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