Wednesday 26 February 2014

Luscious Columns - A Work in Progress

Monday night, I received the exciting news that Happy Canada Day, Eh! was selected for Quilt Canada 2014's National Juried Show, which will be held June 11-14, 2014 in St. Catharines, Ontario. I'm surprised I didn't wake the kids up with my shriek and crazy happy dance. ;D I. am. still. so. excited!

I got to go to Quilt Canada back in 2006 when it was in Ottawa and I was blown away by the gorgeous quilts in the National Juried Show. I remember wondering if I'd ever make a quilt that was good enough to be accepted. And now it's actually happened. Pinch me. I still can't believe it. Woo hoo!

Coming back down to earth was hard, but it was made a lot easier with the quilt top I'm sharing with you today.

After so much wonky with Scrap{Bee}2.0 and Purplelicious, I was ready for something more straightforward and simple. I pulled out a charm pack of Hello Luscious by Basic Grey that I've had in my collection for some time and some Kona Snow and got down to business.


I've had this design in my head for a while and it's so charm pack and jelly roll friendly that I'm sure someone else has done it. I couldn't find anything in my Quilts board on Pinterest though. If you've seen a similar design somewhere, could you let me know? Thanks! Oh and if you have any suggestions for the name, I'm open to those too!

It's a good sized throw quilt and should finish ~ 50" by 60".

BTW, the horizontal stripes you see through the background are from my very high-tech vinyl tablecloth design wall. It's distracting, I know. Must find something better.

Hope you are having a wonderful day and getting in some time to quilt!

Monday 24 February 2014

Cross

I taught my first free motion quilting workshop on Saturday for the Ottawa Valley Quilt Guild and it was so much fun. What a great group of students to work with! It was exhausting too though, and I think I was in bed by 10 that night and that was after falling asleep on the couch. LOL. Once again, I'm reminded how hard teaching is and how much I admire those who do it every day!

Lots to do and share this week, but for today, I'll share this block with you for Modern Block Monday. Chelsea in my Canadians Quilt Bee asked for this cross block (photo tutorial). Low volume prints for the back and red for the cross. I can't wait to see her pull all the blocks together -- they will look fabulous!

  February Block

Hope you had a great weekend! What are you working on this week?

Oh, and I thought you might get a giggle out of this too:


Happy Monday, all!

Friday 21 February 2014

TGIFF! - Purplelicious

Purplelicious enjoys Winterlude on the Rideau Canal
Joy. That's what I feel when I look at this quilt and I've been looking at it a lot since I put it up a few days ago.

I just love purple, although it's not a colour I've been successful in decorating with in the past. Lesson learned: Do not paint a small room, which has little natural light and dark wood accents, eggplant purple -- it feels like it's always night. BUT, you can make a quilt with those colours and hang it on a light neutral wall. Much better. :)

This quilt has been a journey, hasn't it? We talked about it here and here and here.

I'm excited about this piece because it feels like all the colour, design and composition reading I've been doing over the past couple of years has come to fruition in something that didn't feel forced and that reflects me.




New to me in this piece - wonky edges and improv quilting. Okay, two wonky edges; let's not go crazy here. The sides are parallel.

The improv quilting was a challenge. I looked closely at Jean Wells' work for ideas. I didn't have the appetite for changing threads to match each purple fabric so I picked sections of similar toned purples to use either a warm purple (Aurifil #1240) or cool purple (Aurifil #2581). Very happy with that decision and something I'll do again. I also used Aurifil #5009 and #2277 for the oranges. I left the whites and greys unquilted.


So what do I mean by improv quilting? I wanted a bit of an organic, irregular look to the quilting to complement the improv piecing.


Some wobbly lines, wonky square spirals, loose aztec motifs and general wonky circuit board-like motifs filled in the purple areas to give it texture and invite the viewer to come closer to see where the quilting goes. I've spent so much time trying to make my quilting motifs look perfect (not that it is ever achieved), that it felt very odd to intentionally make it look wonky. Does that make sense?


Purplelicious finishes at 24" by 36"-ish. :)

Isn't it fun to see where playing with fabric takes you?

I'm linking up with my favourite party TGIFF!, which is over at Amy's Crafty Shenanigans. Come join us!

Thursday 13 February 2014

TGIFF! - Rainbow Beaver Mug Rug

Welcome to TGIFF!

One of our Beaver leaders is stepping down so I wanted to do something nice for her. Her Beaver Leader name is Rainbow and she loves my rainbow quilts so it was fitting that this mug rug include some rainbow, don't you think? Ann Kelle Bright Remix stripe coming right up!

I also wanted the kids to have a chance to sign it so she'd have a keepsake from her time with us. We had them sign their names on the back with fabric marker. Despite being supervised, one of the kids managed to sneak in writing 'poo'. Grrr! I'm thinking that it may be a perfect spot for some creative appliqué. LOL!

Hope Rainbow likes her rainbow beaver mug rug!


Wednesday 12 February 2014

A Purplelicious Top

I hope you aren't tired of purple yet, because I finished the Purplelicious top. Your comments seemed heavily weighed towards the dark colours and mixed colour border so...I decided to see what it would look like with a mixed dark purple border, but just two colours. I tried the Purple and Eggplant (Kona colours), but the Purple seemed too blue.


I finally settled on Eggplant and Hibiscus -- dark, but warmer:


Lots of partial seams for the final piecing. That and the bias edges from the improv piecing made me worried that this would be hard to keep flat, but it's looking okay so far. We'll see how it quilts. Fingers crossed!

I'm kind of liking these wonky edges. Something else to think about as I quilt this...

Hope you are having a great day!

Monday 10 February 2014

Going Modern Scrappy Irish

Happy Monday, all! EP from our Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild Bee asked for the Modern January Block of the Modern Quilt Guild of Ireland (tutorial). It's based on the Elizabeth Hartman's Scrappy Rectangle block.

I LOVE this block! I means blocks really 'cause EP wanted two and I was happy to oblige. :)

3 by 3 Square (there's also instructions for a 4 by 4 square in the tutorial):

January Block for EP

Rectangle:

January Block for EP

I. must. make. more. :)

Other blocks from this series:


I'm hosting TGIFF! this week so get your finishes ready. I will also be madly trying to finish something too. Don't know what yet...Purplelicious? Scrap{Bee} 2.0? Or something entirely different? Time for some quilting roulette...

Wednesday 5 February 2014

Scrap{Bee} 2.0 - A Work in Progress

The last time you saw the Scrap{Bee} quilt top, it looked like this:


It was a fun, twin-sized improv scrappy quilt. I liked it, but I didn't love it. There was actually another block that I had taken out so that it could be a 3 by 5 block quilt and I was going to use the remaining block on the back. 

Shortly after my last post about the top, I decided to take it apart, add the remaining block and change it to a 4 by 4 block layout. And I added an improv pieced border. 

I love it now. Absolutely love it! Now I feel it does better justice to all the work my Don't Worry {Bee} Happy bee mates did on their blocks. 


It's now 93" square!


I really like the rainbow spectrum arrangement of red purple to blue purple. It worked well with 10 Years And Still Over the Rainbow so I tried it with this layout too. It just feels more balanced to me than red to purple and gets the lighter colour value of yellow more centred in the spectrum.

More gratuitous? photos:




I like rainbow. :)

I'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at The Needle and Thread Network and to W.i.P. Wednesday at Freshly Pieced. Thanks Monika and Lee for hosting such great linkies!
Right Click to Save ImageWIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced









I'm also linking up with Let's Bee Social at Sew Fresh Quilts!

Monday 3 February 2014

Well That Was Unexpected

Thank you for the great feedback on Purplelicious! I really appreciate your input -- it's so helpful to get other people's perspectives. I'm still responding to your comments and that leads me to the reason for my gripping post title.

On Wednesday afternoon, our temperamental computer stopped cooperating altogether -- fried logic board, it turns out. Ugh! Decisions about the right shade of purple were replaced by decisions to replace logic board or the whole computer. Decisions about the right shade of purple are much cheaper and more enjoyable, I'll tell you that.

New computer won out. Yay! But we're still having problems with the WiFi. Boo! Router, now? Or the OS Maverick operating system? If the problems don't get sorted out soon, this computer may be going back so I'm trying not to get too attached. I definitely did not name it Gala. ;)

Anyways, enough of that. Some of you may remember that one of the blocks I made for my Modern Block Sampler was this Sew Mama Sew October Modern BOM in solids:

Sew Mama Sew's October Block

As always, I get a kick out of seeing the same block with different fabrics and I hope you do too because Heather in my Ottawa Modern Quilt Guild Bee asked for this block using the green and blue as backgrounds. We were to stash bust the arrow strips. Oddly enough, I was more excited about the green combination before making it, but I think the blue block turned out better. Such a dynamic block though and I can't wait to see what Heather does with them.

Sew Mama Sew - October BOM


Sew Mama Sew - October BOM

Other blocks from this series:

Oh and while I was contemplating Purplelicious on the design wall last week and cursing the computer, I finished my Scrap{Bee} top. Yes, it was technically completed in October (it can't have been that long ago?!), but then I changed my mind. Now, it's bigger and, dare I say, better? It's Scrap{Bee} 2.0! Later this week...
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