I’ve been working on a new feather quilting design group I’m calling First Feathers. As with most of my designs, I started with a pantograph design (also called Edge-to-Edge (E2E for short) or Overall). Last year I created Wandering Feathers, which, if I may say so myself, is a beautiful design.
So while I’ve been quiet on the blog lately (well, okay, for a very long time!), I’ve had my nose buried in my computer creating new quilting designs and learning how to digitize. I recently purchased a wonderful program, Art and Stitch, which is just for digitizing quilting and embroidery designs. This program can do SO MUCH, but it also takes a while to learn all the neat features. So I’ve been splitting my time between doing tutorials to learn the program, and putting my new knowledge into practice by working on new quilting designs.
In order to keep a quilt straight when advancing during the quilting process, there are several things you can do to ensure your backing, as well as the entire quilt sandwich, is rolling square and straight, and staying that way as you quilt it:
Bring two opposite edges of the backing together (selvedges if they are still intact), and lay them on the belly bar of your machine, with the fold hanging down.
A few years ago I designed a quilt called ‘Bricklayer’. I made it out of ‘brick’ reds, browns, and creams, and the design reminded me of the brick home I grew up in, hence it’s name. It was a great masculine quilt. It’s sometimes hard to find quilt patterns for men. I made kits and sold patterns, but I never marketed it much as I always had in the back of my mind that this would be really cute in a smaller version for a baby quilt as well.
If you are a longarm quilter, especially one who belongs to a guild, you have probably been asked to provide free charity quilting on one (or several) charity quilts. These may be quilts that are donated to a fund-raising auction, given to victims of fires or other disasters, used for Quilts of Valor or other veterans groups, Project Linus, or any number of other community service, or charitable groups.
Well, no one guessed my secret from this post! There were some great guesses as to what my newest quilting related venture was – retreat center, book, line of fabric. I wish I could do ALL of those things – they all sound like fun and anything to do with quilting excites me. But here is what my new venture actually is: