Step by Step texture-book review

Do you love texture on your quilts?  If so this book might interest you.  Christina Cameli was kind enough to let me do a review of her newest book.  It is called Step-by-step Texture quilting.  The minute I opened the book I was just intrigued with all the beautiful color throughout this book.  It has been laid out very well, it's just a beautiful book and very informative.

Christina has 65 free-motion and walking foot designs in this book.  All of the designs can be done on either your domestic machine or on a longarm(which is what I use).  Just look at one page of the book and you can see how awesome it is.  She does a great job showing how you can get more texture or less texture on your quilt.


There are sections on how to quilt grid style, free motion style and ideas for borders too.  For easy reference, in the back of the book there are little peeks of each design with it's name and the page number.

I would love to show you more of the book but then you wouldn't need to buy it.  And I know Christina worked hard to give you great designs and ideas step by step!  Yes I recommend this book.  You can get it right from Christina HERE, she'll even autograph it for you.  Or from Amazon.

Disclosure: I was given the book from Christina Cameli to do this review.  Thanks Christina!!

Linking at Midweek Makers, Let's Bee Social and WednesdayWaitLoss

Island Batik May challenge

May is the month fora paper piecing  project for us Island Batik Ambassadors. We could do either regular paper piecing or english paper piecing.  I decided to try my hand at EPP since I hadn't done that before.

I chose to use paper templates that I purchased at Jo Ann's. The Island Batik fabrics I chose this month are from several different collections. The background is actually 2 of their 10" stack pieces from the London Fog collection as well as the leaves and stem. The outer hexies and binding are from Lavish collection while the center hexie is Grapevine from the Green Acres Collection.

Ok close your eyes and just imagine you are petting this delicious Island Batik fabric-it's oh so sleek and wonderful feeling!  I wish you could also feel the dimension on this wall hanging. Using a layer of Hobbs wool over a layer of their 80/20 gives it such character. The flower and leaves just bump out from the background which I quilted using a design from Christina Cameli.  Did you notice I also had to add the 3 little prairie points on the top-they just add an extra little touch to it.

                                     Threads used are Superior So Fine, Aurifil and Glide.

                                                               It measures 9.5" x 18.5"

You can check out a few of the other Island Batik Ambassador projects that have posted so far.

Bejeweled Quilts
Kauffman Designs
Moosestash Quilting
Bea Quilter 

FunThread Designs
Stone Cottage Designs

Next month will be a Modern challenge, I already know what I am going to do for that-can't wait!!

Linking up with several of the linky parties on my left side bar.

A few fall finishes

With it being September, I am in full' finish things up' mode as my first craft show is only a month away-YIKES. I do have lots of quilting ready, but I always want more of course. I still want/have to make more purses, doll clothes. snowmen and knitted items.  Sleep-who needs sleep, LOL

I tend to really go in streaks with my process, I do lots of piecing and then do the quilting, then the bindings. I used to work in a factory years ago and assemble line is what I know so it carries over into my crafting world.














Freehand design from Christina Camelli.

This freehand design is from a DVD by Patsy Thompson.




















A little felt candle mat I designed and all hand stitched by me. This is my relax time while watching TV.


Of course I will be joining some of the linky parties on my left sidebar this week. It's always fun to see what other bloggers are working on!

Bright scraps!

This is gonna be a pretty quick post, it's so nice out today that we want to get our TerraTrikes out on the local trail. But I wanted to share this bright scrappy quilt that I finished up recently. The colorful blocks are wonky log cabin blocks from the Quilting Modern book. I was inspired by a setting that Cynthia from Quilting is more fun than housework blog used a while ago.

I used a brushed fleece in lt. blue for the backing and NO batting, it is a very sofy snuggly quilt! The quilting designs in the wonky blocks are designs from Christina Cameli's second book. I used Glide thread.

Linking with Oh Scrap, Freemontion by the River and Creative goodness
My side bar will give you the links!


I also entered this into the Finish A Long as one of the seven projects for the second quarter goal.

Freemotion quilting challenge-April 2015

I needed a pillow and there is a quilting challenge at Quiltshopgal, what better combo!  And the fact that I love Christina's freemotion quilting designs, I have her second book, and did a review on it in past posts. It's a super book with lots of fun fresh new designs, you can find more info on Christina's blog.
She also posted the tutorial for the piecing of this pillow here.  My pillow fits an 18" pillow form.

Here it is in my Living room where it is feeling at home!  This was a fun and fast challenge I could meet with no problem :-)

I will be joining with a few linky parties from my side bar besides Darlene's this week, be sure to check them all out.
I also entered this as one of seven projects into the Finish A Long.
Happy quilting everyone!!!

Free-Motion quilting book review and WIP

I hope this post is as fun for you to read as it was for me doing the Free-Motion quilting! And let me tell you it was a ton of fun!!
Christina Cameli from A Few Scraps and CT Publishing was gracious enough to send me a book and let me do a review of her newest book called Step by Step Free-Motion Quilting. I absolutely loved her design on the cover and that is what got me looking into this book further.

 Christina shows you 9 simple shapes and how to turn them into over 80 wonderful designs. This book is well worth the money!  As you can see I stitched this design on a traditional table runner, but these designs would be wonderful on modern quilts as well. I will have another blog post next week with designs on modern quilts.
I really like how Christina draws out the basic steps for you, then explains it in words and finally shows how the allover would look. This is a clean, simple, easy to follow book for anyone whether you are a beginner, intermediate or have been free-motion quilting for years like me!  Some simple designs but also some more challenging. So if you are looking for some new fun designs go check out her book.  She also has another book out called First Steps to Free-Motion Quilting. You can find information on her blog-see link above.  These designs would work equally well on a  long arm or on your sewing machine.
So here are some more wonderful designs I stitched out that I want to share with you just to wet your appetite for more!  One thing to remember is when doing all overs like these is to echo your way out if you get stuck in a corner or find a little bare space that needs a little more stitching.

I also want to mention that Christina has several video tutorials on free-motion designs on her blog. Linking up with several of the linky parties this week.

I dug this WIP out of the box yesterday and worked on it. This was started about 4 years ago at a retreat and I only had about 9 of the blocks done and put it away. So yesterday I put them on the design wall and little by little got several more blocks together. They really are simple and quick to do, I just needed the desire to get this out and try to finish it up!  I still want another column and row of blocks, then some borders. Hopefully it will be a flimsy soon.