Day 19 ~ Where I Slept

My wee colourful bed. The quilts on the bed are two of my favourites. The light coloured flannel at the foot was made by my co-workers at the Great American Quilt Factory when I was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2001. The quilt hanging on the wall was made by my friends from the Quilt Mavericks for the same reason. The log cabin quilt in batiks was a Ladies Choice. I chose the block and six wonderful women from an on-line quilt group made 4 blocks each. I pieced them together and my dear friend, Susan Geddes quilted it for me. She quilted the flannel one as well.

15 June - Fan of Quilting

I am a fan of quilting. Today is quilt guild day at the Piecing Partners Quilt Guild.

Be it quilts I have made or quilts made by others, I appreciate them all.

My granny, Virginia Smith Blair was a quilter. I still have 2 of the quilts she made. One is a bible quilt, it was made when I was a wee child. The original wore out and she remade it. It has polyester double knit for some of the applique pieces. There is also a applique dogwood. She was into applique more than piecing. Her's were traditional.

I also own an antique quilt made in South Dakota that I found at a yard sale.

I have made and own both pieced and applique. Mine tend to be arty rather than traditional.

My girly, Rebecca does AMAZING crazy quilts. My friend Luana, owns e-Quilter. Nearly half my friends on Facebook are quilt related.

I like making traditional quilt blocks with a twist. Things like log cabins made from batiks or skewed/wonky traditional blocks.

I also have WIPs and UFOs that are quilt related, piles of them in fact...

Currently on the pile of UFOs are a Steampunk themed, a sheep grazing by a Henge, and a Japanese influenced one about Peace.

Most of my quilts tend to be small, more for the art of them than as a bed cover. I also use unusual embellishments on my quilts, such as nuts and bolts, scrap metal, etc. I use quilting in wearable art as in appliqued shirts, quilted vests and the like.

Where are the pictures you might ask? Well, they are mostly on my external hard drive and not accessible at the moment. If you scroll thru my older posts you'll see some of the ones that I have made and/or own,

Pike's Peak Quilt Show

This past weekend was the first quilt show hosted by the Piecing Partners Quilt Guild of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Here's a picture of me with one of my entries, Stonehenge with Hale-Bopp.

For a first effort, it is a lovely little show. We did a great job and all hands put forth great effort to make it happen. I really enjoyed getting to know some of our members better whilst working more closely with them. The other entry was a group effort by my fave peeps, the Fiber Pirates. It is a slice quilt and it is called "I Think We Made Our Point".

How to Make a Scottish - American Quilt

In exchange for a hand tooled leather targe (pronounced targhee) with a thistle design made by Cliff and backed with a summer antelope hide given to me by Rickey Mumford of Estes Park. I have made a very large wall quilt with Clan Hunter symbols and symbols for Cliff's family associations.

To begin, I thought of who it was going to be for? What are the Hunter Clan symbols? What should the background look like? Where were they born? So on and so on. I did some googling trying to find the various elements I would need for the composition. Clan Hunter plant badge - The Sea Pink. She, born in Florida - that means Orange Blossoms. He, born in Colorado, thus Columbines. Hunter is a colour as well, so need to incorporate that somehow. Clan Animal, the Greyhound which is centered in the clan badge.

Sea Pinks




Of course, it must include the national symbol of Scotland - The Thistle.



The National Flower of Scotland is the Scottish Bluebell, just so you know. Many people are confused by that fact. Most people just assume it is the thistle as it is such a potent image of Scotland, when in fact, it is the bluebell (harebell).

Scottish Bluebell





Now what to do with all of that? First, I went to the wall and picked out the fabrics I thought I was going to use. I piled them up and let them stew for a while to see if I like where the colours and patterns were going. As I have been on a kick to use my only my stash as oppose to buying new fabrics for the last 5 years, I was really hoping not to buy any new fabrics to make this quilt. It was/is a challenge and a liberation of sorts to use the fabrics I have on hand. It often shows up the holes in the colour runs and the total lack of some colours when I shop my wall. It also re-introduces me to old friends in my stash. I took Heather Thomas' colour class a few years ago and she highly recommended that we shelve our fabrics by colour groups so we could go and pull them as needed, like a painter would squeeze out paint on a palette. Part of the exercise was to discover what is in abundance and what is missing from the stash. When I finally did it, I discovered some wonderful fabrics I had forgotten and that I had a lot of blues, purples and greens. I did discover that I didn't have all the greens I wanted. I did have to buy some of the green fabrics for this project as well as the threads I used to quilt it.

Most of the fabrics for this quilt are of a analogous colour run. I really like the calmness of analogous colours. They are so peaceful to the eye. The only really bright bits are the orange centers of the orange blossoms and the yellow bars, gold buckle and the centers of the columbines.
















Here are my versions of sea pinks, orange blossoms, columbines and thistles.

Time to Reveal More - NYB

The Double NYB in all it's glory.


Detail of the Double NYB Block




Detail of the Single NYB

As promised here is the more to be revealed. Here are detail shots of the NYBs after they were quilted. The binding is now on and on the double one completely stitched with a sleeve for hanging if I so desire. I plan to make so matching fabric napkins just in case I use it on the table instead.

The single block NYB is light enough in weight that it will just get hook and loop tape to hang it with. This is a great trick I learned from Mistress Quilter, Judy B. Dales aeons ago. She primarily uses it for hanging odd shaped quilts but I find it works just as well for square and rectangular ones. It also makes them quick change artists, when I want to change them out.

Surprise! I Really am Working on Some New Quilts

Many of you readers may not know that I have actually been a quilter far longer than I have been a knitter. How so ever, knitting has been a force of nature and pretty much taken up all my attention for the last two years.

Since I finally felt I was missing something in my life, I volunteered to be the Block of the Month (BOM) coordinator for the Piecing Partners Quilt Guild. This was as an incentive to get some quilting back into the rotation of things I enjoy doing. Keeping my hand in quilting is also the reason that I have been participating in the sorta annual Baggo Challenges and the Slice Quilt with my Fiber Pirates friends.


Last month, I designed a Columbine Applique Block for the BOM we turned in this month. Here's a picture of one of them.






This month, I picked a Simple New York Beauty type block from 101 Full Sized Quilt Blocks and Borders for the BOM. The guild block is going to be Red, White and Blue. Here's a photo of one of the R, W & Bs that I did for the sample board. The guild members each will make a quarter block with red, white and blue fabrics and then bring them back for a drawing and winner take all and they'll get a scrappy top and hopefully they learned something new in the process.



I have been a fan of this block for a while, so I really enjoyed revisiting it again. To that end, this is what I did today. I made eight quarters to make two circles. This may end up either as a wall hanging or a table runner. I do have enough of some of the fabrics to make some matching napkins. Most of the fabrics were sold to me as fat quarters which are 18 x 22 inches.


This one is an analogous colour run starting with yellow green and ending at blue red. This is now the second time I have made these blocks in an analogous colourway. Since I was having so much fun, I made a third analogous colour run starting with blue green and ending at red purple, this one used two fewer fabrics than the first one did.






Here too, is a photograph of the first one I did, complete with the quilting and binding. I made this as a class exercise for Heather Thomas' Infamous Colour Class back in 2003. It is in the collection of a friend of mine from the Quilt Mavericks as we did a trade for a piece of each other's art.






More to be revealed, so stay tuned, dear readers.

Fiber Pirates Rock! - Awesome New Quilt

I belong to a Yahoo Group called the Fiber Pirates. We are a cyber ship of quilt and fiber artists from around the globe. We are also a talented group of men and women who seem to collect interesting bits and bobs for making art with. I blogged earlier about the Baggo quilt I just finished for MrsK that is made with dupioni silk, fake rose petals and ribbon yarn (15 April 2009 for a picture)...

We, the Fiber Pirates, annually (somewhat) do a project called the Bag o' sCraps (aka BaggoCrap) or Baggo for short. The basic idea is that each participant collects a gallon bag of fabric and other stuff and sends it off to the Baggo Swap Mum. She, in turn, send that bag back out to someone else. That person then makes a quilt from whatever of the contents of the Baggo they want to use or feel they can use. Sometimes that is the biggest challenge of all. As in, "How in the World am I Going to Do Anything With This Lot?"



These are the contents of the bag I sent for the 2009 Baggo.

We can add stuff from their own stashes if necessary. For instance, for the one done last year, I did knitted jelly fish from a metallic yarn for it. I have blogged a picture of that quilt in an earlier post (also pictured on the 15 April 2009 post).


This is a picture of what I am getting back. This picture is pretty craptastic as there is a metallic fleck in the green fabric. It appears that most point and shoot cameras REALLY, REALLY don't like metallics from what I have been experiencing. I can tell though, that it has an amazing amount of quilting. I just cannot wait for it to come home so I see it for real. I will also have to find its place of honour on one of my walls.

It looks so amazing! I didn't even recognize it as belonging to me as it is WAY BETTER than the contents of my Baggo would have suggested. Earlier, I had thought that one of the other quilts posted was mine as it does have fabrics in it that are in my own stash as well.

It's April 17th & the 1st Annual Blogger's Quilt Festival

This is so kewl. Check out the link here: http://parkcitygirl.blogspot.com and view some wonderful work included in the 1st ever Online Blogger Quilt Festival. The raven postcard pictured here is one of my favorites. It was made for the 200th Anniversary of Edgar Allan Poe's birthday, which is being celebrated this year. I will post a different quilt later on when it's completed. Take a look, as well at "While the Octopus is Away" in an earlier post. It was done from a Bag o sCrap. The theme for that one came about after my daughter got back from seeing the Cirque de Soliel LOVE show in Las Vegas and describing the Octopus' Garden segment.

Rebecca, if you are reading this one, go check out the ParkCityGirl blog and then you should post the Pirate Quilt or else the new neutral one with the brown borders.

In reference to the date in the title of this post, it SNOWED AGAIN today. April is half way over, what's up with that?

Last Night's Incredible Full Moon

Last night, my friend, Rebecca reminded me to go out and look at the moon as it was at it fullest in years. Well, it was amazing! When Erin and I went out there was a coloured ring around the moon that shaded from yellow gold to rust to turquoise to indigo, to lemon yellow to cerise with a fat contrail trailing across it. It was incredible to say the least, and it was huge! This photo does it no justice but is more in the way of a aide de memoire for a Moonatic quilt I have in mind.Web Comic guy, Dave Lowe has a great pix of last night's moon on his blog as well... http://www.davelowe.blogspot.com/

Moon and Planets

Last night, the moon which looks like God's Thumbnail at the moment and two planets were close enough and bright enough to form a triangle in the sky. The daughter and I each took a peek at it and were glad that we had the chance. There were no clouds in the sky to obscure the view and there was enough pink to make a really gorgeous picture. Make ya glad to be alive.

I really was wishing for a SLR camera with which to take a photo as my little point and shoot just can't do it justice. Still, was glad to have experienced it non-the-less with our beautiful Colorado dusky sky and the mountains in the backdrop.

I am going to have to make a quilt of the view to go into my Moonatic Series, which is up to 5, but I haven't worked on it in a really long time. This might be the kick I need to get going on it again.

So, look up every night if the clouds let you.