This has been a busy week! This retreat quilt was quilted with the pantograph "Brush Fire" by Nancy Read. The center blocks had fussy-cut skulls with flames on them. So the obvious choice was a flame design on the quilt using Sulky Blendables #4004 "Golden Flame" 30 wt. cotton thread, which is a variegated orange/red/yellow. In the bobbin I tried my new Magna-Quilt 50 wt. cotton prewound bobbins, which were wonderful.

I love how the thread looks as it crosses the different colors of fabric:

The piecing pattern on the next quilt is called A Quick Trip, and my customer made it for a baby boy. Because of the adorable gecko border fabric, I finally had an excuse to buy Pat Ritter's "Lounge Lizards" pantograph!

How cute are these geckos??

I used Rainbows #836 "Citrus Cooler" 40 wt. variegated poly thread on top and a Magna-Glide prewound bobbin for perfect tension. Once again, I just love seeing how the variegated colors travel over different colored fabric:

Next up is this gorgeous quilt which was pieced by a customer. It's a Jinny Beyer pattern, and I love the stunning colors! My customer has requested Custom Lite, which is an all-over design in the body of the quilt, with separate border treatments. I can't wait to audition thread for this quilt!

In other news, my machine is currently for sale. I am on the hunt for another machine. You can see the ad as well as pictures of the machine in its current working condition by clicking on "Machine For Sale" under the Pages heading in the column on the left of my blog page.

After a few weeks and lots of design twists and turns, I have finally finished my customer's beautiful blue and white quilt! As you can see, it lays as flat as a piece of slate and that is because of the batting - Thinsulate polyester.

My tension dilemmas, which were caused by running out of my prewound Magna-Glide bobbins, were solved by substituting white 100 wt. silk in the bobbin. The match was so perfect I couldn't even believe it! Also, I discovered that YLI 60 wt. cotton thread prefers to be loaded at the back of my machine (standard thread loading procedure), instead of being loaded near the front with my new spool holders.

There is a LOT of stippling on this quilt now, which I love. Not only do I love the way it makes the motifs pop out, but I love the relaxing rhythm of stippling. I set my machine to manual mode at 18% speed, make some tension samples, and then just go with the flow. Saving it for last actually unwinds my brain after all the hours of trying to come up with a design for the main areas.

I'm delivering this quilt tomorrow at our Guild meeting, and picking up several more. My customers are a Godsend, literally.

Here are way too many photos, but I was loving how the light was shining in my studio today:

The progress on this quilt has been ever-so-slow. But yesterday I left it in the condition above, hoping that today I would be inspired to continue.

I knew in the back of my mind I'd need to stipple some background, especially around the feathers. But there was something about the frame around the center of the quilt that needed to stand out somewhat. So, this morning I began stippling there instead and I love it. Which got me into such a groove that I had to begin stippling the white areas around the feathers, too.

The only glitch in all of this is that I ran out of my amazingly wonderful Fil-Tec MagnaGlide prewound white bobbins which have made the tension on this quilt perfect in every way. Just as soon as I had to wind my own bobbin (white So Fine 60 wt. poly), there were problems in the tension. My top thread was changed to YLI Soft Touch 60 wt. cotton for the white stippling, so the obvious choice for the bobbin was the white So Fine. But from the very first stitch the top thread has been unhappy. The bobbin looks just great on the back, but the top continues to make huge bird's nests on the back and little loops on top now and then. All I can do is growl. There is no fixing it, I've tried. Silicone didn't change it; tension adjustments on top and in the bobbin case didn't change it; changing needles and needle sizes didn't change it; and using So Fine on top didn't change it either. So I gave up and I am thankful the stitches are very tiny.

I think I'll go back into the studio now and try ONE MORE THING: I'll put the backlash spring back into the bobbin case and remove the Magic Genie bobbin washer that I've been using the entire duration of this quilt job.

In the meantime, here are a couple of close-ups of the feather areas after stippling them. The rope border was chalked using a stencil: