Author Archives: kmabra@aol.com

For the Love of Fabric – Grandmother’s Flower Garden Vintage Quilt

What got me started with quilting?  It was definitely ‘for the love of fabric’ –  and though I love all the modern stuff out there, I have a tender spot for traditional vintage quilts.  I just had a treat on my machine!  A GFG (Grandmother’s Flower Garden) quilt – 70 GFG blocks – with very dated vintage fabrics.  Some were original feed-sack fabrics from the 20’s, I’m sure of it!

7 rows x 10 GFGs per row x 19 mini hexagons per GFG!

7 rows x 10 GFGs per row x 19 mini hexagons per GFG!

 

 

GFGquilt detail1

 

These blocks were found at a garage sale by the friend of the person who brought me this beauty.  Her friend was blanket stitching the GFGs to the background and sadly passed before she finished but this friend is seeing the quilt to completion.

GFGquilt detail2

The coolest thing (and unless you are a quilter it will make no sense at all..) is that some of these 1 1/2 inch hexagon blocks have pieces of fabric sewn together – to me this is part of what’s so special about this quilt – the original quilter improvised to get all the pieces needed to complete each hexagon….

 

So with that said (sorry for the bit of rambling but I can’t help myself) – here is one additional photo of this great vintage patchwork:

GFGquilt1

 

 

 

Baskets Galore Quilt Revealed!!!

I posted about this quilt a few weeks ago after I finished quilting it but did not show you the front.  The quilt is now completed with binding and will be displayed for the first time at our guild meeting tomorrow CVQGVT.org

So here it is in all it’s glory!

basketsgalorequilt

 

 

This is the guild’s 2014 Raffle Quilt and tickets will be available at various local quilt stores, the Champlain Valley Fair in the Blue Pavilion building and also at our Guild’s show which will be at the Fairgrounds in October (for details see the guild website by using the link above)

Quilting with the Moose in Maine!

One Block Wonder Quilt I just got back from a week-long quilting retreat in Rangley Maine.  Had a wonderful time and was able to spend many hours piecing quilt tops which I don’t have time to do at home.   This quilt is called One-Block Wonder –  all but the inner green border is one fabric. The outer border is the fabric and the inside is over 600 triangles pieced into Stack & Whack Hexagons for a kaleidoscope effect.  I have hand the fabric since 2005 with the intent to make this quilt…. Finally got it done!!

One thing we do around sunset is go out on the back roads looking for moose… we found some! It’s fun to watch them and they are very close to the edge of the road!

Moose 2

Baskets Galore!

I was asked to quilt our guild’s raffle quilt (CVQGVT is my guild).  I won’t post a picture of the front of the quilt…. yet.  I’ll wait for them to have their advertising pictures available – but here is a photo of the back of the quilt showing the quilting design I developed customized for this beautiful quilt….

Customized Quilting for my Guild's Raffle Quilt

Customized Quilting for my Guild’s Raffle Quilt

School’s out and my Official Website is Launched!

Whew!  It’s been a hectic year so far…  but I’ve survived:

1) Starting a new part-time job (now Technical Recruiter for Keurig since 1/27) – love it!!

2) 1st year as Registrar for Vermont Quilt Festival  – >550 Class Registrants since end of Feb!!

3) Taking 2 college classes (Web Development and Internet Marketing at CCV) – enrolled when I thought I would ‘only’ be quilting.

4) Participating in Machine Quilter’s Exposition  – both by entering a quilt and taking MANY classes to learn more about my IntelliQuilter system

5) Quilting 70 quilts for Clients so far this year….. should be able to pick up the pace now that my college classes are DONE!

I handed in my final projects for my classes today and now my website is officially launched!

Please visit my website: Machine Quilting Services of Vermont:  www.machinequiltvt.com  and let me know what you think!!

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