March Free Motion Challenge

Last summer I painted a piece of white fabric with some Setacolor paints, in some pretty (and very pink) flower designs.

So, I never did anything with it, it was just sitting in a pile of UFOs.

This month's challenge on SewCalGirl's blog was presented by Ann Fahl, and she presented a tutorial about free-motioning flowers and leaf shapes. So I got out some black thread, made a quilt sandwich with this piece of fabric, and started sewing.

I outlined the flower petals, then did some pebbling in the centers. I used some YLI Soft Touch thread in black (the only black thread I had).

And here are some of the smaller flowers--

I think the large flowers look like peonies. Lots of thread tails to be buried still!

The finished piece is about 18" wide by 30" long. Now what should I do with it??

Watch the Quilt Show(s) Free

Next weekend, in honor of International Quilting Day, Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims are offering free viewing of almost 100 of their shows. I've heard good things about these shows, so I know I'm going to be watching.

http://www.thequiltshow.com/

Quilt Show in New Jersey

Over this past weekend, I was lucky to be able to travel to New York for my granddaughter's baptism. While there, my daughter was nice enough to take me to the Mancuso Quilt Show in Somerset, New Jersey.

Here are some pictures from that show:

Sorry, I didn't photograph the names of the quilt makers, we traveled through it pretty quickly.

The detailed work in this underwater scene was amazing:

Of course, a NY Beauty, one of my favorite patterns:

This quilt was large, probably queen size, and had three large fish on it. Very simple, but beautiful.

The stitching on this was gorgeous--it's hard to tell the scale from this picture, but the snowflake was about 3 feet tall.

And the best part it was that Madelyn got to attend her very first quilt show-with Grandma.

Fear of Feathers--Pteronophobia

For a long time, I've resisted making feathers, because I thought they looked too hard. Yesterday I finally bit the bullet and sat down and sewed some.

I followed the tutorial of Diane Gaudynski, guest host this month on SewCalGal's Free Motion quilt along. After sketching the feathers with a chalk pencil, I started sewing.

The feathers really pop when filling is added around them. Here I just used a loop-y stitch as a filler.

I really like how they turned out--not perfect (I have a long way to go) but pretty nice for my first try.

It was easier for me to sew on the left side instead of the right side of the stem, which is something I can work on in the future.

Here's the finished piece. I think I might make a pillow out of it.

And, I've been working on the (seemingly endless) Candiotic Table. I fused all 66 pieces of the Natural Triad to a piece of charcoal fabric.

Next, I have to remove all the temporary labels and fuse the ones I printed onto a piece of fabric.

And I've been dyeing the 2nd group of colors, the Brights Triad. They're batching now...

A February to dye for

In early February, I started an on-line class called Dyeing 101: Controlling Color. There's been a massive amount of dyeing done already, and I'm only halfway through the assignment. Candy Glendening is the teacher, and she's great. The course is full of embedded videos and lots of helpful worksheets and information--Candy is a chemistry teacher and it really shows!

Here are my sample swatches from the Natural Triad:

And a bigger shot:

And it just keeps going--66 swatches in all. All colors are different proportions of just three dyes (one yellow, one blue, and one red).

Next up, I'm working on the Brights Triad, again only using 3 dyes. That's my weekend project, I can hardly wait for Saturday a.m.

Raindrops quilt -- still in progress

This quilt is a LOT of work--but I've been plugging away at it. Here are a bunch of pieces taped up to my front door and wall, as my design wall wasn't big enough for it. I started sewing the blocks together last night after work, but only got 3 finished.
It's going to be pretty large when done--and I'm determined that it will be completed, that it won't be a UFO.

On-line class

I signed up for an on-line precision dyeing class last month. This is our first assignment, dyeing tints of three single colors (gradation). The colors I used were Golden Yellow, Sky Blue, and Fuchsia--6 fat quarters of each.

Candy Glendening is the teacher, at Candied Fabrics. She provides great written instructions, and lots of videos embedded in each lesson. I think it's going to help me a lot, as I've had trouble in the past coming up with a specific color that I needed to dye.

Several of the colors are perfect for a Judy Niemeyer quilt I've been working on. I'm auditioning them now, and hope to cut and sew some centers today!

So far, I think I've sewed around 23 of the larger spiked sections, and need to sew 30 total. Kind of tedious, but sometimes I need to do some mindless sewing.

Making some progress

A three-day weekend--time to get some things accomplished at home, like basting this quilt top that I made last March/April. Finally. I started the FM quilting on it, too. It's a Judy Niemeyer quilt pattern, Total Eclipse.

The directions in the pattern are kind of overwhelming--so I took a class at Sew Original in Winston-Salem and was glad I did. Lucille Amos, a certified instructor, made the directions seem simple.

I like paper piecing a lot, and this quilt was actually pretty easy to put together.

And I finished up this little quilt, too. Here it is laying in my driveway this morning, I was taking the picture right around 7:15 a.m. so thie light isn't great, but better than inside my house.

I added striped sashing after I had completed the FM quilting because I just wasn't thrilled by the quilt. It was top-stitched on using a decorative stitch--and I used the same stripe for the border.

Free Motion Quilting Month #1

I decided to do this FM quilting challenge on something I'm already working on, instead of creating a new sampler or just working on a small sample. Free motion quilting is something I've been doing (and loving!) for a couple of years now, it's the reason I make things--so I can FM quilt them.

Here is my leaf shape, done on a piece of hand-dyed fabric so that the stitching is kind of hard to see:

I tried to take a picture offset from the side, too, as I was having trouble getting it to show up well. I used a 50-weight thread from Connecting Threads in a dark green:

One more picture--

These are other parts of the piece I'm quilting. I used more threads from Connecting Threads, as well as some other threads I had (Aurifil, Mettler, YLI Soft Touch) in matching colors.

I'm just trying out some different patterns, I like working on smaller pieces that are part of a larger one so I can practice a certain shape or pattern in a small scale.

I'll take a picture of the whole piece as soon as I get a chance to bury the thread tails and wash those chalk pencil marks off.



I think this one is my favorite design:

If you want more information on the Free Motion Challenge project, or want to join in yourself, head on over to SewCalGal's blog!

No more laziness for 2012

If I was the kind of person to make resolutions, this year's would be "no more laziness"! It's too easy to sit down in the evening after a long day of work and just think about what I want to work on, not actually do it. So, I've joined two different quilt-alongs for the new year, one called "12 For 2012", and another called the "Free Motion Quilting Project". Combining these will work out great, as I have a huge pile of Unfinished Objects, mostly quilt tops that need quilting, and I love to work on Free Motioning. Buttons for each are on the right-hand side of my blog if you want to check them out.

For the "12 in 2012", all you have to do is commit to is finishing 12 UFOs in 12 months. Hopefully I'll be able to--it sounds easy now, but we all know what happens...

Here is my first project, started yesterday! This top has been hanging around for a couple of years now, it's about 40 x 40", and will make a great beach blanket for baby Madelyn. I free motioned some big daisies on it, then filled in with leaves and other shapes. All I need to do now is bind it and it's done.

I'll sew the binding on by machine instead of hand-sewing, since it's faster, and will hold up better to lots of washing.

For Christmas, I got a gift certificate for Connecting Threads. I never ordered from them before, but they had thread sets on sale (40% off) when I checked their website Tuesday night. I ordered a set of 15 colors, plus some fabrics that were all less than $3.00/yard, and they all arrived yesterday. Hopefully, by the end of 2012, there won't be any of this thread left!

My next UFO project is all ready to be quilted--I marked it with a chalk pencil yesterday, trying to decide how to quilt it, but I'll probably change my mind and improvise as I go along.