ALQS-3 Art Quilts

I have participated in a few sessions of the ALQS (aka Another Little Quilt Swap). This round was different in that more artistic quilts were done. Now some of them were too "granola" for my taste, having too much glued items, excessive texture, and unwashability, but that was the terms of the swap. Generally speaking, this swap attracts extremely tallented artisans, so I felt that the risk of receiving something I would not like was slim. Very true.

About 25 quilts were made and pictures were anonymously posted. Each swapper ranked their favorites. This was one of my top three choices. I have traveled to Italy several times. It's architecture, culture and scenery are amongst some of my favorites. Come to think of it, I like the food and the sense or romance quite a bit too (takes me back to a little "trist" I had with an Italian that I met on a Swiss Air flight a decade or so ago!... - I used to travel significantly for business then). Dare I not digress too much though...I was lucky enough to receive Deana's "Italy through Window Shades" quilt. It is all from nice batiks, and so intriguingly constructed. It's so much me, and I feel fortunate.
Here's a closeup...

Thank you Deana - you did a wonderful job.

Now, as coincidence would have it, my "Orca" quilt went to whoelse but Deana! I regret that I never got a nicer picture of the quilt (June was SO rainy and I never got a sunny day to take it outside, before I plum forgot and mailed it off!). It is partially traditional piecing, partly paper pieced, and a needle-turn appliqued killer whale. I live on the ocean, so themes with plenty of deep blue water occur often in my quilting.
Here's a few closer looks at this 20"x20" quilt, made all from batiks (and fairy frost accents)...
...a little feather-quilting along the waves...

The sky had a wispy movement quilted in it.

...and I even quilted in a jelly fish into the deeper part of the ocean...

...and as if there was not enough paper piecing with the waves, I did a NYB for the sun... I really love the freedom I felt doing the quilting. It was a time-consuming project but fun. "Orca" has moved to Utah. I hope he is loved as much there as he was here, and does not feel like a big fish out of water (no pun intended since Utah has no ocean!)

New Artsy Swap

Kate's hosting another round of ALQS. It's geared towards more artsy quilts than purely traditional. You ought to go to the swap blog and have a look at what really qualifies as an Art quilt before you say that this is not for you. I think you will be surprised.

Hope to see many of you there!

A Royal Day

I got the Royal treatment today! I mean...I got the Royal Mail treatment today. Two great squishies arrived, both postmarked from the UK.

The first is another of the birthday block swap New York Beauties from Kate. Very colorful!... and thanks for the scraps for the flying geese border too :-)
The second package was from Anne, and is my ALQS2 quilt. It did not photograph as it is all pastels, but she is a very machanical quilter - immensely accurate. The fact that she never misses a triangle point strikes accord with my sense of order! There's no use in making a triangle if you are just going to chop off it's point with your next seam!
I think she may have made this with the thought that I might put it in my 2 year old daughter's bedroom, as it is decorated partly in pink. Either way, it will likely go there since the rest of our house is mostly in deeper colors. It just looks like a little girl to me.
Anne's quilting is textbook. Her hearts look like they were done by a programmable long arm, although I don't think that they were. I think she just knows how to make it all look perfect.

It's very lovely; thanks a lot Anne.

Here's Dress block #9 for Sophie's quilt (yes, only 6 more to bore you all with!!). I particularly love how the sash turned out.

I have also tried making a couple of these paper pieced bows. They are a bit of a pain in the arse, but thankfully there are only 8 more to do!! The next shot shows the sashing fabric I have leftover from the curtains (golden-pink floral). I really love this material, and the flecks of bright green in it. Thoughts...should the paler pink fabric in the bows be a deeper tone??

And one staged view of 4 blocks with the sashing. I don't want to sew sashing to blocks until I know exact block placements. Soon...

"Believe" has reached its new home

Emma left a message on my blog this morning saying she'd received this, so I think it is safe to post a few pictures. I was not expecting this notification so soon - thought for sure mail to Australia would take more than 5 days! Here's the 22" mini quilt I sent her as a part of the ALQS (BTW...the pictures on her blog are by far clearer and more detailed than mine). Emma sent me my summer 4SQS quilt, so asking Kate if I could have her for a partner was kind of so I could return the favor. Once she said yes was when all of the nerves and trepidation kicked in. You see, Emma is quite the master quilter - she always knows which colors to pair together. Then again, she has nearly 1000 yards in her stash to select the best color combinations from! She's a fantastically accurate piecer -- a very technical piecer, and a spectacular machine quilter. I was kind of daunted by my choice.

So I took off on vacation in August with my sketch pad. All I knew was that I was trying to design a "scene" and I really wanted it to be Christmas-like. Kate told us to actually avoid something like this, but when I have an idea in my head, that's about the end of it! What I sketched up was a view from outside of a house window, looking in at a family's Christmas tree. Other details were yet to be determined.
The scene has a fireplace with stockings hanging. The "E" and "J" are the initials of her children. These were previously Photoshopped out of my cryptic sneak peek so as not to give the surprise away. Above the mantle is a wreath done from tiny beads. It just adds the right amount of shimmer. After all, it is about Christmas.

The tree is made from about 10 fairly small paper-pieced units that use lots of the scrap greens that I have in my stash bag. Why I chose to actually paper piece these is beside me now. They could have been free pieced just as easily! I quilted the garland in metallic thread over the tree, and added red Swarovski crystals as ornaments. There is a present done from a shiny red fabric. Again, a little more subtle shimmer. I hope Emma likes it. FYI - These were applied with a glue which is clear and hand washable.

And here is the overall piece. I apologize if the mullions which define the window panes appear to be a tad wonky at times...these are very hard to hand-sew perfectly straight! I wanted the candle in the window. In December, I love to see the window candles in houses. To me, they just symbolize hope. And that is what this quilt was intended to be about...that youthful, hopeful optimism that is most commonly seen in the eyes of a child at Christmas. Pure Joy.

I don't profess to be a great machine quilter, and quite honestly, I procrastinated on the quilting of this for weeks because I was timid of screwing it up, and giving Emma something well below her standards. Finally, I chose to do much of the quilting with stitch-in-the-ditch around the window panes and shutter slats. In each pane, I free-motion quilted with a white rayon to portray the illusion of a frosty pane, as though it has just snowed.

I entitled the quilt "Believe" because as much as I may sound like a Christmas curmudgeon, I was a long-time Santa Claus believer. I think everyone needs to believe in something hopeful at that time of the year, whatever your beliefs may be.

Busy, But little to Show For It...

Despite not having many pictures of any quilty progress, I have actually been rather productive. I have done the finish serging of seams on a couple dresses I am making. They are done now. I have also added a border onto a round robin square. That took the majority of my weekend as it is heavy on the hand applique. I have also been making squares out of solely my scrap bags. These will be pieced together into playful Project Linus quilts. Today, I did about 14 6.5" scrappy squares. I sound slow, but they take time to trim seams, press, find the right size scrap, etc...repeat! Oddly, I dont think I have made even a dent in the scrap bags :-)

Here's my other project in the works...Two more pretty dresses. They are not complete, as I intend to add some embroidery detailing. Now, I need to actually finalize the quilt's design before going much further. I am leaning towards making the quilt's top be all squares (18 in all) that are different style and color dresses. THey will be bordered with 1-1.5" borders, and sashed with a sashing to look like ribbons & bows (stay tuned to see this!...it is on paper right now).

Both the dark green and the pink ribbons above were actually fabrics that I bought to make Sophie dresses, and then did not, so these are very sweet to me. No doubt, the quilt will be way more nostalgic to me than to her anyways (she'd probably rather have tractors and pirates on the bed, thanks to having two tractor-pirate loving brothers!)

Keep a lookout in your mailbox. I sent out my ALQS quilt a few days ago. If you see this...it's from me.

Very cryptic Sneak Peeks

...at my ALQS quilt for my secret partner. I really was going to not post anything until after I sent the quilt, but hey, I couldn't resist. It only has a label left to attach. I hope she likes what I have made. In all respects, I have kept with my belief: make something you love, and it will be appreciated in return (I hope). I love the colors, and the concept. I really wish this was mine :-(((

I entitled this quilt "Believe". It (as you probably can infer) has a holiday sceene, evoking many of the dreamy memories from my childhood. As a very long-time believer in Santa Claus and the total magic of Christmas, the title just seemed appropriate.

But as you can see, I have Photoshopped the pictures a little to both blur the details and to erase the items which I have incorporated to personalize the quilt for the new recipient. Boo hoo...you'll have to wait another week or two until the quilt is received. I'll probably mail it this coming Tuesday. It has hand applique, lots of piecing, little embroidery, little beading, and machine quilting.
I'm sure you can tell from the "peeks" that it is a holiday sceene. I know, I know...we weren't supposed to do anything of this topic, but I had this idea well before the swap, and figured it would be well received. I can always include return postage in case she just wants to return it to me (but I'll be she'll just be pocketing the $$).

And so, this quilt may just be your's if you Believe.

I am...

...making sweet rows of double pleats in a pretty dress.
...adding a collar and vintage hemstitching to the dress

...whipping (ha ha...it took 12 hours to get my cuts and seams correct!) up a wedding gift.
...practicing free-handed feathers and "water" quilting

...falling in love with my new King Tut threads (not the metallic one, but even that did not sew badly as I expected)

...adding finishing touches on my October Birthday block swap blocks.
...laughing that anyone really will appreciate my turkeys and crows!...it is supposed to depict November....wishing I could actually finish this table runner, started this time last year. Soon I promise!
...and wishing I could show this quilt, which is for my ALQS partner. This is a glimpse of my snow.

In addition, I have 2 mini's awaiting binding to be hand sewn, two dresses in need of much handwork and hemming. I can happily say that I added a 2nd border to my spring Fling Round Robin square, and it is all ready to be mailed to a secret person for quilt finishing. It's a spicy little number...I hope the final owner likes salsa, because that is what the color and desogn of this quilt remind me of. And lastly, I did actually receive my Booty quilt yesterday from Bernadette of Australia. I will post this with pictures later this week. She's a very skilled machine quilter. Makes me drool, and retreat promptly to my machine to practice!

Baby Steps

Progress this week has been mostly in unshowwable items or ones of little to no interest. I have been puttering on the smocking of Sophie's dress in the evenings. Partly I am like a large captainless ship...it is just guiding itself (translation: I try something, dislike it, and take it out). I did find my 1-2mm seed pearls leftover from making a wedding dress and have been casually adding them to the bodice. I really love the look of the bullion flowers, but am being cautious not to embroider it just like last year's dress.
I have also done a little leg-work on this dress like making a tester of the bodice to be sure it fit her before hacking into the smocking and having it not fit. I modified two dress patterns to combine their better features so this step was a must. Today I have cut out the under-dress (cotton lining), it's ruffle, and the sleeves which are a deeper peach so that the entire dress looks more like 2 dresses (under-dress and peach-colored pinnafore). I have drawn all of the gathering threads, but came to a screaching halt when I realized I forgot to get matching thread and a zipper. DOH! Tomorrow's my day off so we will visit Walmart.

Here's a pic of some of my birthday blocks. I say some, because I am still awaiting a few. And 4 of the ones in the picture are not useable as they are the wrong size. Sadly I have also discovered that the instructions I drafted for those that don't like to paper piece had a flaw in a dimension so another 3 of the blocks I received have the wrong size corner triangles. Not a happy moment!...I can certainly replace these corner triangles, but the fabrics will not entirely match. Oh well...

I am going to a Project Linus Blanket day this weekend and will bring some of these squares and border fabrics in hopes of getting this quilt knocked out. I have also pieced another top for finishing Saturday while there, as well as yet another that is cut out in pieces. I am fairly speedy when I don't have three kids driving me NUTS so I stand a good chance of completing much of this. BTW...are you sure it is NOT legal to strangle one's kid if he is truly being a pain in the ass?? ...middle children ()

The binding is on my unicorn quilt. Maybe I will sew it down this evening.

I am trying to wrap up some of my projects because I have been a very bad girl (perhaps not as bad as Emma...who buys WAY more than I...what does one do with nearly a kilometer of material??!! ). I have a few yards of some very pretty batiks coming my way to make a wedding quilt hanging for a friend of my husband. I have a month to complete this, which ought to be enough time. I am doing a heart design in the storm at sea pattern. I have also ordered some Superior thread, which has come very well recommended (to which I say it ought to be like gold - three 500yd spools for nearly $30) - Yikes!!

I started machine quilting my ALQS mini this morning. I really like the top, but there are definitely some things bugging me about it. I have a love-hate relationship with it. Part of me really wants to keep it as it is my colors, style and despite it's flaws, I'd love to display at Christmas since I don't have such a thing. The other part of me is slightly bothered by places where there should have been an orthogonal edge, that wasn't, or places where the fabric looks a little "thick", and should have been trimmed more if this was really possible. I am something of a perfectionist, so the little things bother me. I think that the recipient is somewhat this way too, so these things bother me that much more. I hope she is understanding, sympathetic and well-spirited. Afterall, it only has to be displayed 1 month of the year! Joking aside, it is really a nice piece, unique and well-conceived (kind of like my three wild things); I am sure she will like it. Soon enough I will post a picture or two.

And good (promising) news, I am told my Miniature Booty quilt is "in the mail". It could arrive anyday. I'll disregard that Toni violated the cardinal rule of swap ettiquite and actually told me who mailed it! I hope to post a picture later this week (because it will not force me to actually create something of my own to show too!)

Why Be Normal?

This past weekend, we went to a neighborhood party. It was an "Around the Block" party, where we went to 4 houses, done with different themed events. The first house was the Frat-Toga party. There was a keg in the back of a pick-up and a quarters match in the dining room. Mind you - we are all 15-20 years out of college so this was quite amusing to see. The second stop was the start of the "trailor park trash" theme. Their entire house and garage and yard was decorated to the hilt - pop-up trailor set up, all lawn decorations out, three pick up trucks on lawn and all kinds of good redneck paraphanalia in the house. Very amusing. SHe did squirrel stew (really pulled pork), and had drinks from mason jars. I'm a little embarassed that this hick is my real-life husband, but then, look at me??! I went as Daisy Mae the unwed and pregnant Walmart worker, dolled up with very bright blue eyes, extra-long red nails, large earrings, ciggie & PBR, and the lovely curler in front. Oh, and the back of my maternity shirt had "hottie" in rhinestones! The front (which is hard to read) said "Who's Yur Daddy?...Billy Rae, Bobby? Clinton?". Fortunately, my shoes (which God only knows why Goodwill does not own yet) really hurt so I got to go around as the barefoot and pregnant gal too! The gang quickly decided that I was fit for the head roll at the next house - It was the redneck wedding! So Rosco and I got hitched (again), complete with wedding dress, great redneck vows, jello shooters (to tuck into my nearly-nonexistant cleavage during the ceremony, and staged out rolls like Big Sexy, the angry ex-boyfriend. It was all a riot, really!

Dare I digress for a minute...Back to the real world. I have pieced and quilted this as a present. It still needs binding. If I ever contemplate doing a paper pieced like this again, someone just shoot me.
I also completed this as another Linus quilt. It uses some of my Kona scraps and Kaffe Fassett squares I got on ebay some time ago. It has nice crispness and vibrant colors. Wish I could get that to show in a picture :-((

The quilting is done in the ditch and on the KF squares in a variagated red-mauve thread, flower pattern.

And lastly, if anyone is seeking a sneek peek of my ALQS quilt...the top is nearly completed and I hope to get it sandwiched this week. I must admit, I violated the rule and decided to make a holiday-esqe quilt. At least I do know that my partner is not Jewish!

Another Linus Completion - Ugly Brown Betty

With my impending return to the workforce, I have been feverishly trying to wrap up some of my half-started Project Linus (and other) projects. Since coming back from vacation, I have been a tad pokey, but my table is clearing somewhat.

This top was affectionately named Ugly Brown Betty. Last week it was a bag full of brown assorted pieced squares. I added a few other strips and fillers to get it pieced into a 4' x 5' top. I despise the brown polka dots. They are a pain in the rump to sew...material is thin. But thankfully much of it is out of my stash now.
I played with my machine quilting a little bit (within reason as thread is not free and I did go through nearly 700 yards).
Here's my first feeble attempt at feathers. Not too bad, but I see much practice in order.
And my ruffle-y flowers. I kind of like these.
The fabrics are whacky and ugly and interesting. The rust and red tones keep it from all looking like mud. Anyway, binding is on and it is ready to go to the charity.

Other things...
~I am puttering away on 6" stars for my Summer Quilt's border. Hopefully this will be added by the end of next week (unless teaching Thermo keeps me from this task).
~My ALQS top is done in concept. I have several of the top's larger pieces sewn together. It's very interesting and unique; I think any partner would appreciate it.
~I free-motioned quilted another Linus top. It's binding is ready for hand sewing.
~I have dug out the last of my Legacy quilts (top one in the link) to work on the hand quilting. This is just filler for my evenings.

Swap Quilts

As challenged by Toni to show what swap quilts I have done and received in the past year...Here goes (I'm down to the wire, as today is the last day!)

Here's My Four Seasons quilts...
I made this for Linda last Fall, entitled "Fall in Love with Fall".


and received this from Luisa. It remains my all time favorite, being hand appliqued, embroidered and quilted. It just flows.


I turned around and made this for Luisa pf Portugal for the winter. It has a snowflake quilted into the design. "Let it Snow"


For the winter, I received this from Maria, of Brazil. It is more lovely than the picture, entitled Birches in the Snow.


I made this for Tami in CA for the spring. It's one of my favorites that I made, all hand embroidered and hand - quilted. "First Blossoms"


I got this from Janice in New Zealand. It's gorgeous raw-edge applique. This quilt whet my appetite for trying that techinque om my summer quilt. "Spring Tulips"


Here's the summer quilt I made for Ginger in IN. It is raw-edge appliqued, and reminds me so fondly of my home, Maine.

I received this "Plant in Full Sun" from Emma of Adelaide Australia for the summer.
For the Miniature Booty Swap 1, I made this for Lisa. My partner was a flake and did not make anything. I received the quilt that Jan sent to her (but I dont have a picture of it). This is Lucky the Turtle.

I made this for Marlene for Miniature Booty 2. It is hand sewn, appliqued and quilted. I absolutely LOVE this piece! It is named "Stop and Smell the Flowers". I have not yet received my Booty 2 quilt.
FOr Kate's Another Little Quilt Swap, I made this in May for Lynda of the UK. I called it "Frog in a Blender" because the red and greens. The name may be a little sick and twisted, but I thought it fit the quilt perfectly. It has some fantastic green fabrics Janice sent me from New Zealand.


I received this bold lovely from Kate in return.
I did the Doll Quilt Swap 3 this past spring. This top was initially pieced for my partner, who has 2 young daughters adopted from Asia...the angels represented them, whereas the red hearts represented China. She bailed from the swap so I finished the quilt for my neice.

Though not a swap piece, I finished this for my other neice. The one below is what I actually sent to my partner in the DQS2 - Marianne. It's called "The Lazy Lily".
Here's the piece I received for the Spring Fling Round Robin Session 1...made by Julie, Tami, Jeanette and Marisa.

I did the quilting on this quilt in that RR, (also sewn by 3 others) - It went to Dorian.I participated in Ginger's About Forum Doll Quilt Swap also this summer. I made this for Christine in Florida. It is all of 1930's and is hand quilted. I named it "Memories of Summers Past", as it felt very nostalgic and old fashioned.
I received this sweet number from Ginger. Hand quilted, it graces my daughter's pink bedroom beautifully.
Most of these quilts are hung up my stairs, except for Kate's which is in the dining room, Ginger's that is in my daughter's and a couple other's that just are not up yet! I use straight pins in the corners and dbl stick tape to hang.