The theme for this week’s quilt contest is Miniatures. This can be in the quilt’s finished size or in the design choice(s) in a larger quilt. If you participated in last week’s Fabric Postcards contest, please don’t submit the same item here.

The sponsor for this week’s contest is Guidelines4Quilting.com. They make unique quilting tools that I’m sure you’ll find very useful.

Guidelines4Quilting

Hello Quilting Friends!

For the week of June 13 contest, we’re offering two gift certificates, $20 for the first winner and $10 for the second to be used on FinishedSizeQuilting.com.

Bonus for Everyone:

A Great Way to Use Up Your Stash:

Save $5.00 on the Ultimate Stashbuster™ Set – a Fun, Easy Way to Turn Your Fabric Stash into Finished Blocks.

The Ultimate Stashbuster™ Set works with any 6"x12" acrylic quilting ruler. Take advantage of the $5.00 discount by clicking: Quilting Gallery Special Purchase Page. This page will be available through Sunday, June 19, 2011.

June Quilting Tip:

This month’s topic is how to pre-trim triangle points for accurate piecing.

Good luck to all the contestants, and Happy Quilting to everyone!
The Guidelines4Quilting Team

Enter the Contest

Get your cameras out! To enter the weekly contest, read the rules and guidelines, then submit your quilt photo by Thursday evening (EDT). Voting will start on Friday and last until Sunday night.

• Upcoming Themes

Sponsor a Weekly Contest

There are only a few weeks left for sponsorship this year: August 22, September 5, October 31 and December 12. How to Sponsor a Weekly Quilt Contest!

Last Week’s Quilt Contest

Thanks to everyone who entered last week’s Fabric Postcards contest. I enjoyed seeing all of the gorgeous mini works of art showcasing so much talent and inspiration. Thanks also to everyone that took the time to vote. Our sponsor, On the Grain Fabrics, generously donated 35 fat quarters to the top three quilters with the most votes. Congratulations to the winners:

First place: Kirie

Second place: Katina

Third place: The Quilt Rat

Blog It

Please share the logo below on your own blog. The more contestants, the more exciting the contests!

Please join me in welcoming today’s guest blogger Fleur from The Netherlands, as she shares with us a few of her recent gorgeous quilts, all done by hand too! Fleur also designs and creates really cute Bears.

Hello quilters all around the world,

I love quilts with a HEART.

For me this means that I make them with a special reason, with special fabrics, with special thoughts. From the very beginning of my quilting I made notes, wrote stories, in special books that belong with that quilt. And all my quilts are signed, have hidden pockets and contain one or more letters.
I am very creative, but that is so easy for me having parents that taught me so and gave me this talent by birth.

Mom learned me sewing and quilting and we shared many many days quilting together, visiting special shops and looking for lovely fabrics. My parents passed away and I still miss them very much, but I know so well this comes of all the good memories I have in my heart. But it still feels lonely when having a nice idea or when a quilt has been made and I cannot share this with my Mom.

A long time ago Mom asked me to write a book about my creativity, she was my biggest fan, and she thought I had to share some of my ideas with the rest of the world. I started the book, but had to stop soon, while it gave me too much tears. And now … maybe I will try again … but it is summer and there is a lot to do in our huge garden. But I can dream about it already … and while opening a box with special fabrics in it … tears of remembrance fill my eyes and warm my heart and I go ways back to my youth and all the time after that. Happily I do not need my scissors now to cut the fabrics, not yet, I will glance at it all, feel it all, let the warmth come to me and hopefully come winter I can start to make one of the quilts.

I also kept boxes full with clothes from both parents, it will be hard to cut them in pieces, but it will make a special quilt. Wools and tweed from the beautiful suits of my Dad and lovely tweeds from Mom’s suits. I even still have dresses from my youth and clothes from both brothers and even dresses from my grandmother. And a box full of the cotton shirts from my Dad. Mom and me talked about this, after Dad’s passing, and she loved the idea if I could do this one day. Mom knew me so well, she knew it would be too difficult for me the first time. But I kept thinking about it.

One of the quilts I want to make is a hexagon quilt. Years ago Mom made a lovely hexagon quilt. And she kept all the materials used for the English sewing method, I found them all later. So I will use them again. And while opening a box I also find tiny scraps of fabric … and they all give me memories … and Mom had a reason to keep them …. to use them one day, so how could I not use them … and in the box with the material for the hexagons I also found a smaller version of the hexagon, exactly the right size for the scraps. Great.

Last year I started a tumbler quilt, just small tumblers from 1 1/2" x 3/4". I started this quilt on a special day in the very beginning of May and I hope to sew the last tumbler this year on another special day. This pattern is a nice pattern, but it also says to me: there are so many "tumblers" in life.

It will be good to sew all my sorrow, memories, warmth and love, the missing of all the sweet family and friends, to sew it all in this quilt. I uses all kinds of red fabrics – red for love and warmth. And white/creme fabrics – eternity and see the "light". There are some blue fabrics in this quilt, while Mom loved looking at the clouds and their wonderful views and blue is also my favourite colour. The size of the tumbler is a special size and the total of the tumblers will be a special number with a meaning. Right now I sewed more than 1000 tumblers together. I sew it all by hand, as always.

I am also busy making a spool quilt with all kind of scraps. It is almost finished. The center blocks are dancing spools with hearts and I embroidered some sunshine around it.

And then my lovely basket quilt. The top is also almost ready, I am busy with the last border to fill in the space between the baskets in the border. In the middle of this quilt I made a house and around the house a heart with the baskets. This is a very dear quilt to me.

I hope you liked reading a little about my quilting life.

best wishes,

Fleur
Bears and Quilts with a HEART
Int.Bear Artist and Bear Doctor

Grab yourself a cup of coffee or two and browse the gorgeous Fabric Postcards for this week’s themed quilt contest. I am totally amazed and inspired by all these beautiful creations. I know we’ll all have a difficult time picking just one favourite, so this week you can pick three favourites.

I’m thrilled to introduce you to a new sponsor this week, On the Grain Fabrics. They have generously donated 35 fat quarters to be split among three winners this week. They carry a gorgeous selection of modern fabrics in their online shop and this week everyone can enjoy a 15% discount by simply using the coupon code QGREADER15 at checkout when purchasing from onthegrain.etsy.com (coupon expires June 15, 2011).

Give-Away: When you’re done voting, scroll down to the bottom of this post for a give-way and links to tutorials to make a super cute strawberry pincushion and needlecase.

Now it’s time for you to vote for your favourites!

• Voting is open Friday – Sunday @ 11:59 p.m.
• One vote per IP address (NOT email address), so have your family and friends cast a ballot for their favourite quilt (from home if you send it to coworkers)
• Winner announced Monday!

How to Vote:

• Review the photos and stories below… there are several, so you’ll need to scroll down to see them all.
• Underneath the photos, scroll down, you’ll see the names of all the fabric postcards with a square button** beside each one. Select the buttons for the postcards you want to vote for. You can select up to three fabric postcards this week.
• Then scroll down, all the way, until you get to the bottom of the names of the quilts. Then press the vote button.

** Note: If you don’t see the square buttons to vote, but instead see the voting results, that means someone on your IP Address already voted, or that the voting period has ended, or that you need to refresh the page to see the voting options. Shared IP Addresses are very common in home or work networks.

Please Note: If you are not seeing all of the photos, check your browser settings. Go to view, and text size. Make sure it’s set at medium. If you need web sites to be larger so you can read them more easily, then use the browser’s Zoom function, not the text resize. You can also use the scroll bar above, beside the photos, to scroll and see the hidden ones.

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Facebook, email subscribers and RSS readers: You need to visit the Quilting Gallery blog to vote: CLICK HERE

Next Week’s Contest

The theme for next week’s quilt contest is Miniatures. This can be in quilt size or in design choice in a larger quilt. Get your cameras out and Submit your Quilt Photo.

• 2011 weekly themes
• Sponsor a contest!

Give-Away

This week’s guest blogger, Sandi Andersen shares with us her blogging and quilting journey. Sandi’s giving away a surprise package here and more birthday/blogiversary celebrations on her blog too. Click here to enter the give-away!

Be sure to check out the super cute strawberry pincushion and needlecase tutorials too.