She uses several different design motifs and combines them, producing this really cool effect that is, frankly, kind of mesmerizing to look at. All of the work I had seen of Karlee's had been very high-contrast, but I imagined it on the Tula quilt just in the background areas and only adding texture, not color.
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It just so happened that Karlee had been playing with monofilament thread and that is what she used on the Tula quilt. She then did a very regular looping pattern in each dresden plate and a kind of casual, free motion circle around and inside each center. I bound it with a black and grey Tula print from the Moonshine collection and placed the last stitch on the label on Monday.
I think it's freaking magnificent and I cannot stop looking at it. Thursday, November 13, Romancing the Gnome. Books go out this week!
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International buyers, please go to my shop page to purchase. Thank you!! And just so you know, if there is enough begging—and the begging is of high enough quality—I might share some longer tidbits from the work in progress. Friday, October 24, I'm a Quilting Fan.
Double Dash - The Pattern Testers' Quilts | Blossom Heart Quilts
I think. Yes, I've been a wee bit quiet lately. Some of that is due to the fact that everybody in the Quilt Industry is currently in Houston for Quilt Market and I am not. This is because I am basically no longer a part of the Quilt Industry, at least not the part that goes to Quilt Market. And this is actually a good thing. I had gone to the last Quilt Market in Pittsburgh hoping to become more comfortable with the whole process trade shows are no place for introverts so that I could eventually go and truly market my own stuff instead of being too embarrassed to do so , but instead it turned out to be a clusterfuck of mega-proportions, and I left feeling unsure of my future in the industry as well as unsure of even my love for quilting.
But this time?
I really started to wonder if my love affair with quilting was over. I spent the summer mostly hanging out with my kids, but I also started writing a book. I wanted to remember what I love about quilting, and I wanted to impart that love to other people. I won't say much more about the book than that, but I have managed to write over 15, words so far.
That's not a Stephen King pace by any stretch, but it's not nothing either. I've also been planning a novel, one I have mentioned in the past. I still want to write this, though it scares me and I am still working up the courage to start. I plan for this to merely be a "practice" novel, one to help me get the feel of the process and the structure, but I do have a dream to create quilt-related fiction that isn't all treacle and sunshine and heartwarming tales of friendship and family.
But I still wasn't inspired to actually, you know, quilt. I rearranged my fabrics several times, and even acquired some more, but I still felt no call to actually do anything with any of it. I've been collecting Tula Pink fabrics for a while, and got some more over the summer, and one day while going through some drawers I came across a "fan" ruler that can be used to make wedge shapes, as for Dresden plate quilts. I pulled out all of my TP fat quarters and started at them for several days. It's here, it's here, it's finally here! No, not my Tom Hiddleston fan club membership card.
It's Quilt Talk , by my dear, dear friend Sam Hunter. Tuesday, September 16, My Favorite Shops. Being a kinda-sorta small business person, I pay a lot of attention to how other real businesses work. Turns out most of them do not use my "hope money miraculously shows up in my mailbox" method of self-marketing. I still think that might pan out for me someday.
After writing about the difficulties many people find shopping and working at one of the big chain fabric stores, I wanted to counter that with something a little more positive, and I thought I'd tell you about some of the places where I buy fabric and why I like them so much. I would love to shop more at local quilt shops, but the two that are nearest to me just don't serve my needs well. For one thing, they don't have The Avengers running on a continuous loop over large screens all over the sales floor.
Yes, I need that to shop—don't judge. But they are also clearly serving a different target market and don't carry the kinds of fabrics I like, and they don't tend to move the fabric they do have very quickly.
Desperate Quilters
I went into one shop last year around this time and again just recently, and found the exact same fabrics, and discovered many bolts from lines that are 2 or 3 years old at full price mixed into the color walls. I suspect that the fabric that moves well in these shops are batiks and who can tell when there are new batiks? They're lovely, but it's not exactly an event.
So, online shopping works well for me, plus I can do it with no pants on while eating cheese popcorn. Honestly, I shop at a lot of different places, depending on what I'm looking for and price, but for this post, I wanted to focus on online shops that also have a brick-and-mortar storefront. It seems to me that these days, in order for a store to be competitive, they have to extend their reach as far as possible, and these three are all doing that in different ways at least different ways that I have seen.
They also all three have very friendly and responsive service, and our recent conversation shows just how vital that can be when trying to stand out in a crowd. Pieced borders. November 13, I love pieced borders, but I don't always love making them fit! Happily, there are some tricks to making them work.
Here's what I was working on the last couple of weeks. I wish I had a better picture. The only available quilt holder was busy painting her nails and I decided I didn't want wet nail polish anywhere close to the quilt top! Unfortunately, the deck railing is not a pretty a spot for photos at this time of year. The backdrop is lacking pretty foliage now that the hostas have died back. My initial plan for this quilt was to stop after a narrow inner white border and bind with a matching green stripe, making a very simple quilt.
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I was aiming for classic with a hint of modern by matching the border to the background and using the binding as a frame. I did the math to figure out the size and thought it would work. As I laid out the HST on the design wall, the size looked fine. Of course, once I started sewing all the blocks together those seam allowances, as ….
Prairie Points and Scattered Leaves update. November 12, Last month I presented a trunk show at my local guild, the Ames Quilt Guild. The next day I taught my new Prairie Point Play workshop, all about ways to make and use prairie points in your quilts, including how to size them and figure out how many to make. I pulled out all my favourite examples and made a few new ones. You can put them in a border to dress up a simple piece. The prairie points don't have to run all the way around a quilt. How about tucking them into the binding?
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The points can overlap a lot My all-time favourite quilt with prairie points is Scattered Leaves, using the points instead of binding to finish the edge. I think the scrappy points on that quilt turn an OK quilt into something more. While writing up the handouts for the workshop I re-read my Prairie Point tutorials. I also looked at the prairie point instructions I had written in my Scattered Leaves pattern in and decided the pattern could use a few more details about how to finish….
Starlight Wishes revisited. November 05, Last fall I whipped up a Starlight Wishes quilt top in alternate colors and in a larger size, fully intending to rewrite the pattern to include extra sizes. I didn't get much farther than the flimsy because I couldn't decide how to quilt it. Other projects, deadlines, and life got in the way. This summer, after learning to use my Westalee quilting rulers, I quilted it. I already shared photos of the baptist fan quilting.
It was just what this quilt wanted.
Double Dash – The Pattern Testers’ Quilts
If I had to do it over again I would probably tweak the border quilting a bit, but I'm not picking it out! This quilt is officially a finished quilt! Here a full view. I debated leaving off the blue border and making the cream one under the prairie points a little bit wider. I liked it that way too.