Creations - Quilts, Art, Whatever by Nina-Marie Sayre

One for the Wall - Design Wall Monday

2011-10-24T05:04:00.000-04:00

Finally, I've started on my new project. This weekend, I got back into the groove of creating and managed to get a good bit of wallhanging for my family room done. You can see the design process for this project here. With the four designs sketched out - I decided on the second one - since I wanted it to be a bit busy but not too busy. The last two designs seemed like there weren't enough quiet spaces for the eye to rest. The first was too patterned. I guess the second was my Goldilocks design (grin).

With that decision out of the way, I went up into my fabric loft to pull out some prints. I wanted to use a good mixture of commercial, batik and hand dyeds so the whole think had an eclectic feel to it. Also, I wanted to stick to the warm fall tones found in the room. Here are my choices . . . .

With the design all picked out - the quilt is really easy to make and coming along nicely. I'm using freezer paper templates to make the circles (gathering the edges around underneath) and the leaves are rough edge appliqued.(with a little zig-zag stitch on the edge). I really like how its coming and I think it will fit in the room nicely. I'm wondering though, if I'll keep to my original idea to make twin pieces for either side of my door - hmmmmmmm we'll see!

See more great design walls at Judy's patchworks!

Decisions. . . Decisions. . . .

2011-10-23T18:35:00.000-04:00

Well with everything that's been going on here - basically life - I haven't had time to get into my sewing hole. Still, that doesn't mean that I haven't been thinking about what I want to create next! Where ever I went this month, I brought my sketch pad and worked on the design samples for my new project. You see, I have these two walls in my family room that are in drastic need of a make-over. They have these god-awful prints on them now that truly need to be ~~pitched~~ donated. With that said - now I'm left with the decision of what to fill them with. I thought for once, I might want to put up my own art.

My family room is big with a nice high ceiling and warm wooden floor. Its filled with over stuff couches and my husband's shaker/mission style furniture. The wall color is this warm terra cota which I love since the room is so big and there a ton of wood every where. After much thought, I decided to try to make something decorative - for a change LOL - with organic lines. But what??????

So out came the sketch book and I started getting ideas together. At first I started simple - but as you can see - soon the designs got more and more complicated! Which one do you think I picked???

Quilting Around Chautauqua Institute - A Review

2011-09-27T13:52:00.000-04:00

So this weekend, I finally took the time to go to Quilting Around Chautauqua. This was its seventh year and I've never managed to get there since Septembers are so busy here. Still once I saw that Jinny Beyer was going to give the lecture, I promptly bought a ticket. To say that this is just a local show would be a gross understatement. This is a whole weekend of all things traditional quilt. Ladies come from all over - including Canada to partake in the festivities. There are wonderful accomodations, classes, a 800 quilt quilt show and over 65 vendors. So what's not to love???

Well I did LOVE Jinny's lecture. She talked on color confidence and even though I nor my friend Kristen didn't learn a thing we both absolutely found it entertaining. She's great at talking in public and I felt like it was very personal although the 500 seat auditorium was sold out. Her lecture was interactive and she explained how she chooses color plus showed some her quilts and slides. I would highly recommend seeing her if you get the chance!

I also got to hear a quick hour talk on sewing needles by the marketing director from Schmetz. Am I the only one that didn't get what all those numbers meant on my needle packages??? Well now I do. In fact, I can safely say that I know more about sewing needles now than I ever need too (grin)! Still, I wasn't bored and she handed out these super handy ABC books that showed what all the needles were and what they were suppose to be used for and on. VERY useful. Oh. . . and free!! One thing I learned though, there is no tried and hard rule on when to change a needle - the answer is always -
"it depends. . . "!

Now those are the things I liked. What I didn't care for was the show itself. It was VERY spread out. Even though the grounds are lovely, it was blocks and blocks of walking all day. They did have shuttles running but the grounds were over run with quilters and there were long lines for those. Lunch wasn't well thought out either. When we went over to the cafe - we found it was smack dab in with a bunch of vendors and had an longgggggg line. Our food - although cheap enough was cold and we ate outside since there was no indoor seating.

I found the different buildings hard to find even though I'm usually good with a map. The institute, for those who don't know, is a Victorian village inside its walls. The streets are at different angles as the village grew and can get confusing. Its gorgeous there though! Still I didn't like wandering around looking for things.

For all that was spread out, once you got in the buildings, the show was packed in VERY tightly. It was wall to wall vendors and quilters. No room to look - I felt closed in. You couldn't slowly enjoy and browse since it was such a frenzy. The quilts themselves were mostly hung nicely since they were hung by individual guilds.

One of the main reasons we went to the show, was to see the result of the Jinny Beyer Challenge. 35 of the 50 kits were handed back in and OMG they were amazing. The work the ladies did was just spectacular. I can pretty much say they were the most interesting thing we saw all day. That said, the challenge was displayed in the main hotel, off a side entrance hall. They were on folding racks - smooshed together - some overlapping - displayed from way high - 8 ft - to toe level. Mine was toe level - hung crooked and another quilt over lapped. You couldn't stand and look at all of them since people were coming in and out trying to get to all the vendors.

So, as you can tell this will probably be the first and last time I go to this show. It was an excellent value though - only $4 to enter - Jinny's lecture was $15. Still I felt like the promoters were trying to make up the extra money on vendors and their own booth. I definitely will NEVER do another challenge with that quilt shop. The way they treated the entries was disgraceful. Finally, when I go to a show I look for two things - to be inspired and to have a nice lunch out (sometimes not in that order - grin). This didn't give me either!

Drag Along Quilt Hand Quilted - Design Wall Monday

2011-09-26T05:04:00.000-04:00

Well once again, school starts and my blog goes by the wayside. I really do need my own wife when things get busy. Still I love teaching and this September has been amazing so I can't complain. Even getting a bad cold, I managed to finish my Drag-along quilt in time for the fair. Since this is a project that I've been hand quilting for 2 years I was all happy with that! It didn't win any ribbons - guess my funky sense of style is too much for the octogenarians that run our needlework department - still I was SUPER happy to finish it up so I can use it this winter.

Some facts:

58" by 105" - Couch size
Original Design - Just radom squares
made with Amy Butler prints and RJR Quilter's Sateen
Hand quilted with Rayon and Polysheen threads
Batting is Quilter's Dream Request
Made just for me!

Things I like - I love everything about this quilt!

What I would change - the binding corners were a bit off - I need to look up how to do that again - LOL!

Anyways - it was a great fair week. We go down every night to eat and enjoy the entertainment. I was happy my wallhangings got a first and second place. Plus tons of people have stopped me to say they are enjoying my work - so that is way better than a ribbon. It was nice that I was productive enough this year to have 3 things to enter!

Enjoy other great design walls at Judy's Patchworks!

Winter Wallhanging Completed! Design Wall Monday

2011-09-05T07:25:00.000-04:00

So I spent Labor Day weekend laboring over completing my Christmas wall hanging. I'm always surprised at how much the quilting adds to the piece. As soon as the quilting line was down, the vision I had for this piece really started to emerge. I originally had designed this piece for last Christmas but for some reason I got stalled. I don't know if it was because all the thread work or because it wasn't coming out the way I envisioned . . . or a little bit of both. Still, I'm so glad that its done and ready to hang on the wall and enter in the fair!

Some facts:

Original design
41" by 49"
Made with commercial and hand dyed fabrics
The trees are hand appliqued
The boughs are free standing thread appliqued
machine quilted, faced
good points - the design is strong, complex background adds interest and the gradations works well, thread applique adds dimension
bad points - the quilting could have been neater, the largest tree color is off - still - the borders are still a tad crooked

I was happy to finally do a piece with thread applique and now can add that to my tool box . Its so funny that last year I designed this piece because I wanted a "quickie" , little Christmas wall hanging. Instead I got a piece that took 10's of hours, ended up being crib size and can hang throughout the winter!

Christmas UFO - Monday Design Wall

2011-08-29T07:36:00.000-04:00

Who would have thought that one little tree could take up three full bobbins of thread?? Well, I sure didn't! When I got my order of thread from my sewing shop - 4 big cones of Bottom Line - it gave me the bright idea to take back out my Christmas UFO and finish it in time for - wait for it - Christmas! Doing so I diligently wound 3 bobbins of green Bottom Line. I decided I was going to do the background evergreen in a thread applique rather than in cloth. I knew it was going to take a lot of thread - but OMG didn't realize how much. 3/4rd's of the way through I had to wind 3 more. Now I only used one of those - but still that's a lot of thread.

As you can see I'm almost done with the thread appliques. If you'd like to know how I'm doing them - I blogged out the process in a tutorial. I think I'll just add a few more pine leaves and then sandwich this up for quilting and thread work. I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt it yet - gotta research and plan for that but I'm hoping I can finish it all in a week. Then I'll just sew on the thread appliques on top of it! Can't wait since this has been in my UFO pile for a year!

I did manage to finish up my memorial commission quilt. I'll get a picture of it up as soon as I can figure out how to take a picture of a 10 ft long quilt!

See more design boards at Judy Patchworks!

Easy Quilt As You Go Tutorial - Design Board Monday

2011-08-22T06:52:00.000-04:00

Two years ago, I was ~~dozing~~ sitting in a lecture by Katie Pasquini Masopust, when I heard something that caught my ears. She was telling how she had put her amazing art quilt together by quilting it in sections on her regular machine and then she sewed the sections together. She explained it quickly but it sound like all she did was sew them together and put a strip down the back to hide the seam. Huh?! That sounded wayyyyyyyy too easy. So I just filed it until I could catch up with her later for further explaination. Well. . . later turned out to be this summer at Quilting by the Lake and I asked her about it. She said - yep - that's all you do. She showed me her book where she explained it - Fractured Landscaped Quilts (which of course I bought from her (grin) Its really is a super book!).

Why all the interest you ask? Well, I do have this monster commission memorial quilt that would like to be delievered to its new home. All three sections managed to get quilted this week and by the weekend I was ready to sew them all together. I thought I would blog out the method for you all, since it worked really well!

1. I cut 1.5" strips of the backing fabric. I sewed them together so that they were long enough to stretch the entire length of the two columns - 115" (yeah I know - ridiculious isn't it?)

2. Then, I cleared off my big sewing table and squared up my quilt using my 16" square. I had quilted it to the edges just like each piece was its own individual quilt. I like this method since I could use regular 44" width fabric for the backing without having to piece a back or buy special backing. (TIP: Buy large yardages of fabric when its super cheapie for backings just like this! Got this RJR bolt for $2 a yard)

3. Then I took 2 columns, matched right sides together and pinned every 3" or so. Make sure you're careful when pinning any points you need to match.

4. I sewed them together on my machine (using the Accufeed 1/4" foot for all my Horizon owners!) with a smaller stitch length of 1.7 (which I normally use for piecing anyways). I used the regular 1/4" seam allowance.

5. I pressed the seams open and trimmed them to 1/8". DO NOT sew the seam at 1/8" or you'll never get it to press open - don't ask me how I know this (grin)!

6. Now this is where I differ from Katie's method. I took my strip of backing folded it length wise wrong sides together and sewed. I then took it to my ironing board and folded it over and ironed the seam under the new backing "tape". Katie takes hers - sews wrong sides together and pulls thru to the right side tube-style. That just didn't seem fun to me since my tube was 115" long LOL!

7. I then basted the long backing tape over the seam on back. I did this old skol with a needle and thread on my big table - but I imagine you could use pins if you like.

8. Then I used a blind applique stitch to stitch it down with matching thread. This was a tedious, quiet process - I sat in my easy chair with my knees up and my big block 16" ruler on my lap under the quilt to use as a hard surface - don't let your applique stitch go through to the front. Let me just say about this part - Thank God for Netflix!

I picked this picture 'cause you can see how it went a little uneven

And Ta-daaaaaaa - that's it - 8 hours later and all three columns were put together and you'd never know unless you look close that that backing tape is there. It wasn't nearly as bulky as I thought .

As a side note: I did design this quilt so that there were very few points to match once the three columns were put together. Those that were there were easily matched because I pinned carefully - the way that you would pin if it was just a normal quilt top.

Anyways - I will definitely be doing this method again. I don't like to send out my work to a long arm machine quilter only because I like the quilt to have a "home hand made" look to it - plus I can do the design I had in mind for it. This also keeps costs down for me and my clients.

All that's left is the binding - which I'm thinking of doing by machine - for the first time ever! Funny how sewing down 390" of binding by hand doesn't sound fun (grin). . . .still I'll do a sample this week and we'll see if I like the look.

Hope this was clear - any questions please feel free to email me or comment!!

You can see more cool design boards at Judy's Patchworks!

My Machine and I - Design Wall Monday

2011-08-15T07:00:00.001-04:00

You know I never machine quilted an entire bedsize quilt before. With my old Elna Quilter's Dream it just wasn't possible. Now though, on my Janome Horizon and its nearly 12" sewing bed, I can. On Saturday, I managed to pull back out my commissioned memorial quilt and start basting the second third of the quilt. OMG, the thing is a monster! Its about 95" by 115". Because of this, I pieced it in three columns and decided to layer it up that way too. I'm all happy with myself though because in two days I got a whole column done. It only took 2 hours to baste and 7 hours to quilt! Now that I've gotten into the groove of how to move those big long columns through the machine its really quiet relaxing work. Its amazing how much thread you go through though - I've already used the first 5oo yd spool and am into the 3000 yd cone I had to buy. I'm using Janome's Iris cotton quilting thread since it came with my machine and its really nice. Considering that I'm using it in the bobbin and on top, the lint is really minimal. I'm going to continue onto the third today and do the little FMQing the quilt will need at the end. I did manage to find a nice quilt as you go method to sew the three columns together - but more on that when I get there!

I also managed to finish the Jinny Beyer Challenge this week. It will get handed in to the quilt shop today so that they can display it at the Chautauqua Institute in September. I always forget how much work is involved at the end. Between the binding, sleeve and label it can take a bit. Anyways - here are the particulars of the project:

Passageways, A Jinny Beyer Challenge
23" by 28"
50 hours to complete
used inktense pencils to make foreground fabric
raw edged applique and threadwork is feature

Thanks for all the encouragement with this project - it was a true help!!

See more Design Wall's at Judy's Patchworks!

More Thread Work - Design Wall Monday

2011-08-08T06:59:00.002-04:00

With house guests coming, I spent most of last week giving this ole Victorian a good clean. Love having friends for the weekend, but I would be lying if I said I wasn't ~~ecstatic~~ glad to sit down to 5 hours of thread work on the Jinny Beyer challenge on Sunday afternoon. It always amazes me how much time the thread work on a piece takes. I think that maybe its because there is no specific way to do it - no technique out there that is the norm. Thread work or thread painting is definitely in the hands of the quilter. Because of that, I thought I would show you some of the ways I do it.

Usually when I have a project like this, I have a tendency to make little drawing in my sketchbook, testing out how lines will look on the motif of my quilt. It seems to help and its a lot easier to erase pencils than to take out a lot of thread work.

Of course with this project, its all about the rocks. But gosh. . . . how do you thread paint a rock?? The thing about adding free motion thread is to remember that you are applying line and texture. So you have to think that the direction of the line will lead the viewers' eye somewhere, along with adding texture to the piece. I mean - geesh - if we didn't want to add texture to our pieces, we would all be watercolorists (grin)! When I worked on the rocks, then, I made each a little different - just like rocks. I did anchor the edges down with a scribble stitch - rather than a satin. I don't like satin stitching unless I'm doing something that is VERY graphic.

With the rocks done, I was left with the cave and the foreground. I wanted the inside of the cave to have more texture since it was appearing a bit flat to my eye - but also wanted for it to remain nice and dark. The dark value helped it recede to the background. I'm still not quite sure if putting all that movement in that section was the right thing to do - but its done now (grin). That's the thing about thread work - in the final analysis you just have to step out and go with your gut. Sometimes its just right - other times - not so much.

As you can see, I'm not quite done with it - almost though. Had to stop when my eyes started blurring. I should finish this up in the next day or two and get after some other projects. Our local fair is in 5 weeks and it would be nice if I had something to show!

p.s. - Hint of the day - the way to build a nice thread collection is every time its on sale online or at Joann's buy just a few spools. Sooner or later, you have boxes and boxes and all the colors you need!

See more great design walls at Judy's Patchworks!

Done Dyeing! Design Wall Monday

2011-08-01T05:00:00.003-04:00

This week I blogged out my odyssey into the world of hand dyeing including a tutorial (Part One and Part two) on how Jane Dunnewold taught us how to do it. It was a lot less intimidating then I originally thought. I thought you might be interested in some of the results.

After 7 straight days of hand dyeing fabric I learned some things:

I need to make up recipes for chemical water and dye that suit 4 fat quarters so I'm not wasting either one
Dyeing this way is a lot less messy and time consuming than I thought
The muslin that my friend Julia had dyed and sent me dyed up just as well as the pfd fabric did
Cotton easily took 6 dye baths and still changed every time
My recipe for rust needs less blue - it came out a really dark blue/brown
Adobe is really a pretty golden brown with a hint of red undertones
Twisted fabric makes a really cool pattern if you twist it super, super tight
Fabric dyeing is super addictive!

A lot of people have asked what I'm going to do with the fabric (I've been posting the dye colors of the day on Facebook LOL!). Most of it will go into my stash - but I found that Quilting Arts is doing a surface design challenge that I might participate in. It seems fun since you can use any original surface design technique you want, yours gets swapped with someone else's so you can see what work they are doing AND you have a chance of getting one of yours published. Not to mention the deadline isn't till November so there is plenty of time! Sound fun??? Who else is in???

I guess I gotta get back to my sewing machine - she's lonely without me - enjoy more great design boards at Judy's Patchworks.

Why Dye Something Once, When You Can Dye it 3 Times?

2011-07-30T18:47:00.000-04:00

These probably will end up being textured pieces in my figurative quilts.

Honestly, I didn't think I would be batching up fabric 5 days in a row! But as many hand dyers can attest, its a little addicting. Besides, the weather is perfect for it and we're in the middle of putting in a new bamboo floor so it fits well in the chaos. So today is Day 5 of this dyeing marathon and the colors of the day are rust, teal, olive, adobe and grape. Listing the colors makes me think of a Land's End Catalogue (grin).

These might get more surface design layers or applique on top

Anyways - while they are safely batching up in the 85 degree afternoon - I thought I would share with you a few of the more interesting fabrics that resulted from this week. What Jane had us do after each day of dyeing was to go through our fabrics and judge whether they needed another layer of dye or if they were done. I've kept to that and some only got 2 day baths while others are on their fifth.

A Tutorial in Hand dyeing Fabric Part 2

2011-07-28T13:32:00.001-04:00

So I let the fabric "batch" (set up) till morning. You can do it in as little as 3 hours, but the longer it sits the easier it is to rise out. The dye starts to exhaust (break down) as soon as the soda ash is added, so its not like letting it sit longer will make the fabric any darker.

Jane taught us a nice rinse routine which I found really useful since I usually only do small batches of fabric at a time. You separate the fabrics into colors - the warms, cools, and yellows. The first rinse has a little bit of Dawn dishwashing soap to act as a surfactant. Then each grouping is unwrapped and rinsed with cold-cold water, then cold water and then hot. Rinsing really entails you putting them into a small bucket to soak. Since I was working out of my kitchen I just put a small amount of water into the double sink so I could do two groups at once. It really didn't take much time at all to rinse out the dyes and by the third rinse (the hot one) the water was getting clearer. I wasn't too worried about getting it super clear because I'm just going to redye them anyways. Once everything was rinsed I just threw them into the dryer till they were almost dried and gave them a quick iron. The picture just shows some of the samples but most came out interesting with plenty of white space. You notice that my forest green didn't come out really green - rather it split into the blue it was mixed with - very cool but not unexpected.

Now you could stop there. . . .buttttttt. . . . why dye something once if you can dye it two or three times? So I looked at the fabric and started folding it again. Sometimes I just refolded it back into the pattern it was originally but not exactly. Sometimes I put it into a whole new fold. For these 12 fabrics I stayed away from rings because I think the lines will be more interesting in my art quilts. Anyways - I once again folded them tight tight using plenty of rubber bands to hold them together and to add a subtle resist.

The colors of the day are iceberg lettuce green, grape, strongest orange, and torquoise (all pro-chem dyes). When I picked the colors to redye them, I thought of the color wheel - choosing mostly analogous or complementary colors. With golden yellow - you can chose most anything since its an easy match. The hardest complementary is red/green so I stayed away from that. This time I made up only a quart of chemical water. Each color then had 1 cup of chemical water to a heaping half teaspoon of dye. Notice that as I go through the dye cycle the dyes will get more. I still didn't use all the dye mixtures but at least I didn't waste as much as yesterday. I gotta remember to get fabric ready to batch up in a brown (adding all the left over dyes together). Anyways they are out in the sun batching now! I'll let you know how they come out!

A Tutorial in Hand dyeing Fabric - Part 1

2011-07-27T15:59:00.001-04:00

Am I the only one that has found this whole hand dyeing process confusing? For as many people dye fabric there are that many different ways to do it. Add to that, dyeing is a VERY iffy kind of thing. I mean, if you think you are going to hand dye fabric and control the whole process. . . .well you might as well let go of that dream. Anyways, I decided to blog out the way that Jane Dunnewold taught us to dye. I figure if she's done thousands of yards of fabric over tens of years - she must know what she's doing, right?!

So I started out with 12 pieces of pfd fabric ripped to approximately fat quarter size or so. Let me warn you now, I'm not real exact on this whole process since I'm just dyeing fabric for my stash and to get the process ingrained in this menopausal brain of mine. I used a mix of fabrics - some rayon, some cotton twill, some silk broadcloth and some mixed silk and cotton (yes - you got that right - its silk on one side - cotton on the other - cool, huh?!). All the fabric had been scoured - washed in hot water with additives free detergent. I then took the fabric and manipulated it. Now you can do this any way you want. The key here is to do it tightly - I mean - really tight! So I folded it into squares, fans, flag folds, and even tied one in knots. I then used a ton of rubber bans to keep it all together. They end up as these dense masses of fabric.

I then chose the colors of the day - Carmine Red, Forget me not Blue, Forest Green, and Golden yellow. Some are jacquard colors and some are from ProChem. I made a gallon of chemical water consisting of 1 gal of water, 1/3 c of salt, and 1/3 c of Soda Ash. The water must be hot and you add it to the dry ingredients stirring. Make sure you have gloves and a dust mask on while doing this. Still wearing the mask and gloves, I measured out a heaping 1/2 teaspoon of each dye into their individual mason jars. Then, I added 3 c of the chemical water. I like using mason jars because I had them already, you can just screw on the lid to shake well, and they are easily cleaned and stored. I only used a half teaspoon of dye since I know that I will be dyeing the fabric at least 2 or three more times.

I used 4 zip-lock bags (one for each color) and just put 3 pieces of fabric into each one. I then put enough of the dye mixture into each bag to coat the fabric "packets". This is the iffy part - you want to have the dye soak through the fabric so you don't have a ton of white spots - but not to much that it totally saturates the fabric. You then close up the bags, and rocks the bags back and forth to soak up the fabric - DON'T SQUISH IT! I just sort of rocked and shook it. I then stuck the fabric out in the sun for at least 3 hours. The process likes temps to be between 70 - 100 degrees so summer dyeing is perfect !

This is getting long so I'll continue this tutorial with a "Part 2" which will include the rinse out and the "reveal" (which will be as much a surprise to you as to me!)

Complex Cloth - Design Wall Monday

2011-07-25T05:00:00.006-04:00

Well I'm back from my annual trip to Quilting by the Lake. This is a two week quilt conference that is held in Syracuse, NY each July and this was my 11th year going. This year I took a 5 day class with Jane Dunnewold called Complex Cloth.

Basically it was an introduction to the world of surface design. The class wasn't anything like I expected. First of all, most of the people in the class already knew some information about dyeing and painting on fabric. There was only a hand full of us who were truly newbies. Then I didn't realize how much work went into surface design. I don't mean any disrespect, but I mistakenly thought it was easier to paint on fabric than to cut it up and sew it together. . . . NOT!

Here are some of the things we learned last week: making and using stamps, making and using stencils, dyeing fabric (along with the molecule lesson behind dyes!), manipulating fabric to get different looks, resists on fabric (flour and glue), how to use a thermofax, how to tape and use a silk screen, foiling and metal leafing, textile paints and how to use them AND safety while surface designing. Needless to say - my head is spinning with everything we learned! I worked nearly every night till 10 pm and there always seemed to be something else to do.

The picture shows some of the samples I worked on in class - most of them are experiments in using the different techniques. Remember all the fabric was originally just white cotton, silk and rayon pieces when we started. Jane was a joy to work with - she's very organized - keeps the class on task and always had time for a quick question and to help. I would definitely recommend this class to any new or intermediate dyer.

I'm sure I'll be trying some of the things I learned in class here at home and I'll blog about them as I go. Hopefully I can entice some of you to try something new too!

See more inspirational design walls at Judy Patchwork's!

Inspiration at Campbell's Pottery

2011-07-13T07:24:00.000-04:00

I've tried to teach my daughter, Tessa, that there is beauty all around us - if only we take time to really look! As she gets older - 13 - gasp! - I think she's getting the idea. Whenever we are at some place new, she has a habit of taking her camera and trying to capture the beauty around her. This weekend, at the artist's reception at Campbell's Pottery in Cambridge Springs, PA, she did just that. The pictures were so good that I thought I would share a handful. She very graciously has offered these up to any artist who would like to use them in their creative process (although if you wanted to give her credit that would be nice). I did very little editing - these are just what she captured that day!

I like this one best!

Jinny Beyer Challenge Rocks On! Design Board Monday

2011-07-11T06:40:00.001-04:00

Spent the week working on the Jinny Beyer challenge. Its been fun to experiment with some things I haven't used before. Saturday was dedicated to sewing down my final design. I hadn't done this yet with my Janome Horizon so there were some things I had to try out. First, I found out that it sews great with invisible thread in the top and bobbin. I also ~~discovered~~ remembered that it has a "Last stitch sewn" function and custom stitch setting memory. That means I can set up all the stitches that I use to the exact size and settings I want them without having to do it every time. That's such a blessing since before I used to write down the setting numbers on tape and put them on the Elna - where they would end up looking all old and yucky!

Anywayssssss. once the machine was set up to use just the right zig-zag stitch, I spent 7 - count 'em - 7 hours sewing around all the little stones with invisible thread. Luckily, I had a good book to listen too. Still by 10 at night , the piece was ready to layer up with batting - no back - and to start putting in the extensive thread work I have planned. This will be the first time I free motion with my horizon so I'm sure there will be a learning curve too!

Oh and what else did I do on Saturday???? I went to the Artist's Reception at Campbell's Pottery where my piece, Lilies, is being shown this month. Very fun! Not only was the food good (grin) but also its fun to meet all the other artists. I love meeting people who have never had work shown before - they're so excited - they're just beaming!

I promise to do a review blog about the show later this week. We leave this week for my annual trip to Quilting by the Lake - so I have some blogs that are scheduled to post while I'm gone!

See more great design boards at Judy's Patchworks.

Scavenging for Supplies - Complex Cloth

2011-07-08T07:12:00.000-04:00

Well didn't get much sewing done yesterday, since I took some time to clean up my sewing hole. With that complete, I could put the final touches on my supply list for my upcoming class with Jane Dunnewold, Complex Cloth. Now for you who don't know, Jane is the queen of the layered surface design movement. Her work is amazing and she pioneered several of the techniques that artist use today. Its really is an honor to take a class with her.

Now with that all said - OMG - you should see the 2 page supply list I had to put together. It has everything on it from PFD fabric to old nylons to rubber erasers (boxes of them!). I love though, how Jane was VERY specific on the things we needed - where to get them - and that we would - she promised - be using all of them! For the last month, little by little, I've been collecting items around the house and at various stores. I'm even including some surface design products that are not on the list that I've been meaning to give a try. My scavenge took me to my linen closet, dickblick.com, the dollar store, Walmart, Testfabrics, my sewing hole, my kitchen, Paul's workshop, Dharma Trading and JoAnn's Fabrics. The ironic thing was once it was all packed I realized that this was going to be the least amount of baggage I ever brought to Quilting by the Lake. Usually I have bins and bins of fabric and sewing notions. Now I just have two little boxes.

Oh and yeah - wait for it - no sewing machine! Seems so weird to be going to a quilt conference for a week and not sewing! Of course, I do plan to bring a hand sewing project - the pinwheels. Don't want my fingers to go into shock or anything!

Make Visual Decisions. . . Visually

2011-07-05T15:49:00.000-04:00

Spent the last couple of days picking out just the right fabrics for the Jinny Beyer challenge. There were so many ways I could have gone with this project it wasn't an easy task. I finally decided I would go with a gray pinkish kind of look. With that, the first three just fell into place. Then the dreaded foreground. None of my stash fabrics really worked so the auditioning started. . . . .

First, I tried to paint/draw my foreground with my new Inktense pencils. I hadn't tried them before but they were real easy to use. All I did was used a brush to wet my fabric with water and then started blending the colors I wanted. I did it right there on my cutting mat and just cleaned up the mess with a rag after! I liked the results of the pencils - but wasn't too keen on how it looked with the project. I felt it was way too purple and way too cool looking! So off that came.

Next I tried a dyed fabric from my stash - a Judy Robertson piece. Way too BOLD AND INTENSE!
But I did like the warmness of the colors.

Soo onto the next attempt! I took back out my Inktense pencils and tried painting a new foreground in a warmer color way. It was too light and too pastel for my tastes! Still it looked like I was getting there!!

Finally. . . I took that down and repainted it - twice (grin!) until I got it just the way I wanted it. One thing I learned is from using the pencils is that they will look way darker and bolder wet than dry. So I had to really layer the colors on to get the look I was after.

I'm all happy with this one! It has just the look I was aiming for and the depth of values are right. Now I just have to take it off the design board and re-pin everything nice-nice and start sewing. Ugh! Not looking forward to sewing down all those little stones!

The Jinny Beyer Challenge - Design Board Monday

2011-07-04T05:00:00.007-04:00

Happy 4th Everyone - Thank God for Freedom and this wonderful country!!

Well taking a little break from the Crosses Series, to get working on my Jinny Beyer challenge. You see our local quilt shop has issued a challenge in preparation for Jinny coming to lecture at this year's Quilting Around Chautauqua. They hold this annual event at the famous Chautauqua Institute and there will be over 800 quilts there. The challenge consists of you buying a complete 150 charm set of Jinny Beyer's fabric palette and then making some kind of project with using at least 25 of them. Each charm is 2" by 4" and OMG! they were fun to fan through your fingers! Jinny really has put together a useful line of basics.

Inspirational photo

So I've had the set for a couple of months now - just thinking over what I wanted to do with them. All spring I've had this growing fascination with stones, stone walls, and caves. The more I looked at the charms - the more I saw stone walls. After picking out just the right inspirational picture, I started placing the stones. I used a pellon base and then added a black fabric for the "mortar". The stones were pinned onto the black fabric being placed by value. I'm not fusing them since it would all start looking too flat for my taste.

I've auditioned a couple of fabric for the base foreground but none seemed just right - so I bet I'll end up painting one. That should be interesting since I've never done that before (grin). I'm also in the process of auditioning the fabrics for the inside of the "cave".

Ya know, this is another one of those projects where its all about value baby!!!
Check out more design walls at Judy's Patchworks!

Crosses II - Top Done!

2011-06-30T11:23:00.000-04:00

Well this is the layout I finally picked. You might think - how hard could it possibly be to put together these little cross blocks. Well, let me tell ya, plenty hard. Still after about 20 different layouts - I settled on this one and sewed it up before I could change my mind. Once I was done - I really liked it. So guess they're right when they say "Nothin' that's worth having comes easy " (grin)

I was going to layer these up and start quilting on them, but I think I need a small break. There is a local challenge that is due the end of August and I've learned that my work is better when I'm not rushing the process. I better get going on that!

Hand dyeing the Colors of Summer

2011-06-29T16:14:00.002-04:00

Well finally took a break from making the crosses and my machine altogether. I didn't mean to - honest! But I totally forgot what a big job hand dyeing 6 yards of fabric was. OMG! It seem like it took forever. . . it didn't help that I only do it a couple of times a year so I forget exactly what I'm doing and had to research it all over again. Plus this year, when I started looking at recipes and such . . . well. . .I just wasn't in the mood. So I decided to wing it! I mean, like, everyone needs a bit of surprise in their life right?

Anyways, I did know that I needed some reds, some dark and yellow greens and I wanted to try out the turquoise. I really had started this dyeing session because I wanted to test out the new fabrics I had ordered recently. I needed some for Quilting by the Lake (which is in three weeks!!!!!) so I ordered a bit extra. I ordered some from Testfabrics. Yesterday I ended up dyeing up yardage of Testfabrics 400 and 419. I like the 419 way better since it dyed better and the hand is so nice. It, of course, has a higher thread count.

I'm really happy with yesterday's results. I scoured (prewashed with a perfume, color free detergent) the fabric even though it was PFD (prepared for dyeing) and all fabric was mercerized. Because both of those I think I got a deeper richer color. Besides, the colors I needed, I also saved some quarters for left over dye. I just poured the dye into the cups - layering each color. Because I wanted a more uneven texture I only "stirred" the fabrics once in the 6 hours they sat.

By the way, if you wondering how I do my dyeing - I blogged about it last summer so just click here. Its nice that this year I had all the stuff ready to go - all I had to do was pull it out and play!

Crosses II - Playing with Value - Design Board Monday

2011-06-27T05:00:00.012-04:00

Well, I made it through to my second in the Crosses series. I checked and yes - 2 - does make a series!! This has been a lot of fun studying value and shape this week.    My big sewing table is a mass of green, blue, yellows and now. . . a touch of orange.

For the second one I decided to play with a 4" block and keep the crosses to just the simple 2 line minimum. I also decided to add another color - orange - as an accent. This one seemed harder to layout. I tried about 6 layouts till I decided on this one.. . .at least for now!!    Once I got it up - it seemed right - but just to make sure I did a black and white version of it. You can see at once from the photo that the values are right. Makes it much easier and I would highly suggest to do this to study the value of a quilt. Remember, "Value does the work, while color takes the credit" Still I might end up changing it - it seems a bit chaotic!

As an update on Cross I, I've decided to cut the edges off of it and make it into a rectangle.   While making the squares for the second quilt, I kept it up on the design board "cooking". The more I looked at it, the more I felt that the uneven edges were a distraction and taking the eye away from the focal point. Just to prove my hunch, I took flannel strips I keep on the edge of my design board and placed them around the quilt to "frame" it off. Immediate improvement. So I'm going to have to go back and finish it off before I layer it quilt.

Ohhhh speaking of quilting. . . .been steadily machine quilting the memorial quilt and will start quilting on Crosses I this week!

See more great design boards on Judy's Patchworks!

Crosses. . . The Beginning of an Abstract Quilt Series

2011-06-23T09:08:00.000-04:00

Okay here is the finished quilt top - the edges need to be trimmed a bit but for the most part I'm going to be leaving them uneven. As you recall it was my first assignment for my Quilt University class "Working in Series" with Elizabeth Barton. The whole abstract designing is a bit addicting. Its going to be fun to study value and shape this way. It really wasn't too hard either - 45 blocks and 11 hours in this quilt top! I'm not quite sure where the free motion quilting is going to go but I'll leave that for another time. I'm sure that Elizabeth is going to say, "Okay Nina - get going on the next." See how she is??? (grin)

One thing I wanted to share with you is a quick piecing tip. I used little stickers I bought at the dollar store to help keep the blocks in the right order. In the past, whenever I had blocks like this that needed to be pieced exactly in the right order and the right side side up - they were forever getting switched around. So this time, I numbered the stickers and placed them on the blocks. Worked like a charm. Everything was easily kept in the same order and when I was done - I just tossed them out. I imagine you could keep them for another use but since they were only a buck for 300 - why?

I'm starting to machine quilt the Memorial quilt and start working on the next in the series. Wow - don't I sound serious about my work? (grin)

More Crosses Created

2011-06-21T21:22:00.000-04:00

Well made enough crosses to get up on my board. For now I've just sorta been making them randomly - whatever fabric my fingers fell on - that's the one I used. As you can see, I ended up with more dark than light. So I'll need to add more light blocks tomorrow. They really are a little mindless to make and a little addicting since I'm using my favorite colors and they end up looking all pretty.

Still this isn't anywhere near done - just wanted to get up two days of sewing. One thing about it right now - it seems so busy!! No quiet places to rest your eye. I'm sure I'll have to address that. Also I'm thinkin' its going to need more yellow in the darker blocks to help move your eye around the piece. The new added light blocks though will help with that too!

Its so much different doing a class at home like this - I mean - everyone still expects me to get the car inspected, do the shopping, make dinner etc. etc. etc. Geesh - you'd think Janome would come out with a model of sewing machine that came with its own ~~shirtless~~ houseboy. . . sighhhhhhhh . . . . Guess I'll have to write them with that suggestion.

The value of the Cross - Design Board Monday

2011-06-20T07:19:00.001-04:00

Every once in a while I get the question - "How do you come up with the color for your quilts?" For a while I used to use a color wheel. But a couple of times I picked colors that I didn't want to really work with because they didn't appeal to me at that moment in time. So now the way I do it is that I get out my art books and start looking all the pretty eye candy. I start marking the pages that make me say WOW! At the end of the session, I go back and look at the color palettes.

That's exactly what I did yesterday when I was picking out my colors for the first in my cross series. All the pictures that popped out at my were green, blue and yellow. That settled that. I then went into my stash to start pulling fabrics and realized that I'm definitely a yellow/green kind of a person - got a ton of it! The yellows were hard - had to put back all the cool yellows and went for a more buttery feel. Of course you're going to have leaves and sun - you gotta do water sky blue! With them all pulled they needed staged by value. It makes it so much easier to do the blocks.

What a change it is stitching these little cross blocks compared to the memorial quilt top! Feels great to be working with fabrics and colors that I love. These are only two of the blocks layouts - I'm going to add one more. I have no idea where this abstract is going - so guess you're going to have to check back and see!

See more great design board's at Judy's Patchworks!

Design. . . Its a process - Crosses at the Beginning

2011-06-19T06:37:00.002-04:00

Some Sample Cross ideas

Well after spending the last couple of weeks totally immersed in traditional quilting and clothing scraps up to my elbows, I'm totally ready to get back to my artsy side. All this month, I've been taking the Quilt University class by Elizabeth Barton - Working in Series. Now if you haven't taken a design class with this woman - let me tell you - she's serious about what she does. Each week we've been getting a 20+ page lesson on design principals and how to apply them to working in series.

Its so hard for me to work in series - so many ideas - so little time. But still how else are you going to get to know a topic thoroughly if you don't? One piece is only a little intro - you need to hang out with the theme - put it through its paces - argue with it - coax it - get all touchy-feely . . . .anyways - you get the picture! This is the third class, I've taken with Elizabeth and have gotten to know her and her me. She knows that I usually need a good ~~push~~ shove to step even a toe out of my own little box. So in that light, she's guided me into making my next series a study in abstract..

Value Sketches - Placement ideas for the Cross blocks

ABSTRACT??? Me??? I mean I didn't even start liking abstracts till the last 5 years and I'm not ashamed to say that sometime they just look like a mass of value and shape! But -- as Elizabeth said - What did I have to lose? So started designing a series using the simple shape of the cross. I want to explore value - I want to engage the edge - I want to limit my color palette - I want to really study how the blocks interact. . . .WOW! just realized that's a lot of things to want.

So I started by freely sketching out blocks that I might make up into quilts. I also did some value studies using gray pencils. Then I copied over the little blocks - cut them up- and played with their relationship on paper. Really - these are all the same steps I do with my figurative work but was surprise that you do them for abstract too LOL! After a whole afternoon of playing, these little cross blocks are starting to grow on me!

The next step??? picking out a palette - putting them in values - and finally - sewing some up!

Memorial Quilt Top Finished! Getting Militant About Borders

2011-06-17T12:50:00.000-04:00

You know I hate doing borders. I hate everything about them - cutting them, sewing them on, quilting on them. I wonder why do all the traditional quilts I see have borders? Is it that we see the quilt tops as pictures needing to be framed? Geesh I don't know - and at this stage in my quilting life - I don't really care. All I do know is that the fewer borders I need to do. . . .the better!

With that in mind, I've decided that I am NOT going to put a border on this memorial quilt. As it was creating, I noticed more and more how the whole thing started looking very homespun - its adapted this very homey, warm, country charm. I really didn't mean for it to go that way - but sometimes, I swear, quilts just create themselves. And this one has definitely taken on a look of its own. As anybody who knows me, I am NOT a country chick. I like my colors to be bold, saturated, in your face. . . but this quilt was about the man - who was blue collar, down to earth, fun. So hopefully the quilt has captured that.

The top is now in three columns so that I can attempt a method of quilt as you go. I never tried this method - but its been in my head for about a year so I might as well give it a shot. I'll let you know how it goes.

Almost Done! Design Board Monday

2011-06-13T07:19:00.004-04:00

Well the saga of the commissioned memorial quilt continues. I did a bunch of sewing this week and have lots of the pieces done - just really have to get them together in the final set. Its been a bit of a trial though because I haven't done a traditional quilt in so long - at least not one that I designed. I've had to ~~rip~~ unsew quite a few seams because I'm not following my original draft closely - sighhhhhhh! hate that!! Still, it seems I'm on the right track and should finish up this week.

One thing I did get to try was a new kind of inkjet photo transfer paper. In the past, I haven't been too impressed with the prepackaged fabric, so I've gone through the hassle of using bubble jet and doing my own fabric. This time though I used June Tailor's Colorfast Inkjet fabric sheets. Wow! They worked really nice. The colors came much crisper than other brands I used. Also, I followed the directions on the packaging and they colors actually didn't fade when I put water to them - very nice! So happy since I spent quite a bit of time working on the photos using Photoshop Elements.

Anyways. . . .next decision. . . do I send it out to be machine quilted or do I work on doing a quilt as you go method - always somethin' isn't it?!

More great design walls at Judy's Patchworks!

48 Geese & 24 Four Squares. . . . Design Board Monday

2011-06-06T05:00:00.002-04:00

Wowowowowow!!! Busy sewing week! Its been a while since I've tackled a bedsize traditional quilt and the numbers are a little staggering. Managed to get the 48 flying geese done along with 24 four squares. . . Only 48 more to go!! All of that added up to 15 hours and a TON of scraps. Is anybody else amazed at how many scraps you can accumulate in one project??? Anyways - as you can see - I'm making progress - plussssssssssss a lot more is cut up and in process of getting sewn together. Actually I would say right now I'm really half way pieced!

But wait!!!!! That's not all I did this week. I also started my Quilt University class, Working in Series. So I also almost finished the first lesson on that - which is due Friday. Ohhhhhhhhh and also spent a few hours getting my supply list together for this year Quilting by the Lake class with Jane Dunnewold (more on that to come).

I love productive weeks . . . .don't you????

Check out more great walls at Judy's Patchwork!

Working in Series . . . A Quilt University Class

2011-06-04T06:47:00.000-04:00

My husband Paul's Sculptural Table Series

I'm taking my first on-line class at Quilt University this month; its Elizabeth Barton's "Working in Series" . Now I took this at QBL in a 5 day format - LOVED IT - but only did one of the series of 6 I was suppose to do! Sighhhhhhhhhhh! So thought I would take a refresher and have the whole month to explore the topic. If you are looking for a good design teacher I would HIGHLY recommend Elizabeth. I've taken 2 - 5 day classes and read her amazing blog - and learned a ton!

We have homework and exercises each week - sooooooo thought I would post my work here.

The first exercise was learning what exactly is a series. Its basically a body of work that is pulled together through design elements in common - it could be subject matter - but also technique - color choices - use of shape and line etc etc - I mean honestly - the sky's the limit. Our assignment was to pick 2 each of quilters, painters and other craftsmen and analyze their series. Here are my results:

note: due to copyrights and such didn't post the works here - but please just click on the name and it will take you to the series

Quilters – My favorites – left out Elizabeth ‘cause don’t want her to get a big head!

Linda Levin - New York Series

Elements that are consistent in this series – content of New York buildings, technique (form), color choices, vertical feel movement, medium – hand dyed fabrics

Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer - Windows and Storylines

Elements that are consistent in this series – content of ribbons (storylines), feel of movement (most horizontal, some vertical – no diagonal) - Each piece limits color choices – value is used to emphasis the focal point – form (technique) – medium – hand dyed fabrics

Painters – Again a couple of my favorites

Jacob Lawrence -

War Series – Elements that are consistent – topic - figures in War – use of limited color palettes – use of simple shapes to form figures – repetition of shapes

Wassily Kandinsky -

Another of Paul's Sculptural Table Series

Elements that are consistent – Use of line (curves) – Use of Value (dark/darks help create movement) – Chaotic feeling of the pieces

Others

Wendell Castle

Elements that are consistent – Its all about form – curves and fluidity

Paul Sayre – (my husband) – he’s in the middle of this sculptural curved fine furniture series – he started with a Maloof style rocker and than has designed about 6 pieces

Element that are consistent – form that matches function - curves and fluidity - tables

Hurray for my Janome Horizon! So here's the scoop. . . . .

2011-05-31T20:13:00.000-04:00

Five years ago, I started wanting to update my sewing machine. I asked a lot of my experienced quilter friends and I found that Janome was offering a lot of the features I wanted in my next machine. . . . but not enough of them to make me make the leap! Sooooo I kept quilting with my Elna's Quilter's Dream. You see, I bought that machine with the $$ from my first commissioned quilt, so its pretty dear to my heart. Plus its never broke down on me and I even managed to get all the black sharpie marker off when my then ~~naughty~~ creative 3-year old thought it should be ALL colored black. (ahhhhhh goood timessssssss LOL!)

Finally last year Janome came out with the Horizon 7700. It had almost all the features I've been wanting without an outrageous price tag (I guess that's a matter of opinion LOL!). After a weekend of sewing here are my impressions:

Pros:

Large 11" work bed (harp) - you can fit a lot of quilt in that baby!
5 LCD lights for aging eyes
quiet and smooth sewing
15 feet - including 3 Free Motion Feet
Front Panel that clicks open so you can check your threading
Knee lift
Automatic Scissors (a gift from God!)
250 stitches including 3 alphabets and a ton of applique stitches
extension table included
Built in even feed foot that you can change feet on

Cons:

No bobbin alarm
Its a bit finicky - so was my Elna
Heavy and big - 40 lbs and hard to reach around
Some of the features are hard to get at if its in the sewing table (mine isn't)
Should come with an Accufeed 1/4" foot - bought one though for under $30
Not such a big fan of touch screens - would like buttons instead

But gosh - I do LOVE my new machine and can see where it has true potential. After a weekend of a lot of sewing, I'm totally getting used to having a knee lift and love having a fairy that cuts my threads for me. Love the lighting! Love how smooth it runs. I haven't had any problems going over thick seams which has been the complaint of some. I can tell that this is just the beginning. So all in all - VERY happy with the buy.

One thing though. . .wasn't too happy with the whole process of buying a machine. I had three dealers that are within an hour drive of here. I went to the first shop because they have such a good rep. Once I was there, they were very knowledgable, friendly, and treated their customers right. But when it came to giving me a price they quoted me one that was higher than retail - then with a little discount - trading in the Elna - it came to just below the actual MSRP. You can imagine my surprise! Didn't want to buy the machine for that much so I started saving and waiting and praying (note quite in that order LOL!)

Two weeks ago, my great husband took me for a ride to one of the other dealers. They gave a really good impression too. When it came to the bottom line, they quoted me a price $600 less than the first one without the trade-in. Plus they included the carry case (which doesn't come with it), a big thread collection and the thread caddy. They also have a 5 yr extended warrenty and service for 2 yr which is really nice. Both shops had unlimited lessons. So without much thought (and now that I had half of it saved!), I took the deal.

Anyways - I learned a big lesson. DO YOUR PRICE RESEARCH! Once I started looking, I found that I could easily find that I got a nice fair price - not rock bottom, but a fair one. The price on these machines were all over the place and it was not unheard of dealers quoting prices higher than MSRP! I'm not quite sure what I would have done if none of the dealers would deal - but I'm glad my new one did!

Any comments - good or bad on the horizon are welcomed. Any questions too !

Humble Beginnings - Design Board Monday

2011-05-30T05:51:00.001-04:00

Despite how my design board looks, I've been quite busy this week in my sewing hole. Not to mention its the end of the school year - which is always a little nutsy! Anyways, I did manage to start on my memorial quilt. All the clothes were washed (without fabric softner), cut up into manageable pieces, and interfacing ironed on. OMG! putting the interfacing on the knits took forever! Still most were cotton so that made it nice. Once I had a big pile of cut up clothing, I started with making my flying geese. I've learned long ago that I can't - I mean really I can't - make a decent flying goose to save my life. So this time I just drafted out the patterns quickie quick on the computer - printed them off - and am now in the process of paper piecing them. Come out perfect every time and once you get the hang of paper piecing again goes pretty quick. Its weird that they are so big though 6" by 8", but I like how the colors are coming together. All the "geese" parts are clothing with most of the sky parts being from my stash. (I had no idea I still had so much "country" fabric in my stash LOL!)

But wait - that's not the exciting news of the week. A week ago, I finally - did I mention finally??? - took the plunge and upgraded my machine. YAY! My new Janome Horizon is now in its new home. I couldn't set it up in my chaotic sewing room though - so did some spring cleaning and chased all those dust bunnies out. Anyways - I'll blog about the Janome this week but am getting used to her and she to me. Gotta teach her whose boss!!

Okay so next week - I promise, pinky swear, that I'll have more to show on my board!

See more great design board at Judy's Patchworks!

Birth of a Memorial Quilt - Design Wall Monday

2011-05-23T05:00:00.003-04:00

How many types of graph paper do you own? This weekend, I was struck by the depth of my graph paper collection. I mean, how did I manage to collect so many different kinds? Anyways, I was rifling through them because I needed to start designing a commissioned memorial quilt for a family friend. This is the third commissioned memorial piece I've taken on and I'm never quite sure where the quilt journey is going to take me. I sit down with the client and talk about their love ones. They hand me photos, bags of clothing and memories. I try to look all confident but it all seems a bit overwhelming.

So the first step is to start sorting the fabric, so that I can get a feel of the direction the quilt is going to be. While I was making piles, I found a ton of plaids and stripes - a lot of neutral, earthy colors - hints of red here and there. It just all felt very male. I never worry about the fabric type - that is another day's problem.

Then I sat down at my work table with my favorite pencil set and a big piece of graph paper and just stare at the blocks until ideas come to me. I want something with direction for this quilt - very traditional - large enough to cover a bed. I want there to be spaces enough to highlight treasured t-shirts, photos, maybe quotes and dates. I want the design to reflect the person. . . simple. . .hard working. . . .male. After a couple of hours, this is what I came up with. It doesn't mean that the quilt will end up exactly like this - but at least its a start!

More great design walls at Judy's Patchworks!

Lilies Done! Yay!

2011-05-18T19:33:00.001-04:00

I love completing a project. Its been a trial lately to do that, so that only makes it just that much better. Still the lilies are completed and with a whole month before the jury needs them! Some important facts:

28" by 34"
original design
made with hand dyed cotton - mostly by me last summer
approximately 45 hours to complete (OMG!)
machine quilted, raw edge appliqued
Good points: decorative, stitchwork adds texture, good use of color and value, jagged edge adds interest
Bad points: The focal point could be stronger and its predictable

I used facing instead of a traditional binding. Basically all that really means is that I took the binding, put it on backwards, and pulled it to the back - then blind stitched it down. I used a facing that matched the back so that you can barely see it. Putting it on was a bear, since I had no clue of how to do the inside corners. Truth be told, I still don't have a clue - don't tell anybody though - hate when people know that I don't know what I'm doing LOL! Anyways, with some hand stitching the facing looks neat enough and the false back hides all the thread work. All, in all, I'm happy with it - love making pretty things!

Thread Work Done! Design Wall Monday

2011-05-16T05:00:00.034-04:00

Whewwww!! My sewing machine has been going full speed this week, trying to get all the thread work done on the lilies. It went nice and smooth though, so really it was a pleasure. You see, my machine and I have a love/hate relationship at times anddddddd sometimes I just can't seem to get my vision translated to the fabric under the needle. Not this week though! With all the details put in, all I have to do is add the back and put in a few anchoring quilt lines. You can see in the detail photo, that most of the raw edges are safely under thread - not all of them - but most of them. I like that ~~messy~~ shabby, chic kind of look.

Click to enlarge it

I still get people who say to me - "Wow! wish I could do that." Listen - it ain't that hard. Really, all I do is put my darning foot on and I use mostly - but not always - a poly or rayon thread (yes I like it shiny!). I usually use neutral bobbin thread in the bobbin, but with this project I just used my big cone of Aurifil gray thread. Still, looking back, maybe I should have used the cheaper bobbin thread since I went through 7 - count them - 7 bobbins! I used the batting as a stabilizer with the back not on and it worked up nicely. Then I just start drawing with my darning foot. I guess the hardest part of it all is getting up the courage to just let the needle go and draw what you have in your mind. Still that comes with practice. That's what's nice about doing an annual lily project. You get to know how you want your lilies to look!

For the background "stones", I did some research through my art quilt books and looked at some designs that other quilters had used. I then postie noted them and pulled them out when I needed it. I took my sketch book and just started to draw out the background, practicing how the line would go. That way, when it was time for me to do it, I had a pretty good idea how to guide the needle.

I do draw up my beginning threads, but I don't bury my ending threads - I just clip them close to fabric. I have these amazing Heritage Embroidery snips which work nicely. If I misplace them, I'm totally lost! Sometimes I use gripper garden gloves, but this time I just found them a hindrance. I wanted to feel the fabric under my fingertips.

Anddddddddd who doesn't like the feel of fabric under her fingers when a project is going well?? Hopefully, I'll finish this baby up this week and have something new on my design board next week!

See more great design walls at Judy's Patchworks!

Strawberry Kisses - Blogger's Quilt Festival Entry

2011-05-13T13:21:00.001-04:00

Strawberry Kisses

70” x 85”

Hand quilted, Hand appliquéd

Commercial Cotton Fabric

1999

Early summer always reminds me of strawberries. When you see them in the local fields, you know that the quiet warm days of summer are finally here to stay. All that sunshine seems to be stored in their delicious redness. That’s probably why I’ve always been fascinated with this quilt pattern.

With Amy’s Creative Side’s, spring Blogger Quilt Festival upon us, I thought I would pull this quilt out of storage. I made it after receiving the book Patchwork Pantry by Suzette Halferty and Carol C. Porter. It was a gift from my good online friend, Julia. You see, Julia and I “met” when trading books for fabric and we’ve been emailing ever since. I loved the book – I loved the postie notes she put in with her comments – I loved this quilt.

I remember I chose it to make because it looked like it was going to be a quick and easy quilt. LOL – NOT! After 60+ hours of hand appliqué – most of which were the 3-d strawberry blossoms, I think I had to rethink my original assessment. Still, I did quite enjoy making them!

Anywayssss, I dedicated the quilt to my then, 2 year daughter, who at the time, kept me hopping. She was and is everything the quilt is, bright and beautiful, soft and girlie, sweet and interesting. Its still one of my favorites!

You can see more festival quilts here!

Decisions, Decisions - Design Board Monday

2011-05-09T05:00:00.003-04:00

TOO RAW

So I spent the week sewing down and thread painting my lily quilt entry (You can see the pinned design here). Who would have thought there would be so many decisions to make. It started with the sandwich. I decided to layer it without a backing and just use the batt as a stabilizer. I figure the back can be added near the end with some anchoring quilting lines and it will hide all the back threads. Then I had to decide should I use a free motion foot to sew around all the little pieces or a regular one. I started with the free motion but - gosh - its ridiculous trying to control that accurately. Not only that, but the edges were getting all messy and really frayed. I mean this is suppose to be raw applique but it was looking a bit too raw!! So off it came and on went my fav clear foot. I also switched to a nice tiny but medium wide zig-zag stitch. The edges were looking better but it was a pain changing out the color threads. So out came the thread and in went invisible thread which actually sewed up quite nicely.

Still A Little Too Raw

So after a lot of false starts, I was ready to go. Seven hours later, all the little pieces were sewn down, and now I'm in the middle of adding the thread painting. I'm starting with the flowers and leaves since they are easily done. I'm kinda freakin' about the stone background though - I might have to audition some patterns using clear plastic. . . .Oh great. . . . . more decisions!

See more great design boards on Judy's page.

Back to the Designing Board. . . . .

2011-05-02T16:43:00.000-04:00

OMG! Where do the months go? I'm never my most productive during the first quarter of the year but I really did hit a slump this year. After doing a lot - did I mention a lot of - sewing on my Christmas project, I finally had to call "Uncle" and put it away for a while. I seem to be piling up UFO's projects this year. Hate that!!

Sooooo decided to turn over a new leaf and start designing a new one that I would actually finish. I know that a lot of quilters like to work on a bunch of projects at once, but I like to start and finish a project - seems to keep me on track better. So with that in mind, I started my entry for the annual Lily Art Festival which is held at a local gift shop Campbell Pottery Store. Its a juried show, so my entry might not be accepted but its worth a try. I've been in a couple of times and my husband was accepted last year so this year we thought we would try together.

Anyways, here is the start of my project. The background is made up of all my own personal hand dyeds. It took me about 3 weeks to get this far but I believe this is the finished design. Its now backed with Warm and Natural batting ready to be sewn down. I don't fuse anything since I like the natural feel of the cotton. Still I'm thinking with this one, I'm going to use some invisible thread for the initial sewing and then add thread work over that after. I want to make sure the edges are nice and clean. I'll keep ya posted on how its going!

Thread Painting- If I can do it. . . So can YOU! Design Wall Monday

2011-01-10T05:42:00.000-05:00

You know its been a long time since a project has given me trouble. Usually, I start off my piece with a clear notion of what the finish project is going to look like and then I just work till I get there. I know there are lots of people who like to see where the piece takes them and they totally enjoy the ride. I. . . .am not like that. So when the Christmas quilt started to give me fits. . . .well it almost got designated to the UFO pile. Still, if I did that then another Christmas would go by without me having a new wall hanging on my wall. So I managed to persevere through my fit and kept going.

The funny thing is that the thread painting, which I've never done in my life wasn't the problem. The pines leaves are coming quite nicely even though they are a LOT of work and thread. I'm simply amazed at how easy the whole process is really easy.

First you sandwich two pieces of solable stabilizer between layers of tulle and put them in an embrodiery hoop. The book said to use pins but I found they just got in the way. I then set up my machine to do free motion quilting with bobbin thread in the bobbin and rayon thread up top. With that done, I just started to draw with my machine. Well. . .draw is a bit fancy. . . scribble is more like it. I layered my colors so that the darkest ones were on the bottom and the lightest one - used for highlights were on top. Little by little the pine branch was formed.

40 minutes and 5 thread colors later, I was satisfied with the work. I took it out of the hoop and trimmed around the branch within a quarter of an inch. Then it was run under super hot tap water and placed in a bowl of hot water to soak for 10 minutes. While I was rinsing it, I made sure that the glue residue was gone. I then towel dried it and set it aside to thoroughly dry. It only took about 15 minutes. Then all you do is trim around it with super sharp scissors. You can also use a stencil cutter if you have it - just watch out -'cause those things get hot! Still I found the scissor method worked fine and any left over tulle totally disappeared into the threads.

See Easy-Peasy!!!

So it wasn't the thread painting that was giving me the fits. Its that once I got it all done, I realized that the scale of my thread painting was all wrong. I thought I had been working on the bottom branches but once I got it up on my board, I realized that it was all too small. Well that revelation took me about 45 minutes to come to. Don't you hate when something is wrong but you just can't put your finger on it????

Anywayssssssssssssssssssssss. . . . .I moved the branches I was working up to the secondary ones in the middle and started to think how I was going to do the lower ones which will need to be a lot bigger and therefore take a lot more time and thread. sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh If it ain't one thing. . .its another.

You can see what everyone else is up to at Judy's great site!!

Word of 2011 - Balance

2011-01-06T09:32:00.001-05:00

You know it happens every year. Christmas happens and all creativity is sucked right out of me. Well that's not exactly true. All my creativity goes into the holiday. . . decorations. . . unique gifts. . . great social events. There is never any left over for me to continue my sewing through the month of December. I hate that I lose momentum on projects. I hate that my sewing room gets taken over by all sorts of Christmas paraphernalia. I hate that there isn't a quiet moment to myself. To top that all off, it happens to be the darkest month of the year and gray seems to be the constant outside color. So with all that said, I'm trying to shake it off and get back into the regular routine.

Recently on my art quilt list, a thread came up asking for every one's Word for 2011. Instantly, the word Balance came to mind. For me it always seems like I attack everything with an "All or Nothing" attitude. I get on a mission and everything else goes by the wayside while its completed. I would like to break that cycle. For 2011, I would like to teach a little, mother a little, create a little, clean a little, etc. etc. Oh and laugh a lot!

So under the guise of creating a little, I managed to do about 45 minutes of sewing a couple nights this week. Of course it took that long to find my sewing hole and gather the things for my Christmas project. I decided that I will finish up that project before I go onto the next couple that I have planned. I'll let you in on my progress in my next post.

So hopefully, I can keep with my resolution for . . . . Balance.

Every good deed you do . . . Will Come Back to you . . . Someday

2010-11-23T16:08:00.000-05:00

Don't you love surprises? I mean the good kind - not the car-broke-down what-do-I-do-now kind. Well its been that kind of week. First of all, SewCalGal's Christmas Quilt show came to an end and the winners were chosen. Carol H. won my donated package of goodies. She was all excited to win and I was all excited to give!! I decided to put together a stash of Paddington Bear Christmas fabric from Rose & Hubble. It includes 2 Christmas Stocking cheater panels, and 1.5 yds each of fabrics from the collection.

I hope you enjoy it Carol!!! Send me pic's of what you made with it and I'll put them up on the blog!!

I truly believe that when you do a good deed, that God will bless you 10 fold. 'Cause we all know that we can't out give God!! This week is definitely a testimony to that. In the same quilt show, I was radomly chosen to win a quilt kit of Moda's Luminere de Noel Quilt donated by the overly generous Fat Quarter Shop. A big THANK YOU goes out to them!! I've never done a quilt kit so I'm anxious to try it out. Its nice to have someone else make the decisions for once!


78" by 86"

I feel truly blessed this week - so much to be thankful for. You can still view the show if you need some Christmas spirit!! Thanks again SewCal and Fat Quarter Shop!!

Christmas Quilt Show Ending Tomorrow

2010-11-19T06:14:00.000-05:00

Just a quick reminder that the Christmas Quilt Show is ending tomorrow. There is a ton of free giveaways including one from yours truly! So head on over to SewCal's great blog to the links to the entries and the rules!!

I'm still trying to work my way through all 99!!!

My Christmas Quilt Show Entry - Design Board Monday

2010-11-15T05:17:00.001-05:00

A Paddington Bear Christmas

For Tessa

2000

45" by 45"

Commercial Fabric/Machine Pieced & Quilted

Every once in a while, I don't think its a bad idea to remember where we came from. I made this ten years ago as a quickie wall hanging for Christmas. Tessa was only turning 3 and it was appropriate at the time. . . well I guess Paddington Bear is appropriate anytime isn't he?? I remember I got the fabric on Ebay and it was from the now defunct Rose & Hubble. I loved that company!!

Usually I try to learn and practice something with every project. With this one I was machine quilting with a lot of shiny metallic threads including Superior Threads Glitter Hallogram which is a flat thread. I found out that I couldn't free motion with it but it would make this funky stitch with it so I used it that way. I didn't enjoy all of that fussing though so I never really used it again.

Anyways, since the Christmas show is so early, I'm not quite done with my new Christmas Wallhanging so I'm sharing this one for the show. I promise to have the piecing/designing stage on the new one done by next Monday!!

You can enter this show at SewCalGal's site (its running through the week) and find more inspirational Design Walls at Judy's Patchwork.

Thread Painting Applique - Design Board Monday

2010-11-08T05:16:00.002-05:00

Nothing new on my design board since I spent much of the week cleaning - including my sewing hole! That said, there is something new on my sewing table. I finally - yes finally - took the plunge into free motion embroidery. With two books on the subject which I've read back to back, you'd think I've done this sooner. I have done thread painting on my quilt before but never attempted to make a stand alone embroidered applique before. The Christmas pine boughs seemed like just the occasion to finally put on my big girl pants and try it.

With all of that said, I would need some supplies. I managed to buy the tulle at Joann's but headed to my very traditional local quilt shop. Now this shop is very nice and sells all sorts of fabrics and machine embroidery supplies. I went in looking for film stabilizer and a machine embroidery hoop. When I asked them for a hoop, they said the only hoops they sold like that went with their $2000 brother's machine and did I want to buy one LOL!! Needless to say, I went back to Joann's and bought the hand embroidery hoop for $2.50 instead.

Last night, I sat down to attempt it and realized that there was nothing to be afraid of. Using the clear directions in Quilt Savvy:Simple Thread Painting it really wasn't hard at all. All you do is basically layer your applique with two sheets of water wash away stablizer and two pieces of tulle that is in a color that is close to what you are making. You draw or trace the pattern of the applique onto your stabilizer.

Then you drop your feed dogs, put on a good free motion foot and start moving the thread across the design to fill it in - just like a colored pencil. I used bobbin thread in my bobbin and a mix of rayons, polys, and cotton thread on top. First I started by sewing in stabilizer lines - the book said to do this when you are thread painting it directly onto your quilt but I didn't think it was a bad idea to do it with a free standing applique either. I mean - gosh - the last thing you want is a puckery design right??

I'm not sure what way I'm suppose to layer the colors since I couldn't find that in the book so I just did it the way I do with colored pencils - I started with some of the darkest colors first and worked my way up to the light highlight colors on the top. It seemed like it was taking forever to fill in the pine limb but really it wasn't too bad. As you can see, Kali was there to keep me company. I did have some broken threads that needed to be cleaned out of my machine, but didn't have to adjust my thread tension or bobbin tension.

I didn't manage to finish the one limb but so far so good . I just worked my way down the limb little by little going through layering the colors each time. It seems to be laying nice and flat. I can't wait to dunk the thing and see if water really will magically wash away the stabilizer!!

Don't forget to check out other great design board's at Judy's Patchworks!

Can't Create in Chaos! A Sewing Hole in Distress

2010-11-03T20:16:00.002-04:00

I don't know about you but there is nothing I love more than order. A place for everything and everything in its place. So why is it so dang hard to keep it that way??? You'd think the way I value neatness, that I would have figured out in 40 years how to be neat?? Yes, I admit it ---- its a never ending battle.

That said, I went to use my sewing hole for the first time in three weeks and found that I could not find it. I mean, I'm quite sure I left it there somewhere, but with all the clutter that had accumulated in the room, I'm not sure where. I've been so busy doing handwork in my recliner in front of the TV that I really haven't visited the hole in forever. . . . well. . . at least not to sew in that is. Still, I haven't had any trouble using it as a dumping ground for all things that don't belong in there. Add to that the fact that I have several projects going at once and you get. . . .wait for it. . . .a big mess!

So I thought if I blogged out the before and after, I might manage to get the room clean so I could sew again. I mean can anybody create in chaos??? I can't. Usually that includes the whole house - if the house is messy - my mind seems to be messy. Can't create with a messy mind can you??

So with your help, I've taken a couple evenings and cleaned up the room. It was a work out though since most of the things needed to go up on my third floor where I keep my fabric stash - sighhh - but God knows my thighs could use it - the work out I mean - not the fabric stash.

Doesn't it look nice??? Now onto making those pine branches!

Applique Done!! Design Board Monday

2010-11-01T04:43:00.001-04:00

Well after finally getting my ~~butt~~ hand in motion - I finally finished up the handwork on this project. I managed to sew 10 - count them - 10 hours this week. I don't know why I'm whining so much. I really do enjoy doing the handwork. Still it seemed like it took forever and this was a busy week with it being the holiday of ghosts and goblins. Not to mention now I have a real idea of how much time I'm watching TV!!!!

Anyways. . . .with that behind me I'm onto doing the thread work of the pine needles. I know I've read and seen how to machine embrodier but have never really tried it. I won a nice sulky thread pack last month which included all sorts of stabilizers though and they have instructions. . . . .so I'll give it a whirl!

Hopefully I can fit it in while looking at all the quilts in the Blogger's Quilt Festival - my gosh the talent out there is amazing!!!!

Check out other great design boards at Judy's Patchworks!

Bloggers Quilt Festival - "Momma is that a Ladybug??"

2010-10-29T05:01:00.002-04:00

Momma is that a Ladybug?

48" by 54"

Hand quilted/ Hand Applique

Commercial and Hand dyed cotton

2001

I'm so glad to be once again participating in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. When Amy asked that we share the story behind the quilt, this quilt came immediately to mind. Before I had my princess daughter, I always was into very dark, somber colors. It seemed like all I wanted was muted traditional hues. When God blessed us with Tessa, it was like the light broke through all those many years of wine, navy and beige and replaced them with fushia, yellow and fire engine red. She was such a joy. . . . .well . . . and a handful.

You see Tessa walked just before she turned 9 months and was a toddler on the go and go we went!!! Really a day didn't go by where we didn't go for a walk, or take a ride, or explore some new adventure.

2002

One warm spring day when Tessa was about 3, we were walking to the shops of our little borough. It used to take us forever to go the short 3 blocks because Tessa had to stop and examine every little thing. When we were almost there, she stopped to look at a leaf. She got closer and closer and then waved me in to look too. She said, "Momma is that a ladybug???" I told her yes it was. She told me "Shhhhhhhh I think its sleeping" and off she went on her journey.

The moment stayed with me all day and inspired me to pull out a favorite greeting card I had gotten from a fellow quilter. It was joyous graphic flower with a lone ladybug perched on it. I used the thoughts of Tessa's words and the card to design the above quilt. Now that Tessa is a worldly teenager, I'm so glad that I have the quilt to remind me of those moments when a ladybug held so much wonder. It might not be my most perfect piece but it will always be one of my favorites!

Be sure to take a look at all the great entries in the Blogger's Quilt Festival.

Hand Appliquing Christmas - Design Wall Monday

2010-10-25T05:00:00.001-04:00

Well I've come to the realization that I'm going to have to spend more then 4 hours a week if I ever intend to get this project done by mid November! So the rule this week is that if I sit down for some tv, I have to have the wallhanging in my hands. I did manage to get the applique done on the main trunk which was really a chore.

After a bit of struggling, I came up with a new system of applique. You see, usually I roll the background in my left hand and pinch the freezer paper and fabric with my thumb nail. That doesn't work so well since A - the back ground is really too bulky to roll and B - the applique is so big that it doesn't want to lie flat on the background (even pinned to the high heavens!!) Soooooo - came up with the a nice comfy way to do it. I sit in my little recliner and put the piece on my knees. Under it lies one of the many useless catalogues that they send us this time of year. The catalogue kept me from sewing it to my pants (which I did twice before changing what I was doing LOL!) I then use my left hand to hold the applique and the background nice and flat , while my hand stitches. Worked great - flat tree - a nice neat edge - what more could you want????

So this week I'm aiming to get all the applique done including the rest of the limbs - another smaller tree - and little snow island that is in the background. Gosh that seems like a lot - better get after it!!

Oh - forgot - I included a picture of my clover needle threader - if you do hand work and don't have one of these - run - don't walk - and get one. It has saved me endless hours of needle threading!!!

Look for other great inspirations on Judy's Design Wall Monday list!

Christmas Saga Continues. . . . Design Wall Monday

2010-10-18T05:00:00.002-04:00

You know I'm always stuck by how much time goes into original artwork. When I do a traditional pattern piece, all the work is in the cutting - piecing - quilting. When I'm doing something that is my original design all the work is in the prep work and design decisions. This project is just another example of that. It seems like after a month I should be farther along but I'm not. Still once I think about it - quite a lot got done this week.

I did finally managed to get the right color for the border dyed. After overdyeing it with the strongest red and letting it sit in my oven once again - it came out just as I'd imagined it. I was VERY HAPPY to have it done in time for this blog!! I also managed to make a full scale pattern of the piece and get the templates done for the hand applique of the tree. Yep - you read that right - I'm going to hand applique the tree. I've never done anything quite so large by hand (did I mention this project is 37" by 50"????)so this ought to be interesting but I just like the smooth finished line of hand applique better than machine. Fusing is out of the question since I like to get little puffs when I machine quilt. Still its going to be a challenge. . . . .Not to mention I haven't hand appliqued in about 4 years!!

Auditions for the tree - the far right won

Still I'm glad to finally get most of the design decisions done and get on with the real sewing!! I'm going to take this along to school this week and sew when I'm on break. That's another good reason to hand applique - you can take it with you.

Whining about Wine or is it Plum???? Hand dyeing Experiment

2010-10-16T08:44:00.002-04:00

Newly dyed fabric on the left Slice of fabric sample on the right

OMG!!! Does everything have to be such a ~~pain in my~~ hassle??? I know I've whined about this before but MY GOSH! With the trip to my mother's cabin behind me, I thought I better get back after my Christmas wallhanging. You know this started out being a quick little project that I was going to whip up in time to enter in an online Christmas quilt show. Instead, its turned into this major undertaking. The border is just a case in point. In the hundreds and hundreds of yards of fabric I own do you think I could find just the right wine I needed for the border? No - of course not. Still no big deal - I mean why have a nice collection of dyes if you can't custom dye a color you need now and again. So I started researching how to mix a nice muted whine and of course, pretty much the consensus is that its super hard to get just right. Sighhhhhhhhh!

hand dyed fabric in oven - not our dinner!

After a couple of days of hmmmm-hawwwwwwwing about it - I just decided to take the plunge and guess! For the one yard of fabric I mixed one tsp of fushia with one tsp of Kelly green adding a pinch of black. Then I used a zip lock bag for the first time - which I find more of a hassle then the beer cups I usually use. It was odd working in my dining room rather than my porch, but I managed. Still I put the whole concoction in my oven since the house is at 65 degrees this days - yes I put a little sign that warned all family members not to turn it on !!!

The result was a nice muted wine/plum color - really pretty in fact. But still not the saturated wine I was looking for. I had a slice of muted wine fabric to compare it to - so I had an idea of where I was heading. After much discussion - even bringing in my husband Paul (read desperation) - I decided that what I really wanted was a color somewhere between the two. Soooooooooo back into the dye bath the fabric went using a tsp of strongest red and a bit of carmine red for good measure (grin).

I'll let ya know how it turns out - we'll both be surprised!

Scrap Happy - Design Board Monday

2010-10-04T05:00:00.001-04:00

Well it took me two weeks, but finally I completed the background for my Christmas wall hanging. Just as I started it, I changed my mind and decided to do 2.5" squares rather then 4". A big ADUHHHHHHHH on me. Should have figured out that although it would make the gradation of values nicer, it was A LOT more work. Then to add to the drama, was the fact that I pieced it and didn't like it - so had to rip it a part and do it again - of course! I mean why do it once when you can obviously do it a couple of times (read dripping with sacrasm)

All that said, there were some nice things, learned in this piecing. First of all, I think 17 years later, I have conquered the scant 1/4" seam. Most of my blocks were proper size and I did very few pins. I also got to use up a good bunch of hand dyed blue scraps. This took more time to cut them down individually but I felt very thrify and vindicated that I wasn't just saving them for nothing!

Speaking of that - I was wondering. . . .....................

How do you all store your scraps? For years, I tried different methods. One that worked well for me was taking any scraps left over from a project and cutting them down into usable charm sizes. Then they were stored by size in shoe boxes. This was great when I was doing a lot of traditional work. Now that I'm doing a lot of art quilts, I had to find a new method. So I decided to start storing them in zip lock bags by color. I have one set of baggies of hand dyeds and one set for commercial prints. Each set goes in a tote bag for easy storage and travel. When I finish a project I just throw all the scraps into a zip lock bag - then when I have some TV time I just take them out and sort into their respective color family. Two years later it seems to be working out well.

Oh and yes - Kali was there helping out - if only she would learn to use a seam ripper - sighhhhhhhh

Its Beginning to look a lot like Christmas. . . .Design Wall Monday

2010-09-20T05:00:00.002-04:00

You know I've never been one to start a lot of projects and then work on them simultaneously. I'm a very task oriented - linear - quilter. Well, at least I was a very task oriented, linear quilter. Then this summer hit and I've managed to start working on several projects at once. With the fair safely over - and no I did not get my quilt quilted in time (read big sigh!) - I thought I better get after making my Christmas project. SewCalGal is hosting a Christmas quilt show and I wanted to enter it. Plus I've been saying for the last 3 years that I need to do a decent Christmas wall hanging for the house. You would thing that a quilter could manage to have some decent decorations that she has sewn up during the holidays wouldn't ya??

Sooooo, of course I didn't have an idea of what I wanted - I just knew that I wanted it to be a bit artsy - a bit classy and not toooo cutesy!! I did some surfing and found a pattern that I liked, but it was just a tad too twee for me. So I spent the after noon tweaking it since of course 'cause ya know I've never found a pattern that I didn't want to change in some way. Here is the finished sketch.

In old news, I did manage to come VERY close to finish hand quilting my quilt --- should finish that up this week with all of the new shows coming on. Between the fair, a head cold and working everyday this week nothing got done. Still things are slowing down so maybe I'll manage to finish up some of these projects!

Still Quilting, and Quilting, and Quilting Design Board Monday

2010-09-06T05:00:00.002-04:00

Well its a week later and let me tell you, I've worked myself up into a hand quilting tizzy! First I would like to thank everyone for their encouraging comments on getting this project done on time for the fair. It really helped! Still, it was hard - I mean - really - hard to sit down at the frame for long periods of time. I mean who wants to be sitting there hand quilting when there is a 5 day 90+ degree heat wave in progress. Then to top it all off, our little foster kitty, Kali who is now 7 weeks old, was constantly jumping onto the frame and attacking my needle. I swear I must have taken her off that frame a hundred times this week. Finally by the weekend, she was content to sit on my shoulder and watch me quilt.

Through all the trials, I persevered. I managed to quilt a total of 23 hours this week. Sitting still is sooooooo much harder then it looks. I remembered to get up and stretch but I must be hunching my shoulders because I have a soar spot in between them. My hands feel fine but I have a quilter's callus to prove that I've been putting my needle time in.

So far I've quilted 50" of this drag-along quilt. I've got eight days to finish up the remaining 40" and get it bound. Thank God I decided against bordering the dang thing. I mean who likes borders anyways - they are a bugger to get straight - I never know how to quilt them and if I wanted a frame around my work I would have taken up watercolors! Hmmmmmmm watercolors is looking mighty good right about now.

Check here for more great Design Board Monday Posts.

How Fast Can I Hand Quilt - Design Board Monday

2010-08-30T06:47:00.001-04:00

We had quite a week here, holding a very girlie garage sale. My daughter and I thought that we needed to let go of some of our material possessions. For me - of course - it was a lot of material - well and other quilty things. For her, it was a life time of toys and treasures cleaned out of her room and playroom this summer. We both found it very freeing and thankyouGod profitable. The garage sale was a big hit with quilters and little girls alike and I earned enough for tuition at Quilting By the Lake next year. Tessa earned enough to open her first bank account. Oh and nothing came back into the sale except for a plastic bin of fabric samples that I will use and share.

Now that all said, we did have our hands full for most of the week. With September looming, school and the fair are nearing. At least three times last week someone asked me what was I going to enter. Well, originally, I had said nothing but. . . .with the new clean off. . . .I saw my quilt still sitting there lonely on the loom. An idea popped into my head. What if I took the time and finally finish hand quilting my twin size scrappy quilt that I pieced and layered last year. I've been hand quilting it on and off again but never with any real enthusiasm.

I really like this quilt. I made it just for me to snuggle with during the winter on the couch and then drag around with me like Linus. Our house sometimes gets drafty and its nice to have something on your lap when you are in the den or on the computer or up in the bedroom reading or on the couch sluggingl Its made with Amy Butler prints from about 4 years ago and pieces of sateen solids. I'm hand quilting it using shiny rayon and poly threads. This is only my second time using non quilting threads for quilting so sometimes it can be a bit tricky - but I love the effect. I would also love to have this to enter plus use for the upcoming winter.

My husband laughed when I said I was thinking of marathon quilting for a fair entry. This isn't the first time I've done it and it always throws everything into a tizzy - still I've never missed a deadline. All my other projects will have to stop though. So I think I'll try it. . . . . . .I'll let you know how its going.

Oh and all prayers would be greatly appreciated!!

Done Dyeing for Now

2010-08-25T05:00:00.000-04:00

Well my little venture into hand dyeing is done for now. On and off for the last couple of weeks, I've been doing a batches of 8 -12 fat quarters at a time. I've been using the bolt of Kona cotton twill pfd that I got off of Joanns.com. So far, I've been really happy with the results. The fabric had a nice hand - comparable to testfabs 419 but was a bit rougher. The colors I got were the same intensity of those when I used the pimatex, but the pimatex didn't tangle in the washing machine since the thread count is higher. Still the price is a bit higher too with the Kona being $3.30/yd (for the 60") and the pimatex being $4.86/yd at Dharma Trading. Anyways, I thought the Kona was more than a good value for this beginner dyer.

I ended up trying several of the recipes from my new book Fabric Dyer's Dictionary with mixed results. Now don't get me wrong - I love the colors I got. Still they weren't always the colors I was originally aiming for (which I'm sure doesn't surprise any of you veteran dyers). I really needed more murky colors in my stash so got a lot of those including some really nice grays and muddy purples. All in all I ended up dyeing about 60 fat quarters - a fat quarter being a little short at 18" by 20" due to the bolt size.

At the end I had about 6 fq's left - along with a little dye solution so I tried my hand at two color dyeing for the first time. I went about it by the simple results given in the book and was surprised at how great they came. Of course the photos don't do them justice but trust me they are pretty! Not only are they pretty but I can tell they are going to be super useful in my work. Who would have thought that dyeing was so easy????

So cleaned the dyeing supplies off my porch. I'm sure the mailman was surprised to see them all gone and not the next batch sitting there "cooking". Hopefully I'll get one more dyeing session in before winter - want to try out more multi-color batches. I'm sure though that it will get harder and harder to find 75 degree days to dye with school approaching - sighhhhhhhhhhhhh.

August Cow on Vacation in Australia - Design Board Monday

2010-08-23T13:03:00.001-04:00

Well this morning around 2 am, my little foster kitten Kali, decided it was time to get up and play. With that, I was now wide awake. What should I do??? Well pick out the fabrics for August Cow, of course! Over the weekend I had completed the design - well on paper at least and was eager to get after sending this cow on vacation.

As you can see August Cow wanted to be a globe trotter, so she made for the beautiful beaches of Brisbane, Australia. There she could enjoy the gorgeous sun and fun before heading back to the meadow of home.

I was recently asked how I complete a calendar cow. Usually, I sit and brainstorm out ideas of what that month means to my family and I. Then I look at free images on the web depicting the subject matter but also the emotion of the month. I'll choose two or three and either trace them or sketch them out. I then use a WW II era overhead projector to size the image onto the standard 16" block. I trace it out and edit the design as I see fit. Once that is done usually I let the design sit a while while I think on fabrics and colors. The design might go through a final edit before the whole process is done. By no means is that first sketch a master pattern. I usually use it as a beginning point. I then use a rough edge applique process to get the final block.

I'm not sure if August Cow is quite finish - but its a good start - I still may add something in the bottom right hand corner - hhhhhhmmmmmmmmm or not.

For more inspirational design boards - visit Judy's Patchwork times.

Pets on Quilt Show - The Calendar Cows

2010-08-19T08:21:00.001-04:00

Well I'm entering a half year of my Calendar Cow quilt into SewCalGal's Pets on Quilts. These represent January, July, February, October, April and May. I'm in the process of doing August right now. Originally this was designed by me for daughter Tessa who asked for a cow quilt that wasn't too cartoonish but still not too realistic. Plus I was looking for a uniquely "Us" idea and I'm sure that Calendar Cows fits the bill.

Each block is rough edged appliqued and will eventually have more thread work done on it along with machine quilting (done on a home machine). I used free images online for inspiration but drew a lot of it myself. I might still rework some of the blocks now that I'm in the rhythm of the quilt.

Doing this project was surprisingly rewarding since its different from most of my work but still has my voice in it - plus it always seems to make people smile and giggle a bit. What more can you ask?

Tween's Bedroom Makeover or How to HGTV a Room

2010-08-18T08:37:00.000-04:00

For the last couple of years, we (our family) have been saying its time to re-do Tessa's bedroom. Now it wasn't her that initially brought this up. Not liking change, she was happy to keep on living in Pooh's Corner forever. You see, her daddy had done the nursery when I was in my third trimester, 12 years ago, especially for her and Tessa always loved her room

That said, it was really time to change over that room. Over the year's Pooh's corner had definitely seen better days and was beginning to look like a candidate for urban renewal! Still -- I wasn't looking forward to doing all that work on my summer vacation. That's when I got the very bright idea to have Tessa do most of the work. It was her room - let her do the make-over and take real ownership of it.

So the two of us got to planning. She came up with color schemes and I showed her how to use those colors to their best advantage. We involved my woodworking husband Paul to, once again, make another bed for Tessa (this is the third time he's done that!). Tessa spent 3 weeks cleaning out a lifetime of treasures from room which will be donated or garage saled out. Then she started painting, and painting, and painting. It seemed like it took foreverrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!! But she persevered. I don't think I've ever seen her focus so much on a project.

When she was done, she picked out the vinyl decals from a great online source Walls Need Love and we talked about the placement. Tessa really made all the design decisions with me only giving a little whisper here and there. Most of the accessories came from Walmart.com since the dorm sales were going on.

All in all it took about 8 weeks to complete with a 12 year old doing the vast majority of the work - she did the designing, painted the room (including floors), refinished and painted the furniture and then did the finally decorating. With the project easily coming under $400 total (including the bed which used a lot of reclaimed wood), it was definitely designing on a dime!

Hats off to Tessa!!

More Thread Work - Design Board Monday

2010-08-16T06:51:00.001-04:00

Well, last week was busy. Between getting my daughter to her writer's workshop and ready for school, it definitely put a cramp in my sewing time. It was a good mail week though since I got my order from Joann's which contained a new thread box and some new threads! My life is so much easier when my threads aren't tangled!

Still I did get a few hours of thread work done on this project. Its always amazing to me how a piece with no texture looks at the beginning and then with added thread - how it looks at the end. With the ground finished at QBL, I continued work on the tree this week. It must have at least a dozen different colors before I was satisfied. (To see the thread work better - just click on the image)

Once the tree was done, I managed to move onto the horizon line. For that, I popped off my darning foot and put back on the regular sewing foot. I just wanted to make very gentle waves across the mountains in low contrast thread. I did decide to use rayon and poly threads though to give it a little shine. With the tree I combined the two so that it would have texture with the cotton and rayons for the highlights. Who knew there was so many decisions?????

So now I just have to finish up the mountains and then the sky. I think the sky will have very little quilting in it - just enough to give it a "light breeze" feeling.

Visual Decisions on Value

2010-08-12T17:20:00.002-04:00

After Monday's post about where my pinwheel quilt was going, it was quite apparent to me, that I needed to go back to the design process. For me, that always involves my sketch pad or graph paper, my favorite sketch pencils and something to color with.

Earlier this year, I took my AC Moore coupon and bought myself a set of the 150 Crayola Crayon Tower. I mean who doesn't need 150 of their favorite colors???? With this project, I finally got a chance to break them out and give them a test drive. Let me just say - LOVE IT. If you don't have a set yet - go get yourself one - just for you though - nobody under 18 allowed!!

With my favorite tools at hand, a novel playing on my mp3 player, I started to color in the trapezoid graph paper I found in a quilt book. They had set it up to be colored in by triangles but I made them into pinwheels. It took a good hour but still I got to try out a value placement - plus look at how many pinwheels I needed. The final answer 233 Pinwheels! Which of course means that I'm only about half way there! sighhhhhhhh

Its does seem like a lot of wheels left to go - especially doing it all by hand, but as I always said, English paper piecing isn't a technique - its a vocation!

That said, I'm still on the quest to find just the right layout. The reason that I need to figure it out now, is to come up with an approximation of how many light, medium, dark wheels I need. Its all fine and good to get the 233 done but if they aren't the right value - well that means more work! So I did manage to make a few value drawings. Again - - I'm not really happy with any of them! I won't bore you with all the options but I did make about half a dozen of them.

Actually, I think the one that I like the best was an arrow of light coming in from the right side and making a point surrounded by dark. Still, as I learned many years ago, its best to "Make visual decisions, visually." Which of course means that I'll eventually have to put them all up on the design board and try some of these sketches out.

But with all those blocks needing to be made, I'm sure that won't be anytime soon!

139 and Counting or When is Enough Enough??

2010-08-09T05:00:00.006-04:00

As you may remember from previous posts last year, I started a new English paper piecing project using the simple shape of trapezoids. After doing the tumbling block quilt I said never - I mean - never again but nobody ever listens to me - even myself! So onto the trapezoids I went which make up little pinwheels. The nice thing about a project like this is that you can take it out and put it away whenever since its all done by hand. Over the school year, I did manage to get more of it done on and off. Still its been back in the box for a good six months now.

With Tessa going into a Young Writer's Workshop this week at a local university, I thought it would be nice to take it out and work on it while she was in class. Well. . . . once I took it out I realized that I had quite a few blocks - 139! Now is that enough?? Is more always more??? I don't know. I don't even know what value layout I want yet. I could lay them all out on my design board but it takes forever. My husband told me to design the quilt by using my EQ4 - but gosh never even reloaded that on my computer. Really the design has always been just a vague notion in my head anyways! Normally I would just pay Tessa to lay them out on the design board but this week she'll be way to busy with her writing!

So after some thought, I think I'll just keep making trapezoids into pinwheels this week and I - like Scarlett - will worry about it another day.

Musings after the Museum

2010-08-07T08:40:00.000-04:00

Mabel Hewit, Houses, 1936

Friday, my friend Kristen and I, made our annual trek to some venue of culture. This year, we chose to visit the Cleveland Museum of Art. We had been there before for a special exhibit on armor (yes Kristen wanted to see all that armor and I just wondered among all the metal men) but the main exhibit had been put away due to renovations. So it was a treat to finally see what this great museum had to offer.
When I was younger, I used to just stroll through art museums as if they were big illustrated history books. I would marvel at the scenes depicted, clothes worn, and history involved. Now though, I use them as big buildings of inspiration. The CMA did not disappoint.
First, we were met with the special exhibit of depression era artist, Mabel Hewit. I had never seen her work before but thought the ads for the exhibit looked interesting. The exhibits were of her wood cuts and showcased her use of bold color and simple shapes. I literally feel in love with her work and I'm sure she'll be an influence in mine.

Degas. Dancer Looking at the Sole of her Right Foot, 1896

As I went through the rest of the main collection, I try to take note of the masters' use of value and where the focal points were in their pieces. Its amazing that the same design elements that worked for them will still work for me. Like in Degas' piece above, he uses value (the lightest light) to have your eye move across the piece. Also the use of the accent color burnt orange does the same. With that the rhythm of the piece is created. I like that although the dancers are standing still in this scene they still seem to be moving.

Sloan, Women's Work, 1912

Sloan's painting, a Women's Work, really caught my eye. Not only was I drawn to my favorite subject matter, women, but also I love his use of line and value to bring your eye right to his focal point. There among the big buildings of the inner city is a lone woman going about her daily chores. The laundry line is a big arrow right to her but then he repeats that bit of white near the top to still keep your eye moving. LOVE IT!

I could go on and on. Still my favorite part of the museum was the paintings from the 19th and 20th century. So many of the pieces were figurative without being too realistic so that they weren't just a snapshot of that moment but also envoked a strong feeling.

So remember to take time to treat yourself and your eye to a bit of culture and beauty. Visit a museum or a gallery. Your soul will thank you.

All Tangled Up in Thread

2010-08-04T07:35:00.000-04:00

For the last couple of days, I've been working on the thread work for the project I started at Quilting By the Lake. The first day, was a day of frustration. It seemed that I was at war with the threads and they were easily winning every battle. I probably took out as much as I sewed in! Yesterday went much better with some work getting done on the tree. Over the years, I developed my own style of adding texture to my pieces. When I've done rough edge applique, the edges need to be finished somehow. I find that a pretty satin stitch is way too uniform for my style. So I started working on this scribble stitch as I call it. After sewing down all the edges with matching thread, I go back little by little and scribble them in a bit more. Some designs and shapes call for more - like the tree and bench while others will call for less like the horizon line.

With that done, I'll add more thread work and more scribbling and more colors to get just the right effect of texture to my pieces. I don't ever use fusing since it seems to glue my fabric down too much. So with this thread work, little puffs of fabric will emerge giving a pleasing and organic feel to the quilt.
Over the years, I've collected a bunch of thread to get this feel. Usually a piece will contain any combination of matte cotton, shiny rayon and pretty poly. I've even been known to throw in some hand quilting in - which I might end up doing on this piece.

May Flowers Cow - Design Board Monday

2010-08-02T05:00:00.002-04:00

So after sitting on my design board for months, May Cow is now completely sewn down. I'm happy with it and like the perspective and depth the block has. Also, I like that this is the 6th cow done so I'm half way through!! Yay! Picking up this project I had to remember what style of stitching I was doing and what my machine was set on (zigzag 1.0 1.0). Its not my usual style to work on several projects at once, but it seems I'm trying to juggle a few this summer.
I really need to get out my sketch book and see what the next cow is. I had them all laid out in a traditional set. I want to do the quilt as you go method so we'll see how that goes. Also I lost all my inspirational cow pictures when my computer crashed in December - so gotta sit and fill up a folder of those again - sighhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.
With all that though - this project really does grow on you. I find it very satisfying to complete one 16" block at a time.
More design walls can be seen here!

Creative Distraction - Some Things Ya Just Can't Say No To

2010-08-01T10:56:00.001-04:00

Recently I was reminded of a quote by Jeanette Meyer that I had learned five years ago. She had lectured on the great power of the words, "I'm sorry, but that doesn't work for me." You are suppose to employ these words every time somebody asks you to do something that will distract you from your planned creative time. Also you are not to offer up excuses why that doesn't work for you - which is great because nobody really understands that you'd rather be quilting than doing anything else anyways.

After a bit of practice, I found the quotation one of the most empowering that I've learned in my adult life and proceeded to teach it to all my friends. Of course, I didn't expect them to use it on me when I needed them but they, being very smart women, have done so. (Sigh!)

That all said, this week my great creative plans got waylaid to something I could NOT say no to. My husband and daughter found a little orphan kitty in our carriage house. It looks to be about 3 weeks old. So, although I had planned on sewing all week, I instead spent the week learning how to foster this tiny bundle of black. It seems there has been a recent kitten explosion in our county and with a lot of volunteers on vacation there was nobody to take her in. So after a quick lesson, I was raising a newborn again. The first couple of days she had to be nursed every 3-4 hours but now she's stretched it to every 6 or so. She's doing great now - sleeping through the night - playing pounce with Momma and her stuff bears and ready to start weaning onto real food. Still she's so tiny for her age - just barely 12 oz. We named her Kali - the Dark one. She's sooooo black that getting a good photo of her is really impossible no matter how good your photo editor is!

Still Kali promised me that she would entertain herself while I sew today if I promised to play with her later. She's such a good little Kitty - I know she'll try her best to keep her promise.

Dyeing During the Dog Days of Summer

2010-07-28T05:00:00.004-04:00

You seriously didn't think I could get through a post on dyeing without some puns on the word dyeing did you? Anyways, it was a perfect day to dye on my old Victorian porch. Well almost perfect, if you don't count the dueling lawnmowers from my two adjacent neighbors and my husband using his chainsaw to cut this year's wood. I did manage to really have a pleasant time working up a batch of hand dyes.

You see I treated myself to 5 yards of PFD at QBL this year and I was itchin' to get after it. So I set up my make-shift dye station on the porch complete with me sitting on a bucket. My porch is a super convienant place to dye - well if you ignore the mail carrier navigating through all the paraphanlia strewn all over. He must have done it successfully though, 'cause there were bills in my box as always.

New Use for the trusty red Beer cup

I once again used the helpful methods put forth on Fabric Dyeing 101 with the addition of Linda Johansen's new book a Fabric Dyer's Dictionary. Its super useful with its 900 recipes to get just the color you are looking for.

Still that wasn't my problem. I tend to just sorta guess at what colors I need thinking over my stash. It seems right now I have a lot of saturated pure colors so I need more murky muted colors to round it out. Also I need some decent dark darks and light lights. Leaving them sitting all night gave them a really cool molted effect that adds the needed texture in my work. Next time, though I think I'll take them out and rotate them a bit.
So,dyeing is so much fun, I can see how people can get addicted. I don't see that happening to me anytime soon though. Working at a station which includes me sitting on a bucket and dyeing in beer cups doesn't sound like the making of the next Jane Dunnewold. Right now though, I'm just having fun dyeing!

Rain Rain Don't Go Away - A New Piece

2010-07-26T16:56:00.002-04:00

Well back from Quilting on the Lake. It was an amazing week and I was so blessed all the way through. First of all, I just love the venue, Onondaga Community College. There are nice close suites to stay at, the food was pretty much great (with a few exceptions) and there is plenty of pretty walking trails where you feel like you're out in the country but safely on campus. Really you couldn't find a nicer place for a conference.

That said, my class with Jeannette DiNicolis Meyer, was definitely the highlight. Our class was almost full with 18 VERY talented ladies. It was good to see Jeannette again, since her classroom is such a safe place to create. Our classroom, although tight, still had comfy chairs and air conditioning so I was cool with that. (okay that's my pun of the day). Since this was a guided studio, we could start on our own work right away. I really had no idea what I wanted to work on - just prayed and mediated until a strong thought came to me. One inspiration photo kept on coming to mind. It was a stock photo which I had bought and literally been sitting in my sewing hole for 3 months. Still I didn't want to use it as is since it was photographer's composition and I thought it needed more.

So I took out my trusty sketch book, which I gotta do more often, and started doodling. It always seems to free my mind a bit - Andddddd as usual curves came out which eventually ended up being a tree. So added a tree to piece. It took a bit of playing to get the bench just where I wanted it and the horizon line set but by noon on the first day, the sketch was ready.

Next came the fabric auditions. So many fabrics wanted to be the star of the piece, but I was aiming for a limited palette and a nice balance of cool colors and just a hint of warm for some tension. Plus, I wanted to add a nice accent color in there. Can't have Elizabeth Barton thinking I had forgotten everything she taught me LOL! I was doing fine until I came to that dang horizon line. Its so hard to get the correct value of fabrics when the range of that value is so small. Still the darkest fabrics ended up near the front and the lightest faded away into the background near the top. It only took about 4 hours to get them that way. Also the accent color needed to be placed around the piece so that it would help the eye move nicely. Because the figure was so dark and saturated against the horizon, the contrast was there for the focal point.

Finally, with Jeannette's blessing, I got to sew it down. First though I anchored it with a million blood drawing silk straight pins. Talk about Bleeding for your Art. But I managed to not stain up the top. With all the fabric sewn down to a stabilizer back, I could put in the thread work textured. It was such a treat to be at this point by Wednesday, so that I could consult with Jeannette on where texture lines should go and how line would be a whole new addition to the design elements. Her big advice - DON'T GO TWEE. (excessively sentimental, sweet,or pretty ) Since I'm not twee by nature - well the Calandar Cows are the exception - it wasn't hard to do. I'm about a quarter the way done with the stitching - which I'm doing with the batt backing. Next time I'm going to layer with a thin muslin backing since the batt tends to get every where. I'm really pleased with the progress so fair on this piece.

So as you can tell, I had great time this week. Jeannette is easily one of the best teachers out there to take a design class from. She's generous with her time (we had a meeting during dinner one day and she came back to check on us at night), she always knows what answer to give you in the least amount of words and she had the patience of a saint. She was so hard working during the week - never leaving when the class time was up and always rotating around the room in case you had a quick question. I loved her inspiring poetry, her funny cartoons and her quick little talks on different aspects of being an art quilter. Really its the kind of week that can sustain your creativity for a year!

Off to Quilting by the Lake

2010-07-15T06:28:00.001-04:00

Well I'm leaving today for my annual trip to Quilting by the Lake held in Syracuse, New York. This will be my 10th year so I hope it will be a special one. I'm taking a class from Jeannette DeNicolis Meyer called Expressive Fiber, Master Class. Basically its more of a directed studio than a design class. The class is to have class critiques and brainstorming as well as other professional concerns of a fiber artist like a good artist statement (is there such a beast out of there?). I remember when it was first announced last year that some quilters were intimidated to sign up since it was posted for intermediate to advanced quilters. That didn't phase me until I saw a list of the ladies that will be joining me this week. There are some very talented women in that class. Its always a little scary going in wondering if you will measure up!

This is my second time having Jeannette. I had her about 5 years ago in a design class. At the time, I never really understood or appreciated abstract art and she was the first teacher who truly opened my eyes to it. Her work is abstract but you can clearly see what she's trying to portray with it. It really moved me to the next level with my own work and I loved the piece I created that week. I nicknamed it the Praise Ladies because it was based on women at church who go up to the alter to dance and sway in praise to God.

That was also the piece that won my first ever 3rd prize at our county fair (I usually would win 1st or 2nd). While I was still bumming about that, a lady from Ohio called, said she had seen the quilt at the fair and could she buy it . So it was my first art piece sold. She wanted it for her Yoga studio.

I always credited Jeannette for bringing out the best in my work and I'm hoping that this week it will be no different. I'm thinking I'll continue the arches series - but you never know what I'll end up with. I'll just have to pray and see what happens!

Somethin' on the Wall

2010-07-13T21:14:00.001-04:00

Well after a week of working on it - I did manage to get somethin' on the wall. There was a lot of sweat involved though. First of all - am I the only one that thinks creating in 95 degree temps is hard? Here on mild Lake Erie we only get this type of weather once or twice a year, so we've never bother to put in a condenser for central air. Most summer days, my house doesn't go higher than 78 - but not this week! It was crazy hot in this old Victorian.

Still I moved along on the piece. Looking at the scale of the last arch I did, I thought I might make this one a bit larger. I don't know - I just like working with pieces that are around 36 - 45 inches. With that though, I needed to use some of my bigger hand dyed fabrics. With the palette of golds, browns and magenta as an accent - I really had to dig through my stash. It was fun though, pawing up the cottons. It was like getting reacquainted with an old friend. I did manage to use quite a few pieces I dyed myself last year - yay!!

Anyways - after a week or so - I manage to get the basic design done. I didn't pin it totally down because I want to let it cook while I'm out of town. I'm sure it will need some adjusting when I get back from Quilting on the Lake.

Getting Back on the Horse or the Arch. . .

2010-07-08T06:45:00.001-04:00

Well after a long hiatus from creative sewing, I manage to finally, start sewing again. It was nothing major that stopped my creative process, but after my computer was finally up and running, Christmas happened. Then we were solidly into the "dark" months of winter here in NW Pennsylvania. Its never been my most creative time, but this year I was hit with a perimenopausal funk of exhaustion. I was too tired to get anything done besides teaching at school and keeping the house running. Still with the help of some progesterone cream - which worked miracles btw - I'm back to my ole self!

With that said, I've put aside Tessa's cows which still remain undone, and started back on the arches series. I have Quilting on the Lake looming in a week, so I thought it might be time to actually start a whole new piece to get my creative juices flowing. It was hard - very hard - but finally it seems that things are going smoothly again.

So this week I've managed to pick an inspirational photo from my huge file of them and to trace out the lines that the most important to me. Sometimes this step needs some major editing work, but I really like the flow of the lines in this photo and thought I would use it just as.

Once that was done, I took out the handy set of gray scale color pencils I have and made a value drawing of the photo. I find value drawings a super help and it really keeps me on track as I go through the process. With the value drawing in place, I started to look at color palettes. Since I feel so out of the whole creative process, I took out my art, quilt, and fiber art books and picked a piece that the colors really struck me. Now I just applied that palette to my own piece - "easy-breezy". Sometimes I go through such design and color angst that it really can stifle the whole process. This way, I could jump right into the fabric stage of it!!
Well getting into the creative process is not like writing a bike but a little conditioning I'm sure I'll be back at it.

Where in the World is Nina-Marie?

2009-12-05T09:45:00.000-05:00

Hi All - just a quick post that my computer got sick this week. Don't worry - I don't think it was H1N1 but still its not happy. It started out being just a tiny glitch but ended up being 31 - count them - 31 viruses. Once those were wiped off - they all rebelled and crashed my computer. Sighhhhhhhhhhh. The Doctor says he can save some files - hopefully - but I'll have to load everything back on. She won't be home till Monday. My family is jonesing for a computer fix and I'm a little lose but its not a bad idea to go cold turkey now and again.

Anyways - hope all is well with you and hopefully I'll be getting back to the moos.

February Cow - Be Mine

2009-11-22T02:31:00.002-05:00

Since February is love month, I thought that this block should have a loveable couple. As this series of blocks goes on, its getting easier to design them but harder to chose the right colors. My sewing hole is a wreck with scraps and papers every where. I'm trying to be neat but its hard with such a diverse project. Its been a long while since I've worked on what pretty much amounts to a sampler quilt. Still I haven't grown tired of it yet. I had no idea that this quilt would capture my imagination and attention so totally. Still the days are clicking closer to Christmas so I need to make sure to keep going!

With that said my mind mooooves on to May Cow. May here means flowers and the return of the sun so hopefully that will show up in the next block.

Moo! Boo! - October Cow

2009-11-17T06:26:00.001-05:00

Well here is October cow, all ready to go out trick or treating. Now, that might seem totally ridiculous to some of you, but living in rural Pennsylvania, its not out of the total realm of possiblity. I had fun making this design although I went a bit more on the cartoon side this time. I mean, like, if you can't have fun with Halloween, when can you?

I still need to figure out what I'm going to do for his nostrils and mouth. Also, I might add something up in the left hand corner. I wanted some quiet space there but I'm thinking its a bit too quiet. I'll let the idea cook in my head for a bit.

So this means that I am now one third done and need to start thinking about Feburary Cow. I'm doing these in order of their layout so I can think about how all the colors are going to look together. Also, the sashing color decision is getting closer and closer and I have no idea what I'm going to do there.

July Cow - God Bless America

2009-11-13T04:26:00.002-05:00

I'm quite please with July Cow. I had her in my head and when I was done this morning, there she was. Its always nice when that happens! For this block, I made even a smaller zig zag which worked out really nice. I think I'll use it on the rest of the blocks.

The block is equally traditionally pieced and fabric collaged together. Its nice to know that I remember how to draft and get the piecing done without much effort. With all the art quilting lately, I would hate to lose touch with my roots LOL!

She uses mostly commerical fabric with a little bit of hand dyed and took 5 hours from design to finish. Now onto October!

Another Great Giveaway

2009-11-11T16:02:00.000-05:00

One of my favorite blogs to follow is Julie Bagamary's. She does some really nice fiberwork (paper and fabric) - most with Christian themes - which I totally love! She just hit her 400th milestone and decided to have a giveaway with one of her great pieces - just click here to enter! The Christian in me says Good Luck - but the other part of me that still needs prayer says - I hope I win! (grin)!

Candied Fabrics Giveaway

2009-11-10T04:16:00.000-05:00

Candy of Candied Fabrics is hosting a wonderful giveaway. Follow this link to check out all the ways you can enter. Take some time to visit her store too. She has so many great products for sale.

April Showers Cow

2009-11-08T15:29:00.001-05:00

So today I skipped church for some much needed alone time. Its harder than it looks trying to get a big project done under Tessa's nose. She definately has her finger on the pulse of our family. 5 hours later though, I manage to get April Cow done. Our springs are notoriously rainy here, so she has her umbrella all ready. Of course, no plain umbrella will do - she needs a nice snazzy one.

For her construction, I switched to a zig-zag stitch rough edge applique. It went much smoother than January cow and I didn't need a stablilizer. Still I'm sure she'll need a bit more thread work. I won't be using any fusible for the quilt since I want it to retain its nice puffy hand. There has been much chat lately on the quilt lists and blogs about thread work and fusible causing all our quilts to appear flat. We'll see if puffy quilts come back into vague!

Okay so I'm off to design July quilt. I'm sure - being from this house - he'll be a nice patriotic cow :)!

Shhhhhhh Its a Secret! January Cow

2009-11-06T05:59:00.002-05:00

When I was little. my mother spent one fall making all these amazing Barbie doll clothes. She did it in the evenings when I was asleep so that on Christmas morning it was a complete surprise. It was even more surprising since my mother doesn't really sew. Still each piece was perfectly crafted and really quiet unique! As an adult, I'm super impressed that she managed to keep the whole thing a secret from me since I was a very precosious child.

In that light, I thought I would surprise my daughter with her own bed quilt as a Christmas present. She's been asking me for one for quite a while. She's also been asking for a cow art quilt. She loves cows and everything to do with them - don't ask me why! To make it truly Tessa's quilt, I decided on making it a Calendar Cow quilt. That way she would have a cow for every month.

It took a while, but I manage to come up with a plan and finish the first block. January Cow is used to our Great Lakes winters and is prepared for the snow with a new cap he got for Christmas. He'll be finished off with some winter red berry buttons once he's quilted to balance some of that red. I'm happy with him though - he's cool without being too funky or cartoonish!

I'll keep you posted only if you promise not to tell!

Princess from Legend of Zelda in the House

2009-10-30T13:24:00.000-04:00

Halloween was never my favorite holiday. I'm not a night person to begin with and I grew up in the country where it wasn't easy to trick or treat. That said, it has to be one of my daughter's favorite holidays. Like - what other holiday do you get to dress up like a princess and get free candy?! (I'm paraphrasing her words of course!) Tessa typically starts thinking about Halloween in August. I try to put her off - but she keeps bringing it up every few days until its finally here.

Well - its finally here. This year she decided to go as the Princess from the Legend of Zelda game. Of course, its the kind of costume that you just can't shell out $50 and buy - so the whole family pitched in and made it. It took up all my creative time this week. With a little research we found out exactly what Zelda looks like. I recycled two shirts from Salvation Army - added trim and - presto - you have a tunic and a top of a dress. I found a blog on line that showed me how to make a skirt in 5 minutes. 30 minutes later - it was done! Who knew that my sewing machine did clothes too?!?! Wow! My husband, Paul, helped out by following directions on another blog. He took time this week to make all of Zelda's "armor". It came out very real looking considering it was made out of craft foam. I finished off the look by doing her decorative pendant in the front. I used only fusing and did no sewing on it - finishing it off with decorative gems.

Now, both Tessa and I concede that this is not exactly Zelda - just my creative vision of Zelda. The hot pink parts are purely Tessa - since in her words again - you can never wear enough pink. All in all - it came out to be a very warrior tough looking princess worthy of any Trick or Treat Raid!

Animal Quilt Challenge Completed - Psalm 124: 6,7

2009-10-25T06:20:00.003-04:00

Oh Blessed be God, We've flown free of their fangs, free of their traps, free as a bird.

Their grip is broken. We're free as a bird in flight.

I'm so please to finish this Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. The challenge was to make some kind of animal - including human and to use some kind of dimensional technique such as stuffed applique, cut away etc. When I read the challenge early Friday morning, I groaned out loud. I mean, like, I've never done an animal quilt (if you don't count baby quilts) in all my life. So I had no idea where to start. All day, while I was at school, my mind was thinking on the subject matter. Finally, in the end, I thought I would just settle on a body part of a person. I've always wanted to explore that subject.

Then I started looking at all my inspiration books and caught a picture of an art deco bird. That was it! I started sketching - putting in lines and taking out lines. I really love art deco and this love bird had really caught my attention. That said, my finish design was really complicated and the final quilt would be a major project. Since the idea of the challenge is to complete the project in a week, that would not do. So I pared down the sketch and made it a study of a future project. This literally is only half the design.

I decided to try to challenge myself to work with only commercial cottons. I liked the shape of my last challenge decided to use that. It fit the bird theme and I liked the irregular shapes. To give the piece dimension, I quilted the base, then added the bird on top - making the bird's body puffy without being stuffed. His wings were double fused to a base fabric and cut out - only be anchored to the piece by the tips. They are quite stiff and you can bend them in any direction you want.

I'm happy with the piece and I'll be sure to put this kind of thing on my list of things to do. It is 22" by 8" and took about 10 hours to complete (including the original design work).

A Quick Present

2009-10-16T06:01:00.000-04:00

Well for the first time in my life, I forgot about my mother's birthday until a few days before. Usually, I start thinking of what she might want a month before, but this fall has really gone fast. Plus she's been busy with a down sizing move into a new log cabin they had built. Its all very exciting but seems to have over shadowed everything else. Still I did manage to call and I promised I would make it up to her in November.

That said - I wanted to make a little something to say I was thinking about her. Of course, this whole month has been about getting rid of things for my mom - so what could I possibly make? I decided that she's still reading and every reader needs a book marker. I've seen the nice ones on etsy - so I decided to make one myself.

I chose this design because it reminded me of the great acreage my parents chose for the cabin - its on the banks of a creek on the edge of the Adirondacks. The marker is just rough edge applique with a lot of thread work in it. It has a cotton batt and I used free motion quilting for the thread work.

Everyday Arches - One Down - Five to Go

2009-10-14T06:38:00.002-04:00

Happily I'm finally done with the first in my arches series that I started in a class by Elizabeth Barton at Quilting by the Lake. I would like to sit and rest on my laurels but - sighhhhhhh - that is not to be. We all promised to make at least 6 of them in the series. Luckily we took the time to make at least 5 or 6 good drawings, so at least I have a start on the next one.

This one though is 24" by 24" and is made from commercial and hand dyed cotton. I used a collage method of appliqueing it to a pellon base and then put some thread work in. I machine quilted it mostly using just my regular foot with feed dogs up. I didn't add as much stitch work into it as a lot of pieces have been lately only because I thought the strong features of the design could hold its own. There is no fusible in it.

When we decided on a theme - Elizabeth had us write a paragraph on it. She said that our designs should match our paragraphs - which made sense. As I went through the design process, I noticed that every time I had trouble with it - it was because my design decisions didn't match my paragraph. Very cool!

So here it is. . . .

Arches are everywhere. Their symmetric curves are found in the most unexpected places. Of course, they're in our local gothic churches, but also on a sewer grate and a milk crate sculpture. Architecture can be so straight. I want to explore how the arches' curve looks against it. There are so many interesting parts in arch design. I want to use strong contrast in values and unexpected color palettes to celebrate these amazing everyday arches.

The Value of Pinwheels

2009-10-12T07:28:00.000-04:00

So over the last month, I've been working diligently on the pinwheels quilt. I take it everywhere I go. First it was the whole job of basting up the blades. Then I separated them into color and values to piece into the wheels themselves. Little by little it seems that I've been making progress.

As the pinwheels are done another couple problems pops up. How many do I really need?? How am I going to lay them out???? Since this quilt really isn't from a pattern (although I've been influenced from the traditional pinwheel quilts I've seen) I guess I am Queen of My Universe and I can decide how I want. Its good to be Queen. (grin)

Now how does one - even a queen - decide on a layout. For me, since I'm one of those, as Cynthia Corbin told me, "Paper Quilters", I like to draw it out. Yes I took my pencil set and some scrap graph paper (don't all quilters have scrap graph paper?!?!) and I sat one evening to make value sketches. Over the last year, Elizabeth Barton's great blog has totally convinced me of the "value" of this step (okay I'm a better quilter than a pun maker!) So now I routinely make them no matter if its a traditional or an art quilt.

Anyways, I came up with 4 sketches and I was anxious to test at least one of them out. I took all the pinwheels I've made so far, the sketch I wanted to test first and a bunch of pins. It took me an hour but I got them up somewhat in the value they need to be in. Looking at the layout, pointed out two things to me - 1 - I'm only half way done with this quilt - sighhhhhhhhhhh and 2 - if I use this layout (and that's if ) I would want the scoop of the light colors to go way further into the quilt. Here they look like an after thought.

So its back to the pinwheels for me - I still have to stitch up the last of the blades and then the process starts all over. Since the laid out wheels only measured 45" by 60" , I still have a long ways to go for a full size quilt. My gosh - do you know how many trapezoids that is?

Blog Quilt Show Entry - Genesis 1: 3,4

2009-10-11T06:37:00.002-04:00

Genesis 1:3,4

And God said, " Let there be light", and there was light. God saw that the light was good and

He separated the light from the darkness.

54" by 54"

Machine pieced/Hand quilted

Commercial and hand dyed cotton

Once again, another great idea from a blogger - hosting a blog quilt show. Clever huh?! I thought I would the use the opportunity to post one of the quilts I made a few years ago, Genesis 1:3,4. It is the last patterned quilt I had made, coming from McCall's magazine. I really haven't done any patterned work for years and years, but I saw this and thought - Gee if the colors were placed better this quilt could really pop. Plus I loved the size. It was a great exercise in value and it was really nice to leave all the design decisions up to someone else. It has a ton of hand quilting in it - all done in - Gasp! - rayon thread. I had no problem hand quilting with the rayon and it really gave it a nice shine. Since it was meant for a wall, I wasn't worried about strength and wear.

You can get the links of the other entries or enter the show yourself by clicking here - Blog Quilt Festival.

Space Challenge Finished!

2009-10-04T07:09:00.003-04:00

Well my first challenge for the Fast Friday Fabric group is finally finished! (Say that fast three time!) I can't say that I'm completely happy with it, but there are some elements I really like. I did end up using my daughter's complex cloth made from tempura paint and sea salt. It worked up lovely - has a great textured and the color really set nicely with the iron. I just won't throw it in the wash any time soon (grin).

The piece is only 18" by 8". I used a commercial print from Paula Nadlestern's designs for the little star bursts. I embellished this with Glitter, holographic thread from Superior threads. The shine you get out of this thread is crazy so I don't use it often. It did move through my machine well though. The last embellishment was fusible little gems that I bought at Walmart. They went on well but getting them all ironed into place was a exercise in patience.
I finished the edges just using a free motion stitch all along the very edge. I never did that before and I thought I would like to try it out. The bit of green color and texture around the edge seems to be working.
I was happy with the use of color and texture in the piece. I was not happy with the free motion quilting that I used. I used a sulky metallic thread and it just doesn't come out evenly with my machine. I've tried all sorts of tensions, needles etc and its never worked well. I should have just used a nice shiny rayon and it would have been fine. Still it was nice to try the iron on gems and see how cool tempura paint works on fabric.

Space - A Joint Adventure

2009-09-29T16:28:00.001-04:00

Well the space odyssey continues. After waiting 3 days for my dye-na-flow fabric to dry, I concluded that it didn't look dark nor interesting enough to use for my space challenge. So much for experiments. Still there was something that was of interest sitting next to this very dull looking cloth.

You see, my daughter, seeing me having fun painting fabric decided she wanted to play too. Well her momma, being mean and stingy as ever, told her she was welcome to do it but using scraps and her own tempera paints. She, being the creative 12-year old that she is, got after it. And what happened. . . .a really - really great piece. Just super!! Wayyyyyyyy better than her momma's . . . . .sighhhhhhhhh.

Still not only is she a great artist in her own right, but she's generous. She told me to go ahead and use her piece for my project - washable tempera paint and all. Of course, my daughter being a chip off the ole block, also asked for credit (grin). So here is her amazing complex cloth - her first piece. Ain't it great?!

Hopefully the rest of my design will do it justice.

Space - The Final Frontier

2009-09-26T16:27:00.001-04:00

I took a break from the trapezoids today to start a new adventure. Recently, I joined an online group called the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge. The premise of this group is that on the last Friday of the month, a challenge would be issued. You are to work as quickly as you can (and that's relative!) to complete the challenge experimenting creatively along the way. There is no judging nor anybody looking over your shoulder. You don't have to do any challenge - you can take as long as you want and you don't have to follow the guildlines of the challenge if you don't want to. All in all - a very friendly but motivating group!

I've joined them in their fourth year which is themed around nature. This month's challenge is outer space . You also are encouraged to use some new embellishing or material that you might not usually use. Now, I'm not ashamed to say that I'm firmly in the fiber arts camp that less is more when it comes to embellishing. I realize that a lot of the market is pushing artists to buy all sorts of media and products to use in their art, but its honestly not for me. I have enough trouble trying to get good design using basic composition techniques without worrying about all that bling!

That said, I thought it was a perfect chance to try out the sampler set of Dye-Na-Flow paints, I bought last year but was too chicken to use. I gleaned inspiration from Hubble's Image site and off I went. Let me tell you, if you can't get inspired from those amazing pictures, then you might want to try another topic. Without much fanfare, I just got a nice piece of left over white fabric, taped it to my dyeing tablecloth, and wet it down. I just squeezed little drops from the bottles and used a brush to blend them all in. After they were the way I wanted them, I sprinkled sea salt on it. I have no idea if this is the way you are suppose to do it, but since I was exploring, I figured I could do it anyway I wanted. So far, I'm happy with the results and it was what I had in mind.

Now I'm just waiting for it to dry to compose the rest of the piece. Since its a rainy day in Northwestern PA, it might be a while. Still, its not as if I don't have any hand work to keep me busy. I did manage to get 30 pinwheels done this week. Just in case you're keeping track - that's 180 blades used! (as I tell my students - math - its everywhere!)

Trapped by Trapezoids

2009-09-21T18:55:00.000-04:00

One of the reasons I started this blog, was to have a record of the creative things I did. I always wanted to keep track of them. Plus - this way I could share them with my friends. One of the by-products of the blog is that it keeps me creating. If I don't make something - I won't have anything to post.

Now that said, not all the things I create are going to be interesting. For instance, I just spent the last week basting little trapezoids - 100's of them! They are the blades for the pinwheels and are all basted onto paper by hand. I'm using the English Paper Piecing method so, of course, all the paper trapezoids had to be cut. Then the fabric attached and finally sorted into colors for piecing. Its a major undertaking and a bit addictive.

Anyways I manage to get over 500 of them done in the last week with a big push on Saturday. I sewed for over 12 hours - one trapezoid at a time. When I finally stopped my hand was a bit sore and the gallon size zip lock was full. I wasn't sick of basting them, but I was sick of all the mindless TV I had been watching. Maybe, next time, I'll just put one of the books on cd on. Oh - and yeah - there will be a next time, because I'm sure this still isn't enough for that quilt!

Everythings Bloomin' at the Albion Fair

2009-09-20T15:55:00.001-04:00

Well another Albion Fair has come and gone. You see, the fair always manages to take over my small town. School is let out early so that kids can get full use of Ride A Rama day. The borough office, library, and resteraunts close for the week. Traffic is sometimes backed up all the way through town. Its "fairly" crazy and its always fun.

The whole family enters their latest projects. Paul entered his contemporary cabinet while I put in my two birdhouse wall hangings. When judging was over, Paul who normally wins best in show lost out to a Pittsburgh Steelers Potty Chair complete with magazine rack and toilet roll holder. I'll let you draw you own conclusions about what that says about our town. Although in the past I've managed to bring home some best in shows, this year I only got a second and third place ribbon since my contemporary work is never well received in this very traditional venue.

My daughter, on the other hand, manage to hold up the Sayre name by bringing home a Second Best in Show with her entry Everythings Bloomin' at the Fair. She is a very creative child and takes her multi media work very seriously. This project took her a couple of weeks and we had long discussions on what was working in it and what wasn't. I just kept encouraging her to follow her creative process and not give up. The result was pretty great and uniquely her. My husband Paul took one look and asked if she's been experimenting with drugs (grin). I took one look and knew it was going to win. Happily, the judges, for once, didn't disappoint me.

I want to remind all the artists I know to take time whenever possible to encourage young people to celebrate their art. I know its where your future lies.

When Ugly is Pretty

2009-09-07T20:52:00.004-04:00

So I took this whole Labor Day thing really literally today. At 5:30 am I wrote myself a list of Things to Do and stuck to it all day. Included on that list of things was to dye me some ugly fabric. While organizing my stash I realized that I did not have enough muddy colored hand dyeds. I like to use them to give some variation among all those intense colors. I also found a box of solid fabrics that I bought in the mid 90's. So I took hunks of a bunch of colors and put them in the machine for a good scour.

The first time I did hand dyed fabrics, I was very careful recording all the colors and the recipes. I was as precise as I could be with the measurements. It was all very exact. Today was very different. I just made up some blue, red, and green dye solution and started pouring and squishing it with my fabric. I had no idea what I was doing although a good friend gave me the advice to use the complimentary color of the original fabric to muddy up the colors. So that's what I tried to do.

Once again it took me all day but I did manage to get the whole process done. I'm all happy with the results since they did come out sufficiently muddy. I'm glad I got some nice grays out of the deal since that is going to be a main color in my next project. One thing I did learn though is that the dark reds and greens did not over dye - aduhhhh - but just thought I would try. I think I'm going to set them aside to discharge then dye sometime in the future.

Pinwheels! Pinwheels! Pinwheels!

2009-09-06T18:23:00.006-04:00

Contrary to popular belief among my friends, I'm still doing some traditional quilting. After completing my 4200 piece tumbling block quilt, I said I would never do another hand pieced project. Well I lied :)) Last September or so I started a hand pieced pinwheel quilt. I probably should call it my "When Hell freezes Over" quilt.

I like to hand piece using the English paper piecing method. Yes its labor intensive, but its nice and accurate. Plus its very transportable. Its the kind of project you can take anywhere you need to keep your hands busy. Welllllll - almost anywhere - if you take it to church you get all these funny looks. . . . . Go figure.

Anyways - I worked on it through out the school year whenever I had the inclination or the time or both. I would take it to school and it would set off conversations with the students on quilting and tessellating patterns. With the coming of the warm weather and dog days, it got put away.

But this week marks my return to the classroom and therefore, the pinwheels. I spent the afternoon trying to figure out where I had left off. For the first time I put the wheels up on my design board - not in any real pattern - just by value. I do want this to be a value study and I want to do it all in cool colors. From the layout I could tell that I definitely needed more mediums and lights. So off to my newly cleaned stash I went, where it was a breeze to find exactly the scraps I needed. Also from layout I can see that I have a long way to go. When I put it away it seemed like I had gotten so much accomplished. But as I found out with the tumbling block quilt, hand piecing isn't a hobby - its a vocation.

Stash Clean Out Complete

2009-09-04T06:23:00.006-04:00

Yes - drum roll please - I did manage to complete cleaning my stash yesterday! I keep it up on the third floor of my aging Victorian house. We have a big dressing room that has two closets and walls of shelving. One side holds our clothes while the other holds all my fabric. Its dark and ventilated so its been the perfect spot to store it. Still it was always a mess since there was too much fabric there for the space. With the recent sell-off (which is still going on if anybody wants any - cheapie!), I've managed to really organize the fabric I really wanted to use. Here it is. I grouped the commercial fabrics together by color and put the top shelves with hand dyeds by color - sort of! Its hard to actually get that exactly right when the hand dyeds are sometimes equally one color and another. I do have two closets of little boxes. They are boxes of odds and ends like - tatting trims, left over blocks, vintage patterns, etc. etc. Still they are now labeled and easy to get at. I also found out that I don't need to buy any batting for a while with at least 4 queen size batts in reserve! I also have nice collections of William Morris fabrics, Rose and Hubble fairy fabrics, two boxes of Japanese fabrics, a box of Liberty of London AND more 30's reproduction fabrics than I ever wanted to look at. I only found 3 or 4 UFO's and a couple of tops needing quilting so I was happy with that!

One thing that this venture has shown is what hand dyeds colors I need to dye. I need the neutrals and the muddy colors. I have a lot of intense green and blues but no reds - like what's wrong with red that I never have it in hand dyeds? I also found a big box of solids from years ago that I'm going to try to over dye and see if I can come up with some nice muddy colors.

So I guess my fall cleaning is done and I can get back - happily - to the sewing hole. My family is very impressed with me - I'm just glad to get it all pretty and organized!

These are the "mid clean" pictures of the process - I meant to get before shots but I forgot~!

Stash Sell Off!

2009-08-30T11:25:00.006-04:00

Okay, I finally made the decision. I am going to take half of my stash and sell it off - cheapie! cheapie! It was just cluttering up my shelves and taking away room from the fabric that I actually did want to use.

Now I own a lot of fabric - although I would not say an obscene amount but respectable for a long time quilter. I never was a quilter who bought fabric for a project. I would buy fabric because I had to have it and if I found a project that it would go into that was fine. I would always use my overtime money for it so it wasn't a big deal to my husband. Besides, I'm not like other women you know - I don't want expensive shoes or purses or a nice car or even a nice Bernina - I just liked to have a decent stash of fabric. Over the years its been a blessing too since I now only work when my daughter's in school and fabric is soooooooo expensive.

But lately I've found that its been more of a hindrance then a help. It seems like my stash was always in a mess and I couldn't find anything that I wanted. Plus, I needed to find a place for my hand dyed collection which is getting bigger. I also wanted to find the fabric in my stash that could be over dyed. So I started cleaning.

And clean I did - to the tune of over 500 yards - and counting! There is also a big bin of fabric sample cards I want to get rid of. I decided that I would start the sell off at a garage sale that I'm having. I just casually let some quilter friends know that I'm going to do a big stash sell off at $2/yard. I did manage to get rid of nearly 100 yards yesterday but still there is a ton more. I'm going to run the garage sale one more day because its been raining on and off both days - sigh!

Also I got serious today - I listed it on Craiglist, I contacted the heads of the quilt guilds I know or could find online and really just tried to reach anybody who might want quilt shop fabric cheap! I'll keep you updated. Plus I do a blog on my pretty - organized - remaining stash.

One quilter asked if it was hard to let go and the answer was a huge NO! I still have at least that much fabric in my stash and now I can actually get at it - plus its nice to bless another quilter with cheapie good fabric!

Hand Dyeing Fabric on a Dime

2009-08-23T20:10:00.007-04:00

Well, I finally took a leap of faith and started hand dyeing my fabric. I ended up taking a quilt back I had bought on sale and cutting it into 12" by 18" pieces - bigger than a fat eighth but smaller than a fat quarter. I put 26 of them into a soda ash bath and set it out on my wrap around porch. I decided after looking at many different quilter's dye station set ups, that I wouldn't go so fancy. I just put a vinyl table cloth on the floor of my porch - set a bucket upside down and worked there. I put two buckets of water around me - made my dye solutions and made sure I had enough beer cups labeled.

As an aside, let me just tell you, I never thought in my life I would have gone on a hunt for the elusive beer cup. I didn't even know they made such a thing - can you tell what a big drinker I am? I was following the methods set down by Melissa Will in her Dyeing 101 blog. Its fabulous! I asked a couple of neighbors concerning the cups and they clued me into the fact that you can get them in the 18 oz size at a discount store. So in case you hear rumors that I've taken up drinking in large oz glasses - its just that I'm really hand dyeing fabric!

Anywaysssss - Although it took me most of the day, the process was easy enough to follow. I ended up with 26 different color samples. I just used two sets of different blue, yellows and reds that I had bought on sale and applied recipes that Melissa had suggested (although she had used different primary shades). I thought the results were quite nice although a little pale. We have hard water here so I'll have to look into a softner or used bottle water to dye with. I cured them for 4 hours at 70 degrees so that might have been a factor too.

Still I love the results and that I actually did it. Its fun playing mad scientist for a bit. I love that you're not quite sure how the colors are going to come out and the sense of accomplishment you get when you see them all ironed in front of you. I did start a dye journal with the recipes and samples.

To Dye or Not to Dye

2009-08-20T06:42:00.008-04:00

For the longest time, I've said I wasn't going to be dyeing any fabric myself. First of all I already have a nice stash of hand dyed fabric that I've bought from other talented people. Then there's the fact that I just hadn't been doing that much sewing the last couple of years. Since it seems I've finally come out of that perimenopausal haze I had going, I really am starting to sew again. That said, I noticed all the pretty hand dyed fabrics ladies had done themselves at QBL this year. Now I'm thinking. . . maybe I'll give it a try.

So where does one start??? Well, since I'm so visual, of course I got a good book for beginners. There are alot of them out there. I read a couple from the library and bought Fabric Dyeing for Beginners which was really helpful. Then I read a bunch of the wonderful blogs they have on the subject including Mel Johnson's, Paula Burch's, and one by Melissa in Canada. These were most helpful and I can't believe the information these generous ladies give for free!

Next I needed the stuff. You know how it is - every new endeavor needs stuff. Since I'm suppose to be on a No Spending Spree (it is back to school time), I started locally. I went into ACMoore's in Erie and found the section for textile coloring. They had Synthanol, urea, and soda ash but no dyes. That didn't make sense - so I looked and looked only to be disappointed. A couple of days later, I went back in just to browse with a girlfriend (because you know its fun just to browse in ACMoore's!) Don't you know I found all the dyes in the clearance ailse (which I wasn't originally going to go down but felt drawn in) for $2 and $3 a jar for 3 oz. I was all happy with that and bought the 7 or 8 colors they had. I'm always surprised when God lends a helping like that. It never gets old and I never take it for granted. I then went up into my stash and found all sorts of fabrics that I can scour to practice with. Because our family is trying to be green I'm using recycled plastics to do the dyeing in but did buy new measuring and mixing stuff at the dollar store.

So after my little scavenger hunt, I think I'm ready to start to begin to hand dye on a dime. With the dog days of summer upon us, it looks like its something to keep me busy until work really picks up again. I did manage yesterday to get the thread work on the arches done and will finish quilting that this morning - Thank God. I'm sooooooo over this piece and am itchin' to get onto the next!

Woodworkers Who Marry Quilters

2009-08-17T06:52:00.009-04:00

I've been steadily working on finishing up the first in the arches quilt. To me its amazing how long sometimes the thread work will take in a design. Twice I've put in lines that I've had to sit and take out. Annoying! Also I've been trying to follow my rule to sew at least an hour a day, but with the dog days of summer finally upon us that's all I've managed! Well at least this is another week and I'm hoping to finish it up so I can start on the next one.

I did manage to make Elizabeth Barton's blog - twice. Her and I do think a lot alike but it always surprises me when she uses one of my comments in a later blog. She's really hit a nerve with blogging out the whole debate on if surface design is a stand along art in itself. Interesting!

So my husband Paul left yesterday for his annual week at Marc Adam's School of Woodworking. He's taking an advanced class in veneering. I find it amusing how many quilters are married to woodworkers. I run into them all the time. Although Paul did originally start 17 years ago (the same time I started quilting) with regular furniture, lately he's taken on some more interesting projects. He's designing his own work and adding all sorts of marquetry. I love the curves that he's scupting into them - pretty! His latest pieces, though, don't fit into our practical need of furniture here so I keep asking him to sell them. He's been contacted by a couple of galleries and I sure could use a new bedroom set!

Since he took my digital camera - sorry - our digital camera to class, I thought I would post some of his latest pieces.