It's not every day, or even every week, that my studio is blessed with a quilt as beautiful as this one. There are so many different batiks that it makes my eyes want to keep roving over the surface until I discover them all. 

The texture of "Dazzle" and the shimmer of "Honey Gold" are just enough of a design element - without detracting from the quilt itself. 

All that remains for me to do today is to attach the binding to the front of this quilt so that my customer can attach it by hand to the back. 

As promised, here is a picture of the beautiful SewBatik wide back fabric:

My Spring quiltmaking class ended yesterday. My two students and I have met each week for a couple of months and we've worked our way through a Log Cabin quilt, using Eleanor Burns' "Quilt in a Day" book. 

They each chose completely different fabrics and colorways, falling in love with them even more as their quilt tops came together.

My dear neighbor chose lime green and purple.

And her dear Daughter-in-Law chose red, gold and forest green.

After my Summer rush of meeting deadlines and painting my house, the ladies and I will embark on the most fun of all: quilting their tops on my longarm machine.

There is an enthusiastic mix of trepidation and excitement between them...

Sometimes the best ideas happen by accident. Such is the case with the most recent customer quilt that is on my machine this week. 

Creative minds gave me the spark to order 2 clamshell pantos, which I did, and I threw in one additional panto I'd had my eye on for future quilts.

The first clamshell panto is called "Far East Leaf" by Lisa Calle of Intelligent quilting. The fact that it had such curvy leaves inside of the clamshells is what sold me on it. I knew this would be the perfect design on my customer's quilt:

The second panto is simply called "Clamshells" by Hermione Agee of Lorien Quilting. I really liked how it was intended to be stitched out vertically - longways - on a quilt. When the panto arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see that there are actually 2 double rows on the pattern. That means 4 actual rows of clamshells are stitched out before rolling the quilt. The traditional look of these is the reason I put them on my list for my customer's quilt:

And the thrown-in panto is called "Dazzle", a new pantograph by Hermione Agee of Lorien Quilting. This one has been on my wish list since I first saw it. It's got the same shapes as "Square Spiral" by Keryn Emmersen, but it is stitched out much larger. And it has the added curvy center. This panto has a distinctively asian feel, with a sort-of Sashiko look to it:

I was all set to use "Far East Leaf" on my customer's quilt. The center panel is a gorgeous dragon design, and all of her fabrics are the most elegant batiks imaginable. The curvy leaves of the panto were exactly what I was looking for, coupled with the clamshell idea from my creative friends.

But when I opened up the "Dazzle" panto and saw it in person, I was completely and irreversibly hooked! It has the perfect spacing for this huge 86 X 101 quilt. And, I decided to load the quilt longways so that the pantograph would be more diamond-shaped.

So, I now have 2 clamshell pantos for another day.

The lighting in my studio is not the greatest, but here is how the design looks so far:

Creative minds also suggested using a shiny gold thread, which I gladly agreed upon since I love gold thread on batik quilts. I'm using Glide 40 wt. polyester "Honey Gold" #80125 and it's just perfect. It's a deep, warm, bright gold.

In the bobbin I have wound bobbins of The Bobbin Line by Fil-Tec. This is the same thread they use in their Magna-Glide Classic 60 wt. prewound bobbins, but in a color called "Light Tan" #13575. It looks like a pale gold, which is the perfect contrast to the backing fabric.

And speaking of the backing fabric, my customer purchased a beautiful batik wide back from SewBatik in Mayville, ND and had it shipped to me directly. When it arrived, the instructions called for prewashing and drying before quilting it. So, I threw it in the washer and threw it in the dryer and it came out wonderfully soft. The people at SewBatik did such an amazing job of cutting this huge piece of backing, that I barely had to do anything to straighten it up before loading it onto my machine. In fact, all I had to do was remove about 16 inches because it was too long to be loaded vertically. The quality of this backing is by far the best I've ever seen.

Tomorrow I hope to have this quilt finished and I can show the backing fabric in its entirety. The tension is behaving just beautifully on this SewBatik wide back. And that makes everything right with the world.

I'm usually a little late to the party, which is why it has taken me almost 5 years to figure out how to save time by joining backings. These twin quilts would've cost my customer the minimum machine quilting charge of $50 per quilt had I needed to load each one separately. Since we were both unsure of exactly how to join the backs, she gave them to me separately. I'm glad she did because I needed to actually see how to do this the best possible way.

What I learned is that the variables are mind-boggling. Will the backing be directional? Are the quilts directional? Is there a specific pantograph for each? Or both? The backing likes to be loaded onto the frame with any seams running parallel with the frame. The backing also likes to be loaded with the selvedge edges parallel with the frame. But these variables are not set in stone.

So I can't make any rules set in stone.

This time around I am just thrilled that I saved time, and my customer will be thrilled that I've saved her some money. We both win and that's how I like it!

I decided to use my first choice pantograph called "A Little Bit This" on the second quilt:

When I saw how dense it was I backed away and was trying like crazy to find some other design to go with the second quilt. I wanted to pick up the swirls in the white-on-white fabric as well as the leafy designs in the block fabric and in the gecko fabric. This pantograph did the job:

I used Madeira PolyNeon variegated polyester thread color #1603 on top, paired with an Aurifil 40 wt. pretty green cotton #2886 in the bobbin:

Which quilted out like this:

Yesterday's cute butterflies (with lopsided heads) were quilted using Aurifil variegated yellow thread #3920 on top and in the bobbin, which quilted out like this:

Not every customer can provide one backing for two separate quilts. I can already imagine how huge some of those backings would have to be. But for small quilts, which have a minimum quilting fee for each when done separately, I think it will be beneficial for me and my customers to join the backing.

The texture of Square Spiral on this baby quilt is the reason I love using it. This is the small version of Square Spiral. The large version is nice, too, and I did own it in the beginning of my longarm career. But the long lines were difficult to keep from being wobbly so I've stuck to the smaller version. Now that I've got EdgeRider wheels on my machine I could probably do the larger version with no problems.

Today I began working on these two small quilts which are made of the same fabric and the same pattern, but one of them has a more scrappy arrangement in the blocks while the other keeps the blocks in color order. 

My studio is being revisited by these adorable geckos! This fabric is cute and vibrant and happy. Which is just what I needed today.

I was given 2 exact backings made from a very luscious pale turquoise baby corduroy fabric. The backings did not have enough fabric on the top and bottom, so my customer added on fabric extensions that will be used for loading onto my machine. These extensions will not be part of the backing.

So I decided to join them lengthwise into one long backing:

And that way I could load the first quilt (using a full float):

I chose the pantograph "Flypaper" by Gali Designs because it reminded me of the outdoors, and tied in with the gecko theme:

This was a fun design even though I had a rough time getting those butterfly heads nice and round. I used Aurifil variegated cotton #3920 for the top and bobbin, 40 wt. on top and 50 wt. in the bobbin. This color has a subtle variegation that goes from butter to lemon, which is exactly what I needed. On this quilt I wanted to bring out the whimsical feeling I got from not only the cute geckos, but also from the scrappy block colors.

When I got to the bottom of this quilt top, the joining of the backing became visible:

I added the next piece of batting about 3/4" below the seam of the extension and the new backing fabric, secured it with a line of stitching, and added the next quilt top in the same manner as the first:

Then, I rifled through my array of pantographs until I was completely and utterly stumped about which one to use. I don't think I own one that I want to use. I'll spend some time looking online for something that is perfect, because I have a hard time settling on something that misses the mark for me.

Meanwhile, I have these cute guys as a reminder of just how much I love my job...

This pretty quilt is finished and ready to begin its journey through life. The definition from the wool blanket is what made this quilt a stand-out. It was already a very pretty quilt, with attention given to block placement and color choices. But when the light hit it just right....

...those Calla Lilies really showed themselves off. Here is a close-up of one of the blocks, showing the golden-tan homespun-look thread as it moves across several different fabrics:

I'm working late on this cute little cowgirl baby quilt. The pantograph I chose is "Square Spiral" by Keryn Emmerson:

This was a hard choice for me, because my customer wants me to keep this quilt soft and not too densely quilted. And Square Spiral is a bit dense. But my pantographs with stars or cowboy motifs just wouldn't have worked for this little quilt. So I went with my gut and used the pattern I knew would unify all of the adorable blocks without overwhelming any of them.

My gut was telling me to pick up on the 2 main elements in the quilt: the star blocks (geometric designs) and the horseshoe fabric (curvy designs) - even the name of the pantograph embodies these two elements "Square Spiral".

I love how the quilting definition doesn't overpower the piecing. Those little cowgirl blocks are adorable, aren't they?! If you click on the pictures, you can see them up close.

Have a great holiday weekend!

Once in awhile, I get the privilege of working with unique quilt-sandwich ingredients.

My customer provided this beautiful, soft, vintage wool blanket as the batting for a very special Anniversary Quilt. Vintage wool blankets are typically wavy on all 4 sides, and their edges are uneven. Especially if they haven't had the benefit of a satin binding holding them together over the years. These little idiosyncrasies are due to the years and years of laundering they've endured. And the years and years of laundering are exactly what makes these wool blankets so yummy to use as batting.

Above, you can see that I could not use the top edge of this blanket to identify where to start my first line of anchoring stitches. This first line of stitching determines where I'll be lining up the quilt top, and it must be straight. Thankfully, the design on the blanket was straight. So I used that as my reference to set the horizontal channel locks and stitch a straight line.

My customer requested a pantograph called "Calla Lily" by Willow Leaf Studios, because it was her wedding flower:

How funny that in all of the years I've been quilting - and have scrolled past this pattern on websites - I've never once considered adding it to my repertoire of pantographs. Maybe it was the scroll-y buds that intimidated me? I can tell you today that I'm reformed! This pattern has become one of my new all-time favorites. Just look at the luscious definition of those wavy lines and flower buds!

Each row stitches a whopping 13" tall swath across the 56" wide quilt top which results in a little more than 6 total passes. And although each pass is quite dense and time-consuming, it's so fun to execute that I don't even notice the difficulties.

Sweetening this whole week of extensive quilting is the wonderful thread tension I've enjoyed on the past 2 quilts. As usual, I tried something that I've tried a million times before with no success. And then out of the blue it decided to work for me. That something was thread lubricant:

Each day before quilting I've soaked the thread spool as well as the bobbin with Lube-it-All silicone lubricant, which I purchase online from Linda's Electric Quilters:

http://www.longarmsupplies.net/lubeitall.aspx

As is typical when I want reliable tension, my thread choices were Aurifil on top paired with Fil-Tec prewound bobbins. Yet the tiny random loops on the back were plaguing me even when I used this combination. 

But this week Divine Providence smiled on me and blessed my thread tension with a product I already had on the shelf. Which put a spring in my step!

Even though we won't see spring here for about 3 more weeks...

Blogger decided I needed a break from blogging for a couple of days. So I kept myself busy quilting and teaching. I finished the beautiful king-sized scrappy quilt, and was pleasantly surprised at the near-perfect tension on the back:

The "Meandering Daisy" pantograph was a perfect choice for this quilt. The full effect of the quilting design is actually very subtle, until the light shines on it from the side. This gloomy day was perfect for quilting but not for quilt photography.

Last Winter's Log Cabin quilt student returned yesterday to learn how to prepare and attach the binding to her quilt, joining my Spring Log Cabin quilt students who were putting their 9 finished blocks into a quilt.

Here is the first finished quilt center of the day:

When my Spring students were finished piecing their quilt centers, they headed home - which happens to be across the street from me. My Winter student remained hard at work attaching the mile-long strip of binding to the edge of her quilt:

Here is the finished product, before hand stitching down the back which she will do at home in front of the television. After her baby brother goes to bed, of course:

To say she is hooked on quilting might be a tiny exaggeration. Since she's just 15 years old she can't drive to quilt shops yet, which may be her only road block to complete quilt mania. Walking the 40 miles over a mountain pass to get to the nearest quilt shop is not her style. She's got school work after all. 

: )

I didn't let her leave without her graduation trinkets: