Published!

There are days when surprises come and make me happy!   This is one of them.

I picked up my mail and inside was the Martingale Publishing flyer that showcases the new books coming out in the next six months.

I was especially interested in this.   I did a quick look in the Table of Contents and zoomed to p. 11.   There was the book I was looking for 'Kitchen Stitches'.  

You know where this is leading right?   I have 2 projects in this book!   Imagine my surprise when I looked at their description and photos and on the bottom left is one of my projects.  See those little coasters?  Those are mine!  

I am so excited to actually have the book in my hand in January 2014, I can barely wait!   I can't show you the second project until the book arrives.

I am quilting too.   Up on my design wall I have one quilt that I have pinned tight and have lightly sprayed with water.  I am hoping that will straighten it out so I don't have to try and find somewhere to lay it out on the floor.  With 2 boys and a dog, that is tricky=)

While in Utah, I raided Amanda's studio, she is the ultimate fabric designer for Riley Blake Fabrics and goes under the name 'The Quilted Fish'.  She has a new line coming out called 'Twice as Nice' and it is super adorable.  I grabbed a bunch of the fabric and  made a fun placemat with it.   No quilt of mine can go unembellished.   Notice the giant red ricrac?

I am off to look at the Martingale flyer again...ok, mostly stare at p. 11 in awe=)

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.

A Little Art Quilt

I had been experimenting around with little scrap triangles that were emerging from doing my Bestie QAL using the 'Swoon' pattern.  
When I make little quilts, it is nice if I can combine them with another purpose.   The Quilting Arts magazine has another challenge going on right now called 'Text Me'.  

I made this little quilt using my hand dyed fabric, ric rac and the left over triangles.

I did recut the triangles to make them fit a little better into each section.   I could see a larger quilt with perhaps some different ways to fill the shapes created by the ric rac.

I do adore working with ric rac!   The colours and different sizes and all the wonderful ways you can add it to your quilts.

Back to School = Back to Reality

If you are like me and still have kids in school, or if not,  imagine a summer filled with playing, sunshine and happiness.   Then imagine a dark cloud moving in called 'School' and life is filled with tears, lunches and  homework. Maybe I am exaggerating slightly alot, but regardless the days of no schedule are over for ten months.

On the positive side, and there always is one, I can GET BACK TO QUILTING!  You have been so great to stick by me, as I know my posts border on sparse this past summer.  Now I am ready to roll out the quilts, find new ways to 3D embellish and maybe even do a bit of teaching along the way.

This weekend I spent time working on two different quilts.   One was hand applique... OH MY GOODNESS that is tedious work.  If you are a hand quilter, you really, really need to give yourself a pat on the back.  Heck, go buy yourself something chocolate.  You deserve it.

The other project, albeit hand work, but not quite so insane, was stitching my felted pieces.   Finally this weekend I had a brainwave and figured out how I was going to turn this into a quilt.  It took the right piece of fabric and two years of sketches, yes I did say two years.   I could just never get the design to look like what I wanted it to.

I even visioned using it in a piece of wearable art... but the thought of sewing them together and then cutting off the pieces that didn't fit into the pattern made me too sad.

Now I am really excited with what I think may work.   We all know what you have on paper does not necessarily turn out like that once you try and make it into a quilt.  Well, that is what happens with me.  How do you get a new quilt started?

Winner and Newest Quilt

Sorry for the delay in announcing the winner, I went out of town for the weekend.
Here is the lucky gal to win the FQ bundle:
 Bonnie58 said...

Hi Jackie. We call Saskatoon, Sask. home. Red licorice is my downfall, fresh, old, or inbetween - it's all good...... Love the quilts and a Great giveaway.

Now, I gave a great deal of thought to all your comments regarding my strip piecing quilt, and Dana said this to me:

 Dana Gaffney said...

The last (and only) time I made a strip quilt I felt like it needed a little something, so I appliqued big funky daisies,

So I did this:

I am still not done. I am going to use more of the blue/green strips on the borders, that are in the stems and leaves.  The center of each flower is not complete as I have to embellish it some way.  It can't be with hard embellishments, as this quilt is going to a child with a long term illness.   I am thinking ric rac=)

Stay tuned.

Ric Rac

My first order of ric rac came in the other day. This is 15 yards. It does seem like quite alot doesn't it? Do you remember me mentioning I had found this fantastic deal of 75 yards of ric rac? That hasn't come in yet... I am getting a little worried now.

I finished my 4th wallet and it works. My third attempt I put the closure on the wrong side, so I have to see if I can pawn it off on a friend. I will post my final wallet here in the next day or so.

Whimsy Flower

This is a preview of the quilt I have been working on for a long time. I finally decided on a quilt design and love it. The binding is half on and I will have to attach my 3D design and I am using buttons and ric rac for embellishment.

It will either be so over the top that no one will like it or so well embellished it just might have a chance to get into a juried show next spring.

Amy Butler contest

Fabulous fabric designer Amy Butler has a contest on right now. Using a specific line of her fabric, you have to create something. My niece was up for the past two weeks and her birthday is in October. Her mom said she would love a belt, so I killed two birds with one stone and made her a belt out of the Amy Butler fabric.

Just to make you all laugh, I have been searching for ric rac lately, kind of like my button fettish. My button drawer is quite full now, I even had someone, a dear friend, deliver me a box of fabulous buttons. And I spent some time last weekend sorting them by colour. But I digress, I haven't been having much luck finding ric rac at a good price. But after some investigative internet searching I found a batch of it at a very good price. Here is where you may let out a giggle, when I say batch of it, I mean a good chunk of assorted colours, and by good chunk I mean 75 yards of it. Yes, that previous sentenc is correct, 75 yards. So you should see some art quilts coming out of here with ric rac, if not, I will just sew it all into a big dress and give it as a birthday gift to the next friend whose birthday is coming up!

Ric Rac Flower

I just completed a ric rac flower. It is going to be the center of my latest quilt. I just have to lay it out and quilt it. I am obviously not looking forward to that part, as I just spent the last 2 days cleaning my studio instead of quilting it. But I needed to rearrange and clean so that was good.

The ric rac flower was time consuming but a nice hands on project in the evening. The colours of it match my latest quilt, so you can see that it is bright.