Hippy Dippy Dotty collage

 In May our guild hosted a fun workshop with Carol Morrissey to learn her Hippy Dippy Dotty collage method. I had great fun making my own small version....

This is the pile of fabric and die cut circles that went into my quilt

It was fun to play with color and design for a day and I love my finished project. I straight line quilted it on my domestic machine, added a faced binding and hung it in my dining room. It's 23"x19".  It was fun to see how different everyone's quilts turned out!

Collab with Chris

Everyone knows I love a good collaboration. Recently I had an opportunity to make a quilt with my friend Chris....

I spent several days helping Chris sort out the clutter in her sewing space. It was fun finding things Chris had started and making a plan for future quilting projects. In the bottom of one bin of assorted fabrics and blocks, I found the improv blocks Chris had made during our workshop with Debbie Jeske in 2018. I couldn't bear to see them all unassembled, and, as Chris had no plan for them, I tucked them in my bag, took them home and set to work puzzling them together.

The final quilt is fun, Chris's signature rainbow color palette and my assembly. I especially love the black and white stripe she added to some of her blocks. It adds a bit of zing!

This was a fun, unexpected project!
 

100 days of bojagi

It's been 100 days since Quiltcon 2020 in Austin. 100 days since we hugged new and old friends, stood in lines (close together!), ate tacos in crowded restaurants, chatted with vendors with no masks and thought nothing of it. 100 days since I sat in a classroom at the convention center with new and old friends and learned to do Korean Bojagi from Daisy Aschehoug.

Daisy is a warm, kind, bubbly human who currently lives in Norway (yes, she flew across the ocean to teach us, another thing people could do way back in February). She's an awesome teacher. By the end of the evening, I was totally in love with this new hand sewing technique.

For the record, I used several colors of Kona cotton for my bojagi project and a spool of 12 weight, Wonderfil Spagetti thread that I bought at Quiltcon. Size 24 chenille needles worked perfectly. I also highly recommend a clover needle threader that I never knew about before quilt con and now cannot live without. It's so sturdy, and perfect for large eyed needles and thicker thread.

 This is how far I had gotten that first night. My stitches were a bit uneven and way too tiny and tight, but the more I stitched, the better they got. I casually said to Daisy "I really want to get good at this...." and she suggested I make it a 100 day project. Well, I had always wanted to do a 100 day project but had not found something I wanted to commit to for that long! This was it. I started counting that very day and stitched on my bojagi project for the next 100 days. Some days I added one small piece. Other days I put together a whole section, or joined larger sections together. You can see my progress pictures here, at #ellynlearnsbojagi.

Today, May 31, 2020, is day 100. Here is my final piece....

While it is not perfectly square, it measures approximately 28"x28", and, if I'm counting right, it has 145 pieces, varying in size. If you look closely, you can see how my stitches relaxed, got larger, and more even as I learned, which was exactly my goal.

One of the cool things about bojagi is that the back is finished (no raw edges) as is the front. kind of hand sewn flat felled seams if you will. Here is the back of mine...

My plan is to hand hem the edges (Daisy taught us how) and keep this as a sample/art piece. I'm so happy with it, and very happy that I stuck with it and did the work for 100 days! Now if we could just get back to hugging people again, I'd be even more pleased. Be well...

gifted quilts

There have been lots of happy occasions to gift my quilts lately! In December, friends of ours got married. We gifted them the improv string plus quilt I had begun in Sherri Lynn Wood's workshop in 2018. My pal, Diann, of Happy Quilts quilted it for me.

Then the babies began to arrive! Dear friends welcomed their first grandchild, a girl, in January. Knowing she was coming, I had made my final 2019 fifth Saturday challenge especially for her....

I assure you the quilt is square! Apparently I had my phone at an angle and this is the best photo I got of the quilt.

Another baby arrived in January, this one a boy, a great nephew for us. I hadn't made a Line Dance quilt (pattern by Kathy Mack) in years. This one came entirely from my stash...

Another great nephew will arrive in March. This quilt is ready to head off to his family for a baby shower this month...

These were block lotto blocks I won at a McKinney Modern Quilt Guild meeting last year. I knew they would make a bright and happy baby quilt.

I love gifting my quilts and knowing they are being loved and used.

QuiltCon classes

I always have the best luck with the classes I get for Quiltcon! This year I took two half day (ok, evening!) classes. The first one was with Melanie Tuazon. I didn't know much about Melanie when I signed up for her class, but just the title sucked me right in.... Planned & Unplanned, find your improv groove. Boy did she deliver!

Melanie was encouraging, approachable and a terrific teacher. In the end I came away with finished blocks for a quilt top...

my mom says it reminds her of post it notes & I agree! I plan to add dark gray (I know, it looks black but it's not) borders so it "floats" and I think I'll call it "Take Note".

My second class was with Debbie Grifka and was titled Every.Day.Creativity. I've followed Debbie for a long time on social media and really admire her work. She's in her third year doing a hundred day project and has inspired me to think about one I could do. I loved every minute of her class and connected with Debbie on so many levels!

I came away from her class with two finished projects, this 10 inch quilt which is partially done here and a 4x6 "postcard" quilt.

This one is titled "Nashville" because it poured rain the entire time we attended Quiltcon! Not a bad souvenir!

fun with Sherri Lynn Wood

Last week the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild invited Sherri Lynn Wood to speak and teach for their guild members. Lucky for me, visitors were also welcome! Thursday night, a friend & I visited their guild meeting to hear Sherri speak.

If you don't know Sherri, she literally wrote the book on improv quilting. Her thought process is fascinating and her speaking style is engaging! If you ever get the chance to hear her speak, I recommend it (hint: she's the keynote speaker for Quiltcon 2019 in Nashville. Will I see you there?)

On Friday, my friends Bonnie, Anne & I attended her workshop on strip piecing and color theory.

It was a fun and interesting day. We did several "rounds" of strip piecing, each one based on different color parameters. 

Look how different all of our sets came out, even though we all used the same "rules". 

Here are my four strip sets:

I haven't figured out what I'll do with them yet! I do have a few ideas. 

Thanks Dallas Modern Quilt Guild for inviting us to play along with you!

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!