A little of my own sewing

Here's my November batch of blocks for the flickr QBE - Quilt block exchange. There's a pinwheel in pink, white and soft green for Mary. Pink and green block for Wendy. More red and aqua for Jennifer. Black & white is for Alicia - with a hit of color too. And pink and green for Rachel - Sweetteamom. It's always nice to have these done. And next is a showing of the blocks I have received over the last 2 months. I asked for 12-1/2" pink and orange. I totally love how they all go together. Hopefully in the coming months I will find time to get these quilted.

I took a day last week before my flood of quilts arrived to longarm quilt one of my own. It's one of my favorite tops, in some of my favorite fabrics. I held off doing it sooner because I didn't want to mess it up with utter inexperience. Now it is all bound too. It's lots of Kaffe Fasst and Carla Miller prints.

This was my first time using the pantograph patterns. This one is called Splash, from Willowcreek designs. It took about 4 hours to do this measely 60"square quilt! I didn't realize how dense it would be quilted! The quilt back is very textural. I like that.

And here's the whole quilt, but before binding. It's called "Sophie's Garden" - all the flowers just remind me of a summer garden.

And lastly, here is my holiday quilt for the Four Seasons Quilt Swap. My partner does not celebrate Christmas. I selected her specifically so I didn't have to sew something red & green. I loved the challenge of designing this. I used EQ6 to design the top, so that it had the candleabra and the snowflake. The snowflake and dreidle's, which are appliqued on, are in shimmery Fairy Frosts.
I had to do a little research on the internet to figure out what Hebrew letters to put on the dreidles. It has reached my partner, but I don't know what she thinks yet. I spent a long time designing and paper-piecing (which is NOT my favorite thing) this. I just hope she likes it.

September Quilt Block Exchange

Just a sampling of the blocks I have been making the last 2 weeks. I only needed to make 7, but was not thrilled with a couple of them so I made extras. One of the swappers sent me 3 blocks, too, so I felt compelled to do the same. My design mojo is on the lower end of low, but the ones above that look uneven or wonky, really are not (except for the log cabin which is intentionally "wonky"). Wanna check it out? Go here...

Happy Labor Day Weekend

I guess it's about time to face the music...Summer's a coming to a close soon. It's pretty warm today, but with school back in session and me back at work teaching, the long and lazy days of summer are ending. It's time to move onto new ventures and make new plans - plans to carry me through the winter.

A couple weeks ago I showed the blocks I made for the flickr Quilt Block Exchange. Here are the ones that I received. One's not shown because it is the wrong size. And I actually made two of these so as to have 12. Sadly, I have run out of batting and am holding off buying more right now, so this (what would be my 52nd Linus quilt for this year AND the last of my goal for 2009!!), will have to wait to be finished. I have an offer from Dawn-Marie to use her Millinium Long Arm, and I think that this is the quilt I will play with on it. Surprisingly, she signed up for the 4SQS Holiday swap, and lives at most 5 miles from me! It is fun to see the assortment of colors, fabrics and patterns that come when all you specify is "pink and orange" blocks!
I have made this row for the Row Robin swap I am doing. The owner of the quilt has specified "In the forest, at night" as her theme. I have found this to be limitting. Perhaps it is just my lack of design mojo right now. The other four rows that have been done are here. I couldn't think of an animal that is out at night, given that the owl was already done. I hope that Harley thinks it is OK - I just aimed for a variety of trees with semi-dark backgrounds.

On my other front...

I am going next weekend to an APQS seminar for 3 hours to learn about their long arm machines, aspects of a LA business, etc. They also said we'd be able to play on some machines. I do not know yet about any trade show "discounts", but hopefully I will be prepared at that point to make a purchasing decision. The APQS was my least favorite LA that I played on at the Maine Quilt show in July, but I have heard from enough others that have them and like them. I thought it was worth another look.

I have been making flimsies over the last few weeks which will be quilted once I do get my long arm. Here are a couple that are completed...

I have not named them, although this reminds me of the beach surf and driftwood because of it's colors. It mostly from the Marcus Alfresco line, which is really pretty. Best of all, I bought the fabrics from Whittles for under $4 per yard too! It measures about 55"x60".

I didn't buy many of the fabrics for this flimsy (#2) recently - earlier this spring I think - so they were mostly full price or $7-9 per yard. I have mixed the Freespirit Annabella and Treetop Fancy lines. Both sets of fabrics are outta this world, if you asked me!! There are also touches of two tones of pink Fairy Frosts in the framing. These fabrics were more challenging to work with because I found myself fussy cutting much of it, but not wanting to waste the remainder. This flimsy is 53"x61".

Here is a closer look... (or dbl click above). The birds and butterflies and flowers are lovely together. Hopefully, when I get my Etsy shop up and functional, someone will want to buy this :-)

And lastly, I have a 4th flimsy in the works. It is based on this pattern below that I saw in a quilting magazine. I coincidentally had many of the fabrics, and even the chevron border fabric. The center of the quilt is done, but this morning I was assembling the border and made a critical mistake. Sadly, I had to order more chevron fabric before I can finish it :-(( It is really pretty, though, all done in Carla Miller and Kaffe Fasset prints.
Maybe next week I can show this!

New Block Swap

This month I started another block swap on Flickr - Quilt Block Exchange. My primary goal is to acquire a variety of blocks with which to make Linus quilts. Here are all but one of the blocks I made this month.
I specified that I'd like orange & pink blocks. I am drawn to this color duo right now. I have received 3 of my 10 blocks and will show them towards the month's end. The signups are monthly so if you think you may be interested, go have a look!