Lone Star - Part 3

I finally have finished sewing together all the strips into the 8 sections for the Lone Star quilt. This is as far as I have been able to get on this project to date.  A lot has been happening at my end and most of it has been non-quilting.  If you have been following my posts you already know the details, and if you just follow the Lone Star Quilt Along group then you can check things out in my Sunday May 20th post.

Here are the pictures of the 8 completed sections, starting with 1 & 2 which were completed back in April.

Next are sections 3 & 4.

Then we have sections 5 & 6.

Finally here are sections 7 & 8.

I hope everyone has fun at today's Lone Star quilt along. I won't be here to join in the fun. I'm heading down to London, Ont. to visit my mom and her friend Jean at the nursing home. Then it's off to see a few out of town friends since likely I won't get another chance this month with everything that is happening next week. Have a great weekend.

Hollis Chatelain Workshop

Last Sunday I attended a workshop by Hollis Chatelain called "Quilt Line As The Third Design Aspect". It was hosted by Marilyn Farquhar and held at her quilting studio (and home) north of Waterloo, Ont. Here is a brief description of the workshop from Hollis' web site: http://www.hollisart.com/

"This is a process class that will help you find new ideas on how to use quilting to enhance the look of your quilt. We will be working on design, not technique. We would like to go further than just holding the three layers together with stitches. The main objective is to use quilting lines to create depth, texture, tension, or shadowing which give a new dimension to your quilt. Lines can be inspired by an endless variety of things (nature, architecture, technology, etc.) to add visual interest and reinforce the overall design of your quilt. Even straight lines can become a design in themselves. You will be working with the quilt tops you bring, which can be a traditional patchwork or a contemporary design. We will pin the quilt tops on the wall one after the other and discuss the possibilities of how to enhance what you like best and diminish what you like least in your quilts."

I have to say that this was one of the best workshops that I have attended and I came away with a wealth of knowledge and a new perspective of how to approach my quilting designs. The first part of the workshop Hollis covered off colour and what effects you can get depending on the colour of threads you select for your quilting. Next was a discussion on line and the effects of lines on your quilting based on their shape, direction and style. Then Hollis talked about the design aspect and how the quilting needs to enhance your quilt as well as be able to stand on its own from a design perspective.

We had a group of about 20 and everyone brought a quilt top to share and discuss.  There was a good diversity from traditional pieced, modern pieced, traditional & modern applique, everything from small wall hangings to queen size bed quilts and every colour of the rainbow.  This diversity provided for some interesting discussions and I'm sure everyone was able to take away some good ideas for their future projects.

I highly recommend this workshop so if Hollis is going to be teaching in your area in the future it would be a worthwhile experience.

Thanks Marilyn for hosting this event and thanks Hollis for proving a very enjoyable and valuable workshop.

Where Have I Been and Where Am I Going

I realized that it's been well over a month since my last post and I'm sure several of you may be wondering what have I been up to. Well on the quilting front not much at the moment.  Life sort of happened on my way to the sewing room and my creativity sort of got put on hold for a bit.

A few of you who I chat with outside of my blog already know this, but the rest don't and I feel I need to share this since I am still here reading your blogs, but I'm not doing much at my end. Awhile back one of the specialists that I was seeing found a lump on the right side of my thyroid. So as with these types of things one goes through the pre-requisite needle aspiration biopsy, ultrasound, then ultrasound guided biopsy.  For those who don't have the privilage of living in Canada and experiencing our medical system, these tests can take a month or longer to get booked, and with each one you will wait 2 to 3 weeks to get the results. So knowing this and knowing that the wait for surgery can be upwards of 3 to 4 months I had made sure I booked my surgery at the beginning of this process.

My last biopsy was done on April 30th and I got the results on May 15th which were inconclusive so at this time they still don't know whether it is benign or malignant. Since my last biopsy was an ultrasound guided one, they first did a full scan of the thyroid and have now discovered some smaller lumps on the left side. The good thing is that my surgery is less than 3 weeks away on June 7th so this will be taken care of and will be sent off for full analysis.  Then I will know with 100% certainty if these lumps are benign or malignant. The prognosis is good since 80% of thyroid lumps are benign and of the 20%, a high percentage are very slow growing and easily treated with specific radiation treatments. So I'm quite optimistic that all will go well and once this is over I will be able to get my creativity back on track and start working on some projects.

My sea turtle quilt will be put on hold for a few months since in the last few weeks I have had a few new ideas come to mind that I want to explore and these will be easier to execute since they will be smaller wall hangings and will allow me to get back into the grove of things.

Have a great week everyone.

Lone Star - Part 2

I have to be honest that not much has happened here with my Lone Star quilt.  First of all I was busy most of March getting the "Spirt of the Land" quilt finished for a 50th birthday present which had to be done before the end of the month. I did get all my strips cut and this week I started to sew the first few sections together.

This weekend though we are having UV film installed on the windows in the sewing room and the one bedroom since both of these rooms face west and in the summer time it gets very hot in there and even with A/C units in there they tent to struggle to keep the rooms cool, well more like keep them warm instead of hot :-). So needless to say this week there was limited time for sewing with things like packing up books shelves in the bedroom, packing up some stuff in the sewing room and then on Thursday it was time to move things away from the windows to get at the curtains down so that they could get washed on Friday. That was the end of sewing time since the sewing machines are set up next to the windows for the best light.

So here are the 2 sections that I have managed to get sewn together for the Lone Star, they may look a bit crooked but that is because I have not pressed then yet.  I'm going to wait on that until I'm ready to cut them.

If you read my previous post you may notice that something has changed. Previously when I had looked at the strips lined up through a "ruby beholder" to check for value I ended up switching my last 2 fabrics around. So fabric 7 now became fabric 8.  This was the fabric that was suppose to originally be the purple botanical fabric but I didn't have enough so I had to switch if for one similar in a hand dyed batik. Well now that this fabric was in position 8 I only needed 5/8 of a yard and I had plenty so I swapped it back in as per the original plan.

So this will be my only post today since there is still more work to be done before the guy comes in to install the UV film and once that is done, then it's time to get everything put back.

I hope everyone has fun today with their Lone Star projects and have a Happy Easter.

Spirit of the Land - part 4

The Spirit of the Land quilt got finished yesterday and here is how it looks.

Today we had the party for Costa's 50th birthday.  He loved his quilt and decided that he wants to hang it up in his bedroom so I actually still have it and will now attach a hanging sleeve.  He didn't want to use it as a lap quilt and have his kitties sitting or laying on it and leaving fur all over it.  Also he said this way he can look at it and appreciate the beauty and the work that went into it. What a nice sentiment.

Speaking of kitties sitting on quilts, here is Jordie giving the quilt his final test and yes I did take the lint roller to it before I packaged it up :-).

Spirit of the Land - part 3

I have finished the quilting on the Spirit of the Land quilt. Here is what I quilted in the columns of the coin sections. In the two larger columns the patterns are sort of abstract organic leaf shapes and in the narrow one I did acorns.

Then in the border I did trees going around the quilt.  These two pictures were actually taken from the back of the quilt since it was hard to see the brown quilting on the brown border fabric.

I also have an update for you on the Connecting Threads thread that I used for the quilting. As I mentioned in my previous post it did sew nicely, no tension issues, no skipped stitches and the quilting does look great.  The spool of thread looked a little bit linty but nothing significant so I didn't think it was going to be an issue.

Yesterday I was making the binding so I was changing thread, bobbins and going back to my walking foot.  When I went to change the bobbin I noticed a lot of fuzzy stuff so I thought I better take the plate off and have a loot.  I was not happy with what I saw, it looked like a bird had made a nest in there.  So if you are planning on using the Connecting Threads cotton thread make sure that you clean your machine much more often than you normally would with the more expensive threads.  This is a picture of what came out of my bobbin.

So all that is left to get done is attach the binding to the quilt and sew on the label.  I'm right on schedule to get this quilt done for the birthday party on Sunday.

Spirit of the Land - part 2

I finished the stitch in the ditch on the Spirit of the Land quilt today.  Once I finally got started it didn't take all that long and I have to say that I'm so glad that I invested in a stitch in the ditch foot for my sewing machine.  This is what it looks like and I have to tell you it makes it so much easier to follow the lines between two seams on a quilt.  I now hardly veer over onto the other side and I can go at a decent pace. Prior to using this foot, I used the walking foot but it was harder to stay on course.

Here is a sample of what my stitch in the ditch sewing looks like. You will have to click on the picture to be able to see the details.

Now the other thing I promised everyone was a review of what I think of Connecting Threads cotton thread for quilting.  I finished my first row of quilting on this quilt and I have to say I'm please with the results. There was no skipping of stitches while I was quilting, the tension was spot on, and the end result looks great. Two thumbs up!

So I have 2 weeks to get this quilt finished. Getting that cold / flu bug last week didn't help since it put me out of commission right up until this week Thursday, but I'm feeling much better now.  Nothing like a deadline to keep one focused.  Have a great weekend everyone.

UPDATE Mon March 19th:  I have finished the quilting on the coin quilt and will post pictures shortly but I need to give you some more information on the Connecting Threads cotton thread. As I mentioned above it did sew nicely, no tension issues, no skipped sitches and the quilting does look great.  The spool of thread looked a little bit linty but nothing significant so I didn't think it was going to be an issue.

Today I had to make my binding so I was switching thread, bobbins, and going back to my walking foot.  When I went to change the bobbin I noticed a lot of fuzzy stuff so I thought I better take the plate off and have a look.  I was not happy with what I saw, it looked like a bird had made a nest in there. So if you are planning on using the Connecting Threads cotton thread make sure that you clean your machine more often than you normally would with the more expensive threads.