Tranquil Moments - Part 1

Here is the pattern for my next project. It comes from Hoffman Fabrics website and it's one of their free patterns called California Rain.

I'm changing the colour combination from the jewel tones against the brown to a series of aqua coloured fabrics and for the brown I'm using Kauffman's Fusion espresso fabric. I'm going to call this quilt tranquil moments. I'm still working on piecing together the various strips together and should be able to start piecing the quilt together in another day or two.

Hawaiian Vacation 2010 - part 2

Yesterday was a trip to Kapaia Stitchery an amazing quilt shop in Kauai. I took a few pictures of some of the new quilts that are hanging in the shop. Some of the quilts that I showed on my blog 2 years ago are still hanging up in the shop because they are either traditional Hawaiian quilts or landscape quilts of the area so I didn't both to take them again but you can see them here: http://felinesandfibrearts.blogspot.com/2008/09/hawaiian-inspiration.html




I also found some fabrics for the back of the whole cloth quilt that I'm going to make from the hand painted sarong.


Here is a picture of a turtle batik fabric that is custom designed exclusively for Kapaia Stitchery. It is gorgeous.

And here are some pictures of lovely Hawaiian fabrics.



Well off to enjoy the weekend. I hope my friends in the US have a wonderful Memorial Day weekend. I'm taking a hand turned applique course on Monday which I'm looking forward to and will fill you in on how that went.

Aloha - Hawaiian Vacation 2010

Aloha from Kauai Hawaii. We arrived Sunday evening after a very long plane flight, very tired but very glad to be here. This picture was taken Monday morning from our balcony where we are staying at The Cliffs on the north shore of the island.


We had our breakfast on the balcony and were joined by the Brazilian cardinal. They are not afraid of people and are very polite little birds unlike the brassy Magpies that tried to horn in on breakfast.

Below on the grown were a couple of Hawaiian Nene. It is the state bird, it is a goose and it is actually related to the Canada Goose.

On Tuesday we had a 10 minute downpour in the morning and then the sun came out and I got a picture of this beautiful rainbow off our balcony.

I've already done a little shopping at a local place that sells high end hand painted sarongs. They are done on much heavier rayon than the usual ones which are light wight and very lose weave. I'm planning on turning this into a whole cloth quilt.

So today it's off to Kapaia Stitchery, an amazing quilt shop to do some fabric shopping.

Bird of Paradise Convergence Quilt - Part 6

I got the one wall hanging finished today that I need to take with me on vacation to Hawaii this coming Sunday. Yes I'm off to Hawaii for a much needed vacation. I get to see Joe & Kent, 2 great friends who were instrumental in getting me back into quilting 2 years ago after a botched carpal tunnel surgery and this wall hanging is a thank you gift for them. If you are interested, you can see what I actually made back then on my very first post at http://felinesandfibrearts.blogspot.com/2008/09/my-return-to-quilting.html. I'm very pleased with how this wall hanging turned out.

Here is a shot of part of the back so you can see some of the details of the Monstera leaf quilting.

I've not added any thread painting bird of paradise. I did have enough time to work out the kinks on that yet. The one that I showed when I removed it and got rid of the dissolvable stabilizer it turned very stiff. So I need to play around some more as to how I make them before I'm ready to use them in a quilt.

I'm going to be doing some quilting while on vacation but I'm not sure what just yet. I'm taking my camera with me and will be taking pictures. I will have limited access to the Internet but I'm not sure if I will get a chance to post while I'm on the island of Kauai. In the mean time I hope everyone has a great time quilting and I will be back in touch mid June.

Bird of Paradise Convergence Quilt - Part 5

I've been quilting the first of the 2 wall hangings and I decided to try something that was a bit different from my usual ways of quilting. I wanted to use the shape of the Monstera leaf (see picture below) as my quilting pattern and I wanted the size of these leaves to be relatively life like. They typically grow from 12" to 36" in size and given that the size of my wall hanging is approx. 31" square this would mean that there wouldn't be that many of them. Also I wanted them to overlap one another like they grow in the wild and I wanted the design to go to the edge of the quilt as well so that in some cases the leaf image would only be a partial.

So here is the end result. If you click on the image you should be able to see the details as well I have a close up of the upper left hand corner .

I really like the way this quilting turned out.

I'm also working on some thread painting that will become some applique that will be added to this quilt. I'm not sure yet if I'm going to do the same with the dark one. The thread painting is done on Pellon's 541 Wash-N-Gone stabilizer. This stabilizer has the look and feel of the tear away stabilizers and handles quite nicely. It's not as gummy as the Sulky wash away stabilizer which looks and feels like plastic. I'm still trying to figure out how many layers are best, 2, 3 or 4, or perhaps go with 2 and use an actual tearaway stabilizer on the back.

Here's a funny story. When I was quilting the veins of the leaves, I was working on my 5th leaf and all of a sudden my machine started to make funny noises and then it went back to normal. Then it made some more funny noises and then back to normal. This happened 4 times until I realized that somehow a file folder that was sitting at the end of the sewing machine cabinet had moved while I was manipulating the quilt top and eventually lodged underneath my sewing machine and was being stitched to the back of the quilt. At the time I didn't think it was too funny because I had to stop my sewing, get the stitch ripper out and extract the file folder from the back of my quilt. At that point I figured it was time to go do something else and come back to the quilting another time. Here is the remaining evidence on the file folder, which now I can look at and laugh but at the time it happened I was not amused.

Bird of Paradise Convergence Quilt - Part 4

I got the borders on the 2 Bird of Paradise Convergence quilts today and they are now starting to take on their own looks. I've looked at both of them and so far I still can't pick a favorite. I like the first one which has the wonderful teal Moda botanical marble fabric which is no longer being made. I love this fabric for its wonderful depth.

The second one has a nice richness to it with the darker border and the deeper orange batik fabric.

So do you have a preference at this point in time?