Elaine’s mom pieced this quilt as a gift for her granddaughter, and Elaine brought it to me for quilting. The relatively large pieces of the snowball blocks required a little more quilting, and the pantograph “Overlapping Crop Circles” was the perfect size for this quilt. I love the texture it created.

Colette made this quilt as a gift and asked for simple, not too dense quilting. She picked the design “Raindrops”. I prefer to use this one sideways to create a wavy pattern but in this case it doesn’t matter as her quilt is square. In case you are wondering, I didn’t like the pictures I took with the quilts draped over the frame, so I went back to my old method for now until I can come up with a better way.

This fun quilt was made by Mary, and we didn’t have to think about the quilting design at all. “Deer in the Woods” has deer, moose, bears and trees and was just perfect for this project. It shows up nicely on the back of the quilt.

As promised (or at least as planned), here is the other Tuxedo Cat pillow pattern. My favourite block is block #5 with the sleeping kitty. I am really happy with this design, I still think you can almost see her paws twitching, and those little pink paw pads are just adorable. This will be the last Tuxedo Cat block to be turned into a separate pillow pattern. As with the other pillow, I enlarged the block to 12″ instead of 10″ to make handling those small pieces easier. I have four more patterns left to publish and two weeks to go until Black Friday, I will try to have them all up on the website by then.

Click to purchase Sleeping Kitty Pillow pattern

This romantic rose quilt was the third project Carla brought to me for quilting. The top has been around for a while, she thinks at least ten years, waiting for a border to be added. Carla felt that a border wasn’t going to happen anytime soon and decided that finished was better than perfect and the quilt was just fine without a border. Choosing a quilting design was easy, we went with the rose theme, and I used the pantograph “Rose Garden”.

This cozy flannel quilt is another one of Carla’s projects. The quilting design is called “Diagonal Plaid Bias Cut”, and it is my new favourite for quilts made from squares. There is also one just called “Diagonal Plaid” that doesn’t have the rounded corners of this “Bias Cut” design version but I personally think that the rounded corners work much better with the strict geometric lines and angles of the pieced squares.

Here is the next of the patterns that I finished quite some time ago but never posted on the website: a Tuxedo Cat Pillow. If you have been following the Tuxedo Cats BOM, you will recognize this kitty from the first block that I published back in January. It is just a 12″ block instead of a 10″ one, and the Flying Geese border is 3″ instead of the 2.5″ from the quilt. I had planned to do a separate pillow pattern from the beginning. Not everyone is such a cat lover that they need a quilt with twelve different blocks, and this is also a great gift for the favourite cat lover in your life. I started selling the printed pattern at the Abbotsford show back in April, and it was a big hit, the patterns sold out right away. Over the summer I turned another block of the quilt into a pillow pattern, I am hoping to post this one next week, so stay tuned.

Click to purchase Tuxedo Cat Pillow pattern

Carla made this quilt top a very long time ago, she thinks probably 25 years. Her original plan was to add appliquéd hearts to the alternate blocks but life got in the way and she decided the quilt was just fine without the hearts. The quilting design is called “Azaleas” and fills the negative space nicely. I am experimenting with taking the pictures in a different spot, with the quilt draped on the frame but I am not sure yet if I like it. I was hoping to get the colours to look better but haven’t had much success. The pink fabric looks too much like bubble gum in the photos, it is a very nice and soft pink in reality. I’ll keep trying!

Arlene made this maritime quilt in blue and white from mostly half-square triangles. The pantograph we chose for quilting is called “Seaside Swirl” and was just perfect for this project. This is another great pattern for using up scraps, it can easily be adjusted to different sizes of half-square triangles and would look great in any colour.

This is Ginger’s version of the popular Labyrinth Walk pattern. I have quilted one of these before, you can see it here. I decided on a different quilting design this time, it is called “Overlapping Crop Circles”. Isn’t that a great name for a quilting design? It spoke to me right away, and it was perfect for Ginger’s quilt. The curves complement the strict geometric lines, the circles/spirals have something of a labyrinth, and they also went really well with the circular pattern of the black fabric that Ginger used in her quilt top. I love how this one turned out. But why I didn’t realize that the quilt is upside down in the picture I took will forever remain a mystery 😉

Nancy purchased the kit for this “Stars for a Cure” quilt a very long time ago. I was curious and did some research… the pattern was published in 1997! Wow, what a blast from the past! Nancy was motivated to finish it for this year’s quilt show. I quilted it a while back, she had the top done with lots of time to spare. The pattern we chose is called “Lapis”.

I was busy all day with my booth but I went in early on Saturday morning to take a quick look at the show that I had helped set up. Quite a few quilts in the show had been quilted by me, and I tried to take pictures of the others, so I would have something to show that you haven’t seen here before. It was a great show, lots of amazing quilts. The only big quilt I had in the show was the finished sample of the Tuxedo Cats. Two blocks haven’t been published yet but here is a preview of what the finished quilt looks like.

My booth was right next to the entrance, and everybody had to pass me on their way to the hall with the big quilts. It started a little slow but around lunch time on Saturday things got very busy and stayed that way almost until the end of the show. Looking at the pictures of my booth, I realized that I have several patterns that I have been selling at shows but never uploaded to the website or even mentioned here on my blog. I will start working on that… we’ll see how that goes with the Christmas rush coming up. One gentleman was in awe of my Pansies pattern, he loved the colours and how realistic the flowers look, and after he had seen the show he came back to my booth because he wanted to vote for my Pansies as Best in Show 🙂 He was very disappointed when I told him he had to find another favourite quilt since my sample was not part of the actual show.

Encounters like this one make up for the negative parts. Somebody actually stole from me this time. Three patterns went missing and haven’t turned up. I also stopped someone trying to walk away with another three and made them pay for what they picked. It might have been an honest mistake but judging by their behaviour (which had made me watch them in the first place) I don’t think so. I usually just have one bin of patterns out for people to dig through, and that makes it easy to watch and pay attention to where the patterns go. This time I had three, apparently that was too much for the busy time. Next time I will be prepared and go back to just one bin.

But enough ranting, it was a great show, we had a lot of fun, and I enjoyed those two days very much. Here are a few impressions of the show, I hope you enjoy them as well.