Tuesday, March 30, 2010

Lisa's Stars... done!

I must first say this is an amazingly beautiful quilt (Primarily Stars pattern by Jean Wells) -- Lisa gave me the perfect background for my art. I love the mottled hand-dyed stars on the black background -- one of my absolute favorites!


If you follow my facebook page you have already seen many detail photos of this quilt, but if not, here are a few...

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

This beautiful quilt belongs to Lisa from Missouri -- wow, what a fantastic quilt! I really love this one -- I'm doing a background fill with multi-style feathers. I'm not sure what I'll be quilting in the stars yet but I'm sure the quilt will tell me exactly what it wants!

Friday, March 19, 2010

Yeah for Friday...

Today was Friday (I'm sure you all knew that)... anyway, Friday's are my official day off -- yes, I take other days off on occasion, but like I said, Friday's are my "official" day off to sew for myself!

Anyway, I had every intention of working on my show quilt ALL DAY... yep, paved with good intentions... anyway, I started on my show quilt, got all the pieces out, looked over my master pattern to see what else needed to be done... ran out of the special foundation paper... okay... change gears, work on different part of the quilt... life is good -- or so I thought! Right after changing gears and moving all my pieces around I ran out of basting glue. Here's another tidbit for those of you that don't know me... I AM LAZY! Once I'm in a creative mood I'm not leaving the house... especially not to get glue! Okay... hurry up and clean up this disastrous mess that I have created twice today!

DONE... not really -- I decided to break out the fabrics I got while in Jersey on vacation (Village Quilter). So I pushed all my creative juices to the side and did some mindless cutting of fabric. Which was good, now all six colors are cut into 12.5" squares and are ready for matching into threes. I'm making what I refer to as my "Jersey Onion" -- it will be a modified Red Onion pattern (Karla Alexander-Stack a New Deck). I love this pattern -- it is so easy and goes together amazingly fast! My modifications -- I'm only using six colors and I'm only making three slices into each square. I think it'll be great... time will only tell...

Here's a picture of the squares -- hopefully I'll be up super early tomorrow and I'll start slicing up the squares before I have to work!


Tuesday, March 16, 2010

Paint dust...

I don't want this to sounds as if I'm bashing -- but I did warn you -- sometimes we get the "ugly" -- for those that know me, you know I'm just venting...

Anyway... I HATE PAINTED FABRIC! There, that wasn't rude at all now was it? Now, don't think I'm talking about beautiful art like my mermaid or owl... NO, I'm talking about manufactured painted-on patterns... you know, tone-on-tones, but they're not really... they are white or cream fabric with PAINT as the pattern, and no, not high-quality paint. But let me stop the venting and show you why.

Here's a pic of painted fabric so that everyone is on the same page (I must apologize for not knowing the manufacturer of this specific fabric)...


Okay... here is what my machine looks like normally...



And here is my machine after one tiny little section of painted fabric...


LOOK AT ALL THAT PAINT DUST! It is everywhere, in the bobbin, on the tracks, everywhere -- oh yes, my lungs too. Now this doesn't mean you shouldn't use this fabric -- this is just my own personal opinion and its more of a mess and clean-up issue than anything else.

Either way, I would love to hear your opinion on this subject!


Thursday, March 11, 2010