November 2008 – Page 2 – Artquiltmaker Blog

I Did Not Attend Houston

Nor have I ever attended the International Quilt Festival in Houston, but I would like to sometime. Depending on life, finances and the state of the universe it could be as soon as next year. In order to attend Virtual Houston, head over to the QA blog for some entertaining photos and commentary by Pokey Bolton.

I was pleased to see that she has a picture of Pamela Allen, doing what she does best: showing off her style (though she is a pretty great teacher as well).

I also love the Caroline and Co booth. I wonder if I could paint one of my rooms with those orange stripes; people may rebel and/or develop a sudden, recurring bouts of insomnia. I do like the cheerfulness, though.

clipped from www.quiltingartsblog.com

Longarming a Tree Skirt??

As I mentioned, I have had longarming on my mind lately. One of the things I have been trying to work out is how to use different colors and different machine quilting designs in one quilt. I don’t want my quilt to look like I didn’t think about the quilting design and just Pantographed over the whole thing. Quilting Arts has a pattern for a tree skirt and it occurred to me that this might be the PERFECT project for the longarm. I could sew several pieces of coordinating fabrics together, longarm it and then cut out the tree skirt. They suggest stamping and painting and embellishing, which is a good idea. Another project to think about!

Denyse Schmidt Fabrics: A New View

countyfairpurse2
Originally uploaded by SarahQFD

I wasn’t that enamoured with the new colorways that DS came out with recently. I like the designs, but the colorways didn’t do much for me. Today I saw this photo (still working my way through the DS Pool on Flickr). These fabrics are obviously designed to be used together. That weird gold looks almost buttery next to the burgundy. It makes me wonder about a fat quarter pack. I have to stop myself, though, because there are many, many gorgeous fabrics that I could use with a bunch of fabrics I already have and these would almost certainly have to be used together and then what would I do with the finished project?

I am glad to see that these fabrics look nice together. Quilt Fabric Delights blogs about these fabrics and this purse at: http://quiltfabricdelights.typepad.com/quilt_fabric_delights/2008/09/i-sewed.html

Bags of the Kemshalls

Linda and Laura Kemshall are quilt artists extraordinaire. I love their Thr3fold Journal and the straightforwardness (is that a word??) and artistry with which they present their projects. They have come out with a new gift bag pattern via Quilting Arts. I looked at the pattern and it is kind of a backwards bag. What I mean by that is that you create, paint, embellish, bead and torture your fabric THEN you make the bag out of it. I can see where this pattern would work for stuff you already had around the house or for test techniques that you didn’t want laying around after you were done testing. These bags look pretty complicated, however. Please note that I haven’t made one, but I am very much a fan of he 10 bags an hour method. Let me know if you make one of these bags and how it turns out. I’ll be happy to post your photo to my blog or link to your blog etc from Artquiltmaker blog.

Thinking about Longarming: Lava Beach

Lava Beach
Originally uploaded by cjb_roe

I saw this quilt in the Denyse Schmidt ‘Pool’ (DSP) on Flickr. The DSP is a group of photos of projects made from DS patterns or fabrics. It is interesting to look through and see the different projects people have made. I saw a couple of things, as I mentioned earlier in the week, that were inspiring.

TFQ asked for more information about the longarm demo I attended last week. As a result, I have been writing about in a letter to her, thus it is on my mind. As I was going through the photos on the pool, I saw this quilt and thought that the quilting design was interesting enough to note. One thing that Kit, from Always Quilting, said was that one needed to doodle designs to be prepared to draw them with the longarm.

Mom confirmed this when she went to try out her friend’s longarm. She said she thought it was about muscle memory.

This picture serves two purposes: the one above, obviously, but also to move me along in a task for my quilt class. I have been putting off creating the machine quilting design sheet for my beginning quilt class because they have totally lost interest and have not basted their quilts. I would like to teach more people to quilt, so it is worthwhile for me to create the worksheet for the future. Seeing this great design gives me a little incentive.

Thanksgiving FIRST, please!

I am a huge advocate of Thanksgiving. I like it because there are no presents to manage. I don’t like the virtual lack of craft opportunities associated with T-day. So, despite the fact that Christmast is months away when I saw this great tree, I had to share it. I love the way Kathy at Pink Chalk Studio blends her colors and fabrics. I really like this tree and it looks like a project where you would get a lot of bang for your buck. Check out her blog.

clipped from pinkchalkstudio.com

Resolution Goes Bad

After a particularly “less than stellar” day at work that produced a lot of animosity for my computer, I resolved not to turn on my home computer.

My computer is off. All good.

iTunes, however, is not on my computer and I decided to update my library while I supervised websurfing by certain individuals. In the course of updating iTunes, I came across Craft Sanity, a podcast by Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood. TFQ had mentioned a particular episode to me over the weekend and I went looking for it. I wasn’t able to figure out how to download one episode, so I went to her site and saw these beautiful photos of colors and fabric. Now, here I am blogging. Sigh.

Enjoy the colors!

clipped from www.craftsanity.com

CraftSanity Episode 41
A Chat with Quilter Weeks Ringle

Candy Corn to Blue

In a recent post I told you about some blue fabrics that had caught my attention. I have been working my way through a couple of different groups of photos on Flickr (the Denyse Schmidt Pool and IQFH). I saw this quilt by Two Dogs and a Quilt in the DSP and thought that it might make a good pattern for those blue fabrics. I’ll have to dig out the dimensions from the DS book I have. If the pattern isn’t in there, I don’t think I really need one anyway. 😉 See it on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24268088@N08/2948711943/

Tidying Up My Mind

Yesterday was a gossamer or chiffon dress and drifting around Manderley kind of day. I mean that I drifted around the house from thing to project to computer to laundry not really accomplishing much as if I were a lady of leisure with servants to pick up after me.

The house is kind of suffering from my drifting, but I did accomplish a couple of things. First and foremost, I finished the Basket top. It was challenging to sew together. Somehow I couldn’t wrap my mind around a sensible way to put it together. I think the sashing tripped me up a bit. It is together now and nobody will know how much unsewing I did once it is quilted and hung.

It has now been named Cheerful #1: Baskets. TFQ thought up that name and I like it. It also implies that we will make more cheerful quilts together.

I need to make the back, which TFQ suggested be made out of a spring green fabric. I probably don’t have enough of one to make it, but I will collect a few spring greens and make it up. Then I will send it up to her and she will have Angie from the Quilting Loft quilt it. TFQ suggested it and I like the idea. I have a feeling quilt tops are going to pile up around here as my free time expands and we work through our financial issues.

Although I could have gone straight to working on a WIP such as the Spiderweb or the Tarts Come to Tea, I went, instead for a new project. The Eye Spy quilt for which TFQ, Julie and I have worked so hard cutting pieces has been on my mind lately. The offspring is probably too old now to appreciate the Eye Spy game, but I still wanted to put the quilt together, so I started.

My first impression of the piecing: FUN FUN FUN!!! I sewed a triangle on to a hexagon on opposite sides of the hexagon. I wanted to make sure I knew how this thing was going together, so I sewed the airplane to the yellow umbrella drink and it was really easy to put together. I couldn’t stop piecing last night and stayed up way too late. I just hope I have enough of the red triangles. I also have no idea what to do with the edges, but I will worry about that later. Right now Girls Just Want to Have Fun!

I have also been reading Ringle and Kerr’s Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop: The FunQuilts’ Guide to Understanding Color and Choosing Fabrics. I especially got into the text yesterday morning before I got up. I think my mind was in the mood for food, because when I went to the workroom a group of fabrics waiting to be ironed caught my attention. They were fanned out in a certain appealing way and I just had to take note.

I ironed them and cut the pieces I needed. These are the pieces I need for the FOTY 2008 quilt and they are currently on my design wall where I can admire them together. The blues are not completely matchy-matchy. There is something calming and/or restful about the color combination. I think I have good scale variations and may just have to do some project with just these fabrics. I am tempted to sew them together and keep them in a group in the FOTY quilt. We’ll see.

Finishing To Do List:

Sleeve for Nosegay
Back for Making Cheerful Quilts #1: Baskets
Back for Crazy Quilt Test
Handwork, binding and sleeve on Pamela Allen House quilt (no name yet)

So, I think I have tidied up my mind enough to get moving on some other issues – real issues – but I am glad that I was able to clear out these ideas. I would love to hear your thoughts!

Book Review: Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop

I have also been reading Ringle and Kerr’s Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop: The FunQuilts’ Guide to Understanding Color and Choosing Fabrics. I especially got into the text yesterday morning before I got up. I haven’t completely finished the book, but here is my review, such that it is. When I update it, it will be updated here.

Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop: The FunQuilts’ Guide to Understanding Color and Choosing Fabrics by Weeks Ringle

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
This book gives quiltmakers points and tools for selecting colors. It does not steer you towards the accepted methods of selecting colors, such as the ‘focus fabric’ method. Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr bring their experience from outside the quilt world to quiltmakers by introducing techniques and methods that quiltmakers are not normally taught. Lstening to instrumental music and identifying the colors the reader sees in it as well as trying to replicate textures in color are two methods discussed. There numerous other suggestions by the authors for methods of selecting a unique palette.

Selecting fabrics is just the start, however.

One of the best things about this book is the definitions. They have definitions of hue and value and color that actually make sense; definitions that the average reader can take away and use.

After the definitions section come the exercises. These exercises are made up of three parts: color variations, individual exercises and group exercises. The pages where Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr display color variations in quilt format gives the reader a practical sense of the use of color. Part of this exercise shows the proportion of color used in a quilt and what happens to the overall look of the quilt when colors are added and removed.

I haven’t done any of the individual exercises, but they are quite accessible and one of them (listing all the colors I can think of and then marking my favorites) is quite tempting.

The group exercises, which took me awhile to notice, make me think of a class where, over the course of a period of time, a group could explore color together.

The three parts of this book made me look at colors in a new way this morning after reading several sections.

As with all quilt books, there are projects and patterns. These don’t annoy me as much as patterns in other books, because the authors discuss their Big Idea in the course of the pattern.

This is a book that I would encourage people to read and keep near by for easy and frequent referral.

View all my reviews.

Swaps with Love and Affection

Be*Mused also talked about a swap post by Calamity Kim that I thought was useful if you are thinking about participating in a swap.

I haven’t participated in a swap since the advent of Web 2.0, so I don’t remember what it was like except for the stress I felt. If I were on the receiving end of Jan’s doll quilt (from Be*Mused blog) I would be thrilled, but we all know it isn’t always like that. Review Kim’s tips and tricks before you sign on the dotted line.

clipped from calamitykim.typepad.com

Swap Etiquette

I want to write about Swaps and I want this to be upbeat and positive.

I have also been in some amazing swaps where I was the receiver of a box , that once opened, made me feel overwhelmed with love and affection.

Yokohama Quilt Show Photos

No, these are not my photos. Movinghands, over on Flickr, has graciously shared her photos from the Pacifico quilt show with the world. Be*mused was kind enough to point the posting out on her blog.These have a different look than the PIQF photos I posted last month. More subtle colors and applique’. I have just been looking at Gwen Marston books, so applique’ is on my mind. Enjoy.

clipped from flickr.com

Yokohama 2008

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Update 3/26/2013:
The photos above are no longer available. You can see quilts from the 2008 Yokohama quilt show here.

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Month: November 2008