What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Ta Da! I finished the Beach Picnic quilt that I made for the June blog hop. Joan from Moose Stash Quilting and Carol from Just Let Me Quilt take turns hosting a year long blog hop. They chose a different theme for each month. 

The theme for the June blog hop was For the Birds. The project is simple, and just needs a bird on it.

I made the quilt in June, but I had not finished binding it. 

I posted the unfinished project here in June.

Now it is finally finished.

I added a pole with directions to other ...

Quilting

There is so little that centering the design in each block isn't possible. Also, the shortest length ...

Quilting

So I made a few more. {And this is how ...

 I finished the portraits quilt I showed you in the last post.

I used the index card portraits as my inspiration, so I used background fabric that would result in the same size as the index cards.

I used fusible applique to add the body and the body parts: hair, whites of eyes, eyeballs, nose (optional), mouth, and clothing.

I decided to use the binding fabric as a border instead, and since it looked like a frame, I decided to birth the quilt instead of bind it.

I used embroidery stitches to stabilize the quilt instead of stitching in the ...

If I could be doing anything quilty, it would be improv piecing.  It is like taking a journey. "Come hither ye fabric scraps; together we will travel and see where we end up." 

Here is the Island Batik Challenge for March. It reads 

"March brings a free month for you to determine your own project of any size, using any theme and any technique!! This is an opportunity for you to express your creativity without guidelines. Have fun!"

And I did have fun. See how the bits and pieces grew.

Starting Point

And then there were two

Growing

Coming Together ...

The blues are not done with me yet. Here is a photo of the leftovers at this point

All of this plus the quilt posted yesterday came from the little box in the middle of the table (except the backing on the right) and then I found a drawer of 'orphan' blocks, added the ones with blue in them and started making another one. So far this other one is nearly done and still have this table full of bits. They may not survive to go into a third quilt!

As for the second one, it is partly sewn, about ...

I have finished and submitted to my first SAQA (Studio Art Quilt Associates) exhibition. The Northern California/Northern Nevada region issued a call last summer for a juried regional exhibition entitled Prism Play. From the start I loved the vision for this exhibition. The quilts are all required to be 15" wide by 45" long and monochromatic, following one of the color cards from Joen Wolfrom's Ultimate 3-in-1 Color Tool. The selected quilts will hang in multiple full color spectrum groupings during the exhibition.

In phase one we each signed up for a color (or colors) and were assigned ...

A few weeks ago I shared my new daily project, WIPs Be Gone with Leanne of Devoted Quilter. Here's a wrap up of all the works in progress I worked on during the first 25 days (of the last 100 days of 2021).

My commitment to myself is to spend at least 15 minutes (though often it's longer) making progress on a WIP. My goal is to finish 4 larger quilts before the end of the year as many of my finishes in the last year and a half have been mini quilts. You'll see that I ...

Hey there, friends!  I am so happy that today I get to give you a little overview of the final sections of my new book, Scrappy Improv Quilting.  The third section of the book is titled Seasonal Sensations and contains six adorable little seasonal quilts.

The best flowers are at the Keukenhof in Amsterdam. A bit out of my reach, mostly.

Tulips in Amsterdam, 2019

Keukenhof Gardens

The Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania are huge and absolutely beautiful, but still a few hours from me.

Longwood Gardens, Pennsylvania

Water Lilies

The Cherry Blossoms in Washington DC are more accessible and I don't mind the long train ride although I will avoid the nightmarish parking in downtown DC. 

From 2008. My first time :-)

So beautiful

Last week I shared the flannel rag quilt kit I prepared for a week long retreat I’ll be attending. Of course one isn’t enough, so I now have two more ready to go!

First up is a string block kit. I pulled from some beloved batik greens and blues and one almost white and cut into varying strip widths. The plan is to sew them onto paper piecing paper doing a diamond design. I love to do string quilts! For me its both fun and therapeutic sewing. Sewing this quilt will also be perfect for a retreat as ...

Quilting

Quilting

This top is finished. It will go on the longarm in a day or two. I just love this one. The entire quilt is made from scraps that were in my scrap bins, finding a few other colors to spice it up. I love the shots of blue (not as dark as the photo, more of a teal) and the bits of orange and green. I pulled out a few yellow fat quarters but didn't use any of them. Even the binding is already cut from scraps and will be mostly the darker pieces in the quilt. The backing ...

If you've been on a zoom call with me this pandemic, or indeed seen one of the interviews I've done recently, then you'll have noticed a large stretched quilt behind my head. That was my first go at this technique more than a decade ago – so much wrong with that one, and yet not enough to make me take it down and redo it.

In the last year or so I've been inspired to refine my process and develop something that doesn't look like my seams are going to pop any minute! Stretching a quilt ...

Chinese Coins

1. I plan the overall size (LxW) of the finished quilt because it helps me determine when I have enough columns and when to stop sewing onto a column. Believe ...