Painted Dryer Sheets

Bonnie asked where the painted dryer sheets were in my pink portal. I have outlined the painted dryer sheets in this picture. They were painted with Transparent Setacolor paints in purple, yellow and some gold.

Chris

Pink Portal and Turkey

More or less finished my third portal. I decided to try something more abstract this time and use up some of my pink, peach and purple solids. Pink and purple are not my favorite colors so I am going to have to stock up on kona green and blues for future portals.

The shear "fabrics" are painted dryer sheets. There is also some pink tulle over the window and lace in other parts of the piece. The grid in the window is the plastic netting that a turkey breast came in. Last night we had turkey and I managed to get perfect grid for my window.

It was a bit out of my usual experiences to use something like food netting, but it definitely was not hard to sew it into place.

I did have a hard time getting good pictures of it. Hope you all are having a good Sunday. It is really hot here in NJ today. Hard to believe a week ago we were freezing.

Chris

Last Comments About the Blue Portal Piece

I would like to thank all of the people that commented about my blue portal piece. The comment that summed up my own feelings about the piece were made by The Idaho Beauty.

She said, "I agree that the quilting over/within the stones is too much of a good thing. I think the cleanness of the previous picture shows this work to better advantage. This is always my fear with machine quilting - when is enough enough and will I add one more thing that makes theoretical sense but in reality just detracts? Sometimes simplicity really is the best tactic. I have an awful time visualizing my results in advance. However, it is still a lovely little piece, and I like that you have learned from it, instead of just calling it a failure. It succeeds if only because you've chosen to allow it to help you grow."

The reason I have posted about this comment is that I think we all have a lesson to learn from it. When I was just starting to learn to machine quilt I pretty much did very simple quilting in the ditch because that's all I could do. As I learned to free motion quilt I began to feel like I had to do more elaborate quilting on every quilt I made. I felt like it was not doing my best if I did not quilt the quilt to death. I was no longer in my own mind allowed to do simple quilting even if that was the best thing to do for the quilt. My experience with the blue portal has been a wake up call. Sometimes simple quilting is better. Not doing elaborate free motion quilting is not wimping out...it might be just what the quilt needs.

My comments back to The Idaho Beauty shows that this is not my first experience of this nature, but I think this time I have learned my lesson....at least for now.

"Idaho Beauty, I completely agree with your comments. I think that for such a small piece that the thread within the stones overwhelms it. The thread sticks out way too much. Maybe if these were large stones that I could have done the stitching inside the stones and even so I should have used a thinner thread. I had a similar issue last summer with my house quilt for the trees behind the house. The trees were made of small pieces just like the stones in the portal piece. Initially I did quite a bit of free motion quilting inside the pieces. I ended up spending hours and hours tearing out all the stitching and then just quilting around the pieces. It looked 100% better doing that.

This time I will not take the time to tear out the quilting. In fact you would have thought that after all those hours of ripping out stitches for the house quilt, I would have remembered why I ended up doing that and not to do it again. I am going to keep this quilt so that if I ever think of doing this sort of thing again, I can look at this portal piece and see why I should not! It is a lesson learned and lessons are good things."

Chris

Nominated For the Friend's Blog Award!!!!

My friend, Kathy, nominated me for the Friend's Blog Award. Check out her blog at http://kcn2cats.blogspot.com/ because she does some amazing art.

Here are the guidelines for the award.

I am to award this to 5 other deserving blogs. This is going to be really hard since there are a lot of blogs that I like and that inspire me.

For those of you that receive the award from me, this is the badge that comes with the honor:

"These blogs are exceedingly charming. These kind bloggers aim to be friends. They are not interested in self-aggrandizement. Our hope is that when the ribbons of these prizes are cut, even more friendships are propagated. Please give more attention to these kind writers ."

So here are my nominations for the award.

Quilting on a budget (Joan's wonderful site to help quilters save money.)

Janet's Fiber Art News (Janet's quilts and fiber art are inspiring to me. Plus she has been one of my online friends for nearly a year now.)

One of a Kind Fiber Arts (Shirley loves to share her fiber art through tutorials.)

Lazy Gal Quilting (How could you not love a blog with Tonya's inspiring quilts and her beautiful cat, Pokey?)

In Stitches With Bonnie ( A lovely lady with a lovely blog.)


Chris

Blue Portal Done....Live and Learn

Well the portal is done, but I think that I should have just quilted around the stones rather than quilting inside the stones. I also quilted some vines going up the building, but I am not sure of those either. As you can see I still need a lot of work with my free motion quilting!!!
As someone once told me, "It is just some fabric." So I think I will make another portal, but I think I will do something more abstract.

Lessons learned on this one.

1. Plan the blocks out better rather than just winging it.
2. Make things straighter.
   
3. Use fusible web the next time.
4. Only quilt outside of such small blocks or quilt differently.
5. Make it bigger the next time. This was only 8 inches by 10 inches.

Chris

Portal 2 Continues

I have started to stitch/quilt my second portal. I think this part is easier than cutting out all the blue stones.
My birthday continues since my husband is taking me out for dinner tonight.
Chris

Grandma’s House for Blogger's Quilt Festival—Spring 2009

There is an online quilt festival going on. In order to participate you have to post the story of your favorite quilt. I know that I have posted about this quilt before on my blog, but since this is one of my favorite quilts I would love to talk about it again!

I made this quilt of my parent’s house for my Mom's 80th birthday which we celebrated last August. I did not think it would take too long, but it pretty much took the entire summer and was more difficult than I thought it would be. These are some pictures of the finished quilt.

When my Mom received the quilt she was really surprised. I think this photo is my favorite photo of the quilt. When people at the party saw the quilt they thought it was a painting. When I told them it was a quilt they looked at me with a puzzled look on their faces. I guess most people don't think of quilts beyond traditional patchwork quilts.

This quilt looked so much different when I first started making it. This is a photo of what it looked like not far into the process. At this point I was almost going to pack it in an get her something else for a gift since it did not look too good at the beginning. So I guess this shows that you have to keep going when making a quilt like this.

So you might ask if the quilt looks anything like the house. Here is a photo of the house so you judge how well I did. I decided to make a spring scene and my Dad sent me photos of the tree in front of the house in the spring. I sent photos back and forth to my Dad to get his feedback. He designed the house so I did not want to mess up. I loved his comment to me, "Don't be so hard on yourself." I should take that advise more often.

And yes, that is a cat in the window on the quilt. The cat is no longer around, but used to sit in the window all the time and make my Mom crazy.

Birthday Gifts

Wow I am really racking up the birthday presents today. I received the beautiful roses in the photo from my wonderful husband. He gave me 2 quilt books and Fabrico markers and my daughter sent me 1 quilt book.

Quilt books received.
 

I got all 36 Fabrico Markers!

He also made vegetable lasagna which is baking in the oven right now and smells wonderful. I also forgot that he got me a fancy cork screw to make it easier to open bottles of wine.

To top it off the weather in NJ was absolutely beautiful today...sunny and 70 degrees. What a great day!

Chris

Portal 2 Continued Again

I finished gluing down the blocks for my second portal. I think I am going to use invisible thread to stitch them in place. I am anxious to get this one to the quilting stage because I want to practice my free motion quilting. Plus I am going to be stitching lines in blue for the window panes so my portal will look a lot better when it is all stitched up.
Happy Easter to all. Eat lots of chocolate!

Chris

Portal 2 Continued

Added some more to my portal. I am anxious to get the rest of the blocks glued down so I can stitch/quilt the pieces in place.

Chris

Portal 2

I just started working on my second portal for my portals class. I am making this one out of blues. I still have a lot more blue blocks to add and lots of stitching to do so it is very much in its early stages.
Chris

Abstract Portal 1 Finished

I decided to stitch lines on the windows to indicate individual panes of glass. I did not like how the windows "bloated" out on top if the quilt. I like my quilts to be pretty much flat. Hopefully this looks better.

Chris

Abstract Portal 1

I am taking a class called Portals on the site "Quilters Keep Learning." I finally got a chance today to create my first portal. Portals are just windows created with shear fabric. It did not photograph very well. For once I tried not to over analyze things and just have some fun.

I never did anything like this before so working with shears was a whole new experience. I think it came out pretty good for my first attempt. Since I am a realism kind of girl I can't wait to do some windows (portals) that are more realistic.

Chris

Maple Leaf Blocks From Swap

These are some of the maple leaf blocks I received from my block exchange for spark people. I think they are wonderful. The colors are fantastic and they will make a wonderful lap quilt. I only had room to put some of them on my design wall since they are 12 inch blocks. I am trying to figure out what to do with them. I have some ideas, but since I have so many projects going right now the maple leaf blocks will have to wait.

Chris