Monday, May 18, 2015

Lotsa Quilts

I have several quilt projects to share today. First up is this small quilt the I made using English Paper Piecing and elongated hexagons. It measures about 16"x20" and I'm delighted with the way it turned out. Below is a picture of the completed quilt before it was washed - - -

- - - and this is how it looked after a spin through the washer and dryer - love that crinkly look that I get from using cotton batting.

A wee bit of a close-up. I just did straight line stitching using a monofilament thread about a 1/4" from each seam.

I have also finished piecing the top of this small churn dash quilt that I made by choosing the border fabric first and then finding prints to coordinate with that - very different from my normal procedure. These blocks measure 4-1/2" finished.

I've been following Cheri's SAL and am enjoying making all these 6" blocks - quite a variety so far - and I've added in a couple of my own as I stumble across them. Thinking of how I want to sew these all together.

On Saturday I attended a meeting of our rug hooking guild. One of our members works in a quilt shop and she's taken several classes from Sue Spargo. She provided us with a kit to make a book cover for a composition book, and taught us some basic stitches to embellish our work with - similar to what Sue does. It was great fun - I really enjoyed it and finished putting mine together this morning.

This bit in the center is my favorite part with the beads and the boullion stitches. I'm trying to figure out how I can do more of this type of project, but use my favorite color palette - which is much more subdued than hers. We'll see what I come up with.

Hubby & I are headed out of town later this week to celebrate our 35th wedding anniversary with a trip to Seattle. Should be fun!

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Rugs & Quilts

Last Tuesday I attended the monthly meeting of one of my rug groups and there was some great show & tell. Jeanette was finished with the hooking on the rug below and started finished the edge while we were all there together. Her rows are all perfectly spaced and the squares have sharp corners - I love the scrappy colors she used - the red center of each block ties everything together!

Leisa finished her Tree of Life rug and is planning to put it in a frame on a gallery wall in her home.

Sandy is working on this lovely pattern from Vintage Heart Primitives and it's so lovely! The tiny flowers really look like roses!

Shelly arrived a bit late and showed us this great rug - it's made from a kit she bought from Deanne Fitzpatrick and it's her very first project - she's a natural I think! If you look closely you can see the alpacas she added beneath the trees - she raises them so wanted to include them in this project.

Tonia traced her design onto linen at the beginning of our meeting and got this much hooked before leaving for the day. Since this picture was taken a week ago, I'm sure she has it finished by now.
(edited to add: you can see Tonia's finished pillow here)

I got one more motif hooked on this old-fashioned looking geometric I've been working on for months. Soon I'll have to make a decision on how to hook the alternate blocks - hard to choose!

A couple weeks ago I saw this cute little rug for sale in a consignment shop - wonder who hooked it?



On Friday I attended the HMQS show in SLC and was surprised to see this hooked rug in a display of teacher's projects - nice!

There was a special display of quilts at the show that had creative labels exposed and I snapped several pictures to give me inspiration for when I make labels for my own quilts. Some of them were SO clever!







The quilts below were part of a special exhibit too - they were all the same size - and each quilter had been given parameters on how much of the quilt was to be sky, how much was to be water and how much was to be beach. They were free to do anything else they wanted, and when the quilts were lined up side by side they made for a very interesting shoreline image when viewed from a distance.


Usually when I make a quilt, I will make scrappy blocks using whatever colors I think work well together, and then find something that will do for the border. However, I've started a quilt that I seem to be making backwards. I found a wonderful paisley floral print that I loved and wanted to use for the border. So I chose fabrics to coordinate with the colors in that print and made my blocks using those. In the picture below you can see the border print on top of the stack, and the block fabrics are below that. We'll see how it turns out.

My two daughters showered me with fabric gifts for Mother's Day - they know me well! On the left are some assorted FQs to add to my stash - and on the right is fabric that's a kit to make a small Kim Diehl wall hanging - I can hardly wait to start cutting! My 4-year-old grandson was very puzzled about why I would get excited about fabric - until I explained to him that those are Grandma's toys and then it made better sense to him! Too funny.....