A Quilted Prom Dress!

Today I thought I would share with you something a little bit different. My oldest daughter had prom this Saturday and the darling girl actually agreed to allow myself and my dear friend Annie to make her dress, but not just any prom dress mind you... but a QUILTED prom dress!!!

Now she did have one stipulation, if she didn't like the dress she would be allowed to purchase a dress to wear to prom, I agreed because after all, it is her senior prom, her last one. The one that MATTERS!

Now my first disclaimer is this I CAN NOT and DO NOT sew clothing, Oh hell no! But I am lucky enough that my friend Annie just happens to be an excellent seamstress! So she handled the construction phase, while I did the actual quilting and crystallizing of the dress. And like a dummy I didn't get a single shot of the dress on the frame!

Instead I have these photos to share, No mind you prom is not for a couple of days, these are of Torrie this evening after a day in outside in the rain taking photos for her school....

 This is a close up of the bodice area before the crystals were put on. You can see the quilting fairly well in this shot, but it really doesn't do much for the dress....

 This is my lovely daughter, like I said she spent all day in the rain taking photos for yearbook! I will post better pictures after Prom!

 This is the quilting down the thigh, it tapers off at the knee, it is the same floral design as the bodice.

 This is the bodice, filled out and with crystals, I had to be very careful of the floral placement when stitching this... did not want any awkward flower centers....

And the back, the band is quilted as well as the straps.

Oh and the good news, she loves it!
Thanks for stopping by today...
Happy Quilting,
Ginny

Garrett's Eagle Scout Quilting for Cancer Project coming along nicely!

Is a serious understatement! I am pleased to say that the main reason I have been negligent about blogging is because I am so very busy quilting! My business has just exploded this last month. Last week I get calls for 10 quilts! For a fairly new business I can't complain. On top of these quilts I have been working with Garrett on his Eagle Scout quilts, we are coming to the end of his project with all quilts needing to be quilted, bound and labeled by Feb. 21st! This week I have had the boy scouts over and they are finishing the last 5 quilts! Last night was day 2 they are finishing one a night and I have been very impressed with how they have just jumped right in. Check out the pictures below!

 One of the dads was so intrigued by the whole process that he as if he could give it a try. I loved his comment that "after a day of surgery (he is a Dr.) this would be very relaxing and rather zen like."

 David was a bit nervous at first but got the hang of it pretty quickly!

 Matt and David feeling rather proud, and for good reason, they each finished a quilt!

 And I think they actually had fun doing it. Matt has decided that quilting should be an Olympic sport!

Garrett working on his quilt.

Wendi did 2!

 These are just a few of the quilts that everyone has been working on.

This is Garrett showing off one of the quilts at Quilt Party. Stay tuned for pictures of when we get the entire batch completed! 











Oh and if you want to follow more closely what all we are doing with these quilt please log onto facebook and "like" my Candy Mountain Quilts page by clicking

www.facebook.com/candymntquilts

As always thanks for stopping by!

Happy quilting,

Ginny

Peacocks take 2

My last post was all about the peacock quilt I made for my husbands manager. Well, I liked the quilt so much that I felt the need to make another one! This one I made with the intent of keeping it, well you know what they say about good intentions! I finished the quilt and decided it needed a bit more sparkle. So I got out my crystal setting tool and went to town!

I had a great time both quilting this quilt and adding the crystals,
I think it fairly shines. Enough so that I will be entering it into a couple local shows!

  A couple of detailed shots of the flowers.

I didn't count how many but I know there are at least 500 crystals!

 Sadly, the one thing I did was inflame my shoulder, so no quilting until I can get in to see my doctor!

I even put crystals in the feathers!

I really had planned on keeping this quilt for myself, but after showing it to Bobbie and seeing her reaction. I will be giving this quilt away after the quilt shows.

It will go to a good home! Now I have to make myself ANOTHER ONE!!!

A Peacock quilt for Rhonda.

Last week my darling husband called me from work to ask if I could make a quilt for his managers, it seems that she doesn't have any heat in her office. I said I would and set out to make this quilt. I played with the layout on EQ7 until I found something I liked and then got to work, it took me just one day to put together. 

 

I had a lot of fun making the quilt, and deciding how I was going to quilt it. I needed something fast and easy, yet elegant to match the beautiful peacock on the panel. 

 So, I decided to do a simple swirl type fill with tiny peacock feathers in the black, stitched with black thread so not to detract from the print.

 Then in the pinwheel blocks I had a feather party! Each half square triangle got a peacock feather!

I needed to make this a super warm quilt (due to the lack of heat) so I opted for Minkee on the back with Warm and Natural as the batting. I love how the quilting shows on the back of the quilt.

Stuart took the quilt to work today and by all reports she loves the quilt!

Now I think I will make another one, for me! And I am going to add some hot fix crystals to mine!

What I've been working on.

I have been a busy busy girl! I wish I could say that I have been working on personal quilts, but nope that's not the case. Oh don't get me wrong I am certainly not complaining! I have been getting more and more customer quilts and that makes me very happy. Plus I am now doing at least two classes a month over at the shop and that is a good thing too.

I have just finished piecing a beautiful quilt top that is due to be quilted this weekend, it is for Stuarts boss. She doesn't have any heat in her office so he ask me if I could make her a quilt... this is the results!

 I have finished 4 customer quilts since Thanksgiving. Here is a snippet of what I have been working on, each is very unique and had it's own challenges.

 This is a gorgeous quilt! It is all embroidery. She wanted just a simple stitch in the ditch with a monopoly thread. So that's what I did.

 A jeans quilt, this was a fun on. A simple meander, the customer used a fusible and fused the tree material on top of denim, I was a little worried about the weight and my machine handling the denim, and knit and fusible. She did good though and I had no problems!

 This was a quilt made by my friend Carol. I purchased several new leaf templates at MQX in October and was telling her about them, she "donated" her quilt for me to learn on! I have to say I LOVE the templates, the leaves stitch out beautifully and really surprisingly fast.

 The back of the quilt, I like it!

 A close up of one of the leaves.

 And a big ole feather on the border.

This last little quilt is a baby quilt for another friend from the shop. This was a super fast and easy quilt done with a sweet heart pantograph. I do love Ann Bright Pantos!

Happy Halloween!

Just popping in to wish one and all a very happy halloween!

               A quick blast from the past....

Gin

Happy fall, a trip through the maze.

 It's that time of year again, fall... The leaves are turning, the nights are cold. We have fired up the pellet stove so the smell wood smoke now fills the air. This fall is bitter sweet to me. This will be the last fall that Torrie will live at home as my little girl. I keep coming back to that reality. It pops into my head at the most unexpected times. That at this time next year she will be off, living her life separate from us. She will be an adult and in college. I have been making a point to not slack off on some of the things that have become tradition for us, one of those thing is the yearly trip to the pumpkin patch.


 We have made this trip every year since the girls were little. There is a bit of a ritual, Morgen always jumps from the straw pyramid, we always get caramel apples and of course we get our "perfect pumpkin" and as the years have slipped past and the girls have grown so have their pumpkins. The winner for the biggest pumpkin this year was Morgen. Hers weighed in at
40 lbs.                                                                                                

 The there was the leisurely stroll through the corn maze. Oh and for those who don't know I am NOT fond of corn mazes. I guess I am to much of a control freak, I don't like the feeling of being lost! After about 2 miles (yes I had the pedometer going) we finally found a "shortcut" out. I told them they cheated. No one listened.

My two pumpkins, so grown up yet so very young!

Thanks for stopping by today. Have a Happy Halloween!
Ginny

MQX West and a Class with Dusy Farrell

So, I mentioned how much fun I have been having lately and my trip to Portland for MQX, I could rave for days at how awesome the show was. One of the coolest things I got to do was take the echo puzzle filler class with Dusty, he is an interesting instructor, very free form and easy to talk to. You get the feeling that he is just an nice guy! Any how I jumped at the chance to take his class because I love his quilting style but just could not wrap my head around echoing those swirls. Well three hours later I was rocking the swirls! Plus very quickly picked up one of the flower designs I have always struggled with, on and a curly feather. Yep pure inspiration, that's all it took!

So, I get back home head full of swirls and curls and spirals, had to finish a quilt for a friend. When I got it done I threw a narrow piece of black on the extra backing and played for about 20 minutes... This is what I did!Yeppers I am super proud of myself!!! And now that I have the feel for it, I know I will get better. So what do you think? Pretty wild huh!
Oh and I love the new thread I got. It is Superior Thread, from the Rainbows line, called "the quilt show" Oh and a close up of that feather at the bottom.

Did I mention that my Crown Jewel stitches like a dream...

Well that's all for now.
Thanks for stopping in again,
Gin

Candy Mountain Quilts.

Well, two posts in one day I think it is a record! 

I finally got some work done on my Candy Mountain Quilts site. It took me a while to get everything written up. But I am now set up to take customer quilts via the internet! My pricing guide is there, quilt prep, and photos (not many yet) of  my quilting. I will be posting more photos as time allows. I plan the page to be kind of a photo album of sorts, so not a lot of chatter. (I will leave that for here.) So stop by Candy Mountain Quilts and let me know what you think. If you find errors please let me know. And if you like what you see, then pass it on!
Thanks for your support!
Gin

MQX and Eagle Scout

Not sure why I have been having such a hard time keeping up with blogging, I just can't seem to find the time to write. I keep saying its because I a super busy and that really is the reason! Between my customer quilts, my own quilts, donation quilts and now Garrett's Eagle Scout project I hardly have time to breathe!  I am going to keep this post fairly short and just talk about two things.

I got to go to MQX last weekend, Oh my did I have a blast! Stuart and I spent two days at the Expo! This was my first time ever at a longarm quilting show and all I can say is WOW!!! The quilts were stunning (I didn't know you could add that many sparkly crystals to a quilt!) The vendors were great (I spent a LOT of money) The guest speaker was hilarious, the classes I took, well the one with Dustin Farrell was awesome, the one with Karen McTavish, not so much so, and I am absolutely going again next year!!! I will be signing up for more classes, there were just so many to choose from and I was on a very limited time and money budget. I have already started saving for next year and have told the daycare parents I am taking the week off!
I you ever get the chance to go to either the east coast or west coast show DO IT!

The other thing that has been keeping me busy is Garrett's Eagle Scout, Garrett is Torrie's boyfriend and a really nice young man. For his eagle scout he is donating at least 10 quilts to the cancer center. I agreed to be his adviser. It is an easy job, but I am having to teach him about quilting as we go. He has been a good learner and seems to be enjoying the learning. Here is one of the quilts that he will be donating.

 Torrie and Garrett cutting out fabric to go into the kits for the ladies.

 

Garrett at Quilt Party telling about his project and handing out the kits. Out of 10 kits he found takers for 9 of them.

Well that's about it in a nut shell, Oh I have been doing a LOT of other quilting but unless you want to read a minor novel I will keep it to this.
Happy quilting,
Ginny

Snow Hook Kennel Quilt, Plus some!

Good morning, and what a glorious day! The kids are now officially back in school, and I have been busy busy busy quilting. I spent labor day weekend working on a couple of baby quilts and I finished not one, not two but three customer quilts! I think I am back in the quilting groove. I did quilt this summer but not as much as I usually do.

I wanted to share my latest customer quilts with you. These were made by a friend that I have been teaching basic piecing to, when she first started bringing me her quilts, well her piecing was less than perfect.... I started showing her how to cut her fabric more accurately, and that worked into piecing... before I knew it we had become very good friends and we now meet a couple of times a week to quilt together! Anyhow she decided she wanted to make a couple of quilts for her brother who is raising money to fund his run in the Iditarod. These next two quilts are what she made.

Not a great picture, but you can see more in the close ups....

 Moose.... I did a snowflake design in the window sashings, and then outlined the main features in the block.

 

                                                 This is what it looks like on the back

 This is the other quilt, another attic windows, but this one has pictures of the race team and the dogs. the center block says Snowhook Kennels. That is the name of her brothers kennel. If you want to learn more about this team and maybe interested in sponsoring them in the next race please stop by their blog!     http://snowhookkennel.blogspot.com/

 Another picture of the wildlife quilt, just because it was so much fun to quilt!

Kelly's last quilt of the day, this is a queen size quilt, she learned how to applique! I quilted it in a pretty butterfly panto.

 Now on to the baby quilts I worked on this weekend... The back story..... I have not seen my niece Amanda since she was 6 years old, last year we found each other on facebook. That 6 year old little girl now has 4 children of her own! She ask me a while ago if I would make a Minnie Mouse quilt for her baby. Took me forever to find a Minnie fabric that I liked. Well, after an afternoons work this is what I put together. Now to quilt it (thinking ribbons and bows) and send it off to her!

My other baby quilt for the weekend it for one of my daycare kids. Her mom came to me and ask if I could use her old crib bedding... (the one seen in this picture) to make her a new quilt. Oh goodie a challenge! so I said sure. She brought me this huge pile of bedding... bumper pads, dust ruffle, baby quilt and sheets. I proceeded to start un stitching.... spent a day with my seam ripper and away I went.

 

After un stitching, I then took pictures of each fabric and imported them into EQ 7 so I could start the design process.

 

Now, I knew I didn't have any really large chunks of fabric so piecing the new quilt was going to be almost impossible, Mom wanted a quilt that will last until she is a teen, so it has to be a pretty large quilt. So the plan was to add borders, lots of borders... this was my first draft. I NEVER go with my first draft! Oh and Mom wanted minkee, so I was able to add other fabrics into the final quilt!

 So a little more tweaking and playing around and this is what I came up with for the final design! It includes all of the salvaged material, plus a black cotton and black minkee for the final border. Oh the bright green strip, that is a velvety stuff that was actually the TIES that held the bumper pad in place! I used EVERYTHING!

 

And, finally, all pieced and ready to quilt! I am not entirely sure how I will quilt this one, please feel free to share if you have any ideas!

 Well, that's it for today. I have another new project I am starting on, stay tuned!
Happy quilting,
Ginny