Sunday, April 29, 2018

Everyday Improv

Yesterday was an incredibly fun day. McKinney Modern Quilt Guild welcomed Debbie Jeske from A Quilters Table to lead us in an improv workshop. Debbie is my go to improv guru, so it was fun to learn from her in person. Fourteen of us filled the room with fabric, color, enthusiasm and laughter.
We learned lots of different improv techniques all represented in this quilt that Debbie shared. 

This is the tidiest corner of my workspace! It looked like a tornado had blown through, there were scraps everywhere!

Bonny shared my workspace. Hers was all neat and tidy. hmmm I don't get it!
By the end of the day, we had accumulated an amazing collection of blocks, made by everyone in the room. I can't wait to make some sense out of the ones I made and share them with you.
Thanks for a great day Debbie! It was the most fun I'd had in a very long time. I look forward to Debbie's trunk show & lecture at our guild meeting this coming Tuesday. If you're local, it would be great to have you join us!

Thursday, April 19, 2018

Solid Seven Bee blocks

A couple of months ago, I was invited to join an Instagram bee called the Solid Seven. The premise for this Modern Quilt Bee is that they use only high quality solids in their bee blocks. There are more than seven members, but the seven refers to the color spectrum, ROYGBIV. Since I love solids, love modern quilting and really enjoy bees, I was excited to join their ranks. 

Our first set of blocks are for Nicole (Saphre1964). Nicole asked us to make three blocks, on a 13 inch square of white solid, within the theme "collage". She likes bright, saturated colors and requested that our first block be something that represents our childhood. I decided to go with board game pieces....

The other two blocks could be whatever we wanted. After a couple of very rainy days in Texas, this block came to me....
Then I was stuck. I had some ideas but they just weren't coming together the way I wanted them to. Until a friend of mine posted this photo on Instagram, while she was vacationing in Marrakech...
The geometrics really spoke to me.  Block three came to me very quickly after that...
These are off in the mail to Nicole and I am anxiously awaiting our next prompt. If you want to see more of this bee's creations, check out #thesolidseven on Instagram.

Tuesday, April 17, 2018

Hello, is this thing on?

Well I truly didn't mean to disappear like that! There's been some traveling going on, some planned, some unplanned, and all good. Meanwhile, quilting & blogging got put on hold a bit. But I'm back, and have no plans to disappear again any time soon. We'll see how that goes!

Something fun we do at at Not Your Mama's Quilt Store where I host the monthly Boast and Toast, is hold a fifth Saturday Challenge. Since March had five Saturdays, many of us gathered on the fifth Saturday to share the projects we had completed. We all receive the same starting package of fabrics and make whatever we want from them. Then we leave the projects at the shop for a month so customers can vote for their favorites.

I'll admit, I was at a loss for a long time when I received the challenge fabrics. Finally, it came to me! Snugs bear, the 35 year old teddy bear that hubby gave me when we were first dating, needed some new clothes. He's become pretty worn over the years, and I thought a cute pair of pants and vest would make him look snazzy.
And I was right! I deigned the little patterns myself, using a doll clothes pattern as a jumping off point. The print fabric and the minty polka dot were the assigned fabric. I lined the vest with the polka dot and then added a dapper little bow tie (on a piece of ribbon) to finish off his outfit.

What a fun project! And you should see the wonderful things others made. Wow! There's some serious talent in that group. Now, to evaluate the fabric I have for the June challenge and come up with something fun.

Wednesday, April 4, 2018

MQG Riley Blake challenge

I had fun with the latest Modern Quilt Guild fabric challenge from Riley Blake. We received four prints for the challenge and I added Riley Blake solids in Navy and Lime.
I also ordered extra of the navy stripe, one of the prints received, because I love a good bias stripe binding! Here you can see all four prints, the stripe, the navy crosshatch at the star points, the white with rose gold plusses in the center of the block and a white on white print in the outer corners. 

The block is one I designed in one of my Quilt Con classes. Each block is 16 inches square, including the offset border. The whole quilt measures 32 inches square.

I did a simple "straight" line quilting in lime on my domestic machine to finish it off. 

I would love to make my pattern into a much bigger quilt one day! For now, this little version will do.