Going crazy with quilting details
In love
Background straight line quilting
Adding beading
Binding & Beading
Signed
Taking shape...
A velvet nose that still needs work
Happy birthday to me!
Bleeding reds!
Quilt top finished!
Journal Quilt Week 4
Sewing room organized
I am getting a little obsessed adding details to the quilting of this quilt. I wasn't planning to quilt it this way. I was just going to do 3 or 4 rows of echo quilting around the round shapes. Then I noticed my desktop wallpaper. Inspiration is everywhere. There is a lot of stoping and starting so it is taking a long time to quilt but it is worth it. On the other hand, It is not as hard as I thought it was going to be to quilt this size of quilt.
I bought this fabric at Urban Sew Etsy shop during QuiltCon and I'm in love! Rally like the color combination and the way the print goes from busy to less busy at the bottom. It is inspiring a quilt... I have so many ideas of things I want to start but have to be disciplined and finish what I'm working on before starting something new.
Today I quilted the background on half of the quilt with straight lines in 45 degree angles pointing towards the center of the quilt guiding the eye towards the main focus of the quilt. I made a mistake quilting it because I quilted the circle on the edge first and when I quilted the straight lines towards the circle, that pushed the bulk of the quilt against the circle and made a big ugly bump. I'm thinking of ways to fix it without having to rip out the circle quilting but I think that is my only option.
So this is the first block in my new journal quilt. I watch a webinar by Night Quilter about milestone quilts and I decided to start a journal quilt. The plan is the every Sunday I will make a 5" block that represents something about that week for a year (or for however long I want to keep doing it). Also there is a trend to make temperature quilts where the quilter assigns a color to the temperature and keep track of the weather so I will add a rectangle representing the temperature average for the week to separate the blocks.
This week I had the most amazing pedicure at Modern Chic Day Spa. I know that sounds silly but my feet feel so goo I can't belive it. In this pandemic, you learn to appreciate the little things. Turns out that the nail polish color I picked matches the quilt perfectly. I didn't even plan it.
Today I also finished quilting the quilt.
Started adding a bead to every spoke of the wheels (is that the right word?). Hmmm... Mango Strawberry Wheels... It took me an hour to add eight beads so this will take a while. Im going to add the binding and I'll give myself permission to start a new quilt while adding all these beads. I do like how they look.
Speaking of looking good, doesn't this angle look yummy?
Today I did the two B's - binding and beading. I had some leftover strips from the quilt top that had the squares and they made a perfect binding. Still need to bind the top edge because I ran out of the off white fabric. Got to do some searching to see if I can find it anywhere. Did more beading but like I said, this will take FOREVER because I am so slow and it's a lot of beads.
This picture is of the same wheel (they are wheels now) that had the big ugly bump. It took some unsewing but I got it fixed. Here's some detail shots.
In addition to continuing beading (it will never end...) I quilted and finished the mini scrap quilts I had started before. Now the big quilt is exactly as wide as my design wall.
I'm donating the house mini quilt to the SAQA Spotlight Auction. I'm titling it House-bound. Here's the artist Statement.
This year we have all been house-bound. But it has given us time to slow down and reflect on what is really important. It made me return to quilting after a 10-year pause and for that, I'm grateful. Here's is a little gift to the quilting world that has given me so much.
Today I signed the quilt and kept on beading. Had a zoom meeting with a group of quilters from Massachusetts. We just sit for a couple hours and do hand work while talking quilt stuff. I got a lot of beading done last night.
I just noticed a big problem. I used a water soluble pen to mark some of the quilting and it wont come out! I will keep trying to remove it. It is right in the middle of the quilt. If it doesn't come out, I may have to applique some fabric over it.
Today was a busy day. I had two zoom calls scheduled at the same time so I was muting one and paying attention to the other one and changing once in awhile. One benefit of zoom calls, being in two places at once. One was the first meeting I was attending for the DC Modern Quilt Guild. The other was a sashiko class with the Virginia Quilt Museum given by Sandy Star Designs. I really liked the sashiko process is kind of meditative and mindless. It was nice to meet new quilters in the area. Hopefully it will be a good group to join. Then went with my family for a birthday dinner atSidebar and dessert at The Conche. My birthday is next week but they wont be here. Also my friend fron high school sent me a icture of a quilt i gave here many years ago. It must have been in my early quilting days.
Today wasn't very creative but I did finished a second block for my journal quilt. I combined what I learned in the sashiko class with joining the DCMQG and embroidered their logo. My stitches aren't good but oh well... I also went to the Orchid Cellar Meadery & Winery and had some really good mead.
So now that the Mango Strawberry quilt (official name now) is almost finished, I am kind of at a loss of what I what to do next. Got lots of ideas just need to make up my mind. Maybe I'll try a few things and see what sticks.
I started a new quilt today. The indecision only lasted a couple of days . The cat in the picture is one of my two cats. His official name in Kandinsky. I call him Dinsky. The quilt will be called The Dinsk. That's what I call him when he gets bossy which happens often and that's how he looks in the picture. My other cat Maya is going to get jealous so I'll probably make one of her too. I'm a little cat-obsessed so it is pretty incredible this is the first cat quilt I make.
The idea is not totally original. It is my friend, Timna Tarr's idea.The idea is to draw a grid on the photo and get fabrics or pieces of fabrics for each square. It is harder than I thought and I don't have a lot of scraps so that makes it harder. It will probably take a lot of trial and error but here I go. I'm making the squares 2.5" finished so I printed the pattern in a 3" grid to accomodate seam allowances without overlapping the squares so it looks huge but it will shrink.
The Dinsk is looking good. I'm not drawing any patterns or measuring anything. Just eyeballing it. It is funny how I'm sewing it and I'm not happy with it because it looks like a mess. Then I take a picture and see it far away and I'm surprised how good it is looking. I like the yellow orange background but he looks menancing. I need to redo the nose because there is not enough contrast.
I keep working on Dinsk. His nose needed more contrast so I started looking at my other (non-cotton) fabric and saw some black velvet that I thought would make a cute nose. Didn't realized how had it is to sew velvet as it moves around. I thought backing it with stabilizer would work but it didn't. Sewing with a walking foot helped but I was almost done with it when I figured it out. Still needs some work but it is getting closer and it is "pettable"! My sewing table looks like a fabric store spilled on my table. I need more table space!
Got back to my sashiko stitching from March 13 and all the lines I had drawn are gone! I used a water soluble pencil to mark the lines and I guess the humidity in the air made them disapear
I was a professional quilt artist exhibiting and selling quilts for around ten years and then I took a quilting pause. Life gets in the way, circumstances change and all of a sudden you look back and realize you are missing something.
Nothing makes you re-think your priorities more than a pandemic clearing your calendar.
So now I'm getting back into the quilt world and went to a virtual DCMQG quilt retreat. This has been an eye-opening weekend. I have learned a few things about the quilting world and myself along the way.
Another thing that has influenced the popularity of modern quilts is Instagram. People see photos of cool designs on quilts that are a new fresh twist on the quilts their grandma used to make and they want to make them too.
Yesterday and today I have been sewing together parts of The Dinsk into bigger pieces. The nose was bothering me and I think is looking better. I can still see some improvements tho. Looking at it now it looks like he is angry. I don't want him angry so I may have to tweak the eyes. I'm liking the background gradation. I need some more medium grays.
I realized that I really like this technique. I think almost anything can be done with this technique and it is all pieced (no applique which I don't enjoy). It also doesn't look totally realitic. There is some abstraction which is my preference and a good excuse to keep and use more scraps. It is a good use for print fabric.
Today is my birthday and what could have potentially been a bad day turned out pretty good. My family is out of town so I was going to be all alone so I kept myself busy and discoerng new places so the alone factor didn't bothered me much. I usually plan some sort of celebration for my birthday but this year no one is in the mood of gathering. I started the day by attending the the end of the DCMQG retreat where I won a book (woo hoo!). I asked for quilty places in the area that I could go explore today. I went to Three Little Birds Sewing Co. in Hyattsville and Finch Sewing Studio in Leesburg, VA. A lot of driving around but I like driving. In both places I found some nice fat quarters and bought a pattern to make a quilted jacket that I was inspired to make after seeing someone make one at the quilt retreat. On my way home stopped at a roadside stand selling kettle corn and roasted nuts for TV watching tonight. Then stopped to get a greasy burger and a shake. When I got home I found some flowers that friends had left me . After eating the burger and shake I was too full to eat anything else. The rest of the night was spent watching 90 day fiancee and finally finished adding beads to the Mango Strawberry Quilt. I was so close to finishing that I didn't want to stop so I didn't make a block for my journal quilt. I will make one ASAP.
Today I was going to take the final pictures of the Mango Strawberry quilt but I have come to a devastating realization that the pinks may be bleeding into the white areas! It could be the angle or the lights in the room or something, I may be wrong but I think the reds corner is darker than the orange side. I may die. A quilter friend of mine suggested that I could die the whole thing and it may hide the mistake. It is too much to think about right now and I may be wrong so I'm just not going to think about it and it may go away. That usually works, right? At least the lesson is not to make a quilt with red on a white background. Maybe it is all in my head. I hope...
I finally made the journal block from last week. It represents all the Zoom time spent in the quilt retreat this weekend.
Dinsky has a new routine. Around 9pm he starts meowing because he wants me to go to bed with him. I don't want to go to bed because I'm sewing so he gets tired of meowing and goes to sleep under his quilt until I'm ready to go to bed. He is so cute and annoying at the same time.
I donated one of the mini quilts to the SAQA Auction and got this nice message from the director.
Today I picked up a sewing table for $20! It is beautiful and just my style. I do need to do some work to it to fit my machine. It has an old singer machine attached. The person selling it gave it to me with all the things in the drawers so there is a bunch of 60's and 70's notions in it. I will probably get rid of most of it but maybe there are some treasures inside. I got it in Facebook Marketplace. I have never looked there but that place is dangerous! The photo in the ad looked a little in bad shape but after some cleaning it looks perfect!
Hey! I made all the blocks in the month of March. Let's see if I can keep this up. I'm having fun so far and they don't take long to make. Just realized I have the wrong color for the sashing for this week. I'll fix it next week. The block this week represents the sewing table I bought.
I haven't made more work on my quilts because I have been reorganizing my sewing room. I have rediscovered a bunch of things I had hiding in corners that I forgot about. I officially recognize I don't need to buy anymore fabric, beads, buttons or thread. Of course the fabric is always going to tempt me. Believe me, quilters see my fabric stash and think I dont have enough fabric. Now I have more space to sew. I still need a bigger design wall which is going where the framed poster is now. And now back to sewing... I have so many projects I want to start but I have to finish what I need to finish before starting a new project or I'll never finish anything.
