Design Wall Monday 8-22-2011

Where does time go. One day it was July and the next its August, about to be September. Only thing that I seem to work on lately is still class projects. The current project from Quilters’ Academy 3. It’s a mock feathered star that is easy if you break down the parts into half square triangles, square n square, and flying geese. After you get the parts made, its assembled like a 9 patch. I miscalculated the yellow background fabric so I have to get more to do the side setting blocks.

Also wanted to let anybody know that the opportunity quilt that I was working on earlier this year is finally finished and if anybody is interested I posted about it in the previous post.

That’s all for me for now. Jump over to Judy’s blog and see what everybody else is doing this Monday.

Cheryl M.

2011 Opportunity Quilt

I wondered if this quilt would ever get finished. If you look at earlier post about this quilt you will see that it was an overwhelming adventure. I am happy to say that the quilting, binding, label and sleeve are finished. It has been registered in the local quilt show, quiltfest jax, that will be next month.  Though I don’t expect the quilt to win any ribbons, but it will be fun to see what the judge’s comments will be.

The funds raised from this quilt will go to the local food pantry that helps supply food to low income families and the homeless in the clay county area. In this economy it is usually the last place people will donate funds or food to. The selves nowadays are mostly empty. So the funds that the guild brings to them in October will be a blessing for them to stock up on things before the fall and winter months get here.

If you are interested in a chance to win this quilt please drop me an email and I will get a ticket to you. They are $1.00 each. The drawing will be on September 24 at the end of the quilt show. If you get a chance to go to the show look me up at the First Coast quilt guild table at the front area of the show. It is a fairly large show, with over 450 quilts and about 70 vendors. Thanks for looking.

Also by the way all the fabric is hand dyed and measures 73” by 73”.

Cheryl M.

Design Wall Monday 7-18-2011

Been a while since I did a design wall Monday. So I will jump into it again. I am the worse blog writer. I do quilting things for teaching and personal projects, but when it comes to telling about them. I feel that they are not anything worthy enough to write about, a snip here or a one seam here kind of thing. My quilting projects are mostly teaching samples for my classes at the present time. I get so wrapped up   into getting the project done and to the shops that I forget to take pictures of them.  I have about 5 projects going at the present time, and only one is at the stage to be on the design wall. This current project is a class sample for the Quilters’ academy book number 3. It is a wonderful book to learn different techniques for half square triangles, flying geese block tricks and basics about sewing on the bias. I started out with a plan to make the sample quilt that has 9 different blocks that consist of 16 half square block that are arranged in different configurations. I sewed one block together and thought that my students would get frustrated with getting the points aligned. So I modified the blocks to incorporate flying geese and s2s blocks. Sixteen 2” blocks are a pain to put together, let alone teach it to others. Some of my students are somewhat beginners and I want them to feel like they can do the quilt without getting frustrated and quit.

This morning as I was sewing the sashing to the blocks and trying to keep everything square with the star points I made a decision that this quilt will be to difficult for some people. Since I already have one row sashing sewed on I decided to make a small table runner out of it. The other blocks I rearranged to make a modified table running that is in the book. The bottom line I will teach the techniques and the students can arrange the blocks as them want later.
I will try to post about my new sewing machine baby that I simply love for free motion quilting tomorrow. Till then, jump over to Judy’s blog and see what others are doing.

New obsession

Been busy making my class samples for my quilt classes. I will post about that real soon. But in the mean time I have started a new obsession. For a couple of years now I have seen Judy L. knit socks and been wanting to try. Well for 1 1/2 years I have been trying without any success, till recently. I learned how to knit the continental way using circular needles with the magic loop style. Boy that was a mouth full! I finally finished a pair last week.

I have been buying yarn, when it was on sale for the past year. But when I walked into Joann's today and discovered that clearence items where an additional 50% off. So I collected enough yarn to do 11 more pairs of socks plus the 6 pairs that I allready had. I sure hope I like knitted socks. LOL.

Till later I have to go find a place to stash my new yarn obsession.
Chery M. 

FMQ challenge continues

So far I have been able to do the FMQ challenge for the last 7 days. I seem to only grab a 15 –30 minutes time frames, but at least I am doing in each day. Thanks Wendy and Joanne for the challenge, it was just what I needed to jump start the FMQ again. Here is what I have been doing for the my day 6 and day 7.

For day 6 I finally figured out the swirl design for my daughter’s quilt. It was staring right at me in one of the fabrics in the quilt.

It’s feather design with swirly curls for the feathers. I wanted to quilt the red blocks in red and the only red thread that I had left was a spool of invisfil 100 wt. poly.

So I did one small area and it was a dream of a thread to work with, I melted into the fabric and showed very little wobble in the back tracking areas. The small area that is next to the swirl feather is about 1/5” wide by 1”  long. The invisfil thread is so fine that you can get very detail in the spacing and control of your movements. If you ever get a chance to work with this thread, do try you will be amazed by control you can have.

On day 7 I started the quilting the red blocks in DD quilt, going slow and that is OK. I mark each 3” block with a pilot frixion pen just enough to see. It might take me the next 7 days to do this quilt, at least I will have been working on it and not folded up in the corner. One thing that I noticed about this design is that every now and then the swirls form a heart shape, fitting for who the quilt is going to.

Cheryl M.

One more on my plate!

Well I may have to be committed after May 6th, with all that I have going on now with teaching classes to guild projects and starting a couple of knitting projects, plus starting up doing my hand needlework again, I really don’t need another thing in my life. BUT I have decided to join in on an online free motion challenge that Joanne and Wendy are doing. It started on Friday April 22^nd and goes to May 6^th; the challenge is that you have to do some form of FMQ for 14 days straight. I think it will be more help to me than doing an overload to myself, for the simple fact that I will be trying to finish some of the projects that are lying around my sewing room. Finishing is always a good thing in my world. The projects are somewhat small so the idea is to get back to FMQ slowly and work up to doing maybe a couple of larger projects after the challenge is over. I have not done any FMQ this year and I only did a couple of things last year. So with that said I will go organize my projects and report back sometime tomorrow.

Design Monday 3-21-11

Just a quick post about design wall Monday. At the present time I don’t have anything on my design wall . This week I will change that, I will be able to put up something of one of my own projects. For the last 4 months I have been putting my guilds’ opportunity  quilt together.  Its is not hard, just very time consuming to get all the points to align up in the right place and several pins later. I can say that the top is together and ready for another member to quilt it.

As you can see I went with the orange border strip.

Now go see all the other design wall Mondays for great inspiration on Judy’s blog.

Cheryl M.

Design wall Monday 2-21-2011

I finally have something different on my design wall. Though I am still working on the opportunity quilt for my guild. I will show pictures of that also later. This quilt is my class quilt for the Quilter’s Academy class that I will be teaching in March.  It is the first quilt in the second book. A fairly simply quilt, more nine patches with solid blocks in between them. The fabric is some of my hand dyes that I did last summer in playing with a kit that I ordered from Pro Chemical and dye, to learn how to do hand dyed fabrics.  It totally is not my colors, but I like the change from blue and yellow for now. If I don’t like it when I get finished I will put into the pile for charity.
For the other quilt that I am working on, you may be interested to know that I have all the blocks together and working on the pieced border now. I hope to have the top completed by the end of the week and ready for someone to quilt it. The only problem is that I am not sure if I should use the gold, yellow or orange accent border. I would love to hear what others think. I will show the complete quilt next week.

If you want to see what everyone else is doing, hop over to Judy's blog and see what is going on.

I think I got it!!

I did another gradation yesterday. This time only 1 1/4 tsp. of dye in a 1/2 cup of water. You can see the gradation came out better. the first two are close to the same. The middle two are about the same value and the lightest two are close to the same.  In real life you can see the graduations better. I think one reason for the little difference in  gradations values is because of the color I am using. Some colors dyes I have discovered do better gradations than others, also the different variables like water amount and estimating dyes volumes plays into the equation.

I was also playing around with the photo on the computer. I discovered that if I take the color out and have a black and white picture you can see the texture of the fabric. Cool hah!!

I might try to do a different gradation color this weekend to see how that comes out. My time is premium for me now. Doing class samples and organizing my lessons plans makes for doing two jobs.

Till next time

Cheryl M.

Hand dyes

Last May I started to learn how to dye fabric. This has been a real learning experience. The quilt that I have been showing on Design Wall Mondays for the last three weeks is all done in hand dyes to get the correct shade of colors. I do pretty good in following the instructions on Pro Chemical and dying website and a couple of books that I have. All of the fabric pieces that I have done so far have been 1 yard or more cuts. My problem is that I want to do some 6 step gradation using only FQs'. The reason for doing only FQs' is that I like to do scrappy and applique quilts and large yardage would most likely sit in my stash. Plus I only have so much room and money to experiment. I did a couple of colors to see how they would come out. My 6 step gradation come out to have only 2 gradations in color in IMHO. I think that I am using to much dye for the concentration of water ration. I use 2 tsp of dye to 1/2 cup of water and keep adding 1/4 of water back into the mixture of dye of the next step. As you can see the first 4 FQs are very dark and the 6th step is lighter in shade. If someone can till me what I should be doing for FQs and not whole yardage I would greatly appreciate the advice.
Cheryl M.

Monday’s Design wall 1-31-11

Well it’s Monday again, and I have a little more to show on my design wall. The same quilt is still on the wall. I have a couple more blocks up and sewn together. It seems that I should be done putting this together, but it is slow getting all the seams to match. I can only do a couple seams at a time. Then I have to move to something else. I had to dye some more fabric for this quilt. I ran out of the darker blue and I still have the border to piece together. I will be glad to see this one completed.

In other things I started to work on a class sample for the Quilter’s Academy series, this one is for a class that I am teaching in March. It is from the second book of  Harriet Hargrave’s book Quilter’s Academy. It should go together fairly quickly after I find some more fabric. I cut the strips out last night, but I figures wrong and did not have enough. I should be able to find something very close. If not I will find a way to use what I have. Make it into a learning experiment for class example of what not to do and how to save a quilt. All in one example. I hope to have it up on my design wall next Monday. I am sure everyone is tired of seeing the same quilt on the wall for three weeks. I know I am sure tired of seeing it. I am ready to move on to other things.
If you want to see more things and get some wonderful inspiration go check out all the links on Judy’s L. blog. Till next time and hopefully with something else on the design wall.
Cheryl M>

Design Wall Monday 1-24-11

Just a quick post for design wall Monday. As you can see that I have done a little more on the opportunity quilt for one of my guilds. I have all the blocks back from the members, and just have to finish a couple of blocks that I said I would do. I have been able to stitch a couple of 4 patches together and will sew them together this week. I am hoping to get this center done by the end of the month and working on the border real soon. My goal is to have the top finished by the 11th for guild meeting. Then someone else can take it for a little bit to have it quilted.
Thanks for stopping by and go look at all the other design Mondays' on Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday 1-17-11

I thought that I would try to do Judy s' design wall Monday again this year. Since I have more time now, I might be able to keep something on the wall to report, other than one or two thing a year. I presently am the quilt mother for my guild's opportunity quilt. This is our 2010 opportunity quilt that I hope the top gets finished in the next month. I am so ready for this quilt to go to a quilter. It started out to be a project that sounded interesting. Last year I presented 4 quilts to the guild. I did not think that they would pick this one, due to that it is paper pieced. The problem was that not many guild members like to paper piece. Then I thought that it would look the best in hand dyed fabric. The problem was that hand dyed fabric would cost the guild to much money to make. So I learned how to dye the fabric myself. Which turned out to be pretty cool, so now I have a new skill that I enjoy very much. Its not a difficult pattern but it does have 27 pieces in each block and not all the blocks are the same color arrangement. Anyway the blocks are almost finished, just waiting to receive about 4 more blocks from a member and I will be able to put the top together completely. The pattern is from the magazine 'Quiltmaker'  the September/October 09 issue. Thanks for looking at my blog, go see all the other great post on Judy's blog of other design wall Mondays.

Happy New Year

Wishing all a Happy New Year. Hoping that you succeed in all your goals and dreams.