Hello My Name is (Part 2)

I finished the calling cards. I don't really need calling cards. I just wanted to see if I could do it. It was more of an exercise in seeing if I could focus my artistic point of view in small space with limited images and text.

They are the size of standard business cards and made from fabric that has been used in other projects. I also decided that they had to incorporate hand work so they have some type of embroidery or beading on them. I created an image from a baby picture to go with the text for the reverse side. I used an iron on transfer to get the image and text onto the fabric. Mostly because I wanted to try out the iron on transfer stuff.

I put an eyelet in my favorite card and tied it to the bag I made with a piece of scrap ribbon. I will probably attach the rest of them to future projects. It is a good way to use up scraps of fabric. And one day, when we have gas in our state again and can leave the house, I might actually be able to give them to people. They are calling cards after all.

I didn't use anything like a stiff stabilizer or fusible inside the cards because I don't like to hand sew through that stuff. So the cards are flexible which I kind of like. I embellished the back of the cards before stitching the two sides together because I didn't want the stitches to show on the back. And the whole thing is put together like a pillowcase because I don't like binding. I guess my artistic point of view also includes a certain amount of laziness. I'm okay with that.

Hello, my name is...

I'm making some calling cards. Not that I ever go anywhere or meet anyone. But I was thinking about things like artistic voice and communicating a point a view. Something like a business card or calling card has to communicate everything you want someone else to know about you and where you're coming from in a very small format. So I decided to try making some. They are pretty much like ATC's but 2 by 31/2. And there is text on the other side. I was thinking of attaching them to projects.

Work on everything else has stalled. Mostly because I just can't get to it. But I can work on these little cards here and there and feel like I'm accomplishing something. I'm crocheting baby blankets too. Lots of people seem to be having babies these days. I don't know if they will be girls or boys. But I figured I'd make a few in different colors and get ahead of the curve for a change.

I'm hoping to get back to the other projects soon. The cityscape and the olympic quilt were moving along really well. But I just haven't been able to get to them. I think someone is slipping me decaf.

5 Days of Solitude (Almost)

The vacation is coming along nicely, thank you very much. Apart from the telemarketers and the ants that are trying to eat our relatively new air conditioner, it has been ideal. I even gave up worrying about the germs that were threatening to put the whole household out of commission.

I spent the last few days working on a city scape. It's like a landscape but for city girls. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while now - but who has the time? So it was like my own self-directed art quilt camp. And I have been learning a lot.

All of the piecing, fusing and zig-zag stitching is done. And I'm pretty happy with the outcome so far. Naturally there are flaws, but they have taught me valuable lessons, so I choose to look at them as learning opportunities. I'm moving on to the quilting next. Hopefully the ants won't carry us away in the night.

A Day Spent Quilting

I got to spend the whole day quilting. Right now, I can't think of a better way to spend my vacation.

I did some piecing and I quilted the water quilt which now has it's official title. I don't actually put the names of quilts out there until they are done or mostly done. That way I'm sure they actually are what I decided to name them. Anyway, this quilt is named "Middle Passage Mediations". I'll take a non-blurry picture soon.

The fabric is hand dyed. And it is machine pieced and quilted.

I even quilted a ship on it.

I don't really have too much to say about what's going on with this quilt. Or I have so much to say that I don't know where to start. I'm not sure which is true. Suffice it to say, I think every person has something in his or her consciousness that sort of haunts them. It is useful to process these things and meditate on why they grip you. I think it might also be useful to get them out of your head an up on a wall where you can gain some perspective. That's all I have to say about that for now.

Update on the Blair Witch. I've managed to stay one step ahead of her with hand sanitizer and mentholated vaporizers. It seems like she's not going to get my vacation. But I've seen enough scary movies to know that as soon as you let you guard down, something crawls out of the TV and gets you. And yes, I know those are two different movies. Risk is everywhere.

iQuilt

I finished the improv quilt. Since I just made up the cutting and piecing, I decided to just make up the quilting as I went along. It was fun. I got to play with lots of different threads and lots of different stitches. I'm relatively new to the machine quilting thing - at least new to doing it correctly. So this was my chance to experiment. It's almost like a sampler. I'm sure I will refer to it when I'm doing more deliberate machine quilting. The quilt is raw edge applique, machine pieced and quilted. The fabric is hand dyed.

I ended up naming the quilt, "This is Your Brain on Shuffle." I was listening to iTunes while I was quilting and I had it set to shuffle. I have wide ranging tastes in music. The randomness of the songs that were playing was entertaining and kind of like the quilt.

You know what? Quilting is fun.

Progress Through Guilt

I'm making progress. Slowly but surely. Here's what I've been up to.

I figured out what was missing from that improv quilt. I reconstructed the circles and lines I deconstructed in the other blocks and voila - a new block. Now I just have to figure out the quilting. It's always something.

I've also made progress on the coffee quilt. Actually, it is pretty much done. But I don't have the right fabric to bind it. Like I said, it's always something.

I was approaching the other UFO, the blue quilt, in the same way I approached the coffee quilt. That is, stop piecing and see what I could make with what I had. But I didn't seem to have enough blocks to make something out of what I had. So I pieced some more. It's still not working. Did I mention, it's always something?

I've also picked up my crochet hook. I have all this yarn in my sewing room and it has been sending me on a guilt trip. Every time I go in there, "So you're making stuff out of your fabric stash again. I guess we're not good enough to be stuff." And, "We were here before some of that fabric. Sorry, we're not as much fun." That kind of thing. Yarn can be so whiny sometimes. So I'm also busy converting the yarn into scarves and hats and other such things so it will get off my case. It's looking at me right now. I'd better go.

Stitched Myself Into A Corner

So I decided to to a little improvisational quilting. Like jazz, but with cotton and thread. Because sometimes you just have to play with your materials to see what will happen.

I made these blocks. And I wasn't entirely sure where to go next. Did this ever happen to Ella Fitzgerald? Did she ever start scatting and it just got away from her?

I felt like they wanted to do this.

Now what? Heck if I know. So I cut up some more fabric and came up with this.

I like the x blocks. But, as the kids say, I'm not feeling this design. I think they might want to be in their own quilt. I've taken enough art classes to know that the eye needs a place to rest and this thing probably needs a color to unify the blocks, yadda, yadda, yadda. I'm just going to leave the blocks on the design wall and see what else they have to say. But if they start singing "A-tisket, A-tasket," I'm leaving.

New Year's Resolution Quilt 4

I finished the fourth bad luck quilt. This one is called "Don't Squish Spiders." If there is a spider someplace you would prefer there be no spider, get a piece of paper or a cup, and escort it outside. It is bad luck to kill a spider. For one thing, they eat bugs that are even more objectionable than spiders.

The quilt is machine pieced and quilted. Everything is from my stash except the thread. The spider web is made out of angelina fibers and sewed on by hand. The spiders are hand beaded. As I mentioned before, they came out a little more realistic than I anticipated. I was thinking cute beaded spiders. These things look like they might car jack you. I think the legs are creating the ick factor here. Since they are dimensional and not flat on the quilt, they look like they are going to crawl away.

You might be wondering how I come up with designs for the quilts that incorporate objects or images like the bad luck quilts. I usually have an idea of what I want to make, like a spiderweb or a broom. I use these as keywords in a google image search. For those of you not familiar, you go to google, select images, and then enter the search term. It will spit out pictures instead of websites. And you can search for anything. Even coffee stains. Just don't search for spiders. Trust me. There's something out there called a camel spider, and once you see it, you can't unsee it.

Anyway, I try to find several different images. I don't want to copy the images I find. Instead, I'm looking for common characteristics of the object that would help you identify what it is. Like the bands on a broom or the holes in a salt shaker. Or the legs on a spider. These are sort of iconic elements that help you immediately identify an object even though it might be a strange color or in a weird setting. I then sketch the object and plan the background. Sometimes, the background will be a setting, like the Buy A New Broom quilt. Lots of times, I try to enlarge an element of the object and make that the background. The Don't Spill the Salt quilt has baby blocks as a background because if you look at salt under a microscope it has a cube shape. And sometimes I don't put that much thought into it and just go for a pretty color. So that's my tip for the day.

Why Is There A Tissue On This Quilt?

Because there's a spider on it. Ewww!

I am aware of the fact that I made the spider. But still, I didn't think it would be so creepy looking.

It's giving me the willies.

New Year's Resolution Quilts 3

I finished the third New Year's Resolution quilt. This one is called, "Buy A New Broom". In my family it is bad luck to bring a broom from your old house to your new house. You should buy a new broom or, better yet, someone should give you a new broom. This is because you don't want to bring the dirt from the old house into the new house. I think this is my favorite family superstition. Something about acknowledging the transition from the old to the new, and the idea that you can leave the "old dirt" behind you and start fresh.

Anyway, the background is machine pieced and the broom is needle turn applique. Most of the quilting was done by machine. The detail on the broom was done by hand. And of course, the beads were applied by hand. The edges are finished by hand with a blanket stitch. I really like the red thread and purple beads against the greens and browns. That red thread on the broom was vexing. I think the overall angle of the broom may be off, which is why the thread never looked quite right no matter how I angled it. After the third attempt I decided to just call it quirky and move on. This quilt is 100% from my stash.

As I was working on this quilt, I got to thinking about how we really are in a partnership with our materials. We will only gain so much control over them, no matter how much we practice. Sometimes it is not worth fighting. Sometimes if we step back and let the materials do what they want, we will be pleased with the results. Keeping this in mind, we should look for the same qualities in our materials that we look for in good partners. Things like quality, flexibility, and endurance. How about sparkle and wit? It helps if you share the same sensibilities. But it also helps if they challenge you to look at things in a new way.

On to number four. It is waiting to be quilted but I don't have the right thread. Number five is also challenging me because it needs to incorporate text. Stay tuned.

New Year's Resolution Quilts 1 & 2

I finished two bad luck quilts. The first one is called "If You Hand Someone Scissors, You Will Argue With Them Later". In my family, if someone needs a pair of scissors, you lay them on the table for them to pick up. It is bad luck to hand someone a pair of scissors. The background is foundation pieced. The scissors are needle turn applique. It is machine quilted. That bead in the middle of the scissors is actually a brad from the scrap book section. I punched a hole in the quilt and placed an eyelet there for the brad. This quilt is 100% from my stash. The big lesson I learned here is once you trim a quilt, you can't untrim it.

The second quilt is called, "Don't Spill the Salt". I think most people know that it is bad luck to spill salt. The background is hand pieced and the salt shaker is needle turn applique. The quilt is machine and hand quilted. And it is hand beaded. The big lesson I learned here is that you don't have to take things so literally. Actually, I think I may have known that. But I was reminded of that lesson in the quest for beads that look like salt. I had white beads that were too clear, or too big, or the wrong shape. I couldn't get them to work. I tried the pink beads just to see if they were the size I wanted, and really liked the effect. So I used them. There was no reason to use white beads. The only thing I bought for this quilt was the black thread for the salt shaker. The embroidery is too tiny for you to see how bad I am at french knots. I really like the back of this one. It has that whole "book of shadows" effect I was going for. Maybe I've seen one too many episodes of "Charmed".


On baby blanket front, I have 8 panels down and one to go. The only panel left is the center popcorn stitch panel. Yippee.

It's January 20th Already!!!

I haven't been doing much quilting because I've been working on the baby blanket. I have sort of a deadline now, and for some reason, January is slipping away quickly. Holy smokes, it's already the 20th! I have two panels done and I'm working on the third. It has 9 panels all together. This one is referred to as the bobble panel.

I don't find it as interesting to work as popcorn stitches or cables, so I'm anxious to get it done so I can move on to the more fun panels. Are you wondering why I'm crocheting a baby blanket instead of quilting one? I've been crocheting since I was about 8 or 9 years old. I've given away almost everything I've crocheted. I do have a few crochet pieces that I've kept, but that is just a big, flat way for me to store yarn. I often pull these pieces apart and make them into something else if I find an interesting pattern or stitch I want to try. When I was laid off a few years ago, I spent a lot of time unraveling and crocheting blankets in between looking for a job. Lynn Krawczyk recently posted a list of 10 reason why it is good to crochet when you have a head cold and I realized that a lot of those are the same reasons I crocheted when I was unemployed. Being laid off is a lot like being sick except you can't spend the day hopped up on cold medicine. What was the question again? Oh yeah, I crochet baby blankets as gifts because I've been making them a lot longer than I've been quilting. It's kind of my thing now. If Martha Stewart showed up at your dinner party with a liter of Coke, you'd be like, "What's up with that?" It's the same thing with me and crocheted baby blankets. And it's fast and fun. Not a lot of people crochet, so it also makes a unique gift.

I did get a little bit of sewing done this week. I did some needle turn applique on one of my bad luck quilts. Can you tell which superstition this one will be about?

I love needle turn applique. It makes me feel like anything is possible.

New Year's Resolution #3

I finished my third New Year’s Resolution quilt. It is called “Arty Choke”. It turned out much better than I expected. The new techniques I tried were raw edge appliqué, using Shiva paint sticks and zig zag stitches around the edges of the quilt. The artichoke is fused and hand painted. Did you know that artichokes are members of the thistle family? I also painted (or colored) the background with shiva paint sticks. I was not thrilled with the outcome. I liked using the paint sticks. But I felt the piece was too dark and dull. I told myself that I could brighten it up with quilting. But deep down inside, I didn’t really believe that. Lo and behold, the quilting helped 200%. The raw edge appliqué worked out pretty well for me too. And why didn’t anyone tell me about zig-zag stitching before?

As usual, I practiced my free motion quilting. I was pleasantly surprised by how well I did. I still need to work on getting the tension right. But I think I’m getting the knack of it. In the picture, the artichoke looks like it is peeling off. But it isn't. That is the shadow created by the background quilting puffing up the fabric around the artichoke. It has a lovely texture and depth that you can't appreciate in the picture. I know I should have hung it and used the tripod, but I'm really too tired for all of that.

So here’s the thing about lowered expectations. Sometimes, they give you the opportunity to do well because you are not so invested in the outcome. I honestly was not thrilled with the background fabric and I thought the paint on the artichoke left a lot to be desired. I didn’t really think the quilting would help. But one of the things I learned in the Self-Expressions class at Quilt University is that you should keep moving forward on a project, even if you are feeling uneasy about it. So rather than give up, or go back and try to fix what I perceived as problems, I just took a deep breath and kept going. And the quilting really did make the whole thing work. So here’s a light bulb moment. It’s called a quilt because it’s quilted. Quilting is as much a design element as color, texture, and shape. I don’t spend nearly enough time considering the quilting while I’m designing the piece. In fact I rarely think about the quilting until the top is done. You may have known this all along, but then you didn’t tell me about the zig-zag stitch either did you?

New Year's Resolution 2 and A Rant

I finished my second New Year's Resolution quilt. It's called Sketchbook Blueberries. The new technique I tried is using colored pencils on fabric. This was really fun and easy. I will have to try watercolor pencils next. I also practiced some embroidery with the running backstitch in the leaf veins and blueberries. As usual, I had to practice binding. This time, I bound the edge using a plaited edge stitch. This is like a blanket stitch with an extra knot in it. I think I will try this edge stitch again with beads. I haven't tried this sort of raw edge binding before. I like it because it is easier than cutting binding, sewing it on, stitching it down, yada, yada, yada. But it's not really practical for a quilt much bigger than this. All in all, this was a fun little quilt. I will definitely look at colored pencils as another tool for embellishment.

Today, I also tried to print out the New York Beauty foundations for the Weeping quilt. Can I just say - aaarggg! If you heard a crash around 7 pm that was me throwing Quilt Pro for the Mac out of the window. The thing that frustrates me about this program is that you do everything right and it doesn't work. You have to do things 2 or 3 times to get them to work. I wasn't even making up my own block. I was using one from their library for crying out loud and the bleeping foundations still wouldn't print out correctly. The problem is that it is a Windows program masquerading as a Mac program. And the manual is crap. I could have drawn the block by hand in the time I spent dinking around with this program. Technology is supposed to make your life easier - not harder. So I'm done with it. Now I have to find some program that will allow me to design quilts on the computer. There really isn't anything for the Mac. I run an Intel Mac, so in theory I could use EQ on Parallels which lets me run Windows. But I don't want to. The Mac is the best computer on the market for doing design work. In this area, it is superior to Windows in every way. There should be awesome quilt design software for the Mac. If EQ was so great, there would be a Mac version. So there.

The Grand Prismacolor Experiment

The grand experiment with the colored pencils went great. After drying for 24 hours, I ironed the whole thing and put it through the wash. I washed it on a gentle cycle, in warm water, with baby detergent, which is how I pre-wash all my commercial fabric. I also got the sunrise fabric for the Weeping quilt washed too so I can get started on the foundation piecing. Then I put it in the dryer with all of the other fabric. And the whole thing came through with flying colors (pun intended). There is no noticeable fading. And the areas that were treated with the fabric medium still seem soft enough to needle through. The whole piece of fabric has maintained it's drape and softness. Now I'm going to trim it down, layer it and quilt-embellish the whole thing. Probably by hand. First I need to decide how I'm going to finish the edges. I'm not feeling binding. But I can't picture it bound pillow case style either. I've never bound something by satin stitching the edge, so I might try that. Ahh, another project for the WIP pile.

Distracted by Shiny Objects Too

I recently started a thread on the Pickle Road yahoo group about using colored pencils on fabric. I saw an article somewhere about using colored pencils to embellish your fabric but I couldn't remember where. I was wondering if anyone had any tips or knew of any resources. This lead to a discussion about the best method of setting the colored pencil. When it was all said and done, I ended up volunteering to give one of the methods a try. I know I've already got tons of works in progress. But I was too curious to pass this one up. And technically, since I picked blueberries as a subject, it works for my whole New Year's resolution thing.

So here's what I've done so far. I drew some blueberries and leaves using Prismacolor pencils. It was pretty simple. The colors go on smooth and nice and bright. I like Prismacolors pencils because you can build up layers of color. And they blend easily. Here's what it looked like.

Then I applied Golden GAC900. This is Golden's textile medium. You use it with acrylic paints to turn them into textile paints. You mix the medium 50/50 with paint, paint your fabric, and then heat set it. Some people on the yahoo group mentioned that this is what they used with the pencils. One person said they mixed the medium with water and then brushed it on. She had been using watercolor pencils. The other option was to use a spray fixative. Since I wasn't using watercolor pencils, I applied the medium undiluted with a brush. Prismacolors don't blend out like watercolor pencils - but they do blend. So I was careful to use a small brush and follow the shape of the drawing. The colors did blend a little. After I applied the medium, I painted the background with some Jacquard dye-na-flow. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the pencil acted as a resist to the dye so it didn't flow into the drawing. This is the result.

Tomorrow, I will iron it to set it and then put it through the wash. This is the test. To see if using the medium and heat sets the color. See - it's for science. Lest you think I completely blew off my WIP's, I actually got some quilting done on my husband's quilt this morning. He was snoring away, so I couldn't sleep. Since the baby was asleep too, I took this opportunity to get some machine quilting done. I got about an hour of work done. Woo hoo. Here's a little bit of Kevin's quilt to whet your appetite.

Charmed, I'm Sure

Someone recently complimented one of my quilts. I responded by saying thank you and asking them what they liked about it. This is the second or third time I've accepted a compliment on one of my quilts without listing each and everything that was wrong with it. I've decided that it isn't necessary to point out every little flaw and to just let people enjoy the quilts if that's what they want to do. I think it's important to be critical of your work. That way you can identify areas for improvement. Like "Dawn of the Kiwifruit." I don't think the center spike is defined enough. The next time I draft a similar block, I will be sure to make a more defined center spike. Do I need to point that out to everyone who says something nice about it? No. It's like when you meet someone at a party. They say, "nice ta meet cha," and you say, "charmed, I'm sure." You don't list every character flaw and bad habit you have. You let people discover your fine points, quirky behavior and bad disposition in their own time.

It's a big achievement for me. Believe it or not, I wasn't always a slacker. At one time, I was a goodie two shoes, grade grubbing, over achiever. I was always trying to win someone else's approval. It's like trying to make everyone happy. In the process you make no one happy, least of all yourself. When I read the "Bell Jar" and identified a little to closely with the main character, I decided a change was in order, lest I end up hiding out in the crawlspace of my house. One of the things about being a slacker is deciding for yourself what makes you happy and not bothering with the rest, no matter what anybody else thinks. I make art that makes me happy. I don't really care if anyone else likes it. And in a bizarre way, this allows me to be open to sharing my work with others. I can have a critical eye for my own work, and accept the criticism (or praise) of others without needing a dose of EST afterwards.

One of my favorite quilts is Covered In Stardust. I love the fabric, and the beading. I love that the title came to me in a dream. It was the second to last line of a poem I recited about the quilt in a dream, and the only line I remembered when I woke up. I love the colors and the quilting. It was the first quilt I free-motion quilted. It is also full of cut off points, bad quilting and mis aligned beads. I don't care. I still love it.

Venus Must Be in My Creative House

Well the planets must be aligning or something because yesterday I cleaned my studio AND worked on the artichoke quilt. And when I say, "cleaned my studio" I mean both lower and upper surfaces. Who knew there was a floor. And good golly a desk top. So here's the sketch for the artichoke. I know it has way more petals (or whatever those things are called) than the average artichoke. But for me the sketch is about learning the shapes and scale, figuring out where things sit on the page, and experimenting with color and texture. So they go a little wild sometimes. It's colored pencil and Sharpie. I also make notes about construction, fabric and quilting. This is because otherwise I would forget what I was going to do and the thing would end up as a string bean or something.

Here are my supply items. The lighter green is a piece I hand dyed and the darker piece is commercial fabric. In the end, I went with the darker fabric because the texture was more artichoke like. I will paint it with Jacquard textile paint and some lumiere for the purple highlights.

After the sketch, I made a cartoon. This is what it will actually look like. You might not notice because I have a crappy camera, but the actual artichoke is smaller than I originally thought it would be. That's one of the things I learned from the sketch. I needed to bring the size and scale down to make it work. This is why you should just go for it in your sketches and art journals. I think you have a better sense of what will work if you just go a little crazy on paper first. After all it's just pen and wax and paper.

I used this the cartoon to make the pieces out of fusible web. I followed the advice in Robbi Joy Eklow's book, "Free Expressions". That's where the numbers and arrows come from. I was debating about whether I should paint the fabric and then cut out the pieces or cut out the pieces and then paint. I decided I would have more control of the painting if I assembled the artichoke first. So, I got the thing cut out and put together. Now I need to paint it. It is actually looking like an artichoke, so I'm pretty happy about that. I know. I can't believe I got so much done either.

New Year's Resolution 1

Around February or March, I made a New Year's resolution regarding my quilt work. I made a list of all of the techniques I would like to learn or improve and resolved to make a series of small quilts that used the different techniques. The quilts have to be based on my favorite fruits and vegetables and have to use at least one new technique and one technique that I need to practice. So far, this has been a pretty good resolution. Picking a theme frees me from worrying about a design. The small size makes the quilts easier to actually get finished. I guess that's the trick to resolutions. You have to set yourself up for success by setting small goals you can actually achieve. So here is the first quilt. It is called Dawn of the Kiwifruit. Yes, those are my son's hands in the picture. It is machine paper pieced and the curved piecing is done by hand. I do all of my curved piecing by hand. It is machine quilted and hand quilted with this funky metallic floss. It is hand beaded and bejewelled. The new skills I tried were drafting my own New York Beauty Block, using a metallic thread, and using the bejewler. The skills I practiced were free motion quilting and binding. I also got in some practice in on the foundation piecing.

So what did I learn? First, I really dig that bejewler. I would bejewel EVERYTHING if it was socially acceptable. You have to be careful to put the jewels where you want them though. If you slip and put them in the wrong place, it is next to impossible to pry them up and put them back in the right spot. Ask me how I know. I also liked drafting the wonky New York Beauty Block. I really like NY Beauties. I was also pretty happy with the machine quilting. I have a long way to go, but this one is light years better than the last thing I tried to machine quilt. The back of my last machine quilted piece looked like a nest built by a drunken, near sighted bird. There were NO threads tangles on the back of the kiwifruit quilt. Woo hoo! I have to give Alex Anderson props for that. I could actually understand her book on machine quilting and the pictures were great too. Maybe it clicked this time because she is a lefty hand quilter like me. The quilting on the kiwi is not going to win any awards, but I was jazzed at how the meander quilting came out since this was the first time I tried meander quilting.

I still hate binding.

And if you're wondering why it took me until March to made a New Year's resolution, I think the subhead tells you everything you need to know.

Just Do It

I've been spending my time lately endlessly pondering my blog. What should I call it? What service should I use? Blah, blah, blah. I do the same thing with quilt designs. Then I reach a point where I just kick myself in the butt and do it. The blah, blah, blah is just a form of procrastination. If you never start something - never cut the fabric - you never screw stuff up and embarrass yourself. And you still look like you're doing something because you're considering all the angles. Whatever. I recently took a class from quiltuniversity.com where we were forced to cut into our favorite fabric that we had been squirreling away for that perfect project. It was a terrifying exercise. But liberating at the same time. Here is the fabic I chose for the exercise:


It is in that spirit that I started this blog. Plus I made a New Year's resolution to add new skills to my quilting know-how (more on that later). The purpose of this blog is to journal my progress as a quilter. There's a lot that goes through my head during the quilting process. I take notes and keep a journal of all of the quilts I make. But it's private. I don't actually like to show my quilts to people. Here is something else I need to get over by just doing it.

So here's a little bit about myself. I've been quilting for about six years but collecting fabric since college. I am mostly self-taught, though I've taken lots of art classes. I am mostly a hand quilter. I think hand piecing and quilting is easier and more relaxing than doing work on the machine. That said, I am improving my machine skills. I actually have two Baby Lock sewing machines. A big momma that stays in the studio and a little one that I can use in other areas of the house. I have an 11 month old son and husband so I like to hang out with them when I sew. I have multiple projects going at once. I'm a fast typist and an atrocious speller. I find cutting pieces out tedious. If I were a master artisan, I would have my apprentice do all of the cutting. I hate binding. I love everything else about quilting.

By the way, here is the little quilt I made of that fabric I had been afraid to cut.