The Big Crumb Quilt Reveal!!

So this is it... the big reveal of the crumb quilt from the Crumb Along with Jo at Jo's Country Junction. OK, I'll admit that mine is not quilted yet... but it is on the list of UFO's that WILL be finished in the Finish Along this year so It may be the first large quilt I have done in a while that gets finished inside a calendar year (if I get busy since I really started mine last spring when Jo did her first one, well before she decided to do a crumb along)! WooHoo, go me! So this is it... it is about 64" square and I think I will call it Hearts of Gold.

I think one of the things that makes the chaos all come together is the unifying color, in my case gold, and the 'motif shapes' mixed in. The stars, 4 patches, flying geese and yes, those little hearts I fell in love with give the eye something ordered amidst the chaos... a 'negative space' if you will. I am not normally a 'hearty' kind of person but something about those little hearts struck me and I couldn't get enough of them. I even made hand warmer bags with hearts done this way and posted a tutorial in this post. 

 After looking and pondering and consulting with some IRL quilters I think that I will be quilting this one in a largeish all over meander with special attention to the hearts. I will likely echo quilt a couple of times around those and nestle them into the rest of the meander.

I can't wait to see the other Crumb quilts that will get posted over at the Crumb Quilt Check in today, including Jo's latest. Go on over and check them out, I bet there are some spectacular ones in all different colors!

Squeaking it in under the wire...

This is all about my free motion escapades this month practicing leaves, and more leaves for the Free Motion Challenge hosted over at SewCalGal.  I have done leaves similar to this before...but mine are often in a line or a border (these are in the purple triangles between the green squares that have flowers in them) and I use the center spine of the leaf to move onto the next leaf stem so they all look like they are in a waving line. The leaves for the January FMQC tutorial this month were a little different. Here are my practice attempts.

This was the first attempt. The leaves are too small to be practical on a large quilt. I did get tired of them over there on the left and tried a stem of leaves to see what that would look like and then filled in what was left with a filler design ala Susan Day. I don't recall its name, but as a Zentangle it is called Whirlz. 

Second attempt... bigger leaves but terrible placement! those on the right are the ones that look like Christmas lights!

The final attempt with some fluffy batting. I liked this one the most; fairly consistent leaf size, decent distance between them and pretty random placement. I would not bet on this happening again if I tried, but it is a matter mostly of practice. I seem to hit it off pretty well with beginners luck at first, then I think about it too much and eventually I get the hang of it. I think if I had some structure I would do better, like a pieced block to quilt over. The lines of the patches would give me some reference.

I have learned, as if I didn't already know, that my coordination while free motion quilting (small things anyway) is not too bad. However, the 'planning where to go next on the fly' definitely needs work! Way back when I began FMQ a few years ago I found that a small glass of wine did wonders for my meander quilting (see below).  I am not sure the same would apply to this kind with the leaves. There are many things to keep in play in your mind's eye... keeping them all evenly spaced and not quilting yourself into a corner, keeping them all about the same size AND not making them face all the same direction so it looks like a string of Christmas lights (although that would be a cute quilting pattern on the right quilt). Lots of things going on. In the past I have done more quilting to a sketched line and I do fine with that... I will have to practice, practice, practice the magic of making it all even and random.

An older wall hanging with some very tight meander quilting made with the aid of chardonay!

I can't wait for the February tutorial!

A New, Old Project...

OK, this week's design wall is pretty much the same as last weeks... I am about 80% finished cutting out pieces for the Tweets I had posted last week. Little sewing went on this weekend... we were gone for part of it, and the rest of it was trashed for sewing by a hand injury. The good news is that the hand is not broken, just swollen and sore so I can sew at some point this week if I get time.
Late last week I stopped by an LQS and ran across some of the Aunt Lindy's Paper Dolls fabric on clearance. It was the scattered clothing print. Seeing it (and OK, buying some of it) reminded me that I had purchased a kit of the doll fabric with some Fast-2Fuse stiff double sided iron-on interfacing and some Pellon iron on fleece for the clothing back in September at the quilt show. I was supposed to give it to my 3 year old for Christmas! Ooops! So I sat down to listen to my book on CD on Friday and ironed away.  I sealed the edges with Fray Check after cutting everything out and the kit included some cute butterfly backing fabric for the stiff dolls.
I did the final trimming in the car on the way to a scouting outing on Saturday and my daughter has been having fun playing with them since (like while I got X-rays of my hand this morning!).

original panel

ready to fuse

Meet Martha, Peter, Ruby and Helen (left to right) is some of their finery.

For what other's are up to, check out Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times.  

Picking Up Tweets again...

No, I am not talking about electronic communication - like anyone wants to know what I had for breakfast or how long the ENT had me on hold (although I will tell you that I organized the plastic-ware cabinet while I waited)! I am coming back around to work on the My Tweets 2011 BOM from Erin Russek again. I got a block behind over the summer and never really recovered. Back when I began last year I thought that I would likely only end up doing 9 of the 12 and not doing the center block, although it is lovely. Then February's block took a color turn I ended up not liking - my color choices, not hers. Then I was not super fond of a couple of the patterns in the fall and was about out of my Kona background fabric and I just let it drift for a while. Well, last week's winter sale inspired me to buy more of the background and I have browsed the patterns and decided on three more to make to arrive at 9 blocks - plus the Feb block that doesn't quite fit with the rest. Now I need to decide on colors! This is the hardest part.

My scheme is as follows... all bird bodies are a brown/tan, the wings and under-wing parts are two shades of a color and the 5 tail feathers are the same two colors plus a lighter brown/tan than the bird body. The flowers are whatever goes with the bird color. These are two of the set of 6 I have so far...

 I have two blocks with blue as the bird color, one with red, one with purple, one with teal and one with orange. This block's bird will be dark purple. My quandry right now is what color to make the flowers. They have three outer petals of one color and two inner petals of another and a center - which could be green now that I look at it. The berries will be a darkish burgundy to match the intensity of the dark purple and dark brown I am using for the wings and bodies respectively. Neither the pink and blue or the pink and yellow combo is grabbing me... and I am not sure the pink goes with the deep red either, although it does go with the purples and lightens things up a bit. I think I like the yellow inner petals, but maybe I need a totally different color for the outer petals? Something of a medium value, that coordinates with the yellow/gold and deep red and purple. Back to the color wheel! Any suggestions? And should the green be a schootch darker?

To see what other quilters are up to and what other design problems tax their creative minds hop over to Design Wall Monday at Patchwork Times. Have a great week - mine will be busy!

Purple Challenge

So I have been a bit off my game with my tangling... I have started many but been unhappy with the outcome and set them aside to start others. In addition I have been working on covering the box that I got as a gift from my son. It is the perfect size to hold pens, pencils, etc and my small notebook that I am working in. Eventually I think it will hold my watercolor friendly pad and my dry water colors as well. So I have one side and the top complete and have begun the other side. Unknowingly, I met the color challenge with this box before I ever found out what the challenge was!

 See there, I always think of Purk as purple... not sure why.


These are the sides of the box:

And this is a photo of  the whole box. I still have the back and handle side of the box and half of one side. I will likely do the bottom as well. I suppose when I am done I will spray it in clear sealant to keep it from getting too grubby and smudging the pencil shading.  Then I have two magazine holder boxes in white card board I plan to cover in tangles also. 

This is another response to the challenge I started, but I think it needs something more (like maybe the penciled in tangle in the upper right... not sure). I am beginning a very busy week for me so I am not sure I will finish it in time for the Sunday deadline... so you get to see it in-process. I actually started this one several times and kept not hitting on just the right combination of tangles and ending up disappointed. This one I am happy with so far... if only I could remember the name of the pattern down the middle!

Have a great week and head over to the Weekly Challenge at The Diva to see others' purple inspirations.

Designing progress

WooHoo! I will admit that the first photo is what WAS up on the design wall this weekend - borders for the crumb quilt, Hearts of Gold. It is now FINISHED (the top anyway) but I will wait to reveal the whole thing until the BIG reveal of all the crumb quilts from Jo's Crumb Along on 1-31-12. I hope to have the back made by then and maybe even have it layered, although I doubt there will be much quilting done on it.

I really need to figure out how to take photos of my wall without the flash washing out the colors!

This is a little TEASE photo of one corner of it but you will have to wait until the 31st to see the whole thing (and for me to get a decent photo of it since this one is back-lit and you can see every seam allowance!)

What is on the wall right now is the beginnings of a quilt I am contemplating making for my son's teacher for her retirement at the end of the year. If I plan it right I can have a light colored square for every student she has taught in her many years at our school. It is still in the planning stages and it looks a little odd the way I am putting the 9 patches together because I am working out of my drawer of full and partial scrap 4 patches and 2.5" strips.  We will see what comes of it, maybe  a charity quilt if it does not come out right for the retirement gift. 

For more of what other's are up to this week, hop on over to Patchwork Times and check out Design Wall Monday.

Zentangle Challenge #53 - getting back in the groove

This week's challenge from The Diva is to use a new tangle of hers called Undine. It turns out that it is a great framework for about a million variations. I finally had to stop looking at entries for the challenge until I had a chance to work on my own so I could develop some of my own ideas without being too influenced by the creativity of others.  Like getting a song stuck in my head - when I see a variation Ireally like it is hard to 'see' past that to something else that might develop out of my own head. So here is my entry for the week with three versions of Undine.

While scanning I realized that it has been a while since I scanned any in. I played with the idea of a snowflake string a while back in response to another challenge and just never had a chance to scan and post my results.

And here are a few other fun ones I did before I sort of fell out of my groove. It has taken a while to get back. 

I like all these grid based tangles all together

 And can I just say whirlz and Frickle are my favorites