First Customer Quilt

So, I have to tell you that I have plenty to share with you over the next few weeks or so.  I've already started quilting my 7th quilt, five of my own and two as my first customer quilts.  I am trying to sew down bindings as fast as I can so that I can show you all my finished quilts, but you know how that goes!  Very slowly sometimes...  Mind you, depending on whether my boys are in the mood to jump all over me or not, sometimes I can now just be in the room with them while they play instead of constantly running and jumping to them.  So in theory I could spend some time binding down quilts during the day.

Anyway, I am posting some pictures of my very first customer quilt.  This particular one is from a friend who attends the local quilting group that I use to go to more regularly and now just stop in to say hello from time to time.  The ladies from the quilting group are very friendly, mostly an older crowd who are not necessarily the most advanced quilters on the planet (we don't have quilt police in attendance) but who are all amazing sewers.  That is something that I have found here in Australia.  Most women have amazing sewing abilities having grown up sewing clothes or learning from mothers and grandmothers and have a great understanding of it in general.  When it comes to quilting, my ladies are still proficient, just lacking in modern techniques and tastes.  I love to visit with them and to see how they approach quilting even if it is different than the way I go about things.  I am not a discriminating person, I just love for people to do what makes them happy and to have a go at things without fearing what the outcome may be.

So, most of my ladies still hand quilt, a few have tried to quilt on their domestic machines and one lady has tried out free motion quilting this past year.  I offered every lady in my group to have me do one free quilt for each of them.  I am happy to say that some of them are already taking me up on the offer!  Last week I received this quilt top from Caron, who did not think she would ever get this quilt done.  She was no longer interested in finishing this top with hand quilting and thought it would be her opportunity to have this quilt finished.  I picked out this bow edge to edge design to compliment the bouquets wrapped in ribbon in the center panel.  The quilt was not square and it was somewhat challenging to get to lie flat, but I enjoyed the process of learning how to deal with that.  I was quite pleased with the end result.  She was very happy as well as I delivered it to her today!  It was a tad bit messy with the black fabric and the bamboo wadding, but that all came off quite easily.  I was unsure whether or not to trim it for her or to hand it over to her untrimmed.  I left it untrimmed and after I saw her cutting it down with the scissors I showed her how to use a rotary cutting blade!  I love that!  I could happily teach a quilting class, I think--I didn't realize that I have learned so much over these past years!!!

Any Australians game to have a go and send their quilt tops to me?  I am offering Extremely affordable pricing for edge to edge quilting and very likely to get it finished before Christmas.  Leave a comment or send me an email and we can talk:)