Thank you all for your coments on the blog during Emma's Garden Blog Tour.  I was a bit late drawing the winner tonight, but I used Random.org to choose the number of the comment who won:  

DRUMROLL PLEASE

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Timestamp: 2014-08-23 04:45:07 UTC

And comment number 1 was :  

Jane Powell 8:16 AM on August 16, 2014

Bee Damask is my favorite. I really like this whole collection. Patty did a fantastic job!

Congratulations Jane Powell. Please send your email address so we can get all the info to send you your fat quarter bundle of Emma's Garden.  Thanks again for those comments!  

Have a great weekend everyone!  Happy sewing and quilting!

Baby Sawyer, the second child of some friends of mine, was born yesterday, a couple of days early, but that was a blessing to my dear friends who we anxiously awaiting his arrival.  

I wanted to make Sawyer a quilt and since I have known about this for at least six months, you would think I had already finished it.  But, no, I had other things in the works and I did not start this quilt until Saturday night, yes, August 16.  Actually, I might have started a few days earlier cutting squares of fabric for the quilt.  

I enjoyed the quilt I made from Emma's Garden using HSTs so I decided to do this one the same.  They are so versatile.

For Sawyer's quilt, I cut out 9.5" squares from all my fabrics which included most of Riley Blake's Fun & Games by Lori Whitlock.  Here are a few of them.

I added a few others from Art Gallery in blues and grays from Oval Elements collections.  

Sawyer's room is decorated in blues, grays and a hint of aqua.  

I matched a light and dark square with the help of Rebekah and started sewing all the squares around the four sides.  I finished this by Sunday night.  On Monday, I cut each sewed pair on the diagonals.  Then I discovered the Bloc-Loc Rulers.  I used a 6.5" square to trim all the HSTs down to 5.5"  These rulers are excellent if you want accurate HSTs.  You can find them here.

I cut out 72 HSTs from the squares and proceeded to design a quilt for Sawyer.  It only took a few hours Tuesday evening to put the blocks together.  I quilted it and machine bound it Wednesday morning.  I'm ready to go meet Sawyer and present him his quilt.  Here's the front and the back as well.  

Well, that's a great accomplishment for me today.  I'm almost ready to see the new arrival.    

There are just a couple more days before I draw a winner of the Emma's Garden bundle, so if you did not already comment, check out the post before this one and comment to win.  Drawing is Friday at 5 pm CST.

Today, I'm very lucky to be featured on the Emma's Garden Blog Tour.  I'm so glad you stopped by.  It is a great honor to be invited by Patty Sloniger to be part of the tour and more importantly, great to have the opportunity to make fun items with the new Emma's Garden fabric line designed by Patty Sloniger for Michael Miller Fabrics.   I first met Patty when she came to Houston Modern Quilt Guild and told us all about how she became a fabric designer.  I was instantly enamored with her amazing fabric designs.

I fell in love with the Emma's Garden collection immediately because of the rich, vibrant colors, in both florals and graphic patterns.  The Michael Miller cotton feels silky to the touch and just begs to be fondled.  We quiltaholics do have a problem fondling fabric, don't we?    The Garden Bouquet and Big Blooms really stand out as my favorites and I can think of lots more things I would love to make from them.  

Just a few of weeks before spring market, Patty provided fabric and I began cutting and sewing faster than a speeding Janome.  I made a cute baby quilt using Emma's Garden Blush Colorway.  I started with just a six inch strip of each fabric, I matched up each one with a white strip and cut six inch squares of each.  Sewing around all four sides of the squares and cutting on the diagonals, I made lots of half square triangles.  

This is so easy to do that I did not even need a pattern.  Then the fun began as I layed out all the half square triangles to design a quilt.  

Here is the cute baby quilt which I also quilted all over with flowers since Emma's Garden is abundant with flowers.

I actually made enough half square triangles to make a table runner to brighten my table in spring and summer.  I changed up the design a bit and quilted this a little differently.

The center of each square is quilted with a funky flower and swirls to adorn the negative space.  

The great thing about half square triangles is all the fun designs you can make with them.  

Houston Modern Quilt Guild went on a retreat in early May.  During the retreat, I made a paper pieced circle of geese pillow from all the pinks, violets and purple fabrics in the collection.  This pillow was lots of fun to make and really goes together quickly with just four blocks and some added borders.  

These flying geese got some simple straight line quilting.  You can find this free patern on Craftsy.  

Patty has generously donated a fat quarter bundle of the Blush colorway of Emma's Garden and you could win it by commenting below.  Tell me what your favorite fabric is from the entire collection of Emma's Garden. As always, if you are a no-reply commenter, please leave an email address for me to contact you! I'll pick a winner on Friday, August 22!

I hope you have been enjoying the blog tour each and every day, but in case you missed a day, check the schedule below

Don't forget to pop over to beckandlundy tomorrow for a Grand Finale giveaway!

8/7 - Michael Miller's website (that's Patty!) www.makingitfun.blogspot.com

8/8 - Hilary - youngtexanmama

8/9 - Karri - karriofberries

8/10 - Felice - sewscatterbrained

8/11 - Sally - sallysangelworks

8/12 - Liz - www.fatchickquilts

8/13 - Julia - starsandsunshine

8/14 - Jacey - jaceycraft.blogspot

8/15 - Sophie of C'est LaVie - lescrapdesoph

8/16 - Pam - pamquiltaholic

8/17 - Patty (yup, that's Patty's wrap up!) beckandlundy

If you would like to purchase your very own Emma's Garden bundle you may shop right here on my website.  Just click Shop now.  

Most mornings, I scroll through the numerous emails that have come in over night.  I'm sure you have the same issue that there are more than you can possibly read in your inbox each day... so most of the time, I scan for important ones from friends, family and fellow bloggers and then maybe read a few of the others that have interesting subjects.

Well, today, I happened to read The Quilt Show.com and lo and behold, I see a topic called 1st Time Entrants...Really?  I have always loved reading The Quilt Show.com but today was the most special day of all days.  My quilt, "Point Me in the Right Direction" was featured in the slide show of 1st Time Entrants in the 2014 Paducah AQS show.  I entered it in a category called Bed quilts 1st Paducah Show because it was of course my first time trying to get a quilt into a show like that.  I made this one before I started longarm quilting and Laurie Tigner quilted this for me and the quilting is stunning.   You can watch the show here:

http://secure.smilebox.com/ecom/openTheBox?sendevent=4e4445774d444d314e54513d0d0a&blogview=true&campaign=blog_playback_link&partner=smilebox

I hope you enjoy seeing all the quilts as well as mine.  Mine is toward the end, but you will love seeing them all.  

Hope you get to sew or quilt in your spare time today!  Have a great day!

Pam Quiltaholic

In the last few days, I spent some time practicing various patterns in order to use them on a quilt I am working on for a dear friend and customer.  Some of these took on a new life as I tried various changes and added my own touch to patterns I learned on Craftsy from classes such as Quilting the Negative Space by Angela Walters.  

These were my continuous curves, which sometimes appear to be circles, but even when they don't, they are cute.  

One of my favorites learned in Linda Taylor's class at the International Quilt Festival in Houston last year.  

I called the center motif Random Happening because that is exactly how it occurred.  There was really no plan before I started this and it just grew as I quilted...

I called this Doodle Bug.  I know that is silly but as I was practicing the wavy continuous curves, I added a little swirl in the corner  and it just made me think of watching those litle bugs when I was a child.  I did play in dirt a whole lot......

These figure 8's are coming along.  They might not be perfect, but they are little.  The parallel lines are one inch apart so these little figures are less than a half inch.  I  like to do small quilting.  This King Tut Thread called Cleopatra makes everything look pretty.....

These fern leaves can get very tiny so I really have to control myself ....I did use an entire cone of the King Tut thread on this queen size practice piece.....and that was just on the top, not the bobbin..... Quilting boxes around some quilting was something I learned in Angela Walters' Craftsy class Quilting the Negative Space.  I have not used it but a few times, but I love it when I do.....I have a friend who has requested this on several quilts and so, I have named this for her --  Amy's Wave.  I had so much fun with various designs, I just called this Play.  Quilting is very much like play.  It makes me happy and hopefully makes someone else happy when they see their quilts or they receive a quilt that I have quilted.  Just a bit of everything in here so I called it the Kitchen Sink.  I see some hearts I learned from Nichole Webb Rivera who I miss because she now lives in Washington. But I love Washington, too, and if she ever needs company, I would love to visit!

I will soon be taking a class to learn to do curved crosshatching, but I thought I would try something that looks like what I think it should but just doing it free hand.  This is without templates and well, it is not too bad for a first time....

Well, I better get a quilt on the frame and start some real quilting.  The practice was fun and necessary.  I think that with everything we do, "practice makes perfect, or at least practice makes better".  

If you see any designs you like, let me know and let me know how much time you spend practicing any tasks that you want to get better at...

Have a wonderful day and hope you get to sew and quilt in all your spare time.

Pam Quiltaholic

If I want a laugh, I just have to look at myself to see all the funny things I do.  Last Saturday, I went to a great workshop taught by our own Cathy W. of the Houston Modern Quilt Guild.  She taught us how to make a lovely scrappy trip around block and quilt using a strip piecing technique, both fun and simple.  

I had selected a red, white and black theme for my quilt, packed up all my fabrics, and tools including sewing machine but when I got to the workshop, guess what I forgot?  The machine!  Well, that was not the only thing I forgot that day, but it is rather funny that I go to a sewing workshop and forgot the machine.  I've heard of other people doing that, but I usually could not believe one could forget the machine.  Yep, now I believe it.  

I love those precuts held together by ribbons and these are the ones I used:  Kona solid white Roll Up, Riley Blake Mystique, Studio E Essentials VII and a few other Riley Blake fabric pieces, some rich lush Cherrywood fabrics in reds.  I'm very lucky to have a great friend who just happened not to bring her fabric that day and offered to sew my fabric so it all worked out pretty good for both of us.  And she did a fantastic job of sewing for me.  Thanks Janet!  Here is one of the beautiful blocks!

So, I picked my stripsets and made a few and began to cut the pieces. It took 6 strips to make a stripset and 6 cuts of a stripset to make a block.  The idea was to make the stripset into a tube, then cut pieces from the tube to make the block.  Unsewing at different places in the tube made each strip different and allowed the block to have movement.  However, last night, I forgot to make the tube before I started cutting my pieces from the stripset.  I got a laugh out of that, but I discovered a great timesaving technique in my mistake.  

Because I cut some pieces before making the tube, I was able to use these two pieces for the first column and last column of my block, and then I did not have to unsew these two pieces.  I then sewed the tube and cut the second, third, fourth and fifth column which I will have to unsew at different places.  But, in my mistake, I discovered how to save the time of unsewing over 52 pieces which I would have had to do if I sewed the tube first.  Yea, this all worked out in the end....

I now have some blocks, some stripsets and some pieces to make more blocks and hope to make a quilt from all these soon.  

Do you have a funny story about something you did and can laugh about it now?  I'd love to hear about it!

Do you ever think about doing something, but just never get around to doing it?  Well, that is what I have been doing for a while....thinking about blogging.  So, today, I decided, it is about time I start this blog.  

This week went by so fast.  On Monday, I learned to time my longarm.  (Every longarm quilter needs to do this eventually.)   I was so fortunate to have the help of the 24/7 technical support for Innova longarm machines.  That was one reason I chose the ABM International Innova machine - because of the 364 day a year, 24 / 7 support which is just a phone call away.  I first watched the video showing how to do it and then the tech support person, Michael, took me through the timing process step by step.  Cameras on cell phones and texting pictures was very helpful as Michael explained each movement to make and identified from my picture whether it was just right or needed a little more tweeking.  When completed, the process was successful.   Thank you Michael and Innova!

The next day, I attempted to bind a quilt while waiting for a friend to have some tests done in the hospital.  I'm still working on that binding.  It is a slow process for me.   This is the quilt I was binding, before I quilted it.....will post finished picture later.

Another day, I had a couple of friends come over to my studio and I entertained them with what I do and how I do it.  I don't really think I was teaching, but I was just telling them how and what I do when I start a quilt on the longarm and showed them a few tools, books, and shared a lot about the various classes I have had and teachers I have learned from.  It was lots of fun.  Sharing always makes me feel good and I hope that I might have said something that was helpful to my friends.  I learned some things from them too and I will put those things into practice immediately.  

Then, the next day, I went over to help a friend with her longarm experience.  I hoped to share my technique of checking and setting the tension, something that you have to constantly be aware of.  We started off pretty good and due to some issues with the stitch regulator, we ended up stitching in manual mode.  This actually went very well.  I have a great attitude about things like this:  Just Do It.  (Wait, is that someone else's saying?).  Hope they don't mind me using it too.  My friend finished quilting the quilt that had been on her machine for almost six months and it turned out great.  We loaded another quilt which was a charity quilt for our guild, Houston Modern Quilt Guild.  We changed threads, tested the tension and it was great.  Still stitching in manual mode, she had almost stitched across the quilt once and I felt of the back stitches.  Uh oh, it did not feel so good.  So, we picked out stitches, but I had to leave before it was all picked out.  I felt bad about that, but she did finish picking it out that evening and got started all over again and I think the tension was good after that.  I had tested a small section on the right before leaving and it appeared to be ok.    

So, here's Friday, and the week is almost over.  I decided I need to start blogging.  I will wrap this first blog up and get back to the fun stuff:  quilting.  

What will you be doing that is fun today?