Peace

 I was at a boutique in November, and I came across a lovely booth that sold little packs of pre-cut applique letters. I think I spent the most time in the that booth!

I really liked these letters, so I came home and made this cute little mug rug.

I ironed on the letters and did a machine blanket stitch around them.

Then I added a few borders and tried an echo quilting pattern. I really like the way it turned out!

It was nice to be able to do some fun quilting just for me.

Quilt Days Auction for LDS Hospital

 I have started to attend an organization of hand quilters. They meet once a month at LDS Hospital to work on quilts. Which is just perfect, because I really want to perfect my hand quilting skills.  Every other year they action off the finished quilts and donate all the proceeds to an organization that needs help. For example, this year they are donating to the hospital's mental health program.

They have an open house for about a week before that auction to display all of their hard work. Last week I went with a bunch of quilt guild ladies I know, and admired all the work.

I know I have helped on a couple of quilts, but I haven't done a lot of work compared to some other ladies. This one was fairly recent, so I remember working on it. I did some work around the border.

It was fun to see my name on the list of the quilters.

It was all very fun to look at. There are some amazing quilters in this organization. 

 This red and black one is made of old ties and suit scraps from the old ZCMI alterations department. It is bordered with the suit tags. What a lovely idea!

All of the snowflakes hanging from the ceiling had been hand cut  and were very intricate!

This feathered snowflake is a quilt put together by the organization's board.

There are so many of these I would love to make! I feel blessed to be apart of such a lovely organization.

Custom Mug Rugs

A lovely lady named Carol purchased this lovely mug rug:

She left this lovely feedback:

love this sweet little quilt! have it hanging on my wall in my teal, yellow and red diningroom

 Then a couple weeks later, she came to me and said that she had it framed and hanging, but that it would look better with another two on either side of it. So of course I told I would make some more!

We decided that the same fabrics, same borders, but different stars would be the ways to go. This is what I came up with.

She loves them! Me too!!

I love to hear back from customers, and I especially love it when they love what I made for them!

Quilt Fest 2017

 It was a crazy summer but I made it. I have been working a lot on my Etsy Shop and improving that in lots of ways. I have introduced some new items and cleaned up my listings.

But in the mean time, I have started a few new quilts.
Specifically, Quilt Fest was this week and I was able to attend two classes. The first one was called Moroccan Lullaby. It involved some lattice work, but I love the teachers visuals. It was very easy to follow.

I also love the way she quilted her pattern quilt.

Here is the first block I made. I have decided I am going to make some baby quilts out of the blocks.

The next class I took was called Kaleido Medallion. it is all paper piecing. The teacher had a cool computer program where you could plug in the colors you chose to see what the finished product would look like.

Here is what mine will look like.

Here is one of the sample she brought to class. I want to make one like this too. 

Her instructions were very clear too. I am not quite finished with my first block, but I am really close!

The "Green and Orange" Quilt

In 2015, the quilt guild I am apart of did a block of the month for the Quilters Digest magazine.

I was feeling kind of stuck, and not confident in my color choices, so I had my husband, Will, pick them out for me. So since then it has been dubbed as HIS quilt as it was definitely not colors I would have otherwise picked out.

Well, I kept up with the group and made all the blocks. Some were definitely harder than others. But I learned some cool skills, like fussy cutting, working with tiny pieces, and organizing my pieces to keep them straight.

Each block was so cool and different.

Making the border was an interesting experience. With the blocks on point, I had to deal with bias stretch and sewing with the angles. But I love the way it turned out.

After I got the top all put together, the project got put on hold for a year while I worked on other things like Christmas presents.  But my husband would admire each project I would do and then ask when I was going to work on his quilt.

At the beginning of 2017 I decided I need to finish my unfinished business.  So I got it all pinned together and worked on how I was going to quilt it. I wasn't a fan of the way the magazine had it quilted but I wanted to quilt it in a way that would show off the piecing. It took a few weeks but I finally figured it out

While this was all happening, I got a flier for a local art show. I had entered a couple of small quilts into this show before, but nothing big. I decided I wanted to enter this quilt. It was the best piecing I had ever done, and so I worked really hard to make sure my quilting was awesome too.

After I picked out a fabric I wanted to bind it with, I tried a more professional method to get my mitered corners more square. I also hand sewed the binding. The first I had ever done so on anything bigger than a wall hanging.

Here it is getting blocked. Another first for me.

And it is finished!
Here it is hanging up at the art show. By happenstance, I arrived to take this picture when they were doing the awards ceremony. I figured I would stay and see who won because there was a few of the ladies from quilt guild that had entered quilts, and they always won.

I was very surprised when they called my name!

Honorable Mention in the Machine Quilting category. I am so happy!

Recent fun stuff

 Recently, my friend hired me to recover the seat cushion that spans a whole wall in her sitting room. She has lived in that house for over 10 years and she had never recovered it the whole time she had lived there. It was starting to get holes and wear marks. I had never done anything like that, but i was willing to try! The hardest part was take the cover off. It even had a zipper on it. It was also kind of tricky trying to get it in my car to get it back to her house, but we made it!

It turned out so great, and it matches her blue piano!

Also this month I reached 400 sales in my Etsy shop! The thing that has been selling the most has been my wreaths. They were very popular for mothers day.

I have been venturing out into the hand quilting world. I recently discover a group that gets together once a month and makes hand quilted quilts to raise month for a local hospital. So I try to go for at least an hour each month. That ladies there are so nice and happy to show me how to do it. They are also really happy to tell me about their great-grand kids! I am probably as old as their grand kids.