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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…
Sometimes it all comes together and your work gives you a gift. Last night I found myself hand basting the layers of my larger Lily quilt together. The house windows were open, the Delta breeze kicked in-the evening was lovely. Outside I heard the breeze rustling the leaves and the sounds of a train. The air was heavy with the perfume of Sweet Broom and Mock Orange. The pond across the street had a bevy of toads in full chorus. I was alone working so I could fully hear and appreciate all that was going on around me. I’m hand basting this…
The Pine Tree Quilt Guild’s show, “Springtime in the Pines” was just spectacular! It’s about an hour’s drive for me but it was so worth it. It had to be one of their best shows-it seems like I took a hundred photos. They have a vibrant nest of art quilters and there was even a nice selection of tasteful garments.This was the nicest touch: they had a quartet playing both days I was there.Yesterday there was a flute quartet and the day before, a woodwind quintet. I can’t tell you how lovely it was to be viewing the show with their music in…
I tried a different method on my second rayon scarf, hoping to avoid the wrinkles, fading and fraying of my first scarf.I saturated the fabric in undiluted starch and ironed it flat before stitching. This worked beautifully, creating a board of fabric that held the stitches well and kept the fabric from drawing up. The marks you see are the very basic markings I used for placement of the daisies using a heat erasable Frixion pen.By putting the unwashed scarf next to the first one, you can clearly see the dramatic color fade and wrinkling of the first scarf-huge difference!Dang, when…
I also participate in Superior Threads “Superior University“, a monthly project club that highlights different threads or techniques.This month’s project was to make a hedgehog pincushion using their King Tut thread to embellish as desired. It’s just the cutest thing! I decided to embellish mine by using Bernina’s “Tailor Tack” foot #7 to make the fuzzy guys on his back. I really do like my Bernina feet and who but Bernina would make a foot just for tailor tacks? There is a bar in the middle of the foot and you basically zig zag over the bar and that forms the…
April’s project for the Free Motion Quilt Challenge used Don Linn’s method of transferring quilting motifs using tulle as a transfer agent. It worked pretty well except the unavoidable problem when marking-what to mark with. Don’s method uses a Sharpie to trace your desired motif onto a piece of tulle. Once you heat set the tulle, you then place the tulle where you would like the design to be. You transfer the design by tracing over the tulle, using a water soluble marker. Just to keep it simple I used my lily motif as my focal point. I don’t have much tulle lying…
Thursday was a cold, rainy, long-sleeved kind of day here in northern California. I started to head out the door to run errands and at the last minute popped on my Daisy Fill Vest to see if it would work with my jeans and t-shirt. It did! There surely are better choices for the layer underneath the vest, but I think this was a decent combo.I have this problem-truth be told, I don’t always end up actually wearing the clothes I make. I don’t always hit the target-I may not like them after they are made, they may not fit into my normal…