Quilt Photo Shoot

 I took my completed quilt in the yard to get some photos.  This is a larger quilt than I normally do so I didn't have anywhere to hang it. As I was posing it in various places Milo followed and supervised.

 This spot had good light but I lost the top corner, it's laying over a bush.

 This may be the money shot for now.   I am standing on higher ground looking down.

Quilt pattern:  Soul Searching by Kathy Doughty.  I took the class from her in Sisters, OR last summer.  Size is 72" x 84".  It was machine quilted by Darla Running.

The Old and the New

Completed Quilt:  These were blocks made by my friends in the What Knots, and I've had them since 2006.    I used the "quilt as you go" method where each 12" block was layered with batting and backing and quilted on my regular machine.

Then the blocks were attached together.  On the front that was just the matter of a seam, but on the back it required a sashing strip to connect the blocks.

So this is what the back looks like.

And here is the quilt artfully posed.

Since we are now empty nesters, we have to indulge the cats.  We bought them this cat tree and some new catnip to entice they to use it.  So far only Milo has climbed on it on his own.

This is the best time of year for lovely sunset views, and we've had several.  In another month the sun will be setting farther north, which is behind those trees on the right side of the picture.

A new tool I was compelled to purchase is the Quick Curver Ruler by Sew Kind of Wonderful.  It was on sale at Fabric Etc and the designer is going to be doing a workshop for my guild.

This Poinsettia block is a free pattern on their web site and I had fun practicing my machine quilting on it.

Picture in the snow before it went to it's new home (a Christmas gift)

Any picture can be clicked in for a larger view.

Quilt Retreats

 I've been quite the spoiled girl, attending 2 quilt retreats in a month.  But I did get a lot of sewing done.  These first 2 pictures were taken at the Willow Pond retreat by Cindy.  She documented a lot of the group's fun on Facebook.  The quilt top above is suppose to be my Bonnie's Team donation, but I'm running a bit behind on getting it quilted.

 Several ladies admiring Val's quilt, but that's me in the background at my machine.

 Next retreat was at Warm Beach and I brought my recently completed Zig Zag quilt made from Kaffe fabrics to photograph.

 Bunny had the great idea to pose the quilt on an old wagon that was a decoration near our sewing hall.

 My first project was to sew together the blocks of this quilt.  I started it in a class at Sister's, then managed to get the blocks all sewing during the earlier retreat.  I knew this facility had great walls for designing, so I was able to complete this top.  This is a really big quilt for me, 72" x 84"

 Most of my time was spent on this quilt.  I had purchased the stripped Kaffe fabric a couple of years ago (or maybe last year) and had this inspiration to make a triangle quilt with rows of color.  It went through several arrangements.  My daughter Kim stopped in for a visit at the retreat on her way to Bellingham from Seattle and I had her play with the blocks.  She decided I needed to have a light source and did most of this arrangement.  The blocks are sewn together in horizontal rows but those rows still need to be stitched together.

 And for a little break I made a few more blocks for this selvage quilt that is also a long term project.

Back at home, the spiders have been very busy on the deck railing and yard art.

Paducah Pineapple

 A finished quilt that was started in 1999.  That is when I took a trip to Paducah, Kentucky to see the American Quilters Society Show and meet up with some internet friends.

We made a side trip to Hancock's of Paducah and here is what I wrote in my journal.

"Although I had heard stories, I was not mentally prepared for the reality of Hancocks.  Breezed right though the main sales area to the discount area in the back.  All the fabric there were flat folds, and all were $4.49 per yard. 

There were probably at least 20 huge tables piled high with these flat folds, from all different manufacturers, but I didn't come across any batiks.  They bring in more fabric every day, so I guess it pays to return, that is if you have more money to spend.  Since I really don't need, no let me rephrase that, have room for more fabric, I was trying to be conservative, and my way of doing that was to buy fabric for a specific quilt.  One of the patterns I purchased was Lynn Grave's foundation paper piecing pattern for a pineapple quilt, with the intention of making it for Kim's bed.  So since her colors are currently blues and greens, I even had a color scheme to start with.  My goal was to get 5 fabrics in various blue and green combinations, and then a gradation of 5 gold fabrics to go with them.  I headed up to the cutting counter with just my 10 fabrics, but the lady next to me had lots of blue and green fabrics also, so we traded a few. "

I don't have any good reason why this quilt took so long to complete.  I love the pattern and I love the fabrics.  In this time period we did build our house (living in a mobile home) and my kids went from elementary school to being adults.  For some reason many other quilts got completed but not this one.  There was a time when I had the blocks together and was stymied about the border.  It sat for a few years after a botched attempt at machine quilting, and another couple after I took the quilting out (maybe 1/4 of the quilt done) and had just a top again.

Size:  58" x 70"

To quilt is heavenly, but to finish is divine!

Cityscape Project

At The Quilter's Affair in Sister's OR this summer I took a 2 day class from Hilde Morin titled Cityscapes.  It was a wonderful class where I stretched myself to create a quilt from a photo using piecing only, no applique allowed.

Everyone showed their photos at the start, I had one of Friday Harbor, which on reflection seemed too complex for a first project.  Diana was working from this photo and let me share.  It seemed much more manageable.

I had 2 very productive days and came away with this almost completed quilt top.

And now it is done.  As I see the pictures together I realize I lost one of the unique aspects, the wonderful perspective of the upward view of the building.  After a rocky start with the machine quilting, I found my groove and really enjoyed the process.

Click on the picture for a larger view.

Update:  1/21/2014  I now know where the picture was taken.  It is Hundertwasser Village in Vienna.  Norma has a similar picture on her blog that she is going to work from.

Flowers, flowers and more flowers

 Dresden Daisies

44" x 50"

New quilt that was completed in record time.  I am enamored with Dresden plate blocks at the moment and love making them with striped fabric, they make such great flowers.  Thanks to Chris for taking this great picture when I showed it at quilt group.

 The Crocosmia are in full bloom, when they are done I need to dig them out and move them because they are shading my Sweet Peas.

 Carmen Bunky Dahlia

This was my first Dahlia to bloom this year, Parkland Magenta.  Still waiting on a number of other plants to start their show.

Quilt of Valor

 

A speaker at one of my quilt groups is organizing some quilts to donate to Quilts of Valor.  In addition they are going to display these quilts at the Ferndale, Washington Library for the month of May.  I was inspired to make a quilt for this organization and came across a great pattern in the January 2013 issue of American Quilter.

This is a quilt where you first put together squares, and then using a Lil' Twister ruler, cut the pinwheels and reassemble.  The magazine has a template that can be used to cut the blocks, but since I have the ruler and was interested in using it again, I adjusted the size of the blocks to work with my ruler.

The photo at the top of the page was taken in my studio, but I also wanted to try and get a photo in natural light.  Even though I knew it was too sunny, and there was a bit of a breeze blowing, I got Dave to hold the quilt for me.

Three Views

 Finding a place to photograph a quilt in natural light during the winter is a bit of a challenge.  Most outside places are wet or muddy so on a sunny morning this week I took some inside pictures of my latest completed quilt.  This view is on the floor in near a window, really shows the quilting.

 This cropped view shows the vibrancy of the fabric.  The quilt was laying over a chair which is why the sashing lines aren't straight.

Full quilt, picture from the Moonlight Quilter's Website from last meeting Show and Tell.  I'm calling it "Crazy Fence", the blocks were started in a class with Karla Alexander.  43" x 60"

Quilt Retreats

Two quilt retreats in one month, crazy I know, but the opportunity presented itself and I decided to just go for it.  Both were wonderful times full of friendship, laughter and production.  I wan't quite ready/in the right mindset for the first one so I didn't get a lot done, but boy, on the second retreat I was cranking them out.

Zipper Quilt - pattern from the book The Modern Quilt Workshop by Weeks Ringle.  This quilt is my donation for Bonnie's Team (cancer infusion center) and is fairly small, 36 x 45".  It should be hanging at Fabric-Etc this week along with the other donations.  I put the top together at the first retreat, then quilted and bound it at the second one.

Orange Sunshine (I'm making up names as I go) has been in progress for several years.  These are Friendship Blocks I received from the Moonlight Quilter's guild.    At the spring retreat I got them arranged and the top sewn.  I quilted a large sunflower design on each block with my long arm machine and then straight quilted the sashing on my Horizon.  I still had a few rows of machine quilting to do at the retreat, and then add the binding.  I took this picture without the binding completely hand sewn  because it it large (58" x 72") and there was a great wall to hang it on in the retreat center.

Next up is Crazy Fence.  Most of these blocks were make in a Karla Alexander class (Feb 2011 I think) so at the retreat I finished the last 6 blocks, arranged them and sewed this top together.

I zipped through all my project so fast, now what should I do?  One of the retreat highlights is a trip to Over the Rainbow, an on-line fabric store that allows us to shop in their warehouse.  I repeatedly said I was not going this year, but broke down when I decided to shop for fabrics for this quilt.  Carrie started the zig-zag quilt trend working on one in Halloween fabrics, and Judy followed with red, white and blue.  I decided to make a Christmas one and was a little overwhelmed trying to find 10 coordinating fabrics when I stumbled on this Moda Jelly Roll, all I had to add was the repeating green fabric (and I only used half of the jelly roll). Yep, another top done, guess it is time to get busy with the long arm.

Dyeing, Crochet and Quilts

Somewhere in my blog readings I learned about Tumble Dyes, and of course I wanted to try them.  You don't have to pre-treat your fabric (soak in soda ash).  The bottle reads "non-toxic, washable, ready to use, water based, easy clean up".  You just shake the spray bottle and go.  Once your fabric is dry you heat set, an iron will do.  I haven't washed any of my experiments, I don't think I'll use this on any quilts that need to be washed.  The top right is my sample card of the colors I bought, I used a paint brush on dry fabric.  On the left (orange) is one I sprayed on a white on white printed fabric.  The bottom piece shows where I used a leaf stencil, the one on the left bled some so I used a dryer brush on the right leaf.

This is a larger piece I did.  I started with wet fabric, sprayed different colors on it and let it dry flat.  The wet fabric had some wrinkles in it and the dye does some migration which caused the ridges

In other projects, I crocheted these darling booties.

And I entered 2 of my quilts in the Northwest Washington Fair this year and got blue ribbons on both of them.  They give out a lot of ribbons, there are lots of categories.  My Zinnia quilt, which for some reason I've started calling Dahlia, won for Adult Division, Small Machine Quilted, Machine applique.

My house quilt won for Adult Division, Small Machine Quilted, Group quilt.   The house blocks were a prize from a raffle at a quilt retreat.

More Quilting

 Completed piece!  I made this as part of a guild challenge, there were 2 fabrics that we had to incorporate in our work.  The orange of the house is one, the other is cut into little bits and used on the flowers and leaves.  It's an original design that is greatly influenced by the work of Jamie Fingal.  13-1/2" x 15"

This quilt top has been on my design wall for several months now, I just can't figure out how to machine quilt it.  I usually do some sort of all over design, but this time I'd like to try something in each block, for a change.  Any ideas?

June Rain

It may be June, but it's been cloudy and cool here, lots of drizzly days.  My creativity has been cloudy too, but I went with the inspiration of a blog post by Kathy Loomis  and made this piece.

I'm not good at coming up with names and stories for my quilts.  Reality is I had this piece of hand dyed fabric that I had done some playing with, stamping with bubble wrap and using a Shiva paint stick to add some subtle texture.  Then I sliced it and added the color strips.  This is a small piece, 8" x 8", but it is DONE!

 (Quilt posed on our rock walkway)

It gives me the impression of looking out my window.  There is the blue of the rainy skies, with little slices of color, occasional sunshine and things blooming in the yard.

 (Quilt posed on the wood deck, which do you think is the best pose ignoring that the color is more washed out from the 2 outside pictures?)

I was so inspired by my accomplishment, I did the whole thing in a day.  Immediately I went to work on this piece that has been languishing for several months.  I hope I can keep the flow going. ( and yes that is some new fabric on the left hand side that I got yesterday when I went to see the quilt show in Sedro Woolley.)