Leaf choices

I don't know what happened to my first post regarding this piece.  Gone to neverland, I fear.  So this information may appear twice and I apologize if so.  Anyway, this is the piece started in the first day of classes with Gloria Loughman.  I need your opinion on the leaves.  Square as in the left, or free form as in the upper right, or just bare limbs.  What do you think?  Again all the fabrics are Gloria's hand-dyes.  Luscious.

Success!

If you remember yesterday's post I stated that I am determined to finish three projects from classes I took at the quilt show in Oaks, Pa. last week before going on to some other project.  Yesterday's post pictured the work before the sections were joined together and set in a circle.  I'm pleased with it.  There are some things I would do differently and I guess that means that I must work in a series.  In any case, my daughter came over, looked at it and promptly said it looks like a hamburger.  She has no taste!  I could have rotated the middle so that it was less hamburger patty looking but I liked the way the colors flowed.  So, I'm calling it "A River Runs Through it".  Tomorrow I hope to continue with the project from the first day's class.  I could have shown you a preview but somehow the photo is in some unknown album.

Thanks for looking.

I'm Determined...

I'm determined to finish three small projects started in classes I took this week at the Mancuso show in Oaks, Pa.  The photo is from one of the classes taken from Gloria Loughman.  We drew an abstract design and then started filling it in with segments with various adornments, for lack of a better word.  Gloria is a fantastic teacher moving us along at a quick pace and fitting in as much information as possible in one day.  She does 5 day workshops using this technique so you can see we did move briskly along.  My sections are completed and tomorrow I'm going to put them together and then insert the circle into a background piece.  Gloria brought along some of her hand-dyes and, of course, I fell off my no more fabric diet.  I did manage buy a bit from her but not much from the vendors.

The entire three days spent in classes would have been much more enjoyable had my knee problems decided to flare up big time.  The venue for the show is a convention center with concrete floors and after two days of class and trying to see the vendors and the quilts in the show I was in agony.  Fortunately a close friend and I shared a room and she really treated me like a queen.  And a bit help was stopping on the way to class on Friday to purchase a cane.  Much better, though I did not do any vendor snooping or looking at quilts.  I just could not bear the thought of another night like the afternoon and evening of the previous evening.  Unfortunately I'm seeing a knee replacement in the future.  Then, hopefully, I'd be able to run around the convention center at lightning speed.

In a day or two (if my determination holds up) I'll have a photo of the finished piece.

Sleeves and bindings, Oh My!

I  think that blogger is trying to defeat me again.  Or else that my adding photo skills are not what I thought.

Anyway, our local quilt guild will be having its quilt show in two weeks and I've been busily putting on sleeves and bindings in quilts that I've previously considered "done".  Well, they were done--except for sleeves and bindings.  I think I mentioned that I live in a house built in 1854 (it actually was once a log cabin and I know that for a fact because we had to have some plumbing done and the plumber had to remove a section of the wall and there, big as life, were huge logs.  How they ever managed to get them to the second floor is beyond my understanding) and I can't hang many bed sized quilts so I never got around to the bindings and sleeves.

Hopefully this photo will appear (and it may appear twice).  I used a book by Barbara Brackman titled Women of Design and it contains patterns that she adapted from original newspaper patterns by quilters in the 1920s and 30s, such as Ruby McKim and Carrie Hall.  The baskets are machine pieced and the flowers are machine appliqued with invisible thread.  I really loved picking the fabrics for the blocks.  I wanted to be a bit quirky.  The hardest part was determining the size of the blocks along the sides.  That was a challenge!  Anyway, I hope you enjoy looking at it.

North, South, East, West?

Here is what I came up with this morning.  Well, afternoon actually.  But, anyway.  I'm trying to decide on the orientation of the circle.  Any preferences?  I took a class recently with Philippa Naylor (great teacher, btw) and she suggested "weighting" your pieces toward the bottom.  None of mine exactly do that and I probably could have achieved a better result at doing that had I put my initial circle (see yesterday's post) at a different angle.  Live and learn.  Anyway, will look at it for a while.  As you see it is how it's to be taken to class so I don't have to make a decision until mid-October.

Later today on to the third one.  Then I'll be ready for that class.

I'm also taking two one-day classes with Gloria Loughman at the Mancuso show in Oaks, Pa. in mid-September and frankly those two day classes have me in a quandry.  For the first day we have to bring a photo of something we'd like to do in class, a landscape.  My photography is not good, so I've been running around like a fiend trying to take a decent photo.  With not much luck.   The third class I'll be taking there is with Robbi Joy Eklow which is a more spontaneous class I think.  Anyway, looking forward to those classes.  

There's been a change

If you remember yesterday's photo of the project for my free motion class in October, I've made some changes to it.  I took it over to a quilting friend whose reaction when she saw it immediately told me she didn't like the background fabric for the circle or the entire block.  So I've made some changes.  The beige background is still too pale, I think, but I'm not going to go out and buy new fabric for it.  One thing this has taught me is to buy fabric in larger pieces--fat quarters aren't going to do it.  This is not good for my pocketbook but should be better for my work I think.  

Not sure in what order the next photo will appear but I'm on to my second block for the class.  Right now I'm not liking it, but there are only so many decisions I can make in a day...so I'm leaving it to work on tomorrow. I'm going to add more arcs to it.  At the present time the pieces are only tacked in place, not permanently sewn so I can move things around or just replace the whole thing if it's not going where I want and I suspect that's the case.  Anyway, tomorrow is another day... It's not as if I don't have enough projects to keep my busy tonight.

Back on track

Those of you who follow my blog (and there aren't many I'm afraid) are probably sick of looking at the previous post.  So finally I've gotten around to writing another.  Our local quilt guild will be having their show in September  so I've been busy putting bindings and sleeves on quilts I've done in the past few years.  For some reason once I finish the actually quilting I consider it done, despite the fact it will needs a sleeve and binding.  Probably because I live in an older home with only 7' ceilings and lots of windows and furniture that prevent hanging larger quilts.  So they stay wrapped on a swimming tube, unfortunately out of site.  Anyway, this quilt was made about three years ago from a class I took called "Six Minute Circles" (I think from the book of the same name).  It's become my favorite way to insert circles into a quilt.  

The smaller piece is for a class I'll be taking at a Nancy Crow retreat in Baltimore, Ohio in mid-October.  The class is with Sandra Ciolino on free motion quilting and we are to bring three similar pieces for quilting.  I may have mentioned that I love circles. This is my first one for the class.  The three pieces are to use fabrics with similar colors.  I have yet to do the other two.  I agonized for several weeks on what pattern to use and decided to go with my favorite circles.  Til next time (hopefully sooner than two months...)