After years of devotion to quilting, my husband Larry encouraged me to leave my employ in the medical field and pursue my dream of being a “Long-arm Quilter”. We promptly purchased an APQS Millennium I have named Lydia, and started my long-arm business in what had been our living room.

After several years it enabled us to add an addition to our house creating my studio. We added a 16’x50’ space which not only gave me a spacious master bedroom and bath, but also a 16’x 25’ space for Lydia my long-arm quilting partner.

Nearing completion of our addition we were considering what kind of flooring to put in the studio space. My husband is one of the world’s finest collectors of “stuff we might need some day”, my full barn attests to this fact. On one of his rummage trips he returned with an entire truck load of 12”x12” commercial vinyl tile. I remarked what are we going to do with them  since they were all different colors.

He said “well Ladybug, you will figure it out I am sure”. The tiles remained buried in the barn for several years as we continued to build and consider options.   My husband with a gleam in his eye suggested using the multi-colored tile and arranging it in some kind of pattern.   The light bulb came on and I started designing “my quilted floor”.   We do work together very well.   The tiles were 12”x12” so it was very easy to come up with a wonderful design for the floor incorporating, flying geese, nine patch, friendship star, shoo-fly, Irish chain, and four patch. One of my friends came over and in the space of one weekend we managed to complete my largest quilt so far. Lots of colors where used.

Quilted Floor

One of the unique things that has come about from having this large area in which to work, is being able to design and improve some very old tried and true quilt designs using a revolutionary new strip-piecing technique that I was given in a vision. It makes piecing the corn and beans block easy fast and addictive using a strip piece method that eliminates all the bias problems of sewing individual pieces. Using this strip-piecing method it is “sew easy”. I have recently launched an on-line business to market these new patterns using the new method. Come visit me at Quiltedladibug.com.

Danette “Dani” Sawtelle  The QuiltedLadibug Long-arm quilting service and pattern company