Sunday, March 26, 2006

Home Alone (almost) and Strips and Curves Quilts

We had planned an excursion to Eugene today to shop for a car for our daughter, but unfornately little sister is not feeling up to par. So, I am staying home with the sickie while Perry and Catie go up to look at cars. I am airing out the upstairs since it's not horribly cold today, getting the laundry started, and plan to do some general cleaning. Then I can play a bit!
Hopefully if I can get some of the household chores done today it will free up my week to actually do some sewing. Of course that would mean I cannot spend too much time online fooling around!

I finished cutting out the batik quilt (Jewel of the Prairie) this week, and I have sewn 4 6" star blocks so far - they are so pretty! I wonder if people will think this quilt looks like my "style"? It's actually fairly traditional as far as the actual pattern goes, but this is my first foray into batiks, so I think it will throw people who think they know what kind of work I like to do. There is a ton of sewing in this one - the plan is to have it pieced by the end of May so that I can quilt it in June/July. I want to give myself plenty of time. I am also working on the Basket Row by Row for the shop. I skipped doing this one in Jan. because I was so busy, but I need to get caught up! I have all the pieces cut and the fusing done, so just need to buttonhole the handle and piece the baskets and that will be done.

Strips and Curves
! got a couple of samples back from the shop this month - both were from the book Strips and Curves. I made Walkabout first. We had just gotten in some really interesting Australian fabrics, so I challenged myself to put them together in a quilt. I really went all out with the machine quilting on this one. There are a lot of swirls, outlining of the flowers, wavy lines, you name it! I figured it was an experiment, and if it wasn't absolutely perfect that it really wasn't going to be a big deal. I used a YLI variegated thread called Mango which was the perfect color.


When I was done I had a good amount of left over "strata" from the strips, so picked a couple of different prints and made another quilt from the leftovers. This one I just called Ribbons. The pictures really don't do the fabrics justice, I think. I did a lot free-motion on this one also, outlining the flowers and quilting flowes into the reddish pieces that didn't have any. I still have some pieces of the strips left, and have been thinking of making those into little zippered bags, or even using them as the background for some fabric post cards.

I also got back the first top I made from the book. It is going to be a fabulous quilt. I used a gorgeous purple oriental with butterflies on it. When I was making it, and arranging the fabrics I was thinking of a shady little garden pond with butterflies and flowers, and that's exactly what the top looks like! So, that's another project to be quilted this summer! All I've been doing lately it seems is piecing, so I am anxious to get down to some serious quilting again. Hopefully I can get a lot done this week, so that will be a possibility!

3 comments:

Deb Hardman said...

I got to take a workshop with Lousia Smith. One of my Calendar Girls Quilt Group, Carol ight Jones is old pals with Lousia. Louisa is really a lot of fun, you should have her come there & teach.
I think Carol probably has a quilt or 2 in the book. I never finished mine, had too many other things on my plate at the time. Send images to Louisa, I'm sure she's like to see them. She's a great gal.Your quilts are really fun!!!

Granny Fran said...

Saw your link on Quilt Studio forum and came by to check it out. Your quilts are great to look at. And I got a big laugh out of your Azlan costume blog. Your are definitely a game gal.

Kay said...

I also read your posts on Quilt Studio and came to see the blog. I have some Australian fabrics I bought there almost three years ago, and hope to do something with them soon. In fact, they may be next on the list. So it was fun to see why you did. I like the curves with them. I am thinking about some sort of Drunkard's Path effect perhaps.