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
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.
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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!
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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/
Vicki’s Gorgeous Colors
I finally tracked down Vicki’s blog. Vicki is a long time reader of Artquiltmaker blog. I was pleasantly surprised to find images of gorgeous fabrics as I scrolled through her recent posts. [Secretly I want them!] The other fabrics she shows in the same post are wonderful as well. I also really like the words that she adds to the image. I’ll have to put that on my to-do list to learn.
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After scrolling through a few months of Field Trips in Fiber, I added Vicki’s blog to my blogroll. I really like her photos and two posts really floated my boat. First, on September 26, 2008, Vicki mentions the completion of MY Bullseye top in her post called Field Trippin’ the Web. I felt like all of this blogging is worth it when I saw my name.
Second, I laughed uproariously at Vicki’s post called Sanity Quilting. I know it probably wasn’t that funny in the moment Vicki was living it, but we have all been there and I could totally see the humor.
Nice work, Vicki, and thanks for blogging.
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!
Denyse Schmidt on the Prairie
I found Tallgrass Prairie Studio blog hrough the Denyse Schmidt Pool on Flickr. She has some lovely photos on her blog and a nice writing style. I particularly like these pillows.
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After coming across what seemed to be the 4000th or so post…
So starts the post from Tartx about blogging without obligation. I have a personal goal to blog frequently, because I love to write and want to practice. I also adore making quilts and playing with fabric. Writing about those activities makes me happy and provides an enjoyable way to practice my writing skills. Still, I have enough MUST dos on my to do list (not leaving children at school to languish, feeding people, showering, etc), so I may not blog every day and sometimes I may not blog every week. I am committed to you, dear readers, and hope you will keep coming back for more. If you don’t want to manage a RSS reader or check back frequently, use http://www.page2rss.com to create an RSS feed for this blog.
Thanks for reading!
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blogging without obligationBook 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.
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.
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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.
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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.
More Meeting Tidbits
Here are some general shots of the meeting and the shop.
Above is the work that my group did on the longarm. After the general demo, they broke us into smaller groups, had another little lecture on actually using the machine and then we were allowed to try it. I stepped up to the plate and tried the machine out first. This means that I set the tone and you cannot see my work. It wasn’t that interesting – just a bunch of loops. Linda and Mom went after me and you can see their work is a lot freer and a lot more individual.
Here is the big computerized machine that they program to do create certain designs in certain areas of a quilt. While nobody actually said, it sounds like they don’t do very complicated free motion quilting. I think this means that while I may do some longarm quilting on my own, I will still use Colleen for the quilts I want done a certain way.
Here we are at our worktable sewing. We had to share the room with the Strip Club who were meeting on a day that they normally don’t get to meet. We weren’t that happy with having to share the room, mostly because we weren’t expecting it, I think. The two women closest to the camera in the middle of the table were from the Strip Club. Justine, in red, actually knew one of our members and may join the group. The big arrow points to my machine and my piece. In the lower left you can see Mom’s machine and in the lower right you can see Julie’s hands working on her DH’s Snidely Whiplash cape.
Spiral Creations
We had show and tell at the CQFA meeting. Linda always shares with something interesting and this meeting was no exception. She showed Sea Glass III.
This piece is about 8″x10″ and is gorgeous! I adore it. It comes out of a lot of work that Linda does. She is always working and moving forward in her art. I admire her greatly. You can see more about this piece on Linda’s blog.
The people at Always Quilting were quite impressed with our machine quilting skills even though none of us had really ever driven a longarm. I think it was because, like Linda, we all have a little bit of practice machine quilting. I also think a lot of us doodle consistently.
Living Life Fully
Here is some inspiration for the day. This from Starbuck’s ”The Way I See It” series. It is number 233.