A Trio of Baby Quilts

I have recently finished quilting a number of quilts which are going to be gifted to new-born babies.  I always find these little quilts rather special.

The three baby quilts I am sharing today have been made by my customers Hilary, Cath and Sharon.

Hilary has made a simple baby quilt, setting squares of beautiful fabric with white sashing. The quilt has been quilted with an all-over feather design which has given it a lovely texture.

The next photo shows the back of this quilt - I do love pieced backs!

The baby quilt made by Cath was her first effort at making a quilt and she has done a lovely job combining piecing and applique.

Cath's quilt has been custom quilted - swirls to go with the sea theme, straight lines in the borders, continuous curves in the sashing and blocks.



The central boat applique square has been quilted with the sun, clouds and water.

Sharon's quilt is a gorgeous quilt which is made almost entirely from the tiniest hand pieced hexagons.

This quilt has been quilted with continuous curves around each hexagon, a feathered heart border and some random hears inside some of the hexagons.

Each hexagon is just over 1 inch across - I do love the tiny hearts.

Hopefully by now, the babies for whom these quilts were made have safely arrived and have brought joy to both the recipients and the quilt makers.

Summer Knitting - Rock Island Shawl

The summer holidays have meant that not a lot of quilting has taken place at QOB.  During our time away, however, I did manage to get some lovely knitting done.  This year, I took the Brooklyn Tweed pattern Rock Island Shawl along on our camping holiday to knit while driving, beside the pool and in our campsite - very relaxing. 

The shawl is knitted with lace yarn and I used Madeline Tosh Lace in a gorgeous red called Vermillion bought from Eat Sleep Knit.  While I found the edging an endlessly long knit, the rest of the shawl, including the lace section in the body of the shawl knitted up remarkably easily and quickly.  By the end of the holiday I was thrilled to have finished this beautiful, featherweight shawl.

For more pictures and all the details check out my Ravelry page:

With the holidays now at an end, the kids back at school and everyone back at work, quilting has again commenced.  I will hopefully have some great quilts to show soon.  I hope everyone has had a great start to 2012 - my apologies for Happy New Year's wishes in February!

Merry Christmas

I am going to finish this year with a final, very appropriate Christmas Quilt.  This cute little quilt was made by my customer Denise and quilted very simply with an all-over design of stars and loops.  I hope you are enjoying your quilt at the moment Denise.

I would like to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, a wonderful festive season and a healthy and happy 2012.  Thank you to my readers for stopping by this year - it has been another wonderful year of quilting.  I am certainly looking forward to the quilts 2012 will bring.

Ricky Timms is coming to Australia

I was very excited to meet the extremely talented and very friendly Ricky Timms in Houston last month.  He was more than happy to pose for this photo together.  If you are not familiar with Ricky, go and check out some of his quilting and musical achievement on his website.

As I didn't take any classes with Ricky, I was thrilled to find that he will be coming to Australia next year.  Ricky is going to be teaching an all day class on Friday 28th September, 2012 at the Australian Machine Quilting Festival  at the Adelaide Convention Centre.  Registration for the Ricky Timms all day seminar "Ricky's Best Kept Secrets" opens on 15th December, 2011 through the AMQF website.  More information is also available through the AMQF Blog.

The AMQF is being run over 4 days from 28th September through to Monday 1st October, 2012.  The festival is catering for all machine quilters from Longarm quilters, Mid arm and domestic sewing machines.  If the 2010 AMQF was anything to go by, it will be another wonderful event and I am certainly looking forward to attending.

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.

Houston International Quilt Market & Quilt Festival 2011

Only 4 more sleeps and I will be heading off to Houston with my quilting friend Mandy.  We will be going to both the International Quilt Market and Quilt Festival. 

My bags are mostly packed, everything is just about ready...  Neither of us have been to Houston before but we can't wait to see the amazing quilts, the huge number of vendors and to experience some of that famous Texas hospitality. We will also be undertaking Longarm Machine classes with tutors such as Jamie Wallen, Linda Taylor, Sue Patten and Irena Bluhm so should be coming back with lots of quilting inspiration.

I can't wait for the adventure to begin.  Is anyone else lucky enough to be going to Houston this year?