I’ve been busy with my home guild as we are celebrating 25 years and I felt that my last year of guild politics should finish with a bang. I was the guild’s first  president, past president, secretary, program chairman numerous times, same with multiple years as newsletter editor,librarian, raffle committee and teaching. I felt that I would put a lot of effort into this last year and make sure that there was lots of effort put into workshops and other program activities.

There’s been a lot of time and energy from many guild members ,spent on the transition to our new location. Now I can look ahead to finishing the annual guild challenge, putting together my cookie tin exchange quilt in March  and finishing up several community quilts.

Then I am going to get back to my skinny series as the idea jar is overflowing. I’d like to have several new pieces ready for the Arts Alive in the Park ( august) and then of course along comes the next quilt show.

I know that there will be an emptiness with no commitments to the guild, but I am hoping that I can fill the void with more arts council activities.

I’m going to add a few photos for Leslie , who asked me to show the 2 blocks we discussed. In the cookie tin exchange, ( one a month rotating through our group) there was one tin that asked for black and white blocks. The beginning block was of a tangram figure. I wanted to try some more difficult blocks as the recipient really likes a challenge, so I chose 2 blocks that have been favs of mine for years.

The bottom 2 pieced blocks are mine. Left side is a unnamed block from the 90′s and I had lost the  instructions, so proceeded to dust off the brain cells and do some drafting. The right block is called Tap Dance and is found in quite a few of the Quilter’s Newsletter special magazines over the years.

I took pics and flipped them both ways and the orientation feels comfortable both ways. My personal deadline is to get this finished for the end of the year party. The design was inspired by the work of Tommy Fitzsimmons.

next skinny in the series

Guess who the fool was to volunteer her home and garden for 30-40 people to enjoy potluck,evening glass of wine and hopefully be as bug free as possible. Yup!

Well I have gone back to some hand quilting for this series of skinnies. I’m useing a biggish embroidery needle with a decent size eye and 3 strands of hand dyed floss. I am doing a running stitch or Kantha stitch and some of this fabric is tightly woven batik (meaning tough and dense)

My fingers have been very sore trying to push the needle through the fabric layers and also to pull up the needle. I do have a small piece of rubber to grip the needle , but you must continually find it, pick it up and then put it down – hopefully in a place with your scissors where it won’t get knocked onto the floor or lost in the folds of the quilt.

I grabbed one of the machinger gloves and find it has enough padding so my fingers are cushioned while weaving the needle in and out for 3 big continuous stitches on the needle,and i get a good grip on the needle when I want to pull it through. It’s made the last hour of stitching quite pleasant. So instead of a latex glove from the dental office, the machingers are cool and my hand doesn’t sweat.

These were taken on our last trip through the city. He is 6 weeks old.

I am working on my guild’s challenge this week, but I’ve made it a “skinny” and plan to finish it with a different faceing method so I have experimented with all of the examples.

We were given a CIL paint chip card, and my colours ranged from a terra cotta to a very light peach. We were instructed to make something with these colours but to add anything that complemented our paint chips. I of course took that to mean that we could add any other colour on the color wheel and I’ve chosen a few sandy beiges and a few foresty greens. Of course I had all those in my drawers and did not have to look far for a selection of fabrics to work with.

I’m working with circles and curves, added a few circle and polkadot prints to the batiks and plan to incorporate some circles in the machine quilting.

Can’t let you see it until the unveiling at the guild’s end of year party.

But I will take some time and add some cute baby pics that we got last week on a short visit.

So I immediately got out all my bits and pieces of gauzy madras plaids and i am working on a series of circles in different colourways. Here’s the start

my 2nd skinny is inspired by Tom Russell of Texas. He doesn’t have a website – but he has entered Houston several times. I like to be “inspired by” but attempt to avoid a exact copy. I’ve changed the orientation from horizontal to vertical, changed the background to my own version of string pieced blocks, and going to change the birds and flowers to my own William Morris /pippa moore influenced shapes .

I am having a problem with the base of the tree so here’s a series of photos, but now that I see this photo of the background – the transition from dark to light looks too abrupt. But I will stop fussing as it will be all covered with branches , birds , flowers and leaves and I will ” get over it”

string pieced backgroundcartoon drawing of treestring pieced tree trunk with fairly decent transition from dark to light,tree trunk placed on background.

Here is the cartoon of my tree’s basic shape above.

and below is the main trunk of strings.

string pieced tree trunk with fairly decent transition from dark to light,

But here is the 2 of them placed together and I’m not happy with the base of the tree almost getting lost in the navy blue of the background.

As you see from the previous post- I am working on a skinny series.

This one is a row of 3 ninepatches, inspired by  a few pieces that i saw on Sue Benner’s website. I am going to face this with red, and do some “big stitch” or Kantha stitching . I will stitch it with a minamalist style.

Below is a detail:

first skinny inspired by Sue Benner

Janis asked what is a Kantha stitch? some modern versions of this would be seen at Pamela Allen’s website. She is using more hand work in her recent Women in History series and you can see the running stitches especially in “Woman waiting II”

http://pamelart2.homestead.com/newquilts.html

There is also a lovely example of Kantha or running stitch on the Embroider’s guild contest page

http://www.embroiderersguild.com/stitch/jos/harris.html

Hope that helps.

nina

I want to do another  series with a couple of challenges for myself. When I challenged myself with the alphabet series a few years ago, I had deviated from making them all the same size – so………

I am going to keep to a size perimeter. They all will be no wider than 18-20 inches and no longer that 48-54 inches. I’m referring to them as my “skinnies” and hope to find many designs that work well in that long and narrow  format. The online group called Quiltart did a challenge several years ago called the “straight and narrow” but they could vary from horizontal to vertical. I’m sticking to vertical for now so that I have ease of display at a couple of summer exhibit  opportunities.

Not all of them will be perfect rectangles – but may have uneven edges.

Then I also  want to do  all my projects this year with facings. That will be facings on the outer edges as well as facings on any openings or holes in the middle of the quilt as well.  A lot of my ideas and sketches have circles, arcs, curves and they well may be faced and almost a separate part on top of the base quilt. I’ve started last night , piecing a project  inspired by the work of Sue Benner.

I’m starting in the left over strings – but actually broke out new yardage to compliment the other neutrals, dots, and swirls

( yahoo!)

The Facings part of the project might turn into a class for the guild in the fall. There is a excellent tutorial on Susan Brubaker Knapp’s blog as well as an excellent article on 3 methods in a recent issue of Machine Quilting Unlimited. These 4 methods coupled with a lesson on facing circles and little elements to place on top of a quilt – well – that should turn into a good Sat workshop.

Off to the studio to play in the scraps!

four rectangles make pretty diamonds

I hope all of you taking the class learn as much as I have over the last 6 months about all the variations in String Quilts.

I will include several websites here that have been particularly helpful in my research about String Quilts. They are worth sitting with a cuppa tea and browseing.( See Side Bar for String Quilts page)

Also check Dec 28th post for the earlier pics.