Peek-a-Boo!

So, having finished the last of the customer quilts required before Christmas, I started a little patchwork project of my own, hoping to finish in time for Christmas giving. Guess what...regular old patchwork is pretty boring when you have been making nothing but art quilts!  I did enjoy choosing the fabrics.

I decided to use a birthday gift from last June to cut out the squares...a Big Shot die-cutting machine! 

Yes, the very same type that was used to make all the flower applique quilts that I have quilted in the last year.  (And no, I am not planning to make one for myself!)  Mine is the electric version, which means no cranking.  It will cut about eight layers of fabric in each pass. I have a template that makes four different sized squares, one of which was the two-inch size I needed for this project.  After a while, I figured out that I didn't have to cover the whole template, just the part I needed.  I have lots of extra squares cut for other projects now!

It wastes some fabric, but saves some time.  And my wrists...no rotary cutting for all the squares in this project.

So... after a couple days I finally finished piecing the top yesterday.  The pattern was more complicated than I thought.  And when I was all finished, I discovered...

THE MISTAKE.  You know, when you see that you reversed a patchwork block?  And you have to decide...

Do I leave it in as a Humility Block, as the Amish supposedly do?  You know, to show, nobody's perfect?

Or do some "unsewing?"

Can't show the whole quilt yet, but you can see the decision I made.

There is hope of getting this done, cleaning the house, making lasagna, and packing for the Christmas weekend...maybe!

Have you finished making your Christmas gifts?

A Customer Quilt and a Charity Quilt

Here is a rather awkward photo of a quilt on my kitchen table, taken with me standing on a chair.

This is my latest finished customer quilt...yes, another die-cut flower quilt!  This one is in red and cream/white.  The quilt-maker is another student of Martha Armstrong of Zebulon, NC, who has brought me several of these types of quilts with appliques from the Big Shot die-cut machine.

I like the crisp color combination, which looks fresh and clean, although the prints are somewhat old-fashioned floral designs. 

These require 189 trips around the flower shapes to attach them to the quilt, as they are just basted on.  Sometimes the little petal edges flap up when you are progressing from circle to circle, so I quilt basically with my right arm while my left hand is smoothing the petals.

Good bicep exercise, but I am so ready to NOT do another one for awhile!  The backing was a red fabric with white swirls, and again, I felt like the lines of quilting competed somewhat with the lines on the fabric.

Last night my Cyberbee group met and had a wonderful time.  Five of us ate dinner before the meeting at Cafe Caturro in Cameron Village, Raleigh.  I liked the restaurant very much- nice fresh food and not too noisy.  I had a raspberry-walnut salad.

I thought you might like to see an easy group quilt that Martha Bragg showed us.  Each participant cut strips of varying widths.  They made squares with similar-colored fabrics and at least three strips.  Here is the one Martha made, to be donated to our Quilts on Wheels charity.

Sort of a rail fence, no?  Very cheerful!

It was quilted by someone who just got a long-arm, but unfortunately, I did not catch her name.   I still have about nine charity tops to quilt from last year, but got so busy with customer quilts that I fell behind.  That's okay, I think I did thirty charity quilts last year!

A New York Frame of Mind???

Here is the die-cut quilt I finished today for a customer.  Unlike the previous ones I've quilted which all had floral themes, this one is in neutrals with geometric fabrics.  The color scheme reminds me of every New York hotel room I have stayed in.

Since this one did not lend itself to my usual posies and leaves, I decided to add swirly feathers to the border, and follow the circles and ovals of the background print somewhat.

Problem is, I had to use a thread color that blends perfectly with the lines in the background fabric.  So, which tan lines did I already sew, and which are part of the fabric?   Hard to say!

When I was quilting this, it looked very busy.  Sometimes at a distance of eight inches or so, you can't see the forest for the trees.  When you see the whole thing at a more reasonable distance, it looks rather striking.  The black accents really make the fabrics pop.

Just don't spend too much time looking at the back!

Now why is Blogger making all my pictures left-aligned today? 

Spring Meadow quilt

Here is another of the quilts made from the die-cut machines (Big Shot) sold by Stampin-Up rep Martha Armstrong of Zebulon.  Martha must have had a good year...while I am slaving over her quilts, she is off on a cruise to the Bahamas that she earned from Stampin-Up.

This one has a lovely color combination of yellow, blue, and green.  It has a square shape for the outer petals, rather than a third round shape. 

 The flower shapes are just attached to the background fabric with glue stick, so I have to go around each one to attach it to the quilt.

The backing is a bright blue, which really shows off the yellow thread of the quilting.

You can see from the back how I framed each flower with leaves and vines, then went in and out of the flower rings with a wavy freehand circle.

This quilt reminds me very much of the fabrics and colors in a Yellow Brick Road quilt I made when I first got my Gammill.  I call it "My Favorite Things."  The prints have hummingbirds, dragonflies, flowers, an angel or two...

For some real spring pics, here is a shot I was able to get while Mama and Papa Bluebird were out of the box and not guarding it from their usual branch.  There are five babies, although only four beaks show in the picture.

Here are some woodland violets that I photographed in the mountains last weekend after it rained.

And this good fellow was looking rather grumpy and red-eyed after the night of rain. 

And finally, here is a blue salvia that I planted where our driveway forms a "U" going uphill to the cabin.

I am also still working on the online journal class, and hope to have two more pages finished by tonight using paper collage on watercolor backgrounds. 

More "Flower Power"

After I quilted Susan's quilt with "Big Shot" die-cut flowers a couple weeks ago, she showed it to another Stampin'-Up demonstrator, Martha Armstrong of Zebulon, NC. Martha brought me her flower quilt on Tuesday afternoon, and I was able to finish it yesterday evening. And she was here bright and early this morning to pick it up, so she can show it in time for a craft fair on Saturday! Martha has a blog where she features many of her lovely cards and other projects.

Martha also used a "layer cake" collection of 10-inch coordinated squares. I've got to say, I love these fabrics and the way they work together. Martha's fabrics were softer colors than Susan's eye-popping citrus colors.

I quilted it almost the same as Susan's, with lots of flowers, leaves, vines, feathers, and a butterfly or two. The three shapes comprising each flower have to be stitched around in order to attach them to the quilt. I used a wiggly circle that somewhat echoes the scalloped edge of each flower piece. The edges will fray if you choose to wash the quilt, for that soft cottage look.63 flowers x 3 pieces = 189 circular trips around. I upped my price after doing the first one of these!

Martha intends to wash her quilt to achieve the shabby chic look. This morning she told me that she had not pre-washed any of her fabrics, including this almost fire-engine red backing. Uh-oh! I guess you can't really pre-wash the jelly rolls and layer cakes that come pre-cut, or they would fray before you even use them.

I have found that reds tend to bleed more than any other color, and with the white background fabric on the top, I was a little nervous about her washing the quilt. I sent her home with a little Gladware container of Synthrapol, a liquid detergent intended to be used for washing hand-dyed fabric. With that and a Shout Color Catcher sheet, maybe her quilt will not bleed.

She is not going to wash it until after the Craft Fair just to be safe! And she has a handful of my business cards in case she runs into any quilters who want to make a quilt with the Big Shot die cut machine.

When I showed this quilt to my husband Charlie last night, that conservative gentleman informed me that he liked the glowing orange back of the quilt better than the front! Okay, this is a chick quilt, indeed!

Finished Projects

After I finished my post yesterday, my friend Mary came over with some gifts for me. We had cut some branches from my magnolia tree to make wreaths for her craft fair last weekend, and look what she gave me!

This wreath has a straw base. The leaves are sprayed with hair spray. I think it is beautiful! We cut some more branches so she can make more wreaths. She also brought my door prize from the craft fair- look at this lovely purse in fall colors! (The painted artificial gourds were purchased at the Cotton Company in Wake Forest last weekend- aren't they cute?)

And it is on the table that features my finished quilted tablecloth. I am so pleased with this project. Before quilting, the hand-dyed, embroidered fabric would not lie flat, but it makes a perfect table-topper now.

Here is the topper with one corner flipped up to show the back side. It will be reversible- the salmon/yellow batik will be perfect for spring.

I bought two other pieces of dyed vintage linens at the Artistic Artifacts booth last spring during the NC Quilt Symposium. They are destined for quilting, as well!

Not today, though. Another Stampin'-Up demonstrator brought one of the die-cut fabric tops like Susan's for me to quilt. And she wants it fast! So, of course, my thread broke about every eight inches when I started quilting yesterday afternoon. I think I will take another walk, hope for another deer sighting, and then get to work on the quilt.

Flower Power Quilt

How about a trip in time- back to the sixties and seventies! These bright sunny colors and happy flowers remind me of the Flower Power days when I was in college.

I quilted this one for Susan Merrell, who teaches and sells scrapbooking, craft, and stamping supplies. Her website is Stamping Up. The flowers are cut from three different sizes of templates using the Big Shot die cut machine. Susan has a special promotion sale for the Big Shot on her page. Okay, quilters, here is a new toy for your Christmas list!

Susan says she can cut eight layers of fabric at a time. The flower shapes are glue-basted to each other and to the background fabric. These fabrics are from a Layer Cake fabric set from Wish Upon A Quilt in Raleigh. A Layer Cake is a set of coordinated 10-inch fabric squares, usually from the same fabric line.

Of course, I had to secure the glue-basted shapes to the quilt, so I made wavy lines around each tier. The edges are meant to protrude for a dimensional effect.
With all these daisy-type flowers, I of course had to do some flower-power quilting! Lots of petals, leaves, vines, and swirls.

Susan wanted this quilt to be done quickly, and wouldn't you know that I experienced a lot of trouble with my bobbin tension on this project. Finally, I realized that the thread was jumping out of my intermittent tensioner on my Gammill. I fixed that problem by using a different thread-path through the three-hole guide which follows the tension disk. Can you say three hours of "unsewing" for every hour of sewing? They sure go in faster than they come out. The un-sewing procedure is known as "frogging" in the long-arm quilting world. ("Rip-it, rip-it, rip-it!") To top that off, my spool of thread was getting perilously low near the end of the project. But, I "gotter done" in time to enjoy my weekend.

No travel plans this weekend, since we have our annual pig-picking on Saturday. This time we are trying something different, hosting it at North Ridge Country Club instead of here at my house. It is supposed to rain, but we can move indoors easily there---much more so than if we were all trying to fit in my house. My dad is coming down from Boone this afternoon, and I am looking forward to a much more relaxing time than when I am the hostess, trying to have my house and yard all in good shape at the same time. Hard to do when you are a quilter!

One year, with the help of my darling daughter-in-law and her friend Aimee, I even hung quilts from my back deck for a garden party quilt show. I must have had much more energy back then!

Tonight we will have the sauce-making party...my husband Charlie cooks the pig on our own cooker using my brother-in-law Kenny's secret sauce...it's vinegar and tomato-based, but that's all I can tell you!