Icicles

As the last of winter melts away.....

Small Studies 2

Icicles through the Window

Small Studies 1

You may remember, some time back, I purchased Gwen Marston's book, 37 Sketches.  My intention was, one day stitching a series of Small Study quilts.  Well, around the end of summer I pieced together my first one, Small Studies 1.

Also, stitched the June Sweet Nostalgia block, Let's Play Ball.

And, appliqued my Fish Challenge quilt.

Today I finished stitching the July Sweet Nostalgia block, Fun at the Beach.  I am going to prep and start right into the August block as this is the last block.  It only took me what, four years?  Now I am rushing to finish!

Worked a bit on my Postage Stamp quilt and now have 992 stamps pieced together.  Small Studies 2 is almost finished. And, well thinking about warmer days to come, I prepped two quilts for spring, a small applique and a mid-sized quilt for hand piecing.

Still to show you, the center of my new hexagon quilt, Recipe for Friendship.  I stopped working on it back in the fall to take a picture before continuing on.  That's right; I have yet to take that picture!  Or a picture of my mini quilt top called, Camellia, or my latest Hocuspocusville block.

Besides quilting I have been working on crochet and slowly learning drop spindle.  My rug hooking is back out and will be completed  by the end of March.

Hope you are enjoying your winter as much as I am and all is well.

Until next time.....happy quilting!

Karen

Snow Days and More

Well, actually, everything I am about to show you was completed long before the snow started to fly.  As summer turned to fall I began stitching Snow Days, the January block of the Sweet Nostalgia BOM.

 

The last time I showed you my Kansas Dug-Out, I was deciding on border and binding colour.  As you can see I went with a black border and coloured binding.  This little dug-out was hand pieced and quilted, in the ditch, with black thread.

My third Hocuspocusville block, Spooky Lou's.

And, a long time coming, but now finished my Amish Stripe quilt.  Machine pieced in 2008 and recently hand quilted with a variegated thread.

I also machine quilted my free-form quilt and decided not to square up the edges before binding.  Letting it  remain in its free-form state seemed like the thing to do.

Remember Jeanneke's Building Houses with Scraps from last year?  Well, here is my mini version.  I hand pieced a house or two each month and put it all together before the end of the year.  Once hand quilted the binding will be done in the same fabric as the corner squares.

And, what I spent most of my time working on, my Shades of Autumn POTC quilt top.  The blocks were hand pieced in 2009-2010, but I still had a long way to go added the sashing and borders.

The colour in this photo is more true to the fabric I used for the Shades of Autumn POTC background.  So, try and image this earthy yellow colour instead of the washed out white (damn the camera) in the quilt top photo above,  Much nicer, yes?

That was autumn and it's on to winter, more to tell you another day.

Until next time.....happy quilting!

Karen

free-form test quilt

Never would I have thought, back when I started quilting, that one day I would make an Art Quilt, well, never say never I say!  It is so different from traditional quilt making that a whole new way of thinking is required, you almost feel naughty for trying it!

On a scale from one to ten, I'm not sure how my free-form test quilt would rate, but it was fun to make and something I would like to explore.  So, to get the creative juices flowing, I am going to follow Gwen Marston's lead and begin a series of what she calls Sketches or Small Studies.

This doesn't mean my traditional quilt making days are over, just a nice change when the mood strikes me and it will help keep the dust off my sewing machine.

Until next time.....happy quilting!

Karen

free-form quilts

According to Rayna Gillman, you can't make a mistake in free-form quilting, so with that said I jumped right in and gave it a try.  The plan was to read both books from cover to cover before I started, but when I got to the chapter on technique I couldn't help myself.  Once you get going, it is almost impossible to stop.  At some point, I will stop and piece this puzzle together, curious to see what I end up with.

 

Very exciting!

Release date: August 2012

Until next time.....happy quilting!

Karen