Plain and Simple TOP ten

I just have to BRAG over my local quilt shop
Plain and Simple quilt shop in apex nc.
They got picked as top ten quilt store in the country with better homes and gardens magazine!
it's awesome.
and it's such a fun unique little store, it's an old house, with a hallway and regular rooms, fabrics displayed in little antique furniture and shelves, and mostly sticking with reproductions/ civil war and victorian fabrics.

Sharon- the store owner has been so nice to me when I first showed her my quilts when I got my long arm and she has given me the most referrals and personal business.
So last week she called me that she had two quilts for me to do, and when I got there at the end of the week and saw what quilt it was! I was floored and honored, it's a duplicate of the quilt in the BH & G magazine, BH & G keep the quilt that's pictured in the magazine so the owner had to make another one to display at the store and she asked me to quilt it. I know she wanted to do it herself but she ran out of time. She gave me sketches and a photo copy of the original and I tried the best I could to copy that.... hope she likes it :-)

redwork blocks made by the employees I was told :-)

go to the moon and far east

Finally I got around to quilting this top, I had made an asian bargello twist quilt a while ago, and because I ordered the fabrics from fabric.com, I have to round up to the next half yard, anyways, I had a lot of fabric left over as you can see, I just made up this pattern, easy squares and rectangles, and I had calculated wrong or changed my mind on how to sew it together so I made this brick border around a small red border, it actually looked fine :-)

I gave this to heartland hospice in raleigh!

an overall large feather swirl quilting

so the baby shower I was at last weekend, the hostess was also pregnant and actually due in a few weeks, she had been on bed rest for a while so I hadn't seen her a church and had to ask around about her decor as well, and I heard outer space and saw this fabric at JoAnn's and just HAD to use it, a small quilt again :-)

retro baby quilt

Last weekend I was at a friend's baby shower.

She's one of the church fascilitators at our church like I am, so when I found out she was pregnant I kept bugging her about what colors she has the nursery in ( after she found out it was a boy)

She sort of described it and I looked at her registry...

First time I made an embroidered label, time consuming but fun!
I got the pattern from a book I got my pine tree guild.
it was an old book, and the ideas were old as well, but with new MOD fabrics I think it turned out nice, and I knew Kelsey loved to see the quilting in it too, I did feathers all over.
not a big quilt but a nice baby size

BOM march

I almost forgot to upload the BOM I recently finished, here another "tricky" fabric was this light blue with dots, it looks almost grey, but I like it :-)

not all quilt are pretty

So my last quilt guild meeting I bought some plastic templates called winner's bouquet and I used scraps to make this quilt, I had to trim the blocks down just a smidge, but that's okay, I actually liked how the quilt turned out but then I did the "mistake" of quilting in dark purple thread, and I just DON't like it. oh well, it's a donation quilt and already left my posession.

I did FIX the bottom left corner that I hadn't quilted, I put the whole thing on my frame and quilt again, just note to self- which I KNEW- use lighter thread.

a coiled basket

For the first time I tried to make a coiled basket, without really looking at directions, other than hearing from a neighbor and looking online, I only got 4 yds though from JoAnn, cheap stuff BTW.

so it's not really pretty, but it's cute and I'm happy with first try :-)

My little notions basket, perfect for doing bindings- and Hey it's made with strips too :-)

Ribbit smart plate quilt applique frog quilt

I saw this fabric and HAD to make a quilt with it, I've seen it at JoAnns for a loong time, but finally decided to do something. - a spur of the moment decision, I was supposed to just buy batting and backing when I went, but how can that happen without buying something for another quilt?

So I used the smart plate quilting for another kaleidoscope quilt and this time added a small border, I had planned on just using that fabric for the backing just like the pink one I made, but it just looked so good when I laid it out next to the quilt top, but it was missing something when I sewed the border on!

I took a scrap piece of frog fabric and scanned it and printed it LARGE, I had to split it into 4s in photoshop and print individually and then tape together to make the frog big enough, I did needle turn applique and used ricky timms stable stuff for the stabilizer, no need to remove it, just soaked the corner overnight and dried a day, then quilted it, I did a free form sort of swirly wavy thing in light green and just outlined the frog, so he's kind of puppy like trapunto.

This was the frog I scanned!

Don't know yet who'll get this quilt.