Hello again!

Well hello quilt blog world!

I was so surprised to see I haven't posted in such a long time, but I guess it makes sense because I have been quite busy!  I mean, the last couple years have been pretty intense for everyone but on top of a pandemic happening I was also working away on my longarm quilting.  I have a few photos for your perusal today, mostly wanted to pop by and say "hey" and "promise I'm still alive"! ;)

I went full time into longarm quilting January 2022!  I just love all the fun quilts I get through my door, check out these pretties:

I even had tote bags made!

John and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary last year at Lincoln City.  It was super fun and we look forward to going again.

The beach is a beautiful place to be!

Thomas and Belle are still doing wonderful in their Quilt Inspector jobs.

I hope you are all staying happy and healthy and getting a ton of quilting done!  Hey, if you need anything longarm quilted, let me know.  I have an average 2-week turnaround and would love to help you finish your quilts!

~Brandy

2019 - Back in action

Welcome back!

I just have to laugh at myself, I have been that person with the "best of intentions" when it comes to posting updates and yet I get so busy I just clean forget!  So here is some eye candy:

Rhonda's Elephant Abstractions quilt that I custom quilted for her.  She delivered it in person to her daughter in New York and her daughter loves it!

I had a great time figuring out motifs with Rhonda, we ended up picking out favorites from photos of finished quilts on Instagram and creating a unique design.

This was the first king size quilt I loaded on the longarm and I free-handed loose swirls on it for Anita.  I was really impressed with this quilt, the interlocking chains look so cool, and the simple quilting let the piecing shine.

This beauty made by my cousin Mary V. for her granddaughter was so wonderful to work on, there were new things to experience such as rouched fabric, applique, and dense quilting with a minky backing.

This minky looks and feels wonderful, even with the tighter quilting.

Business is going quite well, I have been able to make the payments on the longarm from money made on quilts for the last 3 payments, so I am beating my goal of making payments by the 2nd year of business!  I have gotten to work on some incredible quilts over the last year and am so thankful for the supportive quilters in my area. 😘 

And I am so happy to have my quilting area more complete, we added a white board (to track projects), a cork board (to hang my rulers), and new lighting which is really helping my eyes as I am in the basement.

I get to start this year off as part of a blog hop featuring a new book from Martingale:

I am excited to share my blocks with you all and to see what everyone else does with all the neat options Teresa has layed out for us.
Teresa can be found at mypatchwork.wordpress.com.

Thomas and Belle are quite attached to this quilt I made this year as part of a jellyroll competition.  It needs it's own post so you can see the quilting, but I will tell you that Hobbs wool batting is awesome.  And that may be why the cats love this one so much.

Have a super sparkly day!

Brandy

Ahh, a break

Hello again!  It's been radio silence for quite some time, perks of working for a packing and shipping store during the Christmas season. :)  We have been quite busy, as I'm sure you can imagine.  I have found time to sew a couple times this month though!  We had our potluck guild meeting on the 8th and had a gift exchange, so I made this potholder:

 I had to fight for my chair again...

He is getting entirely too comfortable.

 

Also, I took the time and painted my nails during a Seahawks game!  Strings of lights, next time I will go a little more simple though.  I ended up changing my nails to just the red and green tips halfway through the week, and had a ton of complements on them.  Simple is effective!

 

I made up some wine bottle bags to sell at the store, last year we had people asking for something similar (we are the only place in town that can ship wine besides doing so directly from the winery itself) so I figured I could pick up some pretty fabric from Joann's and whip up some bags pretty inexpensively.  We only have one left now!  I think I made a total of 10.

We put together a little gift package for my brother-in-law Joe and his daughter Eryka, and I included this jar in the hopes they will bake the cookies up together.  Or Eryka will do it with Joe's girlfriend Sarah.  Whatever, just make the cookies!  I was pleased that I was able to cut my usual chocolate chip cookie recipe in half and it fit in the quart jar without issue.  I do understand now why people put the brown sugar on top of the chocolate chips though, that flour sifted right through them hahaha!  Silly me.  Next time I will do Flour, chips, brown sugar, flour, brown sugar, white sugar.  Then I'll still have the layers but it will be more clean.  I think.

I also was able to use almost all of this last Sunday to cut up fabric for this table runner, it's a French Braid runner and the first time for me making one.  It is coming along nicely, I just hope to finish it before 1pm on Christmas (that is when I will see the intended recipient).

 

I have been making tumblers as a leader-ender project as suggested by Bonnie Hunter.  These are pairs laid out next to each other, it's fun to see the progress!  Of course I went with 2 1/2 inch tumblers, why would I use larger ones that might go together quickly?  I have decided I need to go through my fabric and cut 2 1/2 inch strips from each piece so I can have more variety in my pieces, I don't have a lot of scrap in general and definitely not in that size.  So I will have to create some.  And I'm fine with that, just need to make the time to do it.

I also finally sat down to see how long it would take to make this Hunter's Star quilt, and it turns out it takes ~half an hour for me to make one block.  I need more than 30, and that means at least 15 hours just to assemble the blocks for the top.  So I will not be trying to complete this for Christmas.  Probably Father's Day though.

 

We have had one GOOD frost this month.  Even snowed for a day!

And then we had sunshine.  It's actually sunny right now, I can feel it on the back of my neck.

 

 

The cats were so excited yesterday morning, running back and forth between the side window and the front window, and then John and I heard this thunder-like noise, and when we looked outside we saw a HUGE cloud of birds flying in our yard!  It was the first time we've been so close as to hear them flying, it was really neat.  We tossed some birdseed in the yard with the hopes that they will entertain Belle and Thomas for a while.  It's working.

 

I also took a few minutes this weekend to finish decorating the tree.  It always makes me so happy to bring out my ornaments, I have many old friends in my boxes.  And John and I have picked up some new ones, the black and white zig-zag one on the bottom left is from our visit to Mesa Verde in Colorado.  And our topper this year is an heirloom from my Great Grandma Schuster (the same grandma who I inherited the White from).

 

I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas, I am personally excited that I have Christmas Eve all to myself for ~8 hours to make candy and sew up a few more items before John gets home and we head to my aunt and uncle's house for the annual Lasagna Feed.  Oh, I better remember that I'm making a lasagna this year, oops!  Guess I know where I'm going after work tonight!

 

Merry Christmas!

~Brandy

 

This may be one of those times it's ok to let the cat out of the box...

 

Dog Gone Cute-my day!

First of all, thank you to Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts for inviting us to join in this blog hop and play with her pattern, I am so happy to be a part of it all.  If you follow the link to her blog you will find more information about the hop and see all the other great ideas that she has out there.

I am very excited to share my Dog Gone Cute wall hanging with you today.

I knew when I started that I would need to keep it fairly small so I could fit it in my work schedule.  During my time of indecision regarding what I should create, I received an email from the Blue Mountain Humane Society, which talked about a fundraiser they are hosting next week called the Fall Furr Ball, and that they were accepting donations for their auction.  I thought, heck yes!  This couldn't be more perfect.

 

So I stopped into the humane society and spoke with the lovely Jenna about possibly donating a wall hanging, and boy howdy, that was the most excited I've ever had someone be about a quilt.  It's kinda infectious and makes me want to get that reaction more often!  She gave me a deadline, and nothing makes me work as hard as a quilting deadline.

 

I am one of those people who makes one block to get the idea of the pattern, then goes on to the others.  So far my system has been working for me, we'll see how it develops as time goes by. :)  I was able to cut out and sew together my blocks in two evenings, then did the rest on the weekend.

 

 



 

I decided my dogs would be all ears up and perky, representing the hopeful adoptees at the humane society, and I put them in a grassy field.  One of my dogs ended up with more spots than was planned for after I discovered I had sewn a triangle on the wrong upper left hand corner... so I improvised!

 

Quilting on the Bernina as usual, and probably later at night than I should have been.

I had to make one of the Schwin & Schwin Hipster cats after seeing the one on Baa's blog during the Pets on Quilts show.  He's aspiring to be a mini-quilt one day.

 

And here we are!  This is four small blocks, in case anyone is wondering.

 

I used 1/2 inch poly batting and it gave me wonderful definition around the dogs heads.

I have made a couple labels in this fashion lately, I have fusible web on the back of my white fabric that I then fuse to the back of the quilt.  I've only done it on wall hangings, so am not concerned about them coming off any time soon.

 

Finishing this quilt was immensely satisfying, especially when I dropped it off at the humane society.  I've never heard so many squeals!  The girls were very impressed, and I'm thinking I may need to make one that they can hang in their office.  I am just so happy to be contributing to a good cause, and I hope it brings in some funds.

 

Belle says it's time to finish that cat one...

 

Thank you so much for stopping by, I hope you're finding all the projects inspiring, I sure am!

~Brandy

 

Here are today's and next Tuesday's blogs:

 

Thursday, October 8

Carol of Just Let Me Quilt

Nina of Inchworming

Doris of The Quilting Queen Online

Brandy of Pampered Pettit

Leena of Creative Instincts

Tuesday, October 13

Ruth of Charly and Ben’s Crafty Corner

Tanya of Tanya Quilts in Colorado

Laurel of Quilts by Laurel

Kathy of Kathy’s Quilting Blog

Deb of New Creative State

 

WIP Wednesday

I am really enjoying the whole "solids" idea in quilts.  After seeing the Kona cottons lookbook, and then winning a charm pack of their newest colors and seeing how fabulous the colors are in person I have become a HUGE fan.  On top of the purity of color that you get in an all solids quilt, you then have all this open space to show off your free-motion quilting!  Yes, I find that appealing.  I can also see how that could be very intimidating.  I am trying to continue to challenge myself so I know I'm still growing as an artist.  Although, there are some days when I find I need to get back to basics.  And it doesn't get much more basic than solid colors does it?

 

These four colors just happened to fall next to each other, and I find the combination highly attractive.

 

These were next to each other in the charm pack, and I am a big fan of blues and greens together, the purple is OK, I'm not a huge fan of purple, but I realize you need a "pop" color and this makes for a nice cool palette.  And I mean cool as in opposite of warm FYI.  You could throw an orange in there for contrast in place of the purple and that would be interesting too, although I'd probably be more inclined to go the hot pink route.

 

These half-square triangles made for the prettiest scrap piles :)

 

Parade of color!

 

I am making the Moda Love pattern which is available as a pdf file here.  I took my charm pack and cut it in half, then one of the halves in half.  I haven't decided if I will make 4 of these mini quilts or just 2, but in case I am done after two, I have some 2.5"x5" rectangles to do something fun with.  The plan with this particular one is to quilt it with a puzzle quilting motif such as Lori did here and give it to my Great-Grandma for Mother's Day this weekend.  She's been really into puzzles lately, and expressed interest in my quilting so I thought she'd enjoy something like this.  She doesn't need a full size quilt, but I hope she will use this as maybe a placemat or something.  It should finish at 12"x12".  I'll be sure to share a finish photo when it gets to that stage!

 

I also got my Snapshots quilt block finished for April recently, and since we have 2 cats I changed the puppy block to a kitty.

 

When I shared my block on the Facebook page I had a lot of positive response, a few people even asked for directions on how I made the cat!  I was able to give them measurements, but really all I did was not make the puppy ears and barely changed the shape of the head.  Sometimes I don't realize that the concept of figuring the measurements may not be as easy for others as it is for me.  Thus I shared what I knew.  :)

 

 

 

Here are my gratuitous cat photos from this last week, they are so excited about Spring being here that they're acting like total goofballs!

 

 

 

Have a lovely day!

~Brandy