Applique Thursday 7/28/11

Hello!  I did work on my applique piece, but not far enough along to show it, so I am going to post one I did a while ago right now.  If I get further along(busy day tomorrow), I'll post again and show it to you.  And I've got the winners to annouce of my giveaway, too!

First the quilt - no, not the one on the bed, but the wall hanging you can see on the dresser.  I called it Oriental Spring and was a guild challenge.  And yes, it is pieced and appliqued.  I had fun with this.  'The back is solid red and you can see my hand quilting very nicely.  There is an iris in the bottom right corner.  If I find another picture of this, I'll post it too.  I just wished I had made the bed quilt - LOL - isn't it breathtaking?  These quilt were on display at our guild quilt show which was held in conjunction with the Historical Society in Redlands, CA. 


And the winners of two of those fabulous needles are


James-Linda said...  I'D LOVE TO TRY THESE NEEDLES-SOUNDS SO MUCH IMPROVED! THANKS FOR YOUR BLOG+IDEAS!

and

Bonni said...  Those needles sound wonderful. Picking one day a week to devote to your applique will be very useful. You don't have to do a lot but eventually your projects will be finished.

Congratulations, ladies - please email me privately with your mailing address and I'll get them out to you.
Thank you all for participating.

And now for the eye candy! 

WIP Wednesday 7/27/11

The quilting is all done on the curvy block.  All I need to do now is find the left over batik I used for the border and bind this quiltlet with it.  I'm showing the back because the quilting doesn't show up as much on the front.  Ay de mí.

Go over to my left sidebar and click on WIP Wednesdays by freshly pieced to see what other are working on. 

What are you working on?

Fabric Tuesday 7/26/11

Today, my girls (yes, I borrowed them, Christie) finished their placemats.  But first let me share with your their quilts they made with a some help from me and my mom. 

Lauren and Megan are 10 and 9 years old respectively.  They are home schooled, and I offered to do a unit on sewing this summer.  So they came over last week to have their lessons. 

We first started by planning the quilts.  Boy, were they surprised to learn they needed to use math to figure out their design.  They had to do the division and multiplication to figure it out.  They decided on a quilt 36" by 48" as a good size.  So they did the math.  As my batting could be quilted up to 5 inches apart we made them 35" x 45" - close enough.  And they calculated that they would need 63 blocks of fabric.

Then I gave them a box (copy paper size) of fat quarters and asked them to group them by color family and decide colors they would like to use. 

Lauren picked purple and yellow:

Megan picked green and blue.

Without any color theory instruction, Lauren had picked complementary colors and Megan picked analogous colors.  Amazing.  They had to pick a third color family in order to get their 63 squares, however I think they did great!

As they ironed the fqs, I cut squares for them and they would lay them out.  After all were cut, it was time to arrange them as they wanted and label them with masking tape and numbers - so they wouldn't get out of order.  Then we started sewing them.  Since we only had a week, I sewed pairs and then my mom came over and helped do the chain sewing.  We were done in a flash!

Next I taught them about sandwiching and picked out backing material.  We then proceeded to baste the quilts in preparation for tieing them.  The girls then tied their quilts. 

Here they are hard at work tieing their quilts.   Since they were still in the practicing using the machine stage, I went ahead and bound the quilts.  By friday, we had finished the two quilts. 

Later,  I'll share the practice pieces they made almost all by themselves as they mastered the sewing machine.

For more fabric tuesdays stories, go to the Fabric Tuesday by Quilt Story button on my left sidebar and see what others are up to.