Tag: Quilt Class

New Inspirations (and A New Danger to You)

As you may remember from a previous post that I am teaching a class at work (other life). Above is the gorgeous quilt from one of my students. The photo is not so gorgeous, unfortunately. Alice has used all batiks and the quilt just glows.

I got a new phone for work and it has a camera. Danger! Now I have a camera with me AT ALL TIMES. WOW! This is great for me, because every time I see something I can snap a picture. The color isn’t as good as my other camera, but at least I have it with me all the time.

These are tiles I have been walking past for years. Finally, I was able to take a photo. This is a simple tile pattern, but I love the contrast between black and the pastels.

I stopped by Stone Mountain and Daughter to buy some fabric for pants. While, I was there I saw this quilt (yes, I asked and received permission to photograph). It reminds me of the Piece O’Cake pattern (below-pic from APNQ 2006). I like the subtlety of the fabrics that the maker chose.

This is painting by Carolyn Meyer. Ms. Meyer is the Assistant Director of Fine Art at the Academy of Art. The Academy of Art gallery was one that I went to visit a few weeks ago. I went back, because I love this painting. It has some qualities of Wayne Thiebaud’s work, but this painting is very restful to me. It is called Summer and I would love to have this piece to hang in my house. Unfortunately, it is $1900 and I don’t have it to spent on a painting right now.

One of the mosaics in the building where I work.


September and October provide some of the best weather in my area. One day, after work, I couldn’t shake the need to go and sit by the ocean for a few minutes. Despite the weird looks that Darling Boy gave me and the several questions about what exactly this action meant for his future, we went. We went to a place where they have recently remodeled a few benches and a parking lot at the top of one of the cliffs. While there I saw this tree. I couldn’t shake the idea that the trunks would make a wonderful quilting pattern.
I applied some filters to the photo to try and outline the pattern of the trunks.

Rugs – good quilt patterns?
I like the repetition of the windows with the estuary in the background. The color didn’t come through very well, though.

Class notes

My students are back in the groove of quilting, so tomorrow I will give them their next block, a foundation piecing block. I picked the New York Beauty for the block with the Pineapple as the alternate. Not sure which one I will do. Perhaps both.

I still have to finish the damn Nosegay and am thinking that I will have to completely redo the bottom (cone) part. It just doesn’t fit. C’est la vie.

I did have osme success with applique’, however. The Grandmother’s Flower Garden petals are applique’d to their background. This is one of the blocks from the class that has been kind of languishing.

I also worked on applique’ from an Elly Sienkiewicz class that I took years ago at Thimble Creek. It is one of the blocks from one of her Baltimore Album Quilt books. After doing two of the cut snowflake type blocks I decided that there was no way I could do an entire Baltimore Album Quilt. Still the block I worked on is nice and I did want to finish it. My applique’ leaves a lot to be desired, but it shows me making progress. The journey not the destination. I look forward to finishing it so I can say that one UFO is off the pile.

Forced Creativity WORKS!!!!

This is the block that I made today. I wanted to get it done to show my students and just hadn’t made the time. I decided that I was in the groove and did it this morning. I thought I would run my errands first, but realized that that was deadly and did the pieced part of the block first. After cutting, it took me about half an hour to do the main part of the piecing. HALF AN HOUR!!! That is nothing. How could I forget that piecing, once you know what you are doing, takes no time??!!?? Later this afternoon I appliqued the handle and sewed the two halves togther.

I am pretty excited now and will, perhaps, make the Nosegay. I gave the Nosegay to the students as an alternate block to the 8-pointed star. I always give an alternate block, but haven’t made many of them for this project. Nobody has done the Nosegay including me. It is the traditional version with inset seams and not Doreen Speckman’s version with no insets.

I think the colors are pretty bright, but I like the brightness and the different way in which the fabrics react with each. The purse fabric is a new colorway, as I ran out of the other colorway. I like this colorway better with the bright green and pink. I am wondering if I should redo the other blocks with this colorway? Seems a little crazy, but I am the woman who took apart a whole back of a quilt, because I needed to use some of the fabric on the front of another quilt. Stranger things have happened. 😉

My sis said she didn’t really like the color combination. Oh well. I have to admit that I was getting tired of it until this most recent block. I like it. We’ll see how it ends up.

This is an interesting photo that I took before I cut and placed the middle pieces. You can see that I was having some trouble cutting the background so that it all lined up. I eventually got it right, which you can confirm in the photo at the top.

My problem with lining up the fabric the way I did is that two sides of the block (top and left) are on the bias. I have to remember that so that I can take care in handling the block later.

I still have to applique the Grandmother’s Flower Garden to a background, so perhaps I should do that instead of starting the Nosegay. It shouldn’t take too much time, especially if I machine applique the petals. Stay tuned.

How to Sew a Curve in 3 Easy Lessons

I spent time this week catching up to my students on my blocks. I had the pieces to the Drunkard’s Path blocks cut for weeks, but couldn’t seem to get them together. I pinned and pinned and pinned and pinned and pinned and something didn’t seem right. I couldn’t figure out what it was and I couldn’t sew the things with so many pins. Per chance, I picked up Ruth McDowell’s Piecing book. If you don’t have this book, get it. It is the best.

Anyway, I read the bits about sewing curves and found the problem. Clipping! I had forgotten to clip the concave part of the curve. I think I was so caught up in having problems with the block when I was a beginner and trying to make the Drunkard’s Path that I couldn’t think straight.

I sewed all the little blocks together then played with the layout for a few days and came up with the following layouts:

Drunkard's Path
Drunkard’s Path

Good graphic look on this one.

Drunkard's Path #2
Drunkard’s Path #2

I really like the way the middle circle comes forward in this design.

Drunkard's Path #4
Drunkard’s Path #4

Not sure what the heck this is supposed to be, but it obviously doesn’t work.

Drunkard's Path #5
Drunkard’s Path #5

I like the way the pinwheel type design shows up. This is my second favorite.

Drunkard's Path #6
Drunkard’s Path #6

Again good graphic look, but the way the circles go off the side don’t appeal to me as much as the other layouts.

Drunkard's Path #7
Drunkard’s Path #7

This is supposed to be an X, but the X doesn’t show up, because I used three colors (2 for the background) instead of just two total.

Until I finally decided on the design below. I did have a hard time deciding between this and the pinwheels:

Drunkard's Path Final
Drunkard’s Path Final

This exercise, again, shows how great blocks are. I could make a whole quilt with this block and do each one with a different layout. I think that there is so much that can be done with block designs.