No Dust Here

I've been keeping super busy here and I've got the photos to prove it.  It's been a whirlwind in my studio the last few days and that means no dust has had a chance to settle.

I've been painting kitties with blue backgrounds on some cotton duck.  These are destined for handbags.

And I finished the quilting and binding on the Sea Glass quilt. Here it is stretched and pinned to my design wall. I tossed it in the washer and dryer to bring up the quilted texture and now it is blocking into shape. I am hoping to get a nice day soon so I can take it outdoors for a photo session.

I made this composition notebook cover this week. It is made with this month's 3 Creative Studios color palette, Carnival Games.

And here is a photo of the inside.

Do you remember the flower screen prints I shared recently? Well I made them into a table runner and here I am already quilting on it.

Other things I did that are not pictured include mending some pockets on my hubby's jeans.  Who wants to see that?  We installed a new dishwasher as the old one was on it's last legs.  There was lots of naughty words flinging around in the kitchen during that job....and not by me!  I was just the assistant.

I hope you are having an enjoyable weekend!

Making a Permanent Screen

I haven't screen printed anything for a long while and have a few screens just laying around doing nothing.  I recently had Jane Dunnewold's book out for some fabric dyeing information and found the section in it about making permanent screen print designs. So I dug out one of my unused screens and followed Jane's directions.

I drew my flower design onto a piece of paper and then traced it onto my screen with a permanent marker. Using regular, cheap craft paint, I painted around the design lines and let it dry. My first print is the one shown in the lower part of the photo.  My painted screen needed some fine tuning and after doing that I got a better result. I like this technique. I think I may take some Dye-Na-Flow after those flowers and give them some color.

I've started quilting on the Sea Glass quilt.  I'm doing an all over design in the inner area of the quilt and haven't decided yet on how I will quilt the borders.

Add This One to the Pile

I woke up in the wee morning hours this morning and was wide awake.  So I decided to get up and finish putting the borders on this quilt.  I have sort of named this Sea Glass but I'm not sure if I'm totally committed to that title or not just yet.

I'm happy to say that I now have batting and can get busy with quilting on my "to quilt" pile now, which now includes the above quilt.  I was asked to help yesterday at my local quilt shop as they were short handed and that gave me the perfect opportunity to get the batting that I needed.  I was a very good girl too and didn't bring anything else home but the batting.  That isn't always so easy for me to do when spending that long in a quilt shop.

After I get this one quilted I will try and get some better photos of it.  It's not always so easy to capture the right colors and lighting when taking a photo when it's dark outside and all I have to rely on are my studio lights.

Hope you are having a wonderful weekend.

Sewing with Quilting Fabric

I finished sewing the tunic I started the other day.

This is the pattern I used.

The shirt fits me fine but......it doesn't have much shape in the upper body/bust area and looks a little boxy and unshaped. I compared this pattern to another pattern I have purchased but not made and noticed on the unused pattern it has a dart in the bust area and a slight curve shape in the side seam. So I may like that pattern more. I think if I was to add shape to the current tunic it would be difficult to get on and off without ripping the seams, because I used quilting fabrics it doesn't have much give or stretch when pulling the garment over the head to put it on or take it off. I could also try a stretchier fabric too. I think quilting cottons are not the best fabric choice for these shirts. I'll probably just wear this one around the house.

I still haven't gotten to the quilt shop to replenish my batting supply, so I haven't started on my "to quilt" pile yet. But I have been working on a new quilt. Here is my design wall as it looks at the moment.

Can You Say HOT!

The weather in my neck of the woods is seriously hot and humid.  I've been trying to stay indoors as much as possible.  Over the last few days I've been working on projects.  Up first is the wonky star quilt.  I've finished piecing it.  Now it sits on my "to quilt" pile.  I can't quilt it as I've run out of batting.  I'm not going out, anywhere, until the weather cools a bit.

I did, however, have enough batting to get quilting on my dotty spotty quilt.

I've finished the quilting on this one and attached the binding already.  It's now in the blocking process and then a hanging sleeve.

And today, I'm trying may hand at sewing a garment.  Eeeeeekkkkk!  I pulled some fabrics from my stash that have been there for eons and that I won't likely use in a quilt anymore.  So this is my prototype:

It will be a tunic top......hopefully, when done and I'm basically trying it out to see if I can make it to my correct size and that I like the fit.  At this point I haven't attached sleeves yet.  I'm hoping to do some more tunics in the near future...I bought some patterns.  I'm into the tunic style top at the moment.  Who knows...maybe I'll enjoy sewing garments so much that I will want to be on Project Runway. NOT!!!

Not Going According to the Non-Plan

Here is my progress on the wonky stars quilt.  I am in the process of adding the borders and the top and bottom log-cabin style borders are stitched on already.  While I didn't have a set-in-stone plan for this quilt (I'm using up scraps from another quilt project), I am running into some troubles with my sort-of-planned borders.

I'm guessing my calculations were very off (pretty obvious) as my next round of borders are much too long and not lining up correctly.  Now I need to figure out what I will do.  I'm leaning toward adding another solid white border strip to the two sides and then adjusting the length of the two log-cabin style borders so they fit.  But I'm still thinking...

Another view...

I added little butterflies or bow ties in the corners of every other block.  I used an assortment of white-on-white fabrics for the white background areas.  It feels good to be using up stash.

Twelve by Twelve - Gray Reveal

Today the Twelve by Twelve group is revealing quilts that feature a gray color palette. Here is the quilt I made for this challenge.

You can read more detail about my quilt over on the Twelve by Twelve blog and also see the quilts that other group members have made.

The Ups and Downs of This Wonky Life

The past couple of weeks have been both good and bad. We've had the joy of spending time with visiting family members and celebrating my son's 22nd birthday, and then we had the sorrow of saying goodbye to my father-in-law. Also just this morning, my brother wrote that he said goodbye to his best friend last night, his German Shepard of about 12 years. His dog was an old man in human terms and he had a few health issues as well. Family members, whether pet or human, are so very precious and we are blessed to have them in our lives when we do.

During these busy times, I've been escaping to my studio and working on my wonky stars. I need this sort of mundane project right now to keep me busy without too much thinking. Here is how the space around my sewing machine has been looking lately. I'm still using up all the scraps from my king-sized bed quilt....which, by the way, is being delivered to my quilter today.

Here is what my design wall is looking like now. I don't have any specific plans on how big this will be in the end....I've just been making blocks and throwing them up there on the wall. The blocks are not stitched together yet, just in case I come up with other layout ideas I want to play around with.

Hope you are having a great weekend. Be sure to give your loved ones an extra hug or two soon.

Gray Play

The next reveal for the Twelve by Twelve group color play challenge is just next week, the 12th to be exact. I'm in the process of putting the finishing stitches into my piece. Here is a photo of some of the fabric I used in my 12" square gray quilt.

I purchased the hand dyed gray fabrics from my friend Vicki Welsh. She dyes beautiful fabrics and I knew I didn't have time or the desire to try and dye some grays myself so I looked through her etsy shop and it was like magic....she had some gray fat quarters that were perfect for me.

And another friend of mine, Margaret Applin, sent me a fun Thermofax screen to play with and I used it to create the surface design on the gray fabric. Margaret has just opened up an Etsy shop to sell her Thermofax screen designs and my goodness....I think I want them all....I love her designs.

Are you wondering about that green strip of fabric???  Well I took a cutting off of the lower gray fabric after I had screened on some gray paint and I soaked the piece in bleach.  This is the results after the bleach removed some color.

Here is a new product I recently purchased and have just started using. These are called Wonder Clips and they are made by Clover.  I was never a big fan of those clips that looks like hair barrettes that quilters use for holding the binding while hand stitching it.

These are much easier for me to manipulate and they even have measurement markings on them.  I'm hoping they will prove to be handy for many sewing/stitching tasks.

Feeling Wonky

The other day I was Feeling Groovy, but today I'm Feeling Wonky!

Here is the completed dot quilt top. I love this quilt. However, my blocks would not line up correctly at the seams (pout). I thought I could trim them a bit but they seemed like they were twisted and I feared cutting too much fabric away in order to square them so they would meet at the seams. Did any of that make sense?

So I decided to just sew them all together in a wonky way and unless you are within two feet of this quilt you don't even see it. No quilt inspectors will be allowed to see this quilt! Now I am awaiting my quilt backing fabric to arrive to start quilting this dotty top.

I ended up with lots of odd and wonky scraps from my king sized bed quilt project.

So, in keeping with the wonky feeling, I created this wonky star block.

I am thinking I can get a lot of wonky star blocks from the remaining scraps, so I guess that will be another ongoing project. I never run out of projects....and I bet you don't either.

It appears like I've abandoned art quilting at this point doesn't it? Well I've got lots of ideas brewing in my head and right now I'm planning to get more of my UFOs completed over the summer months. Then this fall I will get back to more artsy stuff. At least that's the plan.