12.29.2013

Sessoms Quilt

I cannot believe it's been 9 days since I've blogged! I've been so busy the last few months that I just needed a little break. I've been having fun playing with my kids, sleeping in and just enjoying life! I'm thinking of taking a few more days off this next week and then I'll be back to my normal quilting life. :)

Just before Christmas I finished machine quilting this awesome quilt. This quilt is a sample for Quiltique Quilt Shop in Las Vegas, Nevada. I'll be teaching there in a couple moths so I've been machine quilting a few fun quilts for them.
This quilt is called Sessoms, and I'm pretty sure they have kits at Quiltique.
I had so much fun custom machine quilting this quilt. The pattern really lends itself to cool quilting.
While I was machine quilting this quilt I couldn't resist sharing pictures over on Instagram, here are a few pictures while I was quilting.
Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas!

12.20.2013

Yours & Mine Embroidered Pillowcases

Kathleen and I have been having fun making hand-made (well machine) Christmas gifts this year. These adorable pillowcases are our most recent creation.

These were super simple to make, simple purchase high-quality plain white pillowcases. Kathleen and I have created downloadable embroidery files for the Yours & Mine, download those here.
Embroider the words onto pillowcases.
Enjoy!
That's it!

12.18.2013

2013 - A Brief Look at Our Creative Journey!

2013 has been such a great year! Kathleen and I had so much fun sharing our new book, creating tutorials, sewing, teaching and growing in our quilty journey! I thought it'd be fun to put together a little list of the quilts and tutorials that we created this past year!


Last but not least, the release of our second book, Modern One-Block Quilts, I'm pretty sure that was a big highlight of 2013 for both Kathleen and I.

WOW!
I honestly didn't realize how busy of a year 2013 was! I think I'll go take a nap now!
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

12.17.2013

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas & Happy New Year from my little family to yours!

12.13.2013

Bouncing - A Modern One-Block Quilt

Bouncing is the fourth quilt in our new book, Modern One-Block Quilts. 
When Kathleen and I decided to re-make this quilt Kathleen immediately came up with the idea to use gray as our main color and have it more of a winter type quilt. I love that she chose gray, it's so fitting for a winter quilt.
Like all 22 patterns in Modern One-Block Quilts, Bouncing comes with three patterns sizes, Baby 50"x50", Throw 63"x63" and Coverlet 75"x88". 
I may have gone a little picture crazy with this one. But I love it and I couldn't help myself, and besides, who doesn't love looking at pretty quilts! :)
Kathleen also came up with the cute idea to add some machine embroidery to this quilt. So we added in three Let it Snow embroidery blocks. You can purchase and download our Let it Snow embroidery files here.
We also added in thirteen machine embroidery snowflakes. You can purchase and download the snowflake embroidery files here.
I machine quilted this baby version using our Modern Cross Hatching digital pantograph pattern, that is available for long-arm quilters here.
This is the original version of Bouncing, featured in Modern One-Block Quilts. I love how bight and cheery this version is, but it's still really cool to see both versions and see how different the pattern can look.

The original version was made using Heaven and Helsinki by Patty Young for Michael Miller Fabrics.

Signed copies of Modern One-Block Quilts are available for purchase here.

Also check out:

Dot Party - Christmas Version

Ashlee & Ainslee recently made some adorable Christmas quilts. They each made a version of  Dot Party, originally designed by Julie of Jaybird Quilts.
I love how bright and happy this quilt turned out, such a fun cheery Christmas quilt.
I machine quilted this adorable quilt using an all over holly pattern.

12.11.2013

Swoon in Terrain

Becky recently had me machine quilt this adorable Swoon quilt, her version was made in Kate Spain's Terrain fabric.
Becky wanted the quilt to fit nicely on her bed so she added sashing and borders, it ended up being about 100"x100"
I had a lot of fun custom machine quilting this version. 
Thanks for letting me machine quilt your beautiful quilt Becky!

12.08.2013

Weekday dish-towels ~ a free tutorial

After Kathleen and I made our Holly & Jolly dish-towels and the Peace & Joy dish-towels we got the idea to make weekday dish-towels.
Yeah, we're on a dish-towel kick lately, but they are so simple and adorable we can't stop!

12.06.2013

Breakfast Club - In the City

I spent the last few days machine quilting on this beauty. It was so much fun to machine quilt. Quiltique, a fun quilt shop in Las Vegas, Nevada is hosting a Breakfast Club in 2014 and Tula Pink's City Sampler is the quilt they will be making, it's an in-store only project, so if you're in the Las Vegas are you should totally sign up, details over on their website.
When the ladies at Quitique asked me to machine quilt this beautiful quilt for them I was totally flattered. This quilt is such a cool quilt and machine quilting it was so much fun. Every single block is different so, every single block is machine quilted differently. all free-motion quilting. 
I really wanted the machine quilting to pop so I used two layers of batting, Quilters Dream Poly Deluxe and Hobbs 80/20. It's pretty heavy but the texture is pretty awesome!
I may have gotten a little wild with my machine quilting on this one, there is a section of the right side of the quilt that I did a lot of straight line ruler work. I really wanted the quilt to have a cool modern feel, so I just did whatever I felt like at the moment. :)
Love how it turned out!

I'll be teaching a few classes at Quiltique in February, can't wait!

12.03.2013

Quiltmaker Magazine - Year of Machine Quilting

I am beyond words thrilled to share this exciting news today! 
I've been asked by the wonderful editors at Quiltmaker magazine to join with them and share a year long series, Year of Machine Quilting. 
(see my name on the cover, yeah, pinching myself)

Each issue for the course of the 2014 year I will be sharing machine quilting patterns ideas and tips. The first segment is appearing in the January/February issue, on sale today! In the first issue I share some tips about machine quilting from the beginning; needles, thread and other beginning tips, and also share a few machine quilting patterns, with step-by-step photo tutorials. 
Over the year the my publisher, C&T Publishing, has agreed to join the fun and a few lucky readers will have the chance to win copies of my book, Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting.

I'm super excited about this series and hope to be able to help many of you build your machine quilting skills.

Happy 2014!

12.02.2013

Small Business Saturday - Suppose Quilt Boutique



This past Saturday, for Small Business Saturday, Kathleen and I had the opportunity to visit Suppose Quilt Boutique.  An adorable quilt boutique in Preston, ID.
We were able to share all 22 quilts from our new book, Modern One-Block Quilts and also some of the quilts from my first book, Beginner's Guide to Free-Motion Quilting
The ladies at the shop are adorable, (yes, we couldn't resist buying more fabric) and it was so much fun to mingle with family and make new friends.

Thanks so much to Jo & Kathy for having us.

Now, it's time to bury my head in the long-arm, only 3 weeks until Christmas and I've got a lot of quilting to do before then. :)
Have a great day!

11.26.2013

American Stars - A Modern One-Block Quilt

Okay, I couldn't wait any longer.... I was planning to wait until December 15th to share this quilt.... but oh well! :)
I love this quilt!
Kathleen and I actually finished piecing and quilting this quilt almost a few weeks ago, it's been so, so, so hard to wait this long to share it! :)
Today, we're sharing the third quilt in Modern One-Block Quilts, American Stars. I really did love the original version, done in Gray and White, but red and white..and scrappy.... YUM!
This quilt pattern, like all 22 quilt patterns in Modern One-Block Quilts comes in three sizes Baby, Throw & Coverlet. The original version is made in the coverlet size measures 68"x85", this red and white baby size measures 34"x34". If I can get this quilt out of Kathleen's hands I'm totally going to use it as a little table topper in my kitchen.
The original version, above, I machine quilted using our Zig-Zag machine quilting pattern, long-arm quilters can purchase that pattern here
The baby version I machine quilted using our Rainbow machine quilting pattern, I love it on this quilt, long-arm quilters can purchase that pattern here

Check out the baby version of A-Maze Me and Alternating Stars.

Signed copies of Modern One-Block Quilts are available here.

American Patchwork & Quilting Quilt-Along


Have you heard about the American Patchwork & Quilting Quilt-Along? Lissa Alexander, the amazing scrappy quilter has designed a fabulous new quilt and American Patchwork & Quilting is featuring it as a quilt-along! Love this idea!
I wish I had millions and millions of extra hours in each day, I'd totally be sewing along!
Since I probably am not going to be able to actually make this adorable quilt, I do feel like I get to contribute and play along, just a tiny bit. I am honored to be able to share that I machine quilted this fun quilt for Lissa!
Hop over to Lissa's blog to learn more about the quilt-along!