Totally , TOTALLY 180 degrees Crafty stuff!

Well I succumb to the sewing urge...........and made trinkets. Yes Trinkets. Crafts!

I'm meeting 2 dear old friends in TO tomorrow for lunch. We used to work together. We watched each others' children grow, and now its a weddings and funerals relationship except for the occasional GIRL'S LUNCHEON. ( YES )

Should be great fun. AND I decided to do the hostess gift thingy. These little change purses were posted on another forum last week and I though I'd make a few. One of my friends has a GD as well as a DD so I had to make four.

The first one took about an hour...........the last one 15 minutes.
Looking forward to tomorrow.

 LOL

PS: 8/14  5pm -Two hours on the road into TO and 2 hours on the road back out......but we had a wonderful time.  ( I'm the "baby" of the group, on the left.)

Update on my Dear Jane Quilt

Back at the end of May I proclaimed to all the world I was going for my Dear Jane Deadline. I had 80 blocks. I now have 107. (missed a few in the photo)

A friend suggested I should put them on the wall ....to haunt me every time I walked past.
Yea Me! Not quite half way but.........

I'm thinking I should start on the border blocks as they are bigger.....................

2 Very Different Quilts for a friend

One of the things that I love about "show and share" at our guild, is the astonishing variety of colour ways that people put together. And the wondrous thing is they are always very different from mine.
My friend has a stash that tends to the playful side. The colours are light. She puts together combinations that are not second nature to what I would do. But that's why everyone's quilts are so different and so beautiful.
So here are two of her quilts. They are both the same pattern, sewn from different fabrics and quilted differently. The first, the greener of the two, she asked for leaves and vines. I placed a leaf roughly in the centre of each block and then vined around them. The backing is a wonderful Fall leaf coloured batik.

 

 

The second, a truly feminine rendition, she asked for geometric. But it called for something a little more feminine, so we agreed on Square Flowers in each block.
 I think she'll be pleased.

Nellie's 7 Shirt Quilt

It is SO NICE to get back to sewing and quilting. After dealing with some issues it took me a few days to get my energy back. Just when I thought I might get sewing again, the weather said I HAD to address the garden and then I HAD to earn some money. Artists never get a break!

Though my friend had given me this quilt top almost 2 weeks ago, I'm astonished myself that I took so long, but its done.
Some lovely materials can be found by scouring thrift stores. These were all first class shirting materials and should make a durable quilt for the gentleman it is intended for.
Because of the material patterns, we decided simple quilting would be best. SID was a little too plain so I moved the stitching lines about 1/4 inch onto the materials. Just enough to make the point and secure the batting.
Such a cute pattern would adapt itself to any materials, of course. I can see it as a crib quilt as well.

PPM Quilt update - Cabin Fever

My initial layout looks great. I've decided to replace that floral intruder with a lovely batik piece.
And here the slippery slope begins. I was trying to restrict myself to using only my charm squares and not cut anything, but oh the possibilities If I do.
I guess I really want a full size quilt and therein lies the problem.
I did come across one solution albeit a bit radical.

Here's the original.

 

This was the intended (by my hosts) layout. Very sweet and I would be happy with it if it weren't for the size. It would be a charming and unusual Baby quilt.

This was my first variation, Sash everything.

 

 

It does add an bit of interest as well, but still too small.
So I increased all the sashing to the width of the white fabric bars. And Voila! A Queen size.

Now the blocks appear to be floating. Nice. HOWEVER, I have to check to see if I have enough material. The white was a remnant.

 

 

Alison's House

I thought I'd go back and include a few pieces that were constructed while I was incommunicado with the rest of the world. It was lonely working in a vacuum because I wanted to share my frustrations with geometry.
Geometry and Art Quilts? How do they relate.? HA!
My sister asked me to make a hanging of her daughter's new eclectic house as a Christmas present. It used to be a restaurant and had a kitschy accent. A waterwheel. No river..no water within 10km, but a waterwheel.

 



Once you get past THAT, you realize they have a beautiful fieldstone house. It was irresistible.
My niece sent along a few photos to work from.

Laying out the whole scene is necessary to get the perspective right even if you don't use the whole thing. I've learned to add at least 2 inches all around anything I make so when trimming time comes there is enough to work from..

Now that pesky little water wheel didn't just happen.. It may be a perfect circle but its on an angle. There aren't many drawing tools or for that matter quilting tools to help. By trial and error I came up with an oval that fit the size and angle I wanted.

 

And because the wheel is made of wood it had to be squared off and cut up into little pieces.

                                                                                 Twice.!

(It was really rather fun working with tweezers and tiny pieces.)

 

The stone work and the siding were a matter of choosing appropriately patterned material that made putting in the accents an enjoyable task. I did take some liberties with the garden aspect. Mowed the lawn and put in some flowers.

 

I'm hoping I can visit my niece and her family in her charming new home. I think I'll take my camera and see what else this old piece of Canadianna has to offer.

I posted this picture of her home on another board and an American woman, who vacations in her area says she knows exactly where the house is and passes it every summer. Small world Alison!.



 

 

 



New Year - New Site

I feel like its been ages since I was able to "put anything OUT there". I hadn't realized what a cathartic affect writing things down had and how it helped me to clarify direction and process. I fear my old blog is going to go silently into the netherworld and never be resurrected. (Even old IT guys drift into the ether of their own minds and never return.)
I was astonished, after my Wordpress account died, by the number of emails I received or inquires I received form members of other boards. A lot of people are lurkers and have no idea how much a comment or acknowledgement brightens our day. SO if that applies to you, drop me a comment and do the same for other blogs you follow.

 

So let me start the year 2014 with the belated wedding quilt I made for my stepdaughter and her (drop-dead gorgeous Germanic hunk) husband Olaf.

 

I think Arwynn had been reticent to accept or give me the okay to make her a quilt as a gift. Whether she thought she'd be stuck with something hokey or worse. As a graphic artist in her own right, the design was important to her and I appreciate that she insisted they be in on the design from the beginning. I finally got approval almost a year after her wedding for the design above, a take on a Mondrian painting. (We were able to see a number of his originals in Basel Switz. and were surprised at the "slap dash" nature of the canvases). Arwynn had selected her colour scheme, similar to her wedding colours or Lime green and Teal. And batiks were a non brainer. A few hand dyed ( no not by me "dye-version") fat quarters thrown in and two batches of jelly rolls and we were away to the design table.

 

 

 I knew I had enough fabrics but the trick was ti use them effectively. Some pieces were larger than others so I had to make a few compromises to get pieces large enough. That was one of the reasons I opted to make a couple of patchwork pieces. They gave some relief from the sold blocks, added little shots of subtle colour and added some action and life to the design.

 

 Though the actual quilt went together quite easily, if I discount a few false starts on inset pieces and y-corners, the challenge for me was to minimize the seams in the background fabric. I actually ordered two complete batches of background fabric. After the first arrived, I decide it was too busy for the front and consequently I used it as the backing.
But how to quilt this cost me a few nights sleep. I finally went back to Costa Rica, where the wedding had been. Referencing the colours I decided to reference the flora and fauna for the design. Totally extraneous from the quilt design, I layered it over the severe graphic.

My quilting frame gives me only an effective design area 18 inches high. All the motifs were much larger. I considered drawing them on the front but I live in fear of the marks never coming out. My solution was to "stitch" the major parts of the foliage using a needle and thread in a running stitch in  contrasting colour. This allowed me to move the quilt back and forth on the frame (after machine basting the WHOLE thing first) and follow my thread lines.

 

 

The results were really very good and I know I will use that method again. I have been unwilling to make such large designs on my quilts as well as customer quilts because I knew I would lose my frame of reference.

So Arwynn and Olaf finally have their wedding quilt, a year late. But I think she was very pleased and the dog will sleep on the floor.