My Quilting Studio

For the past couple months, I have been concentrating on quilting. Matt nicely worked on creating a design board for me that is 8 feet square. He has also installed lights over my longarm, cutting table and sewing table. He picked out two very cool pendant lights that now hang over my cutting table. I still need to hang quilts on the walls but needed to take pictures, so I decided to post them so that you could see what the studio looks like. My longarm lives in our bonus room which is over our 2.5 car garage.

The first picture was taking from the back of the room where my sewing table is toward the front of the house where my Millie is.

Here is the design wall and the cool pendant lights over the cutting table. I use Golden Threads paper to audition designs on quilt tops while they are up on the design wall. I like the cubes that I found that fit under the two wings of my cutting table. They give me a lot of storage and a cleaner look then the Rubbermaid containers that used to be under it.

The last picture shows a close up of my Millie and the beautifully pieced State of Grace quilt that I just took off the frame today.

A Day of McTavishing

I spent the morning taking a The Art of McTavishing with Karen McTavish. She and Sue Patten are teaching this week at Ye Olde Forest Quilt Shoppe in Greensboro. Karen was teaching to a full house as there were 12 of us in class. They had 3 frames with 2 heads each on them so we got lots of time to practice.

It was really nice to spend time with a bunch of longarmers. I drove back home and then set down and spent some time with a pencil and sketch pad practicing my new skill. I have a quilt on the frame right now so I will need to wait to practice on my machine.

Busy, Busy, Busy

I have been keeping very busy. I finished a customer quilt the other day and put another one on the frame. Yeah! Unfortunately, I will not get to work on it much this week as I am getting to go to some longarm classes.

Karen McTavish and Sue Patten are teaching in Greensboro this week and I signed up for a couple of classes. They are also having a trunk show and wild horses could not keep me away from that. :) Sadly, I will miss my guild meeting because it conflicts with the trunk show.

I also decided to got to MQS (Machine Quilters Showcase) this year and have been busily planning my trip to Overland Park, Kansas. I am really excited about taking more classes and getting to talk to LOTS of other longarmers!

Lions and Tigers and Zebras, Oh My.....

This quilt is for one of my guild's Quilts on Wheels charity. The top was designed and pieced by one of the guild members. I let the quilt top hang out on the design wall for a couple of days before I quilted it. Actually, I quilted the 3 other charity quilts I blogged about last week while I was getting to know this one.

In the large focus fabric corners I wanted to quilt something that looked kind of organic. I decide to do a fern that looks sort of grassy. Here is a close up of one of the corners.

I also played with different items in a line dancing type of quilting. I did variations of the same them is all of the half square triangles and even in the green borders.

I really like how the large beige half square triangles came out. I used black thread in the small black half square triangles, but used beige in the large black triangles around the center square to add texture.

I really like the back of the this quilt.

Tomorrow I am going to work on a quilt for me... I just need to decide which one. :)

New Design Wall

This weekend I got to create a new design wall for my studio. I covered two 4x8 sheets of 3/4 inch insulation board with flannel and then attached them to one of the walls in the studio. I now have an 8x8 square foot design wall. I can't wait to get in there and use it on my current project.

I also have been quilting a charity quilt for my guild. I have decided that I really like to line dance. Most of the quilt has line dancing and then the large corners have a grassy fern that I made up as I went. I am hoping to have it completed tomorrow and will get a picture up as soon as I can.

Happy March!