Quilting Together in Port Clinton

It's a tough life, but somebody has to do it! This weekend was spent learning from Pat Pauly and quilting with friends. If that was not enough fun. I stayed with my friend and host Sandy Erwin at Our Sunset Place. The winds where brisk and the lake too rough for my hubby to throw out a fishing line, but it was gorgeous as expected. Imagine eating breakfast during summer and watching sunsets from that deck; and at the end of the day being lulled to sleep by the sound of the waves. On yeah!

The view from the window (too cold on the deck).

First task for our visit was to complete the current Round Robin. I had my border on, but have only appliqued once before. I knew what I wanted, but could not get there. I can do the stitching, but the design had me stumped. Luckily Sandy is not a newbie, and had a book on flowers and applique. She helped me design the flower, which is supposed to be a Lily of the Valley. Personally I think it looks more like a snow drop. Sandy assured me it does not need to be that realistic.  We made the applique patterns from freezer paper, which ended up being good practice for class the next day.

Lily of the Valley applique.

Friday night we attended a lecture with Pat Pauly. It was both fun and interesting and really set the stage for the next day. Everyone was very excited to learn from this talented artist.

This quilt is still a work in progress. I have to determine fabric for the darts on the left side. As we drew the pattern on the freezer paper Pat recommended we put dashes on each side of our patterns so we can put them together correctly. Well I guess I forgot to do that on one side. It made assembly a little tricky as I tried to find the right pattern pieces to mark the missing dashes.  Overall it is going together okay. I have a lot to learn about color and fabric selection. I was not supposed to let the white paper peak through the design. I am sure you all get the idea. Over all I am pleased with how this is turning out, especially considering this was made from scraps I just picked up and tossed in a container. I will finish it before the end of the week and do the quilting too. It is only 2' by 2'. I can handle that.

Big Leaf - pattern by Pat Pauly

My head is full of ideas about how to use the things I learned. The next project  is to use this technique is to make a pattern for the "Christmas Morning" quilt I am to make as part of the Ohio Star Quilt  challenge. I have lots of ideas, but we will see if I can translate those ideas from my brain to the board....Hey...I just realizes my daughters s/o is an artist. Weather permitting they are coming to Ohio for Thanksgiving....hummmm..that gives me an idea.

Next week Jana and I will be back, quilting together. Thanks for checking in.

Enjoying fall colors, then heading north for a workshop with Pat Pauly

This past weekend was a busy one. Jana completed the quilt top she was working on, and I started to quilt it. It's not my favorite thing to do, but this is a small quilt, so it should go quickly (I hope). One fun thing about this project has been finding a different way to use a quilt pattern. Here is a small peak at the quilt...Yes I know it's upside down. She does not care. Hopefully she will be ready for the big reveal in a few weeks.
This is the same pattern I used for my green snowman quilt a few posts back. I also plan to try a holiday table runner. I think it should be fun.

This coming weekend we won't be quilting together. I am heading north to Port Clinton for a Pat Pauly work shop. I think we are making a pattern called big leaf. Very appropriate for this time of the year isn't it? This is the first quilting workshop I have attended and I am looking forward to doing a different kind of quilting together with the Port Clinton Ohio Star Quilt quilters.

I think fall is one of my favorite times of the year. The colors are fantastic and I love staring out my great room windows at the woods. The colors are so inspirational. I have promised myself to do some quilt that reflects the fall splendor. Just not this year, with Bonnie Hunter on the horizon. I do know my limits.

Deer fence guards the entrance to the garden.

One of the quirks of nature is that while some plants are going to sleep others are setting buds for the next year.

Stinking Hellebore sets new leaves and flower buds.

One plant has inspires me to think about planning an art quilt is the Sassafras. Did you know that each tree can have three different shaped  leaves. I love the colors and the form of the leaves. They also display interesting flowers in the spring. I would love to do a four season wall hanging with Sassafras theme.
Four now we are packing the car to head north. Our youngest is at home cat sitting. It should be an interesting weekend. Thanks for checking in.

Sassafras trees

 

 

 

 

Getting Ready for Celtic Solstice - Bonnie Hunter's next Mystery Quilt

When the leaves begin to change and the temperatures drop some think of Thanksgiving, pumpkins, turkey and dressing. For many quilters the coming of fall is met with a different kind of anticipation. Fall is when Bonnie Hunter announces her Mystery Quilt.

This year's quilt will be very exciting. Bonnie traveled to Ireland this year. That trip inspired this quilt, including the colors. I had been secretly hoping she would make an Ireland themed quilt. A bit of Irish blood run through my veins. I am especially excited about this quilt. I must admit that initially the colors did not make me shout out with joy. However as Bonnie says they are partially inspired by the colors of the Irish flag, so I am embracing them.

If you are new to Bonnie Hunter"s Mystery you should give them a try. There is a link on this blog. Just look for the green bear. I plan to follow her color scheme very closely. She provides names and number of paint chips to use as a guide. This year they are Olympic paints. It is very helpful to use the chips when shopping your stash or at the store so you can keep your colors in the same value. I learned this the hard way with my Easy Street quilt. My greens where all over the place, so I lost the pattern in some places. I still love the quilt, but it was a lesson learned. When I did this summers Lazy Sunday I changed the colors a little, but learned to keep the value consistent.

Here are the fabrics I'm starting with. I am sure I will add and subtract a few before the quilt is done.Bonnie uses a variety of fabric patterns in her backgrounds. I am not that brave, plus I don't have the diversity in my light scraps, so I am doing one fabric for my background. It's a Moda Grundge.

I am happy with my blues, no changes expected here.

The greens on the left will probably go. I have another green with small shamrocks to add.

Many of my oranges are a little darker and brighter than the sample. I have another two pieces on the way.

I will most likely edit out the two on the right. I have another yellow on the way.

Moda Grundge-Sugar Cookies-The background

When my new fabrics arrive I will post the remaining selections Then I promised myself to put everything away until the first step is announced on 11/29/2013

My granddaughter, Jana is here for the weekend. Today we did some cutting and tomorrow will be a sewing. We can't post pictures now because she is working on a present for someone. Have no fear her progress will be revealed in a few weeks.
Thanks for checking in and have a great week.

Squares, Squares and more Squares, and a quilt in a day.

After taking off last weekend, I have been sewing like crazy. I ran out of the white fabric for my Christmas quilt border, so could not work on it... My sweet granddaughter is not here this weekend, as her dad is off work. So it's just me and my sewing machine....Oh yeah, the hubby and the cat are here too.

The border fabric came in the mail and the first thing I did was complete my Christmas quilt. A few posts back I showed the pattern that inspired this quilt. I was also inspired by the green snowman fabric. It's from Moda's Aspen Frost collection. It's just cute, cute, cute. My only regret is the red I added. I made a change as the quilt progressed. Initially the small squares where going to a variety of red and green fabrics. I decided I wanted the quilt to be mostly green and white. More precisely I want the green solid and the green and red fabric from Aspen Frost.  If this was a gift I probably would have taken it apart and made it all green and white.. it's just for our home...so... what the heck. It's still cute. I can't wait till it is quilted.

Christmas quilt with Moda snowmen.

details of the snowmen.

I really like this pattern. Initially it it was just two rows, and adding the extra row was just what I needed.. This is an easy pattern and I am sure to make it again. I  think it would make an adorable baby quilt. One row might make a nice table runner. Hum...lots of possibilities.

On to the next project.

Since I had the day to myself I decided to try a new pattern. I have been looking for a simple pattern for a quilt I want to make for a friend. He likes modern clean lines and earth tones. I browsed through my old quilt magazines and this caught my eye. I don't think this color combination is very masculine, but the pattern is modern and the main idea is to have high contrast. I decided to flip the colors. I had everything I needed in my stash. The coolest thing is I made this entire quilt today. I could not believe how easy it was. The pattern is called Early Spring and was designed by Lyn Brown. It is in the Feb/Mar 2013 Quilt Magazine.

I can see why modern quilts are so popular. This went together so quick and it really shows off the fabric. I can see this pattern as a Christmas quilt too. Can you imagine a white back ground with reds and greens, or white and blues? Because of how easy it goes together, it would also make a great charity quilt.

I think I should call this Late Fall instead of early spring. Brown is not a favorite color. However this batik had an subtle, but interesting pattern. I think it set off the rest of the colors, made them pop. I am very happy with how it turned out. All that is left is to send it to my long arm quilter.

Brown Batik for the borders and beige, blues and greens for the contrasting fabrics.

Taking time off to celebrate.

My husband's family has the longevity gene. Last weekend I took a break from sewing to travel across town to a birthday shindig for Eva Contadino, who turned 92. Her cousin Mario Giovanni,  also turned 92. So it was was a festive celebration. My mother-in-law Rena is on the right below. She will be 93 in March.

I am sure they are both thrilled that I am broadcasting their ages across the internet. Don't they look great? They may be  in their 90's, but they are young at heart.

Eva Contadino and Rena Contadino

 It was wonderful to see the cousins. Everyone shared stories of the good ole days and exclaimed all the kids are so grown we could hardly recognize them. Oh where have the years gone?

Quilts for Bambina

I love making baby quilts. Their is such excitement and anticipation for the birth a child. Just think of the  joy that little person will bring to the family. Now I am turning 65 in December, so I am not making any babies (shudder). But I get excited whenever a neighbor or co-worker is expecting. I am in my glory picking that perfect fabric. I sometime make myself a little nuts trying to find just the right fabric, something that represents the parents in some way.

A few months ago I made a quilt for a co-workers daughter. She gave birth to a lovely little girl they named Luna.  All I needed was her favorite colors and the name of her child and I was off to the races picking fabrics illustrating the story Good Night Moon and all kids of fun things that mom liked. I was super excited when I found fabric for the back that had bunnies and bears swing on moons. Too cute!.

Luna's quilt

backing for Luna's quilt

This quilt was fun to design and make. I even quilted it. I think it took me longer to quilt it than it did to piece it. I am beginning to think quilting on a home machine is sort of like exercise. Sometimes you have to do it, but it does not mean it's fun. The piecing... yeah! That is fun.


Having had so much fun with Luna's quilt I was ecstatic when a psychologist at work announced she was expecting a baby girl in February. I found a pattern in Fat Quarterly book called Shape Workshop for Quilters. The pattern name is "Cub Crawl Baby Quilt". This is a square-in-square block with long rectangles. The design is perfect for fancy cutting fabric for the squares, and lots of  room for creativity in the fabric selection. The quilt is 48" by 56". This seems a little big for a baby crib quilt, but perfect for throwing on the floor for baby.

Mom has painted a mural with trees on a wall in the baby room. There will be birds on the branches. When I saw the tree fabrics and the birds that set the tone for the quilt. I then found a companion fabric for the pink forest that had princesses. Just the right touch of pink for the little girl. The last fabric I fell in love with had pink and orange scooters and bugs. So this is no traditional baby quilt, which should be perfect for this thoroughly modern mom to be.

This is the layout of the quilt. At this point it needed to be assembled, which I have done, but have yet to take a picture of it together. You can get the general idea. But I admit it looks even better sewn together. It also looks much nicer when it's not against my basement floor, but that is my "design wall" for now.

Ready to be assembled.

 Oh, and for extra fun I found a wonderful funky fabric for the back. Did I mention there is a lot of Italian heritage on both sides of this baby's family. I was powerless  when I saw this Italian alphabet fabric. I had to purchase it.

The alphabet in Italian.

This will be the backing and I think I'll bind the quilt with a green fabric.. I'm not quilting this one. At least I hope not. I just sent a email to my longer arm quilter. I hope she says send it up. I have some time before the baby shower, but I am excited to see this one quilted. Sandy always does a great job and I am excited to see what she comes up with when she quilts this.

So time to wait, no, time to cut out the fabric for that Christmas lap quilt. I love Christmas quilts too.
And my granddaughters aunt is expecting.....sounds like time to shop the stash. Maybe another baby quilt is on the horizon.
Have a good week.

Satisfaction of a project completed.

It's finally done. Jana has been working on a quilt for a dad since January. She designed the quilt. She decided on red and black, and blocks of Ohio Stars and Friendship stars. I don't know how she managed to keep it a secret from her dad, but she did. This week we got the quilt back from our longarm quilter, we trimmed it up, added the binding and Jana made a label for the quilt. She could hardly wait for her dad to pick her up on his way home from work.

A nice surprise after a long day at work.

This weekend was not without challenges. This was the first time Jana applied binding to a quilt. She was nervous she would ruin the quilt. I assured her she could not, and even I made come goofs along the way. Any problems can be fixed. She used her machine, the needle down function and her walking foot. I did help when she got to the corners so she could have that mitered corner. She was nervous, but it was not long before she got the hang of it and figured out it was actually pretty easy to do.

Miss, "I hate to hand sew...I can't hand sew...I don't want to hand sew"...decided to try giving  hand sewing a try. She wanted to be involved in every part of this quilt. She actually did a nice job. She makes small stitches, but does not have the patience to stick with a project this large.  After about 20 minutes she was done with it. We wanted it completed today, so grandma helped finish the binding. We thought about sewing it down by machine, but I like a hand sewed finish, so Jana agreed, as long as I helped.

"I am getting the hang of it, but still don't really like it"

All done!

Our second project is still a work in progress. Her bear crossing the mountain is becoming a bear of a quilt. I plead temporary insanity since I decided to quilt it on my home machine. Bad decision.

First problem was with the beautiful King Tut variegated I choose for the top.  My machine didn't know what to do with such nice thread and this caused problems. The tension needed to be changed, I also had Coats and Clark in my bobbin, which I learned from my dealer is a no-no. So after days of playing around, and some cussing. I took it to the dealer. They oohed and aah-ed over King Tut and looked pale and shook their heads when they saw my bobbin thread.  New thread for the bobbin solved the problem.

Pretty King Tut thread.

Even though this is  lap quilt size. I struggled with it on my sewing machine. I loved to piece. But quilting on my little home Janome...not so much. I know there are sewing wizards out there who even do full size quilts on their home machine. I hold you in high esteem. I have decided my sanity is more important. Unless it's a place mat or mug rug, I am sending my quilts out.

What's the problem. I can't roll something up and sew a straight line. And it is hard to sew with a budding photographer shooting close ups as you sew. But it is really just me. It is a pain. I get grumpy!

I also could not figure out what to do with this sunset border. I tried some free motion meandering. That was a disaster. I had to take it all out. I also ran out of the "good" bobbin thread. That meant no more using good old King Tut.

We did use the variegated thread to add depth to our bears fur. It actually looks better in person than this picture.

So it is kind of together. It still needs to be trimmed and have the binding added. This quilt won't get a lot of wear and tear, so I am considering no quilting in the sunset border. I am sounding like Jana, but I am afraid I might ruin the quilt.

Time to stop while I'm ahead and the quilt is still presentable.

We've had a long day of sewing. Jana is home with her dad. He is happy with his present. I've folded this quilt up on my sewing table until I can get to the binding. The cat has taken over. I think he is saying that's enough, we are done for the day. Time to rest. I think he knows what he is talking about.

"No I'm not giving it up ..I am resting"

Good idea. I think I'll go to the same... Have a good week all.