Permission to Play

My self imposed One Week, One Challenge (okay nine days!) reminded me of the importance of giving oneself permission to play!  To make a quilt without any specific purpose or recipient in mind.  To sew and play with fabric just for the pleasure of it.  To toss aside judgement (easier said than done sometimes!).  Starting with favourite fabrics (being sure to include a few shockers … those fabrics that your hand might back away from when you see them on the store shelf, but that are so necessary to give your quilt life and depth), making some 16 patch blocks and then making my favourite blocks, “Broken Dishes”, I was in heaven.  

  Know though, that this quilt is version 2.0!  There was a setting fabric decision that … well … suffice to say all photographic equipment was banned from my studio!  That quilt would have been aptly named “What Was She Thinking!”   The lesson in version 1.0, was that I was not listening to the quilt.  The original idea I had in my mind did not need to be tweaked, “improved upon” (remember that judgement part!!! lol!), nor did it need “complexity” … simple celebration of all the elements that came together was best.  

  Pairing 4″ broken dishes with the “16-patches” meant this quilt went together rather quickly.  

  Now how to quilt it?   This week’s blog book tour stop is Ingrid, at Supergoof. I have been following Ingrid’s blog for a couple of years and in particular, her progress on her spectacular interpretation of the Rocky Mountain Thimbles Quilt from our first book “Small Blocks, Stunning Quilts.”   She hand pieced all 6552 pieces, hand quilted it and with it’s completion, Ingrid became an Honoured Member of The Spa Society!   Working by hand Ingrid is already incredibly prolific.  Recently she acquired a Featherweight sewing machine and I can only imagine what is going to happen once she gets going on it!!  I urge you to check out her beautiful blog.  You will be delighted with all that you see.  I eagerly await the completion of her “dollies” quilt!   For her blog post about “Small Pieces, Spectacular Quilts” Ingrid decided to try her hand at a block from “Go With The Flow” , and rendered it in warm and luscious Dutch reproduction fabrics from Den Haan and Wagenmakers.   It made me want to run to my box of precious Dutch scraps and play!   Ingrid’s blog is written in Dutch, however, I found that when I viewed it with Google Chrome a translation button appears at the top after the post is loaded and clicking that translates her blog into English.   If this is your first time on my blog, welcome, and be sure to check out my inaugural post and leave your comment to have a chance at one of the ten giveaways.  Next week’s blog book tour stop is Linda of Quilts in the Barn, way down under, in Australia!   Have a fabulous week & Happy Stitching!

One Week, One Thing Challenge

This weeks’ blog book tour stop is Amy Ellis of Amy’s Creative Side.  Amy is an author, prolific blogger, founder of the online Blogger’s Quilt Festival, and co-founder of The Sewing Summit a modern sewing and blogging conference being held this October 11 – 13th in Salt Lake City.   About a year ago, Amy started the “One Thing, One Week Challenge” which she stresses is not to create stress to complete something but to provide motivation to do so.  The first Monday of each month her readers can decide on one thing that they want to challenge themselves with for the following week, then they tell her about it in the comments and a week later, she has a linky so everyone can check out each other’s projects.  There is nothing like public declaration to motivate!   I liked the idea of the challenge and decided to create a challenge for myself in honour of Amy’s post on the blog tour!  Lucy, of Quilting With The Past has been working on a sweet quilt in a delightful colour palette.  You might remember Darra’s post about how I organize my scraps.   I dove into my tackle box of 1 1/2″ squares and inspired by Lucy’s colour selections, this is what I came up with:  

  I knew that I needed to round out some of the colours, so I went to my loose scraps and to my fabric buckets and pulled these.  I love fabric pulls.  It means a chance to visit with my fabrics and fondle them!  

    So what did I make?  This is the start and a peak until next week …  

  Do you see the square with the tiny blue and pink flowers?  

  That is the first quilting fabric that I bought back in 1975!  Do you remember your first quilting fabric?   If you are stopping by for the first time, be sure to click on my inaugural post and leave your comment to have a chance at one of the ten giveaways.  And next week’s blog book tour stop, Wednesday August 29th, is Ingrid at Supergoof!  And be sure to check out the latest “Honoured Spa Society” member, Mickey Mowry!   Have a great week & Happy Stitching!

An Awe Inspiring, Swoon Worthy Quilt!

This week’s blog hop stop on the book tour is Janet at Quiltsalott.  I started following Janet and her work shortly after she started blogging, admiring from the start her fine needle skills and wonderful colour sense.   A dedicated hand quilter, her prolific output and enthusiasm on all quilting fronts is inspiring, and if I have moments of lagging production I know I can live vicariously through her abundant efforts. One day Janet announced, spurred on by Tracy, that she was starting a new quilt.  Not just any quilt, but a reproduction of Susan McCord’s “Vine Quilt“, my all time favourite!  It boggles the mind how Susan McCord found the time to complete all of her magnificent quilts while raising seven children and managing all the work involved in keeping a farm.    This is Janet’s work in progress:    

  Janet’s skill and tenacious efforts as panel by panel she interprets Susan’s masterpiece, leave me in utter awe.  She has posted some fabulously helpful tutorials and is providing her pattern for her interpretation here,  sized to fit more modern beds.   My dear friend Nancy taught me how to string piece and she has what surely must be one of the largest and finest collections of string quilts ever amassed.  Nancy and I have talked frequently about the Susan McCord quilts and she is convinced that Susan string pieced all those leaves and buds because she loved doing so, not because she did not have other fabric.  Her use of them over and over again in her quilts certainly attests to her love for them!   If could meet Susan today, I would like to ask her if she chose the fabrics specifically for each leaf or chose them randomly and what her process was for piecing her leaves?  What question would you ask Susan if you could?

  If you haven’t already done so, be sure to stop by my inaugural post for a chance to win one of 10 fabulous giveaway items.

Finding Inspiration

This week’s blog hop stop on Friday is See How We Sew, where Darra Williamson shares the blogging fun with three other talented quilters:  Christine Batterman, Laura Nownes, and Jennifer Rounds.  In fact the four of them have sewwwww much experience combined, they could quilt circles around me!  Twice a week they inspire with tips, techniques, nifty projects and patterns, reviews of books and products, interviews, news of upcoming events and more!  I met Darra when she was the editor of our first book (add awesome editor to her long list of creative talents!)   One of Darra’s recent posts about using a camera to capture inspiration reminded me of a photograph my friend Cherie took.  When I saw these rich colours, I fell in love with them and knew I wanted to use this photo inspiration as a jumping off point for a quilt.  

  And this is the quilt!     Now yes, there was that dash of orange in the photo and I did try it out in the design, but after it was auditioned I decided to leave the orange out.  Auditioning is one of my favourite parts of the process, because usually the quilt is able to tell me so clearly what it wants, which saves me from fussing over what works and doesn’t!     So where are some of the places you find inspiration?   If you are visiting my blog for the first time,  be sure to visit my inaugural post for a chance at one of 10 giveaway items!