Tuesday, May 26, 2009

I Am So Excited



I went to the Fiber Arts Fiesta 2009 on Saturday to see all the wonderful stuff. I was also hopeing that the quilts I had in the show would do well. They did! I was just awed that I won not just one blue ribbon but two. My Ode to Spring was something I finished off the UFO pile that was just having fun playing with all the things I never to to try because I was too busy. Oregon Shores the group quilt I made with Jackie and Kathy also got blue. Needless to say I am just elated!




Saturday, April 11, 2009

Landscape Round Robin


This is my little landscape piece finally done! This is really the base only which will be my contribution to the piece. This is a round robin so there will be 4 of my friends who will each in turn add things to this to make a final piece which will come back home to me to finish up. I am very excited about this group as we are really going to uncharted waters of fiber arts in that we will enhance these pieces using any fiber technique we would like.



This is the base that my friend Dee has made. It is a desert landscape and I will be the first person to make additions to it. Since I live in New Mexico this is pretty much my back yard so I will have lots of nature to examine to come up with some things to add to the piece. I think the first addition will be more prickly pear cacti and maybe a few other native cacti. Then I need to add a creature of some sort.....................horned toad, rattlesnake, roadrunner or quail......................humm I am still thinking on that.

Tuesday, March 24, 2009

Another Custom Quilt Finished











It has been some time since I have written here. I have been really busy and do miss writting in my blog. In any case I just finished this great sampler quilt and here is some eye candy!! I did notice that I missed one of the triangles in the top photo and went back and added the quilting to that! One reason why taking pictures is such a good thing.
I have been working on the crazy quilt round robin and am just putting the final touches on the last round and will have some photos of that pretty soon so come back and visit again.








Friday, March 6, 2009

I Am Still Here..............Really!

Well life has been pretty busy with non quilting stuff and I have not had the oportunity to post. I do wish things were different but I am having to concentrate on other things that take me away from those things I love doing. I hope to be back soon with more stories and photos of needlework and fun things.

Friday, February 6, 2009

More Work On Lou's Block


This bow was a total experiment, and I love how it came together. The ribbon was pretty stiff and hard to work with. Basically I began with tying a real bow with the amount of ribbon I wanted to use. I plopped it down and did the first french knot in the center of the bow to secure it. Then I worked my way around each of the bow parts turning and adding french knots to arrange them in a pleasing way. Then I did the same with the ties. Next I had to figure out flowers. Since I did not really have the right silk thread I thought out of the box and went to my DMC floss stash and found this wonderful color that went nicely with the ribbon and the background and made chain stitched roses. I made the stitches very loose so they would stand up nicely and love the effect. I also found a green that went with my other colors and just did some lazy daisy leaves. I really like this one.


This one is at the center of the block and the more I looked at it the less I wanted to plop down some design. I finally decided accentuate the rose so did a blanket stitch in two colors to define it. I also added french knots to the center.



There are some really long narrow patches and I decided to just add a feather stitch vine to this one. If I have time I will add something to the vine but this can also be added in the next round as well.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Work In Progress Wedensday


This first photo is a little landscape I have been working on for a round robin I have begun. We are a group of five. Our goal is to embelish these 11x14 base pieces with elements to make a pleasing landscape. I am currently working on green hills. After these are in place a house will be added, the foreground, a red barn and a road. This base will then be sent along to the next person in our group who will begin the embelishment. You can find our group blog and read more about what we are doing here: http://landscapefriends.wordpress.com/



This is more progress on the Crazygoround round robin group. You can find the blog for this group here: http://crazygoround.blogspot.com/ I have added some ribbon roses and a bit of green with a stem stitch and lazy daisy for a stem and leaves and then made some french knots to add a bit of spark.

Here is another part of Lou's block. Here I did spider web roses and a feather stitch for background foilege. I might add some leaves or leave them for next round.


And....................more work on Lou's block. The blue block has more ribbon roses, stem stitch, lazy daisey, and french knots. These are the same combination of stitches as the photo above but there is a very different look. I have also done the outline of a heart in the red patch which I will be adding more things to.



Last I have begun quilting the commission quilt. The colors in the photo are not very good. In any case I have done stitch in the ditch around all the blocks and have done a stipple in all the light areas. In the bottom of the quilt is the border which will be getting flowing feather. Once the feathers in the border are done I will be going back to each of the 10 blocks and adding more quilting in the colored areas of the blocks. This will consist of some continous curves, some feathers, and a few other elements which I am still thinking about. Since this is a sampler quit each block is different.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Some More Crazy Quilting



Well this is not quilting at all. Crazy quilts are really a anything goes embelishment and needle craft piece. This is a portion of round three of the round robin I am in. This is Lou's block and the needlework is actually really simple. There are only a few stitches involved, stem stitch, chain stitch, fly stitch and french knots and sewing on a few buttons. I just love the way this little spray of stems looks. I am going to add a few flowers and then leave the rest to do for the round four person to have some fun with. I will be showing more photos of this block as I work on it. Now I better get back to that quilt waiting on the frame............I am doing a Popcorn panto today on a lovely pieced tulip quilt.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

Round Two Finished On Crazy Round Robin







I have finally finished round two on the Crazy Go Round round robin. In this round we received a block that had all the seams embelished with a simple seam treatment and we were to add to the seams to make them more complex. I now have the round three block sitting here waiting for me to begin. I will post some photos of it later.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Oregon Shores At Road To California!

Here is Oregon Shores at The Road To California Quilt Show 2009. We got an honorable mention as I was told by my friend Suze. She took the photo for me. Lucky lady she not only went to the show but also took some classes as well. I am pretty happy to have gotten another ribbon on this quilt. I wish I could have gone to the show to see all the great quilts but I guess I will have to go another year. They always have the most wonderful quilts entered in that show.

Monday, January 12, 2009

Traditional Sampler



I am working on a commission quilt. The request was for a sampler and the use of traditional colors and fabrics. Getting the coordinating fabrics in the requested colors in the right fabric sure was a hunt but in the end I found 5 fabrics at about 3 different stores and had looked at about 7 stores total. Here are 6 of the 10 finished blocks. They were pretty complex but it is always fun to see how things look in different colorways. The photo is just a quick in progress shot that shows the blocks on the fabirc I will use for sashing, with the green cornerstones, the border and green binding.

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

My Scrap Quilt Is Pieced And That Fabric Is Not Right




Have you ever pieced a scrappy block, or been in a block swap and found that the fabric used did not have the look you wanted? The two photos are the same, well almost the same. This is a log cabin quilt I am beginning to quilt and there are a few fabrics here and there that are a bit too light in the dark side of the log cabin block. Well no problem I have a new trick. If you look closely you will see that two of the fabrics on the dark side of the log cabin block are just a bit darker and look much better. There is a very dark piece to the right of the red square and the fabric next to it and the one below the red square are just too light. How did I do it? Simple I have an assortment of Sharpie Markers and Pigma pens in various colors and I simply lightly darkened those pieces. The difference is subtle but it does make a big difference. I have been busy stitching in the ditch around all the light areas so have pretty much been all over the quilt and found quite a few pieces here and there that were just way to light. Some even lighter than my example here and I simply played with the markers and changed them. In some fabrics I played with the print to only change say some really light leaves and make the darker green, or on a plaid I only darkened one color in the plaid. Wow what a difference this can make.

So the next time you find that the fabric in your scrap quilt simply is too light you can fix it without having to rip that piece out and replace it.

Monday, January 5, 2009

Looking Forward To 2009




I am back form my holiday. We had a wonderful time in Southern California and even made it to the beach one day. This is where I was playing with trying to catch a good photo of a seagull in flight. I think the one above might even make a neat quilt. On the way home we stopped at the Grand Canyon which is one of my favorite places. We decided to stay the night and went out early the next morning to see the sunrise.................it was glorious.

With each new year I like to reflect o the past year and then look forward to the new year and set some goals. For 2009 I have some specific goals for my quilting and art. First of all I really want to offer my blog readers more and am going to try to add regular tutorials. I do love teaching and sharing and look forward to seeing some photos in the future of things made by others that were inspired by tutorials.

Another goal is organization. My sewing studio is worse than bad. It was dubbed by my family as the messiest room in the house (I is really a total disaster). Yesterday I finally go in there and spent a few hours beginning to clean and organize. I actually made a big dent in the mess but it is not a one day fix. I will be continuing to clean and then organize. The goal is to have my entire workspace both the upstairs studio and the longarm studio organized by March 1. There is allot of work to do be done to achieve this. I will share some after photos and maybe a few in progress ones.

This year I really need to get a handle on my UFOs (for you non crafters this is a term used to describe "unfinished objests"). I am going to cateloge all of them and try my best to finish as many as is possible. The good news is that I have alot of finished top only needing quilting and binding.

I also want to start a few show quilts for this year and play with some new techniques. This will be really fun and I am very excited about some things I have planned.

What are some of your goals?