Basted!

One of my favorite things about my "studio"
(read - the portion of the basement I fixed up for the kids that they never used and now it's mine)
is using the top of the ping pong table for pin basting my quilts.
The binder clips keep the layers taught & the table even has mid-point lines painted on!

For some reason I really obsessed about the quilting pattern for this quilt,
so I copied an outline of the blocks a few times & tried out various patterns.
The winner is:


It felt a little like writing manuscript notation for music.
Hope I like it on the quilt as much as on the paper!

It's a Top!

Put the last border on the comfort quilt today:

The happy colors are just what I wanted for Anna.

The pretty bluebird hanging at left is from one of my favorite stores,
our local 10,000 Villages and was
a bright offering from Haiti.
Good to be able to support the artisans of that country yet.

Another Kind of Love

Early this week I learned of a 20 year old neighbor whose father died suddenly. The colors below are the start of a comfort quilt for her in much brighter colors that the the original design called Emerald Forest which I have in a Batiks Inspired by Bali book.

Mixing and matching got a little bit more messy:

And by the end of the day I was fitting in puzzle pieces on the design wall:


I'm calling this quilt "Doors"
in honor of the doors her father opened for her,
and the ones she'll open in the future.

Sunny Valentines

For "Tuesday Teachings" this week I made a beach scene Accidental Landscape a la Karen Eckmeier's book.

This one's a bit too wide, but it was so I could do this:

And then to bring some wonderful Laura Wasilowski color into my white February, I tried her confetti collage technique from Fusing Fun and took these steps:

Backed in a bright yellow & a little binding with pretty thread and voila: a valentine bookmark.


The back has a small silver heart charm strung on the ribbon.
For next time: shorter! And coordinating ribbon would be nice, although it does go well
with the lucious sulky orange/yellow/pink blend thread I had in the bobbin!

Tenderness

This journal is on its way to my son who loves the poem on the cover titled "Tenderness and Rot" by the U.S. Poet Laureate Kay Ryan. At stressful points during our packing of him off to college this year, he would spontaneously quote the final stanza:

"It is important
to stay sweet
and loving."

Missing him this Valentines Day

Harmony

Another "Finish it February" success! This is "Harmony" - pattern (and material) by McKenna Ryan. It is off to the dorm already. I really like the look of these small wall quilts mounted on canvas - hope to try it with one of my own designs soon.

Peace

This McKenna Ryan pattern piece was a gift for my daughter. It was the first time we ever both liked the same thing from a set - our aesthetics are dramatically different - so this, and a companion piece (Harmony) are late Christmas gifts. Her color pallet, nature for me.

I'm practicing "Finish it February" at my house - no new projects until a few of the UFOs are complete. This also provided some free motion practice which is on my list of "do's." The back before mounting on canvas:

Peace was a January finish, Harmony - hopefully - will be a February