How fun is this???

I opened my email the other day, and someone had sent me this picture from the display of Thread Tails and Vapor Trails exhibit at the Road to California quilt show. My quilt "Going Home" is the one on the left. I just cannot begin to tell you thrilling it is for me to think that my little quilt is travelling the country. So thank you Shirlee for sending this to me.
Until next time,
-Karen

A new name

After much contemplation, I have named my little gift from Em. It's called "Beauty Waits". To me, the circle of chores and responsibilities of life are always there - for all of us. Each day as I work at my desk, I can see this little quilt. I think about the end of the day when I will go home. And so, each day, no matter what our individual lives look like, beauty waits and calls for us to come and create.
Have a great Friday.
Until next time, make something beautiful,
-Karen

Ooooh, it's a little love from Utah

Last week, I posted a comment on Em's blog and what happened next was, well, I guess just meant to be. She was working on this little wallhanging, and asked for interpretations. I wrote about my perspective of working full time and balancing my household responsibilities with the need and desire to create beauty. That struck a chord with Em and we connected in a little long distance "quilty" way. I replied, then Em replied and the next thing I knew, she told me this was on it's way from Utah to Florida!! You can read all about it on her blog. The quilt arrived this morning and now proudly hangs in my office. :) I can't wait to tell people the story of how it came to live here (I'll actually only tell the poeple who I think would really care LOL!). It looks so perfect here.

This is the view from my desk, I can see both Tin Man (my current office quilt) and now my "O" quilt. I haven't come up with a name yet, but I will. With all this going on, I have to really focus to get any work done (only kidding).

So thank you so much Em, for this gift of friendship. Utah is a long way from Florida and we may never meet, but you never know - I'm just saying........
Hope you all are having a great Monday!
-Karen

Basket Decision

Since we've had temperatures in the 20's and 30's here in Florida over the last few weeks, I put my basket quilt on the bed as it's extremely warm. I used wool batting since I was going to hand quilt it and hand quilting with wool is the best!! I started quilting this about 4 or 5 years ago. I paid to have it basted by a long armer, and couldn not wait to start quilting!! After about 7 or 8 rows, I stopped, overwhelmed by the size and difficulty seeing the marked design. This wonderful quilt has been waiting for the last 5 years for me to finish. I've now know, I never will. I have decided to spend a few days carefully ripping out all my hand quilting and then machine quilt it.This quilt is too pretty and has too many special memories to not get finished. If any of you have projects that you've started hand quilting, and know that you will never go back and finish, don't be afraid to un-quilt and go in a different direction. It's very liberating to finally have made this decision. I'll keep you posted. I've got a few things ahead of this, but I will get to it. And then I'll have to decide how to machine quilt it. When I started this quilt in 1998 or so, machine quilting it was not even a blip on my radar screen. How our craft has changed in the last 10 years - at least for me!

If any of you have any suggestions on quilting designs for baskets, I would love to hear them.

Until next time, make something beautiful.

-Karen

My January Quilt

The Christmas quilt is gone and hanging for the first time is one of the quilts from Scrap-Basket Sensations - Northern Comfort. Thanks for all the wonderful comments on Kim's new book. It's been fun seeing how excited people have been. This quilt looks so perfect in my living room and is a perfect January quilt.

Kind of wintery looking but warm and inviting. The chair doesn't look this purply-red in real life so the quilt looks wonderful. It will be hard not to pull it down and cuddle under it. It's a good thing I have a few other quilts lying around LOL! It was 23 degrees in Pensacola a few days ago!! But no snow - my DH was so disappointed!

Here's a close up of the quilting. Hope you all are staying warm and having a wonderful Saturday.

Until next time,

-Karen

Introducing Scrap-Basket Sensations

This is such an exciting post for me - my friend Kim Brackett is introducing her new book (click on her name to check out her blog)! It's the sequel to "Scrap Basket Surprises" and is due out January 11th. It is with great joy that I get to show you the quilts I made for "Scrap-Basket Sensations". I think it is safe to say that when I met Kim almost 15 years ago, publishing two quilting books was something that never came up during our daily sit and sew time over lunch. Her friendship is one of the true treasures in my life. Thank you Kim for allowing me to contribute to your books, you know what a joy it has been for me.

This first quilt is called "Flowers for Nana Girl" and I think it's my favorite ( although it's really hard to choose LOL). I absolutely love it not only because it's beautiful but because it will always remind me of Nana Girl and how I came to be called that by my granddaughter. Kim tells the story in the book. After picking out the border fabric I chose about 5 pieces to coordinate, bought the yellow background and the green for the leaves. The rest of the fabric all came from my stash.

This next quilt is "Flower Boxes". This picture doesn't even begin to capture how beautiful this quilt is. When I first looked at Kim's choices for her new book, this one just leaped off the page. It's so different from anything I've seen done with 2 1/2" strips! What's even more amazing is that there is only one block for this whole quilt! The pastels in all shades look so pretty when paired with the soft brown.

This quilt makes my heart smile. It looks really old. The main fabric line used was Wicasset but I added quite a bit of my stash including the outer border, the back and the binding. There's a big feather design in the border and the whole thing looks old and well-loved. It's definitely a cuddle quilt.

The last one is called "Northern Comfort". The warm blues, browns, reds and greens are 100% within my comfort zone. For years, my quilts looked just like this and so instead of calling it Southern Comfort I chose Northern since I'm originally from New York. This quilt primarily uses fabric from the Vine Creek line with very little from my stash.

I can't wait for you all to get your own copy of this wonderful book. The thing I love about Kim's books is that while they are all made from 2 1/2" strips, they all are designed to use random fabrics from your own stash so they have a true scrappy feel. But they still look good done with precuts.

In addition to my quilts, Kim asked Mary from Quilt Hollow and Darlene from Quilting Daze to make quilts for the books. Check out their blogs to see what they have to say. The 4 of us have had such fun over the past year. I hope that we all get to meet someday. Because of our blogs, we all feel like we have become friends.

Be sure to keep looking for details for the upcoming Book Blog Tour! You can win your own copy of Kim's new book.

Until next time, make something beautiful.
-Karen

The Tin Man

I got this book in 1994 as a gift from my 94 year old great aunt and have looked thru it many times over the years. It's a great idea book.
One of the quilts that caught my eye was this one. How cute for a little guy's room. My partner in crime (aka Kim) and I were looking for a joint project to work on and I thought of this little quilt.

I drafted a pattern (since the book is just pictures), we raided our stash fabric (which were mostly homespun and plaids at the time) and away we went. We each pieced the blocks and I quilted it.

We finished this in probably 1998 (I need to do a better job of dating things) and now it's hanging in my office! After 13 years - still full of fun memories.

And lest you think I forgot the kitties, here they are :).

Oh, and here's the back. I re-drafted the pattern to a much larger size and put one on the back. I love back art - should do it more.

Thanks for taking a walk down memory lane with me.

Until next time,
-Karen

MIAGIA Update

From down here in Pensacola, FL I've been promising a certain quilter in Chicago, IL for several months that I would do a post about this, and today is the day!! (Sorry it's taken me this long). After my guest appearance on Stash Manicure back in July, I got a bunch of emails from people about my Miagia idea (Make it and give it away). I began to correspond back and forth with this one person and she sent me progress pictures. Her name is Annie and here's her finished Miagia. She told me she had lots of old, ugly fabric and she wanted to try my idea and see if she could use some of it up. She doesn't have a blog, but here is how you can find her and see her wonderful work: www.flickr.com/photos/sequana. I'm so excited to have been the spark for this idea. Her quilt is completely made from stash - the whole point of SM and of Miagia's. It's using stuff you will probably never use for yourself, and making something wonderful for someone else - someone you will probably never know. Here's her back. This was also from her stash LOL! Thanks Annie for trying out my idea and great job on a finished Miagia!!

And these are some pictures taken from our guild's community quilt night group. We have a great group of quilters that love to come and sew. We've used Kim Brackettt's book "Scrap Basket Surprises" for a bunch of them. Our guild supports several local charities. They're getting pretty good at making Miagia's.

Good old rail fence blocks.

Hard at work :).

From a tutuorial I did on Stash Manicure I taught them the easy folded method of bow tie blocks and these girls had a ball!! It's an unbelievably fun block to do and you can use just about anything!!!

I believe these are bright enough to keep us awake for quite a while LOL!!

Hope you're inspired to get out that stash and start cutting. There are loads of good charities and people that would love a quilt! So just make it and give it away!!
Until next time, make something beautiful.
-Karen

Guild Challenge

Our guild is having a challenge and it's due next month. It's called Chasing the Rainbow based on Sherrill Kahn's wonderful fabric. Each person started with a 5 inch square cut from the same fabric.
The rules were pretty simple: you can only use the colors found in your 5" sample. You don't have to use all the colors, but you can't add any color not found in your sample. So below, you see my mess of fabrics that I've pulled to match (see the pineapple pile in the background, I'm still working on that too LOL!).

We're using this wonderful book by Sharyn Craig and Pamela Mostek. Each challenge in this book has 2 parts. So the second part of the challenge is that you have to include at least one Square in a Square block. The quilt is to finish at 36-40 inches square. That's it!!

So here's what I've got so far. I can't show the whole thing yet.

And here are some of the blocks I've done. Not sure of the final set yet. This quilt is "telling" me what to do as I go along. The perfect thing for a challenge. This particular challenge has been more difficult than I thought. There aren't any lights in the fabric.

But the coolest thing will be to see all the quilts that have come from the same piece of fabric. Each one a part of the rainbow. I'm really excited. I've got less than 2 months for the big reveal!!

Until next time,

-Karen

New Year Thoughts

It's hard to believe that I've just passed my one year mark for my blog. It has been so amazing to me to meet and "talk" with people from all parts of the country and all over the world. Some of you I feel have become friends and that's an amazing thing to me. I'm looking forward to 2011- there is such hope to see a whole year stretched out in front of you. I've been reading alot of blogs where people are listing their projects for the new year. It's fun to see all the potential, but there seems to be such pressure on us as quilters to finish all the projects. Years ago, we simply curled up and spent months either hand piecing or hand quilting our projects (or at least I did). I know times have changed, but I hope we can resist putting such productivity pressure on ourselves and find the joy in the journey. Having said that..... here's my project I would love to finish this year. And I'm completely stuck!!!

I finished piecing this quilt in about 2002, had it basted and started hand quilting it. And here it still sits :(.. My friend Kim and I made this as a joint project together and of course, she finished hers and gave it away - hand quilted mind you LOL!!

Can you see all the great Robyn Pandolph fabrics (I remember we were obsessed with her fabrics).

Here's the back art (love it!!).

Here you can see some of the quilting. It's the orange peel pattern.

Most of the markings have evaporated off the front, so even if I wanted to finish, I can't see them any more.

Thanks for listening and sharing this journey with me.

Until next time, make something beautiful.

-Karen