It's here! Quilting with Fat Quarters

Quilting with Fat Quarters is now available!  I'm going to show you a few quilts from the book, but if you want to see all 17 projects, click the link then on "see more images".

Even though I don't have very many readers as yet, I am going to do my very first giveaway!  Leave me a comment telling me which project you want to do first and I'll enter you in a drawing for your VERY OWN COPY, signed by as many of the designers as I can get (some of the people who contributed have retired or for whatever reason are not in the building).  Since I don't have all that many readers, "the odds will be ever in your favor" for this giveaway!  I'll announce a winner on Monday (the 18th) evening.

On to the quilts:

First up:  Retrolicious!  - my contribution to the book.  I love quilts with "chains" on them.  Keeping the black and the white chains going in their proper directions was a challenge for this ADD gal, but if I can do it, anybody can!  A design wall (or floor) is essential for placement here.  It's hard to see in the photo below, but I added a faux piping flange on the inside of the binding for an additional pop of color.

Retrolicious!  Designed and pieced by Cornelia Gauger; machine quilted by Cindy Glancy 

I think my absolute favorite quilt in the book (besides mine, of course) is the cover quilt.  All you need is a stack of fat quarters in your favorite color gradation and some black and white prints and you have this spectacular quilt!

Heat Wave - Designed, pieced and machine quilted by Abbi Barden

And here are a few more:

Sherbet Punch - Designed and pieced by Tracy Overturf; machine quilted by Lynn Reppas

Old Architectural Stars - Designed, pieced and applique'd by Karen Costello Soltys; machine quilted by Krista Moser

Na Kai o Kaua'i: The Waters of Kaua'i - Designed and pieced by Leanne Clare; machine quilted by Karen Burns

Grandmother's Thimble - Designed and pieced by Regina Girard; machine quilted by Karen Burns

And one more:

Blue Skies Ahead - Designed, pieced and applique'd by Adrienne Smitke; machine quilted by Dawna Callahan

There are 10 more quilts-which you can see here.  Have a look at all of the projects and then leave a comment below telling me which quilt you want to make first (it's ok if it's not mine, I'll understand).

Make sure there's contact info so that I can get a hold of you if you win!  I'll announce the winner on Monday evening.

Cheers!

Cornelia

House Paint

I am having the worst time getting started today!  I slept late, finished the book I was reading, started another and in the meantime, my dirty kitchen and disorganized sewing area are taunting me.  I'm dressed!  I guess that's something.

I had to laugh today when looking at my blog stats.  4 whole followers and 9 people read my last post!  LOL.  I really am talking to myself (mostly), it seems. 

The big news for this week is that we got our house painted!  We can't afford it but also can't afford not to if we ever want to sell our house.  The paint was in pretty bad shape.  Here's a really bad "before" photo that I lifted from Google Maps:

The color was awful.  A very light, almost white gray with peacock blue trim.  I've lived with it for 12 years and I guess I had become accustomed to it without realizing how much I hated it!  Choosing the new colors was rather daunting.  I'm indecisive, eclectic and have a new favorite color every day!  Also, while I wanted it to look snazzy, I also didn't want to stick out like a sore thumb.  Enter Anya, the color expert.  She was really good at pinning it down.  I ended up choosing Portabello for the main color, Oyster Bar for the trim and Sun-dried Tomato for the accent.  Sounds delish, doesn't it?  Oh, these are all Sherwin-Williams colors, by the way.  Here's the "after":

I LOVE the red we chose.  It's a gorgeous deep red with orangy undertones, although here it looks more blue.  One thing that Anya thought of that I didn't was that any paint we chose really needed to have warmer undertones because the the amber-colored windows around the door.  Obviously, we need to paint the railings a different color.  We're just going to do them in black.  I also want to do some red pinstriping on the rectangles of the garage doors.  I think that will give us one more "pop" of color.

My kitchen is calling!  

TTFN

Cornelia

Love Your Mother

In my last post, I told you all about the 12 x 12 challenge group that I'm involved in and the first quilt I made for the challenge.  Now, it's time to move on to quilt number 2!

The theme for this one?  Life!  <groan>  Such a broad subject!.  When I got home the evening that the theme was announced and was telling The Husband about it, he replied "Well, what could be so hard about a 12 x 12 quilt showing a big steaming pile of poo!?  You could try doing trapunto!"  For you non-quilters, trapunto is a technique where you put extra padding underneath a motif to make it poof out from the rest of the quilt.  That was funny and all, but I didn't think it was appropriate for an art quilting group.  I was tempted, though, since I've never met a poo-poo joke I didn't like!

All kidding aside, the main thing that kept popping into my head was the Earth, or Mother Earth.  I really wasn't quite sure how to execute it, however and had kind of dismissed it.   That is, until I went to the Stray Threads quilt show and saw this wonderful fabric in the Marbeled Arts booth that looked just like the Earth as seen from space.  She also had a lovely hand-dye in a beautiful dark blue that looked almost like velvet.  Gorgeous and I had to have it (cha-ching!  Hand dyed fabric is not cheap!).

So now I had my theme and my fabric, but I couldn't just applique a circle onto a square, could I?  No, but it was a start, so I cut my circle and sewed it (right sides together) to some fusible interfacing.  I cut a slit in the interfacing and turned it right side out and it made a perfect circle which I then appliqued to a square of the blue fabric.  Pretty!  But still boring and it needed more.  I started thinking about symbolism and life.  I saw some images on line of goddesses and one theme that I kept seeing and liking was the spiral of life in the belly of the Mother Goddess.

The spiral is a spiritual symbol of life in many world cultures and religions.  Spirals come in every size from the huge spiral that is our galaxy right down to the tiniest snail shell.  I've always loved spirals.  My Spirograph set was one of my favorite toys when I was a kid.  But I wondered if I could pull off a motif that small.  As it turned out, I could! I used gold Fairy Frost fabric, tiny scissors and fusible applique'.  I then machine stitched a tiny blanket stitch around the raw edges using gold metallic thread.  I was nervous about using the often-fussy metallic thread especially with such a small stitch but Superior threads metallic usually works very well for me and it did not disappoint in this use either.  I then added hot fix crystals and stars to the background.  Without further ado, here is the finished quilt:

Love your Mother by Cornelia Gauger completed April 2012

I still think she needs something else.  More quilting or decorative stitching for some extra dimension.  It will be hard to quilt in the background since the crystals are there already.  Still, I think it is doable if I'm careful.  I also may do an echo quilting line around the Goddess.  That might make it a little more interesting.  I'm open to suggestions! 

The next theme (due June 6) is:  Summer.  I'm still cogitating on that one!

TTFN

Cornelia

Long time, no blog!

Wowie Zowie, I can't believe that I haven't posted on this blog since JULY of last year.  I really love doing this and will try to be a better blogger.  A lot has happened this year some good, some not so much.  I'm not going to try and fill in a whole 3/4 of a year right now, though. 

I have all sorts of quilty goodness going on at the moment and have joined in on a couple of group efforts.

One is a Civil War Legacies quilt-along headed up by my buddy Jeanne.  I do love Civil War quilts (ok I just love ALL quilts), but I don't collect those kinds of fabrics at all.  So I was a little reluctant to participate.  But, since the quilts are smallish and Jeanne is such a good arm twister, I consented to join in the fun.  More on that in another post.

The other one is a Round Robin type of thing here at work.  This is not just for fun but to help promote a book that Martingale is publishing in July.  I'll blog more about that later as well.

The one that is really getting my juices flowing at the moment is the 12 x 12 group.  We were inspired by this group, although we've set ours up a little differently.  Plus, there are only 11 of us in the group.  The way it works is that every six weeks, we are given a theme.  Each of us will have a turn at assigning a theme and then each of has to make a 12" x 12" quilt interpreting that theme.  Lemme tell ya, it's HARD to work that small. It does make it easier to keep to the deadlines, though!  Unfortunately, they have decided to keep the group blog private.  I would have liked for the rest of the world to be able to see what everyone has done (they are amazing!) but they wanted to keep it just among ourselves.  That doesn't mean that I can't post my OWN stuff though!

The first theme was Exuberance!  I knew fairly quickly what I wanted to do for it, but as usual, it was the execution of my grandiose ideas that was the roadblock! 

The inspiration was this photograph, taken on the boat launch at Silver Lake Park last October:

I should mention that this photo was taken by Catherine Eastman.

Now, it just does not get any more "exuberant" than that, does it?  But how to translate it onto a 12" x 12" quilt?  I think I pulled it off.  Here's the finished quilt:

It's a pretty awful picture, sorry 'bout that .  The close-up is better:

I put a penny in the bottom corner so you could get some perspective.  I had to cut out the "Ninja boy" on the far right of the picture.  I was working small enough as it is!  I started with a square of Kona White.  I painted the sky, the water and the concrete boat launch.  Then, I sponged in some green trees.  Then I quilted the sky and put some silvery tulle over the water.  Now, time for the people!  I traced them from the photo and then onto steam-a-seam.  I carefully "built" each kid, taking a few liberties with the dress and hair colors.  The shoes and dress straps (you really can't see them here) are done with a micron pen.  THEN I thread painted the trees, being very careful to get right up next to the people.  There were a few hits and misses (not to mention a few swear words!) involved but I think it turned out kind of nice.  The last dilemma was what to do on the top and bottom.  It was a rectangular picture but I had to make the quilt square.  Thankfully, I found this great black-and-white stripe in my stash. I wish that the full photo was a little better (dratted phone camera) but you get the idea.  All in all, I was pleased!

I'll talk about the second theme (Life!) in my next post.

TTFN
Cornelia

Busy Busy Busy

Holy crap, I've been so friggin' busy!  Good busy, but still...busy.

The instructions and photos/illustrations for my fat quarter quilt had to be in by Monday, but since I'm going to be busy with family stuff for the next few days, I had to get done early.  This is no easy feat for me, lemme tell ya!  I'm usually the one who's scrambling at the last minute.  In this case, however, there were other deadlines to deal with so I had to set that one up to be earlier.  Got it done and turned in on Friday-I sure hope that the technical editor who's working on it isn't going to hate me!  I decided to call the quilt "Retrolicious!" by the way.

B's cousin and his wife are visiting from San Antonio, TX and B's niece and her family are here from Norway.  We had a big family reunion BBQ at my sister-in-laws' house yesterday and it was one awesome day.  But before we left, we had to get started on housework, because cousin Kennedy and his wife (Paula) will be hanging out with us from Mon-Wed.  I doubt I can avoid having them actually enter my house! Those of you who are not like me (aka, clean freaks) just do not understand this having to pick up the house and figure out what to do with all the clutter.  I had this discussion with a like-minded family member (you know who you are!) at the BBQ yesterday.  We are totally clueless on how this business of "a place for everything and everything in it's place" works.  It's like there's a data chip missing in our brain; what is so natural to most completely stymies us messy-chaos-clutter types.  As much as it pains me to admit it, it is who I am.  I hate it.  I've always felt so inadequate and like a lazy bum, but seriously-you see everything you have to do and your brain explodes.  Sure, I could do a little every day, but that doesn't work because whatever little thing you do is quickly undone.  So it turns into a great big cleaning production.  I always vow to stay on top of it and somehow it still gets away from me.  We all have our "projects" going on and they eventually take over the living/dining room.  To make matters worse, I don't have a separate room for my sewing so it's in a corner of the dining room.  Even when it's all "straightened up", it probably looks messy to others.  Frustrating.  So once I've posted this (avoidance maybe??) I'm back to it until it's time for us to see the Rat City Roller Girls this afternoon. 

Tomorrow B, Maddy and I are driving up to Bellingham with Kennedy and Paula and boarding a boat to cruise the San Juan Islands for the day.  I hope to see some Orca whales!  I'll try and post photos.

Have a great day!  ~C

Promised photo

It's a really busy day, no time for a long post but I did promise a photo of the fat quarter quilt I finished this weekend.  I'm trying to come up with a great name for it, so if you think of anything...let me know! 

 And here's a detail shot.

Cheers!

Cornelia

A Quilt Finish-YAY!!

And now a bit of quiltiness...
I finished one, woohoo!!   It will eventually appear in a Martingale & Co.book.  I'll post photos tomorrow.  
It came together pretty easily except for the part where I thought I was done and found that there was a piece sewn incorrectly!  GRR.  I powered through and finished and boy howdy, what a relief!  Now I "just" have to write the instructions for it, make a backing, have it quilted, wash it and bind it!
More on this quilt in a later post!  Every quilt I make teaches me something and my plan is to share that with my reader (s).   Here's my tip from this quilt:  Fons & Porter Glue Marker.  It's great stuff!  It goes on blue, but dries clear, and washes out with water and is skinnier than a conventional glue stick, so you have more control.  For me, at least, it works way better than pinning for getting those seam intersections to match up.  I can't seem to pin without distorting the fabric but everything stays nice and flat if you glue it.  For some reason, my sewing machine will twist some of the fabric at the beginning and end of each long seam which creates distortion. So, I glued each end of my rows and border strips.  As near as I can tell, things came out pretty square.  We'll see what my machine quilter says after she loads it onto the longarm.  Thanks to my buddy, Regina for turning me on to this great tool!
My one and only reader had a question about the recipe I posted the other day.   She wanted to know why there was no salt or seasoning listed.  Excellent question!!  First of all, the tomatoes have italian-style seasonings in them already.  Great if you have Add and have no idea how old the spices in your cupboard are (LOL)!  Better than Bullion has lots more flavor than regular beef-broth-in-a-can-or-box, too.  I use the chicken and the beef varieties instead of salt in lots of dishes.  Try it!  It seems expensive, but it really is cheaper than boxed broths.
Photo and family in tomorrow's post.  Off to the bestie's house for BBQ, yum!  Have a wonderful and safe 4th.  

Cornelia