and you thought Bob could only quilt!

A few days ago, Doug, my son, emailed me this picture of one of his hiking packs, wondering if I could do some repairs on it. As you can see, it needed a little repair. He came over today and we 'reworked' the pack, giving it a brand new top, patching mesh that had ripped, reinforcing seams, etc. Ater all, this pack has hiked the PCT and the AT also........just check out his link on my page.

As you can see, "Bob", was able to help, I was able to do the darning much easier this way.














Now here is the repaired pack - looks almost like a brand new pack! Now it's ready for Doug and his wife, Dora, to go hiking in July.










Don't you just love this bright and cheerful quilt? This is a little baby quilt that Laurie made and I just got it quilted for her, using the splash pattern. She makes the most fun, happy quilts, always using such bright and cheerful colors! It's headed for New York to brighten someone's life!

Pastel Baby Quilt

Here is a pastel baby quilt I made last week. The way it started out was I made two baby quilts last summer for gifts and as usual, bought a few extra fat quarters for more variety and ended up having several extra blocks. In fact, enough for another quilt. I just set them aside and last week decided to go ahead and put them together. The pattern is the Yellow Brick Road by Atkinson Designs. I just made it work with what I had, including the back of the quilt.


Here is a close-up view of the quilting - I just meandered over the blocks and did a rose border. Of course you know that you can always just click on a picture and get a really good close-up also.

And, here is the back - pieced from several other baby quilts that I have made. I was not going out and buying any more fabric.
A few years ago there was a book out by Country Threads called "Use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without! I've been trying to use that philosophy with using up my fabric stash this year. . .well, as much as possible! It is a fun challenge and makes you more creative and put fabrics together that you might not have thought of if you were not improvising.

Hmm, how often do I blog?

Hmm, trying to decide how often I will blog . . . guess whenever I get more pics ready to upload and show! So, here are a few - some new, some not so new, but guess that doesn't really matter.

This may seem boring or a little strange, but it is the backing of the Chinese Coins quilt I showed the other day, all made from the bag of pink scraps. I only added one little strip from my stash - the rest came from our group of ladies in the guild all put together. Anyway, it was fun to just sew strips and come up with a delightful charity quilt.


Now this next quilt is the first one I finished with Bob, my longarm machine. It was also made from scraps, fabric samples I had ordered, which I believe were 3" squares. I just added some strips and borders and here we have another quick quilt. How easy is that?

This Kaleidoscope Shades quilt was made in the nineties from the pointillist fabrics which gradated in color from one selvage to the other and the colors were produced by tiny dots. I really enjoy shading fabrics so that is how this came about, just shading along, and each kalediscope has 8 different shades.


If you viewed Wayne's traveling quilt last week, you may recognize this. A photograph of Delicate Arch, Arches National Park Utah, is on his quilt and I took a photograph, blew it up to 11" x 13", and cut my pattern pieces from that. The fabrics are fused to my batting and then this is heavily thread painted. So, it's a tiny quilt.

This is a graduation quilt I quilted for a friend, Mary, whose son just graduated from college. It was so very graphic and straight lined so we decided circles would be a nice addition. What do you think? Love the colors she used!!

Close-up Photos

Here are a couple of close-up photos of Wayne's travel quilt. The first one is pretty self-explanatory - we are on the summit of Pike's Peak in Colorado, over 14,000' high. Quite the experience.














This next picture is at Arches National Park in Moab, Utah. It is north and south windows. You have to be standing just in the right place to get both of those enormous arches in the same picture. They are huge - you can climb up into them and be totally dwarfed by their size. A great place to visit and hike.














This is a quilt I just made a couple of weeks ago. It is a charity quilt using a bag of scraps I received from our guild which had been donated by many people. We sorted hundreds of strips and scraps into several stacks and since I've been doing a lot of pink quilts lately, I chose the pink one. I love a challenge and this was fun, just sewing pieces together trying to use all the fabrics. I had a few coping strips but ended up with a quilt about 55" x 55" when completed. I only added one little piece to the backing from my stash and had some leftover binding to use also.


















A close-up of the Pink Chinese Coins.

Wayne's Traveling Quilt

Three years ago Wayne and I visited many national parks out west. I made a quilt using about 47 of our photos, which I printed on my inkjet printer using Printed Treasures fabric, which is temporarily paper backed to go through your printer. Many of these pictures are from Arches National Park, Zion, and Capitol Reef, all in Utah, which are Wayne's favorite parks. We hiked and had a great time. On one of the trips our children, Sondra and Doug went with us and you'll see them in the photos also.

and then along came Bob. . .

I began quilting 26 years ago in Martinez, Georgia, just sitting around a quilt frame with several other ladies at our church as we hand quilted a raffle quilt for our yearly auction. I fell in love with quilting and have been passionate about it since that time.

I began machine quilting in 1991, as I realized how many more quilts I could get completed to share with others by using this quicker technique, plus, maybe keep up with the dozens of quilts in my head that I wanted to make.

I continued to quilt on my Bernina sewing machine, yet it was difficult getting those large quilts under the arm of the machine, and I felt I was limited to the designs that I could do. Finally, in the spring of 2006, I became interested in getting a longarm quilting machine. After checking them out, getting the okay with my dh, Wayne, I took the plunge and purchased a Gammill Classic+ last May. And that's where this story really begins ........and then along came Bob............oh yes, don't you know, all longarm machines have to have a name as they become your quilting partner, and dh named him Bob!

Now I quilt for others to help them get their tops turned into quilts - after all, it's not a quilt until it's quilted. So, if you need some quilting done, send me an email and let's make more quilts!