Quilt Show Goodies

I didn't have a lot of time to shop the vendors at the show, but I did come home with this beautiful amethyst basket.

 It supports the Heifer Project and I love that buying this basket helps someone halfway around the world.  It was made in Ghana, Africa of Elephant Grass with goat hide handles. It supplies milk to needy families.  This is my third basket from the Heifer Project, but I especially loved this color and shape. (And doesn't Jubilee Tribute look pretty on the chair?)

And then on Saturday my number was picked during our Chinese Auction and I won this cute basket of some fat quarters, thread, note pad and book.  It's always so much fun to win something :).

Still trying to recover.  I'll be back to normal soon.

Happy stitching,

Karen

The Journey has Begun

I finally got up the nerve to count all these baskets - 179!!! And they say it starts with one. So after several days of trying to decide on a quilting design, last night I started quilting. I am so conflicted about this quilt. I love it so much, and I'm so afraid I will be disappointed when I'm finished. I started this in either 1998 or 1999. It was either the second or third project that Kim and I worked on together. I have zillions of memories of the two of us using our lunch hour appliqueing basket handles on the prettiest pink and green fabrics we'd ever seen. I still feel that way too. This quilt is one of my all time favorites for many reasons. Here is the monster on my table. Can you see the puffy wool batting? This is one of my issues.

I always meant to hand quilt this and I love to hand quilt with wool batting. But now that the decision has been made to fmq, the wool is very puffy and doesn't really hold the layers together the way a cotton batting does so there are little tucks all over the place, and I've only done like 10 blocks! I'm so wishing I had a nice piece of 80/20.

While I'm pretty happy with this design, my stitch in the ditch skills are quite lacking :(. This is really an understatement - it's quite discouraging. I know I will improve over the course of 179 baskets, and I'm hoping the overall look will hide the individual mishaps. Here is what the back looks like.

This shadowed picture shows the pattern better. It will eventually have little feathers on the other side of the basket. So far, this can all be done as continual quilting, not having to break the thread or do any back tracking - which I really like. I have a hunch this will go on and off the machine often as I can only do so much of this "custom quilting" and I use those words loosely LOL!! I've already changed a few things and I'm not going back and rip out!

Sorry to do so much whining. I guess I just needed to vent. Now that I don't have my buddy Rodger to talk to when I sew (still miss that little guy), I'm glad I have bloggy friends.

Until next time,

-Karen

One Stitch At a Time

Well, after 3 days of ripping, all of my hand quilting stitches are gone from my basket quilt. I'm using a wool batt, so those little darlings were way down in there - arghhhh!! But I truly know in my heart, I would never have finished HQ this quilt.First off, it got way too big, and secondly, the quilting marking design was almost impossible to see.
So I am happy that one day my beautiful baskets will be done.

My problem now is.......... how to machine quilt this. Here's my basket post from a few months ago. As always, any suggestions are more than welcome.

Have a great day,
-Karen

Making Progress

I hope you all are enjoying the blog book tour for Scrap-Basket Sensations!! Go see Kim and say hi - she's so excited to have you all know about her wonderful book. It's been a busy weekend for me (social obligations), so not a lot of quality time sewing, but..... I do have the top together - WooHoo!!! My Tipsy Baskets are not so tipsy, so I've named this Winding Baskets, as each row of baskets follows from one direction the next. The colors in the Martinique collection are so subtle and beautiful. I'm hoping to be able to have this quilted by the time it's my turn, but remember, I do have a full time job outside my home!!I'm also working on the burning question...... what do you do with all those little triangles??? LOL!! Here I am trimming them up.

I press open the seam and trim them to 1 3/4". Stay tuned, there's more to come on this too.

Don't forget the blog book tour.
Sherri at A Quilting Life - February 10th
Mary at Quilt Hollow - February 11th
Stephanie at Loft Creations - February 12th
Nicole at Sister's Choice Quilts - February 13th

Today is Millie's day!!!! Check out her wonderful blog and leave a comment to win a copy of Kim's great new book!

Millie at Millie's Quilting - February 14th
Sinta at Pink Pincushion - February 15th
Darlene at Quilting Daze - February 16th

Ooohhh, my day is coming soon - yay!!
Karen at Nana Girl Quilts - February 17th
Sue at Quilt Times - February 18th
Carol at Brown Quilts - February 19th

Have a Happy Valentine's Day.
-Karen

Sneak Peek...

In case you haven't heard...... there's a blog book tour going on!! Scrap-Basket Sensations is finally here!! Today is Mary's day over at Quilt Hollow. Be sure to check it out. My day is coming up next week, and so in the meantime, I've been working hard on having some new show and tell for you. Here's a sneak peak of my version of the pattern "Tipsy Baskets". I'm using a jelly roll of Martinique by 3 Sisters. I haven't worked with jelly rolls that much in the past, I work mostly with fabric from my stash when doing scrap quilts. So this project has presented some challenges for me. I had trouble getting enough value difference for the basket pattern to show up. I found a few "taupey" fabrics in my stash that seemed to blend in (see the stripe bottom left hand corner). I'm considering a different set from the one in the book.... we'll see :). Not sure if I'll have the whole quilt finished by next week or not- I'm still busy sewing. I hope you all are enjoying the blog book tour so far and are getting to know the author, Kim Brackett, a little better. Here's the schedule:

Sherri at A Quilting Life - February 10th
Mary at Quilt Hollow - February 11th
Stephanie at Loft Creations - February 12th
Nicole at Sister's Choice Quilts - February 13th
Millie at Millie's Quilting - February 14th
Sinta at Pink Pincushion - February 15th
Darlene at Quilting Daze - February 16th
Karen at Nana Girl Quilts - February 17th
Sue at Quilt Times - February 18th
Carol at Brown Quilts - February 19th

Hope you're all having a great day!

Until next time,

-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

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