It's Blogger's Quilt Festival Time!

Many thanks to Amy for hosting this fabulous opportunity to check out quilts from all over the world, in the comfort of our own homes!

I hummed and hawed about what quilt to enter, and I decided on this one - my Summer Sunset in Vancouver. 

This quilt was made as a Guild Challenge and included a couple of firsts for me -

 my first New York Beauty blocks, my first attempt at trapunto and my first original quilt designed in EQ6 that I actually made!  It was also my first real attempt at free motion quilting a quilt, doing more than just stippling the whole thing!  I had a lot of fun playing with different stitches in different areas.

 

Hey it was a challenge, right? 

I also pulled the fabrics from my stash, based more on the thought that these are not colours I normally use, so challenge that as well!

This quilt always makes me feel happy and warm when I look at it, and as we are heading into our wet grey winter a little warmth and sunshine is warranted.

I hope you enjoy the Blogger's Quilt Festival, and take the time to visit as many of the other entries as you can - there are some fabulous quilts out there!

I love a challenge - do you?!

Happy quilting!

Doodling

white gel pen on black paper - a very fun way to doodle!

 did you know how much doodling can improve your quilting?  I've never been much of a doodler, but I'm taking a class from Carla Barrett - Quilt Whisper - and our assignments include a lot of sketching, drawing and doodling.  I've been an admirer of Carla's quilting for some time - I've been following her blog Feathered Fibers and when she announced she was offering a class, I jumped at it!
I've progressed from this:

sketching from inspiring fabric

to this:

combining doodles

to last night I doodled on fabric:

just letting go and letting the doodle emerge!!

closeup

Have you been doing any doodling?
Happy quilting!

It's Quilt Show Weekend!

The Blue Mountain Quilter's Guild, of which I'm a member is having it's quilt show this weekend!  We had a busy day yesterday hanging the quilts, and people waiting for the doors to open at 10 this morning - so much fun!  and what a fabulous display of quilts!  We have such a talented group of quilters in our guild.  If you're in the Greater Vancouver area, please try and stop by before it closes at 4 pm on Sunday.  Click here for more details.  Maybe tomorrow I'll remember my camera and will be able to show you some pictures!
As mentioneed in my last post, I got my mug rug(s) for the Flickr Scrappy Mug Rug swap posted off and they have been received now.  Liz seems very happy with them, and I'm so pleased.  A picture-less post is boring, so I'm repeating them here!

I'm still waiting (and not so patiently any more!!!) for mine to arrive - I'm hoping this week's the charm!
Now that the Quilt Show setup is behind me, I'm going to be able to actually spend some time sewing and quilting.  I'm looking forward to that!  My big dream these days is to design and quilt a wholecloth quilt.  I'm not going to start off big probably a  36" square, max, but I'm quite excited about spending some time doing this. I've not actually planned the quilting out on a quilt before - I usually just put it under the needle and then just go!  This is going to be interesting for sure!  I'll be sure to post some progress shots as I go along. 
Of course, I still have my 4x6ers postcard swap - the next theme is crazy quilt, using luxurious fabrics (I do have a few velvets, silks and glittery bits from making those Irish Dance dresses hanging around!), another Winter/Christmas theme Flickr Fabric Postcard swap and a third Flickr group - the Mini QT Swap, which this time round, is a holiday house theme.  Gotta get my thinking cap on!
Happy quilting everyone, and hopefully I'll be around here a little more frequently for a while!

What a weekend!

I had a very busy week last week - in fact the last few weeks - at work, and quilting and sewing had definitely been left behind.  Not so this weekend.  While Friday night wasn't a sewing night, it was our guild meeting, and that just got the juices flowing.  Late Saturday morning I headed down to the Boundary Bay Quilters quilt show, and let me tell you, what a treat!  There were some fabulous quilts on display.  After all the inspiration there, I was itching to go home and stitch.
I had a number of projects that had to be done this weekend so that they can go in the mail this week.  One of them I started at the Quilting Retreat I went to a couple of week's ago hosted by Krista of Poppyprint.  My original thought was to make a landscape style mug rug for the Flickr Scrappy mug rug swap.  But I got a little carried away, and my end result was just too big to be called a mug rug - but I love how it's turning out, and will finish it off as a wonderful little wall quilt.

But, with this now out of the running as a mug rug, I had to come up with something else.  I've been wanting to do more of the fabric weaving like I did on this mini quilt, and thought why not?  I grabbed some fabric, sliced away, and then started weaving it.  I had a couple of false starts as I didn't like the way the pattern was progressing, but soon sorted it out.  In order to hold everything together, I use a really light weight fusible interfacing as a backing, and work on my ironing board.  Once I get the weaving done, a quick press with the iron and it doesn't shift around on me. Unfortunately, I was having so much fun, I forgot to stop and take pictures along the way!  I decided I'd try cutting a circle in it and appliquing a patch over the back (is this reverse applique?)  Then I thought, why don't I try the inverse of that as well?  So here are the two versions I came up with

A lake from outer space?

Quilter's Earth

That was about as far as I got last night.  This morning after making some Rhubarb Oatmeal muffins for breakie - yummy! - I decided to make up a couple of little house blocks I needed to do for another swap.  These were fun, and used up some scraps - gotta like that!

These will be going in the mail tomorrow.  Then it was time to go back to the mug rugs.  They looked kinda neat, but a little too plain.  I know, I got that really cool pattern for a Canada Goose in flight awhile back - I think it would be perfect!  Found the pattern, and then reduced it by half for the "moon", and came up with these:

and

A little quilting, bindings on, just need to stitch them down tomorrow night at my local stitching group, and these two will be ready to mail!

Oh, it feels good to be sewing again!
Happy quilting!
Janet