Flying geese and trees by Carla

 Ahh, cozy flannels.  Hard to think about those when it's 80 degrees out, but it's going to get cold and wet soon. Carla made some lovely tiny trees and flying geese to snuggle under.  Then quilted with leaves.  Almost (but not quite) makes me wish for a rainy day to cuddle under it and eat soup.

Butterflies and Hexagons by Joy

How can you not love this quilt?  It's in pinks and purples, and pieced with hexagons.  (Even if Joy did them by machine, I still love grandmother's flower garden quilts), and then sweet butterflies appliqued across.  What a lucky little girl to get this one.  

 Quilted with a meander of butterflies in the border and figure eights in the body on the quilt.  SID around the butterflies.

"The Love Quilt Project" by Judy

 I got a call from Judy about 4 days before I left for a week's vacation.  She has 2 quilt tops that need to be quilted and bound by the end of the month.  Can I help?  What else can you say, but yes. 

 These quilts are bound for Africa, through a charitable organization that Judy works with.  The blocks are designed by kids across the country, I saw that some came from Florida.  Judy puts the tops together, and then quilted most of the pink quilt herself before becoming overwhelmed with trying to do it on her domestic sewing machine.  I finished up the borders only on the pink quilt.

I wish I could ready the language.

"Leigh's Leaves" or "Collage #2 by LeighAnoth

Leigh is another of those amazing people who do hand embroidery.  Then to take all these little fiddly bits from your stash and to create something like this.  Astounding.

 Wool yarn couched down into a flower.

Flowers embroidered

Buttons and lace bits.  Quilted all over with a leafy meander

"Rebecca's Bookcase of Dreams" by Xande

 What is wrong with this woman?  She actually likes paper piecing!  This lovely and amazing quilt is probably by now in London and in the hands of it's lucky recipient.  Rebecca is now about 2 years old, and the daughter of Xande's friends.  Lucky little girl.

 We have the "Harry Potter" shelf, complete with the "Sorting Hat"

 The shelf of "Dragon" books, and I really do love the dragon.

 Here's the shelf of the "Lord Of the Rings" books, with the panel of them walking along.

Gotta have cat books!

"Candy for Cops"

I call it "Candy for Cops" because most of the prints are some sort of sweet treats.  It all started years ago with a specific candy fabric that I loved, but never quite knew what to do with.  Finally decided "What are you keeping it for?", and started this.  I pulled the pinks, greens and purples from the stash thinking that there was enough of one to be in a consistent spot, but there wasn't enough of anything for one specific part.  I even ended up piecing many parts of the sashing just to have enough

This is the original fabric, but then I had others that went with it, but didn't necessarily match the "theme", and added those.

My giggle about a few of these.  I was on the Mt. Adams Century bike ride, and passed the quilt shop for the 3rd time in as many years.  Pass on the final climb, let's go to the quilt shop Xande!  So we did, and found several fun fabrics that had to come home with us.

"Frogs" by Sharyle

I always have to laugh at myself when I hand up a quilt to take it's final photos and realize just how darling it is.  Stuff I didn't see when I was quilting it.  Like the fact that the blocks are sashed with green and yellow/red fabrics on the diagonal. How sweet!

Green minky fabric on the back and quilted with "Frogs" panto

All of the blocks are fussy cut from a frog print to feature a specific design.

Hallowwen Embroidery by Sharyle

First, let me say that anyone who does hand embroidery astounds me.  But this many blocks?  And the detail?  Wow.

 She filled the center of the quilt with these 9 patch blocks set on point, and surrounded by the black setting squares.

Now the embroidery begins.  I stitched about 1/4" from all the exterior seams, and echoed around the stitching.  then a background fill, a different one for each block. 

Since "The Black Cauldron" serves hot soups, I quilted "steam" in the background.

Spiderwebs

 An easy meander to attempt to look like popcorn

 Vines to go with the vines growing from the pumpkin patch

 Water meander to go around the laundry line

 Peacock feather meander, not sure why I chose it.

 Ribbons to mimic the "fly thru" banner.

 Not sure what it's called, but I love how it echos the design that she has stitched around the blocks.

 "Mimbari".  A design of my own.

It's supposed to be "hair" to go with the hair salon.

NY Beauty by Jeannine

Oh my.  Jeannine tells me that she has a quilt that is nearly ready for quilting, and states "The quilt is kind of busy, so the quilting needs to be subtle."  Initially she suggested an edge to edge design, but when the quilt arrived, I suggested that we go a bit over the top and do this heirloom.  With some help from customer Michael, I chose a gold thread, and started in.  When you really look at the quilt, you can see the huge variety of quilting fabrics she used for piecing.  There are Christmas bits, Laurel Burch, Aboriginal, flowers, you name it.  Not to mention that I found several pieces in her quilt that I also have several of them in my own stash.

 

What fun to pull out my rulers, idea books and often times, just look at the fabric to see what it needed.

 Sometimes it was a really tight background fill, like in the light blue above where I've got straight lines going up and down, mimicking the design in the fabric.  Or, the one on the right, where I outlined the flowers in the background.

I couldn't resist adding in feathers every once in a while.

 I need to point out that in the right half of the above photo, those red outlines on the blue points finish at 1/4".  Oh my.

 I love how the background is tightly quilted, allowing the pieces triangles to really pop.

 Aboriginal fabric needed a bit of Aboriginal quilting.

 As if all the paper piecing wasn't enough, let's add curved piecing too!

 This is one of my favorites.  Just copied what the print in the fabric already showed.

Again, 1/4" finished pieces on the lighter purple around the darker purple triangles.