"Infinity" is a winner!

The last few weeks have been busy, busy, busy!  With our local guild quilt show and then HMQS in Salt Lake City I have been smokin' at the heels!  I wanted to share a quilt that I quilted for my customer Joan Anderson that won ribbons at both of these quilt shows.

"Infinity" won 3rd place in Applique at HMQS, Salt Lake City and Best of Show at the Desert Sage Quilt Show!

Beautifully hand appliqued by Joan Anderson, she used batik fabrics along with ultra suede and wool.  I quilted her quilt with all free-hand quilting for the feathers,  McTavishing and pebble fill.  I used a stencil for the double cross-hatching. Yummy Glide thread made everything just shimmer and Quilters Dream Wool batting gave it the perfect loft!  The outer border swag was all hand guided and the mini-piano key was done with a ruler.  After quilting, Joan added her gorgeous hand-done dimensional flowers and beading.  A lovely sparkle runs through the entire quilt with over 1000 Swarovski crystals that Joan applied, and I have a feeling that she'll be adding more!

Unidentified Sea Creatures

I thought I would share an update on my beaded piece.  It's been very slow going, but nice to have some hand-work to play with.  The one thing that I didn't think of is my eyesight!  Boy, are these beads tiny.  It certainly takes good light and strong glasses but I'm enjoying the work.  I've tried to make my creatures similar to sea anenomes and various corals and it's been fun to just imagine what they should look like.  I've also added some beads to the fish, but I'm not sure that I like that yet.  enjoy....

To bead or not to be....

My wonderful mother and sister heard about this upcoming project and sent me a mountain (well, may just a small mountain) of seed beads to work with.  I have this Batik panel that I bought in Hawaii a few years ago with the intention of someday making it into a small wall-quilt for my bathroom.  Now that I have Friday's free to work on hand-work (while my daughter is skiing) I decided to work on a bead project.  I just recently received Nancy Eha's new book "Bead Creative" and decided now would be a good time to practice beading on a small quilt.  Not having the time (or patience) to actually piece something I decided that the Batik panel would be the perfect practice recipient.   Stay tuned for more updates.....

After a quilt quilting session with Quilters Dream blend batting and Superior Threads the batik is ready for beading. 

A small section; partially done after 7 hours of beading.  I'm sure glad that I decided to start with a small panel!

The selection of seed beads that my mom and sister mailed to me.  Jackpot!

Nancy's book is a wonderful resource for quilting on art quilts.