Kathi's Quilt

This is Kathi's awesome quilt! It has so much movement amazing colors. It has been most of my time outside my day job for the past couple of weeks but is finally done and ready to send home. There are lots of photos. The background is a dense fill with lots of different elements that adds lots of movement and interest. The background is quilted with black Omni and the rest of the quilt is monopoly by Superior threads. I wanted the beautiful piecing to take center stage and the quilting to be a nice compliment to that. Two layers of batting to give lots of loft so that the quilting will really pop.

No You Are Not Seeing Double

 These are two twin quilts for my friend Daisy. I just love the way the bargello is broken up with the strips of background fabric. I decided on a really nice fill for the background secions and just some diagonal lines across the bargello................and let me say that making perfect long diagonal lines on a longarm machine is not possible........at least for me. The fill is lovely and I will use it again as it was something new for me to try. There are lots of close ups:

Working On A Strippy Quilt

This is a beautiful strippy bargello quilt. I am working on the "fill" in the solid strips. It is a new to me type of fill and I really like how it is mixed up with the larger swirl/feather and the smaller peacock meander and pebbles. I really like the overall look of this.

On The Design Wall

I have been working on a second blue and orange mountain majesty quilt to replace the one I donated the Wanagi Wolf Rescue last year. I have the blocks all pieced and up on the design wall. Now I need to move them around and figure out the final setting. 

The Sheep quilt is off the machine and the binding and hanging sleeve are ready to be sewn on. The final reveal will be soon.

How Far Would You Go?

 I had a great idea to make a little wall quilt for my office and had a photo on Pinterest I really loved. I got a good start in the first photo.This is the way the blocks were laid out in the inspiration photo.

I just began sewing and somewhere along the way the blocks got laid out differently. Yes they are nice and look good but after posting my photo yesterday I went back to the inspiration photo and............oh no!!!!! The blocks are not the same and although they are nice it is not what I intended. I did not really want to make two quilts so I got out the seam ripper "Jack" and spent the evening taking off the 6 blocks on each side. This morning before work I began resewing and finished up this evening. I finally got it finished and below is the look I wanted. Lesson learned............always keep the inspiration photo close to make sure it is correct.

So what is your limit of what you would fix?

Southwest Quilt Is A Finished Top

I got to spend some time sewing this weekend and decided I just wanted to get this new wall hanging into a finished top. Points like this are pretty darned fussy to get right so I had to take my time and occasionally had to unpick a few places and resew to get the points nice and crisp. I am pleased at how this looks and hope to be able to do the quilting soon so I can enjoy this over my desk at work.

I Like It Much Better Now

Remember this from last post. It is my new project. I cut the squares at 9 inches but when I designed the quilt motif (yes I actually think about the quilt design from the get go on many projects) I need it to be divisible by 1/4" so the blocks got a trim after they were sewn into half square triangles. I cut them to 8 inches and subcut them and voila!!!!!

Here are the same 24 blocks subcut and resewn and put back on the design wall. It makes sense that it shrunk more lengthwise than crosswise because of all those seams. I an really liking this and it went together really fast. I am gonna guess 4 hours tops to get it to this stage. Now I need to sew into a top. I bet the quilting will take longer than the piecing..........remember I mentioned I already have a quilting motif designed just for this.

Juggling Projects

I made really good progress on the applique of my nesting robin and now it is stalled again. I need to prep the little circles. Hopefully I will get them done soon so I can move onto the next border.

The sheep quilt is ready to quilt. The backing and batting are already on the longarm. I just need to get the top tacked on and start the quilting. Once I get going it should go fairly quickly.

And..............last, I really need to start a new project.........NOT!!! But I have been looking at the quilt above my desk at work for some time and although I love it I need a change. I have seen this on pinterest pinned a lot. So here is the first work in progress photo of this new work in progress. I cut the squares yesterday and marked the lines down the center on the diagonal and sewed them on both sides of the lines, cut apart and pressed. I had to just lay it out for color placement to see how I like it. Not bad. Now the next step will be some more cutting these apart and sewing back together...........stay tuned for the transformation.

Sandy's Bargello

We had lots of fun at the Valley Of The Sun Retreat last February. Many of us took a class by Ellen to make a bargello quilt. There was so much variety of colors that they were all unique. This is on that Sandy G. made for her grandson. She wanted quilting for a guy so that took care of the feather plan that I had. The design has a curve which was also a challenge with the design I executed. In the end I really had fun watching this come to be from the sketch I sent her for approval.

I just broke up the design into parts with parallel lines and alternated two quilting designs in those areas.

IN the border I made some diamonds and used the same two designs in them. The was pretty fun to quilt and was out of the box so I got to try something new.

About Ewe

This is a project I have been working on for some months now. I made great progress and then it went to the wayside. The baby that will receive this is coming up on her first birthday so I am pushing this back to the top of the UFO pile. It began with seeing my friend Shelley's version of this. She found it on a Quiltmaker site. I just love it and decided to make my own version from the photograph so mine is not the same size and also has different construction and many different design elements.  

The flowers in the original are dimensional but since the baby will get to use this that was something I changed. I will add to the flowers with the quilting itself. My friend Suze found the butterfly fabric at the Valley Of The Sun Retreat in the give away bin. They were on a white background...........I fussy cut them and appliqued them on. I just wish I had three but two will do. The sheep eyes are reverse applique and the pupils are just made with a pigma pin. Buttons would have been cute but again this is for a baby. It is now ready for borders after much more time that I though I would spend on it. Below you can see the hexagons I started with. Some of them are already sewn together. I opted for whole hexi units instead of the half hexis in the original. I did not want seam across the center of each block. This made for many, many Y seams but I just added one or two rows each time I worked on this. That part of the top went quickly. It was all the applique which stalled this project. The applique parts were needle turn applique and include the flower stems, leaves, flower centers, the butterflies and the sheep eyes.  

I Do This Because It Relaxes Me

This is my second nesting robin. I kinda put this and most of the rest of my quilting on the back burner because life is so darned full of changes and things are just plain busy. I have to say that my life is just in flux right now. I have been doing things but not posting much. I pulled this out about a month ago and decided I needed to have something to do while everything else is going crazy around me. It is currently in a stage where there is lots of handwork, and it is also fairly small as well. This makes it perfect to drag around with me. My coworker saw this the other day when I was showing it to someone at work and wanted to know why I was working on this. Well the answer for me was easy. "It relaxes me". There is really no other reason for doing this. I love making quilts and I especially love needle turn applique and handwork. It is very relaxing and when finished is just beautiful to look at. Working on something like this just brings joy to my life and I love watching it change and progress. The end of this project will be a total surprise and I am just making it up as I go.

The block that this began with

The first border

The project began with just one block in colors that I just love. Then a border, and another. So far so good. Now to add some beautiful applique to those big triangles. The first try was not the right color so I picked it out and began again and I just love how it looks so far.

The second border with the beginning of an idea

The above photo is more complete than the others. There will be some more things added once I have completed all the other triangles to this stage. I am working on adding the leaves to the last triangle.

 

There are a million and one ways to do applique. Most of which require lots of preparation. I learned needle turn applique when I first learned to quilt back in the early 1980's and have tried other things and always come back to the simplicity of this method. It just requires marking the turning line on the fabric and then turning under that edge one stitch at a time with the long straw needle. It yields very nice clean edges and for me goes fairly quickly. There is nothing to wash out at the end or added bulk that other methods require. Not for everyone but it works for me. You can see the leaf on the right below where I just started to turn under the edge of the first side. This slow stitching is very relaxing and portable and I love doing it.

A Little Time For Fun

 I have been back from my cruise for over a week now so I figured I better put this on my blog before it is really old news. We went aboard the beautiful Carnival Triumph out of New Orleans for 8 nights. It was an amazing trip with four ports of call: Cozumel where we went scuba diving on the reef and shopping in town, Costa Maya more shopping and hanging out on the beach, Isla Rotan where we went zip lining and snorkeling, Belize with more snorkeling, hanging out on the beach and more shopping. Fun, Fun, Fun!!! Yes I did go down the slide but the water was a bit chilly so I only did it once. The above photo was taken at sunrise so there were not many people out and about..........the best time to explore the upper decks.

 Beautiful Cozumel! Photo above and below. Right out there in the water is where we did our scuba diving. They took us out on a boat. We went down the shore a bit and got in the water and came out on this beach. I had forgotten how wonderful scuba diving is..............you get to look at all the cool fish, coral and other things and not have to come up for air.

 Costa Maya (photo above and below) had a very rocky beach and there is a nice reef out beyond where the waves break but the day we were there the water was very rough so we stayed on the beach, drank beer, ate the local food and did some shopping.

 Isla Rotan off the coast of Honduras (photo above and below). I had no idea just how much fun zip lining was. There were 17 lines in all and it took us about an hour to go from the first one at the top to the bottom. Just imagine zipping thru the trees, way up and dangling from just a wire........not for those with fear of heights.

Half Moon Bay on Isla Rotan. This is a great place to just sit on the shore, go snorkeling and eat the local food. I love the coconut shrimp and the conch fritters are not bad either.

Every night on the ship the stewards turn down your sheets and leave a towel animal to greet you when you return to your cabin after evening activities. I think the rabbit was my favorite........just too cute!