Design Wall Monday

Ta Da!  I remembered to take some pictures of what is currently on my design wall.  This is the last of the "Christmas" quilts I wanted to give as gifts this year.  This is for my next youngest granddaughter and bears no resemblence to the quilt I was going to make last month.  That one started as an angel appliqué quilt, but after three squares, I just wasn't feeling the love.  I wanted to embroider part of it, either actual embroidery or appliqué embroidery.  Because I was less than inspired by the angels, it was really hard to work on it.  So I finally admitted defeat and pulled out my "Go Baby" dies and a bunch of solid fabrics in graduated color ways.  Here is the result of my playing.

As you can see it is colorful.  Each large square has two letter of the alphabet.  Instead of having 4 patches between the stars I cut large squares.  That gave me the 13 blocks in which to embroider two letters.

I plotted it out in Electric Quilt, but that came after I made a bunch of flying geese.  I pretty much design quilts using the TLAR method:  "That Looks About Right".  EQ was a big help figuring color placement.

Here is a detail of the embroidery:

I used a font available in the Pfaff 5D Embroidery Suite.  The font is called "Pioneer Children".  It reminds me more of a Kate Greenaway illustration.

I used Madeira Potpourri rayon thread.  The first two squares as too light as I used a light green and cream yellow and there isn't enough contrast between the stitching and the background.  They will be redone.

Here is how it looked in Electric Quilt.

I'm pleased with the way it turned out.  Now to assemble it and decide how I'm going to quilt it.

Head over to Judy's Patchwork times for more inspiration.

Design Wall Monday

I have Raegan's quilt up on the wall, more to keep the cats from turning it into a nest.  Things were going swimmingly until last Thursday when I had my own Friday the Thirteenth.  I was trying to finish up Raegan's quilt and only had three borders to add.  The first one at the top was the width of the quilt top.  I measured the one side and added keystones to either end of the pieced border.  It was sewn to the quilt top and things were starting to look good.  I carefully measured the border for the second long side and cut it. Only to discover that the number I had firmly in my mind was for the bottom and thus the border is 14 inches too short.

Now to piece it together and try some sewing magic.  Just another creative opportunity.  Check out Judy's blog to see what everyone is doing.

Design Wall Monday

This quilt top is going together surprisingly fast.  The upper left four rows are sewn together as is the middle three rows.  The blank area is on the cutting table being pinned together for seaming.  I should have the borders on it by tonight.  It is a variation on a quilt in Sharyn Craig's "Layer 'em Up" book.  By layering the orientals with strips of ombres, I'll have two quilt tops for the effort.  Here is a picture when I first started making the blocks.  The second top from this set will be set horizontally.  The big question is: will I have everything done for Christmas?  If so, what year?  Check out Judy's site to see other design walls.

Pre-Thanksgiving activities

This is on record as being one of the most stress-free Thanksgivings for me.  My brother volunteered to host the Thanksgiving dinner for the second year.  So the only thing I have to worry about is providing the infamous green bean casserole.

I finished piecing the granddaughter's quilt.  I have to make an appointment at the local quilt shop to use their long-arm quilter.  I'm in the process of piecing a new quilt top.  I'm using the book "Layer Em Up" and my collection of oriental and ombre sateens.  The way this one is working out, I may get two quilts for the work of one.  The theory behind this one is you take squares, make two or more slices on the diagonal then move either the center slice or the center and one side slice to the bottom.  You can't get bored with making the same square over and over because it's always different.

On the kitten front, they are getting to the fun stage of kitten-hood.  Max and Moritz are about 6 weeks old and are into everything.  They are about 1.5 pounds each.  Their legs are too short to negotiate more than one step.

Well, I finally decided to jump ship from Apple's MobileMe web hosting to Blogger.  With Apple's new iCloud web hosting is being discontinued so I would have to make the transition sooner or later.  Over the next couple of months I'll be transitioning web content and photos to the new blog.


I'm also refocusing the purpose of this blog so hopefully I'll be posting more often.  


On a quilting related note, I finished piecing my oldest granddaughter's quilt.  There is a local quilt shop that rents time on a 30 inch Gammill.  I'm working on accumulating several quilt tops then I'll go for the initial lesson and have enough to quilt so I don't forget how to do it. ;-P  Unfortunately I can't post pictures be the granddaughter or her mother may see it.  I want it to be a Christmas surprise.