A River Runs Through On Display

I finished my quilt, A River Runs Through a few weeks ago - in time for it to be in the "Anything Goes" show at the Ashe County Arts Council gallery. It will be up until March 22, 2019.

Viewing Summer

A hint of Fall 

Both Seasons 

Viewing Fall

I am pretty please with how it worked. One quilt - several different views. I will make on another dimensional quilt in the future as - there are still some construction issues I am not completely satisfied with.

The last few weeks since the quilt was finished have been taken up with being sick (terrible cold), traveling to visit family, and working on farm related projects. The weather is starting to warm up here in the mountains so working in the studio is getting easier. I don't have any major projects planned at the moment - so I think the next few weeks will be used to finish up a lot of long standing UFO's and getting my garden ready for Spring.

I am linking up to Nina-Marie's blog. I would love to take her Open Access challenge - but for now I think I need to focus on finishing things before starting something new.

A River Runs Through - Quilted

I finished quilting the two quilts* that became one. The first is a version of the New River in the summer time with the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance.

The second is the same scene but in the fall.

After quite a few hours of quilting - I then had to slice each quilt into 2 1/2" strips - not an easy task as I was terrified my rotary cutter would slip and I would have spent all that time for a true mess.

Luckily it worked! I have sewn the two quilts together and created the mounting device. The quilt is now hanging in the Ashe County Arts Council gallery in the show "Anything Goes!" that runs until March 22, 2019. I tried to take a few photos before I delivered it - but they were rubbish. I will get to the gallery this week and see if I can get better a better shot.

I have been wanting to do a 3 dimensional piece for a while and I am glad I took the risk. It isn't exactly what I had envisioned in my minds eye - but it is pretty close. I am linking to Off the Wall Friday - I think I might have reached a little of what mentally strong women don't do.  

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Project Finished!

I finally finished the pillow shams for the raffle quilt that will drawn for tomorrow!

I was able to get quite a bit of practice in using my ruler and ruler foot. I am fairly good a free motion quilting but really liked to ability to get straight lines in any direction. I can't wait to play with the others that I purchased.

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

A New Year and Working a New Skill

2019 started with a little more farm work than I had planned. We had two roosters who decided on New Years Day that they didn't like each other any more and it was all out war. One of them has been relocated to our alpaca barn and is settling in nicely with the big boys. But setting up his new home and acclimatizing everyone has taken some time.

But I have been slowly working on the pillow shams for the drawing that will be held next Thursday. They are layered, the stitch-in-the-ditch work is done and today I started working with my ruler foot for the first time since early last year.

I purchased the ruler foot for my Bernina in January 2018 and did a little with it but never really had time to play. I am doing a simple linear ocean wave pattern in the log cabin blocks and finished about a third of each sham today. I plan on changing to a lighter color thread to finish the rest of the blocks.

I am using one of the Angela Walters rulers (Slim) that I was able purchase with my grant from the Ashe County Arts Council.* It was easy to use than the other ruler I have and I am excited to spend more time improving my new skill and use it on one of my art quilts.

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Emerson - A Chicken Story

Back in the spring of this year we added thirteen new members to our menagerie on the farm - a set of bantam chicks. Not ones to do anything in an easy way - we did not get them from the local feed store but instead ordered them through the mail.

One very cold and snowy day in March, we got a call from the post office to come and collect our new babies.  I named this little guy Emerson from one of my favorite book series the Amelia Peabody mysteries by Elizabeth Peters.  He had the lightest coloring so was easy to identify from all the others. 

Of course I took a chance that he would turn out to be a rooster as it is very difficult to tell little boy chicks from little girl chicks.

Chickens grow up very fast and by mid summer he was looking more like a boy.  He is a cochin and sports very beautiful feathers on his toes.

This is what he looks like now that he is all grown up:

Since he will never be a chicken dinner, he had to become a quilt!

He was appliqued 

and then machine quilted on my domestic machine.

I recently was award a grant* to purchase thread and rulers to use on my domestic machine,  It was really wonderful to be able to go to this basket of thread to get just the right color to make Emerson come to life.  

He is currently on display at the Ashe County Arts Council gallery  as part of the Tree Fest show. I am linking this post to Off the Wall Friday by Nina-Marie.

*This project is funded as a cooperative venture of Alleghany Arts Council, Ashe County Arts Council, Watauga Arts Council, and Wilkes Art Gallery with support from a Regional Artist Project Grant of the North Carolina Arts Council, a Division of the Department of Natural and Cultural Resource.

Like Riding a Bike - Sort of

I have finally had a chance to work on quilting a quilt! In 2014 I designed a mystery quilt for my then guild - Cobblestone Quilters Guild

I pieced two different versions for myself - one out of yardage and one scrappy.

Fast forward nearly four years and I am working on quilting the scrappy version.  Although I have done some free motion work in the ensuing years, and even taught a few beginner classes, I have not worked on anything as large as this in a long time.  I have also purchased a ruler foot and rulers for my machine and am learning to use them.

I feel like a newbie all over again.  I know what I want to do - but the muscle memory is very rusty.  It is like riding a bike again after many years - you know what to do but are very wobbly.

I am not pleased with my stitches or the thread colors I have chosen.  But as I work, the stitches get a little better, the movement of the quilt gets a little easier, and I remember why I love to quilt.  So I will pick myself up and keep at it.  Linking with nina marie sayer and her post on troubleshooting free motion quilting. 

Dreaming of Snowflakes

Yesterday was very hot and humid in Charleston until a strong cold front roared by in the late afternoon.  I am ready for fall and cooler weather.

I recently finished a sample quilt for Stitch n' Sew using Kate Spain's Solstice fabric line and a pattern from Moda Candy Oh Sew Sweet! booklet.

I don't usually do quilts for other peoples patterns - but we wanted to highlight this great non-traditional Christmas line.  I used some of the snowflakes in the fabric to come up with the quilting designs in the large off-white square.

The snowflakes were easy to mark and each one was sewn with one pass.  I am definitely using these motifs again.

The quilt is at the shop now - but when I get it back I will probable add some filler quilting between my snowflakes so they are a little more defined.

Now if it would only snow in Charleston (or at least be below 90 degrees for a high)!

Blocks Done

After a long week of marking and quilting all twenty-five blocks are done.

I don't have a design wall large enough to put the quilt on so the blocks are on the floor - hence the poor photo.  I have started sewing the blocks together and will be un-sewing the plain center block and the grey pinwheel.  It creates a bit of a black (grey) hole effect.  The pin wheel will move to the center bottom and hopefully will look better.  I have lots of hand sewing on the back to do - luckily it is Downton Abbey and Sherlock tonight!

I really want to get this project finished soon as it is one of four quilts I am entering in the Cobblestone Quilters Guild Show in late February.  The next quilt up is Bloom - a whole cloth dye painted quilt - much more my cup of tea.

I am linking to Nina Marie Sayers Off the Wall Friday again this week. 

What Was I Thinking?

For the past week I have been working like mad on quilting my Quilt in a Box. Twelve unique blocks, eight setting triangles, four corners and one central block.

Twenty-five total.

I am using the border as the basis of my quilting design and spent many hours designing the main motif.  The half block sketch looks okay:

But it really starts to work when the other half is added:

By having the design touch the edge of the block in a couple of places it creates secondary designs.  One of the blocks that I have finished is the quarter circle block that I showed in the last post.  It now looks like this:

I really like where this is going but - - twenty-five blocks!  Thirteen are finished, six are marked (the most difficult part so far - finding a marker I can see has been a challenge because of the wide range of lights and darks I am working with) and ready to quilt.

I am linking to Nina Marie Sayre's Off the Wall Friday

Now just to Finish It!

Think Pink

I recently traveled home to visit family and took with me this small quilt to donate to the Susan G Komen Southeastern Colorado organization which my sister started working as the executive director of earlier this year.

Our mother had breast cancer so this is a charity near and dear to my heart.  If you are above the age of forty make sure you get your annual mammogram as early detection is key.

I called it Ribbons of Love.

 
The fabric is hand painted and I machine appliqued the small ribbons.  I played with two relatively new books on machine quilting to do the feathered heart and the corners.  The feathers were from   Sue Nickels – Fabulous Feathers & Fillers and the corners from  Karen McTavish – Custom Curves.

As usually I was under a tight deadline and actually finished the binding out in Colorado.

Be Still

At last months NC Quilt Symposium I worked on a second painted piece in my class by Hollis Chatelain based upon a photo I took last fall in the NC mountains.

We spent several hiking days in the Blowing Rock area and I took tons of photos. This is one of my favorites.  I call it Be Still because you can only catch these moments if you are still and look for the little things along the trail.

I was ran out of time in the class and had to bring dye home to finish the background - and it wasn't quite the same color blue so it has a bit of a mottled effect.

I added some watercolor pencil work in the thistle.

After that I did a bit of thread sketching both on the thistle and the butterfly.

Then I layered it for quilting using wool batting.  I did an non-square edge treatment to help get rid of some of the blue that just didn't work and started quilting.

I learned lots in the class and I think this is the first class in a long time in which I came home and actually finished the projects started in class!  Can't wait to do some more dye painting.

December Free-Motion Quilting Challenge

Last day of the month, last day of the year and last 2012 Free-Motion Quilting Challenge.  I have truly learned a great deal this year and many thanks to SewCalGal for putting this together this year.

December's challenge was just that a challenge.  Patsy Thompson did a wonderful job for the last challenge.  Borders and more borders and feathers - oh my!  I started working on this in about mid-December finding the piece of fabric for the front out of a stash of my hand painted cloth.  I then picked these threads to work with:

I used a very busy print for the back and the darkest purple for the bobbin.  Of course this is the time in which I had no tension issues what so ever and wish I had chosen a plainer back ground to show off the stitching.

I used a soap sliver to mark the borders and quilted them in the dark purple as well. Then I started on the borders.

I had to remove the top motif three times before my hands and brain would get the pattern.

I love feathers, but I have always been intimidated by them.  No more.  They are far from perfect but I can do feathers.

The whole quilt.

If you want to see my other completed challenges here are the links:

January,  February, March,  April,  May,  June,  July,  August,  September, October, and November 

        

Hope everyone has a safe and happy new year.  I can't wait to start 2013 and the next quilting challenge.

November Free-Motion Quilting Challenge

I love spirals and so was very excited to see this month's tutorial by Sarah Vedeler. I printed out the practice sheets early in the month - and they sat on my desk until yesterday (a busy month with teaching, doing a trunk show with ATW and family).

After practicing with pen and paper I marked my sample fabric using a template I had recently purchased from Pam Clarke and a Quilt Pounce I purchased many years ago at a quilt show but hadn't really used.

As I have mentioned before, I really hate marking quilts.   But as the year has gone on, I am finding it to be easier and love all the different techniques I have learned and used.

I first started quilting the basic spirals in a straight line.

Then I worked on spirals that alternated direction.

Then I did smaller spirals in both techniques.  The larger ones are about 2" and the ones below are about 1".

I am pleased, for the most part, that my stitches are consistent in size.

Another great tutorial.

Portal - Another Time, Another Place

The latest challenge for my art group (ATW) was to do a piece based upon the phrase "Another Time, Another Place".  I choose to do a almost whole cloth quilt from a photo I took in 1981 near Killarney, Ireland at Muckross Abbey.

This has always been one of my favorite photo's I took while traveling during my junior year of college.  Several friends where traveling with me and we had a picnic lunch on the Abbey's grounds.

I used several of my favorite "quilting" tools to make this piece - my scanner, computer and printer.  After scanning the photo in and doing a little color adjustment, I printed it out on four pieces of fabric which I then pieced together to get the full quilt.

I used a little trapunto on the largest arch way, a little thread sketching and lots and lots of machine quilting.

I knew I wanted an irregular edge, so I finished it with a little bit of yarn that I couched over.

I called the piece Portal as I could see this as a doorway to the past - both to mine and the monks.