New Year's Eve

Wow...forgot about posting to the blog for half of 2016...sigh..I will really try to do better next year!

2016 in review:
Finished a few quilts... Echos of the Grand Canyon, Goose, Goose, Duck; Dragonflies Paradise, Hexie Daisy, Thread-Sketching Bouquet, Embellished Antique Linen, Summer Quilt for Dad, Star Mug Rug, Doodled Hexie Mug Rug
Worked on a few more quilts ...Fire Mountain Bargello, Desert Landscape, Wee Hexie Basket, Cape Blanco Light, Columbia Gorge...
Ate lots of good meals...
Went on several trips - Arizona, Texas, Nevada and the annual Quilter's Run in So Cal
Laughed a lot...
Cried some...
DGD moved to Tennessee..we are going to try visit soon..
Still working...Retirement is looming though!

Hope 2017 will be a great year!

Here are the Christmas gifts I made this year:
Squirrel Lovie

 Frog Prince Lovie

 Wolf - kinda a lovie..but I stuffed him...

 Three French Hens

Hedgehog for my hedgehog loving Sis: (not a Christmas Present!) - I had to try out my PomPom makers I bought on the Quilter's Run...amazingly..they work!

I discovered Corner to Corner crochet...it works up soooo fast...

 ...that I made a whole passel of washcloths and handed them out at the Christmas party!

Our tree...

 ..with a silly squirrel under it!

And the mountains out the back on Christmas Day - as close to a White Christmas as us flatlanders in So Cal get!

A Star for a Star!

My daughter really, really likes stars...so I made a star wall hanging/mug rug for her birthday:

I fastened the ribbon holders on with a pair of starfish earrings. The star hanger I got on the Quilter's Run a couple of weeks back.

Paper pieced...this is about as much paper piecing as my tolerance allows. I must be getting a bit better though, since I did not cut any pieces too small and only sewed one seam with the fabric upside down when my mind wandered a bit..I have learned to use HUGE pieces of fabric for paper piecing, and if I cannot see the right side of the bottom fabric when I am stitching on the line...its wrong!

All star fabric, even the label on the back...

HST Column Quilt

The HST Column quilt as a top:

Finished quilt: (sorry the color is bad - my normal snap camera is trying to die....and I used the cell phone camera instead..yuk!)

When I showed the top to my Mom, she thought if would make a marvelous summer lap quilt...so I finished it for her - just backed it with one of the remaining bigger pieces of fabric scraps and folded the edge to the front instead of binding.. I did try the quilting in the 'column' part to see if using a different color of thread would make the column stand out a bit more...the result of that experiment: it really wasn't worth it..it would require a way more dense quilting than I had the patience for to get it to change color...best option if you want the column to be noticeable...make those HSTs with a different color!

Here is a closer up picture:

But...Mom likes it and it will serve a useful purpose..and now all three of us have a quilt made out of those dress scraps from long ago.

Progress on the HST Column Quilt

The center is put together. It probably could have been arranged better, but I grew weary of arranging the blocks. I ended up printing out a sample of the layout so I could get the pattern right,

Here is the original layout..the column is not very obvious...but the blocks were sprinkled around nicely...

Here is the center after I sewed it..I decided to group the colors to make the column stand out more.

Its pretty small - 21 x 35...so I am going to add a resting strip and a border..

I rummaged around and found a pile of scraps that I will use to make a piano key border...could not find any more of the light blue, but did find a piece of the dark blue I used to make the sashings on Heart's Garden..there are strips already cut that will go almost all the way around and hopefully I will have enough for the binding out of the same dark blue...

And I have enough of the blue plaid or the green and purple flower (top right corner of center) to make the back.

HST Column Quilt

I need a new project like I need another hole in my head..but..when did that ever stop a quilter???

A couple of friends have made HST column quilts and I got to thinking about a stack of HSTs that I have had from when I made my sister her quilt from the scraps of clothes that our Mom made us when we were little..and how cute they would be as a column quilt...

I was going to make them into pinwheels..and even had stitched a  couple up..but they were sad, sad lumpy, crookedy pinwheels...the HSTs were not all the same size and in my ignorance as a young quilter, I though I could just...make....them...fit...

NOT...

Anyway, the HSTs have been hanging around in my quilting studio, ripening, for a LONG, LONG time! First order of business was to deconstruct those two very sad pinwheels..and trim up the HSTs to an even size..I found the smallest one..and that is governing the size of the rest of the blocks...

It is turning into an interesting project...

I am using a gizmo my Dad made for me a few years ago...its called a Square Up (my design, his execution)

It is making the trimming of these blocks really, really easy..especially since I acquired a set of square templates at Retreat last year on the donation table that have a groove on the diagonal which makes it very easy to line up with the seam..the arm holds the template from moving, the base rotates (there are levers to make it go only one way or free rotate)...and it folds up and has a handle so I could take it to class if I ever were going to one that needed to cut blocks (not usually my cup of tea...though...this IS really easy to use - might have to reconsider that option!)

Here is a block before trimming:

That same block after trimming:

And the two stacks of blocks - the trimmed ones look soooooo much neater!

Will post more when I have all the blocks trimmed and laid out...

Mandarin Duck Progress

I have quilted the center of the Mandarin Duck and added binding, which is now finished...
I am going to add quilting in the brown border - Flying Geese...with feathers in the corners, as a nod to Jenny Bowker, the teacher of the class (Images in Landscapes), who uses traditional blocks to expand the size of her quilts to HUGE...
Still have to decide if I want to do the FG in Monopoly like the rest of the quilt or brown quilting thread...but that will be for another day!

Here is what I started with...the picture of the Mandarin duck was taken by my daughter at the LA Arboretum...

Here is what that picture got turned into in class..

...and here is the quilt before I finished the binding...

The quilt is currently drying from being blocked..

Fire Mountain Bargello Progress

I decided the size of the bargello was going to get too big when I added borders, so I took a few of the rows off..I ended up using the rows I took off as the color border between the two cream ones. There is very little of those rows left - mostly trimmings and a couple of two inch pieces..but..I like how its turning out..

This is what I made at Retreat:

This is how it turned out after I finished adding the borders:

I am tentatively naming this Fire Mountain..

And..now, I am trying to decide if I want to add applique to the borders..you'll have to squint really hard and use your imagination...the green pieces would be leaves, the blue pieces would be birds,  the rest of the colors would be flowers and butterflies...I will be making patterns sometime in the next few weeks..to try out the shapes..I do think I will like it!

There was a suggestion that I think about putting some flames on the 'mountain'...will have to try that shape out too!

Hexie Daisy Done

Finito!

Wool batting, all scraps from my stash, border, backing and binding fabric from donations table at Retreat. Quilted with candlelight quilting thread.

Patchlara

I never got around to blogging about making my Fairy Quilt Godmother last year. One of the gals on the forum pointed us to the Paper Panache website where, after answering a few questions, you were given your own personal Fairy Quilt Godmother pattern..Mine is named Patchlara.

The pattern  did not look TOO hard to do (HAHA!). I added a few extra pieces and changed a few things...made the hair a bit different...and eliminated the original locket on the necklace...and made the dress pieces solid instead of being cut in two ( I didn't want to cut up that gorgeous dress fabric!)...after piecing, her mouth looked way too severe...so I appliqued a more generous bottom lip onto her face. Oh...and she got rosy cheeks via some carefully applied rouge...

One of the gals on the forum took her pattern to Kinkos and had it blown up to double the size..which when paper piecing a Paper Panache pattern is a good thing! There were some parts that I ended up disparing of ever getting done..but I persevered...and she is done..When I quilted her, I added some gold netting to make her sparkle a bit...and added a cat charm to her necklace. She hangs from a wand on the wall in my office.


Meet Patchlara:

The scraps and scnibbles were collected into a pill bottle - Fairy Dust!

Road To California Report

Fisrt, some eye candy:
Road To CA Quilts

Wednesday, I took two classes on the Brother Scan N Cut...the first one, we unpacked a brand new machine...learned to read the menus, created a card, and cut a purple heart out of fabric (we all went home with purple hearts!)....the second, we learned to pair a Brother Dream Machine embroidery machine with the Scan N Cut..cut the appliques and watched the Dream Machine stitch...

I was less than thrilled with the embroidery machine aspect - not my cuppa tea...but the Scan N Cut...now..the lady packing the boxes after the class I told her she was just gonna have to wipe my drool off it (she laughed) - I loved it!...My friend who was in the class with me bought her Scan N Cut..but whoo doggie, she spent a pile 'o cash! Even with the show special of 20% off, it still was almost $1K to get the machine and all the optional geegaws that go with it...

I made my embroidered piece into a mug rug...

I like the back almost as much as the front:

This is a picture of the Brother Dream Machine stitching out placement markers - it tells you where to stick the applique pieces on that you cut with the Scan N Cut

And then it tacks the pieces down and satin stitches them...automatic thread loading, cutting  - practically does the whole thing for you! And..no thread tails on the front of the piece - not quite sure HOW it made all of them go to the back ...probably magic...

The machine I was using kept un-threading its needle...so though its automatic, it was a bit frustrating to have to re-thread the machine...

Friday, I took a 'thread sketching' class from Shannon Shirley..utterly fantastic class...I was able to get my entire quilt DONE..not just the stitching/quilting, but the binding, stitching the back of the binding down AND dissolving off the washaway that we used to 'transfer' the design from the pattern to the fabric...

First, we traced the pattern onto dissolvable film using a Sharpie pen:

My hands have some kind of grease that makes the Sharpie pen marks rub off the dissolvable  film...the teacher let me borrow a pair of Graberoos - they are kinda like Machingers, but purple (so they don't get as groody-looking as the white ones) - and they don't make my hands hot! That solved the problem so I have a pair on order from Amazon...tried to find them in the vendor mall, but couldn't locate a pair...

I learned a new binding join technique that is fast, accurate and non-frustrating..and it requires no measuring or pins (whoohoo)

Here my finished piece:

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE that it is finished! G thinks it could use some color..so maybe I will attack it with the Inktense pencils...have to try coloring the pattern first though to see if I even like the effect...

Saturday I took two classes...one on hexies from Cheryl See, who won the Best Use Of Color for her Starlette hexie quilt at last year's Road...and the other was a Zentangle pincushion class put on by the Janome dealer...

The hexie class was very interesting. She had us cut at least 70 two inch squares of a color family from our stash..mine is GREEN of course! (If you know me, you know I love green!) I actually had 82 green scraps without cutting any of my yardage or fat quarters...

There were only 8 students, so we got very individualized attention from Cheryl....we arranged those scraps in a watercolor format on our quilt scrolls - I made mine using a pool noodle, a piece of fleece, the cardboard tube from a dry cleaning pants hanger and two hair scrunchies...after I got fabric on the fleece, I regretfully realized that the back side of fleece is equally sticky..Yikes! So, right now I have a large plastic bag inserted into the roll to keep the wee pieces of fabric stuck to one side of the scroll...I will have to back the piece of fleece with something ...maybe one of the home dec fabrics would work...

Here is my hexie daisy block on the scroll:

and here is the hexies I got done in class - the center round is stuffed - the petals have to wait until the surrounding hexies are stitched on to be stuffed..

Learned lots from the Hexpert! We traded stitching techniques and I showed her the doodled hexagons...She had never seen the 'back stitching' method nor doodled hexies...

The Zentangle pincushion is cute...I like how mine turned out but the relaxing part of the whole Zentangle experience was out the window! We stitched on a piece of fabric that was prepared using Terial Magic so you don't need stabilizer..it was kinda fun picking the patterns on the Janome machine..and it is another COMPLETED project..so there is that - but it was a bit stressful not knowing exactly how big the patterns were going to come out (the machine does give you a hint, but I was so unfamiliar with the machine that it didn't register til almost the last line I stitched)

So..the hexie daisy block is my ONLY UFO this time..pretty darn great!

I did not buy too many things at Road this year...

10 zippers in assorted colors - they were only 50 cents each! The wee and very sharp scissors - the blade guard is attached so it cannot get lost, a very cute snail tape measure (Missouri Star Quilt Company), some fusible thread from Superior  called Charlotte's Fusible Web, a hard shelled credit card holder, some Bohin needles, and a hexie project - pieces and book - to make a jewel box necklace...The Superior booth was giving away Dr Bob's Thread Therapy discs and a catalog of all their threads..I also bought a hand dyed 3/4 length sleeve T-shirt...and a multicolored jacket...its so lightweight but its really warm! (that was an excellent salesperson..she was bound and determined I was not getting away!)

I am looking forward to trying the fusible thread...just to see if that works!

Happy New Year 2016!

Wishing you and yours a very Happy New Year.





Resolutions...well..not so good on those, but I will try to post more this year than last!

I am spending most of the day quilting ...a very good day so far!
Here is a peek at what I am working on:

Around the World Blog Hop

I was asked by Misha of MishaMichele, whom I know In Real Life from the Valley of the Sun Retreats, to participate in the Around The World Blog Hop. Sounded like fun..so here goes!

I would love to know who exactly started this Blog Hop and when...I tried Googling  but there are soooooo many Around The World Blog Hop posts it's impossible to find the first one. I agree with Sophie - there should be a master page somewhere that lists all of the hoppers...maybe a suggestion for next year's blog hop??

1. What am I working on? 

The bottom of the Drip quilt. the colored part started out as a project in a class I took at Road to CA from Katie Pasquini Masopust. Most of the applique is done - I just need to finish that one last bottom piece (I don't care for how the under piece looks...) before I applique the piece to the border fabric.

The whole Drip quilt against the fabric that will be the borders - it is a very neutral looking piece of what must be home dec fabric - I have no recollection of how it came to be in my stash! It is a half yard piece, but from selvage to selvage, it is two yards wide.  The Drip quilt will measure more than a yard when the borders are added. I was initially worried about using this fabric because it seemed a bit thin, so I washed it...and it still has the same crispy body. It should be fine, since this is an art quilt, not a quilt that will get washed a great deal. I love the color against the finely dotted neutral...I have another fabric that is actual quilting cotton that is essentially the same pattern in a different shade of tan, but I like the color on this one better. Plus...there is more of this one so I can applique it directly instead of cutting border pieces. I need to iron the color block, but will wait to do that until I finish that last wee bit of applique.

The mini Eclipse quilt  - I did the blocks at last retreat.  I put the center together by hand since that is the only way I can get nice sharp intersections. For the borders, I have been trying different combinations of the Fossil Fern fabrics and I think I like this one with the triple border of orange, purple and pink best. I keep finding  more fat quarters of different Fossil Ferns almost every time I look through my stash. They are in a separate pile now. Need to get this one done before next Retreat as there will be a showing of all of the Eclipse quilts.

This is a detail from the Mixed Media piece from a class with Patt Blair at Road To CA...it needs a bit more quilting and the buttons need to be sewn on before I am happy with how it looks.

More buttons...

The whole Mixed Media quilt...with the buttons pinned on. Most of these are antique buttons from the stash I inherited from my Granny. (The green hearts are a more recent vintage!)

Framed Hexies - this was a project Pirate (another blogger I know In Real Life) started, decided she didn't like this particular technique for hexies so she gave the whole kit and caboodle to me. I worked on these during my vacation. Not sure what it will end up being...or how big it will get - there is enough done that with a couple more blocks, it would make an interesting table topper. But there are oodles of cut pieces still in the project bag...they are cute, quick and portable...and a conversation starter...

Tuscan Landscape - it is very nearly done. I added a flock of sheep on the hill after looking at some more pictures of this view of Tuscany which I have discovered is in Val d'Orsia. I may take the bottom edge quilting out since its getting too puffy...I need to quilt tiles into the floor and add some decorations on the archway.

My 'Forever Project' - the wee hexie basket...this is made with 1/4 inch sized hexies..I just have the background to finish..the boring part! It will likely get minimal quilting and be put into a hard frame to be hung on the wall when it is finished. (I need to take pictures more often...I see something I need to fix again!)

2. How does my work differ from others of its genre? 
I tend not to use commercial patterns, though I have done some...and I really dislike making the same block over and over, so there are only a few quilts like that in my repertoire. And you won't find very many 30's reproduction fabrics in my stash. I tend to like either true-to-life colors or bright saturated colors. Batiks and hand dyes are my favorites.

3. Why do I create what I do? 
I have always been creative - I come from a very creative family, where creativity is cherished. My paternal grandfather was a professional artist - there are still examples of his art on display. His brother was also a professional artist. Their father was a master jeweler at Tiffany's in New York. My maternal grandmother was a prolific quilter - she and her charity group made hundreds of quilts for the homeless. As a child, I designed Barbie clothes, dressed my dolls and stuffed animals, made all sorts of things - my favorite magazine when I was growing up was Pack-o-Fun. Every month, I would read devour that magazine as soon as the issue arrived in the mail box.

I love trying new techniques just to see how they work. As a consequence, I have oodles of WIPs (Work In Progress) and PIGZ (Projects In Gallon Zippies) which is a common occurrence with most quilters, I suspect. 

4. How does my creating process work?
I draw inspiration from all around me. Sometimes a new quilt is suggested by something I see, though a goodly number of them are class projects. I know some folks never finish what they start in a class, but I feel obligated to at least do something with the materials since I have invested time and money and fabric - I can generally figure out a way to finish any project (I would not have taken the class if I didn't at least think I would finish!) - some just take longer than others!  I still have at least three in various stages that are waiting their turn to be finished. But...I will finish them - God willin' and the crick don't rise!

I noodle around with an idea for a while and mostly I can 'see' the finished product before I start...though I have been trying to loosen up a bit and try different things after the basic design is done..

I am supposed to tag three more quilters. It is getting hard to find quilters that haven't been tagged!

So...here are my tag-ees! I haven't heard back from the last blogger, but am putting her link info in in the hopes that she will reply back in the affirmative.

Rian  of Rian's Pages  who recently moved into a new house and has just re-started quilting. She has a very interesting technique where she uses large sheets of freezer paper with flowing designs, mostly rendered in yummy batiks.

Sophie of Sophie Junction who  already did the Around the World Blog Hop post.  I am fascinated by her use of color. Another of the quilters I know In Real Life as I have attended a Retreat with Sophie.

Tanya of  ByTaniwa who is a quilter from Japan. She moved to Japan from the US to teach English...and ended up staying after she met her handsome hubby Tetsu. I enjoy reading about all of her adventures.