Jane Austen Dress

How many soon-to-be 16-year-old daughters ask for a Pride and Prejudice era dress for their birthday? Not many!! 

But lucky me (or unlucky depending how you look at it), I have one of the few!

So, instead of quilting for the last month, I've been sewing this monster of a dress. It could have been much less monstrous had the ENTIRE DRESS not called for lining. SERIOUSLY!

The fact that I bought the wrong size of pattern and had to alter it didn't help either.

Oh well! After much sweat, I finished it just in time for her 16th birthday party, which happened to be a costume party. And miss Elizabeth Bennett looked stunning, so it was all worth it!

A few years ago I bought a Simplicity pattern (like the dress pictured below on my daughter's friend) at JoAnn's for only $1, thinking one day it would be fun to make for Halloween. What happens to something when you finally need it? It goes missing!

 So back to JoAnn's I went, and happened to hit the Butterick $1 pattern sale. 

Unlike the Simplicity pattern, this pattern was fully lined. Because we used cotton fabric, we probably didn't need the lining, but I didn't trust myself to alter the pattern anymore than I already had.

Complete with a Grommet Lace-Up Closure

Miss Elizabeth and Jane Bennett

Even more fun was having a friend dress up as Miss Jane Bennett! Don't they look stunning? Now, where's Mr. Bingley and Mr. Darcy?

Can I Quilt Your Quilt....For Free?!

I'm not so new to quilting but I am new to blogging! I would love to hear your comments on my posts, my blog, your quilting adventures, your family adventures, so on and so forth!

So, from now until the end of the year anytime you leave a comment on my blog - on any post - you will be entered into a drawing. 

What's the prize, you ask?

 I will quilt your quilt for free! Yup, that's right...no charge, nada, zip! 

I will do the drawing January 1, 2013. Your chances of winning are pretty darn good, seeing as how this is a new blog! 

So...visit my blog and let me know what you think! You can leave a comment by clicking on the 'Leave a comment' button at the end of each post. 

Thanks! And taken from a favorite book of mine, "May The Odds Be Ever In Your Favor!"

Past customer quilts

Over the last few years I have quilted quite a few quilts, some with just random stipples, some flowery freehand, and others using rulers and straight lines.  Here are a few samples!

Piano Quilt

This beautiful log cabin piano quilt was designed by my talented neighbor, Sylvia Zobell.

This was so much fun to quilt. Unfortunately, my pictures do not do justice to either the beautiful piecing or quilting. I quilted swirls in the white background. In the black piano area, I used a repeating scroll stencil pattern (like pictured below but without the vertical lines).

This picture shows the border: scroll pattern with vertical lines inside and micro-stippling outside.

Snowflake Quilt

When it comes to quilting, I'm usually drawn to cute, flowery, pastel fabrics, but last fall I was done with pink and green and decided it was time for a cold-weather quilt. I found this Nordic lap quilt pattern by Blue Meadow Designs at my favorite local quilt shop (Quilter's Haven in Bountiful, UT), and thought it was a perfect match!

Fall Tablerunner...a year later

A year ago, I was given some cute Moda fabric mini square packs. These cute 2-1/2 inch bundles come with 42 squares, but they're so small it's hard to know what to do with them.  I had two packs of a fall fabric line and decided a fall table runner would be their destiny.  At the time, I was just learning how to use the new Art & Stitch program that Handi Quilter adopted for their Pro-Stitcher (computerized quilting). I wanted to design a continuous line pumpkin design to go on the table runner.  The piecing was fun. The quilting designing was fun. Unfortunately, I didn't finish quilting it until snow fell, so I tucked it away-binding undone-until next year.

It's a ....

It's a shame that I'm just barely posting this, but life gets so busy! I had my ultrasound on September 19th.  I asked a very talented young lady I know to make a cake to announce the baby's gender to my family. I think she did an awesome job! Visit her blog at http://cakesbycara.blogspot.com/

It's so stinkin' cute!