What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

It is January 1, 2024. First day of the new year - one day to reflect and introspect before the onslaught of work and responsibilities.

A review post is always tricky. What do I include? What do I leave out? And how do I say it? Should it be just quilting? But my feelings are so entangled with the threads of my quilts. Can you really keep your work and thoughts in water-tight compartments?

Unable to separate my feelings from my work

I will try to focus on my quilts and if my feelings seep in so be it. Here are ...

If I could be doing anything quilty, it would be improv piecing.  It is like taking a journey. "Come hither ye fabric scraps; together we will travel and see where we end up." 

Here is the Island Batik Challenge for March. It reads 

"March brings a free month for you to determine your own project of any size, using any theme and any technique!! This is an opportunity for you to express your creativity without guidelines. Have fun!"

And I did have fun. See how the bits and pieces grew.

Starting Point

And then there were two

Growing

Coming Together ...

After sorting UFOs last week, I was a bit discouraged. Will I live long enough? Anyway, the most important were the orphan blocks sent home with me from our Guild's community outreach division. We do charity quilts and have literally tons of donated fabric. I had several blocks left over from other quilter's projects and a few fabrics to go with each one. Doing improv blocks etc. is fun, but I didn't want to sandwich/quilt them. Then the chair person of that division called me, listened to me whine, and told me to just make the ...

In May, E. A. asked us to make two-color blocks that contained the word "hope."

For my first block I chose Kona Cerise and green to make some skinny strip letters. My skinny strips finish at 1/8" wide. I created boxy letters improvisationally, but aimed for the letters to all be about the same height. The letters are about 6 1/2" tall and the block finished at about 12" x 10".

In my second block I chose a much lower contrast color combination with dark purple and dark grey. I improv cut all the pieces for my letters ...

In April, Isabelle asked us to make confetti inspired pieces for her. She gave us tons of flexibility in what we made for her. "Please create blocks that are abstract, and feature small pieces (1”-ish) within the design. The percentage of small piecing that makes up the block is less important than the impact of the small pieces used in the overall design of the block. Negative space, strip piecing, curved piecing, geometric design – anything goes."

I pulled out my smallest solid scraps, including some pieced bits. Do you see the legs from my "watch me grow" block for ...

This month Carole asked us to create some improv slabs to use in half of our half rectangle triangles (HRTs) for her, paired with solid black. She provided a wide range of color options: red, blue, turquoise, aqua, yellow, yellow-orange, orange, purple, red-violet, green, and yellow-green. She gave us a variety of Kona and Bella Moda colors in these hues and asked us to avoid pastels and dark shades. I dove into my stash and pulled fabric from some of these colors.

I was immediately drawn to Kona Acid Lime and aqua. In many cases I used small scraps and ...

 The Island Batik Ambassadors challenge for November 2022 is Creative Christmas Stockings.

Paul: Well, some people may actually use it for stuffing Christmas presents.
Me: Hmm... I thought about that.
Paul: And?

I had a lovely time with Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County today for 6 hours of Building an Improv Toolbox. This workshop is an opportunity to play and you can join me in this workshop on November 5! (P.S. I'm also teaching All About Angles in a 3-hour workshop on November 4.)

I often forget to "take pictures" in a Zoom workshop. It's so different than being in the physical room with folks. Today I remembered to get a shot of our show and tell at the midpoint when we took a break for lunch. It's ...

My version of tweaking involves my design wall, not meth, just so you know. Since last week I have been futzing with minor revisions to “The Left Coast” and a shaggy improv piece inspired by fabric designed by Katie Pasquini Masopust. Both works have spent time on the design wall, as I drop by to squint at them, add/subtract bits of fabric, and take a photo. This process was repeated several times each day. My husband calls it “staring at the wall.”

First, thanks for all the comments on “The Left Coast.” I really wasn’t trolling for compliments ...

It has been a busy summer. Our oldest is building a house in a wilderness spot and photos don't do it justice... so we travel a couple hours one way to see it. I'm almost jealous but more excited for them. We also took a trip to South Carolina to visit our daughter, hubby and all. It was wonderful. Our youngest lives in our city and we spent most of a day with him and his fiancee looking at a show home and eating. Besides those things, the usual visits with friends, our church activities, and now I ...

I have completed my Positivity 2.0 Quilt. I have named him Naman. It is a Sanskrit word meaning salutations.

On the banks of Potomac

Walking Foot Quilting

Labelled

Good use of the Picnic Table :-)

May's car is parked in June's driveway.

It is May's mess that has led to June's stress. I am not thrilled about it but the sad truth is this - unless we move May's car out of June's driveway, June cannot go anywhere or do anything. 

Angela said that May RSC colors were Sage and Forest Green. With all that was happening in May (international travel, recovering from international travel, catching up with work due to travel, Covid, recovering from Covid, nursing Paul as he recovered from Covid, the Positivity QAL set up and launch ...

It snowed this week!! Years ago, it seemed like we got a snowfall every year. The kids would get the day off of school and it was a treat for all of us. With climate change, we rarely see snow. But this week we got about two inches and it was wonderful. Prior to this we got rain, a lot of rain. Living with drought and fires like we do, nothing is better than rain. Anyway, we are enjoying this wintry weather up here in Northern California.

 The Island Batik Challenge for October was as follows:

The 2021 Aurifil Color Builders are a capsule of 12 mini-collections dedicated to an incredibly worthy cause that falls in line with Aurifil’s goal to increase sustainability and positive environmental impact — Endangered Species. Each collection contains three large spools of their supple and strong 40wt thread — a warm, a medium, and a dark.

 Well, I just did a search to figure out how long ago I finished the top of this project. 

Answer: Dec 7, 2016! 

It has been basted and ready for quilting since March of 2017.

I needed something to quilt recently to get someone's mid-arm machine working. This is all that I had that was already basted and ready to go. Sadly that is the only reason this one got finished, but I'm glad it is finally done!

You can read previous posts about this project by clicking the following link: Art Group Project That post says that ...

When Kelly asked me whether I'd like to participate in the Blog Hop to promote her new book - Scrappy Improv Quilting, I had a tough choice to make. 

No, not making the project. That was fun and easy :-) Choosing just one from so many lovely projects in the book - that was a challenge.  Once I picked out the design, I knew I had to make it my own. I had to make it brighter :-)

Birds of a Feather, by Kelly Young

I chose a low volume white/off-white background with bright red birds!!!

Improvisational Piecing

Adding Color

Hey there, friends!  I am so happy that today I get to give you a little overview of the final sections of my new book, Scrappy Improv Quilting.  The third section of the book is titled Seasonal Sensations and contains six adorable little seasonal quilts.

I've been teaching All About Angles workshops since 2019. This project is actually the first quilt top that I pieced for myself in this style, way back before that time. I had selected the color palette, because these sunset colors called out to me and the pile of fabric hung out together on my shelf for quite some time before I cut into it to create this small quilt top.

Like many quilters, I've been wanting to finish up some of my WIPs. I participated in a 100 Day Project January 30 - May 10, free motion quilting for ...

The best flowers are at the Keukenhof in Amsterdam. A bit out of my reach, mostly.

Tulips in Amsterdam, 2019

Keukenhof Gardens

The Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania are huge and absolutely beautiful, but still a few hours from me.

Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania

Water Lilies

The Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC are more accessible and I don't mind the long train ride although I will avoid the nightmarish parking in downtown DC. 

From 2008. My first time :-)

So beautiful

Each week I toss out a few fabric scraps to reduce my collection. Most of my recent pieces are made almost entirely of scraps. Over the past two weeks I’ve put together three tops made of scraps and slapped fabric … Continue reading →