Thursday, November 3, 2011

Baby Feathers

A friend of ours is having a baby ... what better reason to make a quilt!  They had a couple of ultrasounds and after asking them a few times to make sure I was assured that it's a girl.  Ok ...

I saw this gorgeous red/orange/pink/yellow batik and fell in love with it right away.  PERFECT for a girl.  I put it together with a pink patterned background and designed this quilt.  I love love love quilting feathers ... both in applique and quilting ... so I incorporated it into the entire quilt.  The dragonflies add a little bit of fun and extra color to it.  It's all done by hand, with multicolored variegated thread used in the quilting.

It was a big hit at the shower, everyone loved it.  All I can say is, it better be a girl!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

a quote from Steve Jobs ....

A friend pointed out this quote to me today, something Steve Jobs said at one time.  Apparently it sounds like he was talking about me when he said it, I have to say I'm flattered.  

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes. The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify or vilify them. About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

Friday, September 23, 2011

Hou Leng


I was out for a walk a few weeks ago and wandered into a Pier 1 store.  I love looking at all the home accessories and picking out all the things I would buy if I was furnishing my house from scratch ... it's kind of a game I play.  I also watch for things that catch my eye that would make an interesting quilt or part of a quilt and take a picture of them with my phone.  Later I go home and see if I can draft up something cool with it.
This time I saw a pillow with a peacock on it.  I've been wanting to make a quilt in blues, greens, turquoise, and this one fit the bill perfectly.  It's not exactly like the pillow of course, I changed it enough to make it mine and added the chinese character.
 
The peacock is well known as a symbol of pride and beauty, so I've done it here with the chinese character for "beautiful".  The quilt is 24 x 18½" and is named "Hou Leng" which means "very pretty" in Cantonese.  It's all hand appliqued and hand quilted with variegated blue thread.

Monday, September 5, 2011

ok so ... I have very vivid dreams almost every night. Often, unfortunately, they're nightmares of the past (you can find a bit of info on that here), flashback type stuff that wakes me up terrified. But when it's not that sort of dream, I dream about a group of animals, and apparently I talk about them in my sleep. 

It started with Gustave, a snail, and has progressed to quite a few critters now, each with their own personalities. To date we have 8 hedgehogs, an owl, a snail, a chameleon, a turtle and a rabbit.  They call themselves TOMH&R (pronounced tom-har) ... The Order of Mostly Hedgehogs & Raoul.  To find out more about them take a look on their own blog here.

Keep in mind that every post/adventure, including every critter involved, happens in my dreams ... if I didn't dream it I don't write it.  Gord often asks me what about this, or did this happen ... I just tell him if it didn't happen it isn't there, I won't elaborate on them.  Not yet anyhow ....

Thursday, August 25, 2011

A quilter's work is never done ....

I finished these wallhangings a few weeks ago, just haven't gotten around to posting them here until now.  This first one is called "4 trees" (duh) ... it's literally just 4 versions of the same tree.  Each background is different with waves quilted in the background in variegated thread.  It's 14½ x 49".


This one  is 27½ x 39½" and is called "Blessings".
The characters top to bottom, left to right are:
row 1: wealth, luck, peace & harmony
row 2: courage, longevity
row 3: love, long life
row 4: happiness, beautiful, virtue
in Chinese calligraphy.  Chinese belief is that by hanging these characters or representations of them near your front door will invite or encourage these things into your home and life. 

Both of these quilts are, of course, hand appliqued and hand quilted.  Now I'm quilting a batik double wedding ring with a floral appliqued batik border, a wallhanging made up of a bunch of various sized circles in greens, blues, and browns, and some Christmas gifts for my nieces and nephews.

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Hoffman Challenge 2011



This year the Hoffman Challenge focus fabric was really pretty, and equally as challenging to use as every other year. I had a hard time deciding how to use it, I think I started and changed 4 different designs before finally settling on this one.
I had designed a "Wings" quilt this past winter and decided to use that design for the center of my challenge piece.  This centerpiece is all made of the focus fabric on a pale yellow background.


Then I fussy-cut feather shapes from various sections of the focus fabric to get feathers in purple, pink, dark and light green to use in the border.  Feathers and a 1" grid are hand quilted into the background with light colored variegated thread.
I just heard yesterday that although I didn't win anything, my quilt has once again gotten into the traveling trunk show for the 7th time in a row.
The quilt is named "Serendipity".

Friday, April 15, 2011

I now have a logo!

I decided recently that I needed a logo to represent "ScrappyBlue Quilts".  It took a little while to come up with it, though I knew I wanted to incorporate wings and the yin yang symbol.  I also love hearts.  So this is what I came up with.

The quilt itself is about 20 x 22", with batiks used for the logo on a white tone on tone background. I used variegated green thread to quilt it.

Its meaning, which is written on the label on the back, is: With balance, peace and harmony -  the heart is filled and able to soar with creativity.

Soon I'll have to get it printed on my business cards, once I use up all the ones I already have lol

Wednesday, March 16, 2011

A break from the wings ...

I'm currently working on my third Wings quilt, almost halfway through quilting it, then decided to start something else.  What kind of quilter would I be if I worked on one project at a time anyhow?!  I actually also have a bed quilt in the works, but it's way too early to even comment much on that yet.  

So I was in Pier 1 the other day and saw a piece of art in there made with some kind of Chinese fabric on the background and the words "Live, Love, Laugh" on it and thought ... "I can do that!", so I did.  I had this great oriental fabric already, just scraps of it, not enough to really do much with but plenty to make some Chinese characters out of.  I printed off the characters for the words and used them as templates, then embroidered the English words below each one.  

Quilted with a light variegated thread in a hatch-cross pattern in the background.  I love variegated thread and first tried it with a darker version but it overwhelmed the main part of the quilt so I changed to the lighter one and it's much nicer.  The quilt turned out to be about 10½ x 29" and hangs in my front hall.

I also got my Hoffman Challenge 2011 fabric in the mail this week and it's beautiful!  I love the way the gold shimmers in it.  I have no clue what I'll make with it, of course, but it sure is pretty.

Monday, February 21, 2011

Wings #2



And here we have it, my second Wings quilt.  This one is a red batik on plain black background, about 20x20" square.  To make the background not so plain I used bright variegated thread to quilt curlicues in the background.  It's all hand appliqued and hand quilted.  I named it "Wings of Red".

Thursday, February 10, 2011

Wings

A few months ago I started thinking about wings.  Not bird wings, angels, or any other creatures, real or mythical ... just wings.  To me they represent freedom, individuality, an independent spirit. I've been hunting online for pictures of wings other people have drawn, particularly in tattoos, and I've found so many great inspirations.  

So this is my first attempt at a wings quilt.  I just called it "Wings.1".   It's about 19 x 30".  I drew it freehand on freezer-paper first, then made a cardboard template, found some groovy fabric for the wings themselves and away we went.  It's completely appliqued and quilted by hand.  I used variegated blue quilting thread
Once I got it all appliqued came the job of how to quilt it.  I mainly quilted around the wing sections in the ditch, some echo areas, some hearts and things in places.  Then I had a neat off-kilter heart shape I'd used in my self-prortrait quilt and thought it would be cool coming out in all directions around the wings.  I think it looks ok.  I made the borders out of a nice teal that looks good with the main wing fabric, cut the borders in different widths each, and extended the hearts into it.  Have a look at the back of the quilt to get a better idea of what  I mean. 

Wings.2 is in the works ... it's red batik on a black background.  Not sure yet what I'll do for the background quilting, but I have some really neat red, orange, and red shimmery thread to quilt it with.  Stay tuned for Wings.2.

Thursday, January 6, 2011

More quilts in contrast, like 30 degrees

If you've looked around here a while you'd have seen that my little wallhanging "30 Degrees of Separation" has so far been the most popular one when it comes to selling any of my quilts.  This is so self-satisfying just knowing that people like my design ... 5 times so far!  I've got one made and waiting in the wings to sell for the next person that comes along, if they do.
In the meantime I've been working on a few other little quilts in the same dark/light contrasting theme.  Kinda.

 
This one to the right here is called "Bubbles"  I just used a variety of blue, green, and purpley-pink batiks in varying shades of light.  There are actually only 15 circles or parts of circles appliqued to the quilt, the rest of the circles are quilted in.  I used 2 different kinds of multicolored variegated thread to quilt it ... one is quite light, the other is purple.  
Strange maybe, plain maybe, but I kinda like it.


Then we have "Hearts a-Plenty".  I like the dark on light effect and vice versa, so in this one I put dark hearts on light backgrounds in the top 3 rows, did the reverse in the lower 3 rows.  The big heart is multicolored so it favors neither side and sits a tad off-center.  I used dark variegated thread (LOVE that stuff!) for all the quilting.  I quilted in the ditch around each heart, then freehand quilted feathers into the background.  And of course they're all hand appliqued.  I'm quite pleased with this one.