Latest quilt on my frame..

This is a sweet little quilt I made some time ago and I have decided to put it on the frame in between sorting out backings for my next 2 quilts. It is a simple 9 patch but it is very girly and will really suit as a new baby girl quilt or a young girls quilt.

I would have loved to get this quilt when I was a young girl. I am planning on putting it up for sale on my Etsy store which I have not opened yet. I was building up a stash of quilts to sell on my shop instead of just selling one at a time.

I quilted it with a pattern called oops a daisy which stitches out really nice and gives some lovely texture.

I even have some blocks left over that I plan to make a matching dolls quilt with it.

I am really loving being back in Ireland and having my studio back up and running. I don’t get as much quilting work in as I would like but I do as much as I possibly can and I really love it.

Latest quilt on the frame

So I am starting to offer custom quilting to my Irish customers. I love modern quilters like Judi Madsen and Angela Walters. Can’t you tell?? ha. I am already getting quicker at custom quilting than I was when I started and that is a very good sign because you just really don’t make much money from custom quilting.

It would be a dream come true to be as good as Judi Madsen or Angela Walters.

2 recent baby quilts I made….

The first one is a peek a boo quilt and was my first time making prairie points and it was a challenge for me. Also you use alot more fabric than you would think for one of these. My daughter enjoyed peeking into the boxes though. I’m proud of this one as it was a challenge but I have a better fabric stash now and I think if I make this pattern again it will turn out much better.

The second one is a free pattern from the Linus Project. I think the hot air balloons are a fun quilt pattern for a boy.
While I was in Arizona, I quilted a lot of quilts for AZ Blankets for kids and they told me about the Linus Project. I think there is something similar in Ireland so I will have to try to liaise with them from now on seen as I am home in Ireland now. I really believe in paying it forward so hopefully I can.

I have been rather quiet on the blogging scene as the kids are still on their school holidays here in Ireland. I hope to aim to blog at least once a week once my routine goes back to normal.

Schools out. Whatya doin???

I haven’t been very active in the quilting world the last week or so as I have been trying to navigate my way around the Irish kids camps, activities etc for the kids to do while on their summer holidays. I was in Arizona the last 3 summers so I’m sure all you American moms are in full swing at the moment with your kids summer. Mine will only start next week.

What ya’all doing with the kiddos over the summer? I’m asking more to find out if any of you are trying to arrange a bit of time for quilting? Do you try to make time for quilting while the kids are off, or do you take time off during the holidays to spend time with the kids and switch off from the quilting world? I’m not sure many of us can actually switch off from quilting but taking into consideration a lot of us crafters are either working moms or stay at home moms I beg the question can we fit in our quilting around the kids?

I am really going to try to fit in quilting but maybe not in the physical sense of the word. I may only get to physically quilt when they are in bed but during the day I will also try to fit in my quilting ‘research’ as I like to call it. This includes checking e-mails, facebook, blog etc and then reading what is new in the quilting world. This may only be while over a cup of tea but I can’t just switch off from quilting while the kids are off. If anything quilting is my saviour from the full on intensity of the kids being off school and around me 24-7! (deep breaths)

Anyway, the weather is another reason you may or may not be quilting. While in Arizona I did quite a bit of daytime quilting during the summer months because it was just too hot to go outside but now I am back to Ireland if there is even an inkling of sun we are packed up and there is a Liz shaped hole in the wall.

Do you bring projects out with you? I mean, well it would be hard to do that in quilting world, except of course if you hand quilt but even if you do, do you bring your hand quilting out with you?

Sometimes I am sitting in the park with the kids all off enjoying themselves and I think to myself, you know what I could be doing some really peaceful quilting right now with no kids asking me questions but instead I am sitting in the park thinking about quilting. Not very efficient, is it? 

What could I be doing though? There is always quilt magazines and dog earing the many many quilt patterns I just have to try but is there something portable that is a bit more efficient than adding to my ‘to do’ list? I can’t imagine it would be right to bring a rotary cutter to the park right?  but I have thought about it, I’m not going to lie to you. You could get some great cutting done in the park with the kids running around enjoying themselves and guilt free quilting is my thang!

 

 

Quilt Life Balance

I don’t know about everyone else but I find it extremely difficult to balance my hectic life with my quilting life. One of my quilting heroes is Judi Madsen (Green Fairy Quilts) and it amazes me how she can find the time to do such beautiful quilting with 4 little ones to look after. I have 4 little ones also and sometimes I am lucky if I am dressed with my clothes the right way in or out.

Judi says she ‘only’ quilts for 4 hours a day. That is alot for me. I mean seriously I don’t know if it is my eyes or my legs that start caving in first but 4 hours, kids or no kids would be hard for me to do because I don’t think my eyes or legs could take it. Now that being said I’m sure they had to work themselves up to this amount of quilting and I suppose if I had a large collection of customer tops awaiting quilting this might make me move a bit better and make my eyes focus a bit longer. Maybe you get a little bit of adrenaline kicking in with deadlines looming every week.

Another thing with having little ones or even big ones for that matter are the constant interruptions! ‘Mom were are my football socks’ ‘Mom he did this or she said that’ How can you concentrate on what you are doing when all this is going on? I mean I have been interrupted 3 times already just writing this to go up and try to get the kids to settle down and go asleep.  

Ok, so you probably need to try to schedule quilting into your daily routine. If I can fit 2 hours in a day I am happy and sometimes I amaze myself with how much I can get done in an hour. I would eventually love to be able to get up to 4 hours quilting a day because then I could get some real work done and not have so many UFO’s to do, then again with more time quilting I’m a little bit ADD when it comes to it I would probably end up with more UFO’s, in fact I know I would.

If I’m being honest I would love to be getting enough customer quilts in to justify me quilting for 4 hours a day but over here in Ireland there probably isn’t that much longarm quilting needed to give me that many quilts. In the meantime I make quilts and make quilts and make more quilts which I love but there isn’t as much urgency with making quilts as there would be quilting customer quilts. On the flip side if I had too many customer quilts then my large stash of fabric would end up sitting there all lonely and sad so I would like a balance of both.

When my kids are older I will probably have the opposite problem lol

 

 

Relationship between Longarm Quilter and Quilt top maker or piecer

Relationship between Longarm Quilter and Quilt top maker or piecer

What do you think of this piece. Please let me know