Around the World Blog Hop

I have been tagged by my good friend Misha Her Blog is Here to participate in the AROUND THE WORLD BLOG HOP. Humm sounds like fun, I have seen lots of these posts on my daily hopping around blogville.

1. WHAT AM I WORKING ON? Well I guess you can say I am multitasking. I usually have several things on the top of the plate. Right now I am actively working on a blue and green quilt that just needs these 12 rows sewn together. I have a good idea of how I want to quilt this. I will post again on this one when the top is all sewn together as I just love the colors of the blues and the greens. The afternoon sun was not the best for photography and the wind was really blowing so I did not get the best photo........when I do the reveal of the top I promise better colors and eye candy!

I am also finishing up my Mountain Majesty quilt. I found the pattern on Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site HERE. You can see that I went with blue and orange for mine instead of random scrappy. I really enjoyed putting this together as it went really fast and I love the color way for the blue and orange. The hardest part was figuring out the quilting. I just need to finish the binding and then I will do a full reveal of this quilt. Hopefully that will not take too long.

Another thing I just started was a Nesting Robin and I showed the center in my last post. Here it is again. This is a really old block that has been ageing in my UFO pile for some time so hopefully I will breathe some new life into it as the center of a really fun quilt.

 

Here is another top waiting for quilting that I hope to work on in the near future.

 

 

2. HOW DOES MY WORK DIFFER FROM OTHERS OF ITS GENRE? Well for starters I often do now work with patterns. In the past I have made many pictorial quilts and used drawings and photographs as inspiration. Even when I do use patterns I always do my own things and only use the patterns as a guide. I like to play with ideas and actually enjoy making everything form traditional patterns to cutting edge original designs that I think up on my own. I do not follow rules. If I want to try something I will see how others have done it and then just do it my way. One other thing is that for me it is really the quilting that I enjoy the most. I do enjoy putting a top together but it is at the quilting stage that I really finish the design. I sometimes make things just for the quilting part that will come after the piecing. I have a longarm quilting business and love to quilt for others (if you have interest please let me know).

3. WHY DO I CREATE WHAT I DO? I have always enjoyed making things. As a small child I began drawing, knitting, needlework and sewing at a very young age. I like to create visual art. Growing up in the 60's my sisters and I sewed most of our own clothes and we saved our scraps always with the thought of someday making a quilt. Being first generation American there were not any quilters in my family. My relatives in Germany and Sweden did beautiful crewlwork and embroidery. One day I was in line at the grocery store (around 1984) and picked up a quilt magazine.............I decided the time had come to make a quilt. I ran into a lady in a fabric store who said she was teaching the ladies at her church to quilt but I could come even though I was not a member. She taught me how to handpiece and handquilt both which I still do. For me quilting is a way to create art on a large scale. I really enjoy working with fiber, colors, shapes and textures. The following quilt is an example of how the quilt really came together for me when I added the quilting. this is just a small part of the finished quilt.

4. HOW DOES MY CREATIVE PROCESS WORK? I find inspiration everywhere. Sometimes it is one moment in time when I see something and get an idea. The idea will grow until I have to give it an outlet...........make it into a quilt. Sometimes it is a pictorial quilt. I often work from many, many drawings, photographs and then my own ideas, sometimes I jsut work from a single photograph. Other times it is more about shape and color. I know it is time to make a quilt when the idea will not go away and I think about it all the time. I have many ideas and many have been made into quilts. Once I begin working on a piece I let it take over. Sometimes my initial vision is quite different from the finished piece. I find that when I follow my muse the pieces just seem to flow. Other times they reach a dead end and sit.........at a later time these pieces can be picked up again and reworked or completed. I also love to think when I am out in the woods. Today I went to see the fall colors on the mountain. I could see the colors from my house and knew that if I waited very long they would be gone. I love to photograph nature. Here is a view of the yellow aspen................inspiration for today.

Tagging people for this Around The World Blog Hop was a challenge for me. Two people had just been tagged and were doing their posts last week and today. A few more had things going on that was keeping them from their blogs so the timing was not good for them. I did tag Mary Jane at Mary Jane's Meanderings HERE. Mary Jane lives in the Southeast and is very active on the About.com Quilting Forum as am I. She enjoys block swaps, round robins, quilting comfort quilts and making Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilts. Her cats are her devoted quilt inspectors. Look for Mary Jane's post on her site next week.