Snowmen

Finally ready to quilt these snowmen!

Progress on Jason's Quilt

I'm basting Jason's quilt tonight!

Snowmen!

I am so excited about this snowman quilt!!!! Some of the heads I finished today:

;-)

Wide Weave Top Complete

Want to find a cool batik for the back....

New Project

I started cutting a quilt today for my supervisor, who is pregnant with her first child. The nursery is an airplane theme (though she might have said "planes", which could be "Disney's Planes". I did not go that route. I hope that's not what she meant.). I got some airplane fabric and fussy cut a bunch of 2.5x2.5 squares, and then cut 250 more squares from my stash!

That doesn't look like that many squares....

I am tired of standing. I cut at my mom's, though, and she has a high cutting table, so my feet hurt from standing but my back's not in too bad of shape!

She has her handy-dandy embroidery machine, and she's been taking classes in which they do a lot of appliqué. So she  bought this airplane and is going to help me appliqué it onto the top.

Cute, right? It'll be made of different fabrics, though, and not outlined with ribbon embroidery (I don't think). But where am I supposed to get an iridescent fabric, exactly?

Moving Along

I got some of the blocks together on Jason's quilt this morning.

I love it! I hope he does.

Disappearing Nine-Patch, Complete

I was just upstairs working on Jason's quilt (the wide weave quilt) and realized I needed to take pictures of my completed and fabulous disappearing nine patch! 

Here is the "Fiona" that my mom put on with her brand-new embroidery machine. I quilted a heart around it, but it's hard to see.

I worked my booty off to get it done this week when I realized I'd be meeting the mother of the baby for whom I made it on Friday.  I did get it all done and washed Thursday night, but I didn't like the way the frazzled edge looked.  I did two runs of it and once it came out of the dryer, you could see the black of the binding in between.  So I added another row this morning and washed it again and I love it!

Fiona's mom is one of a couple of people responsible for finally getting me to watch Dr. Who; here is part of the back of Fiona's quilt.  You can see a bit of the quilting, and you can see it has some fabric that looks like the Van Gogh painting of the TARDIS exploding.

Now Mom needs to finish hers so we can put them side-by-side!

Peacock Quilt, Complete!

I am so proud!

Quilting Weekend

I spent a great weekend quilting! Saturday Sandy and Sheree came over to sew and today Jenn came over and worked on decorations for Luke's second birthday party while I quilted.

Most of the quilting is black on black, so it's hard to see, but here is my first feather on the peacock quilt (pictured from the back):

Crochet, day 2

Learning to crochet is hard. Lois showed me how again last night. Still seems like magic - when she does it.

Lois's scallop.

My scallop.

Hopefully one day I'll be able to make Seth a Pikachu!

Stack and Whack, Complete

I think our babysitter for whom I made the stack and whack liked it!  I hope so anyway.  It looks best from a distance, like this, so you can see all the pinwheels.  It's a bit busy up close.  :-(

I did that sort of fan pattern in the light blue border and I loved how that turned out!

It looked especially cool from the back.  :-)

Wide Weave Progress

I went and spent the afternoon sewing at Mom's again today. I haven't yet basted the disappearing nine patch, so I worked on the quilt for Jason. It's looking good! I wanted to see a complete block after my afternoon of piecing, so I put one together, though I am nowhere close to being ready to piece blocks in general. But it looks so good!

Ready to Baste

I got the prettiest backing fabric this weekend in La Grange. 

Ready to baste!

All Pieced!

I got the top all pieced yesterday!

Now to find backing material...

Stack and Whack Borders

I have the borders on the stack and whack! They really make the colors jump out.

More on the Nine Patch

I had so much fun working on the nine patch yesterday!! Here's how it started:

Then you cut the nine patch pieces:

Then you put them back together:

And when you have a bunch you mix them all up when you put them together:

Mom has chosen different colors and different ways to lay out the colors. I can't wait to see how those changes make our quilts look different.

Sewing Day at Mom's

Mom and I have spent a lovely afternoon sewing today. We decided to each do a Disappearing Nine Patch quilt. Here's my plan and progress:

Mine's a baby quilt for a coworker. It will be black and white and gray with bright spots of pink and blue. Mom's is much larger, for the daughter of a friend, and is hot pink and purple. She put her sewing machine in for servicing, though, so no sewing for her on our sewing day! Instead, she's cutting out a second quilt that is going to be super cute, with some fabric she bought at the shop hop last weekend:

Ready for Batiks!

Mom, Aunt Molly and I have been doing the Bluebonnet Quilt Shop Hop this weekend. I got the fabric I need for the borders of the hexi stack and whack, so I'll have to get that quilt finished! 

I also think I now have all of the material I need for Jason's batik quilt!

Here's the idea from Pinterest:

And here's my drawing:

Jason's version will be multi-colored instead of just blues and greens. I'm excited!

Stack and Whack Progress

How do you like them apples? I know it's busy. It's the first thing everyone says when they see it. *sigh* But oh well! I think it's pretty! I want to find a solid light blue and a solid dark blue to match for two borders, with a thin strip of the main material in between. Not sure yet how I'm going to quilt it, but I did get some fun sparkly thread at QuiltCon with the intention of using it somehow on here!

I'm taking a break now and starting to quilt the peacock quilt while I wait for the chance to find the right border fabric. So far I've only quilted black thread on a black background, which I don't think will show up in a picture. But once I start using color, it'll be a different story!!

Stack and Whack Progress

The quilt is looking good! I'm still working on piecing it, obviously. I need about twice as many pieces as I have. I'm not sure I'm going to get there, though. It will be as big as it can be! Hopefully, that'll be big enough.

Quilt Con Day Three

My final day. *sniff* It's such an exciting event, so full of ideas and energy! It's so nice to see other people my age quilting, and seeing how great the span of ages of women who are interested in modern quilts is. And to hear from speakers who are predominantly women, talking about their quilts, their businesses, and how they 'made it'. It's pretty inspiring.

Here's the Best in Show. Color me puzzled (though maybe I would be singing its praises if it weren't green!).

Here is the Best Machine Quilting winner, and no disagreements from me. It's beautiful.

Here are some of the cool quilts that caught my eye today. I did make it through the whole show.

I love this one. I am not a big user of solids (which is one of the things that sets me apart from being a 'modern quilter'), but this is pretty fantastic. I do have a bunch of solids that were prizes at a shop hop to use up....

This is a quilt by one of the speakers that I saw yesterday, Heather Jones. She talked about how she likes to take traditional squares and just blow them up to be on a huge scale. It's actually probably the same thought behind the above quilt. I wonder if they are by the same maker?

I didn't get a straight-on picture of this quilt-more's the pity. I didn't notice it until today, though I must have passed it in the lecture hall multiple times! I do love the churn dash block.

The promised Conan quilt. Fantastic, right?

I just love this one:

More of the disintegrating block idea that I mentioned yesterday, and so well done. I think it would have been good if the quilting could have mimicked the motion of the pieces floating away somehow. Or maybe of them being drawn toward the block and into place.

Here are the quilting ideas I captured to ponder:

I love the way the quilting works in tandem with this quilt.

The very best lecture I went to was given by Casey York earlier today on seeking out inspiration for modern quilts and quilting by examining art. Her favorite art period was 17th century, so we saw several paintings from that time period, but also a whole menagerie of time periods and types of art. It was so good. A couple of times she walked through the elements of a painting with us, exploring some specific aspect, say color palette or value, and then showing how to draw a relation to that, say pulling out five swatches of color from an El Greco painting to form a great palette for a modern quilt or explaining how the value differences in an Impressionist painting differ from the value differences in a Neo-Classical (?) painting and how that effects the drama of the whole composition, be it painting or quilt. She showed us a picture of an Aztec (?) tunic, some pottery with really pretty ornamentation on it, and a piece of fabric from a gown during a similar time period, and then showed us a quilt pattern and associated quilting design that pulled elements from all three items that were harmonious and unique and still had a relationship to the original art pieces. Another quilt design and quilting pattern were drawn from a ceremonial signature from someone (didn't catch who) and a ewer from a similar time period, resulting in a truly stunning quilt that she has actually made, rather than just a sketched idea. It was a great lecture.

You're very welcome, MQG. Thank you!