The Pattern is Ready! And My Quilting Machine!

Just a quick mention to let you know The Gardens Of A King pattern is ready for you!

A little bit of wool appliqué for you! Cottons and wools...mmmm...

 

A little bit of hand appliqué for you! More cottons and wools....mmm...

 

A little bit MORE than a little bit of English Paper Piecing! English Paper Piecing with starch...mmmm...

A few nights of relaxing and rewarding stitching for you while working on

The Gardens Of A King,

an interpretation of

The King George III Coverlet!

Click Traditional Primitives to see the details!

My husband and I have been spending a little time "jerry rigging" my quilting machine! I purchased a stitch regulator and we got it installed 100% on Saturday morning! This is longarm quilting on a budget for sure! I would love to have a fancy, wonderful quilting machine, but for now this is what I have to quilt my own quilts. It's a Bailey Home Quilter and is just a basic quilting machine. But that's all I need for now. The stitch regulator worked wonderfully and it was much less stressful to do a little quilting!

 

The quilt loaded on the machine is a small wall hanging sample for one of my workshops I'll be doing in February in the Garland, Texas area. This is a cut away appliqué technique making the zebra appliqué much easier to sew in place! This class will be taught at Sew Let's Quilt It. I'll be teaching The Gardens of a King at Happiness Is Quilting in McKinney, TX, and also will be doing the program and workshop at the Garland quilt Guild. Both stores will be having Holiday Open Houses in the coming days and some of my quilts will be on display. If any of you live in the north Dallas area, be sure to stop by!

Please let me know if you have any questions about the new pattern. I'll be happy to answer them!

Have a wonderful day!

Missie

 

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The Gardens Of A King, Part 3!

Hello Again! In the last post I mention what might be coming next in the quilt. Well you saw a few sharks teeth in a border along with the blocks in the last picture. Here is another view of those sharks teeth.

In fact there are several rows of sharks teeth! The way I sew them is pretty easy...just a zig zag appliqué line. One of the simplest shapes to appliqué! Here's another view below...

 

If you look close in the picture above you can see a few repeats of blocks I've shown you already. These have some different values from the blocks shown before. What other elements do you notice in this picture? A bit of appliqué! With the circular shapes in the blocks, there are elements of Appliqué mixed in with the piecing. I've prepared these curved pieces with starch, just like the geometric shapes in the blocks. When you prepare them with starch it is very easy to appliqué good shapes. The work is done before you use your needle and thread and takes the hard work out of sewing on these curves!

 

There is another type of appliqué in this quilt... In fact, it's wool appliqué! Since the blocks are so detailed, I thought the simplicity of wool appliqué would be a good element to add. The original King George III Coverlet had appliqué scenes of the king inspecting his troops. I wanted to show something else about the time period.

 

This block represents the quilt's name...The Gardens Of A King. As I have been listening to the historical fiction novel while I sew, ( set in the same time period the original quilt was made) I realized how important gardens were. The castle land had fine gardens, and the towns people also had gardens. They needed the plants for all sorts of things...medicines, food of course, dyes and more. The garden was a very important part of survival in the days of yesteryear. When I gained permission from the V & A Museum to do this quilt, I was given permission to reproduce the pieced blocks only, but I knew I would want some appliqué in the quilt also. The block above represents a fanciful English Garden that you may see on castle grounds. I'm sure you are familiar with the shaped gardens, or perhaps the maze gardens. This picture shows a wool appliqué block with cotton sharks teeth. I chose a large green plaid wool, which gives the shape some nice shading.

I've done a little research on plants that grew during the 1700s and early 1800s and have put a few in this quilt. These plants would have grown in English Gardens at the time this quilt was made. Above is an appliqué block showing Plumbs. You can see this block is framed in a sharks tooth border.

And here is a twig of Peaches...

The herb Persalane...

Some apples... They ate well back then...

 

And of course, they enjoyed the beauty of flowers, but also used them for their medicinal qualities, scents, and flavors.

The Hazelnut tree was a bountiful tree. They brewed tea, ate the nuts, and stained fabrics.

 

Be sure to visit the wonderful ladies who've tested the pattern for me...Karen and Carrie's blogs. They will be posting about the quilt as well in the coming days. Both ladies have a unique view of this quilt and have done a wonderful job! Be sure and look back a ways to see all their posts about the process.

I hope you are intrigued with what's to come in the next few days. So far we have English Paper Piecing, Appliqué and Wool Appliqué....my three favorite techniques in quilting. Be sure to come back Saturday and Sunday mornings to see some more and finally the entire quilt top. I'm so excited to share it with you!

Let me know if you are interested in being put on the list for first notice of the pattern, but make sure I have access to your email. The pattern should be ready pretty soon.

Thanks so much for spending a few minutes here today...

Take care,

Missie

PS...please go back to your previous comments and check to see if I've left a reply for you to send me your email address. If you don't get an email back in reply to your comment I don't have your email to send you the information early :-)

 

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Busy Days!

Hello! I am back from the wonderful Hook In from Saltbox Primitives in Warsaw, MO. What a wonderful store and wonderful gathering of rug hookers. It was so much fun. I'm sorry to say I was so busy there was no chance for a picture while my mind was clear. The building was a community building over 100 years old and was stunning. The rugs were stunning, and the people there were all so very nice. It was a wonderful day! Saltbox Primitives in Warsaw, MO is worth the trip...a stunning shop of wool and fabric!

A few weeks back, I quilted the Charity Quilt that my Appliqué Group made for our guild's annual charity Auction. The quilting was pretty simple on this Lori Smith Design. The picture turned out terrible I'm sorry to say! But I am very proud to say it brought $575 for a good cause. Our guild brought in roughly $12,000 for 3 worthy charities. It lots of fun as well as lots of doing good!

 

I've been frantically trying to finish my next quilt! Above is a part of one block...this part measures about 3" across! I am using English Paper Piecing and Applique' techniques, making these intricate blocks Oh So Do-able! It will also have a bit of wool appliqué in the border and center.

And here you can see it as part of the 6" circle... These blocks are so very fun to make! In case you haven't read about these blocks I am making before, this is a reproduction of a quilt from the 1700's, the King George III Coverlet. I am in awe of the original maker who had none of the wonderful tools we have today...amazing! I look forward to showing you the entire quilt very soon! The pattern will be available in the near future.

The picture below is the next block I'm working on today...organized and waiting for some attention! I'm linking up to Kathy's Slow Stitch Sunday today!

Take care and thanks so much for popping by today!

Missie

 

 

 

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New Notions! The Starch Brush and Premium Quilting Starch~ Drawing, and a Special Request!

I have a new tool I'd like to share with you! For now, I'm calling it Missie's Favorite Starch Brush...never again do I need to dip my brush into the starch, paint a few inches, dip again, and so on. This brush has a reservoir that holds the starch right in the handle!! I am so excited to offer this to you so that your starch prep for English Paper Piecing and Appliqué will be easier than ever!

It has a cap to keep the brush protected and sealed.

And here is what it looks like. Pretty cool!

I've created a special starch product that comes in a bottle so it is very easy to fill the brush!  It's called Premium Quilting Starch.  To fill the handle with starch simply squirt it into the handle!

I hold it just like a pen, give it a gently squeeze now and then to release the starch... You can see above that the brush is wet with starch. I barely squeeze at all and a little bit of starch starts to come. It is very controlled and works really well!

Prep all the seams, nice and quick by painting the starch onto the seam allowance!

Iron the seam allowance over onto the freezer paper template (double layer remember) with a dry iron.

For the smallest pieces, use My Favorite Finger Stilleto so your skin does not feel ANY heat from the iron.

The area that's pressed nice and flat is laying on the solid white paper pointing towards the upper right corner of the picture...see how nice that curved edge is pressed?

When using this technique to prep Appliqué or English Paper Pieces, your pieces will be as perfect as your shapes. This is how I am able to piece blocks I could never do on the sewing machine!

And here is an example of what YOU can do using this simple technique and a few great tools you can find on my website if you are interested... Traditional Primitives from Missie Carpenter. You will find some EPP Pincushion Patterns on the Quilt Page and these handy tools on the Notions Page. Our tools make the job at hand so much easier and pleasant to do! Give them a try today! ( This new pattern will be coming soon!)

Now, I know those of you who have signed up for the drawing are anxiously waiting for the winner... I will give it one more day and draw the name tomorrow morning. If you have not entered, look back a few posts and you will find the details. I am sweetening the pot by adding in one of my new Starch Brushes, my favorite EPP thread and Needles, along with a thimble, a few EPPs ready to prep, some Roxanne's Glue and that Darling little Sewing Machine Case!! Get signed up today for a chance to win!

Now, for a special request... are there any rug hookers out there who would be willing to make a sample for me? I have been asked to offer elements of my designs as hooked rug patterns and I can't seem to find time to get any done! Please let me know if you are interested in helping me out! Thanks so much!

Thanks so much for stopping by today! I hope you are inspired to try English Paper Piecing the way I love to prep it...with starch!

Take care,
Missie
Traditional Primitives.com

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"Grow Your Blog!!!" Welcome To My Blog! And...The Winner Is....

Hello to all the new visitors who are stopping by my blog for the first time! Welcome! My name is Missie and I am so glad you have come by today. I love Quilting, doing Punchneedle Embroidery, Wool Appliqué and English Paper Piecing...these are my favorite hobbies! I have turned my hobbies into a business most of my days since I became a mother in order to stay home with the kids.

And here they are, all grown up for the most part...and I am still doing the small hobby business! I love it! That's Hubs and I in the center, surrounded by our three daughters and our son-in-law. I thought once the kids were grown I would have so much time on my hands, but you all know how that goes! Seems there is never enough time to do all the stitching that I want to do...so the list keeps growing and growing! How about you? How long is your list?

I thought I would take a moment to write a bit about my window coverings today. I have had so many questions about them recently! We moved into this house in August and it was so sunny in the mornings...we could hardly keep our eyes open! Haha! We needed something to keep the sun out and these coverings came to mind. I used to sew window treatments for the decorating store for about 9 years, but I never made curtains for circular windows. Yes, they are quilts...machine appliqué and quilted. I was really into quilts when we moved here ( and still am!) and that was the first thing that came to mind. I made the quilted panel a bit larger than the window, which is huge for a window, I might add. Each of these is 58" wide at the bottom. They are much larger than they look way up there! The quilt design was made specifically for these windows and I expanded it into a full sized quilt a few months later. That quilt is now the logo for my business and is one of my favorites. I think it's the red background I like so much! Then again, I do like stars too!

After the quilted panels were made they were ready to be mounted on something....that something took a while to figure out, but eventually we decided to see if PVC pipe would bend well enough. We got two elbow joints and flexible PVC along with some stiffer PVC. It took a while to cut the two pieces the correct length in order to bend in the shape of the window, but we started with the bendable PVC cut a bit larger than we needed and trimmed an eighth of an inch away until it bent and fit in the window just right! Basically, the PVC is joined and bent to look like a capitol "D" if it were turned on it's side. It was very simple!

Then it was time to attach the quilt to the frame that would fit into the window. I decided to cover the PVC with foam insulation built for these pipes. This allowed the frame to fit snug in the window frame and they fit perfectly after a bit more trimming. Then the quilts were trimmed the shape of the frame with about 4" extra in size. To attach the quilt to the frame, I just rolled the quilts to the backside and pinned them in place with a straight pin! Voila'! They are still keeping the sun out of our eyes just fine! We had plans of taking them down now and then to let the sunlight in. We did this for a while, but had to stand on a chair to reach them and eventually we just left them up all the time. I should also say that we added a large piece of cardboard to keep the sun from shining through the needle holes from the quilting. If I were to make another set someday, I might try it without quilting to see if this fixed the problem. That was quite the long story I just wrote! So sorry about that, but as I said, so many have been asking about them recently. Since a few have asked, I will let you know you can buy this quilt pattern on my website if you are interested. Now everyone can get some PVC and make their own! If you do, be sure to send a picture! I'd love to see your version!

 

For the first time visitors, these two mini quilts were just published in the current issue of Primitive Quilts and Projects Magazine. Bluebirds and Berries arrived home safe and sound this week from the offices of Primitive Quilts and Projects! It was so nice to have them both in my hands again. The needlepunched version is the dark one and the light version is the wool and cotton version. I will have to get them up on a wall soon so I can enjoy them! Now that they are back home, It is time to draw the name of the winner of the year subscription that Primitive Quilts and Projects has so graciously donated for the drawing!

The winner is... Ronnie! Congratulations and thanks so much for following along with my blog Ronnie! Look for an email from me so I can get your information!

I truely appreciate all of my followers and wish I could give you each a year's subscription to the magazine. Since Ronnie is the only winner of the subscription, why don't the rest of you newcomers please find your way to my website if you wish, and find two free patterns on the Wool Pattern Page that you can download. The link to my website is just under the button for this Blog Hop on the right side bar. (While you are at the sidebar, notice I have a former blog...be sure to check that one out. It has many more posts!) For those of you who have followed for a while now, look for a new freebie pincushion on the wool page next week! I will be posting about it next.

 

One of the freebie patterns is a Valentine Pincushion that you can see peeking from inside the basket above. The other freebie is a block called Woolie Tree. I have challenged my blogging buddies, and that includes those who don't blog but like to follow along, to make this block using up those tiny wool scraps we all seem to have a bag of laying around. I have been so busy I've hardly started mine, but it is on my list I mentioned earlier. Have any of you long time followers started this yet? Let's keep it on our lists and see what we can get done in the coming weeks.

Thanks so much for stopping to read the blog today. If you are here with the hop, I'd love to have you join my site as a follower. After all we are trying to grow our blogs! If you sign up to follow, please let me know you've done so and by which method you will be following. It's hard to tell how many followers we really have these days since Google has changed the reader. I like to use my dashboard to keep updated, as I have always done...keeps it simple for me. My preferred way to follow is by clicking "join this site". Then I can keep up on things by accessing my dashboard. How about you?

The organizer of this blog hop will have a list of the blogs joining in posted on her own blog, 2 Bags Full. Thank you Vicki! Be sure to stop by her blog to find a few more blogs to follow. Again, Welcome and Thanks for stopping by today! I hope to see you all here again soon!

Take Care,

Missie

 

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Happy New Year!

It's that time when we ring out the old and ring in the new year! It has been a whirlwind of a year for me and I sort of hate to see 2013 go, but I know exciting things are coming for 2014 so I will go with the flow!

As I think about my goals for next year, I have pondered on my goals for this past year and all that I got accomplished. The year was filled with teaching and vending...two things I have not done for quite a while, nor had I done in the quilting industry. I have learned that I do enjoy these activities very much as I get to share the fun things I love about quilting, stitching and punching! These activities have taken me to Arkansas, Missouri, Ohio, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa and in between a few places. I plan on spreading my wings a bit more this year to build my little business. It is such fun to spread the Joy of Quilting to others! Once again, I thank all of you who inspire me to continue with this journey!

Winter 2013 brought a change in our lives as we moved our oldest DD and SIL far away from home to Augusta, GA. We had a great week together painting and decorating their new home so they would feel right at home quickly! It involved a modern touch, which was new for me to help with, but I really enjoyed making their new quilt in that style for them.

 

Winter also brought lots of work designing small sized projects for my pattern business. I tend to love working on large quilts and the plan to make small quilts was a nice challenge. They were made of Cottons and Wools, along with a few Punchneedle Mini Quilts! I made patterns for a total of 15 smaller projects in 2013! There are a few of them pictured below. You can see all of my patterns on my website at TraditionalPrimitives.com.

 

Spring 2013 brought work on Josie's Petals, a design for Blackberry Primitives Wool Company. Cindi and Tanja took her to Market in Portland to hang in their booth. It will be in a French Magazine this coming year!

Spring also brought work on the English Paper Piecing Workshops and Pincushions. It was exciting to get these ready so that I could begin teaching and sharing about English Paper Piecing in my unique method as well as the traditional method.

The weekend in Nebraska with The Quilted Crow Girls was in the Spring as well...Leonie, Deardre, Julie (Me and My Stitches), Lynn ( More Sew For You) and I shared many giggles and fun along with learning the Crow Girls way of doing wool appliqué.

Summer 2013 brought work on Pennies In My Garden wool appliqué quilt. It was so fun to find out how quickly this quilt goes when sewing it. Even though it is made by hand, the buttonhole stitching on the circles in 12" blocks went super fast!

 

Summer also brought the interview with Pat Sloan Radio! It was a great experience to be part of! You can listen to it if you wish...just find my name in June's listings on her radio website.

Much of my spare time was spent helping hand quilt the DMAQG Show Quilt!

Summer was the time that I decided to change my company name from Hallbrook Designs to Traditional Primitives and when I got the new website and blog switched over and running. (Take notice, my old email will be going away in a few days! Be sure to save my new contact info if you have not done so already! I look forward to making the new blog just as informative as the old blog. You can still access any old posts by the way...just click on the right sidebar for the link.)

Fall 2014 brought teaching and road trips for Vending and Trunk Shows in a few stores:

Eastern Iowa at Inspirations, a great little quilt store in Hills, IA; The Rabbit's Lair, a great store in Rogers, AR; Pierre, SD for teaching at a wonderful weekend retreat; Lees Summit, MO for a great quilt show and more. I hope to add more pinpoints to this map in 2014! It will begin in only a few days with my trip to Oklahoma City to vend in the Winter Quilt Show...let the adventure Begin!

Winter 2013 brought some catch up time and basic sewing I needed to complete. I have been working on my own Josie's Petals since Blackberry Primitives owns the original.

And I've also begun work on the next big quilt I plan on making! It has been a challenge so far...can't wait to show you more!

My sewing room is just about in order...the wall of little quilts is up, the new quilting machine is up and running well and my sewing space is slowly coming together. It sure has taken me a while to get things in order, but I am working on it when I can. Only a few more days and I can show you... I know it's taking forever! Perhaps the organization of my sewing room will be the last sewing related thing I complete in 2013!

It was a great year of blogging fun and pattern designing fun for me. I certainly hope your 2013 was as much fun as my year. Cheers to a wonderful 2014!!! Let's make it great!

Take Care,

Missie

 

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