Thread Sketching and Circles

It has been a busy summer, filled with fishing, hiking, swimming, and long walks at the farm. Kids headed back to school yesterday and I have entered my sewing room with inspiration and creativity!

Thread sketching girls has caught my attention and this is the third piece I have made. Still working out the process of the sketching to reduce wrinkles, ensure a smooth finish and so on. This is the one I finished. There is writing in the background that says 'because she can'.

If you follow my blog, you know I have a slight addiction to circles. Out came the rotary cutter and glue and freezer paper as I practiced some fun circles to see how I can turn it into a quilt. 

Here is a sneak peek of a pattern I am releasing shortly. 

Do you have any fun fall projects?

Spring, sunsets, and circles is what my weekend was all about. Finally I think spring has arrived to my little Northern Ontario town in Canada. I only spotted 2 piles of snow left from winter on my drive back home this evening. 

I have been playing with some solids and strips to create different blocks, as I show below. 

I have a big project due in 7 weeks that is requiring a couple hundred circles in a rainbow of colours! It is a huge undertaking and I am just getting started now, I know a little late=)

Each night of the weekend ended with this. I am so thankful for so many things.

Have a super week!

Summer Fun of Quilts, Published and Tutorials!

Does the summer really translate to 'I am too busy quilting and enjoying family life to post?' Maybe this summer it did for me.

I have had some fun though.   It is such a thrill to see my quilts in print.  Here is my 'Falling Leaves' in Quilter's World magazine.  I designed it on EQ7 and used Riley Blake Fabrics and WonderFil thread to create it.

Then I got a little hooked on doing videos... but still have lots to learn, like turn the phone the other way!  The best part is my 2 sons, 10 and 11 years old were my camera men!

How to Make Hexies (hexagons) from Circles is a fantastic way to make hexagons if you are like me and don't like all the folding, gluing, pulling cardboard out type of gal!

How to Make a Travel Needle Case Holder is a super fast tutorial  from scraps.

In June I had put in my year as being President of Canada's national quilt association, and past and present board members gave me all these incredible blocks!

I just loved them so much, but as I am supposed to bring it back to the next Quilt Canada national conference all finished.. I had to put my spin on it!

What do you think?

I had this on my design wall thinking I would stitch it up as is, but the more I looked at it the more I didn't like the uniform of 1, 2,3, 4 I had created.   

I rearranged it all in a random pattern and stitched it back together. 

As you may know my hexies are just showing up in the most unusual places, here they are growing in my apple orchard!

Lastly, signing off with a view from my island.

Circles, Deer and Craftsy

I have been having a bit of fun lately over at Craftsy. Check out my page at the top for all the posts I have written. There are some wonderful patterns and ideas in there!

I have also been creating an adorable deer! I just have to put his antlers on!

I got the pattern over at The Quilted Fish, from fabric designer Amanda Herring. The fabric is Riley Blake's.

My circle quilt is moving along, all the blocks finally got sewn onto the background today.

I threw them up on my design wall to get a sense of quilting. I was contemplating slashing them, but I think I am more inclined to really free motion the white areas alot.  This picture is a partial close up picture of some of the blocks.

 

This is the full quilt, the coloured fabric is actually shot cotton. I have a love/hate going on for this fabric at the moment. I love the texture but hate the unravelling of it. 

Did you notice how I go from one piece of pie missing and graduate to four pieces of pie missing in my circles?

I hope to show you my finished deer shortly=)

I Am On A Roll

I am finally back in my studio creating.   I have about 3 projects on the go, but currently on my design wall is a multitude of colour!  And I am just loving it.
It started with this fantastic medley of colour.... can I just point out again how much I love circles and dots?

I could stare at this picture all day.  Seriously, it is that perfect.  Now I am only showing you a little,  tiny bit of the blocks I am working on... but you get the picture right?

I also am playing with hexies... in dots!   

I couldn't go to market this fall, so the wonderful people at Martingale Publishing sent me my author badge anyway!  How darling are they?   I may just wear it to the grocery store, I am so darn thrilled to be in one of their books!   

The book should be arriving on my doorstep very soon... and i will have some giveaways!

The winners from Houston Festival are up.  Check it out.

Modern Quilting?

I think I have scouted out every modern quilt website available to me.  I am just fascinated by this trend in quilting.   The bright colours, the solids, the movement within the quilt are so eye pleasing and so tempting to try.

I did not want to copy one of the ideas out there, so I have been sketching like crazy!   I have pages and pages filled up trying to find something I liked well enough to try on fabric.  I did 3 small fabric trials and was not happy with any of them.  

Finally I got one!   These were the fabrics I chose to use.  It was a bundle I picked up at our last Canadian Quilters' Association's Quilt Canada conference.   It almost has a linen feel and look to it.  

Here are all my scraps left over from my blocks.  I can't bear to throw them out.   Even though most are too small to use, they just look to good to get rid of.

This is what I ended up with.   If you are guessing circles, then you are correct!   

If you look carefully in the picture above, you will see my hand stitching around the perimeter of the circle.   Below shows you why.  I needed to somehow turn these into  nice clean finished circles and I didn't want to fuse, or machine applique, nor did I want a raw edge.   My solution was to draw my hand stitches tight with a cardboard circle insert to hold the shape. Using spray starch and a hot iron, I pressed the edges onto the back side and flipped the cardboard out.  

It worked!  I was left with a colourful circle ready to be attached to the background.  I will let you know how that goes....

My Circle Fetish

As you may know I have a thing for circles.   Kind of like an addiction, if I see circles, I want them.  

Take a look at the quilt I am working on.  I did the flowers free motion and then the majority of the background was done in free motion circles using all different colours.  

Notice all the circles.

While I was taking this photo, I thought it might be fun to show you just how many circles I have collected.

These are some fun serviettes I can't bring myself to use.

My favourite coffee cup.

My back up coffee cup.   

One stack of circle fabric.

My back up set of circle fabric.

This is a small file folder... and look at the name on it!

My coffee coaster.

My tissues.

What do you think?  Totally crazy?   Or just a quiltin' gal who loves circles?

Designing and Quilting

With the kids home I am finding it a bit more challenging to get into my sewing room to quilt.   I want to spend as much time with them as they are only young once and they won't always want to hang with mom=)

I am trying to do quilting that does not require alot of concentration, because even if I get into my sewing room, interruptions happen every 23 seconds.

The designing end of things has been good.   My sketch pad comes with me everywhere and I can do that while the kids are playing and breaking up fights or getting snacks every 3 minutes are no problem.

From one of my sketches, I came up with this.

It just had to be a circle didn't it?   Sliced and diced and put back together with my hand dyed fabric.   I am doing some experimenting and this gave me some unexpected but workable results.

I also got a quilt pinned and under the machine.   This one took me forever to decide on a design for the middle.   I mean like 4 months to figure it out.   Finally I came up with one I liked and gave it a try.

There are about 20 triangular sections in the centre of this quilt.  I am doing the same flower in each section, but different sizes that match the size of the section.   The background is either stippling or small circles.   I am changing the thread colours for each section as well.   I have about half of it done.   

The circles drawn in the background were done on the whole cloth centre before any quilting or ric rac was added.  I took different sized circles and placed them on randomly and traced around them with magic marker. 

  Different sized and coloured ricrac was stitched down in lines across it. 

 I still have a ways to go, but my plan is to get it quilted and bound by end of summer.   I just got booked for 2 trunk shows in September and would like to bring it with me.  

Linking up to Nina's Off The Wall Friday.