Let the fun begin!

Today I began the Applique Basics Series Class at Quilt in a Day. January was supposed to be the first one, but we got started a little late. No worries. We dove right in.

Now, how does this go again?

They cut, they glued.....

Do you see the little green blob in the middle of the table? Those are cupcakes and Girl Scout cookes. They were so focused
that nobody even touched them!

 THEY CONQUERED! All in only 3 hours. See, applique isn't so bad now, is it?

Our class over-achiever even got a flower done...yay Dawn!

Next class is March 21. I can't wait to see the progress!

It's coming together. I have given myself a deadline to finish this because I have already said I would hang it in the guild quilt show and it is still in a lot of pieces.

Oh yes, the rookie mistake. I'm not a rookie. Been quilting for a long time. So when I totally forgot that applique draws up the fabric and you have to cut the background block bigger, then trim it to size, it made for a terrible, horrible no-good very bad day. (A book my kid used to love).

Had to do the WHOLE quilt over. Cuz now not only did the blocks not fit together, I no longer liked the layout or the colors of the setting blocks.

Will post a pic very soon.

And here is my baby:

Star Struck Hearts. I feel as though I have given birth. Still have border to do and sew down the hearts, but here is a pic of the almost finished product.

Would love to know what you think.

A New Direction: Chapter 2

So I challenged myself to use all (or a portion at least) of those scraps.  The plan was to work in only one color.  I picked the color green because saw on a quilty show somewhere in the distant past that all greens go together. Well, sort of.  turned out I didn't have quite the zillion and a half different greens I needed to make it work. Had to add some background.

I fired up my trusty computer, went to EQ7 and started designing. I picked a shoo-fly in a square block. But I soon realized that I needed more color...

Here is the shoo-fly in a square:

I got really bored with just these and so I created an original applique block made up of a wreath of hearts on a snowball background.

Here is the heart wreath block: (By the way, I need a clever name for this block. Any ideas?)

So it turns out after sewing 13 shoo-flys, and 12 heart wreaths of all different colors.....I made a rookie mistake.

Stay tuned...

A new direction

For a while now I have dreamed of designing quilt patterns.

While on retreat last year in Danville, CA with Verna Mosquera of The Vintage Spool, I confided this dream to her and she encouraged me to "just start". Well, I couldn't imagine how you "just started" but I took it in.

Finally, I thought the best way to "just start" was to "just make a quilt". Of course, one must have some inkling of an idea first, so it all began as the desire to tame the scraps. I have piles of scraps...















Bags of scraps...













Bins of scraps...

So I started.

Stay tuned.