Wednesday, March 21, 2012

Remembering last summer...

ligo7 by Cali-rhoz
ligo7, a photo by Cali-rhoz on Flickr.
I came home from work today and felt the need to go back through my photos and reread my blogs from my trip last summer... this photo caught my eye and I decided to reshare it. It's from a flower market (and summer festival) in Riga, Latvia.

Sunday, March 18, 2012

Teaching myself quilting...

I love the Internet. It is so full of info and how-to videos... so much easier now to learn quilting than when I did it 40 or so years ago (not even sure I ever finished that first quilt it was so hard!). So I have found a few great info sources and I am teaching myself sewing and quilting from them. Today's lesson is from The Missouri Star Quilting Co video "Disappearing Nice Patch Quilt Block Tutorial." The idea in a nutshell is to sew 9 small squares together (I used pieces from charm packs which are precut squares) and then cut them in half vertically and horizonally to get 4 pieced blocks to mix around.

Here is my sewn 9 patch:
9 Patch sewn together

and then here are the squares cut and rearranged:

Design wall-1

It is a cool technique that is super easy but looks like you did a ton of work. I like that!

The squares above are on my make-shift "design wall" which is a piece of batting pinned across a bookshelf. I need to get a foamcore board or something to put the batting on and then have it to move around. The cool part is the fabric just sticks to it when you put it up so you can move pieces around and then stand back and look at them.

Design wall-2

I wish I had more wall space but I don't at the moment -- none that is in a bright enough area to see anything anyway.

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Flowers Art Quilt is finished...

Just in time to bring it to my Art Quilt group on Wednesday to share!

flower art quilt

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Working on an art quilt...

Got inspired by a wonderful art quilter, Jamie Fingal, to make this for my art quilting class...




Still have some decorative stitching to do but it is almost finished. Mostly it has been a learning experience on how to figure out how to do something I see and make it. From this I think it will be easier to branch out on my own. So I think I will have to call this one "Jamie's Flowers" ya think?

Here is the art quilt by Jamie Fingal that got me so jazzed...