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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?