What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Seems like cooking, chores and life were loud this week, demanding all my attention. It took a force of will to return to art. 

The above is a close up of a painting exercise I did this week. I discovered a video of watercolor techniques and sent it as a group exercise to some of my online painting friends. It is good to learn, and after learning to process what you've learned, what you liked/enjoyed and what didn't work. 

We are in process of comparing our ...

She and I grew up together, starting from elementary school, through high school band trips and her family often invited me to spend their beach week with them. She and I had many adventures over the years, many of them at the beach, so of course I made a momento for her. 

She is ...

 Welcome to this week's sewing round up!

the design wall was exciting this week!

I'll start with the wine bottles in dark blue scraps... here is the mock up, supply gather...

pattern free from Hoffman Fabrics

They are a bit close in value to the "bright blue" month at rainbow scrap challenge but that's okay, at least I got the labels different. 

Cabanas  45" X 19"

Above is my finished summer quilt (pattern Moda row by row book) quilted and ready to hang. 

love the beach quilting effect!

One from a valentine fabric and one from my alcohol fabric collection! Seeing pink elephants???

Mostly this week I have worked on my tumbling block quilt, fine tuning colors and arrangements.

see the sun peeking out at top right?

I have been obsessed with the tumbling blocks. I found this project after I'd done about half the blocks that you see here

it was an english paper piecing project I could do in front of the tv, in colors of the month at RSC. I added in some red blocks for this month and thought I have quite a few, what would they look like laid out? Since I couldn't place them on the vertical design wall (paper ...

RSC color of the month is red, and I love it! Out came the scrap bin and I made the little sweater by appliqueing a strong woman on it!

all the colors so far

I spent several days this week sorting my finished quilts... many many of them that were jumbled from the move. I put them in categories, and number order for lectures, and found a couple UFO's mixed in! 

One of them started at our rental when we were ...

24.5" X 36"

for this week's sewing round up, I have lots to share! This was finished last week and I am still seeking a name for it! I LOVE the colors and pattern. I got it free on the craftgossip site, it's paper pieced and you must plan colors so they come back together into stars. 

I used superior rainbows thread a lot as ...

learned from Tamara LaPorte

 At first I thought, maybe I won't share my paintings... but I feel I've learned so much from the Sketchbook Revival artists that I want to remember. Plus the two week lessons got me painting again. 

Isn't she pretty??? The lesson was taught by Tamara LaPorte and I like her style a lot. Of course it's got my own details, and brush strokes and reflects all the tiny decisions made when creating artwork.

First up, the hexi kaleidoscope blocks I learned on a tv show...

In this month's RSC color bright or light blues

After 30 min of sketching and drawing and using higher math, well, I'll have to let you know

I made two ...

No I don't remember where I saw the image I used to make the patterns

 For this week's sewing round-up I have been busy... First off the color of the month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge is bright blue, so here is the sweater I made this month...

I love poodles! (Milo asked that I color his hair pink) 

Mainly this week I've been painting and trying to catch up on the Sketchbook Revival videos before they go away...but this isn't the time to discuss painting.... 

Size 33" X 35" or so

spiral programmed stitch for quilting here, free motion hearts

Note the piping inserted in binding

 I probably made this about 10 years ago but forgot to make a label!!! 

It started with paper pieced bunnies, the idea of doing 3-D ears, decorating their Easter dresses, making paper pieced tulips, and using some favorite purple garden flower fabric to create a kind of clearing for ...

this...

was pieced into these

tops, then quilted to red lining fabric with shiny threads and stitched together into a stocking!

Let the fabric do the work for the back of the stocking, it's so doggy-cute!

and as you saw at the top, it's hanging on the mantle!

It's okay if you go back to baking again Mama!

I wanted to finish the UFO block I made years ago, and what do you do to one ...

Heaven knows I do not plan on going around all these little pieces of fabric, which is why it's still a UFO...

I wanted to make three new stockings for us, and have plans...

a paper pieced snowflake for ...

here they are just the dark ones and they were fun to make. I looked through the scrap bins of black, gray, and brown to pick these

click to see detail

here are the tiny hst's from the current blocks, nothing done with them yet

This has been a good project for the year's focus. It provided me with not only a way to showcase color each month, that didn't take big decisions ...

Rainbow scrap challenge this month is to use our neutral light scraps and I continued with a few blocks.

It's been a busy sewing week here

the color of the month at the rainbow scrap challenge is light neutrals, and I made a number of foundation pieced geese to explore the concept. I say concept because as Joanne reminded me, lime green is my usual neutral!

I pulled fabric scraps from four bins... white/beige, white with busy patterns, and brown (for light tan) and gray

while I'm sewing it gets very messy

but it starts out sorted

The concept of doing blocks with neutrals made me pause. How will I get strong graphic lines with lower ...

I collect fun embellishments, or did before the pandemic, and had these little wooden words on hand but they were too plain, so... gold metallic paint to the rescue!

another little embellishment, placed just so along the top. 

If you remember I made tiny leaf blocks with leftover half square triangles a few weeks ago, and turned them into two quilts ...

12" X 14"

so now I have one for November. I thought, something fun, listing things we like... 

gather fabrics with fun motifs

Like HOME I wrote out Thankful with a calligraphy pen, enlarged it to the size I wanted, 

transferred the word to fabric... using saral paper over face up fabric, then ...