The MQG Challenge

The national Modern Quilt Guild held a challenge recently.  
AND I completed a quilt for the challenge!  
ON TIME!!! 

I rarely get an item finished that is my own...if I actually accomplish this feat, it is because it was entered a show or a challenge with a deadline.

This challenge used Michael Miller fabrics from the Petal Pinwheels collection. The rules were to use only fabrics from Michael Miller or solids. My design was inspired by an old upholstery fabric that I had seen a while back. I really enjoyed doing the hand applique and learning lots about doing applique on such a large scale!! 

Photo credit: Joshua Brawner

 I also had fun with the quilting. Since it was my own quilt, I used different patterns everywhere! I tried a few new things and used some old reliables. And then I used some Elmer's school glue to tack the binding down in back so I could take the photo in time!

Here is a link to the winners of the challenge! Congrats!!
https://themodernquiltguild.wordpress.com/category/michael-miller-challenge/

Fun with Felt

Holy smokes, it has been a while since I posted! Summer is such a crazy time with my boy home and I lose track of myself. I have been remiss in taking pictures of completed quilts, but I do have a couple of things to share over the next few days!

Our guild was graced with Kathy Hays as a speaker about a month ago, and she is working on some new ideas in felting. She is a local artist that teaches wet felting and nuno felting. There were some amazing and gorgeous art pieces that she had for her show and tell! 
Kathy also had a new project in the works - she brought about 10 small felted pieces that she wanted quilters to take and do their "quilty thing" with. I was one of the lucky people who got to participate! All of the felted items were unique and inspiring. I hung back to see which would be left behind and took the last one. Then I quilted my piece and sent it off without taking pictures! How silly is that?? Kathy has promised that we will get our pieces back when she is done with them. I will definitely share when it comes back to me! 

She had little 'scrap' pieces for us to use as warmups, but they were beautiful, too! Here is a picture of my 'warm-up' piece:

It is about 5" x 7". And, yes, I did quilt it on my longarm. I can't quilt worth anything on my sweet, little Pfaff. 

(I remember years ago, when I first got my longarm, Micki and I were joking about pinning a little thing on the big machine....I even made her pose for a picture. 

Haha...joke was on me.)

Family Tree, T-Shirt Quilts and a Textured Surface

I was again called upon to complete a model for my local quilt shop, Happy Apple Quilts! I am so excited when they call because it's another chance to get my name out and build my business in my new city! I sure do love longarm quilting as a profession!!
Here is the quilt they needed quilted:

It is a model using the Family Tree fabric line by Deb Strain for Moda. It's beautiful, isn't it? I took some after photos, but I can't find the blasted things! I am afraid that I may have deleted them.

Next I completed a bright and fun t-shirt quilt! Just an easy meander job, which is a joy between custom jobs!

Now I am working on a fun, textural quilt made by one of my fellow guild members.  Each block is made from a piece of fabric pressed and folded into tucks.

Music

For the month of May, my assignment for Small Wonders was to create a 12x12 with the theme of Music.
I have recently read The Painted Quilt and decided to try a technique that I read about within its pages. I drew/traced a guitar onto freezer paper, then cut out the shape with an exacto knife. I was careful to cut precisely so that I can use the resulting stencil or the mask.

 




Next I tried my hand at improvisational piecing for the first time. 





I was so surprised at how flat it ended up after pressing! I expected to have to quilt quite a bit of lumpiness out. Steam is really a miracle worker!! Love my Reliant iron for that! Check your local quilt shop!
The technique was to use Shiva paintstiks or oil sticks around the paper edge of the shape and then brush the color into the hole. I decided to try a test piece first. Thank God for putting that thought in my head!!! My paintstiks were all dried out and didn't spread well. And the color I thought would be perfect looked black and yucky!!! I couldn't find my oil sticks (studio is still a mess...won't be able to use the 'just moved in' excuse for much longer) so I went for the acrylics and just painted in the stencil. 

  After quilting, I used fusible thread and foil to add guitar strings, but I messed up a little...it goobered up in spots.

Caution: goobers ahead

I think I needed to leave the iron on longer to get the foil to stay better...
Overall, I really like how the piece turned out. I do wish the acrylic paint had kept more of the color variation it had when wet. I will have to dig for my oil sticks and try again on another little quilt!

Thanks for stopping in!

I'm So Blue

The April theme for our Small Wonders art quilt group was blue. Here is my submission. Blue made me think of my pregnancy and just after Joshua was born. There were blue onesies, blue blankets, blue toys, blue sheets, blue everything! And after he was born, I had the post-partum blues 
(turned out to be post-partum thyroiditis that was eventually diagnosed as Hashimoto's disease).

For each of these little quilts, I am trying to learn a new skill or try something that I haven't done before. I am really enjoying the play! And the deadlines help me so much with getting things done. 

I started with some collage on the longarm. None of the fabrics were fused-I just laid them on the base fabric and stitched around them with the longarm. 

I tried some handwriting on fabric to include in this quilt. I got started after viewing Deborah Boschert's tutorial. I really liked the process and will definitely include this method again in the future. 
This quilt has some machine quilting and hand stitching with floss and perle cotton. I also included some beading for a little sparkle. 
 

I manipulated the photo of Joshua to make it fit the blue theme. If you don't have photo editing software, PicMonkey is my absolute favorite website to use for this kind of thing.

  
It's amazing how the brain works in remembering things. As I look at the parts of the quilt, I can remember what was going on as I completed that section. When I look at the beading, I remember that my mom was visiting and we were watching The Day the Earth Stood Still (the newish version). When I was stitching the shapes down on the longarm, I had The Breakfast Club playing on the computer in the studio. 

This month's theme is music! I am sure you will be waiting eagerly to find out what I was watching as I worked on that one!

Getting Things Done!

 I was so excited recently when Karen at Happy Apple Quilts asked me to teach freehand longarm classes for them! The shop had a special machine event, and the manufacturer was able to arrange for a few extra machines to stay behind for classes! We worked on an HQ18 Avante and a Juki midarm. They both stitched beautifully! We had a great time! 
Basic freehand quilting was yesterday, and feathers was today. I am bushed, but we still have custom quilting to go tomorrow~Lord willing!

Last week I completed several things! I finished this gorgeous quilt! This is one that could have shone with a custom job or with an edge to edge. The customer decided that an edge to edge was the ticket, so we completed with a teardrop/paisley pattern.

 

Then there was this little cutie! Quilted with a loopy design and a few butterflies to echo the border print.

Arting

I have really been battling some low grade depression lately, which manifests itself in not getting much done. I find myself overwhelmed with so much on the to do list, and I tank. I am working with my new Dr to get my thyroid treated, which I know is the source of the depression (but it is such a battle because the current medical establishment thinks that they know everything and the only people who are allowed to make any changes to care patterns are the pharma companies with new drugs-I will now step down off my soapbox).

I need to remember several things:

• How far He has brought me already and His amazing faithfulness.
•  Not to place my faith in medicine and the idea of finally being "fixed" but to look to the author and perfecter of my faith to sustain me daily. Or moment by moment, as the case may be. 
• Even if my days will be like this for the rest of this life, it is but a moment before an eternity with Him and the promise of no more sickness or tears. 

Psalm 59

¹⁶ But I will sing of your strength;
    I will sing aloud of your steadfast love in the morning.
For you have been to me a fortress
    and a refuge in the day of my distress.
¹⁷ O my Strength, I will sing praises to you,
    for you, O God, are my fortress,
    the God who shows me steadfast love.

The other day, I had a spark of creative energy so I got out several items and did a little 'arting.'

 I gesso-ed in one journal, painted a background in another, and tried an idea on fabric with some deColourant. The deColourant didn't work, so I think I let it sit around too long and it expired. Success and failure are both part of the creative process!