Design Wall Monday - 6/7

Well, jury duty is postponed for later in the week so I will do this now to get it in before they call and say come in.  Our system is set up one day or one trial.  I didn't get to work on the dresden scrappy. Instead I have a blanket of belief for our soldiers angels project on the design wall so to speak.  I'm part of the binders.  They want all the binding done by machine because these quilt will get a lot of wear and they don't want them to come apart in the washings or use.

Thread Painting

Well didn't get much done on the scrappy coverlet as I attended a thread painting workshop by Phyllis Binkley and wanted to finish doing the sample.  I thought it was going to be a landscape class after her lecture and trunk show.  She had so many beautiful quilts that looked like photographs!  You can see her work at:  http://www.landscapeartquilts.com/  So after her presentation, I signed right up.  Come to find out the workshop she gives at guilds is a thread painting class. You have to go to her house to do the landscape part.  All you bring is some scissors and photos.  Since I had already paid and said I would come, I stuck it out and I'm glad I did.  It may not be the kind of technique I use often - I like to make bed, lap and baby quilts - not so much wall hangings.  But she taught me that I can do this.  So here is my sample.  We wrote right on the cloth (notes to remind us how we did the different techniques) and it made me feel much more confident about using the machine to do more on my quilts.  We learn machine beading, embellishing with thread, marking perspective, blending material and thread, coping with metallic thread, 3-d work and lots more.  What do you think? Well, looking at the pic I think I should learn to use my macro so you can see more detail.  So much to learn!

Design Wall Monday 5/31

I worked a little bit on my scrappy dresden and it's back on the wall again.  I'm sure you can guess what comes next.  First one to leave a comment and guess right, gets a bag of scraps sent to them - LOL!

For all who serve

In honor of all who serve, I made a block contribution to our Soldier's Angel project this Memorial Day weekend.  The guild is gathering 12" blocks to make into quilts.  Here's the unit I'll be turning in next meeting.  I had a challenge putting it together.  The pattern I had was for an 8" block and I had to convert it to a 12".  The problem was the stripe piece has 5 pieces and I had to figure out what each piece would be that would line up with the star.  If I'd made the star first it would have been a piece of cake, cuz all I'd had to do was measure that smallish stripe in the flying geese unit and I'd have known what the others had to be.  I now have enough strips to make some crazy unit to give a third block.