Here I Am!

Well it's been awhile. Two months in fact. I won't bore you with the tiresome details of my enforced break. Suffice to say that I was very busy with un-blogworthy matters, and prevented from doing any projects that require right hand strength and stretch.

The designer that lives in my head has been working overtime though, and I've finally had a bit of time to work on the projects I've been dreaming up. Hopefully I'll be able to share a summer's worth with you over the next few weeks.
First up I saw this fabric in the Hawthorne Threads newsletter a few months back and fell instantly in love. It's called Pretty Petals and is from Sylvia Vassileva's "Silvias Garden" collection from P&B Textiles.

To this focus print I added five prints from the collection

Plus a couple of additional prints that I thought worked

and five coordinating solids

I stared at that stack for a few weeks before I started to get some ideas. I kept thinking about how traditional log cabin blocks start with a red center. In this post I wrote "many histories suggest that the log cabin was an American design inspired by the western movement onto the prairie. The traditionally red center block represented the hearth, and the light values on one side represented the sunny side of the log cabin, while the darker values represented the shady side. "

That image appealed to be, but I wanted a more modern twist.

This is the block I came up with.

And here is the design for the quilt top - - ten of those blocks interspersed with larger and longer blocks to create a bit of a puzzle. When finished it should measure about 46 by 62. Plenty big enough to snuggle under on the couch.

I haven't basted, quilted, or bound this one yet, but I'm happy with the way the quilt top and back came together, and once I had it laid out on paper, it was amazingly quick to assemble. The only tricky part is that the I used the partial seam method throughout. Some quilters may be intimidated by this trick for piecing off-set blocks like these, but it's really pretty straightforward. Laura Nownes has a great tutorial in her free Craftsy Block of the Month class.

I'm still not sure about the backing though. Too bold? Too much flower power? I do think the top calls out for an orderly quilt design - perhaps some simple rows of straight stitching. There aren't many spots where two lines meet, if you know what I mean, so straight rows might fight the design. I'll have to give that more thought. Now if I just had a snappy name for the pattern. Ideas?

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 :-)

Blocks for Boston

I know I've been away for a ridiculous amount of time, and I will catch up with a full report soon.

For now I need take a minute to tell you about a project called Quilts for Boston. Like everyone else I was heartbroken to hear the news of the bombings last month, and waited with baited breath to hear that the one person who I knew was running was safe back at his hotel. I also followed the news closely to hear that the bombers were no long a threat.

Then, like most quilters I began to wonder if there was something I could do. Quilters are like that. When something bad happens we want to wrap everyone up in a warm and lovingly made quilt. Not that a quilt will make everything better, but that the thought and caring that goes into the making can help; Help for those injured by the tragedy, and for those who are witnesses.

Fortunately I belong to a guild - the West Atlanta Modern Quilt Guild - and one of our members has close ties to Boston. In no time she had us on track to help the Boston Modern Quilt Guild with their project. Now nearly a month later I am sending off two blocks - one orderly and one not so much - in some of the colors they requested. Just in the nick of time since blocks need to be in Boston by the end of the week.

I hope that those assembling these quilts feel the same sense of community that I felt making them, and that the gift - wherever the quilts finally make a home - bring peace to those who enjoy them.

The Larkspur Quilt Project Continues

What I’m now calling the Larkspur quilt is progressing, though not as fast as I’d like.

Remember the first block?

For a while I wasn’t sleeping well and I now understand what researchers (and new Moms) mean when they talk about sleep deprivation. One day I spent an hour trying to scrounge up enough material to fix a mistake I made in cutting. Funny thing is, it turns out that I never made the mistake in the first place. I just didn't remember that I had already made those blocks and they were sitting in a stack on my cutting table. I’m never sure when people ask how long it took me to make a quilt whether I should include those little side trips in the equation.

Yes, the top was all nicely pressed before assembly.
Afterward I folded it up  and let it sit for a few days.
Looks like a mess but it will be fine.

But alas, the top is pieced, the quilt sandwich is lined up and pinned, and I’m ready to quilt. If I only knew just how to approach all that negative space. Though I couldn’t make it too the Modern Quilt Guild’s QuiltCon event in Austin this year, I have been enjoying hearing some of the talks which Craftsy.com has made available online.

Watching those talks with all the amazing quilts used as examples gave me ideas, but I was especially taken with Angela Walter’s talk about machine quilting of modern quilts. If you aren’t familiar with her work, take a look at her portfolio. The woman is absolutely fearless with a longarm. Now I don’t have a longarm quilting machine or even a great setup for free motion quilting on my home machine, though rearranging some tables might help.

Layering and pin basting on a small table

Like all quilters who work in small spaces carved out of a busy home, I also don't have a great spot for assembling the quilt sandwich for a queen size quilt like this one, so I use Wendy Butler Berns' binder clip method on my cutting table. She explains it in detail in her machine quilting class on Craftsy.com.

Anyway, after looking at some of her designs, I’m determined to be bold. Lots of quilting. Lots of motion. I might even try to work in a few flowers and birds. I’m itching to start, but making myself wait until I can devote a whole day to working on the quilting. I know I won’t get it all done in one day, but starting when I can only spend an hour seems like it would be too frustrating. Soon though, soon.

Scale

I’ve been playing again.

I’ve been making smaller versions of the Sugar Block of the Month Club blocks. This project is partly inspired by fact that Amy Gibson has left final quilt design up to each quilter. That set me to thinking about how I could do something different and interesting with twelve pretty basic blocks. Around the same time I took a look at the March lesson from the Craftsy Block of the month, and Laura Nownes was talking about drafting and using it to resize a block.

Though I’m pretty comfortable with quilt math and don’t generally bother to draw everything out, this seemed like a good exercise to work on in front of the TV. The drawing above is for the quarter size block. That is, I reduced a 12 x 12 finished block to a 6 x 6 finished block.

Here is the same scaled down version of the January block.

Apparently some quilters are afraid of drafting, and that’s a shame because it can hold you back from designing your own quilts. The truth is, if you can draw it on eight to the inch graph paper, you can figure out how to cut it out with a quarter inch seam allowance. If you have never attempted drafting, just take a look at the March installment of the 2013 Craftsy Block of the Month. You will be surprised at how simple it can be. Then get busy thinking up your own blocks.

I kind of thought I was done with this experiment, but then I got to doodling and decided to draw a  3 x 3 block.

It seemed doubtful that I could manage crisp points on something so small, but voila! I think it would be fun to use all twelve blocks in three different sizes with quite a lot of negative space in between them all. It sure could lead to interesting quilting possibilities.