More New York Beauties

You all are probably tired of seeing the continuing saga of the New York Beauty blocks.  However, between dealing with my dad's death and all the preparations to move, I'm not getting much other quilting done.  While I have neither time nor concentration for free motion quilting, I can still sit and hand-piece these in the evening when I finally try to relax.

These are actually the result of two weeks work.  Fifteen new ones.  Makes the total 126 out of 196.

I'm linking up for Sew & Tell Friday over at Amylouwho's.  Be sure to see all the other beauties people have to share.

The March of the New York Beauties

I know all you quilters know that New York Beauties are quilt blocks. For any other readers, we're not talking about parading women!

Right at the moment, I'm basically working on two projects: doing the free motion quilting on the pansy quilt, and hand-piecing these New York Beauties. This makes 111 out of 196. So the process is marching along. Only 85 blocks to do until I can start driving myself crazy with the arrangement. What fun!

(Looks like I got on a pink kick, doesn't it?)

Although it's not much to brag about, I'll be linking up with one or more of the linky parties in my left sidebar. There's lots of cool stuff to be seen at these locations, so be sure to give them a look.

Two Free Motion Quilting Book Reviews

When trying to learn a new skill, a totally sane person would at least buy a book or a CD on the subject, but not me. I have to muddle awhile on my own first. I need to get my hands into it, know what it feels like so that when I finally do buy that book or CD, the information will make more sense to me.

Having recently jumped into Free Motion Quilting while working on Matt's Quilt, I did indeed get familiar with a range of emotions and spastic moves associated with skill.

• Ack!  Don't let your mind wander
• Where the heck am I?
• This is really cool!
• I'm on a terrifying rollercoaster
• Why did my hands do that?!
• This is going to look like crap.
• How fun!
• What the heck am I doing?

In other words, my experience gravitated between horror and loving the possibilities.  So now, I finally decided to order some books on the subject of Free Motion Quilting.

The first book is Free Motion Quilting Made Easy by Eva Larkin.  I got a kick out of the "Made Easy" part of the title.  I had to see.

I'll admit that I was pleasantly surprised to find a lot of the information she provided did indeed make the process seem less daunting.  One of my problems when looking at a quilt is trying to decide how to even get started.  The quilt looks so big, the possibilities for design are wide open (if only my skills were good enough), and I just have no idea how to attack the problem.  This book addresses that issue.  While of course practice is still a must--there is no way around that--what this book does is provide a well-thought out strategy for making wonderful free motion quilting designs with little marking.  She advises breaking your quilting area down into sections no more than 4 1/2" square.  For a 12" block, this results in 9 sections within the block.  Within the 4 1/2" square sections, she shows how to use some very basic shapes--like ovals, triangles, diamonds--to make some very attractive and intricate looking designs.  When I was done perusing this book, I felt much calmer and as though I will be able to do free motion quilting successfully.



The second book is Hooked on Feathers by Sally Terry.  There were two reasons I got this book.  First, I love the look of feathers in quilting, so if there was a chance in the universe I could learn to do feathers, then I wanted to take it.  The second reason is that several quilters have recommended this book as an incredibly easy way to achieve beautiful looking feathered designs.  I'll admit that again I was skeptical.  Feathers that beautiful just couldn't be that easy.  And yet, the technique this talented quilter has developed does provide a way to make beautiful feathered motifs with little marking and much less work than traditional feathers.  When I read about her technique, I was confident I could master it.

Armed with the information, techniques, and tips from these two books, I'm going to start free motion quilting the Pansy Sampler Quilt.  It's not only going to be a sampler by block design, but also in quilting.  The 16 blocks in this quilt ought to provide me with ample opportunity to try out these various quilting techniques.  Unlike Matt's Quilt, this quilt is for me, and so any imperfections will be mine and mine alone.  I am poised with anticipation!

While today's blog doesn't show off any creative achievement, I am going to link up over at Amy's blog for Sew and Tell Friday.  I hope that these book reviews will be inspiring to other free motion quilting newbies like myself.  And since I will be sharing my free motion quilting adventures with my fellow bloggers on Sew and Tell Friday in the future, I wanted everyone to know where the adventure began. 

I'd better to get to pin basting the Pansy Sampler Quilt!

The Similarities of Tiling and Quilting

What? Tiling and quilting have similarities? It does seem a rather odd comparison, doesn't it? However, ever since my family and I began tiling nearly the entire house almost two years ago, I've been repeatedly struck about how the two endeavors require many of the same skills.

There are three basic skills in tiling: measuring, cutting, and fitting it altogether. Sound familiar? It seriously is not rocket surgery. Yes, a tile saw is used instead of scissors, and cement and grout are used instead of thread, but the concepts used in tiling are the very same ones we use in quilting.

As I mentioned above, we began this project nearly two years ago. We needed to replace our worn carpet, and discovered that tile was significantly cheaper than carpet, especially if we installed it ourselves. Once installed, it lasts virtually forever. Big pluses. The downside is that you're always working on the floor and the endeavor is labor intensive. We've taken extended breaks after getting each section done.

We began in the sewing room in September 2008.
We were working on the living room by Spring 2009. When we bought the house the fireplace already had some tile around it. We didn't want to remove it, couldn't match it, (and while the tile color is okay, it would not be our first choice for doing the entire house anyway), and so we had to find some way to boot the tile we were installing up next to the tile around the fireplace and have it look like a plan. Guess what? The answer was tile borders (okay do I need to refer to my quilting analogy again?). How cool is that? The border made having the two color and sizes of tile in the same room not only acceptable, but decorative too.
This week, we finally began tiling in the utility room. I estimate we are about 3/4 done with the house. We'll keep at it slow and steady, and it'll be done whenever it's done.

I kind of feel like I'm cheating talking about tile instead of purely crafty endeavors, so just to make this article more appropriate for Sew & Tell Friday, here is this week's installment of the New York Beauty blocks. This brings the total to 62.

I'll be linking up at Amylouwho's. Swing over and see what everyone else has been up to this week.

Oh and if I could draw your attention to the polls on the side? Please take the time to vote. P, over at The Way I Sew It pointed out that I'd hadn't offered a choice for UFO's that were only a year old on the poll about UFO age. Personally, I think she's just showing off, not having any UFO's older than a year. ;-) I totally admire that. A year old? Hmmm, does that qualify as a UFO? Since I'm sitting here with a UFO that's nearly 15 years old, it just never occurred to me that someone could have a UFO that was only a mere year old. But what to you think? How long must a project be neglected before it is considered a UFO?

Note: I tried to edit the poll to offer a choice for UFO's only a year old, but unfortunately, I can't change it without wiping out all the votes. So my apologies, P!


Late note: Just found Hodgepodge Friday, a place for creative people to share their creative endeavors. I'll be linking up shortly. Check it out.

The Accidental Quilt

My mom and I are making a quilt that we'd never planned, wished for, or much less imagined--but we're happy about it. How did this happen? It was due to a fabric mix-up. I'd ordered the fabric pictured on the left, but received the fabric pictured on the right. Oops!
A quick call to the online fabric shop, Fabric.com, immediately corrected the situation. They not only sent the correct fabric out to me ASAP, they also told me to keep the fabric they'd sent by mistake. It was 2 1/2 yards worth. Wow! Okay, time to make another quilt.

The fabric is part of Kaufman's Intergalactic line. Given the astronomical theme of the fabric, we decided to make a star sampler. Every block in the quilt will be a different star block, with the themed fabric serving as the background. We also decided to do something a little novel (at least for us) and use only the colors that are present in the Intergalactic fabric. This does limit us to a narrow range on colors and tones, but that's part of the fun. The blocks will be sashed, (we're thinking with some shade of teal), and the quilt will be tailored, like the quilt shown here.

Here is the block I made this week:This particular block pattern came from The Quilter's Cache.

Eventually, we'll need 47 blocks to complete the king-size quilt. However, at the moment, it is a low priority project. We make a block when we need a diversion from our primary project(s)--which are going along nicely and hopefully will soon be the subject of another Sew & Tell Friday. In the meantime, I'll be linking up this post over at Amylouwho's tomorrow.

New York Beauty update. Here are this week's blocks, which brings my total up to 56. Just 140 more to go.