Wildwood Quilt Photo Op

January 11, 2012

Hello Everyone! I want to take a moment and welcome all the new readers/subscribers to my site. Many of you have found me through the projects I have posted on my Craftsy page. I am glad you found me! A few blog posts back, I told you about the Wildwood throw quilt I designed and made. You can find the full PDF instructions for this quilt on this blog, just use this link: Wildwood Throw Quilt Project or use the images links on the right side bar. Well, anyway, what you may not have known was that quilt was going to be a Christmas gift for my daughter who is in graduate school. I could not write about it being a gift for her because she reads my blog! Boy was she surprised when she opened up her gift!

When she was home for Christmas (along with her boyfriend) we all had an opportunity to go to an arboretum and do a photo shoot with her and her Wildwood quilt. We had a beautiful day for January in the Midwest and had a ton of fun photographing. Here are my favorite pictures of our day.

This quilt project is a great one for a beginner, new to quilting, it is quick and easy with great results, give it a try!

P.S. Love you Anna, wish you were still here. When you use your quilt, think of it as a big hug from me.

Happy New Year

January 2, 2012

Another year has come and gone. 2011 was a very good year for me that included three fabric collections and lots of projects and quilts. Time flies when you are busy! Looking ahead into 2012, I don't have to turn the calendar pages very far to see my "to do" list already growing. I expect to see fabrics from my Dilly Day collection arriving on my doorstep in the next couple of weeks. I will be jumping right in and making two quilts right away. I have one quilt lined up for Quilt Magazine and one quilt lined up for Fons & Porter's Love of Quilting Magazine using the new collection fabrics. You will see the fruits of that labor later this year in both their summer or early fall issues.

Look for this ad in your favorite quilting magazines.

Concurrently, I am working on a new fabric collection. This new collection is only in the design stage and has a long way to go before being turned into fabric, so this project will be on going for a bit, but you have to start sometime to finish so, I started working on designs right before Christmas.

I have been enjoying having my three kids, my father-in-law and my daughter's boy friend here at our house since before Christmas. We have had a lot of laughs, eaten way too much and just enjoyed being together which is hard to do anymore with everyone spread out across four states.

My eldest son is a computer engineer. With his help, we jazzed up the side bar on my site today. If you are returning to my site, you may have already noticed the snazzy new look to the right side bar. I have chosen some of the most popular projects posted on this site and now have an easy navigation tool of project images for quick links to the individual projects. Or use the quick link image to the Projects page for all the projects posted on this site.

Another neat side bar addition is the tag cloud called Topics. Here you will find another quick access link to key search phrases found in my blog. If you wanted to search for posts that included projects, for instance, these posts have been tagged and will show in the link results using the tag cloud Topics that are found in the side bar.

I do have several more New Years "things I want do" lists. I can see already that this year may go just as quick as last year did!

Best wishes to all in the New Year - Cheers!

Need Color Inspiration?

December 13, 2011

Looking for some color inspiration for your next sewing or craft project? Maybe you are planning to do some redecorating around your house or simply love color and can't get enough of gorgeous pictures combined with yummy color palettes. Well, I have found the perfect site for you to get lost in -- Designseeds.com

There are scads more of these inspirational palettes to be found at DesignSeeds.com, they have different themes that draw color palettes from beautiful photographs as well as an option for you to do your own search by color with a color picker slide bar.

Try picking one, it is impossible to choose! The inspiration for your next quilt could be one of these intriguing palettes. I am thinking I will find the starting seed for a new collection within these little gems -- find what inspires you!

Tree Inspired Quilt

December 6, 2011

Drinking my coffee on Saturday morning I could not help but look over and admire my Christmas tree in our family room. This is my "Woodland" tree and this year I decorated it a little bit different because I only put up less then half the normal amount of ornaments as usual - I am getting lazy. But, even with just these select ornaments (glass birds, pine cones, acorns, nuts and extra greenery) I really think it turned out nice. Admiring the tree with all the bronze, silver, copper and gold tear drop shapes, I got inspired to create a quilt. Not a Christmas quilt, but a quilt that interprets the pine cone shapes and the colors of my Woodland tree.

My husband and I where planning to go out that day Christmas shopping so I finished my coffee and headed to the sewing room to start pulling fabrics. I knew I would be needing to pick some more prints up while we were out.

I put together a card with little swatches of the prints that I thought were going to work for the look I wanted. I already knew what design I was going to use, a variation of my "Trimming the Tree" design that would be quick and easy to make.

I simply stapled fabric swatches to a piece of card stock so I could have this with me when I went to look at fabrics. Yes, my palette choice now includes some blues rather then all coppers, golds, silvers, etc. But that is OK, sometimes inspiration is just the starting point, you can interpret it anyway you want.

Here are some of the prints I brought home to work into my quilt.

I have a bunch of fabrics here to choose from and because this throw quilt is going to be a scrap quilt, I finally narrowed it down to 24 dark prints and about 12 light prints. This picture is before it is narrowed down.

So, Sunday was cutting the top out and Monday and Tuesday (today) I got it all pieced. Here is the finished top. This picture below shows the quilt a bit more purple then it really is, the border is gray to give you a reference. It is very cloudy here today, so it is hard to photograph well in the lighting I have - I will take more pictures for you when it is all quilted and finished!

This block is sort of a Kansas Dugout, but easier. I made 6" blocks and the finished size of this throw will be 72" square. I will be getting this put together with the batting and backing and doing some simple hand quilting to finish it all up. I love to have a project like quilting to do on those long winter evenings.

I hope your holidays are just as inspiring. Creative ideas can be found anywhere.