What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Jenny

Because me making half square triangles for my Homeward Bound quilt is not very interesting, this week we will continue on with the First & Last Quilt series featuring Jenny Lyon.  Let me preface this with I love Jenny so what follows is absolutely biased.  Still, it's my blog, so I guess that's okay. 

I have been reading Jenny's blog for years and love how she'll detail the true ins and outs of getting a piece done.  With Jenny, she's always happy to give you a peek behind the curtain so you can really see ...

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Monday, May 1st was my 30th wedding anniversary.  It seems like a big milestone, right?  Really, though I don't think of it that way.  Every day with my husband has been a blessing and I'm just glad it all turned out the way I thought it was going to back in 1993.  

Every year we try to do something together that is a little different.  This year we made a day trip to go down to Pittsburgh to revisit the Carnegie Museum of Art.  The last time we were there was 2006ish and so much has changed.  The ...

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Elizabeth Barton's Solo Show at the Georgia Botanical Gardens, Athens, GA

Okay, a show of hands, who out there had a subscription to Quilter's Newsletter Magazine?  I must have started mine around 1992 and kept it through hmmmm at least 2010.  Honestly, without that magazine, I don't know where I would be as a quilter.  Really, those were pre-internet days when this was my one and only pipeline to the national quilting scene. Besides all the great articles,  I  even managed to do two of their Block of the Month patterns in consecutive years which taught me ...

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Attempt 1 - I just thought the petals were too BUSY!

Wow!  Spring is crazy around here.  It's like all the ladies across the country woke up and thought, "Gosh, it's spring.  I need some new clothes!"  So you'll forgive me if this is a short  I did manage to get in a bit of applique this week and when I say a bit....I actually mean a bit!  

I am working on the fourth month of the Homeward Bound Quilt from the Quilt Show website.  It's the month when we finally get to put all the ...

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Paul's latest coffee Table

 Shhhhhhh, can you keep a secret? My husband, Paul is turning 58 this week and I decided it was

The man, the myth

high time he got his own website.  You see he became a full-time artesian woodworker when he retired a couple of years ago and he really needs an online presence.  So with a lot of help from my daughter, Tessa, we put together a portfolio site.  A portfolio website is a site that is primarily there to showcase you and what you create.  Not only can it include a gallery of your ...

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One thing that came out of the Pandemic of 2020, is the fact that I will NEVER take "Date Night" for granted ever again.  This week's installment was one for the books!  One night a month, the art scene in Erie comes alive to host a Gallery Night.  Galleries and small business open their doors to show off what's new. 

First stop, was the Grounded Print and Paper Shop.  Ever since I've heard about this place, I've been dying to visit.  It's a former machine shop warehouse located in a neighborhood where people have been ...

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So does everyone have that one big project that just seems to go on and on with no real end in sight?  My English paper pieced pinwheels is that project.  It's been going on for ...oh I don't know... 13 years now??  I know I started it in a weak moment.  I had finished the 4,200-piece tumbling blocks quilt and thought "Gee I haven't EPP in a while".  What happened if I did an improv EPP using just one shape but played with value.  At that point I never saw an art quilt improvisationally English paper ...

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 So is anybody else doing their spring cleaning?  Since this is my 30th year of quilting, I thought it would be a good time to downsize the stash that I've been collecting all this time.  Recently we did over our dressing room/fabric closet and this is as far as we've gotten.

The Before

Notice what great shelves the upcycled church pews made?

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Me stitching in my studio watching the Mentalist...again

Okay, let's face it.  I'm not one for following trends.  I'm the type that decides what is good for me and mine and then goes in that direction.  I do, however, keep track of trends, just because it's good to stay informed.  I recently got Timna Tarr's latest newsletter and it mentioned that handwork is becoming more of a trend on the national scene.  That I can see.  You hear of handwork everywhere these days.  First English paper piecing made a resurgence with the Millefiori Quilts ...

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 All this back-to-basics sewing around here lately, has got me thinking about when I was a beginner quilter.  I began quilting on a fluke, not because someone I loved taught me.  So it was kinda doing whatever works at the moment kind of thing.  Along that journey, bad habits were formed.  So the first step to improvement is realizing there is a problem, right?  Some of these are practical, some are mental, and some are just, "I should have known better".  So if you recognize some of these, shhhhhh it's okay, your secret is safe with me!

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I had a productive week of hand quilting...but that does NOT make for interesting blogging...with that in mind I'll spare you the details and just host!!

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Houses, Mabel Hewit, 1936

 

This week I went down the rabbit hole they call Pinterest,  only to rediscover my love of woodcut art. Woodcut is a relief printing process in which knives and other tools are used to carve a design into the surface of a wooden block. The raised areas that remain after the block has been cut are inked and printed, while the recessed areas that are cut away do not retain ink, and will remain blank in the final print.  It is a very positive/negative area kind of printing!  I always thought woodcut printing was interesting ...

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Really I have no idea where the week has gone!  I've been working all day and then stitching for a few hours every night.  One thing I can say is that being this productive really doesn't make for really interesting blogging!  (sorry!) So I thought  I would just show you the progress I've made on my three main projects!

Project I - Homeward Bound BOM  Quilt - Month 2

OMGoodness!!  How could it take me this long to hand applique these little suckers?!?  When I first started quilting (BT - before Tessa), I would do hand applique blocks in the ...

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Ya know, even though I don't put much belief in astrology, I can totally see myself fitting nicely under

the sign Gemini.  It's like two people living in my head.  This week it was totally pointed out to me...again.  For the last few years, I've been busy in my quilt studio designing original work and creating it with my Janome.  This month, I've become totally obsessed with the exact opposite.  I have two, yes count 'em two, pattern quilts going at once both mostly done by hand.  Well to be fair, Rain, Rain started out ...

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WoW!  What a busy week.  When I haven't been working at my day job, I've been working in my studio.  I decided once and for all to get "Rain, Rain" onto my quilting frame.  It all seemed a bit daunting because I haven't taken my frame out since the mid-2000's.  Then out of every task in quilting, basting a quilt is the one that I hate the most! Plus I finally wanted to try out big stitch quilting. So needless to say, I've been putting this off.  

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When I first started quilting, I thought art quilting was beyond my reach.  Through the years though I've taught myself how to make them.  Now, with the Homeward Bound Block of the Month quilt, I'm revisiting my roots.  When I decided to take on this project I gave myself some basic rules (yes, I'm a rules chick):

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 Why is it that an organizational project always looks worse before it gets better?  I knew this would be a big job but WoW it's a really big job.  I had no idea how much stuff I had stashed in that room over the years. I am taking it seriously though and as promised I'm documenting as I go.  I decided that I'm going to have three piles....fabric that is organized by color.....fabric that is organized by collection .... fabric that is going to be donated to the sewing programs at the Erie City Mission. The ...

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