I am very pleased to announce that I am now the UK dealer for the sale of the fabulous Innova longarm brand of longarm quilting machines. ABM International is an 80 year old business based in Texas USA and they manufacture not only longarm quilting machines but also the huge manufacturing quilting machines used in commercial applications. Now you are able to buy the machines in POUNDS STERLING !  Ring Janette today for up to date prices. The range of machines start with an 18" freehand machine, 22" freehand machine, 26" freehand machine M20 and M24 new series machines.  They c ..read more

I am now settled into unit 2C after moving from 3C on the 9th February. MIT has been a long few weeks moving three longarms, desks, shelving, and countless bolts of wide back fabrics along with jelly rolls and layer cakes etc. Business resumes as normal.  ..read more

Happy 2018 to all of my lovely customers  It has certainly been a busy year this year and I have quilted lots of my customers beautiful quilts, one big show quilt of my own, and a couple of little projects.   A couple of New Years resolutions.  Make more time for my personal quilting, and don't leave my show quilt to the last minute.  Endeavour to be home on time each night from the studio.  Drink more water (that's never going to happen) lose a few pounds (that may not happen either!) and blog more!!! Just before Christmas I was finishing up lots of allover qui ..read more

This year I decided that I would take a couple of days off and appreciate The Festival of Quilts Birmingham NEC as a visitor again, after demoing last year with Mettler threads. On Wednesday afternoon I was delighted to receive a phone call letting me know that I had won a 3rd place in the Traditional quilts category.  This category is such that if you have used a commercial pattern to create your quilt then it needs to be in the traditional category.   I had been piecing my quilt from February this year at home in the evenings and weekends. I lost interest and was distracted w ..read more

I often get asked to quilt a quilt ONLY in the ditches, so that the quilting is not visible. This is certainly not the cheapest quilting option, costing more than a general allover quilting design, purely because of the extra time that ruler work takes. Stitching in the ditch on a longarm machine involves the use of acrylic rulers to guide the machine in a straight line which gives much better results than purely freehand moving the machine.   This is a skill which takes time to master and thankfully I mastered the ruler skill early on in my quilting career. Now if recent offensive ..read more

I spent Easter bank holiday weekend making myself a quilted jacket after having recently taken an online class on craftsy by Mary Ray. Ever since I started longarm quilting 7 years ago, I have wanted to make myself a jacket after first seeing some made from sweatshirts on the APQS forum when I first started learning how to longarm. So as I had a long weekend to "play" with I decided I would attempt to make one. Fabric on the longarm being pre quilted. This is just a freehand doodle that I like to quilt with swirls, pebbles and feathers, my three favourite quilting designs. It took ..read more

This lovely quilt was pieced by Gill Taylor from scraps of floral fabrics.  I have custom quilted it for her freehand on my Innova longarm machine, using curved rulers for the circles, but mainly freehand quilting.  I love quilting free form feathers.   If you click on the photo it should hopefully make it a larger view.  It was a lot of fun to quilt ..read more

Jelly roll pie quilt  This quilt was pieced by Pat at one of my recent workshops.  It uses two jelly rolls and yardage to border.  I've quilted it for her all over using a swirl design. I think it looks great.  The colours are modern and fresh.  It's a range called "sphere" by zen chic for Moda ..read more

 I was recently reminded on Facebook that it has been one entire year since buying my Innova longarm machine to add to my arsenal of business equipment here at J-Quilts. In 2015 I had tried out Fereets machine at Sandown and fell in love with it.  It just felt right. The right height, the right feel, and of course not to mention the positive reviews in the USA with people switching to Innova.  Anyway later on in 2015 I was fortunate (lucky) enough to win best of show with my quilt entered at the festival of quilts. So I waited and put the prize money towards an Innova ju ..read more

Everynow and again, I feel like making something fun, so I decided that I wanted to make myself a sewing machine mat.  I had seen some ideas on instagram for simple mats that drape over the table, but I decided I wanted a fitted one to fit over my table and to take advantage of both sides of the table.  Anyway one thing always leads to another, so I also wrote a pattern for it and uploaded it to craftsy.com and to my website for sale.  I will also be adding it to my collection of workshops that I will run from time to time at my studio. I also made a pincushion cube, and ..read more