a sad sad day

my fabrics have SAD! the assignment was to create fabric with two fabrics you loved - a light and dark. this was my second selection. Nancy came by and asked if I was conservative? possibly, I don't think so. am I?
my fabrics did look sad but after some consideration I blame the 3 feet of snow on the ground last winter. that's when I collected my fabrics. any colour looked good at the time. so my fabrics suffer from Seasonal Affect Disorder. anybody on this side of the 49th parallel can relate.






this sad attempt at a dramatic piece didn't even survive the wall.

update on convergence

I made some progress on my convergence quilt. The focus fabric is a lovely floral print of zinnias designed by Valori Wells. I have 2 of the books she has written with her mother - Jean Wells. I like them because they have delightful pictures of gardens & flowers as well as quilts and descriptions of their design process.
One of their quilts features paper pieced arcs by Karen Stone's New York Beauties joined to represent flowers. I used just one quarter circle as the sun in the corner on my quilt. The batik has a good mix of the colours in the convergence as well as some brown for the earth. The green is repeated in the opposite corner. The next step will be a combination of fussy cut zinnias from the fabric as well as some silk flower petals under tulle. Just need to decide on foliage.

half way there

I settled on 2 fabrics for sashing & setting blocks for this quilt and a third reddish fabric for the narrow border. I'm quite pleased with how it is looking.

the rest of the blocks

These blocks whipped together in no time at all. and the variety is great.
You know when the cutting and sewing are accurate when the little slivers of colour on the seams are all the same. not bad Eh?!
I found a few playmates in the stash. The small print will probably end up as binding.

large scale fabric

I love that large scale fabrics are now readily available but it can be hard to decide what to do with them.Weekes Ringle discusses these challenges on Whipup. I bought what seems like miles but is about 5 metres of this floral for under $10. It has wonderful dusty greyed colours that I don't usually buy.
I did the Stack'n Whack technique like everyone else a few years back. It lingers in the UFO category. A much easier way is to cut 4 repeats of the fabric, stack and cut into square blocks.You still get lots of variety and options and wonderful movement in the blocks at a fraction of the work. This fabric has repeat of just under 24". My cut blocks are 5 & 1/2" square, making the pieced block 10 & 1/2" unfinished. I love the blocks. Some have more ground fabric that cuts the busyiness. I am going to look for a grey mustardy yellow for setting corners and one of the other colours for sashing. The conventional borders would be the uncut fabric but I want something in the same colour family but from a different line of fabric.

fast fix for quilters

Moda has come out with wonderful collections of precision cut squares or as Wendy at Quilter's Cupboard says 'fast food for quilters'. All ready to go & sew.Hey, that's kind of catchy!
I'm not a big kit person. I've never bought a kit for its designed purpose. I have picked up the odd kit on sale for the individual contents only. BUT....
this I couldn't resist ... a delicious collection designed by April Cornell of stripes, polka dots, large scale botanical, small vintage motifs all in a fresh colour pallette of coral, teal, olive green and chocolate brown.
So what to do with them? They would look wonderful just sewn together with narrow borders but that's not my style.
To me one of the pleasures of buying fabric is bringing it home & introducing its cousins already in the stash. I've pulled fabrics for many quilts that I have no intention of actually making. Just an exercise in playing with fabric. This is especially fun and easy to do now that my fabrics are organized in the closet. This also helps me evaluate the stash. I don't have any great browns to go with these squares. I'll pick a brown for the border and the dark stripe for the binding.

I did pick the pattern before these fabrics. A modern pallette needs a modern pattern and obviously something that starts with squares. I settled on The Spin from Karla Alexander's book New Cuts for New Quilts More ways to Stack the Deck.
These are just sample blocks to work out the measurements but you can see how the square is surrounded with the other pieces that are stacked & cut. The squares end up in alternating directions to make the spin.
Now go & sew!

finished in 1 day!!

A record has been set. I started and FINISHED this wallhanging TODAY. (insert roaring crowd here)

The turquoise and black are actually 3D tucks that stand out from the background fabric by Paula Nadelstern. The tucks are then folded to form the wave of black across the piece. This is a technique by Caryl Byer Fallert called High Tech Tucks. It was featured in Fons & Porter magazine Sept/Oct 06.

It is sewn onto the batting to prevent any linger UFO labels.

Joyce's tent sale

I bought a few fabrics at Joyce's this week. I don't usually go for cutsey stuff but I like the rooster prints. I think I will use them for a wandering-style book for a round robin in Sept. I have 2 cross-stitched roosters that will never be the pillows they were intended to be!!



The other 2 fabrics are pots of flowers that have a very French feel to them. No idea what to do with them!!

Kaffe Fassett

I heard Kaffe Fassett speak years ago at the wonderful site of my graduation- Convocation Hall at UofT. I think it was before he started quilting. He talked about colour & inspiration. He finished by having people who had knitted his kits or in his style on stage with him. Now he has turned into a brand for many different mediums -fabric, tile, yarn.
I have his book Passionate Patchwork. I haven't found any local quilt shops that carry his fabrics -so that was on my shopping list in Chicago.
I bought 4 bundles of fat quarters- 24 in total. I love the colours & the variety of scale in the prints. I don't know if I'm going to do something specific with them or if they will join the stash to play!!