A little finish, a little teaching, a new project and more

I’m a little scattered right now. I would love to finish my yellow silk quilt, but I’ve hit a roadblock and I have to make some decisions:

I need to come up with a border design. I think I like this insert between the center and the border, but I’m not sure about that either. Decisions….. I am wanting to get this quilt done!

I forgot to note in last week’s post that I went to the Roseville Quilt, Craft and Sewing Festival. I did not expect to come home with anything because….well, you know, I don’t “need” anything. But this adorable pattern caught my eye:

I am so not a cutesy girl, but this charmed me into buying it. It folds flat but opens up into a bowl. I am not interested in crazy quilting, so I made it up into this simple bowl:

I consider this a prototype. I want to experiment with color and fabric and I also need to perfect the hand stitching that holds it together. As you near the rounded edges, you have to loosen the stitches and there is no template for that, you just kind of have to figure out how loose to make it. It did not take that long, but more time than I expected. I was thinking I would make some of these as gifts for people that help me, but this one took me maybe 5 hrs? That’s just too long for me.

See how it collapses into this? Isn’t that just adorable? I love things that do that. I was thinking if I could figure out how to scale this up or down I could figure out a way to make bowls to hold product when I’m teaching.

I also ran into P. Carter Carpin‘s booth of adorable-ness:

I loved everything in her booth! She has many panels of various sizes, all adorable. And coordinating fabric. I bought several panels, this is one:

Her tagline is “serious whimsy” and it is! I hope to have a moment to quilt this up, just for fun.

I taught twice in the last week and somehow I am almost empty handed for photos. I taught my intro class to the North Wind Quilters Guild in Fairfield, CA. I just love to teach free motion quilting! It was such a talented, open, engaged and friendly guild. Sometimes it really feels like I have been given a gift; everything seems to be stacked in my favor and all I need to do is teach! I wish I had taken photos of the class, sigh.

I also taught my sheers class at Meissner Main last week. Every. Single. Time I teach that class, everyone has fun. And almost every time onea student will bring fabric that was not what I asked for on my supply list and it is fabulous! What do I know?

This class had 4 signed up with one no-show. Another student had to leave early so I didn’t get a photo of her project but it was lovely. Just look at this fun piece by Karen:

It makes me smile to look at it again!

And it kills me that somehow I erased my photo of Yvonne’s piece. She used a textured fabric for her background, which I did not think would work well, and it was fabulous. She also brought this fabric:

She cut out those ruched 3-d roses and added them to her piece and it was so cool! I wish I had the photo. That was a new one on me. I’ve spent a good deal of time online trying to find similar fabric and I came up dry. JoAnn’s does not have fabric like this right now. Perhaps during prom season it might come back. I want a good stash of this type of fabric!

Also, I am starting on a new experiment that I’m excited about:

I created a whole cloth design on a low volume print and will layer sheers on top for color. I don’t have a firm plan, I’m just playing.

My starting palette:

My stash for this project:

Don’t you just love that vibrant color?

Here I am so far:

Honestly, it’s not quite there, a few things are amiss. All that background is currently unquilted; that will add to the story. The chartreuse center needs some help also. I’m a little meh about it right now. I love this idea, just didn’t quite hit the target on the execution. I want to do whole cloth with sheers on a low volume background. It’s a great idea, just needs some honing.

This is the type of project that I will willingly do some ripping on. I have done a good bit already. I tried two different quilting ideas on that background and they were NOT the answer. Sometimes when I really don’t know where I’m going, I will quilt and rip, quilt and rip. I just have to lay down the quilting on the piece to make the judgement.

I’ve been spending a lot of time on my kitchen redo also this week. Even though the project will not commence until next Feb, a lot needs to happen now. We’re meeting with the contractor today. This is the fun part!

I’ll share at:

Nina-Marie’s Off the Wall Friday
and
Finished or Not Friday