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.

fabric collage

While going through my stack of Quilting Arts magazine for the billionth time I put in post-its of all the techniques I want to try. Tried a few on Friday. I'm really pleased with the painting with pattern stitches by Carole Redlich (issue 19 fall 2005 pg72) I tried. I prefer to call it fabric collage with my fancy pants sewing machine!
I'm working on a piece about 11" square. may cut it into smaller pieces for a journal quilt or it would be perfect for the fabric charms that have everyones attention at the moment.

look at me sew!!

Yet another UFO bits the dust. Yup another finished piece, another watercolour. my own design with 11 assorted fish.

another UFO done!!!!

I'm on a roll now. After a wonderful lesson on free motion quilting by M at the guild workshop day, I was ready to tackle a real piece. A strip-pieced watercolour wallhanging made oh at least 10 years ago!
Done, Finished, Finito Yah !!!!
for someone plaqued by UFO's it feels great. I had the big box out and have plans for many more UFO's to become WIP and ultimately finished.
what a great start to the year.

2nd finished project

yup two finished in 1 week!! I'f I keep up this rate I may run out of UFO's by, say August!!
I don't really know if I like the binding colour but TOO BAD. its on & is staying on. maybe some blue thread blanket stitch ??

first finished project of 2007

I finished a small journal quilt today January 1, 2007! I hope its a good sign for the year ahead. more finished than unfinished.
It is the opposite of the other which was for a fabric book round robin

Happy New Year

How do you celebrate the New Year? Remember the Old? I like to list all the things I did, I made, planned,place I travelled to, friends I made, letters I wrote or received, special days, meals I ate, new techniques I tried and lessons I learned.
Then I list all the wishes, dreams, desires, plans for the next year.