Quilting Resolutions 2010

It's almost 2010, geez where did the year go! Actually where did the decade go? It just seems like yesterday that everyone was running around freaking out about the whole Y2K situation, stockpiling water, and waiting for chaos to unfold around them. And I would like to go on record as being VERY disappointed that my lights did not even flicker during the whole 2000 New Year's celebration. With all the hype, I was hoping the light would at least go out for a minute or two.....but no......

My quilting buddies in the Wild Threads had to come up with quilting resolutions for our meeting this week. I thought that was a fun idea since I like to put my goals down in black and white so I can see them. Here's what I came up with....

1. I vow to remove all UFO's from my life. I will either finish them up, give them away, or disassemble them so they are no longer cluttering up my life. I will do this by March 2010.

2. I vow to do ONE Orange Peel block a week. Then by the end of 2010 I will have them all done.

3. I vow to do TWO blocks per week from the "Farmer's Wife Sampler". I will have most of the blocks done by the end of the year if I follow this plan.

4. I vow to finish my wool flowers quilt this year. I might even manage to quilt it if I ever decide on how.

5. I vow to do ONE block from the "Dog Yeared" CD per month this year. I will have them all done by the end of the year if I manage to stick to this plan.

6. I vow to do ONE technique per week from the book "Fabric Embellishments" this year and create my very own technique book. It would be good for me to do this and learn some new tricks.

7. I vow to continue to hate making t-shirt quilts but also to continue to make them since they are a cash cow and the fabric addiction needs to be funded from some source.

This is my plan for 2010, now to see how it turns out! So stay tuned for updates and photos of my progress!

Happy New Year's!!

kathy

Merry Christmas!!

Tommorrow the big day! I'm done with the wrapping, gotta make a few more cookies, and then its off to NJ! The boys and I made some really cute clay creatures to give as gifts.....Here's Rudolph and Donner....



Then we have a snowman, a baby seal, Santa (try and visualize the screws as his beard), and another red nosed reindeer.






Finally, we made my dog Raven, She is a husky.....we had two versions of her. We even made her a sleight and a snow wall.



Finally, with all the quilting I have done for others the last month, I took some time and made myself this adorable lunch bag for work! I even made napkins and an ice pack cover for it too. Isn't it cute!



I quilted little flowers....cupcakes and flowers....can't get more girly than that!




Merry Christmas everyone!!!!

kathy

SNOW!!!

This past weekend we had a lots and lots of snow!!!! What did I do during the snow? I went outside and played along with my dogs and boys......then I came inside and made some cookies and got some sewing done. Today, being Monday, it was time to head back to work but the snow will be here when I get home waiting for me. Gotta make the most of it before it melts away!

Less than two weeks to go....

So, just what have I managed to do this past week? Hmmmm.....

I finished up 3 t-shirt quilts and 3 pillows for a client.
I quilted a top for another client.
I worked on my Blue Christmas quilt for my Elvis tribute.
I started a brand new job.
I made a really sinful cake which, between the icing and cake, used 7, yes that's right, 7 sticks of butter! And it was verrrrrrry tasty! It was for Brad's birthday, he's 8 now.
I wrapped all the kids presents and gave them to my folks to haul to NJ since that's where Santa's heading this year.
I fixed up the bathroom.
I walked with my baby girl Raven in a 5k while Jack ran it. My friend Janine, hubby Ed, Brad, and Mikey walked in the 1 mile fun walk.
I went to the Ravens game in the freezing rain. By half time, I had lost feeling in my hands in arms.

Now it's Sunday night, I guess I got more done than I thought I did!! Horray!!! Let's see what I manage to get done this week......

Have a great Monday!
kathy

Blue Christmas

Gotta sew, sew, sew!! And offer a sacrifice to the snow gods to send us some of that white stuff the weather guy is predicting! Here's a peak at my Blue Christmas trees.....they are coming along good and with any luck they will actually be done in time for Christmas.

Thanks Lisa for sharing this!!! You can win a ton of great prizes plus learn a little bit about my Christmasy spirit! Here I go!

Mama’s Holiday Wish List MemeTodaysMama and Provo Craft are giving away a sleighful of gifts this holiday season and to enter I’m sharing this meme with you.

What 5 items are on your holiday wish list this year?
*a new extra wide ironing board
*Gwen Marton's new book "Liberated Quiltmaking II" (it won't be published til Jan. though)
*a gift certificate for Pennington Quiltworks in NJ
*chocolate, the dark kind
*dinner at PF Chang's....I've always wanted to go there!

What is your favorite handmade gift you have received?
*this one's a toughy......probably the cards the kids have made for me. They draw and write such funny things

What handmade gift have you always wanted to tackle?
*None, I've always just done them when I wanted to....sometimes with better results than others. Just got to seize the day with experimenting!

What was the best Christmas gift you received as a child?
*my Singer sewing machine!!

What items are on your kid’s wish list this year?
*Legos
*Blast tickets
*more Legos
*Godzilla in all shapes and forms
*yet more Legos

What is your favorite holiday food?
*yet another toughie! I like them all!!! If I had to pick a few of them it would be cheesecake, baked brie, and those pepperoni/olive/cheese things we've been eating since I was a kid. And let's not forget port wine cheese spread......and cookies......and ham.....and, you get the idea..

What will you be hand-crafting for the holidays?
*Molten Chocolate cake gift bags
*My Blue Christmas tree quilt
*stockings, though I have been meaning to do that for three years now....
*pillow cases for the kids
*maybe a new quilt for Mikey.......its a pizza quilt.....its so cool, though it makes me hungry....
*who knows what else......gotta see how much time there is!

What is your favorite holiday movie?
*Christmas Vacation (squirrel!)
*Mr Magoo's Christmas Carol......I LOVE this movie!!

Favorite holiday song?
*Blue Christmas by Elvis.......see the connection to my Blue Christmas tree quilt....I even dyed my last piece of Elvis fabric blue to use in the quilt.....

Favorite holiday pastime?
*Hanging out with the family and friends
*Making cookies
*Drinking hot chocolate, eating popcorn and watching Christmas movies

Pin Cushions!

I've been on a pin cushion kick lately. There are so many cute patterns on the market and they are so quick to make.....I just can't help myself! I made a dozen donuts and sadly I don't have a photo of them. My kids were pretty mad when they realized the donuts were fake! Then I made a couple of pears.......

Aren't t they cute! My youngest son gave these a big thumbs up! He wants me to make the rest of the fruit that came with the pattern: a tomato, apple, and strawberry. Maybe after the holidays and I need a vision of summer.

Then I made some turtles.......

So cute! My middle son thought these were real adorable and wanted one for himself.

Now my big dilemma!! I am doing a Secret Elf Swap with Pat Sloan and I don't know which pin cushion to send my elf friend!!! Which one do you think I should send?

Woolly Flowers

It's Sunday.......and this Sunday I spend the afternoon on the soccer field. It was the last outdoor tournament of the fall season and I am thankful the weather was so nice today. I had a hour long wait between soccer games today so I worked on my woolly flowers. I started stitching these up two summers ago. In fits and starts I have worked on these flowers, doing the applique by hand with a primitive running stitch. Then today, I finished up the purple group! Horray!! I am about 1/3 of the way done all the blocks. My next color group to do is the reds/pinks. I can't wait to see how they are all going to look together so maybe that will get me stitching on these more often. Take a look at them....

Now I still have quite a few more to go but the thought that consumes me with these blocks is....how am I going to quilt it? Should I echo each flower by hand with a big running stitch? Or should I do something by machine? Now the last time I quilted something by hand was in high school so it worries me to commit hand quilting this but I do think that it would look pretty and I could do it in green thread......hmmm.....

What do you suggest? Have a great day everyone!

kathy

I did it!!!!

I made my first Orange Peel block for the "Don't Look Now" quilt along! Ok, I still need to sew it but its all cut, pinned and ready to go. Cutting it all out, then gluing down the seam allowances took about an hour and half. My points came out pretty good though they will get even better with practice.

Making some turtle pincushions this weekend. When they are done, I'll show them to you along with the pear pincushions. These are really too cute for words!

Have a great Saturday everyone!

kathy

Who has most influenced your quilting?

I just got home from watching Pat Sloan's trunk show at our guild meeting. It was a great lecture and lots of really neat quilts. I'm going to take the class tommorrow so I got to pack up my stuff for that still. During the meeting I started jotting down the quilters who have most influenced my quilting journey. Most of them I have never had the chance to meet in person. I've just read their books and admired their work. Here's my list:

Laura Heine- she taught me that your quilting thread does not have to be small and quiet but big and bold!

Valori Wells- she showed me that free motion quilting can be organic and free following. It does not have to follow a rigid pattern and be exactly the same for each motif. Valori has probably influenced my actual quilting style more than anyone.

Karen Stone- her scrappy patterns, use of tons of fabrics, and spikey edges opened up a new frontier for me. I actually has the opportunity to take a class with her several years ago and she is a great teacher.

Freddy Moran- her use of color, color, and more color!! Freddy tends to use many of the same blocks over and over again. She showed me how working in a series allows you to play with an idea and explore it further.

Gwen Martson- her liberated quilting making style showed me how much more interesting a design looks when each block is not all exactly the same. Also Gwen uses alot of solids which I used to think were "boring" fabrics until I saw how big of an impact solids have on a design. They elevated a quilt from being something you put on a bed to something you hang in an art gallery.

Unknown quilt show appraiser- I was talking to her and telling her how it was funny that I do so little applique but that is what I tend to excel in for the quilt show judging world. She told me, maybe the quilts are trying to tell you something......and this is encourage me to do more with creating my own appliques since these tend to be my "arty" pieces.

Who's influenced your quilting??????? Post a comment below, I would love to hear!

Mr Golden Sun

There's this Barney song that goes "Mr Sun, Sun, Mr Golden Sun, please shine down on me..." and after all the rain in the last few days, I was ready to starting singing that tune. When finally, Sunday, Mr Sun popped out! Horray!!! It it was a good thing because the championship game for Jack's soccer team was delayed so we were all at the soccer field for quite a long time. His team lost in double overtime. Jack was the goalie so he takes it rather personally. A trip to 7-11 and a large slurpee patched him up.

On Saturday I went to a quilt marathon for my guild. It was alot of fun but I tend to talk too much and not get any sewing done. And this time I had to run out in the middle of the day to go to......yes, a soccer game! But I did manage to get a pillow done. It's from Pat Sloan and it's free! There's a 12 Days of Christmas Blog Hop going on and every day you get a free pattern from a different person. It's been alot of fun and I have gotten some really cute patterns!!

Here's my pillow and my eager assistants.....

Have a fantastic day and enjoy the sun!!!

kathy

It's a wet, wet day!

Well, it's raining again.......and just when I head out to do some errands, it really starts coming down. So I got a little wet. Came home, dried off and had some meatball soup for lunch. It was very tasty. I spend the afternoon free motion quilting a queen top for someone. It went much quicker than I thought it would. And it probably helped that I dragged my sewing machine upstairs and used the kitchen table to take the bulk of the quilt.

Then tonight, Jack had a soccer game, in the rain. So back out into the rain. His team won and since it's a tournment, he'll play again tommorrow. When I got home, Raven who's my dog, wanted to go for a walk......back out into the rain, AGAIN!

Now, I'm all dried off and I finally found a compass big enough to allow me to draw my pattern for the "Don't Look Now" quilt along.....so that's what I'm going to do.

Here's a picture of quilt I made a while ago and donated to charity. It ought to brighten your rainy days with the happy colors!



Have a great weekend!

kathy

Project Linus

This past Saturday I went to a Project Linus Quilt a Thon in memory of two special people, Wil and Katie Brady, who's lives ended way too early. I took the boys along and spend the day with many others stitching quilts in their memory. Even my husband came by and helped with pinning quilt blocks. Before going I had each of the boys pick out fabric for a quilt to make. My hubby and I picked out fabrics too. Then I cut it all up and bagged it so it would be ready to sew up at Project Linus.

My oldest son, Jack, wanted to sew his quilt himself. He really wanted to go to the Quilt a Thon to help. When Wil and Katie died last year, he struggled to understand the chain of events surrounding the accident. It was hard enough as an adult to grasp how something like this could have happened. It is still hard.

After about 4 hours of stitching, he was ready for some help to finish it up. Myself and another friend Tricia helped him finished his top that day. Here it is.....

Jack's younger brothers helped with sewing their quilt tops. They got a real kick out of pushing the sewing machine pedal to make it "go". Their quilts aren't quilt finished yet. Hopefully this week I'll get them done. I'm very proud of Jack. He worked hard and helped make a difference in more ways than he will ever know.

In memory of Wil and Katie Brady..... To find out more about Project Linus or the Katie and Wil Memorial Foundation, click here.

Red, White and Blue!

The Turkey Track blocks are done!!!! Horray!! I joined a block swap over at Pat Sloan's "Death by Quilting" and signed up to do two sets of blocks (6 reds and 6 blues). They are in patriotic colors and they came out really good! I'm going to mail them off tommorrow and eagerly wait for my package of blocks to arrive. I already have a design picked out for how to set them all.

As promised here's some photos of the "most ugly fabric in the world" quilt....and it's in patriotic colors too. Just can't go wrong with red, white, and blue.

I'm going to be finishing up quilts for other people in the coming weeks. The one bad thing about being a quilter for hire is you don't always have time for your own special projects. But almost all the stuff I have scheduled needs to be done by Thanksgiving. I'm hoping to spend some time in December on my next "artsy" quilt. We'll see.....

kathy

Ugly Fabric

I have finally met a piece of fabric that is even too ugly for me. And I LOVE ugly fabric! I collect it, hoard it, and save it for just the right quilt. Heck, I even made a whole quilt out of ugly fabric that I received from an Ugly Fabric Challenge. That quilt by the way is the header for my blog. It's called Ugly Kathy......I love that quilt. It's so ugly, it has a seductive dark beauty that pulls you in.....kinda like those dogs with all the wrinkles.

Anyway! I was asked to create a small quilt with this ugly red, white, and blue batik. Here's what is looks like:

And this looks better than the real fabric! The real fabric doesn't have such pure white tones as the red and blue bleeds into it. But I was up for a challenge so I did a bit of web surfing and found a pattern I thought would work over at Bonnie Hunter's website called "Playing with Jacks".

And you know what??!!? The quilt turned out wayyyyy better than I could ever imagine. I'll have a picture to share with you tommorrow!

Have a great night!

kathy

Another rainy day....

I love Halloween. It's my favorite holiday of the year. I even got married the day before Halloween. We had apple bobbing at the reception, the DJ played the Monster Mash, and everyone wore costumes. I went as a witch while my hubby wore a prisoner's outfit with a ball and chain around his ankle. Funny guy huh!

So today I thought I would share a few of my favorite Halloween quilts I have made with you.

I made four of these quilts this past month. Why you ask? Because the pattern came with four tissues paper patterns to use for paper piecing so I thought might as well do all of them. I kept one and gave the others away.

The pattern is by Cindi Edgerton and when I bought the Halloween one, I bought the Christmas one too. We'll see if I get that one done in time for the holidays. The quilts are only 15 by 19 inches. So I thought it would be real fast to sew up, but I forgot the flying geese factor. See those flying geese? They're only about 3/4 of an inch wide......and there's lots of them....took a while to get all those done!



But it turned out real cute so it was worth the trouble.....especially since I got someone else to take out the tissue paper for me! Thanks Judy! She got to keep one of the quilts for her paper removal skills. My mom and future sister in law got the other two.

What do you think this is?

A cat? A monster? Fish eyes?

Does this help?

It's a bat!! I love this quilt! I made it a few years ago and it's still one of my favorites. Here's the whole thing....

I did a curvy sashing and border and used my famous yarn binding! No bias binding for me!

Go stitch up some Halloween fun and hope it doesn't rain on Halloween night!

kathy

My first posting

Well, I finally went ahead and started a blog. I joined an online quilt along at "Don't Look Now" and want to share with everyone my progress. Right now I am finishing up my quilt "Cakes!". It's the first in the series of quilts based on the color orange.

The pattern is from the "Buggy Barn". I love the Buggy Barn way.....stack the fabrics, cut them all up at once, shuffle things around, and sew them back together. I teach alot of Buggy Barn pattern classes here in Baltimore and the quilts always come out great!

I want to make the cake pattern again.....I have a few other ideas I want to test out and play with. I'll keep you posted on how it goes. Have a great day everyone!

kathy