Visually Representing My Blog...

It had been a while since I'd checked out Wordle, the cool online program for generating "word clouds" from text you provide. The larger the word appears in the cloud, the more frequently it appeared in the source text. I figured I'd throw my blog at it and, lo and behold, guess which words had the most prominence??

I can't say that I'm at all surprised by the words that are most prominent, but this is a fun little program to play with - you can tweak the colors, font and alignment to suit your tastes. I'm going to print this one and post it near my sewing machine - I especially love how the words "make" and "time" appear next to one another towards the center of the image.

Have fun!!

Happy New Year!

Yes, it's hard to believe that we're already a week into 2010.  While I haven't felt terribly motivated to post of late, I have been getting in some quality quilting time, mainly trying to plow through the Thistlepod quilt in the hopes of having it hanging in my guild's show in March.  We'll see how that goes... I think I'm down to about 10 units left to piece, and a ton of papers to rip off, but I have a Netflix movie and a couple of Mad Men seasons on DVD that I got for Christmas (jury's still out on how I feel about Mad Men).


I did finally quilt two of the three table runners I showed in early November as somewhat belated Christmas gifts.  I'll get to doing the third one for myself sometime in the future...

Here's the first, which I quilted using a grid.

With a close-up:

And the second, which I stippled in the large squares (a good idea in theory, but I broke two needles trying to cross over at the corners, where there is quite a bit of bulk):

And a close-up:

I've been busy with a couple other things too, but I'll save those updates for another day.

Flag Quilt Completed

One of the few things I've managed to finish this month is the flag quilt I showed back in early November. It took me a while to settle on a quilting design because some of my initial ideas didn't work well, given the odd number of rows in the upper half. I wanted a pattern that would give the feeling of movement on the quilt but wouldn't be too sharp and angular.

I ended up deciding to use a flame-inspired motif, but I turned it on its side so it looks more like a wood grain (at least I hope), as I don't want anyone misreading this as a "flag burning" motif. Not the intent at all!!! Here's a close up of the quilting through the stripes (I stippled the blue banner and stars):

Ultimately, I think the modified flame worked well, as I could free-hand it and didn't have to work in rows or change the scale from the upper to bottom rows. (I did do much practicing, both on paper and small sample pieces.) The most challenging aspect for me was figuring out how to move from one knot/flame to the next.

Here's a picture of the completed quilt before I wrapped it and shipped it off to its intended recipient:

New Zealand and Australia

I've taken a somewhat extended break from blogging, in part because I haven't done a whole lot of sewing, in part because I was out of the country for a fair piece of time, and in part because holiday preparations have taken most of my free time since I returned from vacation. Finally, today, I think, I may have an opportunity to catch my breath and relax a bit.

We were in Australia and New Zealand from November 14-30. Both countries are beautiful and we'd go back in a heartbeat as there's still so much more to see. Highlights were most definitely the outdoor activities: snorkeling at the Great Barrier Reef, hiking a portion of the Routeburn Track from Glenorchy, going down (and UP!) the Giant Stairway at Katoomba in the Blue Mountains. We almost got used to the opposite-side-of-road driving, seeing deer farms, and the possum fur-merino blend clothing and accessories. We took WAY too many pictures - on the order of 1,600. On Friday night, we found some time to narrow them down and posted a little over 100 on my Picasa album.

While there are most definitely some amazing Australian and New Zealand quilters and quilt shops, we didn't have time in our schedule to get out to visit them. My one stop at a sewing center in Cairns was to purchase a thread cutting pendant because the Brisbane airport wouldn't allow my sewing scissors through security and I had to forfeit them as I wouldn't check my backpack (luggage was already checked). I was rather ticked and pointed out that the American security hadn't batted an eye at them, the New Zealanders had measured them and ascertained the blades to be short enough to fall within legal range, but it didn't make a difference. They were "too pointy" for an Australian domestic flight. And even were I tempted to purchase fabric at the sewing center, the prices were exorbitant compared to what we're used to paying here, prices like $22/meter for Moda lines, $50+ for jelly rolls, etc. The conversion rate isn't that favorable, believe me!

I did find some quilt design inspiration, particularly among Maori carving designs. Check out these traditional designs. Wouldn't they be perfect for quilting?






I'd taken along a bit of handwork to keep me busy, but didn't get as much done as I'd have hoped (I got caught up in a couple of books on the flights, etc.). However, I did make some progress on 1-1/2" hexagons using Daiwabo fabrics:


I'm not really sure what I'm going to make with these, but it's nice to have a small grab-and-go hand project for those in-between times or to work on in the car. I'm thinking of using it sometime as the background to another design, but really it's all up in the air. And I'm sure it's likely to be years before I've done enough to amount to anything.

I hope all of your holiday preparations are going smoothly and you're able to find time to relax and enjoy the season!

Joy

The final small project I've squeezed in some time for is the Joy wall hanging that I picked up the pattern for a little over a month ago. The design is by Pam Puyleart of Cottage Creek Quilts and I like the whole seasonal "inspiration series" of patterns she has out right now (which includes similar layouts for "grateful" and "create").

The photo is rather washed out, but the flash and lighting just wouldn't cooperate with me tonight.

It was very easy to make this pattern; the most time-consuming part was having to redo the snowflake because the fusible just didn't want to play nice when I went to remove it from the first snowflake I cut out. So I had to cut out another, with slightly better results. Honestly - I don't know what my problem is with fusible of late. But I had problems with the "joy" text in this project as well and in September with the text on the Punkins 4 Sale quilt too. I've heard fusible can "go bad" and that you can get a bad batch, but I've used three different purchase of fusible with not ideal results. Fortunately, things went better with the Ginkgo quilt. Was that just a better batch of fusible? Or because those were batiks? I don't like the fraying I seem to be experiencing and don't know how to solve it. Ideas?

Point Setta Tablerunner

Another quick project I've been working on are these "Point Setta" table runners. I picked up the pattern at last year's quilt retreat (this year's retreat is at the end of this week - yippee!), figuring that although I didn't really need the pattern to figure out how to do this, I'd support the pattern designer, Crooked Nickel Quilt Designs.


The pattern uses charm squares, a background fabric, and fusible grid. It's really not difficult to make, but as you can see, I can manage to have two of the same grids come out at different sizes (I intentionally made my runners smaller than that which the pattern called for). The top one in the photos is made from 3 Sisters' line Glace; the bottom one is made from April Cornell's Nostalgia line. I have another one all fused from the Glace line and just need to sew the seams.

I'm not fully convinced that using the grid is any faster than if I had simply pieced them all using normal techniques. But it's always worth trying something new and learning a new method! I'm hoping I might be able to finish these as Christmas presents, but am not sure how I want to quilt them. It seems like too much work to put a design element in each square, but I'm not sure an all-over meander is really what I'm looking for either. I have time to decide: while I might be sewing at retreat this weekend, I won't be machine quilting on tables in a resort - too painful!

Scrappy Flag

I haven't had tons of time for sewing of late, but I did put together an hour here and there to piece together this flag wall hanging.


The pattern is called "Scrappy Flag," and it's designed by Glory Daze Pattern Co. The pattern features an eagle in the blue section, but I won't be adding it in, as I don't honestly care for it. I've had the pattern forever and thought I'd made enough of them - this is the 7th one of these that I have made (I definitely didn't want to see this after a few Christmases ago when I made 5 of them as gifts) - but I had a request to make one as a birthday/Christmas present. I'll have to quilt this after I get back from vacation, but I've already got the backing fabric and a lovely gold thread that I think will work really well. I'm still undecided on the quilting pattern, but have a month or so to figure it out. Any ideas or suggestions?