New Journey!

I recently posted a picture of my last show quilt, Oh My Bleeding Heart, and said that this was the quilt that broke me.  I do believe this to still be true.

I have decided to embark on a new quilt journey and invite you all to come along for the ride.  My BFF Barb Persing is going to be my guide as this will be completely new territory for me.  I am excited as this is going to take me far outside of my box.  I tell my students all the time to stretch themselves creatively and this will surely do that for me.

I am not certain of the format or where I will be posting most of the journey…. I wish I were that organized.  There will be blog posts, Instagram stories (so make sure you follow me @lisahcalle) and Facebook posts.  I will try and find the way that fits best but can’t make any promises.

 

So Here is the next project….. a pictorial…. should be an interesting journey. Wish me luck people!!

Turkey..Pie..Nap…Oh MY!

 

The sun is shining brightly in Hilton Head where I prepare to tee off for a round of golf; my second love in life. But before I venture into the rolling, green hills composed of 19 holes I wanted to wish all my fellow followers a Happy Thanksgiving.  I hope your plans include eating WAY too much turkey, indulging in a few holiday drinks and slumbering peacefully as Mr. Tryptophan slips you into nappy land.  Those are my intentions for the next 24 hours!

     What would Thanksgiving be without including Black Friday and Cyber Monday? So let’s whoop it up and celebrate those two unofficial holidays with a sale! You don’t even have to leave your home, I’ll help you get into the spirit of holiday shopping AND allow you to stay in your pajamas!

15% off storewide!  This will include my two online classes Perfect Plumes and Anything but Junk: Tell All!  Use code FIFTEEN for online classes.  (note: iquilt classes are excluded)

Now’s the perfect opportunity to purchase those rulers that you’ve been yearning for but guilt has held you hostage. Or perhaps you want to create those beautiful feathers and my online classes have been calling your name.  Not only will you finally learn the skill of designing feathers but you’ll surely be entertained during my online trunk show.

I’m quite sure you’ve been good all year and deserve a little “To Me, From Me” present or two!  I give you permission to treat yourself and smile knowing you’ve taken advantage of a great sale!

Regardless of what you choose to do over this Thanksgiving holiday I wish you peace and prosperity.

~Lisa

When This Quilters Away…

Comes Your Way!

You heard right!! While I’m away ALL orders shipped within the United States will receive FREE shipping until August 20th!

NO Special Code is required to receive free shipping!

So take advantage of this great offer, and fill your cart today!   And you’ll enjoy free shipping within the great USA! 

I can’t stay in Europe forever.  Unfortunately, I will have to return to reality which mean free shipping will come to an end.  So don’t miss out, you have until August 20th to take advantage of what is happening while I’m traveling abroad!

 

 

Only 24 Hours Left!

Sign up for “AINT NO JUNK” today AND join my FACEBOOK LIVE Event!

Don’t miss “Aint No Junk”, a great tell all class with lots of EXTRAS.  AND become a member of my Facebook Live Event! I will be “live” answering questions and concerns regarding EVERYTHING under the sun QUILTY related! Sign up now for this amazing class!

Panic Now Cuz Sign Up Ends Today!

ProFeather™ Ruler Pre-Orders Start NOW!

Preorders are being taken now!

 

Just hang in there with me; those beautiful pieces of clear plastic will be in my hot little hands within 2 weeks!  Remember my last post containing  the video of hopelessness? If not, go back and watch.  If you did watched that little excerpt, and giggled, and moreover connected with my message then you really need to witness the ProFeather ruler in action.  I’ll admit, perhaps my acting wasn’t quite convincing enough to have you believe that this tool would be incredibly helpful.  BUT I am quite confident that the video below will demonstrate how unbelievably useful this instrument could be in producing feathers freehand!

Now that you have viewed my tutorial aren’t you super excited about getting your hands on one of cute little rulers? Yes,  FINALLY this product ready to launch! How about we let a flock of feather’s fly among your fabric!

Preorders are being taken now!

Happy April everyone! Orders will ship the week of the April 23rd!!

My “Almost” Shoulda, Coulda Been Houston Auction Quilt

 

It’s almost time to say,”Goodbye September and Hello October.”  Which means that getting ready for the big event in Houston is in full swing!  I am keeping my toes and fingers crossed that I see many of you there; just in case you are wondering where we will be located this year I am here to share that we will be in booth # 1223!

 

 

 

 And if necessary there’s always 24 other options available according to the alphabet!  Does the below photograph look familiar to you? My mind has immediate horrifying flashbacks when looking at it!

No too long ago, I had created a post regarding my  4 year forever quilt….. , and the lovely bleeding that graced it’s presence on my fabric.  Bear with me readers… I had an orphan block for this piece and had decided that after applying some beaded piping and a border on this project I would then quilt it.

My goal was to finally have this completed  for the Houston International Quilt Festival’s auction. I’m sad to report that  Houston isn’t going to happen.  Now, although the process did not meet the Houston deadline I DID finish quilting it!  I’m currently waiting for my friend Liz Haskell to provide me with the fabric needed which will allow me to bind this piece.  Having had the unfortunate experience of  the “4 year quilt bled bath” I am thinking that this scenario could repeat itself with the piece displayed below.  This time I am going to be proactive instead of reactive!  When it is time to block the needed area, I will implement the same process (dawn dish detergent) for this piece.  Typically I wouldn’t block such a small piece but I figure I might be about to learn another huge life lesson in regarding my quilting so better to be safe than sorry!

Below is a picture of the almost finished piece.

After much consideration I have also decided to hold off and reserve this for next years auction piece.  Hopefully I will FINALLY have the 4 year quilt finished in its entirety and entered into the Houston show.

Stay tuned for results on how  the blocking of this piece turns out!

Is anyone else gearing up for Houston? Whether you’re vending, teaching or planning on visiting please share your plans!

Pa National Quilt Extravaganza!

 

I was teaching at the PNQE 2017!  In a shocker my students were incredible!  This event had me teaching three classes on the long arms, which were kindly provided by Val of, The Longarm Network, thanks  so much Val!  Our tech support was provided by Matt (we would have been lost without him).  Typically we have the double duo team of Matt and Keith but unfortunately Keith was not in attendance; he was greatly missed.  AND those that enjoy their company during the evening really missed the pair as I have heard they are very entertaining!

So here are a few pictures from PNQE.  My classes wouldn’t be the same without one troublemaker participating, see if you can pick her out.

Every student gave a 110%, and as usual I was a very proud of these students.  They never cease to amaze me with their willingness to try new things and step outside their comfort zone.  Kudos to all of you!

The morning prior to classes was spent setting up our booth.  I was actually excited to break away from the booth and see my students   BUT the most exciting part of my morning was sharing the news to my good friend, Deb Levy, that she won Best of Show! Her work is incredible and she was more than worthy of the award.

Many people stopped by to view her amazing piece, I only witnessed a couple of people drooling over it.  Not to worry I was close by with bibs, and napkins in hand!

On a personal note, I was more than thrilled that my quilt, A Silver Lining, won Best Wall Quilt.  Excuse the poor photography but I was in a bit of a hurry.  Places to go and people to see.

A Silver Lining

 

After completing two wonderful days of teaching, I spent the remainder of my time vending.  Although I did not take few, if any pictures, I had many visitors.  Making new friends and catching up with old ones, was terrific!  I had the opportunity to see one of my favorite mother daughter duos,  Debbie and Donna Lohman! Thank you both for taking the time to say hello, it is always great to see the two of you!  Other guests included, Jolene, who took a moment to stop by on her way back to Florida, Teri Lucas, Renee, and so many other incredible individuals!  I must admit that connecting with such wonderful people is one of the best parts of attending these events.

A HUGE Congrats goes out to Debbie Lohman for receiving “Best Longarm Workmanship in the Traditional Category”!   No pixie dust needed you spread all the sparkle on that beautiful award-winning piece on your own!

During my trip to Hershey, Judy and I met Daria (seen in picture below). We spent time chatting about our favorite topic… quilting, of course!  But who knew I’d come to PNQE and discover that Daria won the award for “Best Longarm Workmanship”?  Obviously, she is one talented quilter! Way to go Daria!

Best Longarm Workmanship

Believe it or not, Judy and I did have a little down time in  between customers.  Downtime between customers doesn’t mean downtime for getting work done.  Judy and I made the most of our time by completing some hand work.

As you can see I REALLY made the most of my time and accomplished quite a bit!

What do you do during down time while vending? Is there something special you have in the works?

Me and my BERNINA’s!

Have I mentioned how much I love my BERNINA’s?  My second sewing machine I bought was a BERNINA and I have been in love with them ever since so when they came out with their longarm I was quite excited! I have a BERNINA 145S, BERNINA 750QE and The BERNINA Q20!

My cousin recently had twins, a boy and a girl!  Yeah!  Of course I had to make them quilts.  I went to the LQS,  The Quilt Block where Cynthia was ever so patient while I made my fabric choices.  LOL  It felt like I took forever… Once I had that decision made, it was on to the construction.

I chose an Atkinson pattern called Yellow Brick Rd.  Very simple and quick.  My BERNINA 750QE didn’t fail me!  How many of you love to hear the sound of your machine run?  For me it is very therapeutic and when I haven’t pieced in a while I get a little cranky.   LOVE the sound of the machine!

It is very exciting now because I get to finish my pieced tops on my BERNINA Longarm!  So I popped the two baby quilts on, ZIP, ZIP , added some Aurifil thread (yummy) and away I went.   There is a feature I want to point out that the BERNINA Longarm have that I have come to love!  BSR3!!  This is the basting stitch and I am in love with it.  You can program it to do 1,2 or 4 stitches per inch.  I baste the sides of my quilts AND when doing my show quilts have pinned some areas that  I am not ready to quilt!  Now  I do both with the BSR3!  I like the 2 stitches per inch for both of these.

This past week I taught a guild workshop in MD. and one of my students and I were talking about some of the decorative stitches on the BERNINA.  I am not a sewer so I think the only two stitches I have really used are the straight stitch and the zig zag.  We were specifically looking at the #4 stitch, which is a wavy line and thought it would be a great decorative stitch to sew the binding down with.  What do you think? What are your favorite stitches?

 

BERNINA Stitch #4

Love to hear what are your  favorite stitches!  Don’t be shy!

Quilt on, My Friends!

Lisa

 

 

 

Inspired to Redesign!

I have been working/procrastinating on a quilt for a while now.  You all have seen it.  It has been finished for quite a while now and I have pretty much designed the quilting so why was I procrastinating loading it?

I realized that I wasn’t really happy with what I was going to put in the floral border.  I was planning on doing a basket weave since I just wanted to texturize it.

A Color of its Own

I recently watched Gina Perkes iquilt class,  machine Quilting on the Grid.  I was inspired to redesign the border of the quilt.  So I am currently marking the grid in the floral border.  If you aren’t familiar with iquilt.com you should check it out.  There are some fantastic quilt classes.  My Divide and Design class is on there as well as classses from quilting greats,  Bethanne Nemesh, Jodi Robinson, Gina Perkes just to name a few.

All of the designs that Gina shows can be done either on a domestic machine or longarm so the class is great for no matter how you quilt.  I am going to finish marking this top this weekend and once the batting arrives, I will start quilting.  I plan on posting some along the way photos so please make sure you follow my blog so you can join me on my quilting journey.

Quilt on, My Friends,

Lisa

Zip, Zip, Zip…. Zippers or Pins?

So I have finished a couple of quilts on my BERNINA and am loving it!  BUT, it was time ….. to put the zippers on!

You may be thinking zippers on your longarm… whatever for?  Loading quilts can be a time consuming process so when I was doing customer quilts, I started using zippers instead of pinning my quilts to the leaders.  WOW, what a time difference.  But that wasn’t the only great thing about zippers…. There were times that I ran out of thread for a particular quilt and I was able easily zip it off and zip another on.  Once the thread arrived, I was able to zip the quilt back on and continue.

How many of you have stuck yourself with those corsage pins?  Those really hurt, pins are bad enough but those pins really gouge you. So happy to be done with them.  🙂

We are all familiar with the seam ripper.  Well, with the zippers, I was able to take the quilt off, rip out the offending stitches and put back on easily with those zippers.  Yippee!!!

So now that I have my new BERNINA Longarm, it was time  to put those zippers on the leaders.  I purchased my zippers from The Quilting Connection LLC .  Its called the Quick Zip system and it is super easy.

First I find the center of my leaders and the center of the zipper and I pin from the middle out.  I do this on both the backing leaders.

Then I zip them together. But don’t pull tight.  I then take the machine and sew the zippers to the leaders removing the pins as I go along so I don’t hit them.

Once both zippers are sewn to the leaders. You can pull tight.

You can also put a zipper on the leader where you attach the quilt top.  I tend to either float my top or  just pin my top on with flower head pins as  I won’t take my quilt off till it is at least stabilized.   Then you can just zip your quilt on.  This quilt had zippers on because I had started it on my other machine.

When I am ready to do a new quilt, I will take the backing fabric over to my BERNINA 750QE and set my stitch length to the longest there is and baste the backing to the zippers.  I start from the center out to make sure it centered.  Then I can just zip the backing on.   The best part is when I am done with the quilt, I can just rip the quilt from the zippers.   LOVE that sound!

I am curious how everyone loads their quilts?  Do you float, pin, leader grips?  And why do you do it that way?

Quilt on, My friends!

Lisa