the dog ate my homework

Okay, so it is the cats, not the dog. I don't even have a dog! I put this quilt sample on the table and by the time I looked through the viewfinder it was covered with cats!


I have been busy planning a wall hanging that I am very enthused about. I was inspired by a line of poetry and designed something simple with a pine tree at the center. The machine quilting will be a strong element in the design.

Here is a mock up of the design so that I could practise machine quilting. The blue rectangle and blue shapes represent the tree. I really wanted to be sure I could machine quilt around the "tree" in a flame pattern before committing to the real quilt.

I have been looking at Leah Day's 365 Days of Free Motion Quilting Designs. If you haven't seen it take a look! She has short You Tube videos every day showing her design of the day. She inspired me for this quilt.

The middle photo (orange thread) is the back side of another practice piece for this wall hanging. On the "front" I fused several layers of fabric so that I could tell what the stitching would be like on my final piece. I started with a wavy line of leaves then just tried all sorts of stitching. Can you tell I was having fun? I really like some open space in machine quilting like this piece has. However, my tree quilt will not have any open spaces, just different types of quilting. I hope you can click on the images and really see my quilting.

I used Misty Fuse for this project. I used it once before at a workshop and was less than thrilled with the result. I have heard so much praise for this product that I decided to try again. Now I am a big fan, too! I thought you needed a teflon sheet to put between the iron and the fusible, but I found using parchment paper works just fine.

Got to make a trip to the store to buy thread, then I will get to work on the real quilt. Stay tuned.

Happy Thanksgiving! Here is a picture from the quilt retreat I went to recently. I sure am thankful for all the good friends I have met through quilting.

While you are counting your blessings today, take a look at the Kiva link in the sidebar. Make someone happy today!

Love and Blessings to all!

November

November comes
And November goes,
With the last red berries
And the first white snows.

With night coming early,
And dawn coming late,
And ice in the bucket
And frost by the gate.

The fires burn
And the kettles sing,
And earth sinks to rest
Until next spring."
- Elizabeth Coatsworth

Machine quilting

I have so many completed projects waiting to be quilted. I was tempted to start something new this weekend, but decided what I really wanted to do was try some machine quilting on my new Janome. I've done allover meandering on a few big quilts on my old Pfaff, but when the thread kept breaking I just gave up.

Quilting on my new machine is so much fun! I borrowed a Ricky Tims DVD from the Back Road library and got inspired. I reviewed a couple of books I have on machine quilting and away I went. I started with the sashing. The first thing I did was free motion leaves and vines. These came out okay, nothing special.

Next I tried a "wave" pattern from the book Quilting Makes the Quilt. I traced the design onto freezer paper, cut it out, and used it as a stencil. Wow, how easy is that!


I decided to quilt each block in a different design. This quilt is the sampler we did together in our Tacoma Lakes chapter. Sampler quilt blocks, so now sampler quilting! I tried Diane Gaudynski's clamshell motif described in her machine quilting book. I penciled in the first or bottom row, then did the "bunny hop" as she describes it for the next rows. A few wonky bits, but my goodness, it all blends in and the overall effect is marvelous. Yummy!
Still working from Diane G's book, I tried this design on the pinwheel block. The design is based on a grid. You make a curve from one point on the grid to the next, making a vertical line from one side of the block to the next. Then you sew up the other side of the same vertical seam, making the oval shape. When the vertical lines are done you sew the horizontal seams. Quite effective, although my ovals are not exactly regular that is what practice is all about!

Three blocks done, six more to go! Stay tuned for more.....

p.s. 3 blocks you say? Yes, I forgot that I don't have a picture of the third. You can see a glimpse of it. he he

Mermaid quilt

"The Word for World is Ocean" Here is my mermaid quilt. It is going into the Back Road Quilters show in Gardiner, Maine this weekend. Oct 24-25.





Really fun to make, especially the quilting!

Columbus Day

Does it seem like I only post on a holiday weekend? I really do mean to post again before Thanksgiving. :-) By the way, Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends!

Last month I attended a dye workshop with Sonya Lee Barrington from San Francisco, brought to Maine for the fall PTQG member's meeting. Sonya has been dyeing fabrics for 30 years, so she had quite a store of knowledge and experience to share with us. It was a fun day; I even took a day off work to attend.

At the workshop we were introduced to a number of different techniques to create visual texture with Procion dyes. One method is to take 3-4 inch strips of fabric and braid them very tightly. Immerse in dye and when completed "unbraid". This creates a white (the original color of the fabric) and color spotted fabric. You can then braid the strips and dye another color. Sonya had some beautiful examples of this.

Another technique that is very simple and effective is to scrunch up a fat quarter in the toe of a nylon knee-high sock. Tie the sock and immerse in dye. You get a lovely mottled fabric.

The third method I chose was to sew a piece of fabric into a tube and slip it over a piece of PVC pipe. You then twist the tube and scrunch it down the tube, so it is very tightly twisted. Rubber bands hold the fabric top and bottom. The whole thing is immersed in dye. I had white fabric and put it into yellow dye. The result is a diagonal yellow stripey fabric. I want to sew it into a tube again and immerse it in another color, say orange, to get another layer of color.


This past Saturday I joined the Art Quilt chapter of PTQG. We had Suzanne Drown Trout of Portland give a batik workshop. Another fun day! Batik is a resist dye process. We painted with melted soy wax on our muslin squares. I made sea stars with lots of dots and practiced writing, too. We used Sumi brushes, which are used in Japanese calligraphy. We also got to try a special device called a tjanting, which is especially good for applying fine lines and details.

After drawing our design in wax we were ready to paint with dye. We were given the three primary colors of dye mixed with a thickening agent. I mixed up a peachy orange color and then experimented to see how well the colors mixed together on the fabric. I left some areas open and applied solid yellow next to the orange. A chemical water could be added to the dye to thin it and make it flow more quickly.

I really enjoyed batik and would like to try it again at home. The soy wax washes out easily with hot water and soap. No tedious removal of wax the hot water, scraping, and ironing. That's for me!

After lunch we discussed the December meeting and also challenges to work on. Lots of great ideas and it was so good to be with so many other women who are enjoying the creative process. I felt like I was with "my" people!

Labor Day Weekend

On Labor Day weekend DH and I drove up to Baxter State Park for two nights of camping. The first morning we woke up to a frosty world. The field our lean-to was in was covered with frost. My toes were chilly, but DH made hot coffee and all was well.


We drove to Kidney Pond, had a tailgate breakfast and went on a hike. We must have missed a sign because we ended up walking in a circle, which was rather perplexing. Our map did not show the trail we were on, but later on we found a map that helped us figure out where we went wrong.

Well, nothing is ever really "wrong" is my belief. We did not make it to our intended destination, but we ended up paddling in a canoe on Kidney Pond and saw this huge bull moose.


He was at the outlet where it is fairly shallow. We watched him for awhile then paddled off and saw a female moose and a youngster at a distance. They were probably a pair we saw earlier in the woods on the way to the pond. We paddled back to the inlet and the bull moose was in the middle of this part of the pond, with great long strings of vegetation dripping from his muzzle. DH paddled around him in a big circle while I held the camera and made a short video.

Now here is my picture of perfection. Knitting mittens, "Cottonweeds" coffee mug, the lake and mountains. Can you hear my sigh of contentment?