Author: Wild Rose Quilter

I’m a simple woman…at least that what my DH (Dear Husband) used to say about me…I was a wife, I am now a widow, mother, step-mother & step-grandmother, quilter, and have a full time job in criminal justice. I lost my DH on May 22nd, 2011. I live in a small town in Texas. I love piecing quilts, I love quilting quilts. I have a serious addiction to fabric. I’ve been quilting since 1998, and purchased my first longarm, a Gammill Premier, in 2004. I upgraded to an A-1 Elite, named Corky, in March, 2007. I am in the process of rebuilding my life after losing my spouse. All photos and content in this blog are my own, and I request that you not download, copy or otherwise use anything here without my permission. I hope you enjoy visiting my blog and would love to hear your comments. Thanks for stopping by!

Happy New Year!

January 1, 2010 Wild Rose Quilter7 Comments

I started 2010 out by spending my morning working on a Pay It Forward project. Last month, Sammi Brown, surprised me with a most generous gift. She would not accept any compensation and stated it was her way of paying it forward. So today, I happily worked on paying it forward in honor of Sammi. Sammi and I have never met in person. We have become acquainted through the online quilting community. I was so touched by her generosity toward me and have thought and thought about what I could do for her in return. Maybe knit her a scarf? Send her gift card? Then it dawned on me that it would probably tickle her pink if I simply passed her good deed on in some way. I made these pillowcases for pediatric cancer patients being treated in Amarillo. They will be collected and delivered by my local quilt guild. Sammi, these are also for you. Thank you, my friend. 🙂

I used Vicki Welsh’s awesome pillowcase tutorial. Her instructions are just great and make it so easy and fun to whip some of these out. I said a few prayers for the recipients while making them, as well.

I ended 2009 with one final finish. Yesterday evening, I put the last stitches in the label of my Gracie’s Star. Yay! Yes, there is a small booboo on the label, but I really don’t care. I love this quilt.

And, I have a couple of “almost finishes” for 2009. A baby size “Gracie’s Star”, but in Cowboy fabrics for a baby boy. I have the binding attached, but still need to do the hand-stitching to the back, and the two labels I made for it are ready to be stitched on, and it will be finished. I must hurry, as the baby is due to arrive this month! It was commissioned by my friend, Wendy.

And, I got my chicken quilt quilted, and binding attached, ready for the hand-stitching, as well. It is not the prettiest quilt, but it has all my chicken fabrics in it, and will be cozy and snuggly. I like it.

Chickens on the front.

Hens & roosters on the back. And, I still have enough of this fabric left to back one more large quilt, and then some.

I used Jodi Beamish’s Fancy This quilting panto because this part looks like a chick to me.

I also finished this angel ornament, made with my embroidery machine. That was kind of a fun project. Took quite a bit of time, though. Not to mention thread…lol.

That’s all for now! I hope your 2010 is off to a great start! I must go get the blackeyed peas and cornbread ready for supper.

Stash Quilting Report

December 20, 2009December 20, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter9 Comments

I have been working away on some of my stash quilts. I’m still stitching the binding on my first Gracie’s Star quilt. A bit more to go, a label, and it will be a finish. I’m hoping to have that done before this year ends. I really enjoyed making that quilt, so when a friend asked me to make a commissioned baby quilt for her, I thought it would be the perfect choice for to showcase these western themed fabrics I already had on hand. And, the pattern clearly states you may make them for personal use, OR for profit…so no copyright worries. Gotta love that. If you like the pattern, you may purchase your own at Quiltin’ Tia. I’m not affiliated in any way. Just a a happy customer. And now, the quilt.

I quilted it with the Stetson & Boots panto from The Pattern Man. I used red Signature cotton thread. See the boots and hats? I use this pattern frequently and it stitches out nicely, and fairly quickly.

I used Quilters Dream “Dream Angel” flame retardant batting for the first time. I fell in love with the feel of this batting as soon as I took it out of the package. So soft. I will definitely use it again. I also did my first ever binding on the longarm. It went pretty well. I will definitely do that again, as well.

Yesterday, I sewed all day long, just for me. I needed some instant gratification, so I finally pulled out that stash of fat quarters that has been waiting to be made into a chicken quilt. I just used the Turning Twenty pattern, and now I have another flimsy to be quilted. A few little peeks at it. It’s not my usual color choices. Mostly browns and golds…very warm, for the most part. I think it will look lots better after quilting.

Some of the chickies:

And, I think I am just three and 1/4 blocks away from having enough blocks to make my mom a decent size lap throw. This is Bonnie Hunter’s Oklahoma Backroads pattern, and I have been making these blocks using the leaders/enders method from her site. I went all out scrappy with this one. I think the next scrappy I make might be a bit more planned, rather than using any and everything.

I am only working Monday and Tuesday this next week. Then, I am off on vacation! Yes! Between the holiday days, my vacation days, and the weekends, I will have eleven days off. I hope to get more done on my projects during that time. I am really looking forward to it.

And that concludes my stash quilting report for this week!

quilting

Shopping, Organizing and Cleaning

December 12, 2009December 12, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter15 Comments

I am working on getting my quilting room a bit more organized. Thread storage was a big problem for me. I had my quilting thread stored in three different locations. A shelf on my fabric storage shelving that Greg built for me in my closet. An actual shelf unit that I stuck in that closet. And, I had some in the linen cabinet that I bought for quilt storage, located in my living room. I had been given a $75.00 gift card from Target, as a Christmas gift, last year. I finally spent it this week, on these rolling drawer storage carts. They are the perfect size for the large spools, and they keep them protected from dust. I was able to purchase three of them with my card, and for now, it’s enough space, though I will probably need to purchase one more in the near future, as I expand my thread inventory for my customer quilting. They aren’t made for stacking, but as you can see, I did stack one on top of the other. The wheels on bottom are removable, and it worked out fine.

A favorite find this week, though, are these storage boxes for my embroidery threads, that I found at JoAnn’s. I love these! You can easily see your thread, and they have little “pegs” on the bottom, that fit into little receptacles on the top of another box, for secure stacking. They hold thirty spools each.

Having all my thread neatly contained, easily accessible, and protected feels awesome! And, it freed up space on my fabric shelf for more of my fabric, that I had nowhere to put. And, it freed up enough shelving space for these:

This would be the reason that I have decided to drop my quilting mag subscriptions. These are the issues from the last several years, of at least three mags, that I cannot give or throw away because there is at least one quilt in them “that I want to make someday”. Ok, so obviously I’m not going to live to be 250 years old…I cannot keep piling up magazines. It’s going to be hard. Not getting that little fix of quilter’s crack in the mail, every so often. I may start to shake a little as I walk by the magazine rack in stores, maybe get a little sweaty, weak and nauseous…as the withdrawals hit…but I must be strong. Because truth be told, there are a few more scattered throughout my house, and then there are the books with patterns, and then the single patterns that I have bought. And the set of double wedding ring templates waiting to be used. They are taking up too much space in my life. I have more than enough to keep me busy for the rest of my life and probably most of my readers’ lives, as well.

And, I bought another kit, jelly roll included, with a pattern book this week. Yep, needed another project to put on the list. See? I have a problem. This is the rest of the loot from my excursion this week.

I don’t know how much I will use that calculator, but it was on sale for $19.99. And, when I made that apron recently, it called for bias binding. Since I’m already short on time in this life to finish all the projects I would like to make, I decided time shouldn’t be spent on making that stuff myself, so I bought an assortment of ready made, to keep on hand. I also picked up several colors of rick rack to have handy, for projects. Of course, you know that when the time comes, I still won’t have the right color. Isn’t that the way it always works?

Now, I must get back to the cleaning part. I have dust bunnies to chase. Have a great Saturday!

embroidery

Productive Day

December 5, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter12 Comments

Today was some work, some play, but all in all, a very nice day. I finished up a customer quilt. Lots of laundry done. I played with my embroidery machine a bit. I wanted to try Christmas embroidery on some kitchen towels. I used a heavy cut away stabilizer, and a wash away stabilizer on top, as is recommended…and they are ok, but nothing awesome. I don’t like how you can see white spots in the green leaves, but I don’t know what you can do about that.

I have a love/hate thing going on with the embroidery. I’m trying to build my design library, which is certainly not cheap. And I buy the stock packs from OESD. My machine, a Bernina Bernette Deco 340, reads exp files. And that isn’t a problem, except if I want the colors to load to the machine, I somehow have to convert those files to exp+ files. NO ONE seems to be able to explain to me HOW to do that??? My machine dealer just kind of looked at me…told me my machine wouldn’t have the thread colors in it for the designs I buy and put on a stick, I just have to print out the color charts. Well, that takes a ton of paper, and then you have to store all those printed sheets, and then you have to flip through all of them to find the one you need. I am new to embroidery…only had my machine a little over a year…so tell me you wise experienced embroiderers…is this how it’s supposed to be? It’s really quite a lot of trouble…not to mention $$$$. I’m just not getting it, I don’t guess. But, it would be really nice to get a good explanation of how I’m supposed to convert to exp+ without it costing a gazillion dollars, which one answer I got would have. I asked about this on the Bernina blog…and was told I could do it with embroidery software, and of course Bernina’s is recommended. That’s a pricey answer. And I still wasn’t told HOW it works, just that I could do it with the software. I’m pretty sure that stuff cost more than the machine…like around $2,000.00. Not that big into embroidery. I know I’m still pretty ignorant about this craft, so if anyone can enlighten me, I’m all ears…or eyes, I guess, since I’ll most likely be reading the responses. 🙂

I finally got around to fixing my binding booboo on my Gracie’s Star quilt, too. Now I can get back to the hand stitching, and have a finish soon. I really love that quilt.

Gotta go hang up laundry! And cheer for the Longhorns!

longarm quilting · quilting

Trying To Get Caught Up

December 4, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter4 Comments

Hello again! I have had a lot going on lately. There was some illness, some sadness, some fun times with family, and some customer quilting. I won’t bore you with all the details, but will just start trying to get a bit caught up with quilty stuff!

In this post, I will share a couple of customer quilts that I was privileged to quilt. Every quilt Joanna has sent me to quilt has been wonderful, but this one may well be my favorite. Quilted with Signature cotton thread and Linda Taylor’s Stars & Loops pantograph. I loved this quilt! Isn’t it fabulous?

After I finished it, and had boxed it all up for it’s return trip home, I was about to walk out my front door to get my mail from the mail box, when I looked down and noticed (once again) that it really is true that quilters come with strings attached. 🙂

Next is one I fondly referred to as Wild Thang, from one of my local customers. This is a really fun quilt and I enjoyed watching it “quilt up”. It is a Christmas gift for my customer’s granddaughter. I used Superior’s Lava thread on top, and Superior’s So Fine on the back. Quilted up beautifully! The pattern is Jodi Beamish’s Cat’s Paw panto.

So, there’s a start on catching up. I’ll be back soon with a bit more!

quilting

I Will Be Back Soon…

November 24, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter6 Comments

I promise. Life has just been happening.

quilting

So I Was Stitching Away and CRAP!!

October 31, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter17 Comments

You have got to be kidding me? Seriously!?

HOW did that seam get THERE??? I was SOOOO careful to lay out the binding and go ALL THE WAY AROUND the quilt with it to make sure THAT did NOT happen. Crap, crap, crap!! So, that put a halt to my happy stitching…bragging to myself about how I think this is the BEST binding I have EVER done. Now I have to completely undo that section and splice in a new piece, because I am not going to let one stinking corner ruin the best binding I have ever done. Crap.

And yeah, I cleaned it up for the blog…I don’t think I was really saying crap.

stash busting

Who knew?

October 25, 2009October 25, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter14 Comments

Who knew that I could sew something other than a quilt? Tada!

Thank you to Becca for the pattern. It’s certainly not perfect, so don’t look too close. There is a shorter version, and I think I will make it, also, as I think it will be my favorite of the two. I thought that bias tape was going to do me in, but I finally got it on there. The pockets were the most challenging, and I’m sure I didn’t do them quite right. Also, the zigzag stitching of the unfinished seams. How do you do that without it just kind of chewing them up? Can you tell that garment construction is not my strong suit? But, there are so many cute apron patterns, and I won this pattern from Becca, so I had to give it a try. I’m pretty happy with the end result…better than I thought I would do. It was a good distraction from other issues on my mind this weekend.

And I used 2.5 yards from my stash making it. Year to date stash totals:

Incoming Yardage to date: 75 yds.
Outgoing Yardage to date: 66.75 yds.
Total Stash Busted to date: -8.25 yds.

And now this weekend is almost over…way…too…soon.

longarm quilting · machine quilting · quilting · quilts · stash busting

Sunday Stash Quilting Report

October 18, 2009 Wild Rose Quilter19 Comments

I have stash reporting this week! I finished the quilting on my Gracie’s Star quilt. The pattern is from http://www.quiltintia.com. I quilted it with Jodie Beamish’s Rosie panto. Seems I use that one a lot, but this is the only quilt of my very own with it. Today I got the binding stitched to the front, ready for nighttime snuggling under it, while I do the hand stitching, watching TV. I used 8 yards backing and binding. I am going to enjoy using this quilt. It just makes me feel good.

I used the red in this star for the binding.

I love this fabric, that is in some of the blocks, and I used it for backing, also.

I’m getting kind of antsy to start some new projects, but I’m trying to make myself finish some first. I want some finishes before this year is finished! I do need to start a commissioned baby quilt soon, though. I keep forgetting about that, and the baby is due the end of January. Better start picking some fabric from my stash for that!

My Mom delivered the comfort quilt I made, for our friend with breast cancer, to her today. She loved it. She had a mastectomy a week ago Thursday. The test results have revealed that she had two different cancers in that breast. There will be some chemo, but I think the prognosis is still good. She has an appointment tomorrow, so maybe we will know more after that.

I’ve had a wonderful weekend, here at home, with my family. I hope yours has been good, as well!

YTD totals: