Starlings Are Obnoxious

but highly photogenic.

Wooly Weekend Work

It's only Friday and already I've completed my mammoth project for the weekend!

Woven Ribbons Bound

All done!  It's a simple quilt, not exciting, but the near-earthy tones please me and it was fun to use that floral focus fabric.  I bound the edge with the green brushed cotton.

Kitchen Kitch Komplete

This one is pretty bold and stark for my taste.  I thought it would blend a little better than this.  It is supposed to look very 1940's kitchen, but even still, maybe I went a little overboard.

Paisleys in the solid white and yellow patches balance the color alot, at least in person.  Plus they were really fun!

and of course I spoke too soon when I said the border quilting wasn't easy.  Scalloped binding - now that's not easy.

You were right Beth, the hot pink polka dots really worked for binding fabric.  Thanks for the suggestion.

Quilting Woven Ribbons

This quilt started out just over a year ago as a kit that I made up for a retreat.

Not sure yet whether I want to put a running motif in each color of "ribbon" or not.  The sashing is working out about like predicted.

Hehehe Colorful PUPPIES!

It all started with some black and white swap blocks that had been sitting around since, let me think, maybe 2004. I make lots of black and white quilts, and of late have been trying to work a little color into my stuff. I had this interesting border print, mostly yellow, of dogs, cats, and flowers. Chop, chop, chop! It became the sashing and border for the b/w swap blocks.

The top sat around for a while. When I was at some show - maybe it was the Arlington Guild show a few years back, I picked up a half-yard panel of a Loralie Designs print with lots of dogs on it. Didn't know what to use it for, so it sat around.

It clicked one day a few months back that the panel would sure work with the b/w top. The panel was way too small of course. Just fifteen dog portraits and a little piece of border stripe along the edge with cameos of the dogs.

I collected brights from my stash that matched the border print on the top and sashed each puppy with it. Then I picked a bunch of geometrics from my b/w stash and sashed again. Nearly there. Finally I took the wee stripe of cameos and sashed the living daylights out of it to turn it into a pillow panel on the top of the quilt back.

After adding some barks and woofs and yips in a variety of colors,

and quilting one VERY large dog nose in the big black space, I decided the back was the front after all.

3 of 24

Bland is finished!  This was a super fun quilt - it was way too easy to piece, and since I decided to Zentangle quilt it, the time just flew by as I quilted.  It had to come off Terpsichore before it was finished so a few customer quilts could be worked, but a few days ago I put it back on the machine and finished up.  Binding was finished around midnight last night and here she is!  The quilting detail is visible if you click the pictures of the whole quilt (front or back), but in the blogpost size, not so much.  Pictures of the front and back are of the same areas.  I tried using just a little bit of colorful sparkly thread for the floral cameos that line the winding path that runs through the quilt.  I liked the results alot!

Zentangling needs to be at least a little bit spontaneous, and I just could NOT think up anything for the section below.  I revert to writing my thoughts down when I get stumped, and in this case it turned out well.  Some rows were written forward and some backward so the effect would be similar from either side of the quilt.

Quilter's Technical Jargon

As I un-scrunched over Terpsichore to come up for a breath of fresh air and to uncross my eyes a few minutes ago I heard myself chanting under my breath, "this is NOT easy!"

It made me realize that there is a pretty long list of classifications for the degree of difficulty for machine quilting. It can get really complicated if you're using a wooly thread or a metallic (most classifications start with four letter words in those categories), but for reasonably straightforward quilting, here are a few of the categories:

IN MY SLEEP

NO PROBLEM

NOT HARD

and the one that provoked this blog post, NOT EASY

I'm quite sure you all feel terribly well educated now.  My pleasure.

Clan MacPurple Quilt

These blocks have been in a bag for years.  I finally sashed them with bits of purple or white as the mood suited me and squared them all to the same size.  Meh.  It's a nice enough top.  Nothing to write home about.  I wanted to find some nice white fabric with purple flowers on it for the back.  No can do.  Apparently they don't make fabrics like that anymore.  Anywhere.  Really.

So I decided I'd go with a plaid.  A hand made plaid.  This was the most fun I've had piecing in months.  Wait!  It's the ONLY piecing I've done in months!  Strangely enough, Beth was thinking plaids lately too.  I wonder what she's cooking up?

Collaboration With a Stranger

I purchased several boxes of lovely yardage two years ago along with a vintage sewing machine all at an estate sale.  Mixed in with the yardage were a few ziplock baggies with cut fabric, some already pieced into blocks, some just kitted up and waiting.  Exactly the sort of thing you might expect to see in anyone's quilting collection.

One bag of cuts particularly grabbed my attention.  Many different floral fabrics each with one 6 1/2"x 3 1/2" rectangle and one 3 1/2" square.  I puzzled over them for a while, wondering what the quilter who cut them had planned for them.  I wanted to do her work justice, but I had no idea who she was or what she was like except that she had very good taste in fabric and she cared for it well.  

Eventually I decided to make the simplest blocks I could with these cuts.  I added my own neutral fabric and then layed them out on my bed and scooted them around until i got the closest I could to a color wheel.

I kept the quilting simple with apple cores, too.

Dear Unmet Friend, thank you for letting me collaborate with you on this quilt! I'll do my best with your other leftovers, too.

Boring Sashing Conversion

Beth whipped this up at the retreat we went to recently.  Nine blocks don't really make a whole quilt I told her.  So she added some area with very wide sashing (I practically FORCED her to make it really wide.  She has way more sense about color and proportion than I do and realized that sashing half as wide as the blocks was going to overwhelm the quilt.)  She snorted at it, tossed it across the table to me and said, "There's no way to make this pretty."  (Yes, it can be argued that it is very pretty even before quilting, but we're talking about the sensitivities of a color PRO, remember.)

"Heh.  Sure there is!"

First you stitch in the ditch around all the block elements. No problem. :)



Then you quilt a bunch of scribble roses all over the sashings. Ok, make two passes. One with a darkish pink, the other with a lighter shade. There. That wasn't so hard.



Still using the focus fabric as your guide, insert buttercups along the same path with the scribble roses. Wow. Those buttercups have tiny petals. But there. It's done.

Finally, go through the entire quilt again with a green thread. Make wee tiny calyxes (calices?), leaves, and stems along the floral path. Do it in 30 minute increments because your eyes are getting wierd. Phasing in and out of the universe as we know it wierd.

After just over a week of quilting on a small, donation quilt, there! It's quite pretty.

I do go a long way to win an argument, eh Beth?

Black TATW Finished

The circle in the left border is just a lens flare.  I had to dump so much light into the room to get a good picture of a black quilt - well.  You don't want to hear it and I don't want to tell it.

This is one of my 24 Quilts.  I made the top while on retreat a few months ago and it came off Terpsichore two days ago.  I managed to get it bound today.

I love black fabrics.  There is only one drawback to making a black quilt.  Quilting it.  Unless you use something like lime green thread, you won't be able to see the quilting when it's over.  In fact, it's pretty hard to see the quilting while you're quilting it!  I've made a few black quilts in my day, so I didn't obsess over high detail in the quilting on this one.  It was a fun quilt from start to finish, and the season is still young, so I'll probably get to use it on my bed this winter.

They Grow So Fast!

Farrah Welch Photography

Have you ever wished everyone else could see what you see instead of what you're able to photograph?  Go see Farrah.  She's not just a really good photographer, she's also very creative and sensitive to the beauty of each subject.

She has been in the graphic arts for several years so she brings an amazing talent to the table, turning out very professional finished photos.

Huge Purple Flowers

 It's finished!  This is the first of the 24 Quilts to be completely finished and it's already at its new home!  I gave it to a friend in need the day after I finished the binding.  I have no clue why this quilt appealed to me so much.  The simplicity of the block patterns maybe, the simple quilting maybe, possibly just the fact that I used grey for the background.  Anyway, it was fun to make and just the right quilt to give away at the time.

Using bright yellow thread for some of the quilting on the flowers was fun too.  Felt a little like using those big crayons with a flat side that they give you in kindergarten.

There will be another longish pause while I pay attention to my family during the holidays.   I hope you are all surrounded by those you love and that you get to participate in activities you enjoy during this holiday season.  I'll be back with more from 24 Quilts after the new year!

And Now For Something Completely...

...Pachyderm.  I love faux fur.  : D