Finishes

Yes I know it's almost February and everyone else did their 2013 round-up blog weeks ago. Better late than never? It does feel good to look back on the year and realize how much has been accomplished. Sometimes it seems like I have a dozen projects going at once and none will ever be finished. Anyway, today the weatherman says we may get a tiny bit of snow here in Atlanta, so it seemed like a good day to stay inside (away from all the Southerners that never learned how to drive on snow and ice) and cozy up with the computer and a bunch of photos.
First off, I had a few projects that have been sitting around for a long time waiting to be finished. This was an insulated table runner I pieced for myself but never quilted or bound. I did finish it this year, though I have to admit I no longer love it and don't know how often it will be used.

Front of Table Runner

Back

I also had planned to make this whole cloth baby quilt for a new addition to a friend's family a couple of years ago. Oh well. Now I'm thinking I might just donate it to a worthy cause

Zoo Animals Baby Quilt

Now for a few projects that were started and finished all in the same year. I know right?

I joined a the West Atlanta Modern Quilt Guild at the beginning of 2013 and I have to say that the gang inspired me to get quite a few projects finished. We had a few cute swaps including mug rugs, pin cushions, and holiday ornaments. I have to admit that we did the ornament swap in November and I just didn't have my act together for the holidays yet, so I swapped an ornament I made a couple of years ago. And, of course we made name tags to wear at meetings. I had a few too many ideas, so I ended up making four.

Mug rugs

Pin Cushions

2011 Ornament

name tags

Most of us also participated in the Blend Hip Holiday Challenge. What luscious colors for Christmas. I designed another table topper with lots of flying geese. I became a bit obsessed with flying geese this year, but more on that later.

Front

Back

Speaking of the holidays I made some cute "wonky hash tag" place mats (thank you Amy Gibson BOM 2012), and complimented them with a set of matching napkins. They made just the right touch for our holiday beer tasting dinner with friends.

Place mats

Napkins

Table Setting

And I did finally get around to designing and making some Christmas ornaments

2013 ornament

And then there were "the niece quilts". Somewhere along the line last year I realized that I had made quilts for me, quilts for the babies of family and friends, but I had never made quilts for my nieces. All of them are grown and live far away from me, so I didn't have as good an idea of colors and tastes as I would have liked, but what the heck.
For Coleen I designed "Floating Frames", which is bold and geometric, but also improvisational. I didn't even make a pattern for this quilt - just started cutting strips and let it grow organically. That led to a few fits when bias edges wanted to stretch out of shape (all of those square frames are set on point), but in the end I liked it. And luckily she told me after she opened it that her bedroom is red. Win!

Front

Back

For Cindy, I wanted something a bit more orderly, but warm and making you think of home and family. I called this "Urban Map" because when I looked at it the colors made me think of city blocks with green parks interspersed. The big bold flowers on the back gave me pause, but it did make me think of the riot of color that was my grandmother's rose garden (carried on for years by our grandfather after she passed). That seems like a fitting tribute to family, home and hearth. The pattern for this quilt is available here.

Front

Back

Front

Wendy, the youngest, was the biggest challenge. "Tetris Hex" speaks to me of a young woman with so many talents. The falling hexagons reflect both an orderly mind, but the ability to try and succeed at many things. I wasn't sure about the yellow. I mean it is YELLOW. But Wendy is a ray of sunshine AND a strong individual that others can and do lean on. Whether it matches her house or not, it did seem to suit her. The pattern for this quilt can be found here.

Back

Of course there are plenty of projects still sitting around unfinished. There is the Craftsy BOM for 2013. I've been noodling on adding some borders and making it bigger.

Craftsy BOM 2013

The larkspur quilt which I've been working on since 2012. I had a good bit of this quilted before I realized I had a HUGE pucker in the back. So it all had to be picked out. I kind of lost heart after that, but I will start again soon.

Larkspur Queen Bed Quilt started 2012

I also had an idea to make a quilt with all blocks using flying geese. I am in no way drawn to the color purple, but I have another niece, Robin, who passed a few years ago from Cystic Fibrosis. She loved purple, so this seemed a fitting tribute to her. I'd like to finish this one up this year and perhaps give the quilt to her mom.

Gaggle of Geese Quilt Started Summer 2013

The hex quilt that I've been working on for a couple of years is finally all pieced too, and that needs to be quilted. The idea was to use up scraps from all of the different projects since I started quilting ten years ago. The rounds are organized with the colors of the rainbow (Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo, Violet) and in the manner that my mom used to sort laundry (darks, brights, and lights) with a few blacks and browns at the center and whites around the outer edges. I'm really struggling with how to quilt it as I don't want to take away from the geometry of the hexagrams or the color gradient.

One Quarter of Quilt Top

A Rainbow of Brights and Lights

Finally, I had fun in 2013 with Amy Gibson's Sugar Block Club, so that one needs to be finished up. This picture doesn't show it, but in addition to the dozen twelve inch blocks from the club, I drafted and made half and quarter size blocks with the same designs. I just have to make a few more and I'll be ready to think about sashing.

What else is on the list for 2014? Well I have three gifts I need to make for birthdays in the next couple of weeks, a play mat for the new baby of a friend, my quilt for the Modern Quilt Guild / Riley Blake challenge which is due in February, and I want to make quilts for my two brothers. Plus I have three different bags cut out that need to be assembled.  Not enough? Wait until I tell you about the cat and dog blankets my friends and I are making for shelter animals...

Until next time.

Colorful, Crazy, Craftsy BOM 2013 Finished?

I know. This quilt top is crazy busy already, but believe it or not, I don't think it's done. First of all, it's basically square now, and that's sort of bugging me. It feels like it needs to be more of a rectangle. Also, I still have piles of fabric left, and those flying geese and half square triangles seem lonely. I think we need a bunch more of those. I'm thinking about adding more of both at the top and bottom. And maybe some more spools too. Love those spools.

If you remember, it was supposed to look like this. I did eliminate the flower basket and add the New York Beauty Circle of Flying Geese, more or less in the center. And I banished all of the pink and blue.

Somehow none of that made my version look any less busy, and I know I'm nuts to think about adding more detail and making it bigger. In my defense, when I showed it to my husband, he thought it was "cool" and especially liked the "tumbling blocks" (though he did mention that they didn't look like they were tumbling). His appreciation makes me want to press on, but I will set it aside for a few weeks and see if I find enlightenment in my sleep. Maybe if I finish it and use it as the couch quilt, we can snuggle under it and manage not to fall asleep while watching TV. I really can't imagine falling asleep under this one. 

Tetris Hex

I really seem incapable of designing a quilt with fabric I don't love. When a guild comes up with a challenge related to a particular fabric line, I'm always happy when they say I don't have to use all of the fabric I'm given because invariably out of ten prints, there are two that leave me feeling somewhere between meh and ick.

That wasn't really a problem with the latest quilt I'm working on. Yes there are a couple of colors and one print design in the "Glimma" line by Lotta Jansdotter for Windham Fabrics that don't send me.

But there are plenty to choose from that I love. These are the ones I ordered with no idea how they would come together. Some designers are adamant about not using multiple prints from one fabric line, but I'm so much more interested in the shapes and putting the quilt design together. If the fabric designer has done some of the work and assembled a collection of prints and colors that works together, I'm fine with that.

Some of these prints are big, so I needed to to design something that worked with the scale. Also, I've been sort of obsessed - as have most of the people I like best in the quilting community - with the hex shape for over a year.

Voila. The majority of the Hexagrams in this quilt are six inchers, with a few half size thrown in for interest. I wanted a design with lots of negative space to allow for dense texture in the quilting, so when I started laying out the hexies on a solid background with big gaps in between, I quickly started thinking of the old computer game called Tetris. Do you remember it? All those differently shaped blocks (called tetriminos I've just learned) were falling from the top of the screen, and you had to twist and turn them so that they fit into the stack already at the bottom. I was somewhat addicted to the game back in the early 90s. But I digress.
I have a plan for lots of point to point quilting in that negative space to really emphasize the geometric shapes. Unfortunately I went ahead and spray basted this and then rolled it up to get it out of the way. I can see I'm going to have to do more pressing before I can begin on the quilting.

Like the last few quilts I've designed, the back of this quilt is also pieced, so it can be reversible. I just hope the dense point-to-point quilting planned for the front doesn't mess up the look of the  back. Ah well. Nothing ventured and all that rot.
By the way, those hexagrams aren't appliqued. I actually pieced this puppy, and developed a new love for Y seams in the process. I used this specially designed hexagon ruler to cut out the shapes and it was easy peasy to sew them together.
This will also be a Christmas gift for a special woman. I wonder if she will read this post and guess that it is for her? Well that is, it will be a gift for Christmas if I get busy and finish the quilting and binding. I did make the label for the back today, so I'm making progress.  And no, I'm not giving everything away with that label. Christmas always calls for a few surprises.

Modern Neutrals Block of the Month

October - Lucky Star

I'm really starting to love the quilt I'm making with Amy Gibson's Sugar Block Club. The designs are all modern twists on traditional blocks, and making them up in solids instead of prints gives such a different look to the project.

I fell behind on this one and had to scramble during October to make July, August and September blocks as well. 

July - Lime Sherbet

August - Camp Out

September - Come Fly with Me

Now I'm starting to think about how I will lay out the entire quilt. As I mentioned here, I've also been making smaller versions of each block, but haven't begun to figure out how (or even if) they will be included in the final quilt top. Stay tuned with just two more months to go!

Another Finish

About a year ago I wrote about making napkins. In a couple of cases I made napkins to match table runners I gave to friends and family. I've made quite a few of the insulated table runners that can serve as one big hot pad in the center of the table. This pink and cream one was designed to match my mother-in-laws dishes, and I fussy cut roses and appliqued them hither and yon.

This one has a similar story. It was made for a favorite aunt to go with her Franciscan Apple dishes. And I made a few others. 

Even before I made these gifts, I had one planned for myself. Mine was going to be big and I planned to use it on the kitchen counter to the left of my stove. I have a granite countertop to the right which I can set hot pans on, but I thought it would be nice when cooking for a big group to have plenty of surface to take something hot.

Well guess what! After only about a year and a half. I finally finished mine.

Truth be told, now that it's finished, I don't know if I will ever use it. With family far away we don't have lots of big family dinners here at the house, and the only big party I cook for at home is at Christmas. This fabric definitely doesn't say Happy Holidays. But at least the project is out of the  UFO pile.

And it does have a really adorable little girl and pup for a back. In fact the whole design was predicated on using this panel for the backing. I don't usually go for cutesy images or sayings, but I really liked the cherry pie fabric, and for some unknown reason felt I had to order the panel which was part of the collection. But for the rectangular panel I wanted to use for the backing, I might have designed something square, like this.

But that's another  project for another time. Right now it's time to dig through the UFO pile and finish up a few more projects! How about you? What are you finishing up this week? Month?  Year?

Did I Say Blocks?

I've mentioned a couple of times that I'm participating in Craftsy's free Block of the Month quilting project. Well here is the block for July.

I don't really love the colors, but the contrst definitely makes the 3D impression work. Laura Nownes calls it tumbling blocks or baby blocks. The way they are floating there, they do look like they ought to fall over.

The assignment for August and September was to piece a basket and then applique a bunch of flowers in it. I know, right? I just couldn't make myself cut into fabric to make something that sweet. It makes me think of Sunbonnet Sue. Instead I made this block. 

It's called the New York Beauty Circle of Geese, and I do LOVE it. In october we are supposed to make strips of traditional flying geese and these will somehow pull this whole crazy collection of blocks together. Except of course they aren't really blocks. They are all different sizes, and it's a bit hard to imagine a way to make them pull together. Here is Laura finished quilt.

I think she did an admirable job of designing a block of the month quilt that covers lots of new techniques. I've already used partial seams and Y-seams in a couple of projects I've designed. At the same time, I keep looking at this and I can't find any place for my eye to rest. Now take a look at the collection of piece parts I have to work with.

I tried laying them all out on a bed. Yes I know I need a good design wall but what can I say. For now the bed is what I've got.

 Can you say busy? I can't really imagine being able to fall asleep with all that happening on top of me. I've half a mind to take the larger blocks and turn each into the centerpiece of it's own quilt or wall hanging. Some of the smaller blocks could be joined up to make pillows. And I could make a zillion more spools and use them as borders around one of the big blocks. What say you? 

It's Not You; It's Me

I was reading some of my favorite blogs this morning and feeling a bit guilty that I haven't been keeping up with this one. Then I stumbled across two posts. The first is by Melody Miller of Ruby Star Rising. She wrote about soul searching and deciding to give up her fabric line at Kokka to focus on shaping the life she wants to live.

The next post that popped up in the list was one by Deborah Moebes at Whipstitch. After reading her post entitled "Run Your Own Race", I started thinking about why I felt guilty, what I have been doing for the last couple of months while I wasn't writing and posting, and finally what I really want my life to look like.

One thing I have learned from listening to other fiber artists is that you can't make a living just as a fabric designer, or by publishing a book of designs, or making and selling quilts, or by teaching quilting classes, or.... To make even a subsistence living, you have to do all of the above. Honestly, as a former marketing exec with 20+ years of experience, I suspected that before it was confirmed by those who have gone before me.

Would it be fun to be the published author of a book of quilt patterns? Sure. But, do I want to travel around the country teaching others to quilt, and to be obligated to attend Quilt Market each year, along with a dozen other quilty trade shows and exhibits to hawk a fabric line I've designed? Not really. Do I feel compelled to share every project from concept to completion with an ever increasing group of followers on my blog? Well such a compulsion would make me a bit of a egotist, wouldn't it?

For me the real joy of my art is the time spent in the studio designing and making. I love to share these things I've made with friends and family. And, of course, many of you have become my friends. However, much like that favorite girlfriend you hung with in high school but seldom see now that you both have moved away from hometown, I'm comfortable sharing with you on a less frequent schedule. Like that girlfriend, I can read a post from one of my favorite bloggers, and even though I might have missed what has happened in her crafty world for the a few weeks or even months, I have enough history to "get" what she is saying.

I hope you feel the same way about this blog, because it isn't that I haven't been doing anything worth writing about. It's just that I've been totally engaged with the people and projects that are right here in the middle of my Atlanta life. Sorry that I haven't found time to catch you up, but it's sometimes that way with distant friends, and I've decided not to feel guilty about it.

With that said, what have I been doing since the last real post back in April? Here is the update...
I've made more blocks for the Craftsy Block of the Month 2013

The Fan Block in April

A whole bunch of Strippy Spools in May

A LeMoyne Star for June

And to replace the upcoming flower basket which I'm not in love with, I made this New York Beauty Circle of Geese. The awesome design is by Better Off Thread, and you can find the pattern on Craftsy.com here.

Over at Sugar Block Club I continued with my neutrals to make May - Signed, Sealed, Delivered, June - Home Sweet Home, and April - Sunny Days blocks.

I've been practicing my machine quilting, but it still looks a bit like a dog's breakfast 

I have to admit the Grabaroos and Superior Slider have made a tremendous difference, but I'm still haven't tackled the stack of full size quilts. I especially want to do a good job of adding texture and interest to all the negative space in the larkspur quilt, so I'm trying to be patient. 

What else? Well this pile of parts is going to become a treat basket for our dog. That is if I can ever figure out the design. The original idea turned out too floppy. It would be fine when filled, but otherwise the sides fall over. I've now invested in some steel "boning" which I hope to use to make the whole thing stand up straight. We shall see. 

And even though I'm not really a purple person, for some mysterious reason I ordered a pile of Riley Blake fabrics in assorted shades. Now I'm noodling with a whole host of blocks using more geese. These are pinwheels.

And a snowflake. 

This was an experiment is drawing my own paper piecing pattern. I obviously need to go back to the drawing board because the rays don't match up the way they should.

To include with the geese theme, I think it would need to look more like this anyway. 

In addition to all this crafty stuff, I'm redoing one of our bathrooms. Here's the blah before...

and here is the scary in-process

This week I have a guy helping with sheetrock and a little carpentry, then I'm going after the tile. Keep you posted... or not :-)