Just Wanna Quilt Podcast!

Hello!  I've had a blast speaking with Elizabeth Townsend of Just Wanna Quilt for her podcast.  You can check out the website here.  

I did a podcast talking about my quilts and going to IQA Houston.  My chat is linked here.

Elizabeth wanted to talk to my mom too so our joint podcast is here.

And you can listen to all the Just Wanna Quilt podcasts here.  

I'm going to be doing a live Facebook interview about my quilts in Houston this year with Elizabeth and I'm looking forward to it. 

We talked about a lot of fun quilts including the following pictures...

What fun that was!  Have a listen and tell me what you think!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Quilting My Father's Digital Art - Part 1

I'd been wanting to quilt some of my father's digitally created art for a while.  My favorite of his was leaving me stumped, but as I was wandering around his website I found this beauty.  I knew I had to quilt it.  So I dived into the world of Spoonflower.

Here's the fabric when it came in the mail!  I was so excited.  The print is called Order to Chaos.  Can you see it?  The top is so orderly.  Perfect rows, no color in the background.  And then things get interesting at the bottom as the checkerboard gets more wonky and darker and the black lines go crazy!

How to quilt it?  I have some transparency film that I use to try patterns on top of quilt tops.  Here were a few ideas:

This one is wayyyy to busy...

Stay tuned for what happens next!  I just found out that this quilt got into International Quilt Festival Houston!  I am BEYOND excited.  Three years ago I had a quilt there that I did with my mom.  Now one with my dad!  It's a family bond.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Free Motion Friday - My NEW BOOK!

It's here!  My new book is ready!  It's self published.  I just finished my new show quilt called Gilded.  You'll have to wait a few weeks to see it.  It has 44 different designs based on paisleys, circles, and swirls.  To celebrate all that I turned it into a book!  Each page has a design with drawings of how to stitch it out step by step.  The page also has a photo of the design and a pattern you can try tracing from.

Here is a sample page...

And here are a few of the designs.  This one is called Film Reels.

I adore this one.  It's so modern.

If you are interesting in ordering a copy please send me an email at websterquilt at gmail dot com and I will send you a paypal invoice.  They are $15 plus $3 shipping in the continental US.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Island Batik Ambassadors Secondary Pattern Challenge - Part 2

Now to tell you about the quilting!  I've been a bit busy this summer so my mother kindly offered to quilt this quilt on her long arm for me.  She's amazing!  And she had such fun...

The yellow background was really busy.  What to do?  Bees!  What fun.  She used Lori Kennedy's bee design.  And aren't the feathers in the pink gorgeous?!

More feathers in the border.

Bees!

In the checkerboard she did continuous curve and added some swirls in the lighter green where you can see them.

I love what she did and I'm so happy with the way this quilt turned out.  Island Batik fabrics are simply the best!  The quilt has Hobbs 80/20 cotton/poly batting in it.  It's perfect for this quilt as I intend to gift it as a baby gift soon.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Christmas in July Blog Hop!

I have been a procrastinator on this blog hop.  I admit it.  I started my project last week and finished it the day before it was due.  HOWEVER, I'm so excited about it!  Thanks Carol for hosting this wonderful hop!

My cousin Lisa brought me some fabric scraps and it had flamingos dressed up for Christmas.  I went for it.  I hand drafted the flamingo, found some fun fabrics in my stash and went for it!

I used a triple stitch to quilt down my appliques.  I love how thick it is.

Then I pulled some new GlaMore Thread from Wonderfil (it's 12 weight rayon with one twist of metallic.  It's sparkly!) out and put it to work.  I usually use a topstitch needle for threads like these, but it didn't want to play nicely in my machine.  So I tried a jeans needle and it worked great.

I used the white for his hat.  I gave them curls so you could really see the thread.

I also used the green for the strand of Christmas lights around his body.  I did stitch over it three times to get a really thick line.  Below you can seed the thread on the left is done three times and the one on the right is only done once.

That GlaMore Thread gives just a little bit of sparkle.

I then finished quilting him with spirals in the background. 

I added hot fix crystals to the eye and the Christmas lights as final details. I had to read the instructions on how to glue them down as I hadn't done it in a few years.  It worked like a charm and was so much faster than beading.  After all, Christmas Flamingos need bling!

Be sure to come back Friday for the release of my new self-published book of free motion fillers called Paiselys, Circles, and Swirls!

And check out all the other amazing quilters on this hop!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

July 23

Creatin' in the Sticks

MooseStashQuilting

Lily Patch Quilts

Adventurous Applique and Quilting

Melva Loves Scraps

Sew Many Yarns

Cynthia's Creating Ark

July 24

Wont-To-Be-Quilter

Words & Stitches

Home Sewn By Us

Desert Sky Quilting

Thimblemouse and Spouse

Seams To Be Sew

Clever Chameleon Quilting

July 25

Quilt Doodle Designs

Kwilty Pleasures

Creative Blonde

Just Because Quilts

Vicki’s Crafts and Quilting

Quilter in Motion

Made By Marney

July 26

Quarter Inch Crafter

Marjorie's Busy Corner

Tu-Na Quilts, Travels, and Eats

Ms P Designs USA

Selina Quilts

Beaquilter

Mountain Quiltworks

July 27

Life in the Scrapatch

Quilt n Party

Days Filled With Joy

Quilt Fabrication

All Thingz Sewn

Sew Golden A Chance

Just Let Me Quilt

Island Batik Ambassador's Secondary Pattern Challenge - Designing

I must admit that this challenge from Island Batiks Ambassadors stumped me for awhile.  I wasn't sure what I wanted to do.  So I went onto Electric Quilter 7, my computer quilt design program and started playing.

Here's what I came up with.

I picked a block that needed 4 x 8 inch finished half rectangles.  My tri recs tools didn't go that big so I decided to be accurate I'd paper piece them.  You can see what I did below.

After squaring?  Perfect.  Yay!

Here' the block I picked all done.  Aren't he fabrics perfect?  I started with the yellow which is from the Sweet Tweets collection which hits stores soon!  The pink and teals were in my scrap pile and go perfectly with the bits of green and pink the yellow print.  I love that it's hexagons and circles in the yellow.

I made four blocks and put them together so that the triangles made a star.  How's that for secondary design?  Now....how to put them together.

I put a pink square in the center to anchor the star.

Then I added more teal to make a central star and the extra squares to accent the checkerboards.  I love the way it turned out!

I then added borders.  Come back Wednesday to find out all about the quilting!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

Free Motion Friday - a Work in Progress

Until this week, I hadn't worked on this show quilt in months.  I was back at it and had to remember what I was doing.  I decided on using a motif after this quilt was all marked and pinned.  What to do?  Tissue paper to the rescue!  I have some doctor paper (the kind that goes on doctor's office examination tables and it's like Golden Threads paper too) that I layer together.  How many layers?  Twenty.  Yes!  Twenty!  I then took out my thread from my machine and was easily able to stitch through all twenty layers.

Then I pin it to the area where I want to quilt it.  I then stitched on the perforated lines and then ripped the paper off.  There are little pieces that get stuck so you have to look really carefully to make sure you remove them all.  It's not my favorite method, but in this instance it was the best choice.

Here's the motif after the paper has been ripped off.  You'll have to stay tuned to see the whole quilt soon.  It will debut at MQX Midwest this year.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Apple River Quilt Guild Class! Eye Candy Ahead!

This is my second July teaching a class for the Apple River Quilt Guild in Amery, Wisconsin.  What an amazing bunch of ladies!  It was so good to see you all again.

My favorite part?  One lady looked at me and said, "Oh!  You're the teacher who taught me that I could free motion and now I do it all the time!  I just made seaweed on my ocean quilt."  I was tickled pink.

This year we did machine applique from my Flower in a Pot series.

I love the use of Laurel Birch's cats in the pot!

I love the plaid in this tulip.

I love the blue square fabric in the tulip.

Great choice of thread for the petals.  They're so pretty.  And I love pattern on the light green leaves.

Love the pot fabric.

This pot is so dynamic.  The print for the pot is just so pretty.

Stitching away...

I love the use of flower prints in the flower.  Such fun!

This one is for a kitchen! I love the use of the strips and apples.

Isn't the pot on this one fabulous?  I love batiks.

I love all the different colored petals here.  And the use of the light at the top too.

The light green thread on this piece of applique really makes the thread sparkle.

Very modern!  Love it.

I am not sure I would have had the guts to do so many different colors of petals, but it's GORGEOUS.  I love the way it turned out.

Isn't the fussy cut pot perfect for this flower>!

Check out the dark stitching on that plaid!  It really makes it pop.

Soooo pretty.  I love the blue petals.

All stitched!  There were quite a few ladies who completed their flower by the end of class! 

Say Cheese...

The class was such fun!

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy