Saturday, March 22, 2014

What's more fun than quilting? Nothing, you say? How about a girl's day out going to a quilt show? Yesterday I did just that. There were 4 of us total in our car that went to the Tyler Quilt Show. Had a marvelous time! The theme this year was "Not your Grandmother's Quilt", and needless to say, they sure weren't! Some were simple easy designs, but the quilting! It was over the top!  Here's a couple that really showed that quilting makes the quilt!
I didn't get a close up of the spinning stars, but they did feathers in all the white areas & a simple curves in the pinwheels, then bling them with crystals in the center. Absolutely stunning. Just goes to show you that a simple scrappy quilt can be dressed up with some great quilting!

If you're considering showing your quilt in a show, get with your longarmer & let her play with design to compliment the quilt. Yes, you're going to pay more for the quilting, but so worth it to get that coveted blue ribbon!

Thursday, March 20, 2014

I've had a little play time this week. I've been dying to do another Carpenter Star quilt, so during lunch break at guild Monday, I ran over to Sew & Sew & picked up some fat quarters & a little more cloth. Didn't spend a lot, but look what I made out of it!
It turned out 84 1/2" square. But wait til you see it quilted!  I had enough left over to make a mini one! I'll post a picture of it once I get it all together.
Happy quilting!!

Friday, March 14, 2014

Well, Chance has been home on Spring Break this week & so we've been doing a bit of spring cleaning, both in the house & the studio. Sure nice to get everything put back in their proper places!
I did get some sewing done. I got all the blocks for the Rose Log Cabin finished. Here is a picture of the center of the quilt as it's on the design board.
I know, I have to finish the circle quilt! It's in it's final stage now, so should be showing it off soon!

In the process of cleaning up, found the tote with all of hubby's old jeans. So, for 3 days I did nothing but bone them & cut into blocks. Out of 9 pair of jeans, I came up with 179 - 6 1/2" blocks & 18 9" blocks with the pockets! Amazing how much material you can get out of a pair of jeans!


Tuesday, March 4, 2014

Well, here's the beginnings of a quilt that's going to show. The pattern is Rose Log Cabin by Deloa Jones. She's known more for her longarming techniques rather than pattern design, but I really liked this one & decided to do it for competition, locally.
This is the very center of the quilt. There's 4 blocks in the center, total of 36 in this queen sized quilt. I have all of these done & am working on the 44 green ones that are the alternate block. I'll post more on it as it progresses.

Sunday, March 2, 2014

Well, for those that don't know, I was elected as Second VP for our local guild this year. As 2nd VP, my duty is to run the programs for the guild. Our outgoing Program Director & I did a little survey to see what interests were like & try & give the guild programming around that.  One of the things that was of interest was using color on the quilts. i.e. colored pencils, paint, inks. I've been following Irena Bluhm's work for some time & have done a piece or two of her works, so during the time that weather didn't permit me to work in the studio, I did some samples. I was able to quilt them pretty quickly, then brought them into the house to do the colorings. Here's 2 of the samples:
The blue one was done with Inktense pencils. The red one was done with plain colored pencils.

Saturday, March 1, 2014

If you've been following my blog, then you know my favorite place on the internet is QuiltingBoard.com. PaintmeJudy periodically does a mystery quilt. Well, we got the final clue yesterday for the current one. It was originally designed to be square (sort of). I decided to make mine oblong, so the final step wasn't fitting to the final outcome.  But, here's mine. All pieced, now in the que for quilting.
This will go on my very large dining room table.

Disregard the circle one, there will be more about that one at a later date.

Well, here's a funny story! See this panel?
It was part of my Christmas present from my friend, Judy. I couldn't find it amongst all the fabric she sent me at Christmas time & she ordered a 2nd one that was sent directly to me. A couple of days ago I was working on the circle quilt behind this panel. First of all, I couldn't find the black fabric. I went searching the studio for it. In my search, I came across the panel. Oh! There it is! I'd forgotten about it. Judy had decided that we would make them into wallhanging for each other & do a Christmas in July exchange. OK, move this further up the "to do" list. I set it aside & continued on my search of my black fabric. I found it & proceeded to work on the circle quilt. I had pulled some fabrics out for the border & started cutting. One of the fabrics was a dark green batik which needed ironing. When I opened it up to iron, what did I find? The original missing panel! Yep, hiding inside another piece of fabric! So, I called Judy to give her a good chuckle. I asked her what I was supposed to do with this 2nd panel. Her immediate response was "Send it to Deb!" Now we're cooking with ideas. What we've come up with is a round robin with the three of us. The first person will design & make the wallhanging for their own sewing area. Add block, borders, whatever. We have 1 month to accomplish this. Then we mail to the next person who will quilt it. (All 3 of us have longarms.) Also have 1 month to accomplish this. Then the 3rd person will embellish it in a months time & send it back to the one who started it to keep.  With 3 very creative minds, it's going to be interesting to see how all three of these come out! Stay tuned for the ongoing saga!