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This is the final installment of quilts I liked from the Houston quilt show – enjoy!

ASSORTED BEAUTIES

Maze of Vines and Roses by Judy Garden

La Vie en Rose by Judith Craddock, quilted by Louise Klare

Spiraling Into Cerise by Barb Sorensen

Litchfield by Bernadette Houghton, quilted by Ann Olson

I love the folk-artsy style of this quilt with its pieced diamond border and the positioning of the miniature shoo fly blocks in the four corners.

Knotty but Nice by Marque McKay, quilted by Karen Lambdin

Bertille by France Aubert

Interstitial Phases #3 by Timna Tarr

Waltz of Flowers by ...

I always spend extra time at the quilt show admiring the applique quilts, which is my favorite category. Having done a little bit of applique, I appreciate the time and attention it takes to build a quilt with this method, as opposed to piecing. The originality and creativity behind these quilts make them truly inspirational – enjoy!

Applique Quilts

BASKETS

Green Baskets by Diana Petterson

Basket Case by Nancy Rink

The use of black and white striped fabric for the handles is genius!

RIBBON WINNERS

Truly Madly Deeply by Karen Lambdin

First Place: Machine Quilted

Note the beaded piping along scalloped ...

I didn’t devote much viewing time to the displays of art and modern quilts because my interest leans more traditional. For example, I saw at least three quilts with a chair theme – yes, you read that correctly – quilts showing chairs – straight backed chairs. Okay by me if it makes the creator happy; I just don’t understand it. The good thing is that there is something for everyone at shows like this, and below are the pieced quilts I thought were noteworthy. Enjoy!

PIECED QUILTS

Laser Maze by Melissa de Leon Mason

Celtic knot-inspired

Honeybee Garden by Emily Parson ...

I enjoyed today at the Houston quilt show and have lots of pictures to share. Apologies in advance for some of the blurry photos – flash photography is not permitted.

I was surprised to learn that this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the show.

How wonderful is it that this creative outlet has not only endured but grown and evolved so profoundly? The explosion of print fabric options, tools and notions, thread, irons, batting, lighting, sewing and quilting machines would positively bewilder our quilting ancestors, and possibly render them green with envy if they ever found out about it ...

Quilting remains on the back burner this summer as I continue scanning and photographing family photos and mementos. I also started sorting through some of the stuff in our storage room, which resulted in the tossing of a few items, consolidating items into fewer boxes, and even selling some items to Replacements, Ltd.

I was pleasantly surprised when I unearthed this long-forgotten-about Barbie item, collected from my parents’ house after my mom died:

I don’t remember playing with it much, lacking both confidence and patience to invest time in it, despite the excellently detailed and illustrated instruction ...

There are times when a sewist uses a machine needle for a very short time and then has to change types. What to do with the partially-used (but not used up) needle? I’ve always simply put them back into their little plastic boxes, making sure they were as far to the left of the box […]

My Color Weave Quilt along kicks off Monday, Sept 16th and I’m doing something a little a little different this time around. I’ll be sharing everything via email rather than here on my blog. Lately I’ve been rethinking my social media strategy and looking at numbers. Because I get higher engagement via my direct newsletter, this will be an experiment to see if that format works best for a quilt along. Keep reading below to see how you can join in the fun….

Click here and download any of my free patterns to join my email list ...

The clearing out of our stuff continues, with this project infusing some much-welcomed fun and creativity into an otherwise tedious activity.

This is the culmination of a year of effort and collaboration with my local framer to showcase the seashells and sand dollars we collected on our honeymoon in 1982. These items have safely resided in a well-packed shoebox, backed with good intentions to turn them into something. I just could never figure out what. With those intentions now glaring me in the face, it was now or never.

I started with the desire to have needlework play a part ...

Yesterday I mowed half of the lawn in the morning and the other half at 7 p.m.  The rest of the day was spent sorting through the Cherrywood hand dyed fabric and grouping it  for my second destash sale this month at Wandaful Quilts.  I also moved the remaining 4 items from the #1 sale to the new ...

I’ve said many times that teaching machine quilting is my favorite thing that I do! Nothing beats the look of satisfaction on a student’s face when they realize that can indeed quilt their own quilts. That’s one of the reasons I’ve written so many quilting books. I use them as my textbooks in class, and they are great for “independent study” for those who can’t take a workshop from me in person.

Click here to get PDF downloads of my books and patterns.

My first book was published in 2015 and my latest volume came ...

My family and I recently took a fun trip to Washington DC. I’ve actually been a couple times before, but it was the first time all 3 of my kids have visited as adults. It was amazing and so educational! We visited as many museums as we could, took time to view all the monuments, and enjoyed riding bikes around the national mall – easy rentals were everywhere!

The best views of Washington DC are by bike!!

Because 2 of my kids are currently studying art in college, we spent a LOT of time at the art museums. I found ...

This summer I’ve been working a lot behind the scenes, preparing for upcoming teaching events and it’s my favorite thing that I do! Registration for Road to California just opened and already 2 of my 4 workshops sold out right away. It’s so exciting when that happens because I know folks are hungry for machine quilting education!

The good news is that there are still spaces in 2 of my workshops (as of this writing). I know they’ll fill up fast so if you are even thinking of attending, be sure to sign up asap. Read ...

It’s been almost a year since I started my family preservation project, consisting of digitizing all our photos and keepsakes.

I returned to it this month and became a scanning robot for about three weeks – totally worth it, though, because all this stuff will soon be out of the house.

My recent teaching trip to Alaska was amazing! If you’ve never experienced full daylight in the middle of the night, I can tell you it sort of messes with your mind, LOL! I flew into Anchorage and landed at about 10:30 PM local time. My body was tired after a long day of travel that started at about 6 AM, but my mind kept saying, “you can’t be tired – it’s still bright outside!”

It was about an hour drive to Palmer, which is where I was staying for my visit with the Valley Quilter’s Guild ...

I was recently unpacking from my latest quilty travels and as I was putting my quilts away, I realized I’ve made 5 different versions of the same quilt. How does that even happen?? LOL!! So today I thought it would be fun to share all of them together in one post, plus a few more bonus ideas!!

Click here to get my Bling pattern – PDF version
Click here to get my Bling pattern – paper version

The original version of Bling shown above was created for a magazine and originally came in one size only. I made it to showcase ...

I am enjoying sharing the making of this quilt in real time with no strict deadlines. If you’d like to follow along as I make this quilt, click here to read about Positive Direction Part 1.

Once I sewed the blocks together, I quickly got them up on my design wall following the quilt pattern layout. This wasn’t the final arrangement, but it let me see at a glance what it was going to look like.

Next, I spent a bit of time rearranging all of my blocks in a pleasing order. I wanted to keep the colors ...

I love traveling all over the country teaching my machine quilting methods and I pretty much say yes to any group who invites me. Over the next few months I’ll be traversing California at a couple of big shows. Next up is 4 days of workshops at Pacific International Quilt Festival, July 24-27, 2024. As of this writing one of my workshops is full, but there are still a couple spots left in 3 of them.

Click here for the most updated list of my workshops and to register for what’s still available.

Road to California Schedule – January ...

It’s fun to share some of the reasoning behind the fabrics I’ve designed. With my Good Vibes collection, I wanted to create a group of fabrics with an equal number of lights and darks so that they’d work well in lots of precut friendly patterns.

Click here to view all Good Vibes fabrics.

Speaking of precut friendly patterns made from light and dark, have you downloaded my FREE Puzzle Box quilt pattern? It’s made from 2 sets of 2 1/2″ wide strip rolls – half light and half dark! The picture below was taken at our ...

Update: the giveaway is now over. Congrats to Cheryl C. from New York who won and picked the Duchess Blue chair. I’m sure it will look great in her sewing space!!

I’ve been thrilled that so many of you love my Christa Cabinet from Arrow Sewing. Once I started using the cabinet, I needed a chair to go along with it! So I picked out their hydraulic sewing chair in grey. I’m telling you, this is hands down the most comfortable chair for sewing I’ve ever tried!

Actual view of my sewing table with hydraulic chair ...