Vintage Fabric Winner

I went to see Mr. Random Number Generator this morning to select a winner for this vintage fabric. He chose

Judy Ferguson

I hope you enjoy them!

Scrapbox City Update

Not trying to bore you with partially finished projects, but I have something I’m going to try with this one. I’ve been following Melody Johnson’s blog Fibermania and she’s been working a lot with a quilt as you go finishing technique. It looks good; not like an afterthought. Integrated into the design. She credits Marianne at The Quilting Edge and her great tutorials. All I know is that I want to finish this project with this method.

Advantages: quilting smaller sections at a time. Easier with a domestic machine. You can also add sections to change the size of the piece or the look of the piece at any time, even after you think it might be done!

So–my sections are assembled and ready to be quilted. I made a rookie mistake in the beginning and started squaring things up as I put rows together. Duh! I need extra fabric all around for the quilting and then trim and square up AFTER the quilting is done.

I want to show you the origin of this project. You might think you need to have everything all figured out and planned and drawn to scale and a real pattern before you start. NOT SO! Here’s my plan—

And I don’t usually start with this much! I just had a bunch of scraps, some white fabric (and I never use white), and the idea to make wonky nine patch blocks in different sizes. The rest is all just arrange as desired and fill in the gaps! Fun, challenging, nothing is precise and you can’t make a mistake. My kind of quilting!

Not sure when I’ll actually get back to it. My next several days are tied up with the quilt guild workshop weekend. Maybe Monday. I’ll let you know how the quilt as you go assembly process works…probably with pictures and hopefully NOT with cursing and gnashing of teeth!!!

Oh, this crazy life!

Sometimes life is boring. Same day after same stuff after same thing. And then we go into a phase where life is just crazy. Occasionally it’s a bad crazy and often it’s a good, busy fun crazy. I had both of those in the past week and today I am embracing the boring!

A little beading, a little piecing, a little gardening, maybe a little napping…just nice, peaceful boredom.

Watching the grass grow and the trees leaf out…

Of course, that means nothing to tell you about, so how about a little giveaway?

I always have fabric that needs to find a new home and today I am giving away a vintage set of the same fabric in different colorways. I’m not sure if I have ALL the colors in this set, but I have most of them.

Various sized pieces that I have not used up because I never found the “perfect” idea for them. I think there’s a yard of the green and 1/2 yard of the blue (which has stains along the fold), but only a little square of the brown. I think they would work well in a more traditional pattern and since I don’t use those anymore, this fabric should go to a new home.

Would you like it to be yours? I sure would! Leave a comment and I’ll pick a winner this week…when I’m done with nice, peaceful boredom!

Love this project!

Went to open studio at USArtquest this week and learned a new process to use with mica. Several of us made mica beads and rather than use them in a necklace, Sue decided to showcase them on a textile piece. I got to do the quilting and finishing and I just love the look of this project.

Don’t know if this is supposed to be super secret, but you can have a good sneak peek at another project full of fun!

Here are a couple details and here’s MY secret–it doesn’t matter what you do to these tiles, they all come out absolutely gorgeous!!!

Design Time Again

My scrap project from my recent quilt retreat went up on the design wall today. I took a good, long look at it and decided that I wanted to proceed with it. I like it.

Now come the design questions that I think about right from the beginning, though many of them don’t need an answer until much further into the project.

What size do I want this piece to be? Do I want a real bed quilt or am I thinking more in terms of a wall quilt or a couch throw? On the design board right now it’s about 63″ square. I’m pretty sure that I don’t want it to end up square, but with this design, it will look fine to add more length at the top and easy to do with my planned white background.

Okay-next question…before I make any cuts or sew any seams, I have to decide if I want to square up my blocks, to a common size for each level.

Do I want to add more inserts to the largest blocks? Do I want to join blocks with uniform strips or more wonkiness?

Straight and square seems too easy and somehow like cheating! But wonky stuff is going to be much harder to do. How much work do I want to put into this easy scrap project? Hmmm…..sounds like these are my first decisions.

Time to step away from the design wall and THINK before I do something I’ll regret.

Almost missed it!

One of my favorite area charities is Circle of Art for Food Gatherers in Ann Arbor. Artists get to contribute small art pieces, 9 x 11 or smaller for auction. The event is so much fun that you almost forget it’s a charity auction.

And I almost missed it!

The email with the call for artists went to my spam folder for some reason and I was lucky enough to see it in time to make a couple of small pieces. Whew! I’d have been so disappointed if I missed out.

You’ve seen this piece before, but it’s mounted on a green background now and I’m quite happy with it, and hope someone else will be, too!

Frivolity 8 x 10

This second piece grew out of my exercises with my Wacky Quilters group using the black and white fabrics. Not what I had in mind when I started, but these things take on a life of their own, you know!

We Sail Tonight 9 x 11

Hope you take a moment to click on the link and find out all about Circle of Art. It’s fun and for a good cause!

I stand corrected…

Quite a while ago I published photos of some of the painted leaf stamping I had done.

I called these leaves the largest maple leaves I had ever seen. Well, someone thought for sure they were sycamore leaves and I didn’t think there were any sycamore trees near where I got the leaves.

We walked in those same woods this afternoon and as I scanned the bare branches, I realized that there were loads of sycamore trees around. So, that ‘someone’ was absolutely correct and I was wrong. Not the first time, but I can’t wait until there are more of those leaves available for stamping with. I love them!

In the meanwhile, there was nothing exciting on the path through the woods…some lovely swans…

some beautiful periwinkle on the hillside…Wait a minute! This isn’t sycamore, too, is it?

I disappoint myself…

I worked very hard in the studio today to finish up the article I’m reworking. Process photos, of course, which are a royal pain, but absolutely necessary. When I sat down to finish my editing and add my photos, I could only find half the pictures. The ones from the beginning, which I took last week, have totally vanished. I searched in every nook and cranny and under every rock in my computer, to no avail. I think I deleted them from my camera before I downloaded them. I felt so stupid.

But I can place the blame on this delightful distraction.

When grandson AJ saw my tripod, he just had to be AJ Cameraman for the day. He hauled it around the house all day, “filming” things just like he has seen TV cameramen filming when he was at hockey games. He had a great time and I smiled for the camera for hours!

However, I believe that when I was deleting his pictures, I deleted mine, thinking they were already on the computer. Sigh!

Luckily, in this case I have enough fabric to duplicate my efforts–and my photos.

Some days the hamster wheel just spins around and you hop on and off as the moments pass by!

Ooooh, pretty projects!

Some retreats have everyone work on the same, specific project. At this retreat, we all bring our own projects to work on. This always results in a lot of walking around and looking to see what everyone is doing and lots of oohs and aahs when a project gets done and goes up on the wall.

Here’s a look at what we’re all doing today…

(Click on any image and a larger gallery pops up.)

And we’re off and sewing…

Well, as promised, here is a quick look at the first day. Time went by so quickly!

We always end up packing like we are going on an arctic expedition, but isn’t it better to have too much than to need something that’s sitting home on the shelf?

Oh, and there’s another suitcase with some PJ’s and that all-important big sack of snacks, too!

Scraps, scraps and more scraps–that’s what I brought to work on. The first simple little project was to make a bunch of mug rugs. I had a strip of pre-quilted fabric that I had trimmed from a quilt, so snip-snip-sew around and they were done.

Teeny, tiny pile of bits left…hooray!

The next batch was stacks of fabrics that I had cut a long time ago for a step-by-step demo. Sewed them together and then quilted them, using up scraps of batting, too!

Simple random, free motion quilting. If you are unpracticed, this is great. It absolutely will not matter if things are not perfect. These are mug rugs!

Next step is to trim with a pinking or wavy edge rotary cutter and then a simple line of stitching around the edge and you are done!

Tomorrow I’ll have pictures of the wonderful projects other people are working on. There are some truly beautiful quilts being made here!