We are so happy to be part of Rachel Griffith’s P.S. I Quilt April Give Away!  Along with making custom quilts and quilting tops with our Long Arm Gammil, we also provide a specialized service of printing photos on fabric for customers to make their own photo quilts. What makes our printing so unique is that we use textile inks and the photos are printed directly onto a soft pima cotton. We heat set the photos and then your photo fabric is ready to use in your quilt! The textile inks are sun fast and fade proof; the fabric can be washed and treated just like the cotton used in your quilt.
About the April Giveaway: Connecting Quilts will print 5 photos for you to create your photo quilt, a $50.00 value. We can accept photos via email or you can send the pictures via mail where we will scan the photos. You will receive your photos back! Please check out our website photo page for the specifics of photos and files.
http://www.connectingquilts.com/photo_fabric_printing_files/index.html
Making a photo quilt is a delicate balance of showcasing your photos, choosing colors and fabrics along with block designs so as not to overpower your photos. Editing photos is also a major part of the process. There are so many memories associated with your photo, but in some cases, when actually analyzing the photo, your subject may have too many distractions that take away from the favorite part of the photo. That’s where we come in! We have printed hundreds of photos, and we are experts at taking baby bottles from the back of mom’s head, eliminating Joe’s elbow from the bride on the dance floor, and enlarging and cropping your favorite part of the photo.
With the April give away, I will provide designs that we have created and used specifically for photo quilts. Come back tomorrow where I will show some designs and talk more about choosing fabrics and blocks!

Wow! Where did February go? Ah – the snowstorms and school vacations and and and! I have been busy quilting away despite the white flakes and shoveling!
One quilt that I worked on last week was made by Jen in Fairfield, Connecticut. Jen is a middle school teacher who teaches sewing to her students.

Jen will be displaying her quilt along with her students quilts at the Southport Congregational Church Annual Quilt Exhibit this coming weekend, Friday, March 5th and Saturday, March 6th.

Jen choose some very fabulous colors for her quilt, just right for the welcoming of Spring (soon!).  Jen choose the Swirls Pano pattern from Legacy quilting.  The swirls of the pattern very much complemented the movement of the fabrics and colors throughout the quilt.  Job well done Jen!  It looks fabulous!

Legacy Quilting Swirls Pano

Here's a detail of Jen's quilt showing the Swirls pattern

The Zen of Quilting, or, how to take care of your body to get maximum quilting output!

 I am writing this today because I certainly did not follow my own advice! I was sewing on the binding of a queen size quilt yesterday and I am feeling it today in my shoulders, back of my neck, and arms.  It’s so important to take care of your body when you quilt (for that matter, all of the time)!

This is something that I ask my class members to do as we start class. They laugh at me and think that I am a kook! The key word is GENTLE.

Before you sew at your machine, stand at your cutting mat, or even sitting down hand sewing or appliquéing, it is important to shake away any tension and limber up those muscles. Shaking away the tension will release current tense mind thoughts which physically implant themselves into your muscles. Quilting should be relaxing!

And here is where I sound like a yoga instructor.

Right before you begin the task at hand, relax, quiet yourself down and create a straight sitting or standing posture.  Once in this posture, close your eyes and slowly take three long breaths, focusing on your project. As you let each breath out, let any negative mind noise flow out of your body with the breath. As you bring the air in, think positive thoughts about your project and think of the steps that you will be working on. You are also bringing more oxygen into your body, thus getting the blood to flow to your brain.

After you have done your breathing exercises, slowly begin stretching your arms. Gently lift and round your shoulders frontwards and backwards. Move your head from side to side (again GENTLY). Follow through with gentle stretches of your back and legs.

Once in your task, take a break every 20 minutes or so and repeat your gentle stretches. Take some deep breaths as well. It is amazing how tense your body becomes when focused on a repetitive task! Get up, walk around, get some grapes, or pet the cat. I like to throw in the laundry, killing two birds with one stone. Lots of stretching when bending in and out of the washer, dryer, and folding those clothes.

While it may seem silly, try these steps next time you sit down and see how much more comfortable you are, AND watch your task go quicker as you have allowed yourself a much keener focus on your project.

Oh yeah, did I mention what to do with the extraneous human distracters? Throw those cookies and just shut the door!

Hi!  My name is Lorna Shepard and this is Day 1,Blog 1, the news and notes of a long arm quilter.

There is nothing like self-imposed deadlines! Starting today, I am advertising on Rachel Griffith’s ‘P.S. I Quilt’ Blog page. In order to do this, I desperately needed to shape up our current site, which was thrown out on the web last year at this time.  Instead of shaping the up the site, we threw it out and designed this new one!

The re-design was also a result of me wanting a blog page as well. My husband is my tech guru so I started needling him, as wives know how to do. We ended up on date-night strolling the aisles of Barnes and Nobles and lo and behold! We came across all of this printed knowledge about how to create websites with CS2 and blogs with Word Press. I hate to tell you that on a two day getaway, we spent the weekend in the hotel room with dueling laptops. Scary, but this is what we artists and geeks do for fun.

This is a long winded way to say howdy, pleased to meet you! I am quilter, owning a comapany called Bear Paws Quilt Studio. My mom and I make custom made quilts, focusing on t shirt quilts, photo quilts, and memory quilts. We have been making quilts together for 15 years now. It is great working with my mom!

I am also a quilt teacher and pattern designer. I have lots of designs ready to go but am in desperate need of a clone. I also have two block of the month kits ready to roll. I lecture at quilt guilds in Connecticut and if you ever want me to come places south during the winter, I am on my way!

I have been machine quilting for seven years now, using the Gammill Long Arm Quilting Machine along with the Statler Stitch and Creative Stitch programs. I have a cache of over 3500 patterns – and believe it or not, they are almost all cataloged!

I look forward to meeting each and all of my readers! Please let me know if you have any questions or how to’s along the way as I share all of my tips and techniques with you!