2011 Blog Book

Every January, since I started my blog, I like to have my blog printed out in book form so I have a hard copy of my quilting from the past year.  I look at my blog as my quilting journal.

I get mine printed by Blog2Print and they do a great job. I can delete posts I don't wanted printed and I usually edit out the family vacation post and non quilting related ones to keep the cost down. 

Here is a peek at the inside, it is all glossy paper and color photos.

I like to change the book covers each year to match the quilt pictures I use for the cover.  

On another topic, I did a bit of snow dyeing this weekend....

...so here are the results.

Cerulean Blue and Soft Brown

Royal Blue and Yellow

You can see we have to lift the snow up to get it off the deck now!

I heard that there were some large solar flares yesterday, biggest in the past 7 years, so the potential for great Northern Lights tonight is good.  It was cloudy here last night but I'm hoping for clear sky's tonight!

Just Takes 2 - part 2

I finished my second installment of the Just Takes 2 project. This is definitely going to be a VERY colorful quilt :)

Hourglass Quilt

This is Lynn's Hourglass quilt, it is a Random Threadz design.  She was working on this quilt at our last guild retreat and I was so happy to hear that she was planning on bringing  her quilt to me to quilt...you know I love batiks and curved piecing on quilts.

Lynn brought the pattern show how she wanted it quilted.... all feathers.  So I did a bit of searching on the internet and found out Legacy Quilting  had digitized patterns for this particular quilt design.  Well I don't have a computer on my longarm so I just used these designs as my inspiration! They are all free hand, I just marking in the spines with chalk to keep the spacing even.  I really like how this feather design fills in the hourglass spaces.  I also really liked their feather design for the circles, it is a nice change from a wreath style feather.

I piano keyed the outer burgundy border for contrast.  Funny the last two quilts I have done, both for Lynn, I piano keyed the outer border. I had never done piano keys on a quilt before these two.  Guess I was just waiting for the right quilts to come along.

I was able to clean a tiny space on the lake to take this picture, -34 this morning!

Here are the designs that I based my feathers on.

Scrappy Squares #2

Here is Lynn's Scrappy Squares quilt that our guild did as a fabric exchange project.  When I posted mine I called it the Scrappy Squares quilt but the guild called it the Paper Bag quilt... I'm sticking with Scrappy :) 

Lynn asked for my free hand water meander in the light background and I suggested CC's in the squares.  She used a dark border fabric in her's which really compliments the dark colored scrappy squares in the quilt.

If you read Desley's blog you'll see that we are both working on the Giant Dahlia quilt top...well I should say she is working on the quilt top, I've hit a road block with mine even before I started.   I can't deciding on what order to place my fabrics in my flower. As with most of my quilting projects this part takes the most time for me but once I make that decision I'm good to go.  

I bought my fabrics at Mama Bear's quilt shop in Ashern, Manitoba when we were down south over New Years.  I can't believe I never knew this shop existed as we drive through this town about 4 times a year!! And the boys didn't even complain waiting in the car as they discovered they were in a WiFi hotspot!  Talk about good luck!

 What fabric did I pick....well let's just say she had a lot of Stonehenge fabric in her shop!!

Second Times a Charm

I love it when clients share their quilt story with me.

This is Gail's quilt that she made for her daughter.  She designed it on EQ7 and her daughter picked out the fabrics....since the first quilt Gail started to make for her wasn't made with the right colours.  Now I'm not going to pick on her daughter for rejecting quilt #1, we all have our own tastes, but I had to tease Gail about not knowing what colours her daughter liked. ;)  She said she would never had imagined her daughter picking these fabrics but now this it is done just loves her choices. I think they both stepped out of their comfort zones with color and together they created a beautiful quilt.  

Since this was a joint effort, they both discussed possible quilting design and agreed on the Rhapsody panto.  

Batting is Quilters Dream Cotton Deluxe and it's quilted with So Fine thread.

We are in a bit of a deep freeze this week with daily temperatures in the -30'c with -40'c windchill.  Good quilting weather :)

It's pretty but don't let that fool you! It is bitterly cold.

Yet I still feel compelled to do this.....

Curved Echo Border Tutorial

I've had a few requests for a tutorial on how to do the Curved Echo border design. First I need to clarify that I did not create this design, Raylene Smith shared a pictures of one of her quilts on a quilting forum with this design in the borders.  This is one of my favorite border designs and it is surprisingly simple to do.

Here is a picture of Robins quilt, it was the first quilt I tried this design on.

You will need a curved ruler, I don't think it matters what brand as long as it has 1/4" markings along the curve. I use Deloa's Boomerang rulers and what size you use depends on the width of the border and scale you want to create your design at.   I will be give directions for quilting this design in the outside border.

First you need to divide up the border into even sections and I like to make it simple and use the center of the sashing as my divisions. Yes the first and last curve sections will be a bit longer depending on the wide of the sashing but you really won't notice that in this design.  

If your quilt does not have sashing then measure the inner part of the outside border and divide that evenly.  I have used between 9" to 18", it just depends on how wide of a border you have.

Let's say the spacing between the yellow lines is 10".  The blue line represent the center of the space and this indicates were to end the curve on the outside edge of the quilt. This will be 5" offset from the yellow marking against the inner border. I like to mark these blue reference lines with chalk on my border.

Next I like to chalk on the main 'Zigzag' of the design using my curved ruler. This is seen by the curved yellow line.  At the corners you just take the curve to the outside corner even if the spacing is not the same it doesn't really matter. This is one of the great things about this design is it works so well around corners!

 Once the zigzag line is marked it's time to quilt it using your curved ruler.

Once the zigzag is quilted I then fill in the echos and like to use 1" spacing.

Here is a sketch of the same information I drew on the picture above but the curves are drawn the other direction. This is to show you it doesn't matter which way you start to draw your curves just continue this pattern around the whole quilt.

Here is a sketch of the stitch path.  I backtrack along the main zigzag, seam line or outside edge so no need for stopping and starting. You can just travel in the seam lines or outside edge to get to the next curve section.

I took this set of pictures when I was working on my Mystery quilt. I wasn't too happy with the quality of these pictures but they show a good example of longer curves, I believe they had an 18" repeat.

Picture of the ruler when stitching the zigzag. I use the lines on the ruler as my guide to create the 1" spacing between the echos.

Here are the curved echoes chalked in to show you the backtracks and the finished border.

I find this design has the best impact when stitched on solid or tone on tone fabrics.

Also I would avoid variegated threads with this design because of the backtracks.

Yellow Brick Road

This is Sandra's Yellow Brick Road quilt and I quilted a free hand teardrop shape in the center using a blue variegated Lava thread.  One of my goals in 2012 is to do more free hand edge to edge work and rely a little less on pantos.

 I also added the echo curves design in the border. 

Love the texture it created on the back.

Just Takes 2

I can't believe I got talked into doing an online Mystery project!!  But Lori managed to find my weakness..."It has great quilting potential, we can work on it at the same time and best of all we can use our hand dyed scraps!"  How could I say no to that. :)

So here are my first 6 block and done on time too. The next set of instructions are going to be posted on Sunday.

The project is called "Just Takes 2" and instructions can be found on this blog post here at Sentimental Stitches. Once your on that page click on the link at the bottom of that post to upload the instructions for the first 6 blocks. They are free for the month of January so don't doddle.  For more info on this Mystery check out this link .  The instructions will be posted every two weeks and alternate between Sentimental Stitches and Dear Jane websites.

So do you want to join us in this Mystery project?

It has great quilting potential ;)

Going Green

This is Lorna's Presidents quilt that she made from the blocks guild members made for her as the end of her term as president of our guild in 2010. She asked for bright colored fabrics and provided the pattern for the two different blocks. This is the largest quilt I have ever quilted..... 102" x122"!  She wanted a geometric quilting design and I suggested Spiral Square.  I used green variegated Lava thread on the top.

Lorna also asked me to dye the backing green to match the sashing fabric and she had 4 meters of 108" wide backing in white.   Yet another record....the largest backing I have ever dyed!  I got out my dyeing 'recipe' book and found a few colored that matched the green sashing and did a few test dyes to make sure I could reproduce my original samples. Here is the result....

Not a bad match eh!

Now I do have a story to share to go along with this dyeing project.  You see 4m of 108" wide backing is a lot of fabric, especially when you do most of your dyeing in buckets in the kitchen sink!  Now I had a big enough bucket to dye it in but when it came to rinsing it that was a bit trickier. So I got the bright idea to rinse the fabric in my brand new white bathtub.....can you see where this is going?   As I was happily swishing the fabric around in the tub so pleased I had all this room to give the fabric a good rinse I finally clued into the fact the sides of the tub were turning green!  How could I be so stupid!!   I threw the fabric back into the bucket...without squeezing it out... and ran for some bathroom cleaners and a scrub brush.  After furiously scrubbing the tub the green finally came off!  Whew, what a relief.  Not that my boys would care if they showered in a green tub but it would have definitely bother me.

So the moral of the story is...I need my hubby to build me a dyeing room with a large stainless steel tub, well that's what I learnt out of this experience anyway  :)  

Taro

This is Evelyn's 2009 Guild Mystery quilt and I quilted it using the Taro pantograph.  I just love the neutral fabrics that she chose as most of us went pretty wild with our fabric choices that year.  I think anyone would love to have this quilt on their bed. I know it looked good on mine!

Taro by Urban Elementz

Back Home

Just before New Years we packed up and headed down to Winnipeg to visit family while the boys were still on xmas break.  I couldn't believe how warm and what little snow there was down south.   I grew up in Winnipeg and snow is rarely in shortage this time of year but the above zero temperatures were great.  We drove back on Saturday through freezing rain, snow, sunshine and then more snow!

Definitely no shortage of snow here while we were gone!

Today the boys shoveled the driveway and I decided to work on the rink.

Well that was until I started to walk on the ice and felt...

...slush under the snow!  I should have expected that.

With the amount of snow and warmer than normal temperatures we have been getting this is what happens.

I dug to remove some snow and see that the slush is about 3 inches thick.

Usually it is -20' to -25'c this time of year and today.....

I did manage to find some good ice on the rink but only a 10 foot square area so not enough for skating anymore.  Sigh!  We might be able to save it by flooding it once the temps get colder.

But for now there is still enough ice for taking quilt pictures.

Tomorrow the boys go back to school and I start quilting again for clients so I'll have some quilting pictures to post soon.