Gracie likes it!

EASY STREET Almost done…..

I have to say that I have really enjoyed this Mystery Challenge and I will look forward to next November when we can start another one. I am truly amazed that I have almost completed a quilt top in less than 2 months during the Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays. Of course I have been a woman with a mission! I wanted to be able to link up to Bonnie’s Easy Street Page http://www.quiltville.blogspot.com/p/easy-street-mystery.html every week so that meant that I had to keep up. That is a pretty good motivator. Plus I couldn’t wait to see and start the next step. Bonnie did a fabulous job keeping us all guessing.

It will fit this bed perfectly!

I went to a LQS yesterday – http://www.sanfordsewing.com/. There was a 25% off sale on ALL fabrics so I splurged and bought some for the borders, binding and backing. I didn’t really have any good choices in my stash for the backing – I am still deciding on the borders.  These are the fabrics that I bought for the borders.  I love them and they may work beautifully but I am still deciding.

border fabrics

I will use the fabrics that I bought one way or another because I love them. I have found that it is fun to take pictures of the edge of the quilt with different choices of borders. It makes the quilt look so different to see it through the lens of a camera.

border fabric audition

Thank you Bonnie Hunter http://www.quiltville.blogspot.com/ for sharing all of your wonderful talents, for sharing this fabulous quilt with us all. I am definitely going to be making this quilt again with different colors. The stars in this quilt are just screaming at me to be made in Christmas colors, who knows, someone may get it as a present next year.

I will be putting the borders on this weekend and bringing it to my longarm quilter next week. I can’t wait to see it completed. This has been a wonderful learning experience for this quilter.

Keep pushing your imagination – keep trying new things.  I have been quilting for over 30 years and I have never made a quilt that is this “Funky” before.  It has stretched my use of colors and taught me several new, quicker techniques.  So you can teach this “oldish” dog new tricks.  Remember to have fun and sometimes just let it fly!

Be Kind….

Faith

So it is January 2013. I don’t know about you but I am having a difficult time figuring out where 2012 went. Phew that was a fast year. For me it was a good year. I got alot of quilty things completed. I designed and made a wallhanging without using a pattern. It was great fun and it was very satisfying to look at a quilt and know that I had created it start to finish. No patterns, no one elses idea just changed to suit yourself, just a quilt made from your own imagination. I think that as artists and quilters we need to trust ourselves more often. Take a risk, go with your gut and let it fly.

This is a picture of the work in progress.

in the garden

I assembled the background by paper piecing different log cabin blocks.  The blocks were 6 1/2″ with a 6″ finished size. My vision was to have it look like a landscape.  The top is the sky and the bottom is the ground.  I am very happy with the way it turned out.  The stems are biased cut  tubes that I first stitched down on the machine then flipped and hand appliqued down.  Some of the flowers are English Paper Pieced grandmothers flowers – they were hand pieced and the hand appliqued onto the top.  The rest of the flowers are yo-yo’s, which are then hand appliqued to the top.  The leaves are also hand appliqued to the top.  I really love doing hand work, so this was a lot of fun to work on.

I added the borders – I loved this blue for the border.  It just seems to tie the quilt together.

in the garden

The back of the quilt was also pieced.  I had gotten all of the members of our quilt group to sign peices of fabric and then I peiced them all together to assemble the back.

This was a gift for the out going President of our Quilt Guild.  She is a gardener, she had just finished her quilt studio and I am proud to say that this hangs on the wall of her studio.

The recipient of the Quilt

So go for it – start the new year with a project that you have created yourself.  If you are worried that you will not like it start with a small piece.  Make a pillow or a table runner.  Pull out the fabrics and go for it.  You will be amazed what you can do.

The most important thing is to enjoy yourself.  Don’t be your own worst critic – give yourself a break and get rid of the self doubt.

Have a wonderful January day.  The sun is shining here and it is really rather warm.  The perfect day to imagine your garden.

Be Kind…

Faith