Design Wall Monday

I took vacation time over the holidays and worked on this project. I haven't worked on it for several months. In fact, it had been so long I didn't set my sewing machine up correctly and sewed a bunch of squares with the seam allowance too wide. So I had to rip and begin again. My advice to you all out in blogland is don't leave your project so long you forget what you are doing! So now I'm back on track and I am happy to report that the top part of this photo is the edge of the quilt!

The lower part is actually five sections pinned on top of each other. Next I will sew all the sections together and begin working towards the other edge, on the right. I will make this quilt as wide as I can with the remaining red fabric. I'll have to calculate how many red squares I'll need. Hopefully it will end up 97" x 97".

For more design walls, visit Judy's blog at patchworktimes.com.

Real Studio Tour

Vicki Welsh is hosting a tour of real quilt studios (not fancy decorated and staged ones like you see in magazines) on her blog, Field Trips in Fiber. I meant to participate in all the posts but I just couldn't get myself organized. The final day was Friday and I'm just now getting around to taking photos and writing a post!

My quilt studio is actually the living room of my tiny, two bedroom cottage. When my daughter moved out last year, I moved my longarm from my friend's living room to my own. (I have some very generous friends!) I have a 24" Nolting on a 14' table. The table is long enough to store three rolls of batting underneath. The other side has storage for scraps of fabric and batting, large pieces of fabric for backing and quilting tools.

To the right is the doorway to the rest of the house and my sewing area. I use a sew-ez table with a small folding table at a right angle for my work area. I usually keep the ironing board to the left of the table. Before I bought the longarm I used to quilt with this setup, only I slipped another table behind the machine for a larger work area.

To the right of my sewing machine is the "wall-o-fabric". From left to right is my stash in the first section, which is about 32" wide and 7' tall. The next small section is UFO storage above and more fabric storage below. This fabric is mostly large pieces and stripes for binding. The next section is more UFOs above and finished quilts below.

To the right of that is quilting books and a mix of customer quilts, my own unfinished tops and unfinished donation tops. I hope to make a dent in this section over the holidays. To the right of this is the front door.

On the opposite side of the room is my work table (currently a storage table) and my cutting table. Underneath is storage and the dog bed, so my dogs can be in the room with me but not underfoot. That's Boo in the bed. Roxy is afraid of the camera so she went to sleep somewhere else.

This is my design wall, which I can roll around the room. It's two pieces of rigid foam insulation, covered with flannel, and sandwiched around an Ikea clothes rack, tied together with zip ties. I don't have a permanent place to store it so I just roll it out of my way. I like how I can roll it right next to my sewing machine for putting together a quilt top. I got the idea from someone's blog. It might have even been Vicki's but I can't find the original link.

 

So that's my studio. This is the first time I've had a dedicated sewing space. I wish it were a little bigger sometimes. On the other hand, I would just fill up the extra room with stuff! In case you're wondering, the second bedroom is now the living room.

Design Wall Monday

This is the first Monday of two weeks of vacation from work! I should clarify that I'm on vacation from my day job. I will be working on customer quilts during the next two weeks. Here's what's on the wall today, the last corner of my latest quilt.

This is a photo I took a couple of days ago. I should have this finished today. Then I have to decide about the borders. It's about 85" square right now and I need it to be closer to 100" but I don't want to just slap on giant borders. I also need to think of a name for it!

For more design walls, visit Judy's blog at Patchworktimes.com.

Design Wall Monday



I worked on this quilt more over the holiday. These pictures don't really do it justice. Then I started a tree skirt for my daughter.

 



See more design walls on Judy's blog.

Design Wall Monday

This is the first new project in quite a while. I'm making this quilt for a friend who lost her home in a fire last year. The pattern is based on an antique quilt shown in the February 2013 issue of American Patchwork and Quilting. The original quilt was done in yellow and white. When I look at the photos, I see overlapping squares. I never do anything the easy way so I'll be making each square with different fabric.

Visit Judy's blog for more desigh walls.

Design Wall Monday

I haven't posted in a while. July through September is the busiest time of the year at my day job so I haven't been doing much quilting. I did finish this one though. It's a gift for my mother-in-law's sister, who celebrates her 90th birthday this month. I finished the blocks and put them together at the Ranch Hand's quilt retreat two weeks ago. The pattern is called Patches and Pinwheels and is from Bonnie Hunter's website, www.quiltville.com. Here a link to it.

And a closeup, to show the wonderful striped binding fabric I found for it.

I used wool batting and quilted it with Superior Omni thread in a pattern called Verdant. I have fallen in love with wool batting! I don't know how it's processed but it doesn't felt or beard. It's also light and fluffy, much lighter then cotton, which is great for large quilts.

I had a lot of big things happen in my life this summer, some great, some not so great. I cut my finger pretty bad with a rotary cutter, entered a quilt in my local fair and won Best of Show (large quilts), was in a car accident, my daughter got engaged, my dogs got skunked, and I went to Oregon to take a class with Bonnie Hunter! I will post more details later but I'll say now that my finger healed and I wasn't seriously injured in the accident.

Design Wall Monday

I haven't posted in a few weeks as there has been nothing new on the wall. I have been working on finishing quilts to show at the local fair which starts Wednesday. Last week I decided to take this week off and work on finishing some projects and cleaning up my quilt studio. It's so messy and distracting I can't concentrate on anything!

The first thing I worked on was finishing the Funky Wrench quilt. I first blogged about it here. I counted up all my cut pieces and realised I could make one large quilt or three baby quilts. The fabric seems better suited for baby quilts so this is the third and last pictured.

I really like this pattern but I changed the construction to make the blocks by quarters so I would have more design options. Since these quilts are a combination of donated fabrics and my own, I will keep one and donate the other two.

For more design walls, see Judy's blog at patchworktimes.com.