National Quilting Day

Thursday morning my friend Rita and I decided to go across the border and do some shopping.  One of our first stops for the day was at Tangled Threads in Lynden Washington .

 I believe this building used to be a school and they have redesigned it into a quilt shop just beautifully.  As you can see it had been raining earlier, and the skies were grey but everything was to change once we crossed the threshold of this shop.  I love the sentiment over the front window.

 This front area of the shop is just alive with bright colours and inspiration.  As you can see for a Thursday morning the shop already had some shoppers.  I love that pink and yellow quilt on the wall.

 Here is a closer picture, they call it their 5 yard quilt.  The gal that made the top was there and shared that it only took her four hours to make it and she ended up with two pieces left over of about a quarter yard each!  I may have to go back and get the pattern.  They had kit bundles made up and you could mix and match your fabrics to make the quilt your own.

 This is their batik room, hm.. that small quilt in the corner looks interesting.

 They curved all the straight edges of the churn dash block and gave the quilt a 3-D illusion.

Another room of some fun fabric, dots and stripes galore but hey what is tucked up into the corner of that shelf?

Oh my gosh a PINK Kenmore, is it not just too cute!                                                                              

 Also in this room was a love Sphinx Singer in great condition.

 Coming out of the dots and stripe room is a Christmas corner, love the red lights along the ceiling.

Just down the hall is the Wicked Stitch of the West, Shirley was on the phone talking with a customer but she let me take some pictures of her collection.  She is a long arm quilter with a great sense of humour.  I may have to make a trip down and have her do a quilt or two for me.

 A Jim Shore weather vane witch.

 We also dropped into the Antique and Craft sale at the fairgrounds where I was fortunate to get a lovely collection of friendship signature blocks.  I have to take some pictures and will post them at a later date.  Back home to check out the Spring blossoms.

 Wait a minute, a budding Rhododendron?

Here is a full bloom blossom...but it is early March not May!

Another favourite wintering bloom of mine, I'm not sure what it's proper name is but it has a lovely scent.                                                                                                                                                        

Now off to do some quilting, enjoy your day.

Mary Lou Weidman Cow Parade and a hoochy tree swap!

Mary Lou Weidman along with Mel McFarlane co-authored a book called Out of the Box with easy blocks.  One of the blocks is a cow quilt.  There is currently a Cow Parade at Back Porch Fabrics in Monterey, California.  The purple quilt was made by Rebecka Schaffer and she called it "She Eats The Meadow Flowers."                                                                                                                       

 Mel was kind enough to send me some pictures taken at the shop.  Mary Lou Weidman in standing in front of Connie Donaldson's quilt "Frosty AMOOsement."  Above is Joanne Corte's "MOOey Fiesta."  To the right is Patricia S. Woods' "Dia de los MOOertros."

 Here is a different view of the gallery.  I've visited this shop before and always admire the displays they put on.  On the left wall is Mollly Evangelisti's "Boo MOO,"  Peggy Baldwin-Clayton's "And The Cow Says BOO."  On the centre wall is "ChoCOWlate" again by Patricia S. Woods, Rebecka's quilt and below it is "Miss MOO La La at the MOOlin Rouge" by Sandy Fisher.  On the far right is my quilt "The Cow Jumped over the MOOn."

 This my quilt, I wish I had put some buttons on before and after the words....

Mary Lou has a yahoo on line swap group and these were the flying geese trees I sent off for the exchange.  The rules were soft turquoise for background along with polka dots for the geese and stripes for the tree trunks.  I used three different fabrics for my backgrounds and am pleased with the results. 

 Here is a close up of half the trees.

Here is the other half.

 Here are some of the ones I received back.

 Here is the rest of the orange ones on the left.

 Plus three of mine back, we had one person drop out and one person was counted twice so we got an extra one back.  Are these not all wonderful!

Many thanks to all the ladies who participated and especially Mary Lou for her wonderful sense of colour and design in inspiring us to work outside the box.

As one door closes another one opens....

Last Saturday on my birthday I had the opportunity to spend the day with Katie Pasquini Masopust taking her From Watercolour to Quilt 2 day workshop.

 Katie is just full of ideas and direction and you get a lot accomplished in the first of the two days.

 I decided to chose a limited palate of colours and soon realized that the red was not going to be included.    We used both rubber cement and masque pen as resists.  We blew bubbles across our pieces and had lots of fun seeing what evolved.

 Bubble wrap and plastic wrap were applied to add visual texture to your piece.

 This simple exercise of painting the rims of different sized cups made the above technique.  On Sunday we switched it up and did a one day Fractured Landscapes class, here are the fabrics I brought along and sorted into the seven steps Katie likes to use.  The flash went off in the second picture so the colours are a bit washed out.

You might notice they are the same colours in my watercolour class...I had a plan.  The photo I'll use for the landscape will not be in these colours, but I will use them in my practise piece.

This is the piece that I will fracture and make into a quilt.  You might notice the sun peeking out from a very foggy low cloud day.

Monday we were back to the painting workshop.  We had cropped and traced onto acetate our images we wanted to enlarge.  My original tracing was about 1" x 4" and it was enlarged to 9" x 37".

 Katie shared with us some of her images both painted and photographed so we could see how she turns the edges and then machine appliques them onto the background.

 Occasionally she might use some Ultrasuede but almost all the images you see here have turned edges.

 I had some fun choosing fabrics for my piece and by the end of the second day I had some great progress made.  I'm going to choose all my fabrics before stitching any down.  Mine was made from a resist piece and it will have some strong white images.  The black is from the 0.01 Pigma pen being enlarged and will not be part of the quilt.

 At guild on Tuesday Katie did a great PowerPoint program and then shared some of her quilts with us.

 The blue/green fern leaf one is one of my favourites.

 Friday was a glorious day with sunshine and crocuses in full bloom.

One of my favourites, the orange witch hazel is all of its glory.

 

 Yellow witch hazel being visited by a bee.

 Fresh snow on the mountains.

 Snowdrops in Rita's Garden.

 A double drop.

 Low tide on the river as the sun is getting low on the horizon.

The door that closed was on my job, Friday was my last day of vacation and I have decided to open the door to retirement, excuse me while I check what is on the other side...

Frosty morning and a forest of trees.

January 3rd the morning started out foggy, but a short time later the sun came out and armed with my camera I set out for a walk.

The remaining roses looked like they had been painted with a frosty edge.

The sun highlighted the details of the petals of the flowers.

Walking along to the River Market the fog started to move away.

One of the Palm trees looked like it was made of glass.

An hour later I walked back towards home and took this picture.

Then I turned around and the fog was still present.

The walkway was frosty and slippery but with the sun shining made some interesting designs.

This skeleton of a leaf looked lovely with the frost.

A week later the witch hazel is starting to put forth splashes of colour.

My hoochy mama block forest of polka dot and striped tree trunks are in Santa Monica, I wonder what will come home to me?

Blogger is making it difficult to post photos, I hope this works out.

2013 New Beginnings; a new word CREATIVITY.

One last look last night at the sky showed some lovely pink highlights; what a lovely way to end the year.

This year is full of promise of creativity if the sky is any inspiration.  Creativity in living, planning, photographs, quilting and anything else you choose.

Creativity is my word for 2013, what is yours?