The Wedding quilt is finished.

Rhonda made this beautiful quilt in browns for a wedding gift.  It's big, 99 x 104, so it will fit nicely on a bed. It's just beautiful.  They will love it!

the solid white backing makes it a true wedding quilt.  Actually, they are getting two quilts in one, as the reverse is a beautiful white whole cloth quilt!!  Picture that on a bed with a few bright throw pillows.

Rhonda requested fairly dense quilting, as she knows the recipients plan to use this quilt.  I can assure, it is quilted to stand up to heavy use.   

Walnut Chocolate Chip Banana Bread

What's for Breakfast at the Cartwright House?  This morning I made a new version of an old standby.  This bread was a hit with the guests, and has now been added to the wall of fame.  We serve a full breakfast at the Inn, and there's always something new coming out of the kitchen.  Remember, you can always bring your quilt to Three Bears, and then stay a night or two at the Inn.  



JoAnne's Star Quit is beautiful!

These stars are floating against a dark blue background.  We quilted an edge to edge design that more or less connected all these stars.  Rainbows Thread by Superior is a high sheen poly that was used to quilt the top.  The Bears love to use specialty threads to achieve special effects.

click on any image for more detail

Melody in Fabric

Mary named this beautiful quilt "Melody in Fabric".  My guess is because it's a gift for their Choir director.  It was fairly densely quilted with a design called Gilded.  I think this quilt sings!



Pat's "Midnight Star" is finished!

I love the black background and the red inner border.  All of this just makes the star shine out loud.  It was custom quilted using a flat black thread on the black as well as the paisley border.  The rest was quilted in a burnt gold using Superior Threads Highlights. 

Click on any image for more detail.   

The raffle quilt for the guild is finished!

You better believe I felt honored when asked to quilt the raffle quilt for the Twin Rivers Quilt Guild.  Tickets will go on sale soon.

A swirly, leafy border with continuous corners was added.
The inner narrow border was stitched in the ditch.  that always adds nice framing to any quilt.

 

Hurricane Irene

Hurricane Irene has come and gone.  Today marks three weeks since the eye traveled directly over Oriental.  Very, very scary to sustain a direct hit like that.  Luckily, the Cartwright House,  and the quilt studio sustained no structural damage or flooding. The old girl's been here since 1903!! Thank you, thank you, thank you for all your e mails, phone calls, cards and prayers.  It worked.  Now that we are back to a somewhat normal life here, I'm going to make every effort to post more quilt photos.  That's the thing about blogs.  They're great, if  you keep up with them.  If you don't, it's easy to assume that production has stopped, which totally is not the case here. 

In the meantime, there are lots of pictures and stories on our local on line news resource. 

www.towndock.net

On the right side of the screen you'll find links to stories describing the days leading up to and after Irene.  Pull up a chair and a cup of coffee. Oh, and one more thing.  You betcha, I'd move here all over again.  We love living in Oriental.

JoAnne's Star Quit is beautiful!

JoAnn is a new customer for us.  Welcome!  I wish I knew who to thank for the referral.  Hello??? Are you out there?  Let me know...In the meantime,  here is her quilt:

The quilting in the solid white squares mimicked her piecing

Lots of quilting!

Here, you can see the quilting detail in her sawtooth border

Remember, you can click on any image for more detail

These pictures were all taken on the frame, in the studio.  This way, we can control the lighting and get just the shots we want.

Some fab quilts to feature!!

Somewhere between Dragon boat racing (more to come) and the grand (soft) opening of the Cartwright House B@B, some beautiful quilts were completed.  The first to show you is Linda E.'s giant Dahlia.  Really, it is spectacular.  It was photographed in the Victoria Suite:

On a King Size Bed with a TALL mattress!

Wool Batting shows the quilting in a grand style!

The center of the Dahlia.  Each section is quilted separately.  This project was made easier because of Linda's perfect piecing.  Johnny and I tag teamed on this quilt, as it was quite involved!!



Featured Quilt and Quilter!!

Linda has trusted the Bears this time with not one, but two, king size quilts.  Both will be delivered to Thimble Pleasures this Friday July 15th.  The first one is a quilt that was made on a retreat.  It's totally gorgeous, with appliqued

baskets stealing the show. There's so much going on here that we felt custom quilting would be completely lost.  Not only that, we felt it would actually take away. So instead, we chose a beautiful feather overall design. Thread choice is critical in that it needs to blend everywhere. All we're shooting for is a whole lotta' texture. Superior Threads Sew Fine #402 came through.

Taken in the Victoria Suite  in the Bed and Breakfast.  This room boasts a king size mahogany sleigh bed and I soooo wish this quilt were mine.  Because it it were, this is where I'd put it!

Yes, it IS ok to quilt right over those appliqued handles!  See what I mean?  Imagine if you quilted those baskets, and then oh so carefully outlined the handles. Waayyy too much.   Click or double click on any image for more detail.

Ding Ding Ding!!! Bonus time!  Linda's got a beautiful second quilt.  Just turn it over!  Johnny was the lead quilter on this quilt and nobody gets a more perfect balance of tension than Johnny.  Seriously, he's taught me all I know about how to acheive perfect tension. (Quilt Judges know it too!)  And something else you might not know about Johnny.  He fell off the roof of the Bed and Breakfast recently, but he's OK.  LUCKY!  Thank goodness the Cartwright House is opening Monday July 18th.  Feet on ground from now on.  I got a pinky promise on that.

Unique Quilt to Feature

Very unique, very creative, very beautiful! Peter's got it all going on with this 3D quilt in batiks.  The open piecing presents some quilting challenges, at least for me.  I need to be r-e-a-l-l-y careful when moving the machine head over the quilt.  It'd be real easy to tear one of those squares if you get in a hurry. Alas, all of the little suckers are in tact! The body of the quilt was all stitched in the ditch.  The borders were various widths, so careful thought went into the quilt designs here as the density needs to remain constant.

Click or double click on any image for more detail

SID detail

3 D Piecing, Border detail

Large Border Detail