This is a beautiful quilt made by my friend Mariann.  She loves to do BOM quilts, and this one, called Millhouse, she especially enjoyed making.  We quilted it with an all over design called Panto Feather. We also used a Loftier batting that really gives the quilting definition.  

A simple screw broke.  You would think this would be an easy fix.  But it really wasn’t.  After spending about an hour on the phone with the HQ Dr (aka Krisann) I knew I need to take my machine in to visit her.  My hubby and son were not happy because they had to carry my Handi-Quilter Avante upstairs and load it into my car – no small feat because this machine weighs ALOT.  Luckily, Krisann fixed it while I was relaxing for a weekend down in sunny St George and when I came home I was able to get back to quilting!

So I have another friend who I introduced to quilting this fall.  And she has fallen in love with it!  She designed and made this quilt all on her own – and it’s her first quilt!  It’s for her teenage daughter who helped with the fabric choice and color placement.  I think they both have a natural knack for it!

She decided she wanted me to quilt with the all over Circle Meander to bring some curves to this straight lined quilt.  It turned out so fabulous – she took this picture and sent it to me and I love it! Her lighting was just perfect and the quilting show up so well.  You can see what a great job the Pro-Stitcher does at making perfect circles every single time.

So here’s my final quilt for Christmas presents this year.  I realized while I was making quilts for my kids that I have NEVER made a quilt for my hubby – and we’ve been married for over 17 years.  That’s just sad!  Luckily, earlier in the year I had seen this great Star Trek Next Generation fabric on Hawthorne Threads and snapped it up (it is all sold out everywhere, I know I checked!)  And my husband LOVES Next Generation – it’s his favorite TV show and he has seen every single episode.  Multiple times. So I found a pattern that worked and cut into the fabulous fabric.  And here’s the result!  I quilted this with an edge to edge design from Urban Elementz called Galaxy. 

So I was sitting in my chair, watching tv and knitting and I glanced over.  And my dog had decided she wants to be an Instagram star!  So I snapped a pic of her and made her famous for a day showing off some of my favorite quilts and even the dog bed I made her from polyester scraps I got from my grandma’s basement.  

So now it’s on to my son’s quilt.  He’s a big fan of the Denver Broncos, an NFL team.  I found some great licensed fabric at JoAnn and I spend some time trying to figure out what to do with it.  Luckily, that week at the Syracuse Quilt Guild, we had Emily from Pattern Jam come and introduce us to her amazing website where you can design your own quilts, have them printed on a panel of fabric 54″ wide, and then just quilt them!  So I spent an evening designing the center panel of this quilt, had it printed and mailed to me, then just added borders and loaded it on the machine.  And my son LOVES this quilt!  I did this with custom free-motion and ruler work quilting in the body of the quilt, and I did a football meander on the border.  

So I have decided to make a quilt for each member of family this year for Christmas.  Both of my kids have outgrown all the baby quilts I made them over 10 years ago and I’ve never replaced them.  So I’ve decided to start with a quilt for my darling daughter Mya.  Mya loves all things cat, so when I saw Erin Michael’s Meow or Never quilt kit I knew had the perfect quilt for her!

I quickly put the quilt top together, but then realized I needed the quilt to be queen-sized to fit her bed so I decided to add a fat quarter stack of this fabric and I made some more blocks to add to the two sides to finish it out.  It turned out perfect and the right size.  I got some fabulous fabric from Cotton + Steel for the back and loaded it on my machine.

I played around with my Pro-Stitcher on Handi-Quilter Avante and did a different design on each block.  I am so pleased with the final product, and Mya LOVES it too!

My first official customer – my good friend Lisa – brought this quilt to me and brought a beautiful story with it.  Her mom passed away early in 2016 and was an avid quilter who made beautiful projects and loved to share them with her family.  While Lisa and her family were going through her mother’s things, they found this quilt top, with the backing fabric, and decided she wanted to give it to her dad for Christmas.  And I got the amazing privilege of quilting and binding this wonderful tribute to her mom.  Thanks Lisa for sharing this with me! I quilted this with an all over design called Panto Feathers.

So I signed up for a BOM at my local quilt shop.  And then I got the first kit, read the pattern and screamed “WHAT HAVE I DONE?”  This is how my adventure with Arcadia Avenue began.  This super intricate paper-pieced block of the month kept me busy for over a year.  Some months I had the patience to finish the block in one sitting, but most of the time it took multiple sewing sessions to complete just one block.

And then came to sewing it all together and removing ALL THAT PAPER.  But the finished product was totally worth it in the end.  I used a combo of Pro-Stitcher patterns (as seen in the white block above) and ruler work in the body of the quilt.  And then I tried out feathers, pebbles, and swirls on the outside white border.  I’m pretty happy with how it all turned out!

This quilt was on my machine for a long time, but it was a great learning experience.  I especially loved mixing computerized quilting with free-motion.  And I had some expert supervision from Mischa on this project too!

My little sister recently made the big move with her family from far away Houston, TX to much closer St George, UT.  And of course I made her a quilt for a house warming gift!

This is a pattern from Sew Kind of Wonderful called Country Chic and it’s my favorite pattern from them I’ve made so far!  It was also lots of fun to quilt – we did and edge to edge called Circle Meander that really complimented all the curved piecing in the quilt.