Ricky Tims Quilt Seminar

WOW, I can't believe that it is almost here.  The last time I posted about the Ricky Tims Quilt Seminar http://www.rickytims.com/seminars/ was back in April when my friend Sue from Long Island and I decided to attend Ricky's seminar in Cape Cod.  So I'm leaving tomorrow around lunch time from work so that  I can take it easy travelling to the Cape.  I will stop over night in Rochester NY.  Then Wednesday it's onto Hyannis, MA. The seminar starts on Thursday and goes through to Saturday.  I will then head home on Sunday, again a stop over in Rochester NY and home on Monday, Labour Day. 

So obviously no quilting while I'm gone.  I did make some more progress on the orange quilt and got another column of flowers done but I didn't get to the butterflies yet.  So that will be waiting for me when I get home. 

I hope everyone has a great week and enjoys the Labour Day weekend. I'll let everyone know what I think of the seminar when I get back since I don't have a laptop and likely won't have access to a computer until I get back.

Batik Gems - Part 7

I've been working on the flower quilting on the Orange Batik Gems quilt.  I have half of the flowers quilted.  Each flower takes up the width of two batik columns.  In the length of two of these columns there are 7 flowers alternating between cone flowers and day lilies.  Since there are 9 columns in total, I will have 4 columns of flowers, 2 on either side of the quilt. 

Here is a close up of what the two flowers look like.

And a shot from the back.

For the middle column I'm going to quilt some butterflies.  When I first went looking for butterfly patterns I didn't find anything very interesting on any of the quilting sites, pretty basic designs.  I then decided to do a Google search on butterflies and I discovered that the Tattoo world has some very interesting designs.  I was just looking for some unique outlines so I took some of the interesting tattoo designs and modified them into butterfly outlines.  Below are some examples of the original tattoo designs and then the modified outlines. I think they will make for some interesting quilting.

EQ7 & Cherish Nature

This past week was very busy at work including working late so I didn't get much much quilting done. I did manage to figure out the modifications for the Cherish Nature quilt and here is what it will looks like.

The inner section of half square triangle squares have now become half square triangle rectangles. The top and bottom ones had to be reduced in height while the side ones had to be reduced in width to accommodate the increase in size of the inner border that you see represented by the egg fabric. In reality the egg fabric requires 2 1/4" to ensure that the eggs don't get cropped. The original border was only 1" wide so by increasing it by 1 1/4" I had to reduce the inner half square triangle blocks since there were only a few of them. Otherwise the outer set would be completely off and much harder to fix. Also on the inner set there are various appliqués that will be added on top so I felt it really doesn't matter if these blocks were square or rectangle in shape.

My sewing machine came back from being serviced and it sews like a dream. This weekend I got all the stitch in the ditching done on the orange quilt so I can now move on to the actual quilting. I'm looking forward to starting that and hopefully work won't be crazy busy this week.

Pets on Quilts

Today is the start of SewCalGal's Pets on Quilts Show. It runs until August 21st so you still have lots of time to post your entry into the show.

My entry is in the dog category even though technically the quilt has both cats and dogs. This is the quilt that I made as part of an exchange that we had in our small quilt group called "Quilter's Pets" this past year. The reason why we call ourselves "Quilters Pets" is because everyone has either cats and/or dogs. We drew a name of one of the members of our group of 8 and the common theme of all the quilts that were made was the stylized paper pieced cats and dogs. This was the group's way of getting an introduction into paper piecing since only a couple of the gals had done paper piecing and the rest of us were interested in learning. I had picked Kathi's name and she had a Bichon name Gillian who unfortunately had passed away the previous year.

After completing the basic cats and dogs, I was trying to figure out how to make this quilt special for Kathi given that Gilligan had recently passed away. I was looking on the internet when I happened to come across a paper piecing site called Silver Linings Originals http://silverliningsoriginals.com/index.html. Linda Hibbert creates some of the most amazing paper pieced patterns you will find anywhere and I found one of a Bichon. I really wanted to make this but initially was a bit intimidated because I had just started paper piecing and this pattern looked rather complex. I did buy the pattern and eventually over came the intimidation and actually made 3 Bichons for the quilt.

Here are some closeup pictures of the Bichons.

And here is a picture of the back of the quilt with some more doggy fabrics.

EQ7 - Update

I got a call today that my sewing machine is ready to be picked up. All it needed was a good servicing. So tomorrow morning the shop opens at 10 and I should be there shortly thereafter. In the mean time I have been working on the quilting design for the orange quilt as well as trying to learn EQ7. I haven't tackled the quilt sandwich yet since it has been extremely hot this week. Today it finally turned cooler and it's suppose to stay this way for the weekend so you know what I will be busy with.

In the mean time I want to share with you my first EQ7 project. The Cherish Nature quilt that I also have to get made in the near future for another 75th birthday is being modified from the original pattern. I'm taking out the final border but also I want to increase the size of one of the inner borders so that the egg fabric will show a complete row of eggs.

As it currently is set up, that inner border lops off some of the eggs and I want whole eggs so that I can do them in trapunto. But this modification changes the measurements of the inner section which then will throw off the rest of the block measurements. So I'm thinking that I will reduce the size of the inner half square triangles since there are fewer of them and with the inner egg border still end up with the same final size. Then the rest of the blocks will just follow through.

So here is the initial quilt layout minus the final border in EQ7. It has taken me several evenings to get it to this stage. So it will be interesting to see how long the modifications will take. The most inner square is actually part of the Cherish Nature panel, and it is suppose to be the bird's nest. I just haven't had the time to photographic that fabric and prep it for EQ7 so I went with one of the other fabrics.

Batik Gems - Part 6

Yesterday I did get the back sewn up but I didn't get the quilt sandwich made up.  Instead I have been testing out some quilting ideas that I have for this quilt.  On my drives into work I have been seeing some lovely gardens with orange day lilies, orange and yellow coneflowers as well as some gorgeous gladiolus. So I thought it would be nice to quilt a garden theme on this quilt.  So here are my experiments with quilting flowers.  First here is the cone flower.  I also tried one with a more filled in centre but it was too much so I'm thinking I need to create one with maybe half as many zigzag lines in the centre and see how that looks.

Here is what one of the coneflowers looks like from the back on a beige fabric.

Next is the day lily and I really like how it turned out.  There is also a picture from the back showing it on the beige fabric.

My last idea was to either have the gladiolus along the sides of the centre portion of the quilt or perhaps just have these flowers run along the border section.  This picture is just from the back since the one I took from the front didn't turn out all that great.

Well it looks like my machine has to go in for a service. It started to act up and every so often it decides it wants to sew all on its own.  I have cleaned it, checked various things and it is still acting up so best to take it in before it really has a meltdown. 

Batik Gems - Part 5

The quilt top is now finished and I'm very pleased with how it looks.  I'm hoping that once the quilt is all finished I can find a place outside somewhere to take a photo to get a better take on the colours but this will have to do for now.  So now I have to measure out the backing fabric, iron it all, get that sewn and make up the quilt sandwich.  My hopes is that I may ge all of that done today but time will tell.