Catching up on Quilting

 

Saturday I taught Advanced Threadplay. Pam Harris, is the president of ALCQ, my local quilt guild. She made this great flower in class.

Our next meeting is the Annual Teddy Bear & Friends Tea. I made this little 9 patch quilt for this Turtle in about an hour.

 

I backed it with this polar fleece, & sewed the top to the back like a pillow, then turned it, stitched around the edges & quilted it in no time at all. It will make a nice Woobie for some little kid.

The rest of my week has been quilting another large quilt for a friend. I can’t reveal the front until Friday, but you can see my quilting best from the back anyway, so here are a few shots. Click on any of them to see a bigger picture.

Oh, here is one little preview of the front.

UFO or WiP

 

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Today I went to my friend Kate’s  house. We decided to work on repairing an old quilt for her MIL. When I got there, I set my basket with a crochet project down on the floor, & Camille, the dog decided to check out my funky yarn.

Ginger the cat held the quilt in place for use while we worked on it.

It had one particular square, that was in the worst shape & in need of repair. The green triangles were splitting.  Kate had found a good match, & we cut triangles to lay over the broken ones,

 

Then appliquéd & hand quilted them down.

 

Our friend Jeannie Smith came over too, & helped. It was good to get together with old friends. We think we should make it a monthly happening, & work on those projects that we have started but never take time to finish. Kate has another quilt that needs repair, we’ll fix next.

 

On my way home, I stopped to say hi to my friend the Raven too!

Customer quilts

 

 

This quilt belongs to Cyndi Campbell. I finished quilting it & have it ready to return. She out of town right now, so I am going to take it to Quilt Guild next week for Show & Tell. The top & back were beautifully made, & I wanted to do something special with it.  I considered putting the top on the bottom with wash-away stabilizer all the way around the edges, so I could custom quilt it from the back, but after much hard thought & a phone call to Megan, I decided to keep the top on top I did use the stabilizer on it though, because there was a lot of bias on those triangles, & I figured it would help keep it square, & it did.

Can you see the quilting? The picture below is the back side. It’s pretty too.

I have another quilt on Lily that I’ve started quilting on, & this one is hanging on my design wall, while I contemplate how I want to quilt it.

The one directly below, marked Plan C is where I think I’m leaning.

I do like the corner feathers in yellow, below on this next one.

There are a couple more design choices on the star parts of this next one, but I think plan C is the winner.

A Cool Tool

One of the great things I learned about in my On-line class with Carla Barret, was about this tool. I know they have been around for a while, because when I was talking to my DD about it, she told me that Darian (the DGD) has had one for about 2 years. She does all of her art work with it. It’s better than colored markers!

Below is a picture of a customer quilt that I had quilted a few weeks ago. The fine black lines on it are what I’ve done in practicing with my new Bamboo tool. You can digitally draw on a photo of a quilt top, try out lots of different quilt designs. They can then be e-mailed to the customer along with quotes on what each different design will cost them, then they can decide what they want. What a great tool! That way everybody should be happy in the end. No more problems with “Communication”!

Speaking of communication. That’s the next Fiberaction challenge. It seems that communication has been a very important factor in my life lately. Actually , some miscommunication has taken over & opened up a new window for me (while closing an old door). Try as hard as I could, I couldn’t seem to communicate what I was trying to say, so I will be free of some obligations that I would have otherwise had to spend time, energy & most likely money on in March. I am looking forward to a trip to Delta Junction, & teaching more.

Thank You!

 

Just had to do a quick post to thank all of you who agreed on the wood trim! The ugly stuff has been returned to the store! Warren is working hard getting doors in & trim on. In another week or so we may have his room almost done.

Th picture above is our little grandgirl Carys. My DDIL sent it, a friend of hers took it. Isn’t she cute?

Blogger: Dashboard

The Bar Debate-Your Opinions PLEASE!

 

First of all, I thought since I seldom have photos of myself here, I would share this one, above. My friend Kate Beebe took it during my needle  felting demo at Quilt Guild this past week.

Here are a couple of pictures of Cyndi Campbell’s quilt that I am working on right now. I’ve taken inspiration from the green leafy fabric for the quilting design, plus I am using melon shaped rulers from Kim Brunner for the melon wedges in the blocks. The quilting doesn’t show much on this quilt because of the busy fabrics, but so far I am pleased with how it is turning out.  I am using the Dream Green batting again, & I really like how it quilts.

Now here is where I want some opinions. My DH & I have been working on getting this flooring down in his little Bar room.

The debate is about the floor trim. Above is one that matches the floor. You can click on the images to see them better. Below is one that matches the wall. Which would you choose? We have a difference of opinion between us & I feel very strongly about it, so I want a majority vote, as someday we will want to sell this house & I think we should try to appeal to more people. Can you guess which way I am leaning?

Extra Class Work

Today Carla assigned me an extra assignment. No, not for being bad, just needing to be more challenged. She wanted me to take some of my doodles from the first assignment & try to use them, stretch my brain a bit more.
I started with my trash basket from my studio.

Below is the sketch it inspired.
 
Below is another doodle I did, combining different styles of feathers.

This is the result. I did stretch in ways I seldom go. I did a little bit of marking for the straight lines, & I did a cross hatch marking in the background to have points to cross when I was doing the free-motion lines.
The perfectionist in me isn’t happy with the irregularities in the design, yet the artist in me says it’s OK. When I teach students, especially in my Threadplay classes, I encourage them to not get “too perfect”. I think when we make designs too perfect, they become somewhat sterile, & looks digitized. I prefer to have some irregularities, it makes the art work more human.