Saturday, June 27, 2009

Moving right along

Got another pattern drafted up, just have to fine-tune and make sure all my fabric amounts are right and it'll be finished. This one is a table runner.

I finished appliqueing and piecing the top of the Emergence variation, I'll probably mark it for quilting this weekend sometime. Almost done quilting the body of the Peter & Paul, then it's border time and it'll be finished. Haven't finished quilting the 30 degrees yet, but that'll only take an evening to complete likely.


I had sent an email to the Canucks organization telling them about the Canucks quilt I had made last year, in hopes that they would want to see it, asked for an email address I could attach a picture to for them. And yes, I got permission from them to use their logos on the quilt right from the start.
Got a reply back the other day and they said they'd love to see the quilt, so I sent a picture of it along with closeups of each logo. I don't expect to, but do hope to get a reply with comments from them about it. It would be even more awesome if they ask to see it in person, I can't imagine there are very many (if any) of these around, particularly all hand made.


I've been searching the city for quilting betweens (needles) in a size 10, made by Piecemakers. Everyone has their own opinion of what needles are best, my favorites are Piecemakers. They aren't bendy, they rarely break, and the eye is big enough to not fray the thread when you poke it in. I went to the Piecemakers website for them but shipping was outrageous, considering it's a flat thing and could just be popped in a regular envelope. Finally ended up getting them on ebay, same price to buy them as the actual website, but only $1 to ship. I'll be very glad when they get here, been using #12's and they're way too small for my liking.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Projects in the works

I got the Peter & Paul quilt pieced, marked, basted and about 1/3 done quilting. Of course, I can't just work on that until it's finished now, can I? Silly thought. So I also have a new "30 degrees of separation" almost done to replace the one I sold. It's all pieced and about half quilted, that won't take long to finish once I decide to do it.

I had mentioned earlier that I'd been asked by a few people on different occasions if I'd sell patterns of the quilts I designed myself. I hadn't really given that much thought until recently, then I decided sure ... why not. So far I've made pdf files of the 30 degrees quilt and the one called "Emergence". That's the blue and yellow one shown here on my profile picture. A good friend in New Mexico (thanks juls) is my objective pattern tester, it's always good to get another person's opinion of what you've done if it's going out to the public. Plus we've known each other long enough that if I write something that's way out in left field, she'll say so, I trust her to tell me what she thinks and she will.

It's tricky drafting up patterns with descriptions to tell people what to do. I don't think I ever really appreciated all the work that goes into it before. Especially the figuring out how much fabric part. I usually just scribble out a pattern on some graph paper, grab fabric from my stash as I go along and don't really pay that much attention to how much of each color it takes. Now I have to actually sit down and calculate it all out for other people ... definitely a lot of work. Hopefully worth it though.

I think the next one I do will be my "Gung Hay Fat Choy" table runner. I'm realizing that so far most of my own designs are built around circles and parts of circles. I hadn't really thought about it before but I guess I'm a circley kinda quilter. I'll have to do another one soon without circles in it or people will think that's all I know how to do.

After I drafted up the "Emergence" pattern I decided to do like I've seen other pattern makers do and make an alternative version of the same quilt, for comparison, so I'm now piecing that as well as quilting the 30 degrees and the peter & paul. I suppose I should finish something so I can post a picture of it ... hopefully by the end of the week I'll have something done.



Saturday, June 13, 2009

Getting Started

Okay, here we go. My first post on this blog. I'll warn anyone following that I'm essentially a very slack/lazy blogger but I'm determined to do better on this one. Ideally I'd like to post something every few days, at least once a week, just to say what I'm working on quilt-wise and what's coming up.

Last week I had listed some quilts on ebay and actually sold a couple, so I was very pleased about that. One of them was an original design I'd created myself, so right now I'm making another quilt like it to replace in my "stock". I like to keep one of each quilt I've actually designed myself on hand all the time. This particular quilt is one I really like, a small wallhanging and quite simple in design, but a lot of fun.

This quilt is named "30 Degrees of Separation". It has 30 circles on it, which are like degrees. They are separated on sides with warm colors on the left and cool colors on the right. Quilted in the ditch around each circle and each background square (using variegated thread) and a diagonal line quilted between each circle and into the black border. The pattern will be for sale soon on my website.


I just finished hand sewing the top of a "Rob Peter to Pay Paul" type quilt .... yep, all by hand ... have to pick up some batting so I can start quilting that one. I'm planning to draft up pattern #2 this weekend to send off to my pattern tester (thanks jul) early next week. Once I get the hang of this pattern writing dealie it should be a pretty quick process, it's just a matter of writing things out so they make sense to people besides myself. I know what I mean, but do they??