Happy 4th of July

It is definitely summer in Omaha, we have had 100+ weather the last couple days.  I looked at the long range forecast on my phone ap this morning and it said for the next 7 days:  97, 97, 97, 97, 97, 97, 92.  In Nebraska the middle of summer is as good of quilting weather as it is in the dead of winter,  just a good idea to stay indoors.   We have nothing to complain about considering the weather related problems of the gulf coast with their recent tropical storm and 20 inches of rain over the last week, and Colorado where it is so dry and they have major fires burning and destroying hundreds of homes.  I am glad to be in the middle.

Two more applique blocks are completed.  The Golden Hine ( Ladies of the Sea -Sue Garman pattern) is from 1577.  It is an English ship and was the first ship to sail around the world with Sir Frances Drake.  The red and green block was based on a block from the Circuit Rider Quilt (pattern by Jenifer Dick).  Both of these blocks were a little difficult, the ship block had SO many rigging lines, and the red and green block is just odd to me, not really symetrical.

I just opened my latest purchase from an online quilt store.  This usually gives my heart a little excited flutter, but I am sorry to say that I am now buying needle threaders in bulk.

Happy 4th of July everyone, have a great week!

A Best of Show Ribbon for my Buddy

Fun weekend in Omaha for quilters, it is our local guild's annual quilt show.  My very good friend Leslie won a best of show for hand quilting award.  She handquilted on both sides of her embroidery lines in this little quilt, she did such a good job.  The quilt also won a blue ribbon for it's catagory, her embroidery and all of her hand work is phenominal. I love this picture of her,

  a well deserved award.

I had my quilt Bella Garden in the show and won a 2nd place ribbon in an applique catagory. The other couple pictures I wanted to share from the show were these  t-shirt qults. I thought it was unique to include the uniforms of these brother's quilts

I am having fun working on the red and green album.  I have a couple more blocks completed and  had snapped a picture of the first nine blocks together on my cork wall. 

We are enjoying a great laid back summer here in Omaha, happy stitching all!
Cheri

June Free Motion Quilting Lesson

The information at the Free Motion Quilt Challenge just continues to be so good.  This months instructor is Cindy Needham.  She has prepared a wonderful lesson available right now thru June 30 over at SewCalGal.  I did more of this months lesson on scratch paper than actually on my machine so I only have the above small picture.  This is a short post but the lesson can be printed out and it is really good,  even if you do not have time to do the challenge now you will appreciate having this information for when you do get to read it.

Just a few teasers:
      Cindy's favorite things ( I love reading about excellent machine quilter's notions they like to use)
      hummmm-purrrrrr
      the basic three
     disequilibrium
     zentangles (to my non quilting readers--family members--google  zentangle -- this is habit forming doodling gone art)

Are you curious?  Check it out!

Churn Dash on Point

I decided to try doing a little quilt (yes Kathie, you inspired me to make a little quilt) and was playing around with little 3 inch churn dash blocks.

Why is it that they are so much more interesting when turned on point?

  

I needed a break from the album applique quilts I have been working on.  This was a little kit by Rachel T Pellman called Hole in the Barn Door but the block is a churn dash to me.  It was fun to complete a quilt in a weekend and I have been inspired to get out my book Little Quilts All Through the House by Alice Berg, Mary Ellen Von Holt, and Sylvia Johnson.  There are a lot of quilts in that book that would be really quilt in reproductions fabrics. .                                 

Happy Stitching!

Used Bookstore Finds

Since I have started the red and green album quilt I have been looking through my collection of applique books for inspiration and patterns for some of my favorite blocks. This led to my shopping at a second hand book store, browsing through their craft section I hit a jackpot. My first find was the above March, 1994 issue of Antiques magazine.

Inside was an article about Baltimore Album quilts by Jennifer Goldsborough (at that publishing she was the chief curator of the Maryland Historical Society in Baltimore).

Since the magazine was among the quilting books in the store I figured it is known as a collectible issue to quilters.

Jennifer Goldsborough also wrote Lavish Legacies: Baltimore Album and Related Quilts in the Collection of the Maryland Historical Society. This book was the result of the exhibition of the Maryland Historical Society's (1994-1995) collection of Baltimore Album quilts. The Antiques magazine article was because of this exhibition and Jennifer Goldsborough's study and book. I had heard of Lavish Legacies and have always wanted to read it but the book is quite expensive on the secondary market. Well, jackpot # 2 at the used book store.

This copy of the book has a torn and taped cover, hardly noticeable. 

I have been studying and enjoying it ever since.

I picked up one more old book that day, Forget Me Not, A Gallery of Friendship and Album Quilts by Jane Bentley Kolter, published in 1985.

I have just browsed quickly through it at this point, but am anxious to read it also.

I have managed to get another Ladies of the Sea (pattern by Sue Garman) block completed, the America.

She was commissioned by the New York Yacht club in 1851 and is the namesake of the challenge race, The America's Cup.

I also completed one more block for the red and green album quilt.

Happy Stitching All,
Cheri

Spring Bloggers' Quilt Festival 2012

Yea!  It is spring Bloggers' Quilt Festival time.  This is such a fun event out in blogger land, hosted by Amy Ellis from Amy's Creative Side

"Hello" to all of you fellow bloggers participating in the festival and visiting my blog, I love visiting your blogs and reading about your quilts.   This is my second year participating.  There was really no decision in which quilt I would share, it would be the States Quilt.

I made the States Quilt with my Mom.   My mother has early dementia/Alzheimer's and last summer she and my Dad moved into assisted living.  Because her sewing machine was becoming increasingly difficult for her to operate the decision was made not to move it with them. She was also struggling with knitting and hand quilting, but I noticed she was doing some hand embroidery on dish towels etc.  I had seen this quilt with the 50 states embroidered and an idea was born. 


She was very excited to work on this quilt together.  I would trace the embroidery patterns in colored Pigma Pens so she would know what colors to embroider the state outlines, birds, and flowers and then because they live in another state I would mail 5 or 6 blocks at a time to her.  We continued in this fashion over the fall and winter, in the mean time I worked on star applique blocks and came up with the center eagle block. 

By the end of winter I was starting to sew the blocks together.  I must say I was not  thinking ahead when I choose a pattern with hexagon blocks...LOTS of set in seams. 

I machine quilted the States quilt on my home sewing machine.

 This past April I was able to bring the finished quilt back to my Mom, she was thrilled to see it completed and she enjoys showing it to her many new friends at the assisted living center.   

Happy Stitching All,
Cheri

May Free Motion Quilt Challenge with Leah Day

I have been learning so much from the Free Motion Quilt Challenge sponsored by SewCalGirl.   Each month I have picked up some tips.  I was a little late posting about the April lesson and it was my last post, but when I looked at the video for Leah Day's lesson I really could not wait to try some of her suggestions.  I was particularly interested in her suggestion to NOT drop the feed dogs, but to bring the stitch length to zero and try your free motion quilting with the feed dogs still up.  Her reason for this is that free motion quilting is somewhat hard on the home machine and they are not really designed to sew in this fashion, something I have been told by my local sewing machine dealer.  She feels dropping the feed dogs also disengages something else in the machine that is necessary for balanced stitching.

 I gave it a try with sample two, the railroad track pattern, and really could not tell that much difference.  I think my bottom line is going to be if I am having trouble with balanced stitches in my machine quilting for whatever reason, thread, humid weather, dry weather...whatever, I am going to try leaving the feed dogs up and see if that helps on that particular quilt.  She also described a little product I have not ever heard of, Little Genie Magic Bobbin Washers.  I did not have access to these but would be very interested if anyone has used them in a Bernina and if they thought it reduced bobbin thread problems such as bird's nest.

Leah Day's website is wonderful, she also is sponsoring a free motion quilt project or quilt along that gives machine quilters of any level of experience lots of practice.
Happy Stitching!