Another pre-Christmas post

Here we are in the lead up to Christmas 2014, why is it that the year goes by so quickly these days? It only seems a couple of months ago we were celebrating Christmas last year....must be the fast pace of life which most of us seem to have these days. Time to slow down perhaps......

Life has been a little hectic these past few months, like I said before - where has the time gone?
Here are some photo's of recent work done for my clients.  The first has been made by Ann, using cross-stitch designs for one of her many grandchildren & made for her 21st birthday. Quilting in the blocks was tailor made to fit around the designs, while the borders & sashing's were done with Feathers.

This quilt is made by Jessica, she's done a great job with the colour sequencing in her design. I used a Baptist Fan pattern on this traditional quilt, it finished up beautifully.

The next two pic's are from the same quilt, a more 'modern' design made by Sue. Unfortunately I neglected to take a photo of the whole quilt however these are more details photo's of work done, firstly on the blocks, then the border. I was able to design my own pattern of the wavy bubbles for the borders. I think it looks brilliant!!

This next quilt is called 'Pond House' which is a BOM available from Patchwork by Sea, Hove (suburb of Adelaide) & made by Jen &Terry who own this business. A lovely little shop where they have some beautiful fabrics, kits & classes. This quilt also gained 2nd place in the Group Category at the recent Festival of Quilts in Adelaide, 2014. I was very happy for them when they told me they had won this prize. The quilt hangs in the shop with the ribbon pinned proudly upon it. 

 

A close up of some of the work done on 'Pond House'

 

 

 Finally, here is a photo of our small family taken at our 40th Wedding Anniversary celebrations which was held at our home in September. It was also my 60th Birthday, so we combined to have it all in one due to other commitments around this time (always busy in September!). Two grandchildren were not able to be there with us, but it was lovely to have so many family & friends join us on the day. Thankyou for sharing this wonderful day with us.

 

 

I would like to wish you all a wonderful & blessed Christmas this year.

Although is has been a difficult one at times, I look forward to doing more work for you

in the New Year. I will be taking a little time off over the Christmas break, you never know....I may even find some free time to catch up on posting more photo's of all your beautiful quilts!!

 

Bluegum Quilting Services: Some more Quilts!

Bluegum Quilting Services: Some more Quilts!: Looks like I'm on a roll so thought I would update this page with just a few more photo's showing my work. Some of these were done...

Some more Quilts!

Looks like I'm on a roll so thought I would update this page with just a few more photo's showing my work.

Some of these were done a while back, I thought you would like to see them.  This first one is of a quilt top made by Margaret from Kangaroo Island, she made this for her grandson who is off to boarding school. He had chosen this quilt from her pile of UFO's to be quilted, hope he likes how the quilting has finished it off.

 This close up was meant to show some detail but those busy background fabrics prevent us from seeing the swirls that were stitched to hold things down.

This quilt was finished for Patchwork by Sea, Hove. Many hours put into this BOM which showcases the Shadow Play range of fabrics, using a chocolate brown background that shows up all those yummy bright fabrics in the piecing.

 Here is some detail of the above quilt. I used Nouveau Scallops for the quilting design, this is published by Lorien Quilting of Victoria, Australia.

Now for something FUN.....'Betty Boop' no less!! This quilt was crying out for some Trapunto underneath Betty, so I used 2 layers of Polyester & basted this behind the figure. After trimming away the excess it was then layered with Wool Blend Wadding & quilted to pronounce the areas on her body. THe outer background was quilted with 'Wandering Lips' which was modified from the original design by Ann Bright, USA. I thought this was most appropriate, considering the theme of the quilt.

This quilt was a commission - I was asked to put together a quilt using the panels of Japanese Ladies which were originally bags (machine embroidered on polyester fabric). Using some black homespun, a few Japanese prints & just a bit more of that blue print for the border & I think it finished up quite well. At least the owner was happy with the end result.

 A new baby in the family is always a great excuse to make a new quilt. My hairdresser Fiona made this one with some 3D machine embroidered butterflies, which I repeated in the blank blocks. She was so pleased with this & it was finished just in time for the baby shower - the mother of baby was really happy with it too.

And now we have a quilt with a little difference - Mixmasters!! Must say I haven't seen one of these before which proved a little challenging when it came to the quilting. My new client was quite happy with the result.

 Here is a closeup of the work done on the Mixmaster Quilt.

That's all for this time, I will continue to update more photo's in coming weeks. I'm trying to keep this blog updated with more recent work that I've done for my clients, may even get some pic's in of my own work if I'm lucky!!

Cheers for now
Val

Baby it's cold outside!!

Winter is here at last....you can certainly feel it in the air!! I've had the fire going in the house for a few weeks now, which makes it lovely & cosey.  Client quilts are beginning to come in thick & fast, which is all good of course. I've been getting a lot come in for Edge to Edge work, which is great as this is the quicker work I can get through & get back to my clients within a fairly short time frame.

Since January of this year, I've been making regular monthly trips to Patchwork by Sea which has now moved to Brighton Rd at Hove in suburban Adelaide. I've had some beautiful quilts sent to me for quilting through this shop, I'm so pleased to be able to offer this service to their regular customers. Below you can see some of the work I've been doing for these ladies. There are a couple of quilts made by my local clients too, their work is just as stunning.

Now to get stuck into refreshing myself with some 'techy' stuff so I can update a few things on this blog, which has been sadly neglected for some time. I've recently discovered that I need to either work on this or update my website which is going to be costly, so it looks like the lesser of two evils for me....wish me luck!! 

Until next time

Cheers, Val

Bluegum Quilting Services

It's a New Year & New Beginning

Hello everyone,
Here we are in a New Year, 2014 no less.....where has the time gone?  I haven't done a very good job posting anything during 2013, so my promise to my readers & myself, is to rectify this during this coming year. I've been browsing blog pages by fellow quilters' & I must say they have been doing a grand job keeping up there photo's & stories. So my goal is to write regular posts with lots of photo's.

As I have soooo many photo's to catch up & post for you, I will select some of the more favourite ones to post on the blog but not all at once, over the next few weeks as least. I have a new computer to get used to as well, so wish me luck as I venture into the world of Windows 8!!

Here is one of our favourite flowers in the garden, only from last year's blooming.....we haven't been able to get hold of the Sturt Desert Pea seedlings yet this season.

This quilt was worked with some basic custom quilting for Margaret. She made this quilt for her grandson as he's off to boarding school this year. She did a great job with the piecing, lots of little squares between those panels.

And here is a photo of more detailed work done on this quilt.

Here is a beautiful baby quilt for a new granddaughter for Fiona. The butterflies have been machine embroidered on solvy so they have a lace effect, then sewn on after they were made. Some simple custom quilting to finish this off & I added the binding ready for her to sew to the back as time was of the essence, the baby shower was happening a few days after she collected this quilt.

Here is something a little different & funky!! Betty Boop in all her glory, Trapunto quilted with 2 layers of poly wadding, then layered & quilted with a continuous Lips design which I made up myself to suit the quilt. I think it finished up really well & my client was quite pleased with it too.

This quilt made by Sonya of SA Mallee Country Connection at Karoonda, allowed me to add a pattern which used more pattern, so I chose one called Hibiscus, stitched in green thread which helped it show up really well.  It also added to the look of the quilt which turned out great.

A Tessellating design was chosen by Jenny to piece this quilt while she was on holiday in England last year. Delivered to me as soon as she arrived home to quilt with a basic design called Splash which seemed to suit this quilt perfectly.

Glenda made this quilt/wall hanging with paper foundation piecing. She did a great job & it's very effective. A little challenging to come up with a suitable quilting plan but I think it worked well in the end. You can see what I quilted in the following photo of the detail.

Two little baby quilts made from charm squares for our grand-nephew who arrived in February Quilted together with very basic patterns that worked really well.

Another simple pieced quilt which didn't need a lot of heavy work done so I used a pattern called Streamers which worked quite well.

This quilt made by Patchwork by Sea in a Thousand Pyramid design, I used a provincial design called Dutch for a simple edge to edge quilting design.

I think that will do for now, except one last photo of some Rainbow Lorikeets feeding on the nectar in these gumtrees in our front yard, They make such a noise but are beautiful to watch at the start & end of every day.

And look at these Pansies still flowering in January - we've had such a mild spring here in the Mallee. I've never had them stay flowering this late. Mother Nature continues to surprise me at times....

Until next time

Keep safe & happy quilting

Val
Bluegum Quilting Services

Catching Up....

Still trying to catch up with posting photo's, mostly of quilting jobs done for my clients. The quilts in this edition are those done during November and December 2013, hope you enjoy them.

I'm on baby sitting duties this week, so while the little one is having a sleep I will post more photo's of the many quilts I've been working on. But first, here is a pic of the bird's in our front garden, enjoying the bird bath a few days ago.

A few months ago I was asked by a friend to 'put something together' as a donation for a raffle prize for Aminya Homes at Mannum. This is what I made, she was really happy & we are hoping it will help to sell their tickets.

And here is a more detailed picture of this quilt.

A very simple quilt for a new baby boy, I used a pattern called Bobbles for the
edge to edge quilting.

Here is a pretty quilt made by Joan who is in her early 80's & has only been quilting for a few years. She's doing a great job. Quilted using Ladybugs design by Lorien Quilting, an Aussie designer of quilting patterns.

Detail of Ladybugs on Joan's quilt.

A beautiful quilt for a little boy, the stitchery bloacks have a 'space' theme. Quite basic custom quilting with a freehand swirls design on the squares between the blocks.

Showing some detail work stitched on this quilt.

This next quilt was made by myself as a commission from Jacc who had purchased  three bags while on holiday in Vietnam (these are the blocks with the three ladies). When asked to make them into a quilt, I did find it a little challenging, but once I began with some black homespun & oriental fabrics from my stash, this design soon came together.  I needed to purchase the border print, gold and plain blue fabric, but in the end I was happy with it and so was Jacc.  Quilted with an edge to edge clamshell design, has helped to finish it off nicely.

A very traditional block design of Tumbling Blocks was used to create this wall hanging by Marg B. I used a feather like flower design in the sections of the blocks with feather sprays in the background areas and trying to make them reflect each other as much as possible. Marg was over the moon with the quilting.

Here you can see more detail of what I did on the Tumbling Blocks quilt.

Julie used a traditional Churn Dash block in various shades of Aqua, Grey and White, to make this quilt for her niece's 15th birthday. These are very modern colours & I'm sure the young girl will just love it!!! Quilted with a simple edge to edge pattern called Bubbles

This quilt had a lot of Ballerina's and ballet shoes in the print. The ribbons from the shoes seemed to pop out to me, so I used an edge to edge pattern called Ribbon to quilt this quilt.  It suited really well & Corinne was very happy with the end result for her grand daughter who is Ballet crazy.

This quilt was so big that when hung up to take this photo, the bottom edge was still on the floor! Lots of piecing with a very creative way to use two beautiful Japanese panels. Quilted with an edge to edge design, except for the two red panels which were customised as they were hand stitched with a sashiko design, as you can see in the detailed phot's below.

The edge to edge pattern is called Ginko, which is seen in a lot of Japanese fabrics. I use it quite often for these style of quilts.

I customised the quilting on the red blocks to enhance the sashiko design which was hand stitched.

That's all for this time, I will post more photo's in coming days while I sort through all the pic's that have accumulated over the past year or so.  I trust you are all enjoying the New Year as we lead into 2014, time for renewed thoughts & promises of resolutions that we often make.
My resolution for 2014 is to keep up this blog on a regular basis & to keep in touch with my customers more often....I think a newsletter is way overdue!!!!


Until next time
Keep safe & Happy Quilting

Val
Bluegum Quilting Services
Murray Bridge, Sth Australia