Practice Quilt Squares

In October I will be team-teaching a Beginning Quilting class for our guild. It will be a four-day class, held over two weeks. This is a class I took about 4 years ago. It was a great class, taught by two incredible women. Now one of them has moved away, and the other wants to hand off the teaching job to someone else. So I am going to team-teach this class with my friend Kalynn.

So I've been going over the notes from when I took the class, reading and tweaking. I decided to sew all the squares again, just to reacquaint myself with them, see what techniques are involved, and if I came across any problems.

Here is the Double Nine Patch.

Rail Fence...

Shoo Fly...

Diamond In A Square...

Ohio Star...

and Double X.

Yes, I did learn a few things, and no, I didn't sew them all perfectly the first time! I had a little bit of using the seam ripper before I was finished.

Art In The Redwoods 2010

I've been away on vacation for a while (hence my lack of postings--more on that later), and I just found out yesterday that a quilt of mine won 2nd place in the Textiles division of Art In The Redwoods. I am so excited about that! Art In The Redwoods is an annual art show held at Gualala Arts Center in Gualala, California. The festival lasts for one weekend, and the art show is up for about a month. It is great fun to attend this festival, and great fun to take part in it. People from all around submit their art to the show.

I entered my Sonoma Coastline landscape piece this year. I decided to have it matted and framed, as my teacher had recommended, so I entered it under Textiles, rather than Quilts. I can't believe it won a prize. I'm just thrilled!

I only got the piece back from the framer just in time to turn it in for the art show, so I don't have a photo of it in its frame; here is a photo of the piece, though.

Wall Hanging for SonStitches

Here is a wall-hanging that I'm working on for SonStitches. When he was just a LittleStitch, my Grandma (his Great-Grandma) made him a simple pillow. It was this panel of three birds, which had a blue border around it.

He slept with it all the time, and it really shows the wear! But he's kept it all these years and asked me if I could make a wall hanging for him with it. So he and I auditioned fabrics and decided on this red stripe and green tone-on-tone.

My Grandma had hand-quilted around the birds and foliage and border. I removed the back of the pillow, but left the front intact, with its blue border and (now thin) batting). I wanted to "ruin" it as little as possible!

Now I have these two borders on it, and it is sandwiched, as you can see in the top photo. I'm going to do a little machine quilting on it before I give it back to SonStitches.

I guess I'm kind of touched that he still wanted to keep it, and didn't just throw it away because it was worn out. Now he'll be able to have the memory, but it won't get any more wear by hanging on the wall.

What I've Been Doing

The above photo shows the progress I've made on my Tumbling Blocks Quilt. I'm in the midst of sewing on row 13. This project is not nearly as portable as it used to be!

Here are fabrics that I bought for a new project. Yards of beautiful Kona cottons. I love their vibrant, pure colors. What am I making with this? I'm not going to tell you yet. If you guess it has something to do with a rainbow, that would be a good guess, but it would be incorrect.

In the background is my travel iron and small spray bottle. So this stack of fabrics is not as tall as it appears in the photo!

Yesterday I made this paper-pieced rose. I had to look up in a book to remind myself how to do this technique, but then it went quite well. With only a couple seams that needed to be ripped and sewn again!

This is not intended to be a one-off thing, but part of a larger project. I'll let you know more as it progresses.

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I read a good quote today.

"We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry.

--E.B. White