My Top is Finally Finished!

It isn't the most perfectly executed top in the world, but I felt like it turned out pretty well.  I was so ready to move on to something else! :-) It's a queen-sized quilt, machine pieced and in places embellished with hand applique and hand embroidery.

 I started some of the squares as a BOM project with my guild in Texas many years ago, and then made additional squares for it with the Quilt Bee in Va that I attended with my Mom.  The Quilt Bee blocks were put together by everyone to make a lap sized quilt, but I wanted to add my blocks to the ones from before and make a larger quilt.  A view of the "top half"....

 and the "bottom half".....

 Then I decided to add the center medallion of appliqued grapes and embroidered berries, which led to me appliqueing and embroidering additional parts of the quilt.  I think it all works well together!

The Sewing Room!

OK, I am sure that many of you have been wonderful WHERE I have been!  The last five months have been interesting...two moving trips from Virginia to Arizona, plus all the unpacking that has ensued....and now our daughter and son-in-law just moved into a new rental as well (in Tucson still, though) and we helped a little plus they are opening a new restaurant in town, which is now up and running, but both of them are working every day and I am watching our grandson after school....OK all that was a huge mouthful!  The bottom line is I just haven't been able to quilt YET!!!!  Unfortunately, THIS is what the sewing room looked like a few days ago....

It has actually improved somewhat since then...I'm getting there slowly but surely!  The big chest of drawers is full of fabric....

And this is a closet with a shelf piled high of MORE fabric.  You can see part of my collection of feedsack fabrics here....

And I am absolutely DETERMINED to finish getting this room squared away and start quilting again within the week!  I miss it!!!  Here are a few of the projects I have waiting for me....

This is a quilt top and backing that needs to be sandwiched and quilted...

 These are the squares I made the very first time I attempted to do a sampler quilt.  I didn't know what I was doing and they are NOT very good....BUT I still want to get it made into a top and backed and quilted after, what, 40 years!!!!!

And these are some squares that I worked on in Texas when I lived there years ago, and the rest were made in NC for a Bee Friends challenge we were doing.  They were purposefully made to "go together" but now I need to make about four more squares to finish it off, and get it made into a top as well...
And I won't even go into all the other projects that are partially done, or that I want to start.  I have to GET BUSY!!!!  Hopefully in a week you will have a really good progress report on the room.  Wish me luck!

The Challenge Continues....

 I now proceeded to piece my tablerunner...first though I needed to sign my artwork!

 Here is the pattern I used for the runner, modified a little to suit my perameters, since this runner is 18X50 and that is too long.  But I knew the design would work well with the idea I had....

 I cut out the strips I needed in various colors.  The Challenge is actually called the Color Box Challenge, and all these great colors from the inspiration fabric work well as strips!

 Once the runner is all sewn together, I sandwiched it with batting and a backing of the turquoise fabric.

 This is a closeup view of the runner top...there are red triangles on each end, also that you can't see.  Just a corner of one is visible in the picture above....

 Then I start shadow quilting the bird.  This is a view from the back.  I am using black thread, and it shows up great against the turquoise.  More to come.....

Challenge!

At Quilt Bee a couple of months ago we were all given a half a yard of this crazy, bright fabric and were challenged to make something no bigger than 18X30 using at least one piece of recognizable challenge fabric, and any other fabric we desire.

The gorgeous bright colors gave me the idea to make a table runner for my sister-in-law, who is a parrot and macaw lover, so I decided to place an appliqued parrot right in the center of the table runner on a black background, and then use fabrics of matching colors to make the rest of the runner.  I found a photograph online that I copied, to use as a pattern for the bird.  But, appliqueing something this complex on the machine was turning into a REAL challenge!

So, on to Plan B!  Back in the early summer I had purchased some fabric inks online.  I decided to cut the parrot out of white fabric and use Seam-a-Steam to attach it to my black center square.  Then, since I have always loved to paint, using the fabric inks on the bird was a breeze!!!  A LOT easier than trying to sew down all those individual sections of bird!  You use clear Aloe Vera gel as the fixer for the ink, and after you apply ink to each section, you heat set it with an iron.

This is my black square with the parrot cut out and attached in the center on-point.  I used red ink to color these areas of the bird and heat set them.  Then I went onto another area, heat set again.  At the end, details were added with a black ink marker with a fine point and used it as well for shading areas.... and again heat set.

  

This is the parrot when I finished!  I will now hand-applique the bird around the outside edges using an embroidery stitch. There will be updates on this project as it takes shape!  I also plan to make my sister and brother-in-law two placemats to match though they are not part of the challenge.

Quilt Bee Today!

No, I'm not singing opera, but it sure looks like it! :-) I was the one person who was brave enough to raise my hand and say I would share something about Log Cabin quilts! Not because I KNOW anything! No, just because I like them (especially the really unusual ones) and didn't mind sharing whatever I could come up with!





Mom and I had seen Mary Ellen Hopkins on Simply Quilts and she had some awesome ideas about thinking "outside the box," and I thought maybe I could share some of that. Well, I had in mind I would make enough squares that I could demonstrate them in a dozen different configurations, but hey I did good to have as much made as I did. Last week was our regular day, and we were "nor'eastered" out so the Bee Friends met a whole week late, and I still didn't make anywhere near what I had hoped to! Still, they all seemed to understand, and well, it was fun to share.



Thankfully our fearless leader Pat had some great books and other resources to share, and some great information she worked on as well, plus we had lots of show-and-tell items so the day was a huge success!