SHADOW TRAPUNTO

Here it is all finished and hanging on a wall. You can see the background colors from a distance much better than close up. Sometimes it is good to back off from our work. Close up I see all the flaws. Here's a close up of the background. I tried to do a repeat of the shadow to some degree in my quilting in the back. Also, next time, I will quilt around the outside of the batting, rather than on the inside. It won'l look as sloppy. Thanks Geta for the e-book. It was excellently done and easy to follow. Your pictures were very good also.

More of South Bay Studio Cards

Here are more cards from Kathi at South Bay Studios. We sell a lot of baby items in our shop, so it's always nice to have cards for the gifts that people buy.She also makes these cute cards, rather 3-D, very whimsical and fun. Check out her store. Just click on her name. You might find something you like.

A Shopping Trip

My twin daughters and a couple of friends and I went to Portland yesterday to check out the Mill End and Fabric Depot. Quilters and seamstresses that live in Olympia are deprived when you see what's down there. We have a Joann's and 2 quilt shops. These stores in Portland were amazing - especially Fabric Depot. I didn't have a real plan when I went but I will get one for the future. These are minkys and slinkys (I don't know what else to call them) that I bought . There was more than I could imagine, and the checker said that on Monday they had much more. Can you imagine? My daughters bought lots of fabric for dresses. They said the Mill End was better suited for taffetas, satins, and suitings. Fabric Depot better suited for cottons. So many brand names there - Moda, Michael Miller, Amy Butler, Alexander Henry, and much, much more. We also met some friends that live in Portland, one of them showing us the stores and we had a wonderful time having lunch with them. It was a great trip and we are planning to go a little more often.

Lovely Cards to Enjoy and Buy

I want to let you know about a friend of mine that sells in our shop. She makes these beautiful cards and much more. I personally wouldn't go to the store and buy cards any more. The pictures here don't do them justice. Check out her Etsy store. She is Kathi at South Bay Studio.

I'll be putting on some of her other cards later this week. Enjoy.

What's on my Machine Monday

This quilt is actually on my machine now. It's a charity quilt that I can try to do things on that are a little out of my range. I've had it for several months now. I'm not going to put these quilts off so long any more. I'll get them into my schedule.Looking at patterns and drawing things out.

More quilts etc.

I just put the borders on the quilt for my niece. She just got married so I'm going to get it finished. I just had to get the picture with the TV - Huskies game - they just had a good run but are losing right now - against the Oregon Ducks. If anyone has ideas on how I could quilt this, please let me know. I want to keep the white separate from the blue. And it does have very wide borders.I just took this one off my frame for a customer. Maybe they were her husbands pants and shirts. I sure hope he still has something to wear. She did a nice job. I did a basic stipple on it. You can click on it to get a closer view.

Some pictures of dishcloths I've knitted recently.

These are my favorites. I like the combination. I am working on writing out the pattern that I use, as it is my own. Then others can use it.

Holiday Table Runner

I went to my guild yesterday and sewed most of this then. I finished it this morning.

The neat trick on this is the fabric that gets pulled back to make it look like curves. Kind of like cathedral windows? I will be sewing these down. On my longarm? It could be a quilting step.
I finished this sweater for a little girl I know. I'm sure she will like it.

Getting Ready

Tomorrow at my quilt guild we are making the table runner in the picture. My fabric is all cut ready to go. It is fun to sew with the other women.I finished this sweater made out of an alpaca wool. It's sooo soft. Cute for some little girl.

WHAT'S ON MY MACHINE MONDAY

This was on first thing this morning. I was having tension problems Sat and had to do a lot of ripping out, so I put a scrap in to work on to get it right. The problem with this piece being on is that my husband had a friend in and they who do not know how to work the machine, were trying to sew and broke a needle. My son that used to share a bedroom with this machine did the same thing with his friend. Men and boys like big machines.So after all the ripping out the shadow trapunto is now on my machine. I had to debate with myself whether to do it on my longarm or my Bernina, but the longarm won out. I can appreciate Geta's work even more now. Next time, I'm going to stitch around the outside of the batting rather than inside on each petal. I don't know where my brain was at. I'm using green thread for the filler and it's turning out pretty good. The filler is the ripping out I had to do.

The girl's found a white dresser at an estate sale and so the whole front room got rearranged. So here are a few new shots.

This one has the dresser.

Look Lisa! The jewelry is almost under the window.

Oh- the top green drawer is missing an autumn tablerunner. Where is it? It sold this morning. I think I get excited about everything that sells - but especially my things.

Thanks for coming.

Tripping around the world

This is a customer's quilt I finished today. I couldn't get the colors to come out right. I think that room has bad lighting and I couldn't make it work. I was doing large feathers around the world and discovered as I went the first half of the quilt was larger than the second half. Actually the center isn't quite in the center, so the second half went much quicker than the first half. I love how it looked when I took it off the frame. This picture doesn't give it justice.

A closer look at the quilting, at least in the lighter blocks. It 's not very visible in the blue ones. I kept the dark blue empty as a border for each round.

My newest animals

To my zoo I'm adding Ellie the Elephant and Emma the Cat.It's raining and windy, and our electricity just shut down, so we moved out of the store temporarily (that is sewing machines) and are sewing in the house. We do have a generator here. We have had customers even in this rainy weather.

WHAT'S ON MY MACHINE MONDAY

This is a customer quilt "Trip around the World" pattern. You can see my wax paper there telling me what direction to go with my feathers. I do get turned around quite easily. It seems I am always starting a new quilt on Mondays. It seems one a week is my quota. My back gets aching .Here's my shadow trapunto all cut out on the fabric I bought for the background. The fabric is a batik and is beautiful.

Moving slowly along

I sewed the batting on. That went pretty easily. Now I'm cutting. That takes a lot of patience but it is coming along. A good thing to do while watching the Seahawks. Go Seahawks.

Shadow Trapunto

I've started a pillow from Geta's e-book that I bought. It's now all ready to start sewing the trapunto. I'm just a little nervous. I have quilted on my sewing machine and I've also done trapunto-but large trapunto. But her things are so beautiful. I have to try.Here are some more finished items. Pillows - I think they should sell in our store - and another little animal - an orange zebra or horse? Hopefully someone will like him.

A closer up of the horse.

Getting things done

I finished this lovely quilt this morning. I call it Arizona. That's where it's going and it looks like it.Some closeups of the quilting

I've made hotpads this week.

And crocheted shower puffs - mother, daughter.

I finished this sweet sweater also.

WHAT'S ON MY MACHINE MONDAY

It's the same quilt as last week. It's a large quilt and we did start our store. But I will get it done. These flowers I crocheted from a free pattern that you can get here.

The flowers come with a pot you can crochet but I think they are cute even as individual flowers. Also did some more headbands. When you sell, you have to restock .

Our Grand Opening was great. Especially Saturday. We had a flow of people all day long - more that we didn't know than we did know. My girls and I both got several jobs and some items in our store sold. So a great start.

A NEW HOME

My longarm has a new home. We moved it last night. In the process we broke a wire for the horizontal encoder. My thanks to Ernie. our local longarm expert who came out and fixed it for me. So now I'm up and running again. You can see here the back is off the machine.

We did some rearranging as you could see in the back room. And this now is how our center table looks. We are getting lots of help from friends who now how to decorate. We also put leaves on the windows and that makes them look very nice, rather fallish.
I don't know how much actual making of quilts I'll be doing, because when I sell something, I feel like I have to replace it to keep the stock up and quilt for customers. That is very fun though.

GRAND OPENING!!!!

Our new sign leading the way.The view as you come in the door.

And to your right----
And make a tour around the front room.

Now to the back room through the opening and to your left - the sewing center

We have refreshments these first few days provided by our friends. The quilt on the wall was hanging over the railing on my porch. Hence the fading on the bottom half. I will discount it or put it on my bed.

Ringing up a sale.

Thank you for visiting with us today. Elaine