Makes me Smile

Well, at least for a while, Beauty for Ashes has a home. I've had a lot of good comments from co-workers since I put it up yesterday. They are always so sweet and encouraging. It's funny that it looks so good with the wall color. This must be a great green, it goes with a lot of things.
I've been wanting to do a spring/summer wallhanging for quite a while. I think this is actually the perfect size for the space.

This is the view as I walk down the hall from the main part of our office. I can't imagine how bare that wall would be if I wasn't allowed to hang quilts.

I still can't believe that after all those years, this quilt is actually done. That does make me smile. Out of the drawer and into the world. I should do that with more of my UFO's. LOL!

I do kind of miss my tree though :).......

Until next time, make something beautiful,

Karen

Beauty for Ashes

Many of you may remember last month when my DH was stranded in Scotland due to the volcanic ash. I started working on a pile of blocks that had been in a drawer for many years. Beauty for Ashes is done!! I still need to do a label telling it's story.
The name comes from a verse in the Bible - Isaiah 61:3 that says "..[He] will give them beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness." That perfectly described me for those few days. I needed a garment of praise for my spirit of heaviness. I claimed that verse and after 5 days of being stranded, my DH came home.

I always knew I wanted to add a basket of flowers to these blocks. It's a little bit of an odd shape, ended up being almost square. I will be taking this to the office, I think it will look great on my wall. And I'll get to enjoy it all day.

I had to go buy a few 1/8 yards of fabric for the flowers. This particular line - Secret Garden by Robyn Pandolph, has a very different coloring. Not very many things go with it.

I used a yellow thread for the machine quilting and I'm very pleased.

The flowers are some that I've used before, they are just perfect for me.

One thing I always do (for almost 20 years) is hide a cat in my quilts. Sometimes it is in the fabric (see the center) and sometimes when I can't find suitable fabric, and I add a cat at the end.

Here is the original Secret Garden quilt I made. This is hanging now in my Living Room. While antique shopping in Greensboro, NC with my Dad, we found this hanger. It's actually the back of a dresser. My Dad added a dowell and it's been used to display quilts for many years. I change them out seasonally, or as the mood strikes me.

I couldn't find any cat fabric to match so this got the cat at the end. So this is the end of my volcano saga. We are now dealing with the threat of the oil leak on Pensacola Beach. I don't even want to think about that.

So, until next time, make something beautiful.

Karen

How Many Circles??

This is one way I get to enjoy all the quilts I've made over the years. You already know I hang quilts on the walls, I put some over the fireplace and I have some draped over furniture. But I also always have one at the foot of my bed and change them out seasonally or whenever the mood strikes me. I used to make quilts for all the beds in the house. That ended when I was constantly getting upset when my DH or the kids sat on it with dirty clothes, or the cat had a hairball incident, etc. So I bought a coverlet, and now I just throw this in the washer when it's dirty and everybody is happy LOL!
I made this Yo-yo quilt about 18 years ago. As you can tell from the close ups of the fabric, these are vintage 1980's and 90's classic calicoes. It seemed I carried a bag of circles around for years. I carried them to soccer practices, little league games, dentist appointments, cheerleading practices, church softball games, family vacations, basically to everything my two children were involved in as they were growing up. They are now 34 and 31 so it has been awhile.

Most of the Yo-yo quilts I'd seen (and I hadn't seen that many) were made in a four patch layout. That is, they were only attached on the sides in a North, South, East, West orientation. This left a lot of open space showing, which I didn't really like. Even back then, it seems I didn't want to do anything "normal". So I set this in a Grandmother's Flower Garden layout (which I had never seen, but thought looked better) - that is, attaching them on 6 sides instead of 4.

Here's a picture of the back. Don't you recognize a bunch of these?? I hate to say I still have some of this fabric, but I've got a plan for that. Stay tuned for a future post :).

I think one of the neatest things about this quilt are the memories I have of my children's teenage years. In this scope of things, this quilt is not in the top 5 I'd carry out of a burning house..... but it is very special to me.

By the way, the circles are 1 1/4" finished and there are over 1,100 circles.

Until next time,

Karen

Wall Projects

When I started this project, I had nothing but a picture I'd taken of a friend's antique quilt that I had completely fallen for. After years of wishing I had that quilt, I decided to make one. (Now that I want to do a post about this, of course, I can't find any of the pictures I took.) So I started to cut up little strips of fabric, ties and my husband's shirts (old, of course). I think Bonnie Hunter would be very proud of me LOL!!
Well, all that cutting resulted in this. It's wonderful log cabin wall hanging and it hangs in my son's room. I guess my camera wasn't set right because this picture does not capture the color of the quilt.

This second picture shows the quilt exactly how it looks. It has a very warm feel to it with the gold center blocks. My father made the frame on one of their visits from High Point, NC. as I knew I'd never find one to fit.

The tinier I cut the strips, the better I liked it. I didn't really care about straight grain, color placement, etc. This is kind of like liberated quiltmaking Gwen Marston style. And I loved it!!

Since I had no pattern and no directions (I seem to do that alot I guess) there were no rules. So I ironed very stiff, fusible interfacing to the back and that was it. There is no quilting in this at all. When I look up close at the individual blocks, I think there's no way this could look good, but from a distance, it works. At least it works for me.

This is the second wall project in this room. Our Guild has a program called "At Home in the Guild". A member teaches a technique for any where from 6 to 10 people and we pay a very nominal fee that goes to the Guild. This was a technique where you took 1 piece of fabric and cut it up into little squares. You sorted by light, medium and dark and then started to make a picture.

This fabric started out as men riding horses, dressed in riding habits with hunting dogs all around. Of course, I don't have a picture of this one either. My idea was to create a scene from the Smoky Mountains of Western North Carolina, a place my husband and I love very much. I was hoping it would look like a sunset over the mountains. I made this for my DH one year for Father's Day.

It's not very good, but I'm just proud I finished it LOL!! It actually took a guild challenge for me to finish it and it was the second thing I ever machine quilted. Sometimes it's good to remind ourselves that as Diane Gaudynski says, our quilting gets better every day. At least I hope that's true.

So until next time,

Karen

Distraction Update

Late Wednesday night, after almost 24 hours of travel, my DH got home. Thank you for all the good wishes. I believe the way it happened was almost a miracle. God is good and he's home. I know there are still so many displaced and our thoughts and prayers go out to them until they are home with their families. While he was gone, I was very ADD - bouncing from one project to another. I am happy to show you the very first piece of Kaffe I've ever owned!! Yea!!! I bought this piece last week and have been staring at it. It just makes me happy. :)Here are the fabrics I have pulled so far for my new project. My friend Kim and I are going to do another joint project :). We haven't done one in a while. We use a lot of the same fabrics, share fabrics from our stash and then do our own quilt using the same pattern. It's always interesting to see our individual tastes come out. The quilts look different even though they're using a lot of the same fabrics. Once we get our strips cut, I'll share. We are not 100% sure which pattern we're going to use. Aren't these fun and happy?? So far, I love it!Just so you know I'm not completely abandoning my previous project, I thought I'd share my progress on the hand quilting on "Beauty for Ashes". After machine quilting, hand quilting does seem verrrrrry slow.

But every part of this quilt makes me smile. These colors are so soothing and restful.

So until next time,

Karen

Volcanic Diversion

My DH left 10 days ago to celebrate his 60th Birthday by playing golf at the Old Course in Scotland with 3 of his closest friends. They are still not home yet. The volcano in Iceland has touched my little world here in Pensacola, FL. The last 4 days have been very stressful, and I knew I needed to surround myself with something lovely. About 8 years ago, this project got started. It's from the collection by Robyn Pandolph for Moda, Secret Garden. It still is one of my alltime favorites. I started with 12 blocks, added some additional strips and created a small quilt.

Aren't these fabrics still beautiful??? I added a panel of appliqued flowers on the side (I also love applique).

I won't show you the whole thing yet, but I am machine quilting the main body of the quilt and hand quilting the appliqued panel. I've been listening to a lot of music and trying to trust that this will soon be over.

Hand quilting soothes me. It's quiet and comforting. While waiting for the ash cloud to move, this has been my comfort. I'm not sure what I will name it, but I will never forget what was going on around me while I was making it.

Hopefully, in a few weeks I will show you this beauty. Maybe that's what I'll name it, Beauty From Ashes.

Until next time,

Karen

Mocha Leftovers

I'm sure everyone is familiar with this wonderful book by my friend Kim Brackett. I'm a little afraid to say this, but I must admit I was not a fan of the whole jelly roll thing when it started. Mainly because I don't like someone else making my fabric choices for me. I like to pick my own fabric for a quilt. I want my quilts to look like me. The beauty of this book is that you can cut your own stash into strips or you can use a jelly roll. This is my quilt - Mocha Swirl. It was great fun to make, and almost every piece was pulled from my stash or Kim's stash. I did have to buy some darks as I didn't have enough variety.

Here's the quilt out on my front porch the other day. I'm not the best photographer, but I guess it doesn't look too bad.

The colors really are rich and warm. I knew what fabric would be used for the border, and so I worked from the outside in, pulling the color for the blocks from that focal fabric.

This is another favorite from the book. And since I had so many strips left over, I decided to make this one. Actually, Kitchen Sink uses the exact same unit as Mocha Swirl, so it was a natural fit for all my extra units.

I call this quilt Mocha Remix. No additional fabrics were purchased except for a few more darks. I seemed to run short on fabrics that were either a deep brown or black. All the lights are the same.

One thing I realized early in my quilting journey, is that I have a hard time following directions. I almost never make the quilt exactly as it is in the pattern.

So, if you'll notice the border, I did not use any setting triangles or a border like in the original quilt. I figured the scrappier the better. I just made some double dark units and continued around the quilt. That's probably why I kept running out of the dark browns. The only problem was that these units have a bias edge.

So the very last row is cut on the straight of grain, with a diagonal seam to join the random pieces.
This quilt went to live with my sister, it was her Christmas present last year. She let me borrow it back to use in this post.

Then there's the problem of what to do with all the little corners from all the points. So I made little triangles. These are the extras still on a design board.

Here's a close up - aren't these just the best colors?? I still love them.

Here's what I have so far. The border fabric is actually the backing of Mocha Swirl. It's not quilted yet. I think it's going in a guest bathroom we've just finished renovating.

I'll share when I get it finished and hung.

I hate to even tell you I still have more strips left. I do have one more idea for the rest of the little triangles. Not sure if it will look good. I'll let you know.

Until next time,

Karen