post I have lots of good stuff to share as I've been saving it all up :)

Last summer I began volunteering my longarm quilting services to Quilts of Valor.  I have been doing approximately two quilts each month.  It's been a lot of fun and has given me a chance to try out a lot of different quilting styles.  Many of the quilts I freehanded with my machine, but the two I'm going to share today show two pantographs I bought specifically to use on Quilts of Valor.

The above photo shows the pant laid out on my longarm quilting machine.  It is from Urban Elementz and can be found here ("From the Heart").  The thread I used was by Superior Threads and is from the Magnifico line (one of my favorites!).

Here's a look at the other quilt I did for this same group, but with a different pantograph.  This pantograph is also from Urban Elementz and can be found here ("Star Spangled Support").

I hope you enjoyed these AND I hope I'm back here next week! :)

Have a great weekend,

Megan

Knock, Knock ...

Me: "Knock, knock ..."

You:  "Who's there?"

Me:  "Ivaben"

You:  "Ivaben, who?"

Me:  "Ivaben Gone for a while."

Ok, so now you know the truth about me ... I am a total dork ;)  I was pretty pleased with myself when I came up with that joke, lol!

You may have noticed we haven't been around for quite a while, and boy have we missed blogging.  BUT other than a whole lot of pictures of boxes and us moving things around, there hasn't been a whole lot to share.

Now though we're getting back up and running and we are SO excited to get back into somewhat of a routine which for us includes blogging.

As I continue to get things more organized there are projects we've finished and are looking forward to sharing.  Now that we're more settled we're working to establish the longarm quilting side of our business and are looking forward to doing more of that.

Some exciting news includes that this summer we'll be hosting our first Quilt-A-Long based on a pattern from the fabulous Judi Madsen's (aka the Green Fairy) new book, Quilting Wide Open Spaces. The Quilt-A-Long will be a longarm quilter's QAL, won't that be fun?!?  The pattern I've chosen is definitely going to stretch our skills and hopefully yours as well!  Be sure to check back for more details!  AND I have to THANK Judi for giving me her blessing for moving forward with this project - Thank you for your support!  If you haven't purchased Judi's book, you can buy one from her site signed - HERE!  It is an AMAZING book for us longarm quilters and freemotion quilters, I've already used some of her suggestions to improve my quilting! PS You will be required to buy the book if you take part in the QAL.

I've been blessed to continue working at A Touch of Thread in Ohio one weekend a month.  There, I teach longarm quilting to beginners - those wishing to rent time on the machines and I lead the Saturday longarm quilt guild.  If you're in the area - Zanesville, Ohio - we'd love for you to come and see what our group is all about.  If you'd like more information, please email me at megan@cherryvalleydesigns.com

Enough talking, here are some pictures ...

This is my Work In Progress ... I was going to use metallic thread for the first time on a customer quilt and obviously didn't want her quilt to be my practice piece.  So, I was going to just practice on the muslin, but then got this idea to make something and so one thing turned into another and now I have three spools of Superior's kimono silk thread to use as filler in the background and these fun paints and paintstiks to finish my "practice piece."

One of the great things about our new house is that we now have a dedicated studio space (more on that to come)!  A few weeks ago we got our sofa and chair where we can relax in between projects but more often then not you'll find my boy Max enjoying the sofa ... specifically keeping watch of everything happening on our street ...

"Ho hum, nothing too exciting ..."

"Ooh, what's that?!  What's going on out there?!?"

"Seriously mom, are you done with all the pictures?  You're interrupting my people watching time!"

I'm off to spend the afternoon at Gentle Giants Horse Rescue where I'm doing my orientation to volunteer with the horses. I cannot wait, I'll be sure to share pics of my time there!

Until next time!

Megan

A special shout out to our two linky parties today, be sure to check these sites out for more fabulous blogs!  Work In Progress Wednesday and 

TGIFF - You're in the Right Spot!

Hello Everybody!  It's nice to have you here from TGIFF, I am the host this week and glad you stopped by!


Today I'm sharing a quilt I finished up this week that I will be teaching at A Touch of Thread in Zanesville, Ohio during October.  The quilt is now hanging there and is the pattern, "Afternoon Delight" by Elisa's Backporch Design.  I was surprised at how quickly the quilt came together - I got it pieced in one day! - and love the fall colors to it.

I quilted it on my Gammill and used a new panto I got from Willow Leaf Studio called Autumn Oaks.

The top thread Superior Threads So Fine #728 - it's variegated - and I used Superior Threads Omni #3035 in on the bottom.

The backing is hand dyed batik flannel from Sew Batik and I am absolutely in love with it!  I washed it prior to quilting with Synthrapol and it is soooooo soft!

Thanks for stopping by and be sure to add your link. Also, don't forget the rules:

1) Say "hi",
2) Comment on other's links, and
3) Add away!

Have a wonderful weekend and Thank Goodness It's Finished Friday!

Megan

Snowflakes and Such

I finished up this quilt last week and dropped it off to the owner yesterday.  This was the first quilt she has EVER made, can you believe it?!  This is a variation on my Jolly Holly quilt and she made it last year when I taught the class at A Touch of Thread.

I took over my sampler quilt (I'll share more about this next week) and she picked out the designs she wanted.  She decided she wanted snowflakes in the outer border, vines in the inner border, overall meandering in the body of the quilt, and stitch-in-the-ditch around the snowflakes with tight meandering in the white background.

A few weeks ago I started working at A Touch of Thread one day a week to help out and have had the opportunity to "test drive" the Ellisimo by Baby Lock.  Wow!  All I can say is now I know how people feel who drive cadillacs ... LOL :)  Anyways, I decided to make a matching pillowcase to go with this quilt and try out machine embroidery - something I've never tried.  It was a lot of fun and a nice surprise for Rose.

Thanks Rose for letting me quilt your quilt!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Megan 

We're linking up today with: Finish It Up Friday; Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?; Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday.

Finish It Up Friday + Binding Tutorial

Happy Friday Everybody!  Today I wanted to show you the finished quilt from last week's "Life's A Charm" series.  You can click here to read more.

I did an easy all over block design on this quilt which was a lot of fun, it was a new design for me and it doesn't take away from the busyness of the quilt.  However, for the binding I wanted to try a new technique I learned a couple of weeks ago and thought I'd pass the tutorial on to all of you.  I learned about this a few weeks ago at a machine quilting guild I belong to.  With this technique, you put the entire binding on by machine.  While I'm sure many of you know about this, for those of you who don't I hope this helps a bit.

First, make your binding the way you normally would.  Mine is 2 1/2" wide and I fold it in half and then press.  A little trick is to use an old coffee can and put it in while you're ironing, that way it doesn't fall all over the floor and you can just pull it out easily as you're stitching it down.  This has been a lifesaver for me.

Once your binding is prepared, attach your binding like you normally would with the raw edge of the binding matched to the raw edge of the quilt, but make sure you sew it to the back of the quilt.

Then ... you need to cut off the excess at the beginning and end of your binding on the diagonal and do the final sew down.

A tip of mine is to take a picture of positioning the ends correctly, taking a picture, printing it and keeping it at my sewing machine.  This way, when it's time to do this, you have an easy reference.  I was always getting mixed up and ended up twisting all my ends every which way.  Now I have a nice visual to clue me in ... no more frustrations!

Finally, pull the front of your binding around to the front (make sure your top thread matches your binding!) and stitch down with the blind stitch.

This was the first time I've tried it myself and it went pretty smoothly with the exception that my machine doesn't allow a stitch to have a mirror image.  So when I used the blind hem stitch I had to push the whole body of my quilt into the machine so the stitch was facing the right way.

Special shout out of thanks to the linky parties today: Finish It Up Friday; Can I Get a Whoop Whoop?; Thank Goodness it's Finished Friday.

Have a Wonderful Weekend!

Megan

July: Life's A Charm - "X" Marks the Spot

Hi Everybody! For all of our US friends, we hope you had a wonderful 4th of July weekend.  This would be the reason why we're a little late in getting our Life's a Charm out, along with the fact that I've been sick the past few days and have been operating at a slower speed.  Did you do anything fun to celebrate?  We visited Gettysburg and I cooked a big meal for our family - marinated and grilled chicken; cole slaw; potato salad; and of course, homemade cherry pie!  It was so much fun to cook a big meal like that, I don't get to do that nearly enough!

For this month's Life's a Charm we decided to make a quilt (imagine that! ... our first for "Life's a Charm"), something easy that could come together in a snap.  We've had 16 fat quarters of 30's reproduction fabric sitting around in our stash for a long time and decided it was high time to do something with it.  So, I cut it up into 5" charm squares and got 192 squares.  We ended up using most of these squares for this lap quilt.

For those of you making charm squares out of a fat quarter, it is very easy to do.  You will be able to get 3 rows vertically and 4 rows horizontally giving you 12 charm squares.

Here's how it goes ...

"X" Marks the Spot

Finished Size: 50" x 50"

Materials:
- 4 color scraps of material for 162 - 5" squares (this would be equivalent to 5 charm packs);
- 56" x 56" piece of batting;
- 56" x 56" piece of backing fabric;
- 220" of binding;
- A 6 1/2" x 24 1/2" ruler (for cutting your 5" squares out) - I prefer Creative Grids;
- A 2 1/2" x 12 1/2" ruler - again, Creative Grids; and
- A 6 1/2" square ruler - of course, Creative Grids;
- Your favorite rotary cutter, cutting mat, sewing machine, iron and ironing board!

Step 1: 
Separate your color scraps and make two groups of two.  So, I put purple and blue together (group 1) and pink and green together (group 2).

Step 2:
Chain piece your squares together, right sides facing, and sew a quarter inch seam allowance down one side of all your pieces.  Next, sew a quarter inch seam allowance on the opposite side.  Yes, that's right, just trust me on this one ;)

Step 3:
Using your 2 1/2" x 6 1/2" ruler, cut each square on the diagonal and iron the seam flat.

Step 4:
Pin your pieces back together, lining up your center point to create an hourglass block and sew together.  Your will need 49 blocks of your first group and 32 blocks of your second group.

Step 5:
Using your 6 1/2" square ruler, proof your blocks to 6" x 6" squares.

Step 6: 
Iron your seams flat.  Lay your quilt out starting with one color in the center and lay the alternate color around the center block.  Keep alternating colors (around the world) until you have a 9 block x 9 block quilt.  Sew your rows together.  Your quilt top is complete!

I can't wait to get it on the longarm and get it quilted!  Check back next week for how we quilted this and bound this quilt! ... There may even be a tutorial involved!

Until next time!

Megan

Playing Around With Colors

Believe it or not I would definitely consider myself a novice when it comes to the Adobe suite of products.  Back in November I faced the stark realization that I needed to make "the switch."  Thankfully though, Adobe now has a service called Adobe Creative Cloud.  It is, in a word, awesome! I was hesitant at first, but not having the $1,000+ to throw down on Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign, I decided to give the Creative Cloud, a shot and I am so glad I did.  I specialized in Information Systems with my business degree, so I'm pretty comfortable with the computer.  I was also the "queen of handouts" (an honor bestowed upon me by my supervisor, complete with a certificate ... lol) when I was a college math tutor, so I was comfortable making graphics and writing directions.  What is the Creative Cloud?  You pay for it monthly and it houses pretty much the entire suite of Adobe products and then you can download the programs you need ... as many as you need!  To me, $50 a month was much more reasonable than the upfront cost of the standalone Adobe products.  The other huge upside is you don't have to worry about product upgrades and having to pay for those as well.  The upgrades with Creative Cloud run seamlessly through your product and when one arrives, you're simply notified - it all is included with your subscription cost.  Oh, and you're getting the professional grade of the Adobe products!

That turned out to be a lot more information than I was planning on saying, but if you are in need of Adobe products I would definitely recommend looking into this and seeing if this would be a good fit for you.

Like I said, I'm still definitely a novice.  I do a lot of trial and error.  The worst is when I get something right and I have no clue how I did it!  Grrrr ... does that ever happen to you?  Well, I won't forget this little trick.  Last night, I was working on proofing some new pictures and I stumbled upon this photo alteration trick.

Do you remember our pattern Diamonds are a Girl's Best Friend that I debuted in the spring?  It's a pretty peach and spring green ...

... But look what happens when you change the "hue" using Photoshop?  Oh, the color combinations!

Option #1: Aqua and Purple

Option #2: Two-Toned Green

Option #3: Two-Toned Purple

Option #4: Blue and Green

Option #5: Pink and Peach (My fave!) 

Option #6: Purple and Pink

What's your favorite "new" color combination?  We'd love to hear!

Have a wonderful weekend!

Megan