business cards

For me there will always be things that say I am a grown-up. The first was keys- maybe it was growing up in a house that didn't even have a lock - but having my own set of keys was a very big deal. Then it was business cards- I still think its cool when I give out my business card & I do it many times each day. Now I have these!!!


Business cards sounds too formal and stuffy for these lovely new cards I had made recently. They are called Moo cards and are about half the size of a regular business card. about the size of a piece of gum, Juicy fruit gum. Juicy cards? fun cards? play cards? contact cards? PLEASE VISIT MY BLOG CARDS?!!
The photos are from various projects I've done - you pick the photos you want printed from your Flickr album and the back has up to 6 lines for printed information.
Next thing you know I will be sitting in a coffee shop working on my laptop!!

update on sunset

10 days away from the sewing room and I did about 2 hours of hand sewing on this sunset. I didn't have enough variety in the yarns I took. I am happy with how it is looking especially the bottom part. still needs lots of work. Here is the inspirational piece.

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.

I've been published!!!

Yup you heard right. I've been published or rather my ATC's in Quilting Arts newest book 1000 ATC's. I'm waiting on my copy from Chapters. Its here!! My ATc's are #'s 452 & 455. It was originally a machine embroidered design that came with my Husky D1. It was just hanging around so I hacked it up for the ATC's. They are much brighter in colour IRL. Like others I am disappointed in the quality of the colour reproductions in the book but it is still cool to see my name & stuff in a book!

I think this is my 100th post too. I started just over a year ago and want to post every single day!

I *heart* zine

I've decided to join a zine swap organized by Alma Stoller. The topic has to be about a craft or art - shall I pick quilting or quilting?! But I really need to narrow it so it has a focused theme. I'm thinking of creating texture with thread for journal quilts. I've never made a zine before but I always have words swirling in my head when I'm working on something so this will give me an opportunity to get them out into the world!!

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.

fabric book part 3

These are the pages Lenna made for my fabric book. I like the dark page - a garden at night.

my fabric book

The theme I choose for my fabric book was 'In my Garden'. I used tea towels I had embroidered as a kid for the covers. I've had these for decades and wanted to use them for something. The front cover is carrots & the back inside is peppers.
My first page was made to represent gardens I had visited in Paris. Wonderful flower beds surrounded by grass paths. When I stepped into the bed to see some flowers close up I was quickly told not to step in the flower beds by a local guard. welcome to Paris!! but I quickly got over it and on other visits we found a park where we could actually sit on the grass!

fabric book part 2

Chris had a theme of Japan for her fabric book. I took photos of some beautiful bonsai we saw in a garden next to Villa Carlotta on Lake Como in Italy last year. I transferred a photocopy of the photo onto contact paper and used some free machine embroidery designs to finish the pages.

inside the garden gates fabric page

Chris's theme for her fabric book was inside the garden gate. The gate is machine stitched on gray organza and is supported by stone walls.
behind the gate is a formal garden with the urn stamped & embossed on paper. some thread painting on the topiary for dimension.
the back page is silk flower petals attached to resemble hydrangea.

another tuck

This is the third high tech tuck I've finished. I think this is my favourite especially in vertical rather than landscape orientation. Reminds me of a Carribean holiday!

I think the next tuck I make will be on a different scale. I have a fabric with large swirls of orange & greens that I want to use. After that I am all tuckered out!

class tote

This tote goes with me to any quilt related function. Classes being taken or taught. Usually crammed full of supplies. It is harder packing for a quilting class than a vacation. It has a wonderful section that zippers open with elastic loops for threads & pens & seam rippers & all those bits we need. I've yet to use it that way. I'm a tosser- in it goes but one day I'll be that organized!!
It is from a free pattern on Embroidery library projects.

I always get compliments when I use it.

fabric book part 1

I participated in a round robin fabric book with some lovely women from a group called Fabric-olics. I'm so glad I have photos of the pages I made & sent along.
The first one I received was from Lenna. Lenna has a wonderful website full of art & personal stories. The theme of her book was My Secret Lake in the shape of the lake where she & her husband now make their home. Lenna hosts and participates in many round robins & exchanges. She is making a quiltie a week for this entire year for herself and her husband.
My page for Lenna's book has a cover of vellum through which you can see the fish in the lake. Rainbow trout of course because I have one of my Dad's mounted fish watching over me everyday in my sewing room.

The rainbow trout fish are embellished with metallic thread sewn on from the bobbin and the back is some more funky fish.

sunset background

all ready for hand stitching. This is a piece of the wool felt from the scarf I'm making. Little bits of wool roving and silk felted down. I forgot how luxurious silk rovings are. Some of the yarns ready to stitch a sunset. Or it could be a sunrise!

its a charming life

all thing small have taken over the swapping community. Inchies from paper and fabric charms. I need to get mine out soon. used the new toy to felt some yarns & wool roving to felt.Then free motion machine embroidery with variegated thread. The leaves are from felted organza then ironed to flatten.
The charms are about 1" wide & 1 &1/2" long with an eyelet. theme was Mother Nature & colours were blue,greens &sepia.

variegated

what is it about variegated stuff - thread, floss ,yarn that is so attractive?
these are DMC embroidery floss I bought at Michael's to do some hand work when I will be separated from my beloved sewing machine! I haven't done cross-stitch in years. I still have 2 beautiful roosters done languishing in the UFO box.
Its been eons since I've done any work by hand. I even resist finishing bindings by hand. I am interested in the following TAST has generated and my favourite magazine is Stitch by the Embroiderers' Guild in the UK. I recently saw it at a Chapters store but I get it when I'm in Northern Ireland because a special lady gets the magazine for me the day it hits the bookstores.
So its time I actually did some handwork again.
I'm thinking of something like this. the background is felted and then has stitching. I'll keep ya posted!

Northcott Quilting Marathon

Northcott fabrics has supported breast cancer research and support systems for many years. This year over 3000 blocks were submitted. The president of Twisted Stitcher's Guild won an honourable mention in applique & is going for the win this year. Some of those blocks are in 2 beautiful quilt tops at Quilter's Cupboard in Uxbridge. They will be sandwiched & up in frames for hand quilting March 30 & 31. There are similar Marathons those days at many quilt shops around the country so check it out. The sameprogram in running in 2007.

Dad went fishing wallhanging

Dad went fishing wallhanging
Originally uploaded by Creative gleanings.

wallhanging

wallhanging
Originally uploaded by Creative gleanings.

a new quilt shop

You know you are a true fabric-olic when going to a new quilt store is more exciting than going to a great mall. Cock-a-doodle quilts is not very far from Yorkdale and is next door to The Door Store and Elte.
It is a very nice store, nice variety of fabric- reasonable priced, books, some threads, bright spaceous classroom and friendly staff. My favourite part was what was missing-the crowded feeling of many quilt stores. I liked that there was space to breath and view the fabrics from a reasonable distance.

another one bites the dust

yup another UFO is done! I can't get over how fast machine quilting goes once the right needle, thread, tension etc is sorted out!
A little wallhanging from a pattern by Mary Sorensen.

expressions

I haven't really played with my new machine that much. Here is my first real attempt at a scarf. The base in 100% wool felt. It is absolutely divine to feel and costs about 10 times more than the poly stuff. I rescued one of the scarf kits for myself and along with dyed wool from Wales have started machine needle felting. You can see on the blue felt the tiny bits of yarn that have been punched through to the back.
I've separated sections of the wool to spread out over the yarns. I'm happy with the start but need to 'take it to the next level'.

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.

another high teck tucks

a second sample to show the guild next week. The first one is here. I'll be teaching this twice, once at a quilt shop and then to the guild. The border fabric is slightly different than the tuck fabric- I used inadventently used it for something else. The bind is the same as the background. THe binding is done completely by machine but I think I may go back to a hand sewn binding - give the best finished binding IMHO.

blocks are done

the other half of the blocks are done, pressed & auditioning for placement. I like the movement in the quilt now with the squares going in both directions. I will have to go shopping for border fabrics & will probably get one of the large scale floral prints for the back.

half time stretch

Is there anything better than waving a flag of pieced blocks on the way to the ironing board?
Yup! getting those freshly pressed blocks up on the design wall to get a feel for what the finished quilt will look like!
Half of the blocks using the Moda squares.The other half will face the opposite diection. I love this fabric!

delicious fibers

I put together a group of kits to make scarves. Yummy yarns and a variety of colour combos. I did demos Thursday night and Friday morning at Quilter's Cupboard in Uxbridge. Its a wonderful quilt shop with fabric tucked everywhere and best of all a wonderful group of people working & shopping there. Lots of laughs and a few tears too.
The drive there brought back great memories of when I started my first real job after graduating from university. Now I feel like I'm ready to start my second career.

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.

New Toy

I got a new toy. the Janome Xpression needle felting/embellishing machine. 5 barbed needle basically jab fabric together. Hubby got it for $100 less than the going price so we are both happy!
It appeals to me because I love texture and the gleaner in me saves every little bit of stuff so I can use it all now. can hardly wait to play

fabric collage part 2

The collage is stitched, there were a couple of sections that stand out more than I want but they were eliminated after slicing & dicing. I find, like printed fabric, you really don't know a fabric until you take scissors or a rotary cutter to it.It was easier than I thought to cut it up into 2" squares. Made me realize how small those 1" charms really are.
I like how the squares look on black. Now to figure out what to do with them.