Quiltshopgal's Virtual Fall Craft Fair

Welcome!

I am so pleased to be participating in the Virtual Fall Craft Fair that Quiltshopgal is hosting this week. Check out Quiltshopgal's blog to see the list of crafters who are participating throughout the week. The event is sponsored by a number of businesses and there is a chance to win daily door prizes for visiting the participating vendors.

                                                             
A little bit about my journey...I have been quilting since about 2006 and quickly became addicted. As the years passed my second obsession - freemotionquilting took hold and to this day that is what I do 80% of my time. At the same time I did need to produce quilts and so I started to make mainly smaller and baby quilts in order to be able to get back to my freemotionquilting. At the same time I ventured out into pattern writing, around 2010, mainly for publication in the magazines over here. However, in 2013 I set up shop to sell my patterns and that has been quite successful so far.

I love the brain drain of pattern writing. I do not use pattern testers but make the quilts myself to be clear on where people might experience some issues and might need further explanations. So far, this has worked very well. Anyway, coming back to my little virtual booth...

I only recently decided to sell some of my handmade quilts and have added them to my evolving Etsy shop (I swapped to Etsy in late 2018). I have been making baby quilts for some time by now and usually gift them to whoever needs them, but as time has gone by, I actually need to make some room. There is only so many quilts that one can hang on to.

At the moment I have two very sweet quilts for sale

Sweet Baby Boy Quilt

The quilt measures 36.5in x 36.5in and could also be used as a play mat or security blanket. It is made from 100% cotton fabric, quilted in an overall clamshell design and has a light, soft feel to it.

Funky Bird Quilt

This brightly coloured patchwork/applique quilt is 40in x 49.5in. Having robust use and frequent washing in mind, this quilt is heavily quilted - I want my quilts to be pretty but also usable. All fabrics are pre-washed, however I would always recommend a colour catcher in the first wash just to be on the safe side. While firmer in touch due to the quilting, this quilt will soften with use. If you are interested in the process you can read some posts about this quilt under my blog archive from May to June 2019.

Postage for both quilts is free in Australia and indicated in the shop for  the US. Please contact me via email if you would like to find out postage to other destinations.
I will insure the quilts for posting at no additional cost to the customer.

Please also check out my patterns which will be on sale at 10% off for the duration of the Virtual Fall Craft Fair.

If you are unsure about what to expect when buying a pattern, please feel free to download my free baby quilt pattern under the tab 'My Patterns' at the top of the page. This will give you an idea on how I structure my patterns and the diagrams that I include.

Enjoy the event and come back often. I am planning to re-make some of the quilts from my patterns to offer for sale in the beginning of the next year to mid-year.

Thanks for visiting!

Karin

Virtual Fall Craft Fair

Have you heard?

Quiltshopgal is running a virtual Fall Craft Fair showcasing various vendors selling their handmade craft items.

The event runs for the whole week and is starting today with the first five vendors. I am very excited because I am a participant ...will showcase my stuff on Wednesday!

The event is sponsored by a number of businesses and there is also a chance to win daily door prizes.

I had a quick look earlier and will sit down in a minute to have a good look over the first day...there is lots to see and some lovely items on offer...very tempting indeed.

Thanks  Quiltshopgal for again bringing us a great event.

Karin

The Ultimate FMQ Challenge - Summer 2016

I should call this 'See what You Made Me Do!'. It started with Cindy Needham's Craftsy Class 'Machine Quilting Wholecloth Quilts'. Absolutely loved this class and undertook to do a Wholecloth with the stencil provided in the class. Getting annoyed with all my good intentions and constantly dragging my feet I finally started this earlier in the year. Changed the center stencil a bit to make it my own and also used a darker background colour just to be different:)

I ordered Cindy's Ultimate Stencil Collection over Christmas and decided to combine an exploration of the grids with the Wholecloth. This was not a particularly well planned out approach and the little Wholecloth just grew and grew...in the end I had some space left on the sides and threw in a feather border which I then hyperquilted (see also Patsy Thomson's website)

The end result is rather insane

Grid Sampler 35inx35in

Texture galore

Some of this worked and some of it did not...was not too fussed as this was declared a practice project early in the piece. Here are the stencils that I used

1/2in square grid, Diamond (baby size), Twisted grid (Mama size) & Twisted Clam grid (Mama size)

With 20 stencils (Six designs in 3 different sizes) to choose from there was plenty of choice...

Cathedral Windows

How cool is this filler? - Diamond grid filled with lines

Twisted clams filled with alternating lines

Fail - Twisted grid stitched into oblivion

The compaction I had from stitching out these grids was pretty unreal...hence the pebbles around the feathers...that was super intense and definitely something I want to avoid in the future. Initially I was going to flatten it with lines but then realised that this would not work as I had the lines in the Diamond grid directly next to it. Yep, planning was not that great!

I absolutely loved stitching this out...even the crazy diamond filler! Just took my time and seemed to find more and more things that I could do. Thoroughly enjoyable.
Cindy is absolutely right in saying 'The only ones you ever need!' about her Ultimate Stencil collection. I have used the Ultimate Stencil collection on various projects since then...marking 1/2in dots in a sashing to guide my FMQ design, using the Lines stencil for marking a Baby blocks quilt and developing a Mandala design with her Circle stencil. Just brilliant!

Linking up to Quiltshopgal's Ultimate FMQ Challenge - Summer 2016

Karin

October 2015 FMQ Challenge

Completed my pillow for the October 2015 FMQ Challenge over at Quiltshopgal.
Already talked a bit about the process in an earlier post HERE.

October 2015 FMQ Challenge

Different colour due to daylight, but same piece (still missing the cathedral window)

This months' expert is Lori Kennedy from The Inbox Jaunt and I followed Option #2 using Lori's 'Divide & Conquer' Craftsy class. As there were too many designs to choose from, I decided to do a sampler pillow of some of the designs. By now I have got quite a list of Craftsy classes and this was a good way to quickly remind me what's in the class. These are the designs I used from the class:

Paper Clip design: absolutely loved this; cute little design to frame something or put into a narrow inner border
Square Flower: this appealed to me as it could just be stitched out freehand and looked good no matter how wonky you stitched it;
Dots & Dashes: with just a few lines drawn, this is a nice modern fill
Flower Power: had trouble with this design when I last stitched it, and included it for more practice in this piece, filling out a 6" space
Hearts: formalised hearts in a row is something that I have avoided in the past as I am not that great at it; this time I marked half inches spaces in my section and that worked alright;
Ric rack: again marked some spaces but had some issues with this even though it only involved going up and down
Fabulous Flower: what a hoot...practised this on paper for a while and in the end I just stitched it out as I was not going to get any better at it; funny...the eye only sees what the eye wants to see. Initially I thought that my flowers looked sort of alright, but when I had flattened the area around it, I saw that all of the flowers except one, did not look like flowers at all. So, yep, suck at that design.
Lines: finished the bottom off with some lines
Gridwork: could not help myself and included my favourite grid, the cathedral window, in there

For the back of the pillow I choose to stitch an overall flower design to match the front; I did this fairly quickly and did not stress too much about consistency or scale or indeed anything...just wanted to get a feel for filling a larger space with that as this could make a nice larger scale, allover design. This worked reasonably well and was best stitched with the foot on the pedal. When I stitched slower, I tended to become smaller and smaller...

Really like the back of my pillow

As always, this was good fun!

Linking up to the October 2015 FMQ Challenge at Quiltshopgal.

Karin