Computers and Quilting

I've read on the blogs of many others about how at times they experience computer troubles. Well, I think my laptop is going to crash and burn on me one of these days. It's really acting up lately and the other day I really thought that day had come. It is working sometimes, but I'm scared to do anything important on it now. So I think I maybe should start shopping for a new one so that I can transfer everything over, hopefully before the fatal moment happens.

In quilty news, I've been quilting on my poppy quilt. But that came to a screeching halt when I ran out of thread. I knew it wouldn't be enough thread when I bought it but it was the last spool and my favorite quilt shop owner immediately got more on order for me. So hopefully it will show up any day now.

So with the poppy quilt sitting in limbo, I got started on the next quilt in this series. Here it is as it looks today on my design wall.

Borders

There they are! Borders! I thought I'd put the borders on the two sides this time around instead of along the bottom edge, like the last quilt in this series. Now I need to start doing the invisible appliqué around the flowers and stems.

SAQA Auction Begins Today

Well folks, it's the day we've all been waiting for.  Okay, maybe not for everyone.  But good gosh, the quilts that are up for auction today on the SAQA site are just amazing and there's something there to fit all tastes.  The quilts shown on pages 1A and 1B will be up for auction this week.  The auction starts today at 2:00 pm eastern time. You can read all the necessary info on how the auctions work here.

Included in this weeks auction pieces is Sue B's quilt. I love the colors she has put on this.  They are really striking against the dark background.  And one cool thing about this quilt...it can be hung on point or in a square orientation.

Centrifugal Force

Made by Sue Bleiweiss

Found on Page 1A

And the quilt that I made and donated is to be included in this week's auction.  Here is what I made.

Time for Tea

Found on Page 1A

I hope you'll click on over to the SAQA site and check out all the great quilts.

Poppies are Popping Up

Here is my latest progress on this quilt.  Next up....borders.

So we had snow here yesterday.  Can you believe it?  There was no accumulation, but you could see areas of white in the green grass.  It isn't even officially fall yet, and we had a snow fall. Sheesh!  Weird weather.  It's all gone now as today the sun is shining.  We did get to freezing temps last night, the first of the season.  My bird baths all had a layer of ice on the top.  I think it may be time to pick the apples.

Happy weekend!

On the Design Wall

This week I started working on a new quilt. Here is where I'm at so far with it:

Look familiar? It's the second in a series....oooooo a series! That background fabric is another lovely gradient by Vicki Welsh. She recently added some new gradient colors to her etsy shop.  In case you are wondering, those little orange squares at the top of each panel are sticky notes with numbers on them, so I don't get the panels out of order.

And today I felt like doing some mindless sewing and since my pile of used dryer sheets was building up, I thought I'd get out my dryer sheet scrap quilt and add some blocks to it. Here is what it looked like when last I worked on it (6 x 4 blocks).

And after the work I did today on it, it now looks like this (8 x 6 blocks):

It's time to save more dryer sheets.  By the way, I wrote a tutorial on how I'm making this quilt and you will find it on the Three Creative Studio's free project page, named Dryer Sheet Quilts.

Hope you are having a wonderful Wednesday.

Better Late Than Even Later

Way, way, way back in this post (oh my gosh, was that really back in November, almost a year ago???), I shared a couple of new handbags I had made (lime green/black/cream). I really needed a new bag for myself as my current one was starting to show some wear. I love having matching accessories for my purses, so I didn't use my new handbag because I was going to "soon" be making those matching accessories.

Can you guess what happened?  Yes, the handbags were set aside as I worked on other projects. Pretty soon they were moved to a new location because they were in my way.  And then they got moved again and put out of sight.  I sort of just forgot about them without really forgetting about them....because every time I went shopping or errand running with my current handbag, I kept thinking how I needed a new handbag.

Well I decided that it was now time to get to making those matching purse accessories this past week.  So that's what I've been working on mostly.  I had enough fabrics left over from making the handbags to make two sets of purse accessories.  Included in the set is a mini padfolio, eyeglass case, checkbook holder, quilted zipper pourch, wallet, and business card holder.  Now I'm all set to start using my new handbag.  The other one is going to be a gift.

By the way, four of the accessories shown above are free projects on the Three Creative Studios web site.

Also this past week I continued to do more fabric dyeing.  I found that I had four colors of dye left with small amounts of each.  So I got a large bucket and did One Bucket Fabric Dyeing, also referred to as parfait dyeing.  A tutorial for this is also in the free projects at the above Three Creative Studios link.

The left over dye colors I used in this session of bucket dyeing were:  golden yellow (my favorite yellow), chartreuse, lilac, and turquoise.  In all I think there is about 7 or 8 yards of fabric that I had in that dye bucket.

Have a great weekend!

Kitty Paintings and Book Cover

I've been working on some new paintings the last few days and have now finished them. The first one shown is the next in the Squinty Cat series.

Squinty Cat 3

10" x 10"

Acrylic on Gallery Wrapped Mixed-Media Canvas

The next painting I decided to create a coordinating frame.

Daisy

8" x 8" painting only, 9.5" x 9.5" with wood frame

Acrylic on Canvas Panel

And for this next kitty painting I wanted to try something new. I painted it on 140 lb. watercolor paper. I've never painted with acrylics on this type of surface and have to admit that it was a little different. I would definitely try it again.

Cooper

10.25" x 7"

Acrylic and ink on 140 lb. watercolor paper

All of the kitties above are up for adoption and will be added to my Esty shop soon.

In other news, the Twelve by Twelve group received the cover image of our new book. Lark Publishing is the publishing company for our book and they have been so wonderful to work with. Here is the cover. We all are so very pleased with it. The book is scheduled for a March 2011 release. I can't wait.

And Yet More SAQA Auction Quilts

This is the third week I've shared some of the SAQA Auction quilts with you. The other blog posts can be found here and here.

This week, I'm sharing quilts that my fellow Twelve by Twelve group members have made.

Desire Lines #1: Simple String Theory

Made by Brenda Gael Smith

Found on Page 1A

Rooted XI
Made by Kristin La Flamme
Found on Page 1B

Entwined Roots
Made by Gerrie Congdon
Found on Page 1B

Undergrowth
Made by Karen Rips
Found on Page 3A

Possibilities
Made by Deborah Boschert
Found on Page 3A

Tillamook Rooster
Made by Terry Grant
Found on Page 3B

I find it amazing how every time I scroll through all the quilts on the auction pages that I see something new. A quilt will catch my eye and I'll think "hmmmm I don't remember seeing that one before!" Weird, but I guess it must be because there is just so much to take in that it's difficult to absorb it all at one time.

Hope you are having a wonderful holiday weekend.

A Colorful Thursday

I recently found a web site that was new to me. It is called Artworkshops.tv. It's a sister site to Creative Catalyst Productions, which sells art instruction videos. I have a couple or so of the video DVDs this company has produced and they are very well done. Anyway, their new-to-me site is a really cool idea because it is sort of like a library. You "rent" or "check out" the video of your choice for the amount of days you like and then you can watch it on your computer at any point during that time frame. And you can watch it as many times as you like during that time frame. And the big plus is...the artist who created the video receives compensation each time their video is rented by someone.

So I wanted to check it out and decided to rent the video by Sherrill Kahn called Acrylic Paint Pizzazz. After a minor glitch (the video wouldn't work in Google Chrome, had to open it with Firefox) I had a video session with Sherrill. I've always admired Sherrill's work, as she uses colors that I relate to and I like her designs. A few days later, I felt like playing with paint and found a scrap piece of cotton duck and started. Here is what came of that:

It definitely looks like a Sherrill Kahn piece in my opinion. It was fun and I can see myself playing with this again. By the way, the embellishment on the top is three torn strips of fabric and thread globs from dyeing fabric. That's the stuff that forms when your fabrics fray out in the washer and then they create blobs and wrap around all the other pieces of fabric. I'm not at all sure what I will do with this piece. I don't have a room that these colors will work in.

In Sherrill's video lesson, she always has a serendipity piece going alongside the piece she is working on. The serendipity piece is just a piece of fabric or paper that she uses up remaining paint from her tools. A good way to not waste any remaining paint. Here is my serendipity piece, a piece of paper:

Anyway, I thought the availability of being able to "rent" a video a really good idea, especially if you are interested in checking it out to see if you might want to add it to your own library of videos.

I'm still playing with overdyeing and here is my cutting table looking quite colorful with all my experiments so far. I've been writing the colors on the fabrics, in the order I dyed them, so that I can sort of repeat them if I want to. Some of these results I'm not so happy with and probably won't repeat them, but I will keep them so that I can see what happens when I overdye with those specific colors. I do think they all look great, in relation to each other here on the table.

In other news, it was my turn to choose the color challenge for the Twelve by Twelve group and I announced it today over on that blog. I chose Rusty!

Lorikeet Reveal

Today is reveal day over on the Twelve by Twelve blog. We are all revealing quilts we made to a color theme called lorikeet, chosen by Brenda. Click on over there and look at all the colorful quilts that will appear through the day.