Quiltcation Day One

Couldn't have a film noir inspired quilt without the monologue.  This will appear in the swirling smoke around my main characters.

There are lots of ways to add words to fabric, but I favor printing out my prose in the chosen font, slapping it on my light box and tracing it onto the fabric.  In this case, I used plain old roller ball with black gel ink.  I've had good results with these pens before, but I always try writing on a small section of the fabric to make sure it's not going to bleed, and test it again after heat setting it.

The New Sewing Room (Part Two)

Our house has this huge family room upstairs, which I was originally going to turn into my bedroom, but the skylights make the room very loud in the rain, so this room turned into a catch all for projects and leftover furniture for many years. 

Those skylights, which can be a detriment in bad weather, also give this room the best natural light you can get; very important when trying to match thread to fabric or check true colors.   Perfect choice to turn into my new and improved studio.

The room had shelving in the corner when we moved in, and as I keep a lot of scrap collections in plastic bins, it should hold them perfectly.

I'm leaving the cutting table downstairs, so I knew I was going to need a layout table for my studio.  My mother and son came across this great walnut drop leaf table at the Betty Griffin Thrift Shop for just $75.

One of the leaves had a split along the grain line, so I patched it with a few mending plates and then bolstered it from underneath with a big wood cube shelf to keep it steady.  As luck would have it, the table is the exact same height as my sewing table (which is an altered oak desk we also got at the thrift shop ).  I finally have room to sew!

Take Two

Sometimes it really pays to start over.  I'm much happier with my b&w challenge quilt's main character, Nick Hunter.

Instead of relying on appliqué to shade his face and give color to his eye, the entire face is a single appliqué, hand colored with pigment pens and Tsukineko inks.

Back to the Drawing Board

I hate it when a plan doesn't come together.   I had a whole weekend off to work on my black and white challenge, and here it is Monday... and I am not happy with everything I did.

Since this quilt is largely carried by the characters done in appliqué, their expressions have to be perfect. 

Brilliant me, I figured I'd do the eyes separately, so I could paint them (the quilt is black and white but we have to add up to 3 colors, so I chose to only have color in their eyes). 

Of course once you start stitching something as small as a single eye, you're going to shred the fabric some, no matter how careful you are.  Once shredded, I tried to go around and "fix" it by just stitching over the shreds, creating yet more shreds.

I'm going to quit while I'm behind.  Time to start the faces all over.

About 6 weeks until I need to turn the quilt in for the show.

No pressure.

The New Sewing Room (Part One)

This is the tiny space where I have been doing all of my quilting.  It's a small downstairs room meant to be a dining room.   With two tables for drafting and cutting (at different heights, of course, so everything slides between the two and gets lost, sometimes even without help from Karma), a table for pressing, assorted bookshelves, and my sewing table, it's a tight fit to say the least.  I barely had room for the ancient portable dvd player even before Thumper adopted it.

Despite the tight fit (and the constant arguments with the cats about who was going to use the available space) I've managed to sew a couple of decent sized quilts, including the queen-size one which currently graces my bed.

Still, a little extra space would be nice...

The Black and White Challenge

In ten days I need to register my quilts for Quiltfest in September.   Am I finished with any of them?  Of course not!  Fortunately, I only need to register the name, size and a few details.   "Cat Noir"  is my entry for our themed challenge, which is "It's Not All Black And White" for which we are using three black and white prints.  My least favorite is this loud chevron, which has been so "in" lately.  I sure hope this trend dies very soon.

But since I have to use this ugly chevron, I'm going to turn it into something more appropriate for a small wallhanging.

Welcome to my sewing room!

I hate the term "blogging."  Sounds like something the cat does in the middle of the night (usually in my bedroom doorway).  I know very little about the concept, except that it seems to suit naturally chatty people who like to collect a variety of images, sound bites and random snippets of humor.

Yep, sounds like me!

Ten years ago, I started making quilts, knowing almost as much about quilting as I do about blogging.  My mom always sewed, stitched and crocheted, so I've had a needle in my hand for as long as I can remember, but quilting had never appealed to me until I went to a quilt show.

Talk about a game changer!  It was like being in a museum surrounded by beautiful art, cultural traditions and history.  I was hooked.  I made and entered my very first quilt in the next year's show and I have been doing it ever since, bumbling my way through new techniques and making lots of mistakes.  Within three years, I was actually winning awards for my quilts.  Oddly enough, my self taught approach seemed to be working for me.

So, here I plan to share the tricks I've learned along the way, both through my own approaches and the help of the many generous quilters I've met over the years, share my projects, showcase the many amazing works of other talented quilters, and post many pictures of my cats, who never let me create alone.

Happy Quilting!

Meet the Staff! Say hello to my quilting buddies, Thumper (the newest, obviously), Karma, Mia and Ninja. They never let me sew alone, always at least one of them standing by to offer encouragement, editorial critiques, scrap removal (especially Mia, who is a dumpster diver), inspiration, or free quilt warming services (that would be Karma, the really furry one).