Tutorial: Continuous Cable Border

This tutorial has been a long time coming. My apologies. It was back in November 2009 when my first was just a little one when I first showed this continuous cable border and I used it again for my sisters wedding present in August 2012. I have received so many e-mails asking for the pattern. Here is the pattern that I will leave up for the month of March on the blog before putting a PDF version it in my Etsy store. If you would like a PDF version of the pattern e-mailed to you during March - please let me know.

I haven't done much hand knitting for a longtime. My little bunnies are SO fascinated by knitting needles and the wonder of throwing a ball of yarn around - I can't tell you how many times I accidentally left the knitting within arm reach of one of them and they pulled the needles out! You would have thought I would have learnt after the first occurrence of needle pulling - but apparently not!

Continuous Cable Border Pattern

Diary of a Longarm: Week 7

This a sneak peak at a quilt I am making for the girls school as a fundraiser. The family who won the quilt requested a 'modern quilt, purple, with flowers'. I've been thinking for a while of what pattern to use for quilting.

Here is what I decided. It is from Doodle Quilting by Cheryl Malkowski - I love this book - it has such great ideas from practice to putting various elements together to make interesting designs.

Turn your Kids Art into Greeting Cards

I keep pretty much every piece of 'art' my little ones make. I was spring cleaning a little and going through all the kids art work trying to keep the most special pieces - as even by age 4 my drawers are overflowing with precious scribbles and blobs of paint.

I couldn't bring myself to throw away any of the art and this project has been in the back of my mind for a long long time.

This is an example of the sorts of pieces I have.

Dairy of a Longarm: Week 6

I have purchased some micro handles which are supposed to help me with micro/up close work. I tend to try to do quite dense/detailed quilting. The micro handles are helpful - your hands are in more of a similar position to that of domestic machine quilting - although they do reduce your working space by a few inches as they take up a little room in front of the front bar. I have been trying out some new things I haven't done before - using the Welcome Baby Blankets that I am making for our church as my experimenting ground.

New York Metro Mod Quilters: Quilt Top

As I have mentioned this top came from my guild the New York Metro Mod Quilters. I haven't belonged to a quilting guild before - my teacher Teri had encouraged me to join one. At my first meeting I showed this memorial quilt. For some reason I thought that I would be flooded with ideas on how I could make it better, improved it, done it differently - but to my surprise people where SO kind about it. So kind my cheeks got pink.

I also mentioned I was getting a longarm and happy to practice on anything anyone wanted to give me. Perhaps a foolish offer as a few minutes later I had this quilt top in my arms. The backing material was also provided by the guild.

WIP: Kids Art Quilt: Fabric Building Blocks

My scrap bag has got utterly out of control - over flowing onto the floor and carpet - so I spent the weekend organizing scraps into colored bins and discovering little bits here. Separating pieces that I  can turn into speedy negative space filled quilts. I feel like since Freddie arrived I have become a little bit possessed and obsessed in thinking about quilts I can quickly make so that I can load and spend the majority of time quilting them. The more negative space the better!

Memory Pillows: 9/11 Firefighters Memorial Quilt

It has been a while now since I presented the Memorial quilt I made for the only Fire Marshal to loose his life in 9/11. It was such a great project.

When I work with families on quilts I always keep every single scrap until I know what the families want to do with them. And by every last scrap I mean EVERY label, button, seam, tiny sliver - everything is kept together until I know what the families wishes are.

On this occasion the family asked for two small cushions - one for each of the grandchild.