Life is a Celebration Quilt

I have just finished quilting the most amazingly detailed applique and stitchery quilt made by my customer Alison.  The quilt is a very pretty quilt in baby blues and pinks which will make a delightful quilt for a little girl.  The project was originally run through Australian Homespun as a Block of the Month raising money for research into Ovarian Cancer.

I have quilted Alison's quilt with lots of feathers, stitching around all the applique, a range of background fillers and continuous curves.  Here are a few samples of some of the wonderful blocks.

Alison has also included some beautiful hand embroidery in the quilt.  I particularly love the blue and white scrolled sashing with its delicate embroidered flowers.

The circle of flowers on the setting butterfly blocks is gorgeous too.

More photos of Alison's quilt can be found on my flickr account.

Thank you Alison - your quilt was a delight to work on and I hope you will be as thrilled with the result as I am.

Vintage Quilts of Houston Quilt Festival

It is over a week now since Mandy and I returned from our trip to Houston.  We had a wonderful time - the events certainly lived up to their reputation.  The quilt exhibition was wonderful and the standard of quilts amazingly high.  We had some fabulous longarm machine quilting classes and the booths at Quilt Festival were endless...

I must admit, however, that my favourite part were the vintage and antique quilts.  Unfortunately, we don't see many vintage quilts in Australia - we just don't have the history.  I was pleasantly surprised that there were some 8 or so booths selling vintage quilts, quilt tops, fabrics, orphan blocks and sewing notions - by the end of Quilt Festival, several of the booth owners knew me by name.

Amongst the vintage quilt booths with their wonderful treasures were:-

Cindy's Antique Quilts

Mary Koval Antique Quilts

I think my favourite purchase from Houston is the very green vintage 1930's Double Wedding Ring quilt top which I bought from Cindy's Vintage Quilts.  It is shown here by Cindy.  Eventually I intend to quilt this gorgeous quilt top.

The vintage applique quilt top below was bought by my friend Mandy, also from Cindy's Antique Quilts.

I did buy another vintage quilt top - a 1930's Eight Pointed Star Quilt shown here together with the Double Wedding Ring Quilt.

I spent the last day of Quilt Festival trying to shop with "fresh eyes" after Kathy from Patchwork House showed us some of her purchases.  Whilst I had been looking at the vintage quilts, I had completely overlooked the vintage sewing notions.  I managed to buy a lovely collection of spools, a Dutch retractable tape measure, a needle holder, thimble and needles - some great treasures.

It is back to the present and reality for now - working hard to finish numerous quilts before Christmas.