Blog withdrawal

I have been going through blog withdrawal!!

My phone went out on Friday.

My friend called to tell me she was coming to take me to the grocery store and 45 minutes later the phone was dead.

I managed to get it fixed on Sat by 2 pm, but the Internet would not be turned on til Monday because they had to give me a new line and bla, bla, bla weekend technical stuff not available....

Anyway the tech guy that came out on Sat came back Mon when the DSL still wouldn't work and long story short, he finally got it

working this morning.

It's going to take me a while to get caught up on all the blogs I follow.

I started this quilt yesterday morning. 

 This is the block that is repeated over and over.  I think the quilt is about 100" x 100" and I'm about 2/3rds done with it.

We're gearing up for another Winter Storm here in Oklahoma.  Due here any minute.  Supposed to snow for about 6" - 12".  So I'll be getting some quilting done in the next few days.

I've been thinking about changing the name of my blog.  It seems like all the blogs have such cute, catchy names and the name of my blog is such a mouthful 

Another Mary Ann Custom Machine Quilting

I even had to scroll up to the top to make sure I got it right.

Time for a name change.

When I started the blog I was just thinking about getting my name out for quilting business.

Alphabetically it is good.

When I google machine quilting it comes up quick, (my computer?)

Any way, I was thinking about

QUILTING MY BUTT  OFF BIGGER

Any comments?

Can I get anybody to say anything?

I even had to 

Monster Storm quilt

Is this the perfect quit to be quilting this week or what?  Usually quilting makes me warm, but I'm still kind of chilly with this one.  Not that it is not a warm a snugly quilt, it's just that it looks the same inside as it does outside and guess what?  It's snowing again! 

I know most of the country has had storm after storm after storm, but this is my first storm after storm and I don't like it.

Haven't been out since Sunday and I've found out I'm not very good at stocking up.

We could use some provisions.

If I could get out of my parking lot, I'd probably be okay, but we had

a water line break and there is a lot of ice in the parking lot behind where I park and people have had lots of trouble this morning.

And of course, I'm a chicken.  (Ooooh chicken sounds good, wish I had some.)

Happy quilting.

Finally Finished

Finally Finished the Sunshine and Shadows

Log Cabin and it is nothing but feathers!

Here's a closer image of the dark area.

You'll have to click on the pic to see the quilting.

And this last pic is a closeup of a detail on the wreath over the dark area.

I'm really glad to be finished because I really quilted my butt bigger on this one!

Happy quilting!

Brrrrrrrr

Here we are in Oklahoma, no snow but it's 11 degree's F with a windchill of -5.  I can't wait to get out and walk Dusty, NOT.  Oh well, it's got to happen so I've just got to bundle up.

This is a sample of quilting for the new quilt.  It is a log cabin, sunshine and shadow setting.  I immediately saw big feather wreaths for the quilting.  I never have done wreaths this big, so I did this sample with a fat quarter sandwich, mmmmmm.

I didn't get to the quilt though because my sewing machine did not like the thread I had on hand in the bobbin, sew I have to get to the quilt shop this am before I can get started.

Quilting here

 This little quilt is soooo cute!  It looks like a party.  I think you can see the quilting better if you click on the pic to enlarge it. 

This pic and the following one shows closeups of the back

 that really show the party nature of the quilting.

I thinks ribbons always look festive.

The next pic is the whole back, or most or it anyways.

It really shows that simple designs can turn into magic when placed evenly.    

In this quilt The ribbons went in the pinwheels and the setting triangles.  The alternating directional "O's" went in the small border around the pinwheels.  the alternating directional "C's" went in the patchwork border around the pinwheels. And finally the lower case cursive "L's" went on the piano key border surrounding the entire quilt.

Well I'm on to the next one and it has feathers,

my favorite!!

Happy quilting! 

Good Progress

Made good progress of the double Irish chain yesterday.  I think I may have got almost a quarter or the way done.  But a lot of the times when working on these big ones,  they just get bigger as I go along. Ha!  Had to stop long enough to go and get a new air erase marker.  Both of the ones I was using were getting too faint to stay long enough for me to get the spine stitched.

When doing a feather wreath, I mark the spine and then then the  inner circle that is the border for the edge of the feathers on the inside of the wreath.  I mark this boundary because it is hard to get a circle out of the inner feathers if you don't, and believe me, this will show and look wonky.  For this particular size of feather, the top of a  ziplock container is perfect.  (The old design had a circle in the middle that could be cut out).  Another way to make the perfect circle template is with freezer paper and a compass, then mount it on a piece of cardboard (cereal or cracker boxes are great for this) or template plastic.  Be sure to cut out the center for the edge of the inner feathers.  After I get the marking done, I build the feathers without marking.  This takes some practice and I did this practice on a couple of charity quilts for my guild.  when I turned in these quilts I was told, " Oh, Mary Ann these quilts don't have to be quilted so beautifully, just an all over design will be okay."  I responded with.  I hadn't ever done these wreaths before and had to practice somewhere, so I practiced on these."  Charity quilts are a great place to practice new designs or your skills on new a sewing machine or equipment.

Remember, the more you quilt, the better you get and that is the ONLY way to get better.

Happy quilting!

100th post!

This ought to be a momentous occasion but I don't have a brass band or even a special picture or anything.  I do have something to say, however that has been bugging me for a while and I'm going to say it here.  You know, us quilters are a tough bunch.  We make beautiful quilts and give them away.  I guess you would have to say that we are givers.  I sew with a bunch of women on a weekly basis that hardly have a quilt in there possession because they have all been given away to family and friends and strangers.  We even meet 2 days a month specifically to sew for 'strangers  in need' to give them quilts.

Yes we are givers. If there is a need, we give.  Somebody sick?  Send a card, or take over a covered dish, or visit them in the hospital, or finish the binding on their quilt for the show.  Car broke down?  Give them a ride...  You get the idea.  But, just try to give a quilter a complement on her beautiful quilt and see what happens.  She will throw it back at you in a New Your minute.  (I say "She" because my experience is 100% with women quilters and I don't know if this particular phenomenon translates to men.)  Women quilters can not recieve a complement.  In fact Women in general cannot receive a complement.  Tell a women she looks nice,  she has on a pretty dress,  that was a great casserolle, the list is endless.  You know how it feels to get a complement,  Uncomfortable.  we really don't know how to receive.  but receiving is all a part of the giving process!  You can't have one without the other! When you give something, there has to be someone on the other end receiving what the giver is giving or the process does not work.  You can't have one without the other. 

I guess you might wonder why I am coming at this particular subject at this particular time.  Well, I am part of the committee planning the Holiday party for my Quilt Guild and when the discussion came up about the gift exchange there were some things said that were not very nice about gifts that were received in past years.  "...I gave a wonderful bla bla bla and all I got was a lousy yada yada yada."  And other comments on the same line.  I thought that this attitude is just wrong.  Then I put this attitude together with the unable to receive the complement thing and thought maybe it all goes back to just not being able to receive in general.

When I first became ill with Myasthenia Gravis in 1996, I was just almost helpless.  I required someone to drive me, push me in a wheelchair, someone to feed me at times, bathe me at times, things that were incredibly hard to accept, but let me tell you I learned to lovingly say thank-you and resist the innate response of saying "no thanks, I don't need any help".  I needed help.  And more important, my loved ones needed give me help.

So when someone gives you a complement on your quilting say thank-you.

Happy quilting

New quilt

Started this quilt this morning and got a little better than halfway.  It's hard to see the stitching in most of it but here are a couple of the blocks you can see.  Actually it is a memory quilt but I didn't think I should show the pictures since they're not mine to show.   But, I thought I would talk about what to do about pictures in a quilt.  The one thing you don't want to do is quilt over the pictures unless you are  extremely talented and even then you risk distorting faces.  My best advice is to choose batting that will support NOT stitching over the pictures.  Most of the fabrics I have seen that have been run through the ink jet printers have a kind of stiff thickness to them and when you stitch them you leave holes in the fabric, the thread has a tendency to shred causing starting and stopping, (thus ugly spots).  The batting in this quilt is Warm and White which you can stitch up to 10 inches apart.  There is a quilters Dream that you can stitch up to 12 inches apart.

I found a happy thing on my photo fixing program today by accident.  there is a chart thing called a histogram that I didn't know did anything when I accidentally dragged my mouse over it and it changed to washed out looking pictures my camera produces to looking rich in color.  Yippee!!  Hopefully my future photos will start having a little more color.  I'm really exceptionally bad with this adjusting the camera thing.  It's a cheap camera with lots of mega pixels but too many choices that I don't know what to do with and the default setting don't take a great pic so I'm up the creek. 

Happy quilting

Another quilt

I started this one yesterday.   It's on the cover of a book called On a Roll by Heather Mulder Peterson and the name of the quilt is Cotton Candy.  I know all this because the lady brought me the book so I could quilt her quilt just like the one in the book.  I hope I do it justice.  My quilting never looks like somebody else's quilting because of the way I do it.  This quilt looks like it was done on a machine that was guided by a computer so it was all perfectly placed and symmetrically done. My quilting will by equally beautiful and artistic.  She's a new client.  I need to not stress over it and just get back to work and do the fine job of quilting that I know I can do.  After all I'm not a computer, I'm an artistic quilter.

Happy quilting

Go Sooners

Finished Another

This one went pretty fast.  It looks like it was made from fat quarters cut into large squares and the strip that was cut off to make the square was used to make the border.  What I did for the quilting was to divide the large squares into four using a wavy line, (very forgiving) and then put an eight petalled flower echoed twice around in each square.  The quilting went very fast.  First I marked off the divisions with a chaco marker as I went down the quilt.  The chalk actually disappears as you sew with the vibration of the machine.  You can see  a little cloud of dust rising up as you go.  I just mark with my ruler as far as I can, sew that far, mark some more, sew some more, mark some more.  It always seems like more work to me to lay out the quilt and mark the whole thing and then quilt it.  With chalk or Air erase marker your marking WILL disappear before you get done quilting, so you will have to use a marker that has to be taken out like a water erase marker.  Thus Mark it, quilt it, take out the marking.  That's literally doing the design 3 times!!

On the Back of the quilt you can see the divisions easily and also the the echoed flowers.  Those are always fun.  Remember you can click on the pictures to make them bigger and see the stitching.

Happy Quilting

Another Day

This is one of the quilts that I quilted on Tues at the Mid-Del Stitchin' Sister Quilt Guild's charity sew and Go. A friend of mine who designs quilts donated the top . I love what she can do with fabric.

When I put my shelves up yesterday I was surprised by the number of "to be quilted" quilts I really had. Getting them all put in the same place makes a big difference in keeping up with them. Speaking of which, I'll be basting some today at the church with a friend, got to get some of these out. The bargello I showed a few days ago is progressing nicely, but I ran out of thread and I will have to wait to continue until I get my order from Connecting threads.

Happy quilting

MA