Tuesday, March 24, 2015

When quilts send you running for cover...

Well, when they're warm and comfy, that's when! This click-bait headline brought to you by Portent's Content Idea Generator.

I finished another quilt! I wanted wide borders to have plenty of room to play with the quilting. (It's a twin size quilt photographed on a king size bed, so the borders hang on the sides of the bed). It's quilted on a long arm without any digitized quilting patterns

My daughter, who's quilt it is, picked the backing - flannel giraffes. Well, what else would you use, right?








A lesson learned: I was mostly picking the quilt patterns as i went. It's kind of a quilt pattern sampler.
This part of the block came out ok, but could have benefited from a little more planning. There is a  light diamond that is near the outside point (light green in the photo below) in each block. The dark thread that blends pretty well with the rest of the purples an blues stands out on that light one. Instead of having just the points where all the other bits of the quilting pattern meet, it would probably have looked better with a loop or something that would look more intentional. Next time. I am quite happy with it overall, especially since it was never intended to be shown or judged. My goal is to be able to control the longarm to make it do what I want. We're getting there!



I have nine more stars pieced, guess I should get back to work!

Monday, February 16, 2015

Vintage UFO Sightings


These quilts were started in 2007.  A mystery quilt was devised by the community service committee of Northern Lights Quilt Guild because they were short on baby quilts. I started three, because, y'know, they're baby quilts... I'll just whip them right up. Ha. One was finished that year, but two of them took a wee bit longer.  I had taken them out to finish last fall, but hadn't made much progress on them until Joanne of Splitting Stitches started a UFO Challenge. We could register up to six unfinished quilts that needed a decent amount of work to finish (at least two borders still needed, for example) and we have to finish them by the end of 2015. Or there will be consequences. If we finish them, we qualify for prizes. Just the boost I needed! The light blue one didn't qualify, it just needed to be quilted (by me! on the long arm!) and bound, but the dark blue one did, it only had a few chunks sewn together. Both are done and have been delivered to community service. Better late than never?


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This was another mystery quilt, probably around 2007. Apparently, I am not fond of mystery quilts. Good to know. The original pattern didn't have the sashing between the blocks. My blocks looked terrible right up next to each other, it was just not working. Away it went. Now I have a design wall and what a difference it makes being able to step away and look at it from a distance. I love this quilt now, I can't wait to finish it! I'm hoping I have enough of that green to finish... It's gonna be close.
  

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And this. This is what my latest artsy quilt looked like Sunday morning. It looked much different by Sunday night, you'll have to check back to see the finished result. This one, which I'm calling Red Rain, is going into the trunk show that we are doing in the SAQA ME/NH/VT region. The trunk show is titled A Piece Of Me and we're asking members to send in an 8"x10" piece that is representative of their work. These will be mounted on a backing and placed in plastic sleeves, then sent around the three states. Viewers will be encouraged to pick them up and look at them closely. We have such a talented group of artists in our region, it should be a great collection.