GLAAQN Workshop

The Great Lakes African American Quilt Network celebrated it’s 10th anniversary this past weekend. I was privileged to be a workshop teacher, showing some wonderful ladies how to make quilts without patterns. I had a great time with a really nice group of women.

I remembered to take some pictures–hooray! The best part of a workshop for me is when the pieces and parts go up on the design walls. Everyone works from the same set of instructions and makes the same basic pieces. Do any of these pictures look like the same quilt? I truly love seeing how different everyone’s work is.

I don’t try to match names with the pictures. I admit right up front that I make errors when I try to do that and I’d rather just share the work with you than offend someone with the wrong name on the wrong piece!

This picture is of the samples I brought to show that no two quilts will look the same, even with the same instructions.

These pictures are what the ladies came up with…exciting!

Enjoy!

Giveaway for 500 Posts!

Hooray! This is it! Post number 500. It’s not really a milestone to me, because I’m not blogging to outpost someone and I’m certainly not going to stop. It’s just a nice number of posts and a reason for another fabric giveaway.

I’m finding it very enjoyable to re-locate fabric that I am no longer in love with to new homes. This adoption program is a win-win situation for everyone.

S0–500 posts sounds like 5 fabric bundles. Various amounts of fabric, not meant to match each other, just some hunks looking for a new home. Oh, it’s all quilt store cotton, too. Well, it’s going to be 6 packets because that’s what came to the surface to be relocated!

Posted today–winners selected in three days. If you like a particular one let me know in your comment but I’m planning on sending them out randomly. If you can live with those criteria, I’d love to have you comment for a chance to help me out and become a fabric adoptee!

Here’s the fabric:

1) 1.5 yds, wonderful for a kid’s quilt

2) 2 yds of a dusty rose

3) 2 dark batiks and a striped batik, odd sized leftovers

4) 2 florals, somewhere around half a yard each

5) 2 fat quarters, hand dyes

6) 2 dark batiks and a tree print, odd sized pieces

My little redbud tree

I love my little redbud tree like it was a pet. I check on it almost every day. It was a gift from my family and I really appreciate their thoughtfulness in getting me something I’ve always wanted.

I was heartbroken when a large branch split off and could not be repaired.

Today I noticed something new. There are beautiful seed pods growing on the tree. This is the first year for these and I’m thrilled that my little tree has something new to offer.

I’m so glad I live in a place where I can have my little tree and enjoy it unabashedly! My abstracts may not readily seem like it, but nature does inspire my work. Just look at those lovely burgundy pods…

Irresistible!

As I am planning a fabric giveaway because I have more fabric than I will ever use in my lifetime, I went to a fabric store. I was determined to get just a few solids to fill in with the prints that I can’t resist buying.

Well, I was able to restrain myself from picking up many more wonderful prints. However, I picked up a few neutrals and darks. They were irresistible…

…and I am incurable!

Getting close…

I’m getting close to having written 500 blog posts. That sure is something I would never keep track of, but wordpress does that and then tells me about it. So, just because, I’ll plan a big giveaway.

I have lots of fabric that needs a new home, so I’ll go figure out how I want to divide it up. I want several people to become foster parents for this surplus!

There are even some hand dyes that need to live somewhere else.

Stay tuned and I’ll let you know when I reach that “magic” number.

Oldie but still loved…

One of my shelves holds 19 quilt tops that I have finished over the years. They are class samples, other people’s patterns and designs, made in   order to teach some important-at-the-time technique or concept. I don’t really have any emotional attachment to them, but I liked them when I made them and I still do.

I decided about a year ago that I will never, ever do the quilting on all of them myself, just because of that lack of emotional attachment. I sent one out last fall, but it’s an upcoming gift so no picture of it here right now. I sent my second one out and just put the binding on it today.

Still love this pattern and love this quilt. Very happy that I did not have to do the quilting on it. Must have been a good decision to have someone else do that work for me!

Hubby and I sleep under raggedy quilts on our bed. He says it’s embarrassing in a quilter’s household and I agree. Looks like I’d better go through that stack and get some more of those quilts DONE! And this quilter is not embarrassed to say that she does NOT do all her own quilting anymore! Looking forward to that shelf of quilts being empty and filling up a shelf in the linen closet with finished quilts.

This is linked to Off the Wall Friday with Nina-Marie. Check out the other quilters–some great stuff there!

Always somethin’

Yep–you always see something when you take a walk.

Even if it’s only the rusty gear wheels at the dam.

Aren’t these cool?

My Eight Day Week

That title has nothing to do with my actual week. It’s just the title of the piece that’s been hanging around my design wall for a couple of months. I finally had time today to get back to the studio to finish it. Well, the top at least. It’s not very big. About 36 x 48.

I finally decided to use the orange fabric for the extra blocks, but I took the suggestion in the comments of  Judy Spahn, who thought a secondary design behind the black and white would be good. Here’s how I implemented that…

My first thought was to make curvy lines with bias strips, but then I couldn’t decide on black, white or a print. Finally remembered how much I love cording, and how easy it is, so that’s what I went with.

First white.

Then black.

Here it is assembled before I went into the border decision trauma phase! I auditioned quite a few fabrics, combinations of piping and borders and went back to the original premise–keep it simple!

I’m quite happy with how it turned out and now just need to answer the how-in-the-#*##-do-I-quilt-it dilemna! But that’s actually just fun to figure out, no matter how much I complain about deciding on that.

Here’s a detail of the cording, just because…

I’m linking this to Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday. Check out everyone’s work for this week.

Talk, talk, talk…

You all know how much I love beading and when I was asked to give a little talk and demo, of course I said yes. I love talking about my passions as much as I love working with them.

But when I’m talking, I’m not working, so I don’t have anything new to show you.

At least, not quilt related. We had a dying tree get a big crack after a storm so we had to cut it down. I’ve been schlepping limbs and branches for 2 days! That’s just plain manual labor–nothing fun about it!

I’d much rather talk, talk, talk!

Even bad photos help…

I’m trying to make decisions about my next project. I’ve found it very informative to use my camera to help with those decisions, especially since I am notoriously bad at decisions anyway! This part of the design wall has the least light in my studio, but I took dark pictures rather than move everything. It works…I can tell what’s what and where.

Black and white—the blocks are the results of an exercise I did with my wacky quilt group and I really like them.I’ve actually even got a title for the piece and it’s not even sewn! I’m calling it My Eight Days This Week. At first, I wanted to screen paint designs on top of the black and white. I held off on that because I really don’t have a design that looked ‘right’ on top of the black and white. I may do some thread work along those lines.

My eight days are spaced on a twelve block grid, so I have four spaces to fill.

First selection option: black and white graphic prints, separated with a bright orange sashing?

Next: saturated orange/red blocks of color, with or without an orange border?

I’m leaning towards the bright orange blocks, but I DO  love black and white graphics…

The one thing that even bad photos can’t do is make the actual decision for me. They only help me to see what I like better. Deciding is never easy for me. I do welcome your comments and opinions, even if you hate orange!