Break Time in the Studio

Guess what this means?

It means this!

In my house, this behavior can mean:

a.  I'm so cute and I look fantastic in the sunshine right on top of your work.

b.  I want something, yes food, and I'm not moving off your work until you go get me some.

c.  This sunshine is so wonderful, and even better right here where you've been ironing, ahhhh, nice and warm.

d.  I love being near you mommy, and so this is the best way I know how.

e.  All of the above.

f.  None of the above.

Creative Cue: Rich

Last week's Creative Cue word was rich. I am rich with kitty love, so that is how I came up with my sketch.

Here is the finished mosaic collage face quilt. I've named her Cira. It's an Italian name meaning sun. It measures approximately 23" x 25.5".

And here is something small I made. I don't know about you, but I happen to have fabric scraps. One plastic tub of scraps that I have are those fabrics that have Mistyfuse pre-applied. The scraps in the tub are mostly from other projects. Well my tub is full to overflowing and so I wondered how I might use some of them up.

So I applied some of the Mistyfused scraps to a batting scrap (yes I have scraps of everything). After I had the batting scrap filled with fabric, I then free-motion quilted the entire thing. Once that was done, I then applied some white textile paint. When dry, I thread sketched a girl. Then I applied a backing fabric, hand stitched around the edges, and affixed it temporarily to a blank greeting card. It's a mini quilt/greeting card combo.

Stacked Cups and TAFA

I created another version of this design. You may recall that I first did this design for my Twelve by Twelve quilt reveal on March 1. I wanted to try the design in some other colors. I plan to do some more of these, but don't have time right now. This one will probably be added to my etsy shop in the near future.

I joined a new-ish group called TAFA: The Textile and Fiber Art List. There are many talented artists in this group and you can see them highlighted on the site.

Hope you are having an enjoyable weekend. I am planning on getting the mosaic face quilt finished. I am currently hand stitching the binding.

More on Grippers

First, I would like to thank all of you for your wonderful comments on my mosaic collaged face. Your input has been a tremendous help.

A couple months ago a call was put out to make a quilt block for a special quilt for Yvonne Porcella. The first photo shows the block I made to contribute. You can see the completed quilt here on Jamie Fingal's blog and she shares a bit about the process. The quilt turned out so great!

I made my quilt block with the gel glue resist method and added color with Jacquard Dye-Na-Flow paint.

I wanted to share with you that I tried the gripper pads while free-motion quilting yesterday and found them extremely wonderful. I will definitely be keeping these by my sewing machine to use often. I had a couple of questions on how to use these. Simply lay the gripper onto your quilt in the position where you would normally have your hand, then just place your hand on the gripper and start stitching.

As I was cooking supper yesterday, (I was making manicotti) I looked closely at the plastic trays that the manicotti shells came in and wondered if the tray would be useful in my studio. While they are a bit flimsy, there were two plastic trays and I have them nestled together, I thought perhaps they might make a nice thread spool holder for the threads I pick out to use on current projects. I'm not sure if I'll like this or not but thought I'd give it a try. I like re-purposing things that are meant to be discarded, and do it often. Do you? What's your favorite re-purposed item and how do you use it?

Grippers

Last week I watched the most recent episode (#606) on The Quilt Show, featuring Phillipa Naylor. I love Phillipa's work and have been a fan since I've been aware of her work. In the show, Phillipa shares how she uses a grip pad to help her hold and move the quilt while she free-motion stitches. I, myself, usually wear a pair of quilter's gloves, but liked her method just for the fact that if you quickly need to grab a needle, thread or anything small, you aren't having to remove the glove every time.

So yesterday while I was grocery shopping, I spotted the following:

A four-pack of grippers in the dollar aisle of the store. I figured for a dollar I could easily try out Phillipa's method. So did you see the text I added to the photo? I think the company should consider adding this information to their packaging, don't you?

Remember the sneak peek eye I shared with you last week? Well here's the quilt as it is now. I am trying out my mosaic collage technique on a face. I've got all the stitching/quilting done at this point. I'm not sure if I like this or not. In some ways I do, and in some ways I don't. I'm not totally happy with the way some of the darker fabrics are appearing for shading. I may have to go back to those spots and add some textile paint to blend them in better.

All in all, this piece is sort of an exploration on this technique. I plan to add some flowers to the left side of the quilt, but just haven't gotten there yet.

Creative Cue: Tip

Another Creative Cue word was announced today, but of course I'm behind again and this word....TIP....is last week's word.

I didn't scan my sketch this week because I have a house guest and I can't get into the room with the scanner. Meet Meatball!

She (yes I said she!) is my house guest this weekend. She is my son's cat and I'm looking after her. She is just about six months old and goes 100 miles an hour. That is why I can't get to the scanner as I have some of the rooms closed off.

I tried talking my son out of naming her Meatball, but he just wouldn't listen. Kids!!! She's so sweet, but lacks discipline and is so rambunctious. I haven't had a youngster like this in the house for some time and had forgotten how much energy they have. Sigh! I need a nap!

Bobbin Breakdown

I started working on some composition book covers yesterday. Well actually I had started working on the painted surfaces for these covers over the last few days, but the actual construction started yesterday and I finished them up today.

The surfaces of these composition book covers are made from Roc-lon® Multi Purpose Cloth. This material is great to paint on, has fabulous body, and can be used for many things.

As I was sewing on the comp book covers today, my bobbin thread ran out....imagine that! I was setting up the thread to wind a new bobbin when all of a sudden, my bobbin winding tension disc thingy popped out of the machine...(pout). Silly me thought I could just pop it back in. Nuh uh! It's broke.

So there I was, wondering how I was going to wind my bobbin. Well I could have got out my back up sewing machine, but that would have meant digging in that closet where I have so much stuff stored that it's sort of a nightmare to go into. Then, the lightbulb came on. Hey, I have a Sidewinder! I had won it in a contest a year or so ago and had never really used it, so that was just the ticket.  Whew!  Problem solved...for now.

And I'll end this post with this sneak peek at something else I've been working on.

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

The Thing About Thangles

I was recently working on the latest BOMs for the Block of the Month over at Three Creative Studios and I pulled out my new package of Thangles to try out.

Here are some of the half-square triangles I made.

I will admit that I like Thangles and I don't like Thangles. Here's why! I like how easily you can chain piece with them. There is less fabric waste. It's quick to cut the pieces apart, and there is only paper to remove from half the block.

I found, though, that if I followed the directions and cut my fabric strips exactly the width of the paper strips, I had trouble keeping everything straight and aligned, therefore, resulting in some not-so-perfect half-square triangles. When I discovered I was having this problem, I then decided to try cutting my fabric strips slightly wider than the paper strip, oh about 1/8" to 1/4" wider. You can see my fabric is wider than the paper strip in the following photo.

I found that by using the wider fabric strip, I did have more trimming to do, but I did have better half-square triangles in the end. So all in all, I would give Thangles a thumbs-up rating, but I still plan to use the paper-piecing method I had used before, for certain projects, because I think it will work better for when I'm using up scraps of fabric.

Here are the newest blocks that are available for you to make. The first two are Block 7 in both of the color ways I'm creating.

And these next two are from a bonus block that Vicki created. She made a variation of Block 6 to create Block 6A.

You will find the block patterns here. And be sure to check out the Free Projects page, as we added some new things just today.

Expression

Today is the reveal of the communication-themed quilts over on the Fiberactions blog. Please check them out as they make their appearances. You can read more about my quilt there.

Creative Cue 10: Clip

This is my sketch for this week's Creative Cue. There are many ways to go with this word, but I decided to go with a vision of someone clipping their hair.

I hope you are having an enjoyable weekend.

Creative Cues 8 & 9

I'm a week behind on my sketches for Creative Cue. Up first is last week's cue theme of "cookie". I had been thinking on and off about how I could portray a cookie. I mostly kept focusing on the yummy kind of cookies, you know, like chocolate chip and sugar cookies. I just couldn't get excited about trying to draw one. But then, last evening I typed "cookie" in a Flickr search and one of the ideas that came up was a fortune cookie. Wham! That's what I wanted to draw. So here's my interpretation of the fortune cookie photo I found.

 

This week's cue is "stem". I love flowers, and flowers have stems, right? So I drew some flower stems, minus the flowers. You are supposed to imagine the flowers at the end of the stems.

 

There, I feel better getting caught up with my Creative Cue drawings. I wanted to share a bit of news I learned recently. I found out that a quilt I submitted to Fantastic Fibers 2010 was juried in. I am very happy and excited about that. Here is the web site with more information on the Fantastic Fibers show: http://www.theyeiser.org.

Indian Orange Peel update: I now have 14 blocks done, up one from the post earlier this week. 11 more to go.

Happy weekend everyone!

BOM Blocks

I took photos of the blocks I'm making for the Three Creative Studios block of the month program. I'm doing the blocks in two different color ways as you can see in these pictures.

 

 

Six blocks have been released so far along with a bonus block. The original BOM is created with nine blocks total and Vicki kindly created a variation of block 1 for any participants who would like more than nine blocks. Vicki is planning some more bonus blocks too. In my photos above, my bonus blocks are the ones by themselves in row 3.

And in case you weren't aware, each month we are holding a drawing with those who share a photo of the current BOM block in the Three Creative Studios forums. If you've just found the BOM program, you can still participate. You have until the end of the day on March 15 to share your Block 6 photo in the forums to be eligible for the following prize:

Prize package includes: I Love Patchwork book, Abstract Quilts in Solids book, hand dyed fabric pack by Vicki Welsh, selection of black & white fabrics, pack of glass head pins, set of quilt note cards, Wonderfil threads and Mistyfuse.

Pin Pondering

I've been doing quite a bit of this lately:

 

I pulled out my Indian Orange Peel quilt that I started a long time ago and decided I really wanted to get it done. While pinning the curved seams, I started thinking about pins. Hmmm, kind of a weird thing to think about. I started wondering just how many different types of pins I had and why I have them. Here is a photo of all the pins I could find. I think I may have some more somewhere, but I think they are older pins, perhaps from my grandmother.

  

Pins come in differing sizes, both in thickness and length. I have two different sizes of T-pins, small applique pins, curved safety pins for quilt basting, and more than one size of regular straight pins. I tend to use them all depending on the task and it's funny how I seem to know exactly which pins I need/want for what I'm working on. How about you? Is it the same for you? What are your favorite pins?

Here is a view of the blocks I've sewn so far. There are 25 blocks total and I've got 13 put together.

 

Stacked Blueware

 

Today is reveal day over on the Twelve by Twelve blog. Head on over for some great quilts all created to the theme of blue and white with a dash of black. You'll be able to read more about my quilt there as well.