Mmmm finished at 57" * 72", long arm quilted in baptist fans by the lovely Anne. The batting is Quilters Dream Select, wonderful and soft. This quilt is a total Homage a Gwen Marston. You may recognize it from her book "Liberated String Quilts". Her quilt is called Amish Rectangular String. The quilt top was made in 2008 and blogged earlier. It's quite vibrant. Not so easy to photograph inside on a very cold february morning. It feels so good to shrink my stack of finished tops. Slowly, and one by one - that's my plan... Right now I have a dozen quilt tops waiting in line. How tall is your stack? (I won't hold it against you if you don't want to reveal it - we all need to keep some secrets...) ; ) Wish you all a lovely weekend!

Learn how to make your own fabric starch, aka Quilter's Moonshine. It's cheap, easy, smells good, and you can get the recipe's free printable here!

I am FINALLY able to post a progress report on my newest star quilt. I work best on a tight deadline and I desperately want this piece done before my engagement at Quilting in the Desert in less than two weeks. I also want it to accompany me to Dubai next month. I'm actually going to make that deadline! I was working on it for a couple hours this morning, took a break and came back to my room and was captivated by how pretty it looked sitting in my machine so I took photos from my point of view. I love the little circles. I put in some baby clamshells and have beaded them with little gold beads. There are four of these corners and I am filling them with tight echoing and baby feathers. I am just starting a round feather wreath that will go around the entire outside of the piece tucking underneath the linen corners. This is being done with a very heavy silk thread. Obviously this piece is still in it's awkward "puberty stage" but I am VERY happy with how she is turning out. When I was going thru the photo folder I came across these beginning pictures and wanted to share. This is when I was just getting The Ultimate Stencil project going and learning what it could do. I laid the stencil down in the middle of my piece.. marked the lines that I needed and drafted the center star pattern... and quilted the main outline. Very cool! By the way, the huge star going around is actually a commercially cut stencil thru Quilting Creations...It's NH131 and NH132. When I originally designed this large stencil medallion a few years ago, I used the very same grid system on my drafting table that has since become The Ultimate Stencil. Funny how things come around. And now you know why I've named this quilt "The Ultimate Star". Hugs, Cindy :)

All the tools, supplies, notions and know how for machine quilting on either a long arm quilting machine or a sewing machine.

Cristina Arcenegui Bono discovered that she preferred the machine quilting to piecing quilts that opened a world of art to her.

First a little background to give you an idea of why I find this idea so appealing and which so far has worked really well for me. I have been struggling for some time with a progressively stiff an…

Am Anfang ist immer eine Idee oder eine Person der man was aus Dankbarkeit schenken möchte oder eine Kombination aus beidem... Bei diesem Quilt war es die Dankbarkeit für die Hilfbereitschaft meines Schwiegerpapa's. Ohne ihn würden unser Auto und auch meine Maschinen in meiner Buchbinderei nicht mehr funktionieren. Daher war es eigentlich schon lange an der Zeit für ihn einen Quilt zu nähen. Die Farben waren schnell klar. Blau und Grün... Das passt auch zu dem Quilt, den die Schwiegermama schon einige Jahre zuvor bekommen hat. Die frischen Farben aus der Blueberry Park Serie von Karen Lewis fand ich sehr passend, auch wenn auf einzelnen Stoffe weisse Blumen drauf sind. Die Schwiegermama liebt Blumen und hat auch überall in der Wohnung immer frische Blumen stehen. Daher finde ich geht dies auch für einen Männer-Quilt... In diesem Fall jedenfalls... *zwinker* Mit Hilfe des Super Side Kick Rulers von Jaybird Quilts habe ich Dreiecke zugeschnitten und nach dem Muster des Boomerang-Quilts zusammengenäht. Ich habe das Muster etwas abgeändert und noch weisse Streifen zwischen die einzelnen Rauten plaziert, damit der Quilt es luftiger wird als die Vorlage... An meiner Design-Wand habe ich alle Dreiecke aufgehängt und mal ein Foto gemacht. Das Foto hilft mir zu sehen, ob irgendwo ein Block oder in diesem Fall eine Raute umplaziert werden muss oder ob es stimmig ist... Bei zusammen nähen habe ich dann bemerkt, dass der Quilt, so wie ich ihn auf dem oberen Bild zusammengestellt hatte, zu breit wurde. So habe ich dann noch ein paar Rauten weggelassen... Mit Hilfe einer Plexiglasplatte hatte ich mir verschiedene Quiltmuster aufgezeichnet und wieder verworfen. Dies war dann das Muster, von dem ich dachte, das wäre es jetzt... Doch nachdem ich zwei Rauten gequiltet hatte, fand ich es gar nicht toll. Es war iritierend, da das Muster auf dem Stoff der Raute folgte und ich dies mit diesen Linie durchbrach. Das war mir zu unruhig und daher trennte ich alles wieder auf... Die Blasenkette rund um die Rauten durfte bleiben, doch innerhalb der Raute musste es ruhiger werden und daher quiltete ich bloss noch gerade Linien im Abstand von 1 inch... Hier hat sich wieder mal gezeigt, weniger ist mehr... Und damit ihr auch mal ein bewegtes Bild von mir seht, habe ich mich bei der letzten Reihe mit dem Zeitraffer gefilmt *lach* Viel Spass bei schauen...! Die letzte Reihe komplett gequiltet... Ich hoffe, ich konnte euch einen kleinen Einblick geben, wie bei mir ein Quilt entsteht... Bilder des fixfertigen Quilts werden in einem weiteren Post folgen... Bis dahin, machts gut iva verlinkt: creadienstag , modern patch monday & handmade on tuesday

I have a few exciting teaching announcements and a ton of planning, prepping, stitching, retreating, drawing, and scheming ahead of me. I will make this post picture heavy and hopefully brief. I have been invited to teach at some very exciting shows in 2016 and I couldn't be more excited! QUILTCON FEB 2016 To start the year I will be at Quiltcon in Pasadena teaching, all hands on classes. I had an amazing time in Austin and am really looking forward to February. MQX APRIL 2016 In April I will be teaching at MQX in New Hampshire. New England will be gorgeous in April and I am looking forward to returning as a teacher instead of a student. I am teaching two hands on classes as well as some lecture/demo classes. To sign up for my classes click here. MQS MAY 2016 In May I will be off to Cedar Rapids, Iowa to teach at MQS, registration is not open yet, but should be in the upcoming weeks! SMQG 2015 But hey! 2015 isn't over yet and I am thrilled to be hosted by the Seattle Modern Quilt Guild for a drawing/ modern whole cloth design workshop. Join me Sunday, November 15th, 2015 from 10:30-4:45 at Tukwila Sew and Vac Click here to register, there are 5 spots left and registration is open to the general public now. WORKSHOPS!! YAY! Shown below are a few examples of what my Compositional Drawing/Whole cloth design class will look like. I am teaching this class at Quiltcon, MQX and at Tukwila sew and vac with SMQG. The photos below are samples that I have been making for my Broken Wreath and Ghost Shapes lecture/demo classes at MQX and MQS. Here, I used contrasting blue thread, definitely out of my comfort zone but it's a great exercise and the designs can really pop out. Shown below is quilting on one of the samples that I marked out in my whole cloth design class, this technique quilts out pretty fast and has been a very liberating way for me to look at quilting. And Voila! I've said it before but making class samples always opens up new doors for me. This style of quilting has inspired me to start working on a whole cloth (type) design, that's really not a whole cloth at all. Here are a few photos of my latest project which I will go into more detail as I figure out what I'm actually doing. The design is inspired by the stitch and flip triangle which is sprinkled through a lot of Katie Pedersen's work. I took her magic numbers class and was amazed at the possibilities that exist within this format. I am approaching this project with the intentions of doing it entirely on the longarm so there will actually be no stitch and flip anything, all of the piecing will be raw edge appliqué but the design is certainly inspired by Katie's work, which you can find in her and Jacquie's fabulous book, Quilting Modern. Off to get my week going, thanks for taking the time to read and I look forward to meeting some of you in my classes in the months to follow!! xo

"Edged in Black" by Audrey Arno, 7" x 7" Hello from a long-absent quilter! It is autumn in Wisconsin, Oliver is sleeping near me, now 12 and sweeter than ever. I admit to being a bit surprised that this blog is still online, gosh. Alas these past few years I have not been able to quilt due to a variety of "perfect storm" events, but this past summer I have been sorting through so many saved fabrics, books, quilts, magazines, letters, ribbons, business cards, oh my....several rooms of things to go through, air out, read, save or discard. I've found many interesting items I had forgotten about, articles or photos I liked and then realized they were mine (ha!), and ended up thinking it might be a good thing to start blogging and share few of my thoughts and photos again. They reminded me of friends, quilters, so many experiences over the years, like vintage fabrics that are re-discovered and more beautiful than ever. I’ll begin with the little quilt, above, rolled up in a packet of small treasures I had put away for safekeeping and forgotten. “Edged in Black” by Audrey Arno from Tulsa, OK, was from a collection of "little" quilts made for sale to support Ami Simms' Alzheimers project, raising money for research. They were displayed and sold at one of the big quilt shows I attended and this one spoke to me, a wonderful mélange of vintage fabrics, beautifully designed and pieced. When I held this quilt yesterday the idea that sprang to mind was to make small projects with some of your fabrics you have saved or put aside because they are so special. Don’t simply store fabric, instead make something small and easily completed, and enjoy it, donate it, gift it to another quilter who would love it. It needn’t use vintage fabrics although some of my very first new fabric purchases are probably now old enough to be classified as antique….! It can be from your special collections of batiks, or hand dyed, or conversational prints, blue and white fabrics, whatever. Someone would love it and a small piece can be framed for display or added to a small area in a house. Recently I watched a news story about the container ships backed up and no merchandise to buy for Christmas, oh no. What happened to making something from what you already have? Or doing something special for someone? Or give a day helping a relative with things to do around the house? We don’t need any more things in the house, but of course a small handmade gift would be welcomed with happy delight. Below are photos of just that, a small quilt pieced from an old very worn tied quilt that my mother’s grandmother had made from fabrics in the early 1900’s. My mother made a label so it is documented nicely, and I treasure this little quilt especially since my mother has been gone now for some years. The quilt is about 16" square, the blocks each 2 1/2" finished, and it is hand quilted. The border fabric was new. On the simple label below it is documented, so nice for any piece you make. I loved this in 1989 but it is more precious to me now. It has been lovely sharing some thoughts with you today; see you next time! .......Diane

This is the Shop Hop quilt for the Needle and I. Georgia wanted me to do something easy on it. I did a light custom job on it. No stitching in the ditch....in each block...I did a feather ring...and stayed pretty simple on all the sashing. I really liked how it turned out. It's a 70 x70 inch quilt and took about 4 hours to do up. I used cream thread through out, except for the purple borders....then I used a light purple thread. And I must have a major smudge on my camera lens! This is Angela's. She made it for a baby boy and I used a new pattern called "Jilly" for it. It turned out cute. And this is a sweet baby quilt that Judy made up. I used the pattern "popcorn" on it. ~Jenny~

I was so worried after sending back my first Quilt of Valor. Would it be good enough? Would they want me to quilt a second one? This was the first time I had quilted for someone other than myself o…

Fun Poinsettia's! Isn't this a super fun runner for the Holiday's! We've got a free tutorial to share with you on how to make this simple "Fun Poinsettia" block, using the Quick Curve Ruler. Click here, to view and download your free pdf "Fun Poinsettia" block. 20 1/2" x 20 1/2" I made 3 blocks and put them together to make a runner, but I think a whole bunch of these would make a fabulous quilt. You could do up one for a darling pillow too! I wanted to make my poinsettia's to match my kitchen. Helen is making hers in more traditional holiday colors. They really take on a different look and I love the spinning petals created with this block! So if you are in need of a fun little holiday treat for yourself or need to make up a last minute gift for someone, than this is a perfect quilt project for you! Fun, fast and best of all....super easy!! We've started a Fun Poinsettia Flickr Group for those of you that want to share your Poinsettia's with us and each other! We would love to see what you come up with! Have fun and occasionally we'll check in to see how your "Fun Poinsettia's" are coming along! ~Jenny and Helen~

Customer Quilts Quilt by Noelle Powers Quilt by Noelle Powers Quilt by Heather Bostic Quilt by Jenny Redwi...

I am delighted to have Patsy Thompson as our December FMQ Expert, for the 2012 Free Motion Quilting Challenge. Whe...

Why Count Sheep? Count Stars! Pieced by Claudia Taeubert Quilted by Birgit Schueller Four Greater Than One Pieced by S Walker - Y Fuchs - A Warrick - R Hoffman Quilted by Renee Hoffman 3rd Place Modern Category Taking the Unmapped Road Pieced and quilted by Margaret Solomon Gunn First Place - Embroidery Mixed Technique Ruffled Roses Pieced and quilted by Kim Radabaugh 2nd Place - Embroidery Mixed Technique Passionate Pursuit Pieced and quilted by Terri Doyle Summer Time Pieced and quilted by Carolyn Rider 3rd Place - Mixed Embroidery Technique

GIVEAWAY IS OVER, THANKS! Today, I have the privilege to share with you a new quilt book by Andie and Kelly called "Modern designs for CLASSIC QUILTS"! Love...love....love...this book! Everything about it, from content....to photography....to techniques....to picture tutorials...and of course the fantastic quilts and quilt patterns!! I've known Andie through blogging before her book writing journey. Her blog was one of the first I followed and I liked it because she is a very real in her writing. Well.... apparently Andie likes my longarm quilting skills and asked if I would quilt a couple of quilts for a "project" she was working on....a project that had to do with a future book! No pressure for me, none what so ever! Ha! ;o) This spider web quilt is called "Effie's Web". ..and it's a beauty! I loved quilting it up! This New York Beauty quilt is called "Midtown Girl". I really love how this one turned out! These are only a couple of many awesome quilts in Andie and Kelly's book and to celebrate with them I'm having a book GIVEAWAY!! Anyone is welcome to enter the giveaway and staying on the theme of Classic Quilts....Answer this question for the Giveaway: What "Curved" classic quilt or block would you like to see done Modern and easier the Quick Curve Ruler way? Have fun and good luck! The Giveaway will end tomorrow night. ~Jenny~

Read the APQS blog for lots of valuable quilting content, including video tutorials, longarm machine information, how-to articles and other quilting tricks.

Since I lost my old Blog when my new website was created, I'm going to duplicate a couple of my more recent posts. I wanted to share the small hankie quilt that will be up for bidding at the Silent Auction booth at the upcoming Houston International Quilt Festival. This started out as a beautiful hankie that I stabili

This is Robin’s quilt and she made the blocks using the stitch and flip method using a dryer sheet as a foundation. She used brown and beige fabrics from her stash making this a great stash buster pr

Quilting negative spaces on modern quilts results in achievable but stunning finished products. Using simple designs in an assymetrical manner is beautiful.

I'm teaching a Free Motion Quilting class starting in April at my LQS, Heartstrings and Heirlooms. I finished up the class sample over the weekend. In the class the students will do larger samples, but I needed a small book of designs to advertise the class. As you can see in the above end view, I used three different types of batting for my sample book - Quilter's Dream 100% Cotton, Hobbs 80/20 (80% cotton and 20% polyester), and a 100% wool. I used a tutorial from a recent Quilting Arts Magazine issue (the February/March 2014 issue) to make my little book. The instructions involved drawing some lines on a piece of fabric, then sewing on the lines with a walking foot to make a larger sheet and baste the layers together. Then you quilt your designs and cut the "pages" apart. The tutorial in the magazine was very good. If you are interested in making a book like mine, I suggest you get a copy of the magazine. Below is a collage of designs I plan to cover in the class. Along the top of each page I wrote the name of the design, the batting type and page number from the book I will be using for the class. In case you are interested, I'm using the book Free Motion Quilting with Angela Waters. It has become my go-to book for quilting ideas as of late.

You might remember Diane's beautiful photo millefiori quilt... well here's another beauty of hers that I managed to squeeze in: Again, make sure to follow The Quilt Show for an upcoming episode to see more of Diane and her quilts!

Explore gfquilts' 1883 photos on Flickr!

Cristina Arcenegui Bono discovered that she preferred the machine quilting to piecing quilts that opened a world of art to her.

Finished my Mod Olives quilt! I had fun coming up with 24 different feather designs for each block! I'm happy with my feathers for the most part. Some were kind of weird...like the bottom left one in the picture above. Looks like toes. Half way through the quilt I thought of a great quilting design for the print diamonds and had to do one out of curiosity. It's the bottom left block in the picture above. My favorite feather is the top left one in the picture above. Love that one! I really like the quilting in the background diamonds. It helped give consistency to this quilt. This quilt is quilted a little to busy for my liking but it was fun coming up with a bunch of feathers and hopefully I was able to give some of you some feather quilting ideas. I of course can't take credit for all these feathers. I have been inspired by some of them through some very talented quilters over the past 7 years. I always love looking at the before and after quilting pictures. I like the black and white binding. It helped the quilt feel grounded to me. Hope you all are finishing up your Mod Olives quilt tops. Looking forward to seeing them all! ~Jenny~

For those of you who are patiently waiting for handbook updates, I'm happy to tell you I'm down to the last three books...whew. This is always a grind but well worth it in the end. I'm right in the middle of Basic Wholecloth Quilts and am adding a chapter on how to use The Ultimate Stencil to design wholecloth quilts. I thought it was such good information I wanted to share with all of you too. I have copied the pages directly out of the new handbook and these shots will also be part of my new easel demo for my designing workshops. For those of you following the design ideas I've been posting, remember I am posting my blog photos directly onto my Ultimate Stencil Pinterest page in case you want to access them that way. My Pinterest button is on the home page of my website. I've been teaching you how to draft your designs on the paper Master Grids first. I've taken a basic square, divided it using the drawn lines and filled with feathers. When creating a wholecloth quilt I instruct my students to fold their fabric in half lengthwise and widthwise, press the folds into a firm crease and then use these lines to line up their stencils. In this case you would line up The Ultimate Stencil on your horizontal/vertical lines, draw the guidelines you need, and then fill with your chosen design. See how pretty this block is repeated for an overall wholecloth design??? Here's another very simple block also filled with feathers. This time I've repeated it "on point" still using the horizontal/vertical lines as my guide. This design was drafted using the circle Ultimate Stencil. And this is how it looks repeated overall. Now that you have the idea, let's combine a circle AND a square and repeat them both for a wholecloth quilt. Love how this one came out! I'm still very jazzed about all the possibilities and LOVE being able to share and teach as I go. Hugs, Cindy

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Combining innovation and engineering with timeless design, the Millie is our top-of-the-line machine built with every feature a quilter could ever want in a longarm quilting machine.

Inspired by the Northern Lights Fabric...all solids, no prints Background Fabric: Choose 1 dark colour (black, dark blue, dark purple) Cut: Four 3 ½“ squares Two 4“ squares One 9 ½”x3 ½” strip One 12 ½”x3 ½” strip Star Fabric: Choose 1 light/bright colour (yellow, green, pink, white) Cut: One 3 ½” square Two 4” squares Instructions: Take the two 4” dark squares and the two 4” light squares and make 4 HSTs. Trim to 3½”. If you want more info about HSTs, check out our very thorough HST Tutorial. Lay out in a 9 patch as shown and sew together. Add the 3 ½ “x 9 ½ “to one side and then the 3 ½”x12 ½” to another side. Trim to an unfinished 12 ½” square. As always, the more you make, the better your chances of winning. Make one, make two, make a sky full of stars!

I was the June instructor for the Sew Cal Gal's Free Motion Quilting Challenge in June and a large part of my lesson including dividing and conquering a space and then filling it in. It's less intimidating and more manageable that way. Well, that applies to life in general...not just quilting! Before I share my recent projects I want to send out a heart-felt THANK YOU to Sew Cal Gal for inviting me to be a part of this very amazing project and send out a huge congratulations to all the participants. Wow...I was completely blown away by the work that was created this past month. I had planned on doing a feature and picking out several pieces to share with all of you but that proved to be impossible. I loved every single piece...I couldn't choose. I loved spending a little time each evening perusing thru all the Facebook projects that were posted by the participants and was very impressed with the group enthusiasm and support for each other. Thank you all for such an amazing experience that I will never forget. I've been over-the-top busy prepping for my next upcoming 5-day Design Workshop in Rancho Cordova as well as getting ready to film for some upcoming on-line classes. It all seems overwhelming and too much to handle sometimes. While monitoring the FMQ challenge this past month I was reminding myself to "Divide and Conquer"...isn't that what I was telling everyone else to do? So I did. Baby Steps...divide it up...conquer that small space...and then move on. So I am and it's slowly working. All of the binders/handbooks have been loaded and are ready to go...huge project. Not only has my sewing room, the guest room, part of the living room but the kitchen/dining area have been impacted with all the prep work. I have a VERY patient husband...thank you Kent! If one is good, twice is better...so why not make several more teaching samples for the workshop too? Sure, why not??? I teach my students how to take a main focus design and then create dimension, movement and sunshine and shadow around it. These samples are to help them visualize that and give them the confidence to do it themselves. These samples are also showing how to take a basic stencil design, use just the "parts" that you want, and then make it your own. I had loads of fun while doing these. By the way, these were all started in my hotel room in Santa Fe...I was given a loaner machine, (Janome 6600), to use during my stay and put in very long hours getting these going. Thank you Santa Fe! While on the airplane and in the airports back and forth from Santa Fe I was able to get the beadwork started on the Battenburg piece...I'm very happy with how this is looking! There probably won't be any more blog posts until after the design workshop so I loaded up this particular blog with enough pictures to keep you going. Cindy is alive and well in Chico...still breathing...and am following my own advice of Dividing and Conquering! Hugs, Cindy :)