Design Wall Monday - 5/16/16

Sew....I got to go on a little adventure this weekend and I got to meet a blog friend as well!!

Sit tight - there are lotsa pictures!

Last spring Sharon Vrooman of Vrooman's Quilts asked me to come to her guild, the Schoharie Valley Piecemakers, to teach a class on English Paper Piecing and give a trunk show! My first travel teaching experience and I had a grand time!

Sharon and I were so excited to meet up at her house on Friday that we both forgot to take pictures. Oopsies! When I first got to Sharon's house, her black cat Moe was outside. I called him and he immediately came running for some scritches. He probably wondered how this complete stranger knew his name but he and his sister Bella were later rewarded with catnip toys sent by Zorro and Squeaky so all was well. Sharon gave me the full tour of her quilting space, stash and their quilt store and class area. I kept thinking I've seen that in pictures and that and that and that.

Sharon gifted me this clothesline and thread caddy, both made by her dad. She also gifted me the darling basket quilt with the flower buttons. I think this might be the time to finally make something with 1/4" hexies so I won't have to worry about taking out the papers and just hang it "on the line."

Our class and trunk show were held in this lovely church on Main Street in Middleburgh. You can see one of the town's murals on the building to the right. You can also get an idea of the overcast skies... I drove east to Schoharie in the rain and I drove back west in the rain.

Across the street was the library where Sharon has done several programs and then blogged about them. The Library boasted just one of the many barn quilt squares from the area.

Sharon introduced me to the group - you can see their guild banners in the background - we had a good laugh about pronouncing last names. It's hard to see but I mended my poor blue jeans with a chrysanthemum rosette. It was fun to wait and see if anyone spotted the rosette - which they did!

Our class had 13 students (including one guy!!) where only 3 students had done hexies before. One student said she struggled just a bit at the beginning but once she got the technique down, she really enjoyed it.

Some of the ladies had their rosettes done before the trunk show started!!

I think everyone was pleased with the class and there just might be some new converts!

Does this look familiar to anyone? Look at my "giraffe" project, which was based on an antique quilt.
Everything old is new again!
This quilt was made by basting each hexie through the papers.
She said she was glad to learn the "right" way to make hexies - no more removing basting stitches

These hexies were all stitched with a sewing machine. Y seams!!
Next decision? Sashing between the rosettes or not?

We even had a quick show-n-tell for the students that had made hexies before.

Mom let me borrow several of her smaller trunks and,
of course, the doll cat bed came along as well

Some of the ladies were not familiar with a trunk show nor a bed turning.

I think they really enjoyed looking at my quilts and UFOs - seeing how different shapes and sizes play together, and then adding in fussy cutting or pieced hexies. I've encouraged them to send me pictures of their projects - maybe they will join in for HeLP tomorrow. Hint! Hint!

Before I hit the road again we finally posed for a selfie. Yes, the 2 gals who don't like to be in front of the camera...

The farm tracts run from the side of one mountain across the valley to the side of the next
mountain with the main road running through the middle of the valley.
The valley that had something like 6 FEET of water during a recent hurricane!

My trip home ended up being just a bit different than planned. I crossed the creek to catch a glimpse of Vrooman's Nose Mountain and then the GPS was going to send me the long way to the thruway.

If I zoom in, Martha's house is on the left.

At some point I realized I was up over the Schoharie Valley and could see Martha's farm house were I spent Friday night. We won't discuss the middle of the night footsteps on the stairs in an otherwise empty house!

B&W fabrics for my Salt & Pepper project
Blue and yellow fabrics for my pieced hexie projects

As I continued towards the expressway, I realized that I was near Cobleskill, home of The Yardstick. Hmm...might better stop in while I can...

Then the GPS took me on a lot of fun, twisting back roads until I eventually got to the thruway. It was nice to see more of the valley and mountains, the Victorian houses in the small towns. I will not tell you how much I laughed at the set up for "runaway trucks" on a 2 mile downgrade near Cherry Valley.

The color was much more vibrant in person

I was eventually rewarded with a fantastic sunset as I reached home.

Yesterday was a do nothing day while it snowed.
YES #1 - it was snowing on May 15th
YES #2 -  I spent the day on the couch doing HEXIES and I'll share those for Hexie Linky Party tomorrow...

I best get this posted as I know that Sharon is chomping at the bit to publish her post.
Hugs and Kisses Sharon - I had a fantastic time and maybe we can get together again some time!!!

Design Wall Monday - 11/16/15

Today I have 2 things that don't happen often on my blog - I'm sharing photos of family stuff and a finished quilt (top) that was sewn entirely by machine. LOL.

Both of my nephews play hockey. They play with the Livingston Blues in two different age groups (PeeWee & Squirts). It just so happened that both the boys had games one right after the other yesterday at SUNY-Geneseo (their home rink) so the whole family went to watch them.

This was the first time I have gone to a game when it was 50+ degrees outside *** so when I made the mistake of dressing for the outside weather I was a little chilled. It's ok because cheering for goals (and ringing my antique cow bell!) warms the heart and hands. LOL.

R to L: Mom, Barb (family friend), SIL Kristie, brother Tom, Dad
and down at the pink arrow is older nephew Tyler (Squirt) with his teammate

Ryan (PeeWee) getting his gear on.
Already has his lucky red and blue socks on!

And this is a class sample. Every year on the Saturday after Thanksgiving I teach an easy, scrappy class that could be a donation or a gift. Mine was completed in a day, including figuring and making notes for the directions. Not sure what to call it but it was a fun quilt and I can't wait to make more with batiks or whatever. Linda from Art in Search allowed me to use her idea! Thank you Linda!

Can you believe I did rake the yard once? Doesn't look like it...

Somebody had his burlap underwear on yesterday but did allow me 5 minutes for this photo.

Don't forget to pop back in tomorrow and link up your hexie projects to HeLP for Hexie-aholics!!

*** Yes, it's mid-November and expected to be (near) 60F most of the week. Last year at this time was the huge Snowvember storm. What a difference!

Design Wall Monday - 11/9/15

Now hold on - I know what you are thinking... "Sarah, you looooooove color, so what are you thinking with this bland gray quilt??!!"

Well, this is stage one of my Jelly Roll Race. I've got my 36 strips sewn together. Tonight I'll press the top and pick border fabrics. I'm still debating if the borders should be more grays or a color. I'm kinda thinking color. Maybe even the same color as the applique I'll add in the next stage.







My original plan was based on this project that I pinned from The Evil Website.

HOWEVER...yesterday, while I was scrolling for cat silhouettes, I found this one to the right (be sure to check the link thru Pinterest as there are other fab cat silhouettes too). I think one cat could make such a statement. And, as with the borders, still deciding on the original black I had planned or a bright color? I'm thinking color...

Denim Flower Class

Sadly there were only 2 students in my class last night at the Arts Council. The Director was saying that they may not continue the program next year because attendance has dropped so much over the 5 years they have held monthly Art Nights. Too bad...

I might pink the edges...

I forgot to share this other flower on Monday. It's about 3.5" across with a gorgeous antique mother of pearl button. I also want to make it in a smaller size. We didn't make this flower in class but I did demo the process and I'm sure both Sarah and Jackie could easily make them at home. Yes - there was a student named Sarah, a quilting friend, in class. Jackie would say something to 'Sarah' and we would both answer. LOL.

Mine is at the top. Sarah's is bottom left (love the variety of denim) and Jackie's is on the right (she's also a painter and she's going to add some color to her denim and then put it on a denim bag)

Flying Swallows

I didn't leave myself enough time this morning to decide which purple hexies to add to my denim pillow band so I grabbed another project to work on at lunch. It feels good to work on some of those UFOs I have been neglecting. I still have 3.5 months until my trunk shows in October and next May I have been book for a class/trunk show also so I'll be a hexie machine for the next 10 months. And all y'all know I'll be like a pig in mud! Thrilled to pieces!!

Feline Friday - 11/7/14

A few weeks ago, when Momma had a three day weekend thanks to some guy way back in 1492, GrandMomma came over for her first quilting lessons on her new Janome. I took charge and made sure that GrandMomma didn't work too hard and took breaks. I also had to fur her quilt top.

Momma and I shared her seat. Yes! That is her butt in the red sweatshirt and I didn't really want my photo taken cuz she was hogging most of the seat. Geesh!

When Momma got up I kept her seat warm for her. You can see that my chunky monkey sissy kept the ottoman warm by the front window. Who knows what my little sissy was doing...probably hiding from me!

GrandMomma will be back this weekend to sandwich her quilt. I hope there are leftovers for me cuz I like sandwiches!!!!

An InLinkz Link-up

Blue Ridge Beauty with Bonnie Hunter!

My class with Bonnie was this past weekend. It was a long day with driving 80+ minutes there and 110 minutes home since there was a bad truck fire on the expressway. I stopped at Viddler’s, an awesome five and dime in East Aurora but I was so tired, I wandered and left empty handed - not my norm when I get a rare chance to visit Viddler's. When I got home I put my things away and didn’t do much of anything the rest of the weekend. It’s a good thing Zorro made me take that break on Thursday – I could have used him again Friday and Saturday. LOL.

Ummm...that paragraph sounded like a real downer when what I had was a great day. Sorry L

Lots of space for everyone to sew, do demos at the front and 5 ironing stations at the back

 

Class started at 9am on Saturday. I got there about 20 minutes early and looked for free table space since the room was already pretty full. A lot of the students had taken 3 or 4 classes with Bonnie! Many people sat 2 to a table but I was lucky to get a table to myself. Whoo hoo – room to spread out which is nice when strip piecing.

We started with making 4 patches. I think Bonnie finally convinced me to layer the two strips and cut them as pairs without pinning! It worked well in class so it must work at home, right?

The 2-toned green bit on the left is my leaderEnder - a Christmas quilt for one of my nephews.

After lunch there were door prizes from the host guild and then we had show-n-tell back in our class room. I asked Bonnie to pose with me so I could put our picture on the quilt label. I guess I better get the back done so I can quilt this baby and put that label on!

No I don't know who the guy was in the painting behind me.
Class was in a museum and there antiques all over the place.

 

And then we moved on to half square triangles using my near&dear friend the Easy Angle. Bonnie demoed her 2 step method of flipping the EA back and forth but since I taught myself my own 2 step method years ago I just couldn’t get hers to work with any speed. It really didn’t affect my cutting accuracy so I just did it my way and zipped along.

 

Pretty soon we were putting blocks together and then Bonnie pulled us all to the back of the room to show us the best way to lay out the blocks. It was quite fun to see all our blocks thrown together into a riot of rainbow colors when we were more or less just making a 2 color quilt. The beauty block is easy enough I could see making another scrappy version some day.

 

Did you find me on Bonnie’s blog or Facebook? I’m there several times, including my hexie jacket on Facebook! I haven't seen a post on show-n-tell but maybe that is coming…

I think I've finally recovered from 3 very long days last week, a lazy day and another long day yesterday. Now that I'm typing this post I'm in the mood to go home and sew. I  should be home about 7 or 730 so my fingers are crossed I'll still be in the mood to make more Ruby Beauty blocks...I know a certain person who is going to want my quilt and I would kinda like to keep it under wraps and give it as a gift...

Design Wall Monday - 3/3/14

After SEVERAL discussions on wrinkles, the newest QCO finally got the hang of properly holding a quilt in place without wrinkling it. That allowed me to finish the sashing...

...and then the borders on this Disappearing 9 Patch class sample.

The purple border looks like a strip in this photo - hadn't noticed in person. Cool!

As an option to the sample, I'll be making hexies to place at the intersections with the large purple squares. Obviously I won't be using the fabrics below but I already had this rosette done for another project and it worked for the photo. It also showed me that the hexies will need to be really light or dark to contrast with the purple fabric.

The back 3 fabrics below are scraps from the quilt and the front 2 FQs are new fabrics I thought could work for the hexies. Now I'm not so sure there is enough contrast in the dark purples. I intend to piece the hexies so maybe I can still use these fabrics but add in more lights or maybe even some black somewhere.

Tonight I have to do the housework I successfully avoided all weekend...ughhh...

PS - I almost forgot to remind all y'all to come back tomorrow for The Biblipphile Files and let us know what you're reading!!

A new hobby?

Why yes ... it IS snowing again but see the Arts Council (ACWC) there across the street from my office? On the 4th Monday of the month they offer art classes for a small fee. Often they are painting or drawing which I have a severe lack of skills for. Last night it was Zentangle!!

For just $5 we got this great kit! Cloth bag, 01 pigma pen, pencil, blender, 5 tiles and acrylic case and several handouts. I ate the choco already. Sorry! Ok, not really...

For another $5 I bought 10 more tiles in a case. Chris, the teacher, said that good quality water color paper would also work but I liked the acrylic cases to carry/store them in and I thought $5 was a cheap treat for myself. Any excuse, right?!

For the class we started  by learning these 4 tangles. The shading really changes them. I did discover that less lead was better than more when it came to shading.

Horribly out of focus but here are the tiles the entire class made - amazing how me made the same tangles but the tiles are all so different.

Chris went on to teach us some of her favorite tangles.

During break Chris had supplied lavender shortbread topped with lemon salt and the ACWC provided several tea flavors. Yummo! She had also put out these spectacular napkins. She washed the muslin, hemmed and tangled them and then heat set the ink. I am sewwwwww making some of these for my next tea party. Wouldn't they make great gifts? I also need to get a signature shortbread recipe since I really could have gone for another piece last night... Suggestions?

I've been looking at tangles as machine quilting opportunities and now I am even more excited! I know it's hard to see in some of the pictures but I have already stitched pebbles (ZT calls them perfs) and the spiral design called Rick's Paradox is essentially what I used on my Walkabout quilt which I just discovered I either never photographed or didn't label  properly. Oops.

Now before certain people get worried about my hexies...
A - Yes, I will at some time tangle a hexie something or other.
B - They asked me to teach one of these monthly classes on hexies. whoo hoo! New converts!!

I think my zentangle pin board is going to be expanding soon...

HST with the Easy Angle

This is a table runner I made to teach half square triangles with the Easy Angle. I explained the math method (add 7/8") first and and then removing the papers from Thangles and then they were more than ready to learn how to use the ruler. LOL.

I didn't finish the runner, planning to also teach the pillowcase method of finishing a project but they already knew the method. Go figure. I'll just finish it up soon and take it back to the LQS so the next set of 101 students will sign up for 102. Now I need to come up with a 103 class. Any suggestions?

If you haven't picked up an Easy Angle, or the Companion Angle, I highly recommend them both. I probably use my Easy Angle at least once a week.




All y'all have random boxes on your floors for the cats, right?
This Swanson box is perfect for little Midgie to sit in.
=^..^=

Quiltsgiving

Do you read the Elm Creek Quilts series?

Last fall "The Giving Quilt" was released: the story takes place during Quiltgiving, a quilt retreat after Thanksgiving to make quilts for Project Linus. I won't give away the plot since it's a great book, just like the rest of the series, but I will share that the pattern for the featured quilt was listed on the website!

In the same spirit, I thought this would make a nice class at my LQS to promote charity quilts. Over the weekend I finished the borders and have loaned the top to the LQS for their fair display. I'll get it quilted later this year... and then see who I might donate my quilt to...

Class Sample

Do you remember the batik sample I made before I had to make a class sample? No? Well here it is again.

I finally got the last border on the actual class sample this morning! I must say that I just adore this fabric line and will be sad to give the sample to the store (she provided the fabric) so I best come up with something for me from the scraps...


While drafting this in EQ, I had to decide how to angle the strips and liked that the four corners pointed in.
 I swear this was purely coinkydink but if you look really close in the middle you will see an "S"!!!

 This is such an easy project because it's made from jelly roll strip sets. I modified the original magazine pattern that was geared for multi-width scraps to work from a 36 strip jelly roll and that includes the pieced border as well. I can't wait to see what fabrics the students pick for their quilts...

Look ma! No wrinkly borders!

Houston Classes Continued...

Keep your fingers crossed that Blogger will be a little friendlier...

My second class was Saturday morning and called "Fantasy Flowers." Again we spent a lot of time on the prep work and not the stitching. For me that was fine because I have a "little" experience on the topic but there were some newbies that had no idea what they were doing. I think another hour of class might have helped - the newbies to learn the stitching and the rest of us to get more done on the project. Also, where as I baste in a manner so that I don't have to take the basting stitches out later, she uses freezer paper patterns and must remove the basting to take out the patterns. I think I'll stick to my way but I'm glad to have had the chance to try hers. The real premise of the class was using pieced fabric to create alternative designs within the paper pieced project. The teacher sews strips together and places a certain section of the template along those seams to get the spiralling designs. She gave us plenty of extra strips to go home and play with. AND as teacher's pet for this class, I got to take all the leftovers home. Wootwoot!

Teacher on the far right. Yes, those are my diamond hexies on the display wall along with the teacher samples.

Our class project - we were supposed to learn all three flower designs and the prairie points.

As far as I've gotten on my class project. It needs a good pressing and then to remove the basting stitches and the freezer paper. Luckily the class kit included the supplies to make the rest of the flowers as well as the background and other fancies.

 

Another possibility - leave out one of the "bishop" or jewel shapes for a different flower

Fussy cutting fabric for the center or adding embroidery add plenty more details.