Leah Day's Craftsy Class

I've had my nose to the FMQ foot!  I learned a lot of new designs and tips from  Leah Day's Class: Free Motion Fillers Volume 2 .  She's a wonderful teacher.  I don't quite have her fine honed skills!  I practiced a lot. I cursed a bit.  I ripped out a little.  And I sewed my heart out.  This was not a difficult project until the very end.  Putting the sides onto the main panels was a bit of a struggle, but I managed to pull it off with a minimum of pain!  I do have a hard time with patterns and directions, but hers were pretty clear.  Here 's the final product:

On the front of the tote I used "Stitch, Dot, Turn" on the outer panels; next to that on the
tan fabric is a version of Leah's "Topographical Map," but it was late and I was about to fall
 asleep at the wheel and I forgot to put the bulbous shape in, so it's not as interesting as it
should be. Moving inward, on the yellow fabric, I did a "Super Circuit Board" pattern;
and in the center piece of black fabric, I chose to do 4 sections of her "Spiral Tree."

 

Strap, that's double sharp stipple.

Detail of FMQ



  There is another side to this but the pics were blurry and this is the best side anyway!



 

 



 

Finished One Quilt For Boston

It finally stopped raining enough to take this quilt out and grab a picture!  I took blocks made by 25 members of the Modern Quilt Guild and pieced them together, quilted and bound them up!

Front, each block unique!

Back

Detail

Detail



This was a rewarding exercise in free motion quilting.  I did each one differently so it's really a FMQ sampler.  A few were from Leah Day's 365 Designs Project but most were of my own design.

Aligned

So many WIPs, but finally I finished another small art quilt that I've been working on.  It started as a gel print on muslin and went on to a number of manifestations.  It's first manifestation was this:

 

After some more free motion quilting and going at it with some fabric pastels, the journey finally ended here:

In two different lighting situations.

Do you prefer the before or the after?



Soy Wax Batiks

It is a glorious day out there today in New England!  They don't get much better than this!  A great day to hang my freshly batiked fabric out on the line in the sun!  It's my first batch of the season.  As usual I used soy wax and 2 different Pro Chem MX blues.  One, a cerulean blue and the other, an alpine blue, although they are very similar. Some will be overdyed soon, some may be painted over...who knows!

 

 

 

 

 

  

To Boston With Love

There is yet another quilting event taking place to benefit Bostonians:

To Boston With Love, a collaboration of quilter's guilds making flags to exhibit in Boston somewhere soon to honor and uplift Bostonians.

 Some of the flags can be viewed at the To Boston With Love flickr group.





Front of mine.
 

 

Back of mine.

                                                                       

                                                

Quilts For Boston

 The Boston Modern Quilt Guild is sponsoring an effort to make

quilts for the victims of the Boston Marathon Attack.

If you who are interested in making a quilt block for this effort

 or to donate fabric for the backs, you should go to the BMQG blog

for details.  Don't wait on this.  We are moving quickly. 

We've chosen the colors of the Boston Marathon: blue, yellow,

 gray and white for the quilt.  You can see some of the blocks

already done on our flickr group.

These are mine:

 

This is the very first time I've worked on a quilt without any looming deadlines and without any external factors influencing my design decisions.  It's not for anyone, just me, and I cast off any of the usual inhibitors, such as "I can't afford to go get more fabric!" Actually it's to exhibit in the Lowell Quilt Show, but that's not until August so it does set the bar a bit high but, given the time, that's just as I like it, a challenge without feeling overwhelmed by it.

This time I really went and got more fabric, including another trip up to Marden's in Maine.  Unfortunately I didn't realize that they close so early on weekends, but I still did some significant damage in a half hour!

Instead of having to rush, I could take my time and actually redo anything I wasn't satisfied with.  Well, that turned out to be almost every single square!  I have enough rejects to make another quilt!

The result is that I love every square of this quilt! 

 

But now I have my final design decisions ahead about how to finish it so I'm hoping some of you can help me make a good decision on this one.  I intend to Quilt As You Go (QAYG) this time! I've found some great tutes on this technique I'll share with you:

http://mummastimetocreate.blogspot.com/2012/01/my-quilt-as-you-go-process-tutorial-of.html

http://www.queenofstitching.com/quilt-as-you-go-qaygo-joining-techniques

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjb7IChcaIo&list=PL3F8A9BAF6F9BAA77&index=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ji8BLS2rNHA

 

I'm inclined to go with Marguerita McManus' technique but I'm still open minded on this, although I did just order her book , "Finish (almost) Any Quilt: A Simple Guide to Adapting Quilts to Finish As You Go."

I have 2 reasons for wanting to add sashing.  One is to separate each block with a solid neutral to ease the view from so much pattern but also because these blocks are painstakingly cut to 12 inch squares and once I start to FMQ on these babies there's bound to be some serious distortion, so to keep the integrity of the blocks, I want to add on a border big enough to absorb the distortion and still end up with precisely squared blocks.  But what color?  Of course white is usually my first choice but I already have a fair amount of white built in so I have 2 colors I'm thinking of, though not locked into: 

 a very light grey/beige Kaffe Fassett's
 shot cotton used in the quilt

a tan broadcloth not used in the quilt but seems to compliment it

 

Any suggestions?