One Piece at a Time

Denver Quilt Show: Part 2

Here is the second half of my pictures from the Denver National Quilt Show. I would have had more except I dropped my camera and it stopped working (they tell me it’s fixable though…yipeee). The most depressing part about having the broken camera is that I couldn’t take a picture of the truck that pulled up alongside of me when I was driving home. It was a cattle truck, FULL of sheep. They were all sticking their heads out and bleating. Where else can you drive beside a fancy (insert expensive car name here) and a truck full of sheep on the same highway. I LOVE Denver.

Sorry…I digress…here are the quilts

This quilt, Spring in my Step by Ann Petersen, won an award for the best use of color. I can see why.

Can you see why I loved this one? Feathered Stars and appliqué would be the correct answer.

It’s called feathered Friends by Kathy McNeil and Geri Parker.

This one gets my “perky quilt” award. It’s called Leaf Motif by Laura Wasilowski.

I thought this was really neat, probably because I like color and spirals. It’s called Friends all Around by Rebecca Smith.

I’m a sucker for appliqué so this caught my eye. It’s called Ode to Iris by Patricia Pressler.

Just look at this quilting!

Here was one of my favorites. It’s called Pool Party by Judy Junkman. Now how cute is that?

A Couple of Pictures to Share

Hi Everyone

Happy Monday

Blog posting might be a bit spotty in the next couple of weeks due to END OF SCHOOL YEAR craziness. You know what I'm talking about, concerts,banquets etc etc etc. I just wanted to share a couple of pictures with you that I really LOVE

First

I took this picture at my daughter's final orchestra concert of the year. I've finally figured out how to take these low light pictures...woo hoo. What I love the most about this is the story it tells. The conductor is a senior this year and he chose conducting as his final project. Even more impressive was that he conducted Beethoven's Fifth (1st movement). This kid has played bass for the last four years. The kid in the foreground is new and also plays bass. It's a "changing of the guard" moment.

Second

This is for Amy. These are our boys 14 years ago. I miss this part of my life sometimes...until I smell a poopy diaper...then I'm over it.

Posy Potholder Part Two

Now try saying that five times fast. On second thought, only do that if you think it’s funny to say “poo” (can you tell I have a teenage boy?)

Anyway, potty humor aside, here is how I finished up my little project.

Once you have your flower placed onto the background it’s time to stitch it down. I could have used invisible thread, but I didn’t have any so I just used the thread I use for hand appliqué. Here is a picture of the stitch I’m using. I shrank the size down so that each time the needle jumps over it only grabs a few threads of the appliqué shape. Each machine is different so you might need to play around with this before you start on your project.

I have a Bernina and the foot I really like for this is the #20 foot. I move the needle over to the far right position and line the inside edge of the foot up with the appliqué.

Here is the completed flower

I added a little free motion stitching to the leaves to give it some interest

Now to make the Stable Stuff dissolve I dunk the whole thing in water

And lay it flat on a towel to dry

Once the potholder is dry I trim it to a 9” square

Now all you have to do is add the binding and it’s done. Here’s a shot of the back.

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY and HAPPY SPRING

I'll be back Monday with some thread painting insights and maybe a thread painted bird.

Happy Mother’s Day/ Happy Spring Project

To celebrate Mother’s Day and Spring I’m giving you this fun little project along with a new appliqué technique to do it with. This is so simple that it actually took me twice as long to write the blog-post then to actually make it. I hope you like it.

Here we go

You can download the project  here.

For this method of appliqué I’m using Ricky Tims’ Stable Stuff Poly. This is great for doing machine appliqué because you can make you appliqué shapes with it, sew it to your quilt and it will dissolve when you get it wet and make your shape poofy (is that a word?). You can find it here.

To do this you simply trace your appliqué pieces onto the Stable Stuff

Cut them out

To add your fabric your just use your Stable Stuff shape as a template to trace onto the back side of your fabric

Cut that out and clip any inside points

The next step is to use this glue ( don't forget to get washable)

And apply it to the edges of your shape. I’m only applying it to about ¼” from the edge.

Then you set it GLUE SIDE UP on the back side of your fabric and carefully turn the seam allowance up, pressing it into the glue with a cuticle stick (found in the finger nail isle of your local grocery store)

Working carefully, go around the whole shape

The flower centers are done in the same ways as the circles I do in appliqué. See this post. Only instead of batting and a template I just use the Stable Stuff.

The next step is to pre-assemble the flower (I accidentally reversed mine so I just used a window to trace the flower on the back of my pattern)

The next step is to quilt a 9 ½” sandwich of top fabric, batting and bottom fabric for the pot holder. I’m just using regular batting here but you can use something fancy if you really need the heat protection.

Now I just center the flower on the back ground and it is all ready to sew.

Check back tomorrow for how I finished this sweet project up.

Week in the Life Project

I hope you all can forgive me if that video yesterday made you cry. I bawled like a baby to be quite frank. Anyway there is a point to this, really there is.

See that lady at the top of the post? She’s my grandmother. I never knew her because she died before I was born. As a child I always thought of her as some old lady and my mother didn’t talk much about her. Imagine my surprise when I found this picture of her. She’s so pretty…and young…and it made me wonder. What was her life like? I mean her real day to day life. I really wish I knew that.

This made me think a little more. What if someday one of my (yet unborn) grandchildren finds my picture in a box. Will they have known me? Will they wonder what I did as well?

A couple of weeks ago I participated in Ali Edwards' project “Week in the Life”. This is a project where you document your life, everything from the mundane to the sublime, for one week. This can be done any way that makes sense to you. I did mine by taking gobs of pictures and writing down what I did every day. To make my life easy and because I have techno-nerd tendencies I used my computer and some digital scrapbooking supplies, some designed specifically for this project. If you want to learn more about doing this you can go to here or here.Here's a sample of what they looked like before printing.

I’m really glad I did this and I plan on doing it again. I think it would be a great thing for anyone to do. You are the only one that can tell your story. YOUR LIFE IS IMPORTANT ENOUGH. Your kids and grandkids, nieces and nephews are going to want to know this stuff. It will be PRECIOUS to them.

After it was all done I uploaded to Scrapbookpictures.com and a few days later I got some beautiful prints in the mail.

Here’s a glimpse.

I even saved a bit of ephemera from my daily life, things like my shopping lists and receipts.

Looking back I realize how busy and full my day to day life is. There is so much to celebrate. I'm also glad I didn't pick this past week to document. All I can say about that is PROM.

Products used:

Font: Pea Lauren from kevinandamanda.com/fonts/fontsforpeas/

Digital Templates were: Ali Edwards Week in the Life 8.5x11 Layered Template Album

Digital Scrapbook Supplies: Mindy Terasawa New Spring Kit

Album: American Crafts 8.5x11 Customizable Album

Page Protectors: We R Memory Keepers 8.5x 11 and Divided

OK This is a Four Hankie...Maybe 5 Hankie Video

Happy Mother's Day in advance

How many hankies for you?

Denver Quilt Show: Part 1

Well I overcame my fear of driving in traffic to go down to Denver this past Friday. Seriously, I think quilting is the only thing that can entice me to drive on major highways these days. I was well rewarded for the trip because I got to see some beautiful quilts and I got a parking space right in front. This completely makes up for the fact that I broke my camera while I was there. I’m not recovered enough to talk about that yet, just know it was my purse camera (yes, I have a purse camera) NOT my good camera that I use to take most the pictures for my blog…THANK THE LORD.

Anyway, let me tell you how impressed I was with the quilts. So impressed that I even have to break this post into two to fit it all in.

The quilt at the top is called “The Quilt Show” by Laura Peterson. It made me smile.

This quilt, “Makapu’u Lighthouse”, by Monika Scola is really neat.

All those plants are dimensional

I loved this quilt, “Logs and Leaves” by Joyce Lyon Saia

Just look at the detail in these leaves

This quilt, “Tuscan Village” by Dawn Berry, brought back memories of traveling

This quilt, “Dreamscape” by Marjorie Portilla and Norma Riehm is a real stunner

Of course I like this one, “Pinewood Star” by Alaina Marker, because it’s a feathered star

And just look at this quilting

Maybe it’s because I had all those computer problems a couple of weeks ago but I have to say this quilt really made me smile, laugh actually.

It’s called “Computer Angst” by Angela Kenley.

I have more to show you next week.