Terra Cotta Flowers

I have finished the second of the rust-dyed pieces. My plan was to take it to our guild meeting this evening, but am fighting a cold so it will have to wait until another time.

I am giving this to my friend Anita and she will display it at the Pensacola Quilt Show in a couple of weeks. Hopefully it will help to advertise the rust dyes that she will be selling in her vendor booth…..and it might even sell too…who knows.

Tomorrow I am off to the North Georgia Mountains to teach a one day Machine Quilting Class at the Misty Mountain Quilter’s Guild retreat. I taught last year as well and am truly looking forward to seeing all of the wonderful quilters again.

Hope you are having a great quilting week!!!!!

Keeping Amber Warm

This year it was a rush to finish a queen size quilt to be given to my Son’s girlfriend….Amber. It was VERY exciting that they announced their engagement just a few hours before she opened the gift!!!!

Here she is opening the bag…..can you see her behind all of the paper???

Her first words were….”OHH it’s teal!!”

Here is the finished quilt……

I had intended to do a lot of fancy quilting on this, but ran out of time and ended up just quilting it with lots of straight lines (using the walking foot). In the end, I kind of like this simplicity!!

If you remember several months ago, I posted about the backing to this quilt. I originally tried using 10 inch squares of miscellaneous fabrics, but it really looked BAD!!! So, I decided to dig thru scraps and other fabrics and re-make the back. One of my friends saw this side first and thought that it was the actual quilt…..it is kind of fun!!!

The binding used scrap strips that I had cut earlier this year, so I managed to make the entire quilt WITHOUT having to buy any fabrics!!!!!

It was fun to think about Amber while I was making this quilt and I am thrilled that she was excited to receive it!!

Bali-Pop, Bali-Pop, Oh-lali Bali-Pop!!!

Today I was able to finish up the second of projects for the week…..this time a lap quilt for a wedding present. As I mentioned when I showed the beginning of this quilt, it was made from two sets of Bali-Pops.

It is a very simple design using the 2-1/2 inch strips found in the Bali pops. Although I was really excited about these batiks when I purchased them, I found that making a quilt completely of batiks is kind of boring. Having said that, I am pleased with the final results and hope that it will be a blessing to this young couple.

Today I worked on the third of my projects, but it wont be finished for a couple of weeks. I found out this morning that I am going to have to make a trip to Texas to attend a funeral so will be out of the quilting loop for most of next week. Right now I am desperately trying to think of something to take to work on….at times like this I wish that I did more handwork!!!!

Now onto the decoration of the day…….

When I was six years old, I began taking piano lessons from the High School girl who lived next door to me.
I was the first student that she had ever taught and Susan proved to be a wonderful teacher. She gave this little book as a Christmas present the first year that I was with her. It is called “Miss Flora McFlimsey’s Christmas Eve” and was one of Susan’s favorite Christmas books. I have enjoyed it over the years and, as with many of these decorations, I think of her when I set it out.

Friendship Tree

In 2007, I had the opportunity to attend the International Quilt Festival in Houston. One of the purchases that I made was the book, “Hand Applique By Machine”, written by Beth Ferrier.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t had time to spend learning the technique, so I decided that this was the week to do it!!

So, I found a simple project and started to learn. Beth teaches a method to use freezer paper patterns and then use a water soluble glue stick to turn the fabric edges over the paper. You sew the pieces to the background using a tiny, tiny blanket stitch and monofilament thread.

I had always wondered about using a glue stick because I couldn’t figure out how you would remove the paper. BUT, Beth has the easy solution……you simply place a wet rag over the back of the piece and let the glue soften slightly. You can then cut out the back fabric and remove the paper.

I am glad to have learned this technique and hopefully I can use it in my next quilt. Here is the finished piece……

And…..JUST A REMINDER…..you still have two days to join in the giveaway…..Go to the 101st post and leave a comment.

A VERY different quilt

This week I finished up a small project that had been in my mind for a few weeks, and one which is a very different style for me.

Back in August, my friend Deb H. and I spent a day doing glue resist dyeing. Here is the original post. One of the pieces that I created was a simple vase of flowers and I knew almost immediately what I wanted to do with it.

The first step was to add some embroidery to the background. I used examples from a fairly recent article in Quilting Arts Magazine. The only difference was that the examples there used nice quality variegated threads and all I had were some cheap ones that I had bought some time back. But, I persevered and came up with a fairly nice background.

I felt that the vase and flowers needed to be highlighted too, so I trapuntoed them with 2 extra layers of batting.

I am NOT a paisley person, but this old fabric from my stash called to me and so I succumbed and used it as the final border.

The quilting was fairly straight forward, and I was happy to complete the quilt so quickly.

I took it to my local charity bee and, while showing them the finished product, realized that I didn’t like it because several of the threads were too light in color and the detracted from the background. So, while we were looking at another member’s quilt where she had painted many of the designs, I thought about using fabric pens and coloring over the “too bright” threads.

Voila …..I like it MUCH better now.