Wednesday, May 4, 2011

UFO for April--complete!!

     Four for four!! I feel as good about finishing this quilt as I have for any I've made. This is the first quilt I've marked and quilted with contrasting machine quilting and been completely happy with--like happy enough to put it up for judging in my next quilt show! Formerly called "Michigan Highway", I renamed it "Starry Night".
     With the 18 different colors of stars, I also used 18 different colors of thread to quilt it with. A good friend of mine suggested that and I'm glad I took her advice.
     This was a quilt I made in a mystery class about 3 years ago. I was apprehensive about quilting it because I knew I wanted to use all these colors on the black and I've never found a way to mark on black (and have it wash out) that I was happy with. My friend suggested the Clover white marking pen. She also lent me 5 of her 300+ stencils (!) and that was the ticket! Worked great and the marks washed out beautifully.
  

Here's my #9 UFO for May. It consists of a pile of luxurious fabrics I bought at Britex in San Francisco a few months ago. Britex is a 5-story building just off Union Square in the heart of the city, has been there for decades and is one of the only true fabric stores for a hundred miles around. (No, Joann's doesn't count!) This is where the serious clothing-makers shop, ladies!

I found a fabulous jacket pattern at the road to California Quilt Show in January. Lorraine Torrence is a talented pattern designer who creates fashionable yet wearable garments. So I made a 'muslin' of her
"City Wraps" jacket using my neglected dress form and LOVED how it fit! Hopefully I can translate that into the brocade and silk for which I paid $85!

 Thank you, Judy, for encouraging me to finish 4 of my UFOs so far this year. I finally feel that my UFO pile has been depleted enough to start on some new projects! Check out Judy's website to see everyone else's accomplishments.

Monday, May 2, 2011

DWM: My "A-word" Love Affair

People talk about "the A-word" like its a scary ogre or a disease. I shared that opinion through 3 applique classes over the years where the method and outcome produced a less than desirable outcome. Then I found the freezer paper and starch method and an obsession was born! I'm currently working on 4 applique projects including a Bunny Hill Design BOM pictured here. This is the 4th block of a 10-month series and I'm going to love this fall-themed quilt.



At my quilt guild meeting last week, I signed up for a class in August. The quilt we'll be making is a wall-sized Tennessee Waltz which has 4 large blank areas for fancy quilting or a fussy-cut fabric. I've decided to use 30s fabrics and prepare 4, 'basket-of-fruit' applique blocks to put in the spaces instead. Besides the baskets that will measure 6" across, I need 8 leaves, and 8 each of a penny-sized circle, a quarter-sized circle and one in-between those sizes. By the time you read this, they will be cut out and ready to sew.

I'm also appliqueing 150 leaves on borders of the "Civil War Anniversary" quilt I'm making for my Civil War-buff DH commemorating the 150th anniversary of the beginning of the Civil War and making the "Flight of Fancy" pattern below.

If you think of applique as "the A-word", don't give up! There are a lot of different methods you can learn!
Don't miss at all the other fabulous projects by checking out Judy's blog!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Do I HAVE to tell you. . .?

Boy was I a bad girl this week. Fabric.com had a one-day sale earlier this week where some mighty lovely fabric was $3.95 and $4.95 a yard. With the price of fabric so high--and going higher--I thought I'd better embellish my stash a little and also buy some 3-yard pieces for backs. I added . . .  gulp . . . 29.5 yards. . . to my stash. Top this off with the fact that I only did applique this week (tiny, tiny pieces), and a binding, I can only add 1 yard to my 'used' column.

Fabric bought this week: 29.5
Fabric used this week: 1
Fabric bought this year: 109.5
Fabric used this year: 68
Total: -41.5