Purple Dear Jane

I have 7 more Dear Jane Blocks done. I am hoping to use the Kaffe Fassett collection for all the blocks and do a rainbow around the quilt. I will plan to keep the blocks in the order they are in the book. 

The blocks are mostly pieced and some applique. I hope to get another little bundle of blocks done soon. I have been making little kits of work, pick out the fabric used and I always have to do some tracing on to freezer paper, either Paper piecing or hand applique templates. 

Design Wall Monday May 19

I have this on my wall today. I have gone back and looked at my old notes and stretch book from the Nancy Crow workshop I took 10 Years ago. I had a chance to take a week long class with Martha Cole about the creative design process. On the first day I chose to repeat an old exercise from a Nancy Crow class. 

Here is the strips on the wall before I sewed them together. 

Here it was when I finished the sewing. I first thought yes it is good. Well later in the week Martha asked me to write out what I liked and loved about some of my work. This is one that I looked at. It was a hard exercise but very very helpful. I was not to write down Negative things. Make no comment on the parts or things I did not like. I wrote things like "I like the unevenness of the top lines".  Or " I like the sets of three lines". I also wrote out statements like "I love to piece quilts" So I commented on the process of the art work I make. 

"Eat the Dessert and leave the crap sandwich behind". A little quote from one of my Dog Agility teachers. It was about talking about the good parts, what was done well or what was good and do not dwell in the bad stuff. Martha was saying the same thing all week long. I have to do this more. 

Our class was in a meeting room of the Commonwealth Stadium  and we could look out to the main field. They are doing some work to upgrade the stadium. This is were the Edmonton Eskimos foot ball team plays. Our class room was one of the best rooms I have been in. 

I have added this to Patchwork Times Design Wall Monday.

Well after looking at this more closely I folded one part of the quilt out of the way. Wow I liked that even better. The art work became stronger. So I changed it. I took out some of it. And what you see in the top photo is how it is now. I am not sure if I will repeat this in colour or not. Maybe. 

Weekend of Green Scraps

I finally got working on my Green scraps for the month of May. I pulled out my "Around About" project. Last year I started with the colours of the month according to the Rainbow Scrap Challenge 2013. First was Pink then Purple then Orange and April was Green. For the Green I had the fabric set aside but nothing more done. So this Month in the Colour is Green again and I wanted to get back to this project. I had lots of wonky green strips left over from other free form cutting art projects, most are hand dyed fabrics. 

I am not sure which way is up now. I had designed it yesterday with the top photo but then I had it this way for all the other colours. We will see what happens later, sometimes It just tells you how it will be. 

I also did two spools. The first one I did was Lime green and I did it the wrong size again. Oh well. They were to be 8" square and I keep sewing too many little strings together and cutting the side parts 6 1/2"  long when they should be 4 1/2" long. 

I have added the post to Soscrappy's RSC 2014

David's Green Quilt

I was asked to do the machine quilting on this beauty. My customer David has brought me many quilts over the years. They are always bright and fun to work on. I love Lime Green so this was fun to work on. 

The quilt is going to Quebec and David wanted the center be quilted with some special stitches. So this is what we did. It was a quilt that I did the parts I knew and then let the quilt tell me how I should do the next part. I thought Lime green thread will show off more. So I stated with the main images. Then I still wanted it to show and changed thread to cream, and did the little bubbles fill in quilting. I did not plan it use cream but it was what was needed. David is so good to let me decide these things. He loved  the quilting, Happy Customer makes me happy. 

Here is a detail photo of the outer boarders. I love how the lime green thread shows off on the white and not so much on the other fabrics. 

Just  note to the other customers out there. I have not been too busy this spring. I am booking quilts for June and can book in your quilts for later this summer too. I had that little panic that I may have to do some other kind of work. I said this one of my customers and she called her friends, They have brought me 4 quilts this week. So cool. If you hate to wait for your quilts this is the time of year to get them in. THANK YOU my customers I love my work.

Gifts from good Friends

I am away for a workshop. I have not taken many photos yet. But I may try to get some Sunday so I can show them. In the meantime I have this to show you.

I have two good friends that are Canadian snow birds for the winter and they travel south. This year I asked them to buy me some bright fabrics or any thing with dots for me.  Wow I got these great treasures. On the far Right is a wooden printing stamp. Love it. Then the purple Australian fabric in the middle. They got me 2 yds, not sure how I will use it but I love it. The then the dots that are gold and white and all kinds of stuff. The red has little horse shoes and will be perfect to put with my horse fabric collections for that some day quilt. 

Aren't quilt buddies fun?