Spring isn't quite here..

Not too spring-like here in North Carolina, which is unusual!  Since moving here in 2005, I've found spring to be a beautiful, warm season.  This year, it's still been downright chilly--not just in the morning, but all day long.  So, i just had to make my own spring.  A couple of weeks ago I won a fabric giveaway from Marianne Bos, who lives in Singapore!   Her fabrics are the print ones in this little quilt, which I then combined with some of my hand-dyed solids.

It's just a simple snowball quilt, still in the process of being sewn together.  (another UFO...)

Aren't her fabrics beautiful?  Thanks so much Marianne!

And I'm also finishing up this little quilt, too, which I showed in February.  Here are the leaf shapes that I cut out and moved around, then zig-zagged back on (using some heavy iron-on stabilizer on the back to hold them in place).  The piece was long, about 5' total, and yesterday after stitching the leaf shapes, I cut it in half, so now I have two pieces.  But they look like fish...

 Ok, and now I'm working on my second hooked rug, too.

Happy Valentine's Day

It's only been a month since my last post...how did that happen?  I've been busy working on what seems like hundreds of things, just not taking pictures of anything.  Just wanted to give Elaine Quehl a big thanks for a giveaway on her blog that I won-- four gorgeous fat quarters she dyed--

I got to pick my colors, and these were the ones for me. 

I've started slicing them up and using them for a variation of a Darned Quilt that I made before.  I started with some gradient hand dyes in orange/browns that I cut in gentle curved pieces, sewed together, then fused to a really heavy piece of pellon stabilizer.

Then I cut strips of Elaine's beautiful fabric, and will sew them on from edge to edge.  I'll probably couch some yarns and ribbons, too.  After this foundation is all set, then I'll cut shapes (circles or maybe leaves?) and move them around, followed by sewing, or darning, them into the cutout opening.

Since this weekend is supposed to be cold (for here in NC, anyways!) I'll most likely stay in and sew and have more progress to show next week.

A couple of weeks ago I got this Liebster Award from Katherine McNeese at Blue Heron Quilts.

It was a nice surprise, but then I forgot all about it with everything that was going on at work.  

Here are "The rules":
1. You must post 11 random things about yourself.
2. Answer the questions that the nominator set for you
3. Create 11 questions for the people you nominate
4. Choose 11 blogs with less than 200 followers and link them in your post.

This was just too much information (TMI) for me to share, I'm just not the kind of person who is comfortable putting everything out there for others to read.  Thanks for thinking of me, Katherine!  But if you would like to check out some great blogs that I like (with less than 200 followers), check these out:

tiedyejudy.blogspot.com
multicoloredsnippets.blogspot.com
notesfromstudiob.blogspot.com
ellendacoop.blogspot.com
theredheadedmermaid.blogspot.com
explorationsinquilting.com
fiberartistjourney.blogspot.com

Oh, and finished up my hooked rug.  It measures around 24" x 36", and it was kind of fun to make.  Except for the binding on the edge, which hardly shows up here, but that took forever and was worse than hand sewing a binding on a quilt.

Also--we had a challenge unveiling on Art Quilts Around the World a few weeks ago, our self-portraits.  

Here's mine!

Raindrops Quilt

The only thing I've been working on this week is this Judy Niemeyer pattern, Raindrops, and I'm determined that I'm sewing all the blocks together this weekend and getting it ready for quilting!  The evenings after work seem to be getting shorter and shorter now, making me feel a lot less productive.

This is a great pattern, her paper piecing techniques make it really easy.  I finished up all the NY beauty blocks quite a few months ago, then put it aside.  Not sure why, maybe I was just tired of it at that point.  It was A LOT of sewing, flipping and cutting to get through.  

Now I finally have the blocks connected vertically, and am working on sewing the rows together into one big quilt top.  This will be fun to quilt, but sure do wish I had a long arm machine! 

I'm linking up to Off the Wall Fridays, check out Nina Marie's blog!

Free motion challenge - August

I worked on this last week but only two of the pictures I took turned out.  (Think it might be time for a new camera, I'll have to put it on the list of things to get when I win the lottery).

This design was a little different, and I kept finding myself stitching it large, so I had to scale myself back and make it smaller to fit into areas that I was quilting.  It was a fast design to sew, I probably did this 30 x 30 " square in about 20 minutes.  The thread was Aurifil 50 weight on top and in the bobbin.

The stitching shows up better on the back. 

I understand why people felt this was a harder design to master, as it wasn't as intuitive as some designs are to stitch.  But we're not doing this for perfection, we're doing it for practice and to be more comfortable with free motion in general, which made it a great design for the month.  Thanks, Wendy!

Tiny Sunset quilt

Last summer my daughter sent me this picture of a sunset on Martha's Vineyard:

I've been thinking of ways to use some of my shibori fabric (and tons of other fabric that I have dyed) and came up with this little picture (about 10" x 15").  It doesn't quite look like the photograph, however...

I got a thread-painting lesson over the weekend (thanks, Jenny!) and added a bit of it to this picture.  She showed me how to use 2 layers of a water-soluble solvy material, with tulle in the middle, and build up lots of layers.   

So, while it really doesn't look anything like the original picture, it was fun, fast, and easy (except for the thread sketching, which took a while to do).   Lots of people make smaller sample pieces before committing to a larger piece, and I think I'll start doing that, too. 

Another topic--totally different.  Jane Sassaman has a new book out, Patchwork Sassman Style, and there have been about 100 giveaways this month on blogs, but I gave up trying to win and actually bought the book last week.  For the past 2 years or so, I've been buying her fabric on clearance on-line and in stores, wherever I saw it.  

Her fabric is kind of unusual, and I think it doesn't appeal to everyone.  Large prints are kind of hard to work with sometimes, so her book is full of patterns and suggestions for using these prints--one is by finding other patterns using the two-mirror technique, as shown in the next two pictures.

Another with the fabric alone:

 And with the mirrors:

I'm not sure I'm up to this, as it looks pretty complicated.  According to Jane, it really isn't, so maybe I'll give it a shot.  I'll just have to decide on one of the patterns in the book and try it out.

Hot pink for hot days

Thank goodness I had something to work on inside this weekend.  Another day in a seemingly endless string of 100+ degree F days.  I've been wanting to make a Ricky Tims convergence quilt for a while now, and found a great piece of rainbow colored hand dyed fabric in my studio (garage) that was just waiting to be sliced up.

This technique is really simple, and goes together quickly.  It's a little busier than I would have liked, but acceptable for my first try.  Without the border, it measures around 27 x 27 inches.

For my next convergence quilt, I think I'll use a hand-dyed piece with fewer colors and see how it turns out.

Anyways, I quilted this on Sunday for the SewCalGal free motion quilting project of the month.  For July, Angela Walters had a tiled method of free motion quilting, where you divide the piece into separate "tiles" or areas and quilt each section, then move on to the next.

This was almost too easy after the last few challenges!

The thread I used was a Madeira Neon Pink in a 50 weight.  The spool was just a tiny bit too big for my machine to fit comfortably in either the vertical or horizontal position, but I finally hit on a combination that worked.  Lots of broken threads to bury.  I have to get better at burying them as I go, instead of waiting until the end.

The only picture I took of the whole piece was out of focus--that's what happens when you try to rush things at 6:00 a.m. while rushing around getting ready for work.

It's actually supposed to cool down into the 90s today and tomorrow, and maybe be in the 80s later in the week.  What a relief!

FM Quilt Challenge for June

Getting in just under the wire for this one!  I started by drawing some shapes and doodling in lines and designs like Cindy Needham suggested in the June SewCalGal FM quilt challenge...

Then I got a piece of hand-dyed fabric that was about 45" long and around 18" wide and divided it up into sections and started filling them in after sandwiching it with some batting and backing.  I started on Sunday morning, and worked on it about 5 hours that day, and wasn't anywhere near done by the end of the day. 

It seemed like an endless task--I think I used about 9-10 bobbins altogether in this piece.  Thank goodness I have some large spools of thread!  The thread here was Isacord, in a periwinkle color.  It's a very nice 50 wt. thread, and my machine really likes it.  I bought it at my LQS because they only carry the basics in Aurifil (black, white, beige) but carry hundreds of Isacord colors.

Some close-up pictures of the various designs I used.  Of course, they weren't too much like my original drawing, I like to change my mind while I'm sewing.  I kind of sketch them in with a chalk pencil so I have an idea what I'm going to do in each section.  Sometimes I follow the lines, sometimes I don't.

I sewed for about an hour before work every day this week, then at least 1-2 hours each evening.  Lots of stitches... 

  

This is the only picture that shows the true color of this piece, maybe because I've been taking pictures at either 5:30 in the morning or after 6:30 at night.  

I still have to trim it up, bind it, and wash it to get all of my chalk lines out of it.  Then I'll take a picture of the whole thing during the daylight this weekend.  It'll probably end up as a table runner, since it's definitely big enough.  This was fun, but I should have done a smaller piece!  

Another month, another FM assignment

I love that I've been able to incorporate the "assignments" from the FM Quilting Challenges into quilt tops that I've had done for a while and they just needed quilting & binding.

Here's my May Free Motion challenge:

 Very easy design, and really quick to sew on large spaces, filling them up FAST.

I used Madeira thread for the first time.  It was on sale at fabric.com a few weeks ago and I know that Linda & Laura Kemshall always rave about this thread on their blog.  Madeira is a rayon thread that has a nice sheen to it, I think I like it and will keep using it.  My machine liked it, too, which is the most important thing.

This is a blanket for Madelyn (granddaughter) which is made out of scraps I had left from a beach blanket I made two years ago for my daughter.

Candiotic table

I've been taking an on-line class called Dyeing 101: Controlling Color, and one of the assignments is to create a Candiotic Table using two sets of primary dyes and creating 66 colors for each set. (That's 132 colors) Then these 4" swatches are fused and mounted on a background fabric and labeled so that the colors can be recreated easily in the future.

I had all of mine dyed and mounted (finally!) when I noticed this the other night. That bubble gum pink piece looks a little out of place.

I'm not sure what happened, maybe I didn't follow the formula correctly, maybe I was off counting my millileters. But I really should have noticed it before fusing it on the background.

I've redyed another swatch, and need to fuse it on tonight after work. Final step is to print out a page of labels on a piece of fabric and fuse them to the corners. Then I'm done with this assignment, and on to the next.

Aren't these colors just beautiful?

For anyone who wants to learn more about precise dyeing, this class is wonderful! Check out Candied Fabrics.