A Start and a Finish All in One

Despite Rembrandt's shockingly bad behavior amongst my perfectly-aligned fabric strips...

...I was able to use part of a most generous gift from friend and fellow quilter Mary Jo (no blog) of a bit of each fabric (!!) in Jo Morton's new Spice Chest line...

...to make the Black and Beyond quilt from Evelyn Sloppy's "40 Fabulous..." book:

I also used the Jo Attic Shirtings that I won not too long ago in Kathie's giveaway. The star centers is one of Andover's Vegetable Dyes, for which I feel a recurring urge to write Andover a Fan Letter to thank them for bringing out one of my all-time favorite fabric designs ever. Thank you, Mary Jo and Kathie (not to mention Andover and Jo Morton!)!!

Oops, the very last block got turned sideways. I fixed it :-).

Les Fleurs: a lot of it together

Another picture of Little Miss Stray, who so far won't let me pet her (or carry her off to the vet); isn't she adorable? Incredibly slanty eyes and really big ears. The poor thing has a limp, although it was worse several weeks ago, so maybe it will get a bit better:

And of course Miss Kissy-Toes needs no introduction:

Thanks to multi-tasking during Day Job Duty, I finished the last regular Les Fleurs block (I moved the parts around, added a vase, and deleted a few fronds):

Then, filled with (as I told a friend earlier this morning) steely determination, I did the next six lengths of sashing (having resorted to machine applique in complete desperation since I have so much else I should be doing) necessary to allow assembly of the regular blocks:

I can't believe this thing is pretty much together. The very wide piece of applique that goes across the bottom has yet to be made. Now it's off to other Quilting Activities. What a Les Fleurs Relief!

The Little Applique Bag

Day Job has switched to a different school, elementary level rather than high school, which means I have duty three times a day outside of the media center. Now you know a quilter cannot just stand around when she could multi-task, so I am wearing this bag I just made and put in a few stitches on the fly during the first morning duty time when I am greeting students in the corridor :-).

All I need are the scissors, ripper, toothpick, thread, needle, and a few tiny pins.

Love the Cat

Tell you what, this is one Darn Good Cat :-) :

Meanwhile, four cat ears watch the pigeons (and why I ask you, do we suddenly have pigeons? what happened to our crows?):

Good Wives, Marion OH

Ah, my Silhouette No.1 pattern is on the wall at the charming Good Wives shop in Marion Ohio. Follow the link to see the other photos of their shop, oh die for Primitives!

Show and Tell - Repro Divas

While I was working on this blog post before Day Job, Rembrandt was first pulling pins out of a few bits of fabric on the table. I shrieked and grabbed those away from her, checking for pins in the mouth, then she started pushing the papers off the table, which is why the papers are now secured under the milk pail. And she never once blinked :-).

Show and Tell from Evening Repro Divas (we were supposed to make table runners and several of us actually did). The Day Group showed so many wonderful things I may borrow our noble leader's photos for the next post:

Chenille Comfort

I've been having fun these past several days working on this new pattern for a quilt (64" x 73") that uses chenille strips to edge the hexagon flowers and form the lattice pattern. You make the chenille strips from regular cotton fabric. I think it's the most fun to make the chenille in a print so it's multicolor. I used two different fabrics as well, which is easier to tell in the second photo. The outermost chenille edging is made of the black and white polka dot fabric that's in the little squares:

You can either create the machine quilting as you sew on the hexagon flowers and the chenille strips as I did, or you can sew the chenille on before sandwiching and quilt as desired in the usual way.

Here it is on my guest bed:

Show and Tell Galore-O

Last Sunday, I taught a class at the LQS, "Finishing Your Embroidery"; these are examples:

At the last Repro Divas, we exchanged our swap blocks! This set is from the Morning Group:

and this is our Evening Group swap:

Here are some completed Les Fleurs blocks, mine on the right:

Everybody's quilts are going to be so gorgeous when they are done, and they all look so different from one another.

A disappearing Nine Patch from Repro Divas:

Photos of things that look like letters and assembled into word collages! Found by our leader Kathy Niemann:

Disappearing... presented in table runners:

So cute:

and a final Disappearing...

Drafting and Inking and Colorizing the Bird of Paradise Quilt

Still plugging away on drafting the Bird of Paradise quilt, I should say my adaptation of the Bird of Paradise quilt, hereafter known as A Bountiful Life quilt :-). I have the center blocks and borders drafted and inked. I spent all day yesterday coloring in the inked drawings of the center blocks in order to make a color picture of the quilt:

I hadn't really done much coloring in my imaging software before, so it was enjoyable but I was falling off the computer chair by the time it was finished.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to make the color image of the four borders. Since the drawings are different sections of the border and some things are repeated, well sigh, I'm just not sure how to overlap them. Wish me luck today!

I began drafting this quilt for myself since I want the blocks to be square and I wanted to follow the original border (just love those birds and horses and big ol' dogs). But I'm also thinking of putting all of this on a CD in case anybody is interested in the pattern but I don't know how to do that either LOL! There are soooo many images involved and on a CD, I could include the color pictures of each block as well. Forge on, Karen.

Latest Les Fleurs

Phew, managed to get the next Les Fleurs block done; class is Sunday: