Something About Nothing

 This weekend was the Home Machine Quilt Show in Sandy, Utah.  Practically my backyard.  I entered a quilt in the show:  SWR - "Sylvia Was Right"  I started the quilt while at the Pie Plates Retreat. The blue was created using Color Magnet with a thermofax screen and turquoise dye.  The purples are the leftovers from an ice dyed pieced that I then over printed with a thermofax screen of onion skin cells and human brain cells for the Science challenge of The Printed Fabric Bee. When I started to piece I planned on using the two pieces of fabric I had dyed along with white for an accent. My friend, Sylvia, decided to give me a challenge by throwing some scraps of peach at me.  I complained like a big baby and told her I didn't want to use.  I used it, and she was right, thus the name SWR. I'm sorry this photo is a bit blurry but it gives you an idea of the wonky, free form piecing I used to create this piece.   I didn't win a rib...

"I'd rather have roses on my table than diamonds on my neck." ~Emma Goldman  Flowers and leaves have always been my biggest inspiration in my art, my Muses as it were.  They are my go-to design and a natural choice for me when I wanted to make a whole cloth appliqué quilt.  I layered my quilt by Mistyfusing a piece of ice dyed fabrics to 80/20 wool felt , and then used 505 basting spray to baste the black over the the ice dyed fabric.  Next I free motion quilted the entire piece, leaving the insides of the flowers open so that I could cut them away and reveal the ice dyed fabric. I am submitting my quilt to the Bloggers Quilt Festival. Follow the link above and vote for your favorite quilts in each category!

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again: I'm attempting another reverse appliqué piece. No products to keep the edges from fraying this time. Wish me luck! In the meantime, I've also been helping my daughters get ready for school and more importantly Comic Con. haha  My daughter Ann loves Cosplay and so I am making a Batman corset for her. . . . . .as well as doing a lot of alterations to this dress that is almost perfect for her biggest Cosplay, and I wish I could remember what the character is! I'll blog more about them once I am done so if you don't hear from me for awhile you know why.  In the meantime tell me what you are up to!

This was the greatest success I had in the studio this week. I put an empty tub on the table in hopes that someone would choose to sit there instead of on my project and. . . SUCCESS! At a recent quilt guild meeting a friend demonstrated this product: I was so excited to give it a try on a reverse appliqué project.  I followed the directions by putting it under hot water for 3 minutes, shook it for 30 seconds, poked a tiny hole in the top, put the nozzle cap back on and then tried to apply it to the stitching around the parts I wanted to cut out.  The liquid was so THIN that I found it hard to control.  It would drip out as I turned the tube toward the fabric and I would get blobs where I didn't want them to be.  I didn't worry too much because when my friend demonstrated it the liquid didn't show on the fabric once it was dried. So basically, my first real mistake was not TESTING it on my fabric! Once the fray block was applied, I cut and cut an...

We pulled out the Christmas decorations this week and I was reminded of where I started as a quilter and how far I have come.   In the 1970's - I Tied quilts - it was all I knew and it was quick and easy work!  (I was very young) Early 1980's - I learned to hand quilt and hand piece.  I struggled and it took an eternity to finish a project. Late 1980's -  I had moved on to machine piecing and heard about machine quilting. I gave it a try.  No lessons.  I was terrible.  I didn't know to baste A LOT and I used polyester fluffy batting. Yikes. 1990's - I went back to tying or more often than not - no quilting projects at all.  It was a time of tole painting and making clothing for the kid-a-lees.   It was cheap to make clothing then. In the early 2000's I joined a local quilt guild at the urging of my friend, Lorraine.  The ladies were kind and so willing to share their knowledge with poor little me. Little did I realize they woul...

About a month ago I found a Fiskar Circle Cutter on sale and since I have always wanted one and was feeling generous to myself, I splurged. I finally had the time to take it out of the package and play today.  I decided to make some circles from the scraps of paper I mono-printed with my  Gelli Plate to make my Sketchbook pages .  I was impressed with how easy it was to cut the circles.  I'm also saving the strips to use in my sketchbook. But the real reason I bought the cutter was to see if it would work on fabric. The product doesn't claim to work on fabric but I thought it was worth a try. I ironed a piece of freezer paper to the back of the fabric and gave it a whirl:  Sadly, it didn't all the way through the first time so I tried again from the freezer paper side.  Success! I decided to try cutting just the fabric using a liquid wash away stabilizer and was successful again!  However I found that trying to cut mult...

I had the opportunity to take a three day appliqué portrait class from  Charlotte Warr Andersen  the last three weeks.    I love her quilts and have wanted to do a portrait quilt for some time.  Charlotte collaborated with her daughter on this beautiful piece.  Her daughter painted the faces and armor.   This wolf and horse are actually pieced, not appliquéd.  I'm hoping she teaches this class sometime soon.  And yes, the wolf is upside-down and I forgot to flip it around before posting. :S I am working on a portrait of my cat, Bubba.  I thought a cat might be a little easier than a face.  Turns out I was WRONG!  I'll post the portrait once I finish it but in the meantime here is the photo I'm working with: Wish me luck!

No the title doesn't refer to me being tired of dyeing fabrics.  I don't think I've done enough dyeing for that to happen yet.  It refers to these blocks here: At a Quilters Holladay meeting someone gave me these lovely hand appliquéd blocks and wondered if I would like to try spicing them up a little.  They sat in a bag for a while and were finally pulled out during the last snow storm, along with some dyes I mixed last fall.  The dyes have been in the refrigerator but I still wondered if they had any oomph left in them. Apparently they did! I'm thinking about over dyeing these blocks again. Any color suggestions?