The Hexie Garden Quilt will be here soon!

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I get to finally show you one of the quilts I’ve been working on, the Hexie Garden Quilt!

HexieGardenQuilt

Hexie Garden Quilt finished quilt size: 61 1/2″ x 69 3/4″

The pattern pack has these 9 blocks that are graphic, fun, and full of movement! Each 16 1/2” x 19 1/4” finished size block has 6 wedges. The individual flowers are appliqued onto a block, trimmed into a wedge shape, and sewn together. The sewing takes a lot less time than you would imagine… these really are fast blocks.

The blocks are also lovely when used by themselves. I made another, smaller quilt that is included as a bonus in the pattern pack. My quilt, Tequila Sunrise, is improvisationally pieced, but there are measurements included for those of you who prefer that.

TequilaSunrise

The pattern pack will be available in mid-July. Click here to pre-order your very own Hexie Garden Quilt pattern pack!

Show and tell…

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Teresa Love sent me this photo with the instructions not show it before, May 12th. It is part of her guild’s challenge and is supposed to be a surprise until the guild votes in the evening.

TeresaLove

A few years ago I took your reverse appliqué class in Knoxville, TN at the AQS Show.   I finished a bunch of blocks but I never made it into a quilt. Our guild–Madison Station Guild in Madison, Alabama—had a 5 row by row challenge.   So I put the class blocks into a quilt.  I added the challenge elements and UFO is finished. I so enjoyed  your class.

Teresa Love

It’s a winner, don’t you think! Thank you, Teresa, for sharing your quilt :-).

Mirror, mirror…

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That was the title of our photo challenge last week. We were supposed to incorporate a mirror or mirror-ish surface (like water) in the image. I admit that I didn’t spend a lot of time on this photo but, as it turns out, I like it a lot!

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The round mirror is a small magnifying mirror that I use when I am putting on mascara. When you stand back a little ways from it, the image is turned upside-down. The trick was positioning myself just right which took many tries.

I’ve noticed that I love photos without color, and I love quilts with lots of color. I’m not even going to spend time thinking about why that is. Perhaps, if there were more hours in the day, I’d give it a good think!

I wonder what it says?

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My book, The Quilter’s Practical Guide To Color, has been reviewed in a Japanese magazine. How about that! ColorBookReview-Japanese

As far as I know, the book itself is still in English which says to me that there must be a whole lot more Japanese citizens who can read English than there are Americans who can read Japanese. I cannot read Japanese but I’m hoping that the review is full of kind remarks :-).

ColorBookReview-Japanese-2

The Chattahoochee Evening Stars…

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I spent two lovely days with the Chattahoochee Evening Stars quilt guild. They are as lively as their name suggests! At the lecture last night, these ladies from my class showed the progress they had made on the class block from the day before…

NorthPoleClass-ChattahoocheeES

The whole class did excellent work and had a good time. I love seeing quilters smile :-).

Where does the time go?

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It’s been 11 days since I posted although it feels like it was just yesterday. Steve says that time is time—always the same—but I think that time is moving faster these days. I’m feeling rushed even though I don’t have any looming, horrible deadlines. Why is there still so very much to do? I know I’m not alone. It’s the same for you. Let’s all take a deep breath and slow down for a moment… and perhaps have a glass of wine.

I am still spending time each week on taking the photo for my photo class. This week’s challenge is to Go Big. We are free to interpret that however we want so I decided to show big hands, or a hand as it turned out.

When you really look a hand in different positions, the proportions and shapes are odd, but because we know what a hand looks like, we know what it is. In this photo, if you didn’t know what a hand looks like, you might think that it was mostly big fingers. Side note: I have a new prime lens and there’s more of a learning curve to using it than I thought there would be. It’s interesting to not be able to zoom in or out. It’s going to take me a while to adjust to the distance I need to be from whatever I’m shooting.

Have you ever tried to draw a hand? It’s not easy because when you look a hand in different positions, the proportions and shapes can be odd. But because we know what a hand looks like, we know what it is. Our eye corrects for the distortions that are right in front of us. In the photo above, if you didn’t know what a hand looks like, you might think that it was mostly big fingers.

I used my new prime lens for that photo, and the next one. This lens has a fixed focal length. You don’t zoom in and out with the camera, you ‘zoom with your feet’. As near as I can tell the optimal distance from me to my subject needs to be about 3 feet. There’s more of a learning curve to using this lens than I thought there would be but I’m determined to master it.

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That’s Bear. He’s hard to catch because he won’t stay still.

I travel to Georgia tomorrow to visit the Chattahoochee Evening Stars for a workshop on Sunday and a lecture Monday night. Maybe I’ll see you there! I’ll do my best to post some pictures on Instagram :-).