Field Trips in Fiber - Adventures in quilting, hand dyed fabric and fiber art.

Design Wall Monday

First off, the Eagles provided an awesome end to the week!  What an amazing game that was last night. It was great to see them play the way that they should have been playing all season.

But can they keep it up? I hope so.

Regardless, I am grateful for that one fabulous performance!

In other news, I've been doing pretty well with managing my internet time. I turned the computer off yesterday around noon and only turned it on at 11:00 to see some of the game highlights. I hope I can make a habit of "Sunday's off".

It's going to be a busy week this week. I have many custom dye orders to get done and my Mom is coming to visit for a few days to play with Willie*. I think she has 4 quilts to quilt this week. That means that my first order of business is to finish quilting some spirals on this quilt and get it off the machine today.

It's also time for me to start my next Fiberactions challenge quilt. That means getting all of my CRAP (Creative Resources and Projects) off the cutting table so I can pull out piles of fabric for my next kaleidoscope creation.

I've also got some birthday postcards to make and I'm already behind on journal quilts again! I need to have 2 of them by Friday.

I've got lots of other things to share this week too, meanwhile I will send you to Patchwork Times to see what everyone else is up to.

 

*Willie is my APQS Millennium

Geranium Fabric Palette Projects

I'm back to EQ designs this week and I specifically tried for designs that are relatively easy. As always, if you are interested in purchasing any of the palette fabrics you can order it here. I can also do any custom grouping of fabrics. Just Email me and I will prepare an invoice for you.

This week I took inspiration from my quilt book library and Flickr.

This one is called Quilter's Weave and is from Color Shuffle by Karla Alexander. In the book it's done in blues, purples and lime so this is a very different look for the quilt. I love taking quilt patterns and working them up in different colorways. I think this would be a fun Christmas quilt.

This design is based on Double the Fun from the book Fat Quarter Fun by Karen Snyder. This quilt would go together really quickly and using the gradient for the border would make it look special.

Of course I have to share a design from my favorite quilt designer! This is Winter Break from Weekend Quilts by Judy Laquidara. It's done in really bright colors with black in the book. I decided to turn it into a Christmas quilt.

This fun one is inspired by "modern quilts". I like to look through the Fresh Modern Quilts Flickr group and found the inspiration for this one there.

 

Monticello part 2

Here are a few more photos from Monticello.

Another spectacular view from the garden.

 

Bloggers' Quilt Festival

It's that time again! The Bloggers' Quilt Festival starts today! If you aren't familiar with it please head over to Amy's Creative Side  to check it out. She hosts this quilt show twice a year for all of us who cannot attend Quilt Festival. Be sure to enter a quilt of yours because there are also LOTS of prizes, including a Stash Pack of hand dyed fabrics from me!

I had planned to enter a quilt that I made a while ago but on Monday I decided to try to finish a new quilt to enter.  The top was made over a year ago so I loaded it on the longarm for quilting and finished the binding at 8:30 last night.

Purple Keepsakes

73 1/2 x 85 1/2

This one should look familiar because I made it in this autumnal colorway a couple of years ago. The florals are commercial prints. The frames and borders are hand dyed fabrics made to coordinate with the prints. I really love mixing hand dyes with commercial prints. I think they work really well together.

I made the purple one so that I could use it to write up the free pattern for you. I designed this pattern specifically for large scale prints and t-shirt quilts. You can download the pdf pattern here.

In order to get Purple Keepsakes done in the short timeframe, I quilted it with a pantograph design, Feathered Curls by Timeless Quilting. It's one of my favorite pantos because it's very wide but it's also very balanced and create very nice texture on feminine quilts. I used King Tut Wild Rose on top and MasterPiece in the bobbin. The thread only broke once! When I finished the top I had also put the binding together so I was ready to go once the quilting was completed. It was nice to get a quilt done quickly for a change!

Be sure to check out all of the other quilts at the Bloggers' Quilt Festival and check throughout the week because more quilts will be added daily!

Autumn table runner

I've been so wordy this week in my posts that I'll keep this one brief. When I made the Christmas table runner the pattern was so easy and quick that I decided to make an Autumn one also.

I used some hand dyed fabrics from my stash with a sun print for the center block.

It also quilted up very quickly with a leaf meander. If you want to make one for yourself, the tutorial is here.

Now, I need to get that table cleared off!