QUILTING IN OZ

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Evolution of A Quilter Part 2

Pictures from our guild program last night. Board members of the Little Balkan's Quilt guild showed examples of their early work and recent work. It was lots of fun sharing lessons learned along the way.

Monday, February 16, 2009

Siggies & a Mystery

I made five more signature blocks yesterday. They will be ready to send to someone as soon as I get the list from Annelies. I'd forgotten how much fun these little Sunbonnet Sues are to make.

Part 2 of Cynthia's Fractured Star Mystery is posted. This month's it's a chain block:

12 blocks are needed and they went together quickly this afternoon. Now I still need to go back and make all of the blocks for January, since I only made one of the 20 needed. I'm starting to get excited about how this quilt will turn out.

Tonight was guild meeting. Our impromptu program was a lot of fun. I'll share pictures tomorrow, as well as pics of our guild's 2009 donation quilt.

Saturday, February 14, 2009

The Evolution of a Quilter

(This is a re post of one I accidentally deleted)

The guild member who was scheduled to give our program Monday night has had to cancel due to a family emergency. As program chair I had to come up with a replacement program on short notice. Luckily we have some very resourceful ladies in our guild and on our board and within a couple of hours of sending out an e-mail S.O.S. we'd decided upon a program. One member came up with the idea of expanding on the birthday anniversary of Charles Darwin last week. Each board member will bring 2-4 quilts or so that demonstrate her evolution as a quilter. Great idea, isn't it?

Here's my story:

My first quilted project was a wall hanging I made in 1999. I found the paper pieced pattern in an issue of Crafting Traditions. The only thing I knew about quilting was what I'd learned from watching TV programs like Simply Quilts and reading quilting magazines. It turned out pretty well. I even hand quilted it (don't want to look to close at the size of the stitches). But for binding I simply brought the backing fabric to the front. It was mitered..but still not a good look.

So a few years later when I'd been quilting awhile I decided it really deserved a better binding and I fixed. Looks better don't you think?

I didn't do any quilting again for several years. I was getting lots of fliers in the mail with pictures of cute wall hangings and I decided I could make some of them myself without the patterns. I made these two wall hangings for granddaughters in April 2002. Since I no longer have either of them, they won't be part of my show and tell at guild but I'll share here.

I hand button-hole stitched these appliques and did a combination of hand and machine quilting.

I machine appliqued this one and also machine quilted it.

Now I was definitely hooked and I count my quilting history from this point when people ask how long I've been quilting (7 years almost now). Within a month I made about 10 wall hangings for family members and myself. This was my 6th. The little Sunbonnet Sue pattern was taken from a Miniature Quilts magazine pattern. They finish to about 1 1/4" tall. They are raw edge applique with hand button hole stitch and hand embroidery.

I had so much fun making this and call it "I Still Love Paper Dolls" since it reminded me of how much I enjoyed paper dolls when I was young.

The reason I'll take this quilt to show is because of the sashing. When I put the blocks together I discovered I wasn't so good at lining it all up. Not wanting to take it all apart I decided to fold fabric strips, lay them down on top of the old sashing and zig-zag them in place. Not a conventional method for sure! This little quilt hangs on the wall of my sewing room and every now and then I think I should take it apart and do the sashing properly. Then I decide it shows how far I've come and I leave it alone.

Seven months after those first wall hangings I decided I wanted to make a quilt for the birthdays of my 3 sons, five grand kids, husband, mother and mother-in-law. Since we have 4 December birthdays I started with youngest son and did the other three December birthdays 12 months later (grand kids). I met my goal in 1 year, plus adding a quilt for a new great-grandson in the process.

This is Jeff's quilt...not quite full be sized but big for me at that point. I joined the backing, batting and top using the "birthing" method and then machine quilted it with an all over free-motion pattern. I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to use this method now, but it turned out pretty well and I still love the color play of the fabrics in this quilt. Being a newbie no one had told me that half square triangles were supposed to be hard.

And the back:

I don't have that quilt to take to the meeting to show either, so will take this one, which I talked about here. I made it in Dec 2002.

The quilt I will take to show my current work is my Aurora Star quilt, made in 2007. I designed it in Electric Quilt, using the Dakota Star block and then variations of the block. It has won two 2nd place ribbons, a third place and a Best Machine Quilting award at our county fair last year.

A close up of the machine quilting.

That's my quilting evolution.

Siggie & Dutch Treat

Somehow I managed to accidentally delete my post from Saturday afternoon. So here again is my first signature block for Annelies swap

And a Dutch Treat block called Undergrowth which I find decidedly odd.

I think I had something else in the original post but have forgotten what??????????

Old age creeps in................

Happy V-Day, Happy Birthday, Mike

Happy Valentine's Day to everyone! This holiday always is special to me because 46 years ago today my oldest son, Michael, was born. How can you top that for a gift? So a trip down memory lane is in order.

8 lbs. 14 oz.

Five generations