Friday Night Sew In

Just joined the Friday Night Sew In group.  The link is here and in the sidebar.  Come join the fun.  Next sew in is Friday May 21st.

Star block

David's graduation quilt is made of star blocks.  Here are some pictures.

Around the Block Quilt

I have finally finished the top for Paul's college graduation quilt. Here are some pictures of it.

Fabulous Fiber Arts Workshop

The last weekend in February I was able to go to a fabulous fiber arts workshop.  It was held in the Opera House in Winchester, KY.  The instructor was Jennifer Reis.  The work shop was on hand-worked textile assemblage, including embellishment, embroidery, surface design, shrink art, and non-traditional quilting and appliqué. Click the link to check out Jennifer's art! http://jenniferareis.com/
A bonus to the workshop was that the owner is a superb cook and fixed wonderful lunches for us.
My piece "The Bead Lady's Loose"

Quilts for Kids

Here is a picture of the quilt sponsored by downy for children in hospitals.  The quilted hearts in the black and white squares glow in the dark.

Quote

You are not here merely to make a living. You are here in order to enable the world to live more amply, with greater vision, with a finer spirit of hope and achievement. You are here to enrich the world, and you impoverish yourself if you forget the errand. - Woodrow Wilson

Rip it! Rip it!

The frog chorus could be heard loud and clear in my sewing studio today.
I think I was a bit tired from our trip north, everything seemed to go together wrong.

Had a great time at my niece's wedding in Maryland.  Best of all we were in PA Friday without any obligations or plans.   I got to go to my first AQS show in Lancaster.  The quilts were really wonderful.  I tired out my husband and daughter, but they did enjoy themselves and took lots of photos.  I also tried out several long arm quilt machines.  I have to say I was impressed with the Handi Quilters machines.  My daughter took to it like a fish in water.  Her free flowing drawing style showed through superbly.

Do Not Weep continued

I had to darken some of my darkest purple with purple fabric ink because I needed a darker shade.  Next I added the third purple shade of fabric. Here I made a mistake and was glad the fusible was not fully attached.   Usually  my pieces are numbered 1-6 with one being the lightest, but I did it opposite this time.  I've been working at short intervals and came back to do the next layer and thought I forgot some places because I forgot how I numbered the piece.  I added more of the second darkest fabric where I should have put the lightest fabric.  Anyway, here is a picture of the mistake and then the correction.  I also found that my next color is a bit to close to the number 5 fabric and I need to go shopping for another shade.  I usually number and letter all my pieces so I know where they go.  Not wanting to waist the time I just numbered by shade and am having to spend lots of time figuring out which piece is which.  I will not make this mistake again.

Do Not Weep

I am trying to keep a record of the “Do Not Weep” quilt. After completely starting over with new designs I chose a new color scheme. Each woman will be a different color from light to dark of that color. Woman one is purple. After sketching her and assigning color value, I made a copy on double freezer paper.

Next I cut the woman out of heavy weight stabilizer. I then cut her out of medium purple about a 1/2 larger and wrapped that around the stabilizer and glued the edges down on the back. The next step was to cut out the darkest value from the freezer paper and fuse them on the fabric. I cut out the shapes, added fusing and positioned them in place using the holes in the freezer paper as guidelines.

That’s as much as I worked on so far. I did finish the the eight points for the mariners compass block for the star quilt, and picked out fabric for the 6 remaining houses in the “Strolling the Block” quilt. Next I must cut out all the fusible pieces for each color.

Rabbits Return

In 2004, somebody let about 30 bunnies loose in our neighborhood.  We thought they had all died off , but we saw a solid black rabbit two days ago and yesterday and today the rabbit pictured below was in our garage and under the porch.  We fed it and are hoping it stays around.