For My Next Trick......

I finished the Little Farms quilt for Lyen's baby on Monday.  I did a photoshoot with it around the house.

 For National Dog Day, I asked McGee to model for me...……...

My next quilt?  You are going to love this...……………..

This quilt was begun in a Modern Quilt meeting.  Daisy Auschoung was the speaker.  She does a lot of modern quilt

s that are in the Modern Patchwork magazine.  Very graphic, you should check her out.  She was our President for a while before she moved to Norway.

Her program that day was to talk about people like Joseph Albers who creates with color blocks.  You should check out his art at:

Joseph Albers Foundation

Our project was to divide into groups of two and work with scraps of solid color fabrics.  Daisy had hung batting on the walls to use as design walls.

I was paired with Alice and together we put the block together.  I later added the grey borders.

It was interesting to see the difference in concept and design the other teams came up with.  Each one was so vastly different.  I have not seen any of them finishes and this was several years ago, before the flood even.

I took this photo this morning.  Changed it to black and white.  I used a small ruler and a pencil to audition  several quilting lines.

I would like to do this on the long arm but I am not sure how to do all the angles I require.

A few months ago I bought Jacquie Gehring's book Walk  that is like a workshop in machine quilting lines using a walking foot on your DSM.

I think I need to read that at night while I lay out the quilting lines on this booger during the day.

Hopefully you can see the lines on the copy.  You can always click on it to enlarge and it should be easier to see.  If you do this, make several copies so you can audition several sets of lines.

Even so, it is subject to change I guess.  It is a pretty large quilt.  But it should be a spectacular one!



(PS Just so you know, this is a printed out photo of thw quilt, not the actual quilt with quilting.  I am not that far into it!  

And this quilt is pretty large, maybe 80x70.  )

Scrappy Cross

This is a quilt top from probably 12 years ago.  Tossed it on the long arm with the Red Snappers.  At one point McGee tore through the room and grabbed the top, ripping it off the frame.

After I beat him soundly...….I really didn't even though I wanted to...…..I put it back in place and changed my thread to brown.

Before the quilt went on the frame I discovered several holes that McGee had previously chewed.  They needed to be fixed.

I used a seam ripper to take out the torn patches.  I used the basic measurements to cut new patches.

 Then I used hand sewing to replace the old patches with new ones.

 Here is one of the new sections, you can't even tell!

So here is the top ready to be put on the frame.  All fixed!

 On the frame.  Now to quilt it.

I made a wavy line in the brown scrappy area.  And I used an Angela Walters motif that looks like a large flower to fill the center beige area.  A peony, I think she calls it.  It was easy to do and when you want an easy free motion motif for a square it will make a nice presentation.

 Finished.














Evidence that I have evolved as a piecer, you can see the uneven border fabric.  Three borders were perfect and this one was a mess.

I will have to decide what to do with it.  Or if it can even be made into a workable fix.  Geez.

 Here is the finished quilt.  I am working to bury the threads and I will toss it into the washing machine to see if the fabrics will shrink up enough to help with the above mess.

I do like that flower in the center.  I want to use it again soon.

Oh yeah, the back is green!  LOL

Quilting the Birds

Ok, so I wussed out.

As much as I want do custom work in each bird block and all around the borders, it would sit for years before I would have time.

I decided to go with a panto on the birds.  I chose SoHo from Urban Elementz so I could get it done.  I kept thinking about having 31 birds, and how many I had to do each day.    And it was getting overwhelming.  My life is so hectic right now as it is, I don't want to add more to it.  I would just go mad insane and run screaming into the woods or something.

So I chose the panto.  It kinda looks birdlike even. 

Even that didn't go down easily. 

I got the panto all lined up and everything and did the first motif.  Man, that sucker looked yellow.  I forgot to take out that yellow bobbin!  Rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip, rip.  Bobbin change!

Then I had tension issues.  But I got them resolved.

Then the dogs wanted out.  Got that resolved.

Then the computer went out and Frank had a report to send out.  And when he was on the phone with Cox   ........   he couldn't figure out what was the modem and what wasn't.

Got that figured out.  They are now appropriately labeled in large print with color coded labels.

Then the dogs wanted out again.  How did they get in again?

Then I got confused on which way I was going on the panto and went backwards......geez, rip, rip, rip, et, al. 

So I just stopped and let the dogs out again  and made dinner.

Tomorrow is another day.

Pink Squares

You have to go to Kokaquilts and see my Wolf!  Julie  and Linda are featuring me in their blogpost for Sew, Stitch, Snap and Share.

And of course I am linking up with them for this week's Share.


 Pink is done!!

 Simple meander.  Not complicated.  This is just a quilt that is made to be used and loved.

It is for Kaitlyn. Sweet Kaitlyn.  She is going to love it!

Carol of Quilted Fabric Art told me about an online class by Anglela Walters doing Free motion Quilting.   The FreeMotion Challenge.

I decided to sign up with her.

The first week is echo quilting and meander.

Hey, got this meander thing down, so I decided to kick it up a notch.

I made a circle for the meander quilting.  The circle acted like the echo quilting.

I added lines to the rest of it.  The piece is a charity quilt and I didn't want to spend a whole lot of time or effort on it.

Here is the whole picture.  I trimmed it after I took the photo. 

I made several bubbles.  I guess that will be the name, Bubbles.

The back is a random piece I pulled, boy like.

And once again, I need to do the binding on both the pink and the bubbles.

Fun with Barb

Boy am I stuffed!  We went to Bonefish Grill with some friends and I ate a whole regular sized meal for the first time in three months.  It was good through.  One of my sides was spinach so I sacrificed it for calories sake.....well, you didn't expect me so give up the Moscow Mule, do you.

And it is pre-Birthday Week after all.

I started quilting the Zig Zag.




First I needed to mark it since I wanted to quilt a large Baptist Fan pattern.

This is from Fun with Barb!  We shall see how much fun Barb really is, huh?

Carrie gave me some Tailor's Chalk for Christmas so I figured I  would mark it with that.  I decided to mark it AFTER I spent and hour  loading it on the long arm.

So far, Barb is not all that fun.

It come in white, blue and yellow for all the different colors you might use in a quilt.  That worked well because there was always something that would work on any fabric in the quilt.

And I found out the chalk doesn't bounce when you throw it on the floor.

I got it all re-loaded up on the long arm.

And after doing one swing pass I started getting better at the curves.  If you remember, curves are not necessarily my friend.

 I realized I had re-loaded it from the wrong side.  It is  square, and all the fans were ending in thin air.---------Geez, Barb, you call that fun.

So I took it off the long arm and decided to quilt it with my Husqvarna.  And with all the moving around and taking on and off and on and off, the chalk was rubbing off.

Barb is NOT  any fun.......not at all.  Barb is a bummer.  Go home Barb.

So I ended up stitching one fan, then chalking up the next one.



I have a couple more to do to finish up, tomorrow.

More, More, More!

I finished the Triangles quilting Thursday afternoon.  I had to adjust several curvy triangles to be more geometric.  Let's just say it works better for everyone this way.   Click on it to make it larger.

These are two of my favorite triangles. 

Actually, the curvy one I did so poorly on yesterday doesn't really look that bad from the back.

I did my favorite wavy lines in the borders.  I had intended on doing something like Krista Withers does in the borders, but I wanted to finish this and get another one going.

And do more art stuff........yes, that is why. 

I have the air conditioner grill soaking in some tea and vinegar.  I will have a post about that tomorrow. 


Sawyer is going to be here tomorrow and I am sure no art will get done!

Channeling Patty A

I felt today like I was channeling my friend Patty the Quilt Lady.  She loves to create these large quilts from improv pieced blocks that turn out to be incredible pieces with very dense quilting.  And it lays totally flat even!

Since she works full time she quilts in the odd groups of time available in bits and pieces.  So it may take a while for her to finish a big quilt.

She will announce her percentage of completion with each post.  36% complete...........42% complete.......79% complete.  Following her progress is actually FUN!

My leaf quilt is pretty large, although I don't have the measurements at the moment. And it has 31 blocks, I think I counted correctly.  I was trying to count it on the longarm frame.  It sounds weird to have an odd number doesn't it?  But they are improv blocks made by a group of 12 people, and I filled in some number of them along with improv settings.

I have fully completed 4 blocks.  

So as of today, I am 12.9% complete!

Geez, it looks way worse saying that than just having 4 blocks done............