The Little Red Hen

Welsh Quilting

As I am working out the quilting design for my latest quilt I thought I'd share some of my favorite quilting resource books with you.

I recently purchased two new books focused on Welsh quilting. 

Making Welsh Quilts the Textile Tradition that Inspired the Amish?  by Mary Jenkins and Clare Claridge is a great book that shows old and new quilts with Welsh quilting. I like that each of the project quilts in the book also has a complete quilting plan. You can study how the quilting works with the patchwork of the quilt and use those ideas on your own quilts.  Welsh Quilting Pattern & Design Handbook  by Marjorie Horton is an excellent source for Welsh quilting motifs and patterns. It has no color photographs and shows no finished quilts but is jam packed with quilting ideas. Both of these books are geared to hand quilters but with a little creativity you can do similar things in continuous quilting on a long arm or domestic sewing machine. I'm working on that right now. 

In looking through the Welsh quilting books, I can see that Gwen Marston has been influenced by Welsh quilting. Her book, Quilting with Style: Principles for Great Pattern Design, another of my favorite quilt resource books, features many similar designs and also shows how to draft cables and feathered vines to fit any space. 

The random number winner for the GenQ drawing was 2, Emmmylizzzy! Congratulations.

Favorite Things at Quilt Market

Just look at this! So much eye candy. Melody's Miller's retro room was my favorite. I wanted to move right in.  I LOVE her fabric! 

It was great to see a few booths featuring organic fabrics.  I have to admit that Cloud 9 had some cute samples! Recognize any?

I also liked the new organic fabrics from birch.

The new line from Mona Luna organic fabrics also looked pretty great. (sorry, no photo).

Liberty of London introduced a quilting weight cotton which can be seen here.

Carolyn Friedlander had some nice patterns and her sample quilts had impressive quilting on them. I also like the embellishing she does with her stamps. You can see some of that at her website.

Don't look now had some dense quilting on her samples too.

We laughed, walked, gawked, and drooled over fabric of all kinds and colors.  The amount of patterns, notions, threads and books was downright overwhelming. 

edit to add:  After writing this I saw Ellen's post here.  She and I seem to have pretty similar tastes.   I will have to seek her out at the next market I attend. I agree with some of her notes at the end of her post. I have also been wanting to see some of the sample quilts mixing in more than one line of fabric. That would really give a fresh look and also show some versatility to the new fabrics.

Paris on a Shoe String

I finished putting this quilt top together yesterday. I call it "Paris on a Shoe String".

The guys here thought that the name of the quilt was a bit obtuse but I told them that quilters would "get it". I hope I'm right. If not, it doesn't really matter because I like it and I'm stickin' with it.

I mentioned earlier that I was making some more string pieced triangles. I had the idea to try some different settings with them and this big star design is one that I came up with. I had this great Paris map print on my sewing table and it was begging to be used for the background. I didn't want seams running across the map print so D helped me  make a cutting diagram to get the pieces cut from the fabric I had. We also made sure that the print is right side up everywhere and continuous in the star centers. Not that anyone would notice but us...

I love that when the four large stars are set together you get another star in the center.

I have no idea how I'll quilt over the map fabric here. Any ideas?

Wordless Wednesday

Bluebirds of Happiness

I am happy to share with you the finished Bluebirds of Happiness quilt for Cloud 9 fabrics. This quilt is made from fabrics in the Alegria line. That bluebird fabric is so popular that it is already sold out!!! Miss P fell in love with the little bluebirds and I am glad I snatched up an extra few yards for some roman shades for her room before it was all gone.   Michelle has informed me that they will probably be running another print run of that fabric.

M was kind enough to help with the photo shoot today and also suggested the barn backdrop. I think he secretly wanted to hang out of the barn window.

I am thrilled that I will get to personally deliver this quilt to Michele next week. I will be going to spring quilt market and this quilt will be on display in the Cloud 9 booth. Woo hoo!! I'll be going to market with Brenda, Anna, and Debbie from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild. I am so excited about going and meeting many people like Tia and Katy who I have known on the web and will finally get to meet in person.

The Happy Drawing tops and Crazy Love quilt will also be on display at quilt market.

Happy Sewing

This weekend I finished the Alegria quilt for Michelle (I'll get some pictures of the Alegria bluebirds when it stops raining so look for that post later in the week) and started playing with scraps again.

Last week my neighbor gave me an old three drawer dresser that fit perfectly in the corner of my sewing room. I reorganized and tidied a bit and have now eliminated all of the plastic bins from my sewing room. Yay! This has been a goal of mine for quite a while. I can ALMOST get everything put away. I also love that I now have a surface where I can set the iron when I adjust larger pieces of fabric and quilts on the ironing board.  No fancy  ironing set up here - an old wooden ironing board and a presteam iron- so a dresser top works great for a temporary resting spot for the iron.

I'm making more string pieced triangles like I used in Nancy but I plan to set these differently. I am hoping that by using up more scraps things will really get whipped into shape around here. Since I am building a triangle base I am easily able to use the triangle cut away scraps that have piled up from some recent quilts like this, this, and this.

I'm having so much fun piecing these that I may try a few different setting ideas. Maybe I'll make some smaller quilts. I haven't really dicided yet.

I just love the "parts" that you get when you work with small bits of fabric. Look at those little feet.

Meet Nancy

I'd like you to meet Nancy. (named by M)

D helped me with the photo shoot yesterday while M was fixing dinner. Since M will be living in an apartment next year he wants to learn how to make his favorite meals. One of his summer projects will be to copy the recipies and practice making them. I also told him that if he helps in the garden and with canning that he can take some of our yeild to stock his pantry next year. Yay for tall people being home. I can get double help!!

I just can't say enough how much I love scrap quilts. Really. They make my heart sing.

So many memories stitched into this quilt. In the photo above I see a bit of P's backpack, and some pink pajama fabric, bug fabric that I used for a baby sunhat for D....

I also LOVE the backing fabric. That is such a pretty color of brown with the pink flowers. I also love the way it looks with the green. It has a sort of electrical "does it really go?" vibe going on.

I've had some questions about the quilting on this so I'll tell you how I approached that.

1. I stitched in the ditch on all of the vertical block seams.
2. I stitched in the ditch on all of the horizontal lines.
3. I stitched in the ditch on the diagonal half square triangle lines.
4. I stitched a serpentine line across the diagonals in the string pieced areas.
5. I stitched the feathers in diagonal passes in the green triangles.
I used aurifil 50 wt. for the green feathers, ditch stitching, and all of the bobbin thread. I used a vareigated King Tut thread in the string pieced areas.

Nancy is 64.5 inches by 87.5 inches.

When it Rains it Pours

Just popping in to let you know I'm still here.

I finished this chartreuse triangle scrap quilt almost two weeks ago and it is still waiting for a real photo shoot. I need a tall person to hold it for me. Luckily, two tall people have moved home from school. Soon there will be pictures. I promise. It just needs to stop raining while a tall person is at home.

I've also been working on the Alegria quilt for Michelle.

I am ALMOST finished with it.

Has the spring cleaning bug hit your house? We had a fit of spring cleaning fever this weekend when M came home and was allergic to his room. Lots of wiping, washing, rearranging.... now I kinda want to clean and rearrange the whole house. Have you ever wanted to take everything out of your house and just put back the things you really want and use? I used to do that to my room and closet every year when I was growing up. It would probably be a good thing to do but I don't think it will happen. We have accumulated a lot of stuff in the twenty three years since we moved to this house. It's a little frightening to think about, really.

Fat Quarterly Magazine

Are you familiar with Fat Quarterly Magazine? It is a great ezine that is CRAMMED full of projects and ideas. The new issue is all about kids.

Miss P and I took on the designer challenge in this new issue and Miss P sewed a skirt out of Woodland Tails by Sheri McCulley Studios for Riley Blake Fabrics.

I also wrote up a few tips on how to teach sewing to kids.

We are thrilled to be part of such a great new magazine. Fat Quarterly Issue 9 - Kids. You can get yours at the end of the week.

edit to add. This magazine is 121 pages of awesome with NO advertisements!! A great value.

 

Bluebird of Happiness

I've been getting into the spring swing this week by sewing up some beautiful bluebird fabric from Cloud9 fabrics. Michelle sent me this selection from the new Alegria line for a quilt to take to Quilt Market in Kansas City. This fabric line was designed by Geninne D Zlatkis. I have been following Geninne on flicker for quite a while and was thrilled when she teamed up with Cloud9.
The pattern Michelle requested for the quilt is great for showing off the larger scale bluebird print.

The top is finished and I pin basted it last night. Now I'm trying to decide on a quilting plan for it.

I think the bluebird print would make pretty curtains. The color is really beautiful.