A Little Quilting Among the Chaos

Yes I am still here and have managed to do a little quilting, a little teaching and a whole lot of construction work in the last few months.

The Studio under construction

We are getting closer to having the alpacas on the farm - hopefully within a few weeks.  If you would like to see what is happening on the farm - check out our Facebook page PendleAlpacas.

I hope to maintain my Marsh Isle Fiber Arts blog a little bit better in the coming months with its main focus my quilting adventures.

I designed and taught two classes over the summer - the first here in my new home town of Jefferson, NC.  This class was on dye painting and was a big success as you can see from the quilts.

One of my samples

Working hard

Practice paintings

Almost ready for the background

Show and Tell at a guild meeting

The second class was back in Charleston on my Prairie Point Wreath pattern.

The Christmas version

Lots of fun sewing and pressing

Working on the flower

Fleeting

I love Daylilies - even though each bloom is around only for a day - they make me smile. I have most of my Daylilies on the porch as the deer in my area like to munch them just before they bloom.  This year is a bumper crop.

Around 6 am

Starting to open at 7 am

At 8 they are showing promise

The view from nine until dusk

By the next morning the blooms are faded, but the delightful thing is there are more blooms and another morning to look forward to.

I used this particular variety as the inspiration for this small quilt I will be using to teach fusible applique and simple straight line quilting this summer at Stitch n' Sew.

I Spy A Quilter - or Two

Last Saturday, in honor of National Quilting Day, my guild had a Quilter's Day Out workshop.  I designed an easy I-Spy quilt using partial seams and half-blocks to eliminate matching seams.

We had about a dozen quilters sewing away.

Lots of blocks were made: 

Petal to the metal!

(notice the shoes are off - a quilter after my own heart as I almost always sew barefoot) :

A great time was had by all.

Dreaming of Fall - Part 1

At this time of year living in the coastal south begins to get a little tiresome.  Hot, humid days seem to stretch forever and having grown up in Colorado, I begin to dream of the crisp, cool days of fall and the changing of the leaves.

I am starting to teach a series of technique classes at Stitch n' Sew Fabrics  in Mount Pleasant called Fat Quarter Fridays.  The class will be held the second Friday of the month and will work on techniques using only two or three fat quarters.  Each class will be a different technique and require only basic rotary cutting and sewing skills

The class to be held on October 12th will be on half-square triangles.  The class will work on several different ways to make half-square triangles including the traditional mark and sew  through the center of a square, using the Easy Angle ruler by Sharon Hultgren and the Strip Tube Ruler.  After we make triangles we will assemble a maple leaf block and talk about how to finish it into a small wall quilt.

For the class sample I pulled the maple leaf fabric and inner border from my stash and used a Phenomenal Fall by Moda charm pack for the outer border and the back. The outer border has simple, random curved piecing.

As I was in a bit of a hurry to finish this piece and didn't really want a binding on the quilt, I finished by sewing the all the way around the piece after stacking a layer of batting, the top face up, and the back face down. I then very carefully cut an X in the backing fabric and pulled the quilt right sides out.  To make better corners, I always angle one or two stitches across the corner and trim the fabric away.

Now the quilt is ready to be quilted which I will show in my next post.