Geared for guys

Emily from http://crazyoldladiesquilts.blogspot.com/ has a new book out "Geared for Guys."

I got to meet Emily at Market in Kansas City where she had many of her quilts and her new line if fabric up. Great quilts! I often hear people say, "I need to make a quilt for a guy," which is then followed by a sigh... Emily offers up some fun, smart looking quilts guys will love in fresh modern designs. (they will all work well for the gals too, with a twist on the fabric choices!)

I slipped up and forgot to get my post up for today as I was traveling... sorry Emily! I will adjust my post tonight! Thank goodness for IPhones!!

I really loved Emily's Designs in this book, I feel they have a fresh twist on modern quilting, and cleverly, she asked John Adams to design a quilt as well.

Father's Day is coming! Do you have a quilt made for your Father? :-)


Wanna win a copy?

Leave me a comment telling me two colors you find you often use in making quilts.
I'll leave it open til Friday 9am.
Enjoy your Monday!!!

Playing and pondering...

I have 9 made so far of my Triangle Galore Blocks. My goal at the time was to make a GREEN quilt.... So far so good. But then I start to play and options present themselves. Will I just join them block by block?

Or set them on point?  Will I add another block design in between them? maybe.  I love on point, but, I always do it... time for something new...

 Space and sash them? I rarely do that, But I did play to see the choices...

Something wild? I happen to have some scrap laying here that I stuck in to see how it worked. Of course that gets me all excited! The crazier the better!

Something safe?  bright red sashing?  nah.... not a fan of that... BUT, I can see GREEN flying geese set in the RED! Scrappy geese! Lot's of different green ones, and a few  purple and blue ones just for good measure!

Now I am on to something!  Stay tuned!

Look!
Geese Droppings.

(Couldn't resist)
heh heh ...

I'm off to Minnesota to my wee fishing cabin... I can't wait to have this view!

I'll be hand stitching,  on the dock of the bay!

Have a great LONG weekend!

Great day.

A day of play. Nothing is more inspiring than having other creative types around you when you want to play. Bouncing ideas of each other, conversing and making... Good for your soul.

Melanie Testa came by this morning and I rubbed off on her some 15minutes of play energy, in exchange I'd go to her world soon, and do that same... Swapping styles... Experimenting in many ways of approach are always a good to jump start your creativity.

Melly brought along some of her Made fabric, and I encouraged her to MAKE fabric.  She has a BEAUTIFUL new book out, Dreaming from the Journal Page If you need inspiration, you must get the book. If you need a book to look through and say, "Dang this girl is talented," then you also need to buy this book, Just fair warning... It's so lovely.

...It also seems my Bernina got a good work out, because shortly after that...

Luke Haynes showed up to return my quilt of his, that he borrowed to hang in his last show here in NYC.  He handed it to me, and said, "well, geez, I should have put on a sleeve so you could hang it", and I said, "Well, I have this sewing machine, and these fabrics here".... etc. etc....

Luke has his own ways of doing things, so we swapped info on how to make a quilt sleeve. Now all is great in the universe, my little quilt of his, now has a sleeve!  I can hang it nicely... no more "pin tacking" it to the wall. Luke is leaving us again... back to the West Coast... Safe travels Luke!

Thanks Melly and Luke for a lovely "creative energy" day!  I'm all inspired now, perhaps I will go sew another king size quilt.


Tomorrow, My Husband Michael is being interviewed in a discussion about his new book "The VALUE of ART at the New York Public Library.  If you are in NYC, please come by!

Click here for more info.

What are you up to this week?

Quilt Market 2012

 

OOOH! It's so nice to be home! Even when one has so much fun at Quilt Market.  Our NYC MOD GUILD quilt was on Display at the Michael Miller Booth.  The quilt was made with fabrics from  Michael Miller's Cotton Couture line of solids. We divided up all the fabrics and gave each member a baggie of scraps and asked them to make a 9 1/2" square in a very MOD design.  I worked up the quilt design,  then, Kim H and I made it all come together. Jackie (Canton Village quilt works) also a member, quilted it. You can see the quilt in Houston International Quilt Festival, in the Modern Quilt Exhibit this November.

 

Pat Sloan has a new line out with Moda!  Here she is showing off a new pattern. Isn't it sweet?  Check Pat's Blog, she has OODLES of pictures from Market.

I whipped up a quilt for Pat using one of her patterns.   There it hangs below!

Swung by Favorite,  Marcia Derse... it's always a party in her booth.  Anytime I'm looking for my friends, I find them in Marcia's booth...I mean really...  What is not to LOVE here?

See. I found Michele at Marcia's booth...  I found her there, back at Houston, last November, too, buying up all of Marcia's fabrics! LOL!

And not more than few steps awaywas Weeks Ringle...

Emily Herrick in her booth with her Quilts from the "Geared for Guys" Collection. 

Have you been keeping up on her Book tour?

My Friend Hoodie, was all decked out to match her collection, "Sow and Grow" for Timeless Treasures.

Myself, Shelly and Kim H had way to much fun last night at the MODERN meetup.  So great to meet so many of you face to face! What a great energy there was, and excitement over Quilt CON.  Will you be going?

That is a small taste of what the last few days held...  but for now, I hear my bed... calling my name.

So nice to be home!

Blogger's Quilt Festival

Amy has the Blogger's Quilt festival up again!  It was a toss up on my favorite quilt for the past year, but I think...

My Favorite quilt has to be the TINY DANCER.  These were blocks I made, and also blocks given to me for my New'BEE quilt bee, I  run on my website 15minutesplay.com.

This quilt did not come easy to me. I had several other layouts, and a complete other quilt top which I then hated and cut to "swiss cheese" to save it. You can see the journey here.

Sometimes the struggle is the best part of a quilt.  I love the journey they can take you on and lead you to places you might not have ever gotten to had you sat down and drew it out first. It's an adventure I gladly take. Thanks Amy for another great Blogger's quilt festival!
http://amyscreativeside.com/2012/05/18/bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2012/

KC or bust

I'm off to take 15 minutes for myself... Well, Maybe longer than that. 

I'm flying to Kansas City for Quilt Market, in the early Friday Morning. 

I hear it's nice in the Midwest this week!  YAY!

This necklace was a Mother's Day gift!  A jeweler friend made it from an old spoon.

It's my daily reminder to give myself 15 minutes, and it even doesn't have to be sewing!

Have you given yourself 15 minutes minutes today?

;-)

Pics of market to come Sunday night!

Have a great weekend!

Baptist Fans

I had a couple emails asking to show how I did the Baptist Fans, so, I will attempt to show you... 

Now, If you all could just come over, I could really SHOW you.  LOL!

Free motion fans were new to me.  I could easily do them with a walking foot, but found them so tedious, that I had decided to just go for it, with my free motion foot.

Basically, I started in the lower right hand corner of my quilt.  My quilt was pin basted, and I found that as I went along, taking out a few pins and hand smoothing it as I went, worked perfectly. No puckers...

Left to right, up, right to left, up, and so on about 5-6 fan lines.

Then I'd start the next fan.

ON the next set, I did have to TRACE over and existing line, so my fans butted up to each other.  PATIENCE is key. 
Go Slow.  You can manage this, if not at first, you will do it well by the end of your quilt!

Practice, practice!

The red lines are where I had to trace over an existing stitch line.

You can sort of follow the arrows here, to see my direction, and see where I had to trace my existing lines...

Ever five/six lines or so, I tried to keep them consistent, but once in a while I had four lines or six lines, depending on where I could "LOOK AHEAD" to see where I'd start the next fan.

Practice drawing them out on paper first. If you can DRAW it, You can QUILT it. You need to have your MOTION figured out before you start, or you'll be ripping out your stitches... 
Be patient.  

your first few lines may be wonky or uneven, but as you go, you will find your rhythm, and also get a better grasp of how to move the quilt.  I can also tell you, you won't notice the first few shaky ones after you've washed your quilt.

It actually quilted up very quickly, once I got a good hang of it.    I tried to stay about a 3/4" off my last line, to have some consistency in my lines... Sometimes it worked better then other times... 

It's OK to make mistakes...

That means you are learning!

Good Luck!

homemade goodness.

Mother's Day didn't turn out quite like I expected. I had a migraine that kept me in bed all day long. Thankfully, early in the day, I picked a load of rhubarb from my garden and brought it back to the city with me.  So guess what I did today?  Rhubarb Jam.  Yum!

Today is also a day to  get projects in order for the flight to Kansas City/ Quilt Market on Friday. Boo's Birthday is coming up and she wanted a wrap jacket like I made back here. (click for old post) It's hard to see it here, But it's an A-symmetrical wrap jacket similar to mine. There is NO pattern for it, I make these things up as I go. I started out sewing ( way back when)  a lot of clothes, so I can kind of do these things in my sleep.

I'm making Boo's with black on the outside, and grey on the inside, which is the opposite of what I did on mine.  She's such a NYC kid, she likes black.  I am stitching out the leaves in blue thread, her other favorite color. I then cut out the black and the grey shows through.  You can find out more and HOW to do these type of stitching in these books:

Alabama Stitch books by Natalie Chanin.

I also got a couple quilts back from Shelly for longarming... I just cut the binding for this quilt, inspired by Amy Ellis's Book Modern Basics.   The tulip fabric came from Spoonflower. I can't recall now who designed it, But I thought it looked so great, fussy cut, into the blocks.

I made this over a year ago, I'm slow sometimes. LOL

:-)

I feel like I am fighting off another migraine... Perhaps this rainy, humid air is messing with my head...

Maybe I should go eat some sugary jam... ;-)