Category Archives: quilts 2010

The White Flag of Surrender

      That’s what I feel like doing tonight. I surrender until the 26th of December. I can’t get beyond the basting point on this one. It’s really high thread count pimatex that is hand dyed and I was worried that the safety pin basting method wouldn’t stabilize it enough.So I decided to try hand basting it via the Sharon Schamber method. It isn’t hard at all and really is seeming to lay nice and flat.

     I don’t want to hurry with this one. I am feeling the need to slow down. And enjoy the holidays a bit. So I probably won’t have any finished work before Christmas for you. Maybe just some pretty Christmas pictures. I am going to try to  sneak in a visit to the botanical gardens tomorrow. Don’t tell my family that-they think I am working like a slave around here.:) No one wants to go with me.

   Just take some time to slow down, my friends!

There was a Goal Set/ #5 Finished

     Wasn’t there? I think the number was seven. Well, I think this is five. I had purchased small block kits at a yearly shop hop. Never made it to all the shops so I had miscellaneous blocks sitting in a pile. Once I opened the packages and saw-directions – dreaded directions- I knew I couldn’t follow them. So, I started cutting them up and now I have a little improvisational baby quilt.

One donation for March already done! ( Yes, I think all sane people are thinking about March in the month of Christmas.A little absolute insanity for the week before Christmas when I haven’t even finished Christmas prep yet….)

                                            
                                                    Sweetness and Light
                                                          37×37, 2010

     I had my family Christmas party this weekend. My brother and sister-in-law  from Indianapolis spent the weekend with us. Lots of busy going on here. My family -minus my sick sister and her sick daughter…

       Yes , I have a whacked header up there. I just really only have a certain amount of competence with Photoshop. I will have to wait until my daughter comes home from her exam today and fixes it. With a lot of eye rolling and little patience for me! 🙂 It really does bug me that I don’t know how to do this stuff. Fearless to try  but too foolish to know how to correct some of my mistakes. Oh well. No one will die from my whacked header today. Lesson learned: don’t change it until  you have the right thing to replace it with.

      Off to run a few errands. I will baste #6 today and finish it before Christmas leaving number 7 to be done the week after Christmas when I am on vacation. Or so goes the plan.

      Be creative, my friends!

Onward and Forward?Finish #4

     I have spent the past 48 hours trying to move forward. And I am. I keep reminding myself of that.  I have added a computer to our household-for my husband. I have spent hours deleting old files and then getting the data transferred. He has been very patient but is tired of searching for our one and only desktop throughout the house. By the end of the month- or should I say Christmas day- we should have 4-yes four operating and efficient computers. It is a huge deal to us as we have been operating on one for the past few months- limping along- going nowhere fast.( My daughter is taking a graphics design class and is hogging up the time at night.) I am very excited. More than excited.

     I have also spent way too much time(and money) getting my beloved Yukon fixed again. Yesterday. An unexpected and unwelcome start to the week. The Yukon had problems after the decision was made on computers so no looking back. She has 115,000 miles on her and she is mine. This is a sentimental kind of thing. She has been reliable. She is old and very dog friendly , if not a little smelly. But repaired and good to go today.
     Now, back to my quest to finish things. Finish #4: Carnival Ride.

     It’s for a table in Vermont. Table art. Carnival Ride, 14×33, 2010 , and it’s finished!

     My daughter Hope chose a winner for this last giveaway. She pulled out the name –Lynne– you are the winner. You will love the velvet. And the paints. I’ll mail it out tomorrow.

     I want to join in the holiday fun over here. It might totally distract me from this finish thing. Remind me next year not to do this during December. Motivation to finish works- in- process needs to come in November.

Thank you again for stopping in.

Be creative, my friends!

Just Finish It: #3

      It was the start of a series. I have a whole journal full of sketches surrounding this little simple ‘L” block. Many ideas -of where to go next. I started on it this summer and the top was done. When I started quilting it , the machine started chewing it up and I kept fighting with the machine. Which led to a new machine. I ripped out bad stitching for about 10 hours and then, left it in a heap in my workbasket. I was left with a stretched out  quilt top that I really didn’t want to finish.
     But if I wanted to keep a record of the first in the series, it had to be finished.

I needed to let go of  perfect and finish it.

And it’s done.  It will be for a room in my home.

                                                                
                                                                  L Series: #1
                                                                      9×37                                                                      

     It can still be beautiful even though it’s not perfect.

     Be creative, my friends.

Another Learning Moment

 
The first snow 2010: December 1

       Late this year.The snow.  Looks silly with the sunshine in my banner….ahhh…it’s just the week….
  
       By trying to juggle this new potential career -art and mommyhood- or maybe it’s just working at home-I am learning alot about myself. Take for instance Monday night. 260 women to serve punch, cookies, cheese, crackers, fruit, coffee, tea and water. Sounds good. I can help. I am at home. Sure. Well, I did have two wonderful kind generous friends to help. BUT, clearly, I didn’t have enough help. I was whooped on Tuesday morning. All went well at a  lovely Christmas gala but really Colleen. Lessons learned this week already:

1.Ok to volunteer but look at the calendar. Don’t overcommit. Plan ahead.
2. Learn to delegate. (What was I thinking? )

It’s all a blur but it’s behind me. 🙂

I am now on to binding #3.

I am bribing myself to get this done so I can try this:

I bought a few thermofax screens on Etsy which I will tell you about tomorrow. I won’t get to try them out today (now that’s a realistic statement) but more tomorrow on them. Do you bribe yourself like this? If you get A done, you can play with B? That’s also the whole focus part, isn’t it? My head hurts from learning so much about myself so early in the morning!

I haven’t forgotten I owe you the fourth giveaway. Just haven’t had time to think about what it might be!

I will focus for you today.

Be creative, my friends! And breathe if you don’t have time to be.

Finish #2:The Beast

     There is something rewarding about just pushing through and making it work even though you don’t like the initial design. I pushed even though the colors were not making me happy.The initial design was kind of cheesy. Well really just bad. In the end , I just needed to work through it and do it. I didn’t like wasting my hand dyed fabrics.

                                                            L Series # 3 : The Beast
                                                                     21 x 28    

 
Hand dyed fabrics, machine stitched with yellow and blue cotton threads.

I was having difficulty with my bobbin thread tension at first so I see two lines I might re-do.

Quilt # 2 done and three is being basted today.( I finished a doll quilt too this weekend for the Santa Claus girls but that wasn’t on the list!) My son calculated I could only work on each top for five days to finish it -if I want to complete all 7 by the end of the year.

Be creative, my friends!

 Giveaway: Post on last Friday’s post if you want to win the scissors and thread. I will pick tomorrow.

End of The Week Wrap Up/Another Giveaway

     Winner from last week’s giveaway is number 2 : sweet Jeana Marie! I will send you small package if you email me your address Jeana! I know she will put the thread to beautiful use. What she makes is just lovely. My husband, the accountant,  picked the number to make it official.

     I have been working hard and am very happy to be sewing on binding on quilt #2.

I really enjoying handstitching the binding on. Very relaxing and I like to save it for night time when I can sit with the kids and stitch.

The 3rd giveaway is 4 more skeins of hand dyed thread (the pink is perle cotton) , a quarter yard of this owl print and this great pair of scissors. I  like this little Japanese fabric even if it might be too cute for you.. I have a thing for owls way before they became kind of trendy cute. I am in love with this pair of scissors-very sharp and easy on my hands. They really avoid my thumb which is full of arthritis from all those years of massages I did as a physical therapist.  Let me know what part of the process of making a quilt you like the best. Leave a comment on THIS post and I will let you know who is the winner on Tuesday.  I’ll forget on the holiday week.

Again, the giveaway is just a little thanks for sharing and listening to me talk on and on the past year! Thanks for being good friends.

Be creative, my friends!

A Quick One

      Can’t stay and chat today. The whole focus thing is really hard for me. I much prefer the chatting and stopping to see how you are.

The basting on the beast.

The beast is being quilted. I am getting some weird u-turns where instead I would like crisp square corners. I don’t know what I am doing differently but it seemed a good place to stop.

Just a little lack of focus…and a distraction last night. See how hard this focus is for me?

That pile of jean scraps from last January will be made into bags-I don’t want to buy wrapping paper for the few gifts I will give this year. I like that it is reversible. But it’s kind of boring. I like the size but the straps could be shorter. The recycled market bag . At least my lack of focus was productive.:)

Be creative, my friends.

Looking Ahead

     I went upstairs to work this weekend and I reached “it”. “It” is my acceptable limit of the number of pieces sitting in my workbasket. Works in process or, quite bluntly, works unfinished. I get so excited about trying something new, that I just don’t finish things. I didn’t even start a list of finished quilts in 2010. That’s another topic called neglecting the blog and how it looks. But one feeds into the other. So, a list and it might even be added to . Accountability. Why I decide this during the holidays each year, I have no idea. Ah yes, the list.

Works in process
1. Loving Lucy
2. The L series -#1
3. The L series- #2
4. The L series-  # 3
5. Australian scrap quilt
6. Red/Blue quilt
7. Charity quilts-2
8. Crinkle quilt
9. Silk Quilt
10. The Moon
11. Joy

Impressive, isn’t it ? But I  know you have a similar place where you peek into with horror every once in awhile. Or maybe not. If you are very good about finishing things, don’t tell me please.

Goal: By the end of the year have 7 done, photographed and entered into a page type format on my blog.

Plan: Lots of machine quilting needs to be done. FOCUS. With a clear vision of the goal.

Another goal-shoot in manual rather than auto mode-bear with me.

                                                            
                                                                      Joy, 2010
                                                                         8.5×13

One done , 6 more to go.

Off to volutnteer and pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child this week. Posts will be lighter but still there.

Be creative, my friends!

Stitch Sampler #2 and a Giveaway

    
           Stitch Sampler #2, November 2010
      acrylic on cotton, hand-dyed embroidery thread
       machine quilted and hand embroidered

       You must be sleeping or just not reading until I have a picture of a completed quilt. 🙂 I do the same thing
and just look for the pictures! I have been carrying a few hand pieces with me and finally just sat here in the sun and finished it!  It should be turned so it hangs vertically but you could see the stitching better this way. I just keep trying new things.

    I am having a giveaway. Check last Friday’s post and leave a comment. I’ll pick on Friday otherwise, I have a new sketchbook.

    Be creative, my friends!