Around the World Blog Hop

I have not been a very good blogger of late.  Life keeps getting in the way of blogging.  I was invited to participate in a blog hop by my good friend Beth (who blogs here).  I was supposed to nominate three more to participate, but I procrastinated too long and couldn't find any one.  So any of my regular blogging friends or anyone who is not yet a friend who would like to participate and be one please comment below and I'll add you to the post.

I am supposed to answer four questions:

What am I currently working on?  Well.  I have several projects going on.  The photo above is the one I promised a month or so ago when I expressed my dissatisfaction with my current projects.  I got out the Caribbean hand dyes and paired them with white and viola!  Beautiful ocean colors that just make me happy, happy, happy!

And they pair so well with these beautiful greys that are so popular and readily available right now. 

Another project I am working on was going to be a blog post.  I will share it briefly here, but there will be more in the future.

Hexies!  I took this class on a whim at my guild's annual quilt academy and had no idea how utterly addictive these are.  

The other thing I am working on is my monochrome challenge for Art Quilts Around the World.  It will be revealed on the blog tomorrow and I will post here after that.  Stay tuned...

How does my stuff differ from others?  Probably because of my utter fearlessness to go where others fear to tread.  I mix traditional with contemporary with experimental.  I love to try new things and incorporate them into old things.

Why do I create what I do?  Simple.  It's cheaper than therapy.  I prefer to make stuff.  The alternative?  Ax murderer?

How does my writing process work?  This is a tough one.  I am a writer by trade and training.  I love to write.  Sometimes I include poems and short stories on my blog.  I would include food, but I fear it would take over.  I made a decision when I started this blog that I would focus on fiber and visual art, so adding some photography is ok.  I will save the food for another forum.  

Now thanks to Beth, I have given up more personal information than I am really comfortable with. I am trying to be a better blogger, but I have teens living with me and I would rather make stuff than write about it right now.  I have a couple of posts drafted, so I expect to improve.  Now I have to dress in my mother-of-the-teen clothes and go to back to school night.  -back soon!

Time for a New Palette

 I've been using these colors and fabrics for a couple of years now.  I still don't have enough blocks for the quilt I was picturing in my mind, but I was very dissatisfied with this last block.

Mine is the one in the middle row, one over from the right.

It's a nice block.  But it doesn't make me go, "yeah!"

So I put all the blocks from this group up on my little wall and took this photo.  They're nice.  But they don't make me go, "Wow!" anymore.  I think I'm just tired of the fabrics.  I do love them, but I need something new.  So I folded them up and put them and all the corresponding fabrics on a shelf and got out some new stuff.

Stricker's Pond, Madison, Wisconsin

Early July, 2014

My daughter took this pic of me in front of the sunset over Stricker's Pond a couple of nights ago.

I thought it was a good way to say goodbye for a while to those fabrics that I love.  I'll go back to them sometime, but I need to give them a rest.

Next post:  some new colors!

Traditional Piecing (Traditional for Me, Anyway)

I have rejoined my First Thursday Piecers' group.  We're doing some pretty traditional style blocks this year -- so I've challenged myself to make two of each and then make them each really different.    I also decided to dig into my Laurel Burch stash -- the colors go so well with my hand-dyes.

There are only three blocks in this photo.  Can you tell which are the same? -- Don't count the little Lemoyne stars.

I also got out my copy of Marsha McCloskey's Feathered Stars I -- it took me a couple of tries to get just the right sized star for the center.

I drew it in EQ7 first to get the colors on the feathers right.

I've been working on it for a couple of weeks -- a little at a time.

And it's finally finished!

I'm linking up with Judy at Design Wall Monday for the first time in a while!

It's Coming Along

My design wall has almost an entire quilt on it!  I finished with the *&#$@!!! sashing.  What a pain -- bias edges and I had to be careful to get the colors in the right places.

Still not sure about the block placement.  I think it's because I don't like all the blocks.  There are at least two, and maybe even three, that I really don't like anymore.  But I'm going to leave them in there.

I worked up a couple more feathered stars in EQ7.  I think Beth is right and they are maybe too much for this quilt.

But I could get rid of at least one of the blocks that I'm not liking.  Of course, I have to make the feathered stars out of fabric first...

To see other design walls, click here to go to Judy's blog.

November BOM Report

Last week, my  2011 BOM group met and showed these blocks.  The ones on the right are last month's and the one on the left is this month.  I did not do this block because I've been working on the sashing for this quilt -- I'll have a photo of the progress on that on the Monday Design Wall post.

This beauty was shown last month, but I didn't have permission to post it.  Ellyn kindly gave me permission when I remembered to ask.  She shrunk the blocks from 12 inches to nine inches -- a math feat that boggles the mind  for some of these blocks.  And she added just a wee bit of red in each block.  The log cabin setting blocks were her own invention.  I especially like the little grey squares she added in the border.

I have a little dilemma... I need one more block for mine.  Should I do a "54 45 or Fight?"  I've always wanted to do one of these blocks.

Or should I do a feathered star?  I love this block and I just can't imagine doing a sampler quilt without at least one.  Or do both and put one on the back... Hmmmmm...

Pieceful Tigers is Finished!

"Pieceful Tigers"

64" x 64"

This quilt is adapted from "Pieceful Nights: A Sampler Quilt" by Lori Smith.  I swapped out the center star for a double feathered star from Feathered Star Quilt Blocks I: Really Hard Blocks That Take a Long Time to Make by Marsha McCloskey.

I think that the feathered star is the most beautiful of all the traditional blocks.  And they're not that hard -- at least not after you make a bunch of them.  Marsha's book is really good -- there are all kinds of tips and tricks that make them, well, if not easy, at least not terribly difficult.

I had this tiger fabric and wanted to showcase it in an unusual way, so I made templates for a lot of the blocks and used Paula Nadelstern's techniques for puzzle blocks to make many of the blocks appear different than if I had just rotary cut and pieced them.  I challenged myself to use some of this fabric in each block.

It will be displayed along with all of the other quilts from the 2009 machine piecers group that meets at Mill House Quilts in a special exhibit at Quilt Expo in Madison, Wisconsin on September 9th through the 11th.  It will also be in an exhibit October 29th and 30th at the St. John's Piecemakers Quilt Club in Waunakee, Wisconsin.

Oh -- and just for the record -- I know that "pieceful" is not how it is spelled.

Quilting the Feathered Star

I had to get going on this -- it's going to be in a couple of shows as part of a group exhibit soon and it always takes longer than expected to finish anything.

I've been procrastinating -- hoping it would magically quilt itself.  Not because I don't like quilting -- as much as I like complicated piecing, I like quilting better.  Sometimes.  Because this is going to be a "show quilt" and  is a pretty traditional quilt, there are more "rules."  I don't want the quilt show police coming down on the others in the group for letting me in the show.  Let them get mad at someone else.

I outlined the tigers in the center and did a curved bit around all the star "feathers."


I was going to quilt free-form feathers in all that space around the center star.  So I got into EQ7 and played around with stencils and even printed some out -- but they didn't look right with all the spiky pieced feathers and tiger motifs.

I wound up tracing the space on parchment paper and doing a sort of spiky leaf and vine.  I used chalk to draw the spine of the vine on the quilt so I would have a guide.




I did the quilting much more densely than the drawing -- I was going for a MacTavishy-spiky-viney look.  It was very hard to photograph thin (50 wt) black thread on the black fabric.



Those threads are waiting for me to bury them -- I'm not crazy about doing it, but the quilt will look so much better with those ends buried rather than cut.

Then I went back and did a leafy vine thing in the area around the outer star.  Now I have to figure out what to do with the rest.  The post that shows the whole top is here.  I'm open to suggestions!

Online Quilt Festival!

Amy's Creative Side is hosting another online quilt festival!

My entry is "Jungle Star."  It is the first feathered star quilt I ever made.  It was the first of my quilts to win a ribbon -- 3rd place in the Sun Prairie Heritage Quilt Show for mixed techniques - pieced and appliquéd and quilted on a home sewing machine.  It was also displayed at Olbrich Gardens in the fall festival the next year.

I thought that the squares in the center of each star looked a little harsh, so I appliquéd  (needle-turn) some more of each design over the edges to continue the picture out into the star.

For a look at other quilts in the show click here or on the Blogger's Quilt Festival button on the right side of this blog.

Pieceful Tigers

This is on my design wall today:

The newest tiger quilt and a piece I painted in a class with Judy Coates Perez last year at Festival in Chicago. One doesn't have anything to do with the other, they both just happen to be up there.

The tiger quilt is one I'm doing with a group that meets once a month -- I have been meeting with these ladies for several years, since back when all I did was traditional quilts. One year, we did feathered star quilts from Really Hard Blocks That Take a Long Time to Make by Marsha McCloskey. I think that feathered stars are the most beautiful of the traditional blocks and I love the challenge of trying to piece all those feathers.

If you look at the pattern, Pieceful Nights, by Lori Smith, you will notice that there is no feathered star. This is because I don't like to follow directions. Also, I like the feathered star better than the block in the pattern. This quilt, assuming I finish it in time, will be part of a special exhibit in a couple of shows this year. I'll post about that when I have more information.

This bamboo fabric was going to be the inner border on the tiger quilt. I couldn't find exactly what I wanted, so I dyed this to go with the project.

The reason I started dyeing and painting on fabric was because when I started quilting, I could never find exactly what I wanted. Then it became more than just a means to the end -- I found that I loved putting colors on fabrics so much that I forgot about actually using the fabric. It's more fun to "make" it.

I didn't like this fabric in the inner border -- too busy -- so I will probably use it for the outer border. Or maybe something else...

This is what happens when you fussy-cut using templates for thirteen blocks.

Fabric in a state of "holeyness." As Paula Nadelstern wrote in Kaleidoscope Quilts, "Fussy-cutting lots of identical patches means you'll end up with a holey fabric. Do yourself a favor and don't show it to those nonquilters you live with. It's not to your advantage."

My DH had entered my lair to assist in shelf-building and saw this fabric, "You're going to throw that away, aren't you?

"No!" I said. "There's lots of good fabric here." And there was (is). I cut pieces for several blocks after he left.