finally coming up for air! Annie

Well I had all good intentions of starting my quilt with all of you but other quilt commitments and a thing called WORK, has kept me from getting any further than my pathetic drawing way back in the beginning of December. I have been on vacation this week and spent some time cleaning up my sewing room. Lo and behold, a project that I started for my son several years ago surfaced. I think it is perfect for Tonya's free piecing. My son is a snowboarder and I had him give me a list of all the places he has gone to snowboard. I am going to start making them into signposts,( I know I "stole" this idea from one of you gals!!) and adding them to the quilt. My plan is to have one of the signs done to show on New Year's Day!! Stay tuned! I'm still here and ready to free piece!!

Progress on Joyeux Noel

Hey all, I got my sewing machine out and worked on my Joyeux Noel quilt. Still not completely sure what to do next, but this is what it looks like right now. The two rows of words are all sewn together, as is the bottom row of trees. I was planning on doing a wee little quilt - I think I overachieved.

I've been really pleased to see the Winter Class quilts that are already finished. How is everybody else doing? Probably just waiting for the new year and everything to settle down again - I hear ya. Hope to see some more posts soon with all your sewing and quilting progress. And Happy New Year!

Sara's second word

OK. My second day and second word. I decided to make it a little smaller as a not so important word. And then it turned out awfully "regular". But it is pinned up , just to see how they both look on more blue background. This technique is an interesting combination of fun and tedium.

If time allows tomorrow I will work on "STAR". I have gotten the idea to try to make the "A" look a little starry. Hmmm. This requires more thought than I have in my cupboard right now. Hope to get the three words done since we are going away for ten days.

Guess I'll go work on packing my suitcase and maybe inspiration will strike by tomorrow morning. Since no one is coming here, my time will be my own, as long as the suitcase is ready for an 8 AM departure on Christmas Day.

Sara

Sara's first word

Working Toward "Follow the Star".

So I started with the "O" because I thought that would be easy. Only after two of those did I realize that the lowercase "L" was the simplest possible! Having only achieved the word "ollo", I could tell I should proceed to "F" But "W" was more work. I did it Tonya's way, wrongly. Then I did it her way correctly. And then I did it the way I thought it should look. Many tries.

Now it is pinned up on the top, which has hung over the head of our bed for more than a year. My husband is in there getting ready for bed, and hasn't noticed it. It is right over HIS pillow!

Not a very visual guy.

Maybe I'll get "the" done tomorrow.

Sara

this is the hanging that I'm trying to replace... I made it in 1998... I can remember I was still stitching the little gold hearts on the day after Christmas...

this is a window in my kitchen... I'm sort of tired of seeing the same thing!!

so I'm working on replacing it... as 'indigo' features a lot in my work at present... I'm using a blue/green colour theme... and Jude was kind enough to send me a tree she made... so I'm planning to include that too...

however... I have a feeling that it maybe Dec 2008 before this 'work of art' is displayed... I'll post photos soon...

...best wishes and happy holidays everyone...

Long Time, No Blog

Well ladies, it truly has turned out to be a "Bah, Humbug" season for me. I went into the hospital on December 3 with a severe reaction to a medication I've been on for years. After 7 days in hospital came 4 weeks in a rehab facility. So much for Christmas. Everyone' s quilts are so lovely. Seeing them has really cheered me up. Diane

Sara Ho joining in

Just saw the link to this class from Tonya's Blog. Looks like a lot of fun, and I've been needing a push to get me more FREE in my piecing. I made an attempt with some of the stars in this top, which isn't finished to my eyes. Now I am thinking what it needs is the word "Follow the Star".

Would that be OK with the judges? I haven't done letters before, so it seems like a challenge to me.

About me? I am working on using up my stash making charity quilts, lots from Bonnie's patterns on Quiltville. They mostly go to Lakotah people on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota. I am retired and live in Grand Rapids, Michigan on 4 acres and a little lake with my husband who is an Episcopal priest, not retired, and our dog, Zeke. We have two grown kids and three grands in St. Louis, MO.

Sara

Gillian - not so crazy stockings

I decided to do lots of close quilting to 'smooth' out the jagged effect of the crazy piecing. And I am really pleased with the way it is turning out.


The variegated green perle thread gives lovely celestial associations for me. A swirling cosmos. Or a swirling snowstorm. I can look at it now and simply not see the pieced angles in the green ground. How clever we are to see only what we want to see. A kind of optical illusion.

Perhaps crazy patchwork lovers would see the pieced background and not the swirling stitches. We see the world as we want to see it, in so many ways.

Heidi - Quilting

Managed to pin-baste the top and started quilting crooked fans :-)) But I like it. It's amazing, that all I needed for this quilt sits here in my home. So I found this thick red thread, which I got as a present and haven't had a clue what to use it for, and this thread is perfect for this quilt.
I'll quilt the fans all over except for the elks ( as Tonya suggested ) and maybe for the extra quilted hearts, though I'm not sure anymore if I leave the heart. My plan was to quilt hearts in the lime background of the elks, but .... I'll sure let you know what I'll do :-))
Another amazing thing is the difference the fabric makes for quilting. The lime fabric is a very cheap but pretty fabric von IKEA, it's not as fine as the other cottons and it's a paint to quilt it.
I didn't notice that before.
Again, thanks Tonya for this class and a Merry Christmas to all of you

jude- final photo

it is amazing how hard it is to get details into a whole quilt photo. and i am not good at it...i went for atmosphere instead. hope everyone is keeping warm. it is solid ice here right now.

jude- peace made

i have added many details since this early morning photo. and i am at peace with this one. i will post a better full photo later. whew! some of the thought process is over on my blog. enjoyed every moment of this one. ThankYou Tonya, and thank you all for sharing. hope everyone has a great holiday!

Gillian - finished piecing

I spent a couple of hours finishing the piecing on these simple stockings. I have to say that I'm not enjoying the process much at all, and I don't particularly like the crazy effect. Just not my thing. So, when I started to play with making the word JOY, I quickly decided to skip that bit, finish the piecing and be done with it. This is how it looks now.


Then this evening I sat down to hand quilt all over it in perle thread. Aahhh.. .. what a relief. I enjoy this part of it. I hope that the all-over close quilting will smooth out the discordance of the angles. I'll use red thread to sew strings for the stockings to hang from. And there may be more embellishment to add. This will be the fun bit.



This could take a while.

Please Come See a Quilt

My friend, Karen, was secretly working on a quilt along with us, even though she wasn't an "official" part of the winter class. Please come to my blog, Giraffe Dreams, and see what she came up with!

Here it is!

from Carol E.

On the Wall

My quilt is done! Hanging sleeve, label, everything! It's even hanging on the living room wall now! Thanks for the inspiration, Tonya. I never would have made this and finished it so quickly if it hadn't been for your class.

Carol E.

Quilting is Done!

I quilted my Pa Rum Pa Pum Pum top and today I finished the binding! I did a machine free-motion version of clamshells, I guess you could call it. Lumps of some kind.. and it looks ok! My stitches are uneven as I have not done this particular free-motion style of quilting before and need more practice, but I'm happy with the end result anyway. Like someone else said, the "lumps" suggest snow piles.

I have re-glued the drumsticks and tomorrow will work on attaching the mittens. I'm so excited that I made this and finished it in a short time! Thanks for the fun and inspirational class, Tonya. I hope soon to share my photo of the completely done quilt.

jude making peace and a reindeer

i am already quilting this and i have extended it to include one word. the reindeer wandered in yesterday. i will work on this all week and i hope to have it done next weekend.

Rose Marie-Top is done!

Could have titled this post ..... Winter is done! But, who would we be kidding? Today, it's -6C with light snowflurries.

The top is finished and will have to be put aside for now so that some Xmas gifts can be finished. This piece measures 53" wide x 55" long.

So many thanks to all of you that left comments on my posts about my project. Your kind comments and encouragement kept my interest going so that I could finish this piece instead of just giving up and putting it aside for something else.

Thank you, Tonya, for the great tutorials and for offering this class. It has been a blast for me to do something without ... gasp .... templates and has opened up a new area of quilting for me! :o) I have been wanting to try something free form and this opportunity just jumped out at me to grab onto and do it!

For quilting this piece, I think both machine and hand quilting will be combined as there are a lot of layers to go through and stitch stabbing will just be tedious. Also, by combining the two, this piece will get finished faster and I do want to hang this quilt up this winter (heck, officially winter hasn't even arrived yet).

It has been fun to scroll through the various posts to see what everyone else has been doing. I think our class is so creative with such a vast variety of ideas coming along.

Have a great day and have fun quilting!

Fitzy - Don't Throw The Baby Out with the Bathwater!

I'm a little slower than most in the sewing room...

I'm a little less-confident than many of my blog-sewing friends...

But I come skidding into the room with a Part 1 finish in Tonya's Winter Class!

I will make 3 or 4 of these "signs" and "mount" them on a green (maybe candy-striped) pole. I plan to piece the background free-style. I have two other signs to the flimsy-stage but it's slow-going considering the schedule I'm keeping of late.

Stay tuned, and don't give-up on me. I don't post too often, but I sure "think" about it!!

All layered up!

I have finally managed to layer the quilt up, and am now busy quilting it. I was inspired by Tonya's wonderful and whimsical hand quilting to do some of that (I usually do the bulk of it by machine) but as December rolls on, I am regretting this idea! I think I'll complete the bits I've started - you can't see it, but I'm quilting the sky in swirly cloud shapes - put the binding on, and then add more quilting as time goes on. I want to display it in my dining room for people to sign, so can't take too long over it.

I'm a Fan of this Project

Thanks to everyone for your kind comments on my earlier posts. I'm making progress with quilting the free hand fans, although they are not terribly uniform in size or shape. I'm telling myself they resemble snowbanks. Here is the pinned quilt not quite half quilted.

I will concede one point to the quilt police -- if you trim or graduate seam allowances, its easier to quilt. I'm not a fan of stab stitching, so I'm not going to quilt over the letters. Next time I would be more careful with multiple layers.

That said, it's been a great project. I'm hoping another week at it will get it to the binding stage, and then up on the wall for the holidays.

Brenda from snowy Winnipeg

Carol's Top

This is my top.. I plan to add a small star above the manger and the drumsticks after I get it quilted.

Carol E.

'tis the season to be silly

It looks crowded, but the elements are more or less here. Still need to do the fiddly stuff and make Santa and the reindeer. Still need to arrange the layout. I'm stumped about where I'm going to take it from here so I'm going to leave it for a few days. I'm not really fussed because this is for my mom and I know that even if it looks like trash she will still think it's awesome. I ditched the HAPPY that I put on the blog earlier. Sometime later I'll make the CHRISTMAS to go with it and make a banner for my MIL.

I'm going home to be with my family for Christmas for the first time in 3 years and I'm pretty stoked. Fellow expats, you know what holidays can be like when you are abroad. My husband and I always have a great Christmas, but there's nothing like being in the same house with family. And it always seems a little extra weird because with all the time zones between us Christmas Day for my family is the day after for me. My mom and I have plans to shut ourselves away and sew, and I need to get last pieces cut for the many UFOs I have so I can take them with me and we can finish while together. I'm going to spend a few days cutting and thinking about this SILLY wallhanging.

Rose Marie-Winter again

I’m getting closer to assembling my Winter quilt. Just a bit more on the bottom section and then the sides can be sewn together.

For the q ..... I made a bit bigger tail and am happy with the way it looks now.

When I first started this quilt, the colour choice became evident after going through all my winter fabrics. There was a lot of blues with snowflakes on them. I’m amazed how over the years, I seem to have accumulated a lot of this colour fabric and how perfect they are for this quilt. Snowflakes are the theme, and even the red fabric in the house has some printed on it.

The bottom section will be put together using up all the scraps from making the trees. Waste not! Putting these pieces together is like making a crumb or crazy quilt. Looking at the photo, it is interesting how they pick up shadows and dips and valleys in the landscape.

There are some blank areas which will have embroidery later.

Yes ..... I’m very happy with the way this quilt has evolved.
Have a good day!

Ta Daa!

Hello it's me, Sandy, after 3 Christmas music CD's and many trips to the ironing board......

Here it is; top completed. I stuck with it and didn't put it aside too long. That's probably how I end up with so many UFO's to begin with. But, in the coming days I will get this sandwiched and quilted (machine quilted, that is). Thanks for the comments about changing my letters, especially the W. I like this much better than having them all slammed together. Adding the background fabric to the sides of each letter really helped a lot.

Am busy making gift breads today and tomorrow so will have to wait to finish it until midweek.

Finally, some progress! Tracey

I finally got some sewing for this project completed this weekend. I had planned to use the snowman fabric in the center of my churn dashes, but the snowmen are about 4" across, and that would have made for 12" blocks, which would be just too big for this project. I cut out my blocks according to the guidelines in Collaborative Quilting, and wasn't thinking much when I did. Once I started sewing, I realized that these blocks are smaller than thought...just 5" finished, but thats fine, I'll figure out where they are going at a later point. Last night I made 18 blocks.



Now I'm trying to think about how this quilt is going to be put together. I think I'm going to make some snowflakes to go in here too, and I'll use the snowman fabric, and the words dashing thru the snow. When I was playing with my blocks, I tried a medallion setting, but I'm not crazy about it...too much blank and boring in the middle. I'm going to try rows next, but not until my machine gets serviced.




Any suggestions?

jude- changing scenery

i am reworking this a bit to integrate the new trees. i want to get this all together so i can stitch it this week on the commuter train.

Gillian - solving some problems

It's good to leave a piece of work on the floor of the spare room for some days. And it's good to have a picture of it here. Sometimes, over the days, a new perspective arrives.

Looking at my crazy xmas stocking piece, I could see that it would be easy to break up the long line that was appearing by slicing through the whole piece and making a new angle. So I did!



I have also made progress on some of those set-in angles. I found I could unpick an end of a seam, add the new piece, and re-sew the old seam incorporating the new piece.

Then I squared off two sides, so now I can see more clearly where it is going.

Feels like progress!