Category Archives: Quilting

It’s done!

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Before I left town, I put the binding on the last quilt for the piecing book.

BindingWowie copy

I don’t know that I have ever, in my life, made a quilt this big. It’s 118″ x 118″. Angela Walters quilted it and she did an excellent job. I think I would have given up way before I was finished.

I put the thinnest Quilter’s Dream batt in this quilt—the request weight. It turned out to be an excellent choice. This quilt, as big as it is, would have been way too heavy with a thicker batt. As it is, I’m not sure that it’s washable in anything other than a commercial machine. This is a bed quilt with a lot of white and I have cats and grandkids—washing is going to happen.

The piecing book that Linda and I have been working on is a revision of our book, Piecing the Piece O’ Cake Way. That book is out of print, but the information in it is still completely relevant. We, and C&T, decided that it needed to come back in an updated form.

This is a ‘heavy’ re-write, with lots of new information and quilts. It has both fun and actual work. And as of Friday, the quilts and the manuscript are now in with C&T. It feels great to have finished exactly on the date of my own personal deadline.

I know that most quilters do not link Piece O’ Cake with ‘piecing’, but I’m hoping that that will change. We were both piecers first. I hate to toot my own horn, but I can piece just about anything. And to link this train of thought back to yesterday’s post, this is yet another reason that I enjoy teaching an independent study coarse: I get to work with piecing in class!

Show and Tell…

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Lisa Jenni sent this photo of her quilt, made from a Piece O’ Cake pattern, Garden Blooms.

JenniL_Botanica_full

She says:

Many years ago, you taught an appliqué class at Block Party Quilters in Issaquah. I was one of your students, and still to this day, I’m one of only two persons who finished their appliqué and the resulting quilt. In the attachment you see my quilt “Botanica”.
I hope you like my version of your flowers (I do!), in a totally unusual setting. The background fabric is a hand-dyed from Judy Robertson. All orange veins and leaves are pieced varieties of silks. My quilting is split into hawaiian-style hand-quilting at the yellow flower’s background, and lots of machine quilting for everything else.

The quilt has traveled to two quilt shows. It placed 1st in “Quilts from a Pattern” and an Award of Excellence in “Domestic Machine Quilting” at the La Conner Quilt & Textile Festival (2014). In January 2015, the quilt was awarded 3rd place in “Innovative Wall Appliqué” at Road to California.

Way to go, Lisa!

Fabric Sale!

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That got your attention, didn’t it! As I am plowing through the enormous pile of everything that stacked up while I was gone, I found that I had ordered more fabric. It’s really nice, new fabric from Moda (slideshow below) and I’m happy to have it but we have to turn around and count all that fabric in about 2 weeks for end of the year inventory. Neither Lorna nor I want to do it.

From now until January 1 all the fabric on the website is 25% off. Enter fab25off in the coupon code box of your order form and the discount will be applied.

I will send a newsletter about this sale after Christmas. For now it’s just you all who know about the sale! If I run out of a fabric, it’s gone, so if there’s something in particular that you want, order sooner rather than later.

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And now I am going to turn my attention back to the pile of work that I have been ignoring :-).

One more top done, 5 to go…

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Here’s my most recent quilt top for the piecing book, before I cut it free from the machine…

LastSeam-Wowie

The quilt is 90″ x 90″ and covered my design wall from floor to ceiling. I was happy to be moving on, until I realized that the bed this will someday cover has such a deep mattress and pad that 90″-square is just not big enough. Sigh.

I made a border round of blocks, following the same design but with just one light and one darker, blue fabric. The quilt is now 118″ x 118″!!! It no longer fits on my design wall. I haven’t made a quilt this big in many, many years. If ever.

I plan to quilt it myself. I’m thankful that I have the Sweet Sixteen and my clamp system.

 

An Everyday Best Challenge!

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Valerie Prideaux sent me these photos from a friendly quilt challenge that she and some friends took part in. The quilts were recently displayed at Quilts at the Creek 2014, a yearly outdoor quilt show in Toronto, Canada. Aren’t they great! All the quilts were quilted by Sandy Lindal of Scrappy Gal Quilt Co, who was so busy doing the quilting that she never got hers done.

FYI: I’ve loaded the 6 pictures into a slideshow, which is a new feature I’ve found on WordPress. Hover over the picture and you’ll see a pop-up control bar where you can click to go from slide to slide.

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Shirley entitled hers “One Thousand Three Hundred and Sixty pieces of my mind” which cracks me up. I have never taken the time to count the pieces in any quilt I’ve made because, if I knew, I might despair of ever finishing :-).

I do love Valerie’s minimalist interpretation of the design—so very contemporary. Thank you all, for sharing your work!

Little quilt, big impact…

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I want to share Maria Finegan’s quilt with you. Isn’t it lovely! I love the color and the way she quilted it…

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Here is what Maria wrote: “I have long admired your beautiful quilts and gorgeous applique. I have most of your books, but felt a little overwhelmed to attempt a whole quilt of applique. I was once again looking through Amish Inspired Quilts and  fell in love with your version of this quilt. I thought the single area of applique would be a reasonable starting point and if it didn’t work out I would not have invested a large amount of time and money. As it turned out, I loved the applique process. It was more relaxing than I would have guessed. And because of my small success, I am now going back through your books to select my next project. My thanks to you and Linda for sharing your great designs and techniques.”

First I must say thank you to Maria for her kind words and for sharing the photo of her quilt. She is right… a little project is a great introduction to applique!