Keeping Me Company

I finally got this hung in my studio today.  Dahlia Revisited is now officially set to keep me company.  I love the story behind this quilt and I think it's neat that this quilt is the one that is now hanging where I get to see it every day.  It reminds me each time I see it of my journey and my 45 years (and counting) of quilting.

The purple and green colors are so happy and the design is just so pleasing to me (which is a good thing since I made it).  I love piecework and applique - it's my favorite combination.

My studio is up over the garage in the bonus room space, so the walls are only 5 1/2 ft high.  This means my wall space is small and at a premium.  It may look a little "off" to be hanging so low, but it really fills the space and doesn't look wierd.  My wall are painted Marina Isle - a soft turquoise and so it looks almost like it was made for this room.

I'm a happy camper :).

The sun was out today and I spent time sewing. 

Perfect.

Karen

Trying Something New

I am trying to do a post using my new Christmas present from my DH- an iPad 😊.   I took these pictures a few weeks ago and never posted them.

After putting Christmas things away, I wasn't quite ready to put my table topper away.  So I turned it over!

It still adds a little color to my kitchen to get me thru some dreary January days.

So let's see hat happens.

Karen 

My New Best Friend

I keep forgetting I have this and so I've never used it.  After deciding that I wanted to quilt vertical, parallel lines on a border and I didn't want to use a marking pen - I remembered that I had bought this hera marker.  I'd seen people talk about it but I've never used mine.  So I dug thru my big basket of miscellaneous stuff and finally found it.

After trying another ruler that didn't work well, I am now using this ruler.  It's not super quick but not too bad to measure and mark the lines.

The lines look wonderful.  These lines were maked yesterday and they are still very visible.

And here are the lines stitched - almost perfect.  And there will be no marks to remove.  I'm loving this!!

I also wanted to share my latest finish - it's actually non-quilty.  I'm not a super accomplished knitter or crocheter (is that a word???) or obviously photagrapher but I can watch a video and usually figure it out.  After looking at a bunch of different designs, this is the shrug that I decided to make. 

These are not the greatest pictures but I hope you can see how cute it is.  It's just what I wanted, something to keep my shoulders and neck covered without making me too warm.  It was actually so much fun, I may make another one.

So this is my new best friend, the hera marker.  I had to put a ribbon on because I kept losing it, it's not very big.  If you have something you want to mark and are concerned about using a marker on it. try the hera, it just might become your new best friend.

Hope you had some happy time today.

Karen

The Reveal - Grand Illusion

So the final clue has been given, the mystery has been revealed.  One of the risks you run when you participate in a mystery quilt is that you might not like it.  And that's kind of a big deal as you have invested a lot of time and fabric.  Well, I'm really on the fence with this one.  While the colors have grown on me, I'm not a big fan of "twirly" blocks so I'm not sure where that leaves me.

One of the things I had to fix was to rip out all the center 4-patch blocks.  I was very intrigued by where and how these blocks would fit in.  Since we had to do 25 I kind of figured they would be the centers of the blocks.  But they should have been 2 aqua and 2 yellow blocks - no black.  No wonder I was intrigued, the blocks were wrong!!  So I had to rip these apart, cut more aqua squares and re-do the blocks.  Didn't take too long.

So this is what the center of the block looks like - I do like these colors.

In the picture below it's interesing to me to see the difference the green makes.  The blocks on the left look much more pink and black and not nearly as blended as the others.  I like the blocks better with the green sashings.

So I made enough units to make 16 blocks which will be plenty big for me. Bonnie's quilts are always so big I never make the total number of units for each clue.

 I'm still not sure about the border, it just doesn't do anything for me.  I've had to put this away for now, but I will play aournd with the border blocks when I get back to this.  As I've said before, this is my 5th mystery.  For the first few years I waited until the reveal to see if I wanted to make it.  But the last 2 years I've jumped in and played along not knowing if I would like the quilt or not.  

I'm glad I played along even if I'm kind of under-whelmed at this point.  I know a lot of people really love the way this quilt turned out.  It is a happy quilt and I promise I will finish it - the blocks are all done and pressed.  Thanks Bonnie for another fun project.

Happy Stitching,

Karen

A Fun Surprise

Five weeks have passed since I started this post but part of starting a new year is not procrastinating on certain things so I'm finishing it. (I've also got a few more in Draft that I'll get to shortly).  Back in November I got an email from a blogger friend  Teresa Marler letting me know that she has seen Organic Pink Pickles in this magazine and wondered if I'd seen it  yet.

Needless to say I had not and I was sooo excited.  I managed to get a peek at the magazine when I was in JoAnn's before Christmas.  Always a thrill..... it never.gets.old.

I'm off to plan a new baby quilt - pure joy!  Hope I can find the perfect fabrics.  And to start off this new year - it's going to be a modern quilt!!  Eeek, I hope I'm not going to the 'Bright Side" LOL!!

Happy stitching,

Karen