Another Postcard Swap

This morning I mailed my postcards for the swap in the Val Hearder Landscape group. One of my postcards is going to Ireland, one is going to Canada, one is going to the USA, and one is going to Canada. This is quite the international group.

I decided to create a sunrise at the Jersey shore for my landscape. The fabric I used for the sky I painted last summer when I took a class at Quilt University on painting fabric for landscapes. I used Setacolor transparent paints. The water fabrics were just purples from my stash that I cut with my rotary cutter and then sewed to the sky fabric with a straight stitch. The grasses were just some black fabric from my stash fused to the foreground . I then fused the scene to some peltex and did the stitching. I used all free motion to do the stitching since this is a skill I need to work on. I hope the recipients like the cards as much as I liked doing them. The ladies at the post office sure made a big fuss over them!

Chris

Dancing Away the Blues

Well my square dance quilt is quilted and washed and ready to use. All I did was quilt in the ditch, but even that took a long time. I realized while quilting it how much I don’t like moving around a lap size quilt under my domestic machine. I can’t imagine quilting anything larger than lap size this way. It makes me want a long arm quilting machine and frame. Dream on….

The goal for this quilt was to use up blue squares in my stash from a fabric exchange as well as use up more blues for the back of the quilt. Here is the back of the quilt showing how I used up the rest of the blue squares as well as some other fabrics in my stash. I also used different light blues/whites for the binding. Even though I used up quite a bit of fabric, I still have more in my closet.

The parade yesterday in NYC was great. The weather was fantastic and we had a really good time.

Chris

My Handsome Hubby, the Piper

My sister found this great photo of my husband online.  Last weekend started parade season for his pipe and drum band, St. Anne’s of Hampton, NJ.   I think this is a really good photo of him.  He has one parade today and two parades tomorrow.

His band will be marching in NYC on Tuesday, March 17.  This will be his 5th NYC St. Patrick’s Day parade.  I will be walking with other family members behind this band down 5th Avenue. I really enjoy the parade. If one of your TV stations carries the parade you may see us.  I am hoping for good weather.  Most years it has been cold and windy….good days to pass around the single malt!

Chris

The Mystery is a Mystery No Longer

We have now finished our mystery quilt on the Learning FA yahoo group. The mystery was written by Noel and the instructions were really well done. I had never done a mystery before and thought that it would be a fun thing to do. It was fun! Noel had us guessing pretty much the entire project.

I picked out panda fabric for the main fabric because I was going to give this to my daughter since she is crazy about pandas. In fact I bought a kit at the NJ Quilt Fest last Sunday to make her another panda quilt. That panda pattern is done by the same person that designed the dinosaur quilt that I made her when she was about 3 or 4 years old. You can see the dinosaur quilt in the slide show of my quilts or on Flickr or Webshots.

At any rate back to the mystery…. I am a little disappointed in how it came out. I wish I had picked different fabrics to go with the panda fabric, but I guess that is the point of a mystery. You read the fabric descriptions and hope for the best. I am still going to give it to my daughter for her birthday in May. It is not big enough for a lap quilt, but will make a nice table topper. I don’t think it will be good enough for a wall hanging.

I plan on doing a lot of quilting on it to jazz it up. I am hoping that will make it look better. The pink fabric is not really intense enough, but maybe with some quilting with some pink thread that is darker than the pink fabric it look a little bit better. I need to practice my free motion quilting so this quilt will give me the opportunity to do that.

Any ideas for the quilting? I won’t be quilting it until April so I have some time to think about it.

The pandas are really cute and my daughter will love them!

Chris

Quilt Fest of NJ.....Amazing Quilts!

I had the pleasure of going to the NJ Quilt Fest in Somerset, NJ on March 8. The show had traditional quilts as well as art quilts. I mainly took photos of the art quilts since that is mostly what I am interested in these days. A lot of the quilts were astounding. I did not include photos of all the quilts since the video file would be way too large. The quilts are much better in person than they are in the photos.

The show also had a lot of vendors and I did manage to spend some money...I won't say how much or I could be kicked out the the Quilting on a Budget yahoo group!

Enjoy the quilts! You have to wait a while for it to load once you click start.

Chris

Taking it Easy Today

For some reason I am really tired today.  I decided not to do any sewing and give my neck and shoulders a break.  I feel like I have been going non stop on a quilting treadmill lately.  Quilting is really wonderful and I do love being busy, but every once in a while I have to step back and take a breather.

 

“Midnight Stars”

A quilt I made about 16 years ago.  Heavily hand quilted with cables and feathers.  Even though it is only 60 inches by 60 inches, it took me a year to quilt it.

 

 

I am going to a quilt show this weekend in Somerset, NJ.  Since I have not been to a quilt show for a while I am really looking forward to it.  It will really be nice to see some wonderful quilts and be inspired by what I see.  I am also looking forward to shopping.  I just got a small royalty check for a lab manual that I wrote for one of my classes so I will have some money to spend!

Chris

Square Dance is Basted

We had another snow day in NJ and my college canceled classes. I worked on getting my square dance quilt pin basted so that I can machine quilt it on Friday.

It takes me forever to pin baste a quilt because I have to give my back, neck, and shoulders several breaks along the way. Since this is a just going to be a lap quilt, I think I am not going to be doing any fancy quilting. Lap quilts in my house take a lot of wear and tear and basically a great deal of abuse. So I guess I don’t want to do too much quilting on something that will be pretty much worn out in about 15 years. In fact this quilt is supposed to replace one of our current shredded lap quilts.

I am trying a batting that is cotton and bamboo for this quilt. It seems really soft. I did wash and dry it to shrink it before I put it in this quilt. I did not really want this quilt to shrink anymore after it was quilted.

I hope you all didn’t get too much snow today. The end of winter can’t some soon enough for me!

Chris