Catching up

Well, last week was a good week!  Hubby and I ran away for a night alone.  Went all the way to Providence, RI – LOL.  It’s about an hour away from were we are in CT.  We had a very nice dinner at The Cheesecake Factory and then spent a couple hours walking around the huge Providence Place Mall.   The hotel we stayed at upgraded our room for some reason to a suite.  There was a good sized sitting room and a nice sized bedroom with a big screen tv mounted on the wall, so we spent the rest of the evening relaxing and watching movies.  The next day we stopped at the art supply store on our way out of town.  We don’t have any of these (other than a Michales and an AC Moore) close to us, so I was like a kid in a candy store!    Came home with lots of goodies!

Wednesday evening Deirdre and I took off for New Hampshire and MQX in anticipation of the predicted snow storm.  It also gave us the opportunity to get up in the morning and get to the show in a leisurely manner.  We took a stroll around the show looking at the quilts and checking out the vendor mall.  We both had a couple of classes that afternoon, and I had scheduled some volunteer time at the QOV booth.

I took a total of 6 classes, all of which were wonderful.  Kolleen Painchaud’s Hodge Podge class was full of design ideas.  I felt bad for her though because there was an entire row of women who kept up a conversation among themselves throughout the class.  Kathy Frank’s class was a good way to review the basics AND it gave me a real appreciation of my machine.  We were provided with HQ16′s to work on and I found it to be more difficult than my own machine to use.  It seemed to be rear-end heavy, although I’m sure the machines weren’t totally level.  Jamie Wallen and Pam Clark’s classes were so jam-packed with information, it was hard to absorb it all.  They had great hand-outs, Pam Clark’s was just about as thick as some of the longarm books that are out. 

I came home totally inspired and ready to jump into quilting the three quilts that my sister brought me to quilt for her.  These will be given to one of her son’s to raffle off as a fundraiser for his church’s building fund.

There are two like this one which is loaded on the frame and all stabalized now

The other is a queen sized BOM done in shades of purple with LOTS of area for some fancy stitching.  Pictures of the results will be posted as they are finished, so keep checking back. 

It’s gonna be a good week!

Tomorrow night…hubby and I are off for a night out alone!  My sister arrived today and we are going to take advantage of it.  Then on Wednesday Deirdre is coming up and she and I are off to MQX!  A good week!

More quilting…

Not sure what happened, but I tried to post this the other day and for whatever reason it didn’t happen.  But anyway, here are some more pics of the other QOV quilt that I just finished.

 

It’s been a long couple of days…

Because I haven’t been sleeping. Friday night was just one of those nights, I was working on watercolor paintings all night long! Last night it was hubby who got up real early and wasn’t too quiet about it! So by 8:30 this morning I had done 2 loads of laundry AND the grocery shopping! At least today has been very productive. I made a paint brush holder.

Don’t you love the frog?

Today also brought some VERY exciting news! There is going to be a book published from the “Alzheimer’s: Forgetting Piece by Piece” Exhibit and the quilt my sisters and I made, “Shattered Lives”,  will be in it! Please help support research for this horrid disease that not only shatters the life of the person who has it, it shatters the lives of the whole family! So, buy the book and support Alzheimer’s research.

This weeks quilting news…

Received 2 quilts for the QOV program and one is done. I remembered to take pictures of it too! I just need to get them off the camera now. It was a fun quilt to quilt. I used a double sided pantograph and turned the quilt once the body was quilted so that I could put a single row in the two side borders. I did some SID (stitch in the ditch for all you non quilters out there) on the sashing and outlined the stars. I’m very pleased with the way it turned out. The 2nd one is ready to go on the frame and I’ll finish loading it and get started on it today.

The before

and the after

and a closeup You can’t really see the quilting in the red rows, but it is a mirror image of what is in the light rows.

My friend’s son and wife had their baby. Nevin Scott Delaney will receive the cat-in-the-hat quilt in the next couple of weeks. Hopefully sooner, but I think I’m coming down with a cold and don’t want to go visit if I’m sick.

I’ve been busy doing some embroidery too. A jacket order for one of the local town’s, and baby stuff for our grandbaby. Photos of those will be posted too as soon as they are off the camera. (The embroidery pictures are off the camera and can be seen on the Custom Embroidery Page.)

Quilting news!!!

I received notification today that my quilt, Bionic Back II, has been accepted into eMotion Pictures: An Exhibition of Orthopaedics in Art.
My feet haven’t touched the ground since I opened the email this afternoon. To say I am psyched would be an understatement!

This is the 2nd in my Bionic Back series. The first was done for the Indelible Spirit online challenge. When the quilt returned from touring with the Indelible Spirit exhibit I gave it to my back surgeon. It is a small gift compared to the gift he gave me! The technique in both quilts was the same. The central image was created with machine embroidery by digitizing a digital photograph of my spinal xray. The free motion quilting in the center pannel includes rib bones. (Thanks Deirdre for suggesting that!)

This picture of the first quilt isn’t great. I’ll have to see if I can find the original on the other pc and repost it, but this will give you an idea of what the first one looked like

compared to the newest one, Bionic Back II

Woefully behind but catching up…

Once again I am woefully behind on posting to my blog.  I think about it, but then I’m off doing something.  I usually do remember…when I get into bed!  LOL

 

Sewing related – I made a small felted wool pincushion; both needle and wet felting were used.  I gave it to Deirdre since she is the one who gave me the raw (complete with straw and…) wool, which came from her boss’s sheep.  There were a lot of the natural oils (is that lanolin?) in the wool, and my hands were nice and soft after two days of playing with the pincushion.  I’m going to make another one for me.

 

I’ve been thinking about the design for the baby quilt I’ll be starting soon for our grandbaby.  I have a row of blocks put together from a quilt I started many many years ago for our daughter.  I think she was in high school at the time.  I will be incorporating those as a border row around a center medallion done in a kaleidoscope type design.  All in shockingly bright colors.

 

One of the goals I have for this year is to finish up some UFO’s.  I pulled out the log cabin quilt that was my first ever quilt project and played around with layouts.  I’ve discovered that I need to make more blocks – 50 more to be exact!  However, when completed it will give me an opportunity to practice more feathering!  So, I’m going to work on finishing up those blocks as I can.

 

I just finished quilting and binding a comfort quilt.  The blocks were all different kinds of hearts set in scrappy black and white sash with light blue corner stones.  I quilted freeform feathers in all borders, feathered hearts in the four corners with small plain hearts in the corner stones, and a high/low loopy design in the sashings.  The binding was done using the Ricky Tims method of piped binding with the piping being hot pink and the binding navy like the backing.  Turned out very nice.  I will post pictures, but not until after it has been received.

 

MQX – 26 days and counting down!  23 and counting until my sister arrives and I can take a break from caring for the parents. 

 

Last week I started a beginner watercolor painting class at adult ed in the next town over from us.  It’s one night a week  for 2 ½ hours.  I’ve never done any painting of this type before, so of course that meant I HAD to go shopping and get some supplies.  Already I know I need more colors of a brighter variety!  I also need to apply the less is more theory when applying the paint.  I’ve only done one stroke type painting before where you load the brush up and use no water.  Trying to unlearn that habit is proving a challenge.  But, I’m sure I’ll get it before the class ends in 6 weeks.

 

Time to go make dinner…