Purple cotton velvet. Oh my.

Purple? In velvet? And cotton to boot? Hello! That sure caught my eye! Winter makes me want to curl up in a comfy chair and stitch. I used to do a lot of cross stitch and crewel work. It's time to get back to that again. Anna Maria Horner's Escape Artist Bag pattern was just the place to put some stitching to use. A center panel just for quilting and stitching and embroidery and beads. :)

I bought a mixed scrap bag from her shop. In it was a piece of Ghost Wing linen with "luscious" colors I couldn't wait to use. I've been hanging on to some of Bari J's older fabric. Ahh, Full Bloom. Wish I had more of those beauties. Out it came to join the party! I machine quilted the Full Bloom with some bright yellow.

Here comes my favorite piece next. In cotton/linen. First time to use this kind of fabric. Love it!! (I ran all of the fabrics through the washer & dryer first.)

I highlighted the moth shapes and the edge of the linen with a straight stitch. Picked out some perle cotton for a row of embroidery. I added some glass beads as well later on. It's hard to know when to stop embellishing sometimes.

Time to sew the bag pieces together. Geez, am I rusty at following sewing patterns. I'm much better with lots of pictures. Show me where I need to be next and I'll probably get there. I spent a lot of time with my seam ripper on this project, but well worth it. And the next one will go much easier and faster. I noticed right away when I was cutting the velvet pieces that I wasn't going to be framing the center panel exactly like the pattern cover photo shows. I thought I had recut it, but couldn't find my second piece. Either way, it'll do. Live & learn. Learn to love it anyway.

I picked out some of Juliana Horner's and Heather Bailey's fabric for the lining. Love these colors together. I added some ribbon to divide the large interior pockets. The ribbon is great place to stash a pencil. Or pen. 

And here it is all done. Thankfully before winter is technically over and done with.

And the back of course. For my love affair with purple and blues and now brown.

A love for Calicos.

It's a flash back Friday. Seeing the cover of an old American Patchwork & Quilting magazine yesterday reminded me of an old wall hanging I did about 18 years ago. I had to just hit the back button because I typed 8 years ago. Yes, the 90's still feels like 10 years ago to me. Ha!

Sorry for the blurry pictures. Red seems to be hard to capture today and my other camera just broke! I happened to save the quilt magazine I used for the pattern, February 1995. How's that for matching the green fabric on the cover?

I sure have learned a lot since then! And I don't like calicos as much as I used to. But with Liberty of London cranking them out, I'm sure we'll see more of them. I just bought my second sweatshirt in the last few months. Yes, the 80's and 90's are back again. :)

So I learned that pre washing fabrics keeps your quilt from being all cattywampus and skinny in the middle like this one. Especially if you use cheap muslin on the back. I don't always prewash, but I am trying to do it with all of the fabric that I buy. Live and learn. Learn and love it anyway. 

I learned what machine stitches look like when you're tension needs adjusting. See those threads showing from the front! 

I learned I really don't like to appliqué, but this pattern used a very easy technique. (The hearts are two layers, right sides together & sewn completely around, slit in the center of the back, and then turned right side out. Clever.) 

I learned I really like a little hand quilting and machine quilting on almost every quilt I make. Happy stitches. xo xo 

Fan-tastic!

Fan-tastic, it's a word I've heard quite often in our house. And usually pretty dramatically! So here's a fan quilt I started last summer. Hope you find it as fantastic as I do. With all those beautiful fabrics out there to pick from, it sure keeps my creativity in motion. 

I've been hanging on to some Kaffe Fassett Paper Fans in Ochre for years. I wanted to keep it simple design of repeating diamond shaped fans with the fan fabric as a base for each diamond. I remember playing with old paper folding fans as a little girl. So much fun!

The succulents in our garden were looking very pink and a beautiful range of warm and cool green tones. Even a touch of gold. This was the start of my color story. 

I also had some of Anna Maria Horner's Loulouthi Summer Totem in Grapefruit that I had been wanting to use. The colors and the scale were perfect for a wide border!

I wanted to use some Peony fabric from Kaffe Fassett. I used the golden colorway for some of the fans and the deep red in the scrappy back. Sure wish Peony would get reprinted!

I brought this quilt along with us on Thanksgiving vacation. Love how we were surrounded by saw palmetto plants. Fits right in I think! You can also see how I started to quilt the fans. I ended up with only one diamond embellished with a fanfold zig zag at the top. The rest was quilted with a two step, two colored running stitch. I hand tied the whole quilt. A first for me. Just a little nod to the silky tassels that hang from so many antique fans. 

Points don't meet here. But that's not the point. Not always. Not for my anyway.

I wanted to do some widely spaced large quilt stitching across the border. As if somebody was looking out large plantation shutters into the garden. Fanning themselves in the heat of course! Thank goodness we have ceiling fans these days.

Took me what felt like FOREVER to find a voile to use for the binding. There's only hand quilting on this one. That creates a wonderful drape. And a heavy binding would take away from that. I love to use voile in our hot Louisiana climate, especially on a binding. I had a long date with a seam ripper before I finally settled on using some of Anna Maria Horner's Forest Hills voile. Fussy cutting it of course! That first choice of Sinister Swarm in Vivacious was just too dark. Changed the whole look of the quilt.

Finally had a sunny day to take a few more pictures. 

Thank you for stopping by and taking a look. :) 

Mornin' Sunshine

Half Square Triangles, otherwise known as hst's, are one of the best quilt blocks out there to work with. So much you can to do with them! Use precuts and it's an even quicker project.

I finished another hst quilt with mostly charm squares of Fandango, by Kate Spain. I think the white is Kona Snow. I added lots of 5" charms from my stash to get a more scrappy quilt. Even found some of Kaffe Fassett Peony from many years ago in my stash! :)

More big stitches with perle cotton thread. I ran the threads along the ditch and about 3/8" from the seam. I just eyeball it. My stitches aren't perfect and I like it that way.

I arranged it a little bit off center, just like me. I like to try and add a little yellow to most of the quilts I make. Yellow is very much a neutral to me. But it's a happy neutral and can bring a little life to the party. Chartreuse is another fun color to slip in there for an accent. 

I don't think I'll ever get tired of sewing with hst's or waking up with a beautiful sunrise.

No Wake Zone

This quilt is for kayaking. One of the more interesting places to kayak is on a bayou in Louisiana in a no wake zone. Fall is my favorite time. Seems like forever to have to wait for the weather to cool down around here. What a treat when it does finally arrive!

Crossed Canoes is an older block. I think it has been traced back as far as the late 1800's. It looks more contemporary than most. Perfect for the modern quilts and a very modern shade of yellow. To me, it looks more like Crossed Kayaks. Of course!

Here's my color inspiration. Ahh, love Cloud9 organics & Heather Bailey's fabrics! Had to sneak some flowers in there somewhere. Tans are so hard to find these days. Luckily I bought a large scrap bag of neutrals from gloriouscolor.com. It was filled with wonderful brown and tan plaids! Bought it last year I think.

Please pardon the poor quality photos. I found these colors, especially the yellow, really hard to photograph.

Really love these sandpipers! I have more pictures of the quilt blocks on my Flickr page under Quilt Blocks set. It's a little hard to see, but I did some hand quilting too. I used perle cotton to stitch a cross shape in the middle of the blocks and where the blocks meet in the middle of the blues and greens. Slightly similar to tying, but more fun and fast. 

Beautiful sunny Florida :)

Beach Jewels

We've been super lucky to be able to live near two beaches, Kodiak, AK and Sandy Hook, NJ. So far away from each other and so very different. But each had smooth beautiful colorful beach glass to hunt for. Once again I was inspired to make a quilt. My very talented niece of Kathryn Peters Photography helped me capture the dreamy colors of this quilt back in my home state of Alabama. Next to a fluffy cotton field! So southern and so beautiful. The things we quilters can make with cotton. :) Her photos are amazing!! 

Love the sunshine peaking through the quilt & the pecan tree up in the corner joining the party.

kspphotograhpy.com

So here's the typical loot we could find and bring home. There were many more colors in Alaska. Somewhere tucked away are the really rare bits of red and pink. The sand in Kodiak is dark! It's formed from the volcanic rock that the 

island is made of. It's got bits of white in it too so I wanted to add some black and white fabric along with the blues and greens. My favorites. 

I bought this black and white fabric years ago. I could only find a few fat quarters. So sad, I love it! I'm seeing the simple line drawings like this show up in fabric by designers more and more. Yay!! 

The sands back in New Jersey were much lighter. One special piece we found has New York molded into it. 

The handmade net floats are the real deal. You can find them washed up on the shores of remote beaches in Alaska. 

I hand quilted the center portion with Perle cotton and used this beautiful variegated Aurifil thread to continue the chevron design with machine quilting all around the center of the quilt. Bound the quilt with fans from Good Fortune collection. And how fortunate we were to be able to walk the beaches with our  young ones and look for beach jewels all year long. And yes, those beaches are cold in the winter! Had to use to black & white snowflake fabric on the back along with this polka dot fabric.

Keeping the squirrels out.

We've got more squirrels here than any other place we've lived. Plenty of acorns for them too. Though I hear someone nearby feeds them corn. Ugh! Can't plant anything without them coming to investigate. By that I mean digging out your carefully planted flowers, plants, and shrubs just as soon as you leave the yard!!

I have found one thing that slows them down quite a bit is dried sago palm fronds. Those palms are painful when they are green and even worse when they're dried. The squirrels don't like to mess with them. So we keep one sago palm (not my favorite shrub) around just for mulch. 

Happy  Gardening!