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Studio Art Quilt Associates (SAQA) has selected my quilt “Lily of the Valley” to be one of 106 that will be on display at the SAQA booth at the Houston International Quilt Festival in November! I am so honored and excited that I WILL have a piece hanging in Houston this year after all. I was so bummed when I missed the submittal deadline in June-I assumed that I would not have anything hanging in Houston this year. I decided in January that I was going to see the show. I need to get my nose up to those spectacular quilts to learn…
Sometimes lessons come when you least expect them. In mid-July I’ll be given exactly three minutes to sell my skills to a group of shop owners, guild Program Chairs and others interested in hiring quilting teachers at the Northern California Quilt Council. I’ve been putting off the task of making six giant quilt sandwiches for this venue. I want the audience to be able to see what I teach in my Intro to Fearless Free Motion class from the back of a large room-hence the giant quilt sandwiches. I thought this would be a pretty mindless task, but it has been…
The June tutorial for SewCalGal’s Free Motion Quilting Challenge was provided by Cindy Needham. Cindy asked us to “divide and conquer” by creating a random areas to quilt by meandering a curved line across the surface of our sample. Cindy also provided some great tips for successful free motion quilting. I used cotton sateen, wool batting, various weights of Aurifil thread, as well as Superior King Tut, Rainbow and Silk Kimono threads. Since I recently went to the county fair and was especially taken by some of the youth art, I thought I would create a wholecloth piece with a naive style,…
Very few shows happen in the summer so I was happy to go to the Roseville Quilters Guild’s show. I enjoy their show each year, along with the fair and some Food Not Approved by the American Heart Association. This was the charming greeting as you walked in-it got a chuckle out of me! Poor Little Sunbonnet Sue is walking the chain gang in prison stripes, hanging her head in shame. Guess she won’t touch the quilts again! It was a County Fair after all, so there was plenty of youth art. I love youth art and this happy little watercolor…
I love working with Radiance fabric, a blend of silk and cotton. It can elevate the look of your work to new levels. I adore its rich sheen and luminescence. But, it’s a bit tricky to work with. I’ve experimented with a couple of products to stabilize Radiance. I’ve included photos of each combination but unfortunately some of the photos are not as informative as I’d like them to be-but they’re still pretty! I’ve tried four different ways of working with Radiance: -No stabilizer. -Secured with bits of Misty Fuse placed about 2″ apart. -Stabilized/basted with Misty Fuse. -Stabilized with Pellon Bi-Stretch…
I’ll continue showing the Flutter Motif in this tutorial, but first I want to show it done two ways.Here I have stitched it with Feathers, Bananas and Lazy S’s. I used Radiance fabric, wool batting and Superior 100 wt. Kimono thread on both of the samples.Here it is stitched with just Bananas and Lazy S’s. I am surprised with the results: I like this one better than the one that includes Feathers-who knew? I will illustrate the Flutter Motif here using just the two designs I showed in Part 1 of this tutorial: Bouncing Bananas and Lazy S’s, like the photo…
Several of you have asked how to quilt the Flutter Motif and I promised to post a tutorial on how best to quilt it. I love this motif! This is my first attempt to put on “paper” how to do a motif like this. Let me know if you have questions or if my directions are not clear. By combining two motifs you can get something spectacular-try doodling your own favorite combination!I “fluttered” the central area of my Lily quilt and I really like how it turned out. The blue marker is still in the quilt so that’s why the color is funny…
I missed a deadline, an important one. For the stupidest reason-I had the wrong date! It’s almost amusing how I could do this. I was trying to finish my Lily quilt for submittal to the Houston International Quilt Festival jury pool. Somehow I had the date as June 8th, but it was really May 31st. I KNOW I read June 8th somewhere along the line somewhere, I didn’t just make up that date! Was it last year’s date, was I dreaming? Who knows. For this whole last year, it has been one of my foremost goals. You don’t go around telling…
Marking is fraught with peril, it just is. Marks don’t always come out and marking removes some of the spontaneity of free motion-you have to hit a line instead of going free form-it’s just not my favorite thing to do! But sometimes ya gotta do it. I designed my Lily quilt to include an area of “Dianeshiko”, which requires a grid. I came up with a much better way to mark that grid….I thought. I like to keep my marking lines to a minimum because fewer markings=fewer opportunities for peril. Clever girl that I am (I thought), I’m not going to mark…
The May Free Motion Quilting Challenge at SewCalGal gave us two choices and I chose to use Marble-T Designs fabric and intuitively free motion over the surface of the fabric. When I logged onto their site and saw their exquisitely hand marbled fabric, I knew that I wanted to take that challenge. It’s hard for me to just intuitively free motion over the surface, I’m usually a little more intentional. But I don’t want to always be so intentional!I followed the contours of the marbling and really did do this intuitively. I tried not to stop and ponder too much, just…