2014 Aurifil Machine Quilting Tip

This year I'm teaming up with the Aurifil design team, each month this year the 12 designers will be sharing quilt block tutorials, you can read more about it here. 

I'm excited to be a little part of this fun team, each month this year I will share a machine quilting tip and then at the end of the year I will be machine quilting the final quilt.

Today I'm excited to share tip #1.

Always use a high-quality machine quilting thread, never use hand-quilting thread on a sewing machine.

Utah Quilt

Laura recently made this adorable Utah quilt. 

Laura is a quilter and happens to live in Utah, Laura's friend Natalie is a graphic designer who is originally from Utah. Natalie recently made a trip "home" and after she left she designed this adorable Utah print. She actually has it available for free download on her site.

Laura saw this adorable design on Natalie's blog and knew she had to make it as a quilt, with Natalie's permission Laura created this adorable Utah quilt with Vanessa's adorable ombre fabrics.

I was lucky enough to be able to custom machine quilt this quilt for Laura, I love how it turned out! Seriously, how could I not, Utah is where my heart is too!

Thanks for letting me machine quilt your awesome quilt Laura!

Here is a little peek I shared of this quilt over on instagram while I was machine quilting this.

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!

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!

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!

Skittles went to QuiltCon

Simple Chevron Pillow Tutorial

How to make a baby burp cloth - video with Fat Quarter Shop

Back 2 School Drawstring Backpack Tutorial

How to: Embroidery Applique tutorial

Confetti quilt tutorial

Boxy Christmas Tree Skirt tutorial

Boxy Christmas Table Runner tutorial

Striped Christmas Stocking tutorial

Simple Holly & Jolly Kitchen Hand Towels tutorial

Weekday Dish-towels tutorial

Bouncing, remade from our book, Modern One-Block Quilts.

American Stars, remade from our book, Modern One-Block Quilts

Simple Peace & Joy Hand Towels tutorial

A-Maze Me, remade from Modern One-Block Quilts

Mesmerize Quilt pattern, designed for Basic Grey

Alternating Stars, remade from Modern One-Block Quilts

Sweet Treat, designed for American Patchwork & Quilting 2014 calendar

Summer Still Life was featured in American Patchwork & Quilting magazine

Over Under, was featured in Quiltmaker Magazine

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!

Merry Christmas!

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

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:

A-Maze Me, Alternating Stars & American Stars.

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.

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!

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!