Do you know what another name for the Wild Rose is? Meadow Rose!!!! So, to find a Hoffman Dream Big panel called Wild Rose was meant to be! I finished my Hoffman Dream Big - Tide Pool recently and knew that I needed to do at least one more! I so enjoyed working with 2 threads at the same time on the Tide Pool quilt that I wanted to try combing more threads. I quilted all the background and petal outlining with WonderFil's Tutti (13) Hibiscus. this thread is a very subtle variegation from a light pink to a darker fuschia. WonderFil's variegated threads are random dyed, so that changes are gradual and were the perfect choice for this quilt. Once I outlined each petal and had the piano key b

I've been busy. In January I went to the Handi Quilter head office for National Educator training in Salt Lake City. We had a great time getting to know each other better and learning from the Studio Educators and one another. We had a bit of show and tell. We had been challenged to quilt ice dyed panels that we had been given at 2016's educator training. I blogged about my efforts here. In addition to these quilts we were showing, some of us brought other quilts to show. Kelly Ashton showed a Hoffman Dream Big panel that she had quilted. We were all in awe and many of us have since quilted our own. Here's the store of my first attempt. I knew one store in Calgary carried the prints. I knew

A number of years ago quilters were introduced to a wonderful pen. It marked paper and fabric, and heat or friction removed the marks. Quilters used them for everything!! A problem and a worry soon became apparent. These marks didn't erase or iron off completely. If your quilt got cold, a residue of the mark would re-appear. We were horrified!!!!! BUT a but of research showed that these pens were NOT MADE FOR FABRIC. They were initially made for true Crossword Puzzlers who worked in ink! This wonderful new product that we quilters adopted was a disappointment. What's a quilter to do? I still use these heat/friction erasable pens but I limit their use on my projects. I'll use the pen to mar

I've been thinking a lot lately about how to stream line my communication with everyone. I write a Meadow Rose Quilts newsletter a couple of times a month. I've spent most of the day working on the latest issue and it's long! Most of that is a repeat of what I'm writing in my blog posts and facebook page anyway. It's not that I find it too time consuming, but as someone who receives almost 100 emails and notifications a day and wants to read everything!, I think its time I just simplify and not make things more time consuming for us all! So.....I'm doing 2 things. Firstly, I'm not going to write the newsletter anymore! I'm going to use the blog posts as a way to communicate. These blog pos

Today I'm sharing the wedding quilt I made for my quilting niece. Steph loves to quilt and over the years has made many wonderful quilts. When her wedding was announced I asked her Mum for colour ideas and was told she "doesn't need any more quilts"!!! As her Mum is not a quilter, she just doesn't understand that we can never have enough quilts! Steph loves purple. She always has and I decided to include a bit, not a lot of purple in her quilt. I used the Metro Rings pattern from Sew Kind of Wonderful. A bundle of hand dyed fat quarters and some solid navy fabric and the quilt was underway. The rulers make sewing these melons quite quick and easy. I had a number of blocks built and arranged

I've been playing a lot with doubling up my threads when quilting on both my domestic and longarm machines. I'll write a separate post about doubling threads on a domestic machine. This post I want to focus on combining 2 threads from Superior Threads. I've used Superior Brytes, which I think has recently been discontinued** and Omni #3157, Indian Paintbrush. The Brytes is a 30wt 3ply polyester thread that is nice and shiny. Since I can't get anymore of this, I don't want to start quilting a large project and run out! Thus it is perfect for a project this size. The Omni is a 30wt poly wrapped poly thread. It looks and acts like cotton and is not shiny. **EDIT: since writing and posting this

What do you do to prevent the outside edge seams of your quilt from unravelling when you don't have a border to contain those seams? We're taught that we don't need to back stitch when we are sewing quilt pieces together. It keeps the seams from getting to bulky. I only back stitch when I know my seams will be at the outer edge of the quilt. Another trick is to sew a stitch line close to the outside edge of the quilt top. This keeps the seams from coming undone.  This stitching line also helps to keep the outside edges of the quilt from stretching out of shape. Give these 2 tricks a try and see which works best for you  on your next project.