Martha Washington Visits Little Quilts

You've just got to see how cute Muriel looks as Martha Washington conducting her Kaye England class, "Voices of the Past" over at the Little Quilts blog.

Stars Around the Garden Class Show and Tell

Class last night; we brought our first blocks and the various color schemes began to come to life...










Also had some Show and Tell of Second Saturday Sampler 2007 quilts:

This quilt is designed after a pattern called "BQ" from Maple Island Quilts. Has everybody seen this site? They have some pretty interesting quilts.

This quilt has the suggested setting design for this year's Second Saturday Sampler set of blocks and it is made with smaller 6" blocks.

Beautiful!!

This wonderful twirling quilt originated in another Little Quilts class, Pineapples.
Pretty nice, eh?

Emails from College

over a period of months, which to a mother is like years:

[mother emails son]: Hi, Timmy, how have things been going? How is college? Haven't heard from you in awhile. This is your mother. Love, Mom

.....silence.....

[mother emails son]: Hi, Timmy, are you there? How are your grades? What's been happening? Email me. This is your mother. Love, Mom

.....silence.....

[mother voicemails son]: Hi, Timmy, this is your mother. Please call and let me know how you're doing. Are you still enrolled in college? Love, Mom

.....silence.....

[must insert here that we did finally meet up for a Sunday dinner, during which I raved about Johnny Depp and Sweeney Todd; soon thereafter, son emails mother]: Hi, Mom, I am fine. Here is a Venn diagram of the viewer demographics for Sweeney Todd:


He certainly understands what I find funny :-).

Housekeeping

We all love to quilt, don't we. And I know you all care about keeping your lives in good order. I am no exception. Although I am busy with my quilting every spare moment I am home, I never neglect doing the things necessary to maintain a healthy balance in my life.

I keep my house tidy:

I eat a balanced diet:

and I take good care of my treasured pets:

Quilting forever :-) .

Jo Morton Little Women Show and Tell

Look at these teeny tiny Jo nine-patches in their own little wooden box. Each is a stack of perfect miniature nine-patches in the most beautiful color combos.

Now, this woman amazes the rest of us each month with her phenomenal talent for mixing reproduction prints. Isn't this little basket to die for?

And this is hers, too. This is her choice for an upcoming Little Women block swap. 6" blocks in a pattern of our choice, so we will all end up with a sampler quilt of about 18 or so blocks (since there are three sessions of Little Women).

Oh, same talented woman. These are for "Jo Morton Meets the Easter Bunny", as she says :-).


Two Mini-Nines...

Amazing quilt top. Don't you love the featured central block?

Now is this a perfectly amazing quilt or what? The pictures do not show it off well at all. This was made for a Member Challenge that will be shown at the Bulloch Hall Quilt Guild Show. There will be about 20 of these challenge quilts. The challenge was to do a quilt that is 20" square, using either black or white or both, and which uses some property of the color wheel, i.e., analogous, complementary, split-triad, monochromatic, etc. Is that cool or what? You see she won a ribbon and deservedly so.

If you're considering traveling to see this show, it is always a very, very good show.

Pattern Cover

Phew, I've been working all day long on this cover for my "House Party" quilt that is destined to be a pattern that I will offer for sale. Heavens, what a process, figuring out how to use a tripod for the first time (had no idea how many moving parts there were in a tripod), flooding lights all over everywhere, wondering all the while if I should go ask my next-door neighbor who is a freelance photographer to do the photo work for me, searching through my thousands of .ttf files on my old computer looking for just the right font, shooting stuff all over my house looking for the right background (old book covers, old suitcases, old canvas, old cobwebs, old dirty dishes, old kitty litter...kidding). This particular background is my very old chalkboard by my sewing machine on which I keep lists of quilts to work on. And I don't want anybody to know how long it took me to figure out how to make that little girl with the chalk in her hand.

So okay, the pattern cover is done, but I haven't done all that stuff inside it that tells a person how to make it :-) . I don't suppose that will go very quickly, either. What about if I just wrote inside "oh just wing it and do what you like"?... I like it :-) .

Theorem Painting

Went to the most enjoyable class at the LQS taught by the resident Baltimore Applique teacher, Wanda. Shading in Oil Pastels. All present enjoyed this class so much. The shading is done by smearing the oil crayon media on to the fabric from a window template. Here are my creations.

A classmate, Kathy, was busily making her own sihouette boyfriend; she kindly made the one below for me. A boyfriend! Thank goodness, I've been wanting one of those.

Antique Quilt, Two Quilt Tops Assembled, and Generosity

Here is a little quilt study from a book called "Come Look With Me: The Artist at Work" (click to see enlarged image). Isn't it a wonderful quilt...

So, having pieced Muriel's setting blocks for the BOM Vintage Applique blocks (see below), there I was trying to digitize and stitch out the 13th applique block. I meant to do a slightly different form of one block and flip it, oops, forgot to do the flip, and besides the flower shape I had done was hopelessly ugly, so Orphan Block no. 1:

2nd time, improved the flower shape and remembered to flip, but flower colors were too drab. Orphan Block no. 2:


Got it on the 3rd time around (lower right-hand corner) and assembled the top (30 x 30"):

Those little green squares in the center of the setting blocks are only 1/2". I refused to do blocks that size for the most recent tiny Jo Morton Little Women quilt, electing to do mine at 1" and here not a week or two later, I ended up sewing 1/2" squares anyway
:-). It was so much fun to digitize these blocks this past year and to add little critters of my own or to do entirely new patches, such as the one in the center, the bunny eyeing the three heads of lettuce, and the parrot in the center bottom. So does anybody have an opinion on border or not for this??

Also pieced this 36 x 36" quilt top. Just guess where the fabrics came from: remember when I put out an SOS for the beige Gatherings fabric designed by Brannock and Patek? Well, who should send me the fabric but Linda Brannock herself! And not only did she send me the beige Gatherings, but she also sent five quarter-yards of fabric from her new line, Hemming House, which you see used below (there are a few fabrics from stash in there as well) and which Moda says will be available in March. Am I a lucky girl or what to get to play with preview fabric?? Thank you, Linda!

Two Block Sets

Got the two pairs of blocks done for the next Stars Around the Garden class:

I've had a collection in my stash of these Pennsylvania fabrics but have rarely gotten into them, so this will be a major stashbuster.


Hope the background fabric holds out on this group. I'm scaling these sets down to 9" rather than 12".

Broke into the beige and green scraps/stash:

Stay tuned for the result.

I also have something to tell/show you about the Gatherings fabric that a *kind soul* sent me in response to my plea. Got that last Blockswapper block done thanks to this person but also am assembling a little quilt top with the rest of what she sent me. Stay tuned for this one as well :-).

It's January It Must be Time to Assemble BOMs

Here is my version of the Kaffe Fassett alternate colorway for this past year's LQS BOM:

I did lots of my own block choices, since I was interested in making some new blocks, like the two that have one motif repeated four times, and the tree. The fabric at the side is my original idea for the borders, which I may use (my goodness those cabbages are big), but may bring the top in to the shop to get opinions on finishing.

Had our first Stars Around the Garden class last night; this is the new version of Stash Sisters. We are all going to make some version of this quilt from Bits and Pieces in Michigan:

We're all doing our own color scheme. Some are going to do the applique, some are going to put a feature fabric in the center, some may do a completely different layout of the blocks, etc. Some of us are going to pull fabric from stash, like one woman who pulled fabrics using a Piece o Cake book cover as an inspiration and her fabrics are wonderful. Some people are going to use bright fabrics, several reproduction, one reproduction in red/black/ecru, one batiks, one in pale blues, etc. We went home with patterns for two blocks and the applique for those who want to do that. It will be so much fun to see everybody's color schemes begin to come to life next time. I'm probably going to do antique Pennsylvania prints and scale the blocks down to 9". I also am interested in doing a drastically scaled-down version for a table runner, or in this specific case, bucket bench runner since my destructive little kitties want to sharpen their claws on the delectably soft wood.