What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Welcome to this week's creativity round up... a bit of paint, a bit of fabric, lots of color!!!

when I had to switch phones, I tested it by calling my friend Cindy. As we talked about art and life, I doodled the index card above. It didn't turn out like I hoped because I didn't segment the points first. But it was fun, and I got to play with bright watercolors!

I'm going to go back and forth from paintings to sewings.... it's all arting!

I sewed a lot this week, making this for RSC ...

read more

 

blue flowers 15" X 18.5"

for this week's sewing round up, I'm sharing a finish and some wine bottle blocks for RSC

The challenge of the month at RSC is to use our light/lime green scraps... this top was made a couple months ago, and I finished it this week. If you don't remember this one, I started with some blue scraps from a flowering snowball block series way back. They had curves I liked, so I sewed the halves together and improv curvy pieced them with light greens into a blue flower abstract.

pin ...

read more

For sewing this week, I made the hexi kaleidoscope blocks in light/lime greens the color of the month at the RSC. I went ahead and took a pic of the ones already done, and noticed by setting them this way you see kind of a light shadow around the outside... I'll have to take care when I have finished all the blocks. I think it might be a possible twin size with the blocks from the next two months. 

The newest blocks in light greens

I also spent some time with the scraps from making the Ricky Tims ...

read more

 

Welcome to this week's sewing round up... The pic is of a block by Lilyella done with EPP onto paper templates. I am into fall colors now that our trees have begun to wear them...

EPP is done in sections onto paper, and this time I glue basted them

 then stitched them together with a whip stitch
into a kind of kaleidoscope block

Which I'm trying to decide how to set

I enjoyed this music this morning as I typed this...autumn morning bossa nova 

when I finished the block, all the seams meeting in such a pinpoint ...

read more

 

For this week's sewing discussion I have three small finishes. The photo above shows the transition in color of the month at RSC from turquoise to orange.

The calendar says we are getting into Fall even if our temps remain nearly 100 F and the wildfire smoke is choking us when we go outside.  We are having record breaking heat when it traditionally was cooling off. 

My three finishes also show the transition from turquoise to orange and don't they compliment each other?  

I love Fall. I grew up in Florida where we had two seasons, hot and ...

read more

 

would you like some wine? This pattern is free from Hoffman Fabrics, and I used that turquoise in the upper right corner this month for the RSC color of the month. All from the scrap bin too.

Senor Flamingo Rose and Moonbeam Winery gewurztraminer

I have made them in all the RSC colors of the month since January and will eventually make them into a table runner

I looked at my Kaleidoscope this week and finally chose this fabric as my favorite border

However I only have a half yard and it's directional. So. Sew... it will be pieced ...

read more

 

Cabanas  45" X 19"

While sewing this week, in the extreme heat of summer (100F) I finished the cabana's quilt and made my sweaters in the RSC color of the month, dark blue! From coppertone to winter gear! 

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

love the beach quilting effect!

 So I changed up the pattern... I made the tiny snail's trail blocks but chose to offset and double them up to resemble waves approaching a beach. I took out one cabana to make the quilt slightly less ...

read more

 

see the sun peeking out at top right?

This is Saturday's weekly sewing round-up for the week, welcome!

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 ...

read more

 

For this week's sewing round up, and two challenges, I'll start with my painted heart. Sometimes I wish I would not start my experimental sessions with scraps. It helps to reduce creative stress by thinking I won't be wasting any material but then if I like the outcome, I have odd edges to deal with. 

more later on that one.. this is the design wall I saw all week:

read more

 

I know it's paint party Friday but I've been sewing instead of painting again this week... except for the tiny wooden word here at the bottom.... I'll let my assistant show you how I painted it...

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 ...

read more

 

read more

My painting is leading to sewing...
It all started with the pink flower painting, printed three times on fabric.
Left: paper print
middle: color fabric print
Right: lightly shaded black and white with pencil color
In order to pencil color on, I printed a black and white washed out shadow version. Prismacolor pencils blend well on fabric, then heat set with iron.

I finished the black and white version earlier,

When the color of the month at RSC turned to pink, I took out my pink scrap bin, and noted some rounded pieces left from cutting some blocks last year ...

read more

I've spent time in the studio this week, painting and sewing both equally.

I enjoy following along with the Rainbow Scrap Challenge each year because it
1. encourages us to use scraps and I love scraps
2. gives us a focus color to explore for a month
3. provides a ready made menu for the year, once you choose your patterns then it's just sew those blocks each month in the chosen color, then see what everyone else is making in same color

I admit, I'd have liked not to do turquoise, then light blue, then dark ...

read more

How to make a diamond star table runner....
start with a bag of scraps sent to you from a good friend, after letting them age for a few months lol
there! All washed and sorted, pressed and stacked! Find 18 diamonds of the same fabric and place on the design wall
this stage may take a while... look at this and decide what to do with it. Once you decide on a table runner, then look through scraps to see if there are pieces that can go around these to fill in
no, not big enough, then off to the ...

read more

Welcome to this week's sewing round-up

These are some cool log cabins done in an improvisational way.


When looking through my orange scrap bin to keep with the color of the month at the Rainbow Scrap Challenge, "Orange" , I noted a lot of strings.


thin small or long, strips, often ragged often fraying and uneven.



Perfect!







Off to the white and beige bin for similar strips, sit at the machine and piece the puzzle pieces together
don't overworry size of blocks, keep pressing between strips, let the centers vary, allow for it to be perfectly imperfect because the ...

read more

5 blocks on the design wall

I sewed this week on a couple projects with bright green scraps, for the rainbow scrap challenge.
this means pulling down the stringy mess of that box of leftovers and sorting through to find the lightest and brightest of my scrap greens that are the right size.
I have wanted to try this paper pieced pattern of crazy geese for a long time now, so I went to my old sew precise software, found the blocks and printed them out to finish at 6" square.

It takes a while to sew these, because the ...

read more

at least I'm sewing again. It was really hard to find my sewing mojo after the holidays and being sick.

I decided to try Bonnie Hunter's lozenges pattern for the rainbow scrap challenge this year. Free on her blog, I printed it out.
decided to make them bigger at 3.5" X 6.5"  scrap color, and 2" squares.

The color this month is light or bright green... most of my numerous green scraps are dark or muddly. Hmmmm... it occurs to me I have not been replenishing the scraps for a while.
To transfer the bits to ...

read more

Well if it's Saturday, it's all about sewing!
The above abstract piece was a surprise. I was working on other projects, but found I needed some medicinal stitching. Last week I showed the little red piece,
I wondered what would become of it...
This week I got out purple tiny scraps and turquoise ones... and sewed while listening to the latest book.
I keep even tiny pieces as they look like cool mosaics sewn together. I also do not cut scraps into squares or strips... I don't work that way, and don't view scraps that way ...

read more

snowball blocks in different configurations

This week with it's snowstorms, was distracting for sewing. I have only three things to show...

I finished up some already cut snowball sections, and if you'll notice they are not all like the others!
Some have color in the corners, some have color in the center sections. I kind of like them together, especially in black and white. I might even have to do a little study of just black and white ones like this.

I got distracted by putting scraps away and sewed the smallest ones into this red piece... very ...

read more

hand sewing these hexie stars!

welcome to Sewing Saturdays.... I guess I divide my creative time between sewing, painting and writing with a bit of beading thrown in for measure. The above hexie star represents the hand work I do in the car or watching tv.
The Rainbow scrap challenge color of the month is brown/black, so here's some chandelier blocks in both. For black I used my black with multi colors scraps.
See the gray? it's my design wall, back in use since I got the lattice blocks all sewn together into three big sections, and ...

read more