Wednesday, April 30, 2008

It's official!

I'm a Blanketeer for the Linus Project.
I spent my Sunday afternoon at a blanket bee churning out fleece blankets for four hours...
And then I took home four kits to make quilt tops.
I finished this one today.



I have the other three pinned and ready to assemble. Two of them I had to re-work the patterns based on the fabric provided in the kit! I will post them as I get them put together!

Monday, April 28, 2008

One down...



29 to go!
This is my first attempt at chicken scratch embroidery, and I guess I never start small. I decided to copy a quilt I saw on eBay...


This is really easy once I get going, but I have to put this project away for another day, I have other things that need my attention.

I have a couple of kits the I picked up from my day at the blanket bee for Project Linus to put together, a special birthday present to finish, a crazy quilt square to finish for the round robin, and my other quilt should be back from the long arm lady and will need binding put on. So, busy busy!

Tuesday, April 15, 2008

New beginnings

*edited to add- I just realized why I like this piece so much- It's almost exactly like the picture I chose to be in the personality header on this blog! Shows you how much I pay attention!*

This is my work for this month's TIF challenge.

The concept was "How do you see change?" and the color scheme was unappealing to me, so I didn't use it.

As a military wife and a mom to small children, I see change everyday, sometimes big ones...

There are new skills like walking to learn and new assignments and places to live on a regular basis...

I try to roll with the changes as best at I can, but that doesn't mean I don't get whiney about them!

To show how change is natural and inevitable, I first thought to do a life cycle type thing with caterpillars and butterflies, but the I wanted to do a series with birds, nests and babies.
I sketched and sketched, but couldn't get anything I liked, when I remembered I had a pattern in one of my books with birds in a nest.

I chose to do this one in redwork because it is the most traditional embroidery style for this type of image. I love how it is such a spring-y picture, and it has a caterpillar in it, too!

So I called it Every new beginning is a blessing. Hopefully it will remind me that change is a good thing, and I can't stop it anyway when it is happening...



You can click on the picture to see a bigger version of it...

Saturday, April 12, 2008

Finished! Almost!

I finally finished my American Hero quilt top. I will send it out this week for quilting and then i will have to put the binding on and it will finally be finished! Yea!

The white block on the bottom says Thank You in blue with a couple of stars in outline embroidery.


Here is a teaser picture of my Take It Further challenge piece.

Saturday, April 5, 2008

Round Robin block

This is Hazle's block that arrived from Sue this week.



Here is a close up of Sue's work, Very cute!


Here is where I started today... It makes me smile looking at this pretty bowl of beads.


Here is the block all finished, for my part.


A close up of one seam using rick rack and beads.

The other seam I made a magic chain with straight stitches and colonial knots, and also a string of bugle and seed beads. For the patch I did a mix of scroll and straight stitch vines with shell details. I probably should have used more contrasting threads for the magic chain, the color change is fairly subtle... oh well. I know it's there.

Remember you can click on the pictures to see them larger.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

Bunny for mom and AH Quilt

This is Willow.

I made her for my Mom.



She has pussywillows on the ears and tail.



I have been making some progress on my American Hero quilt.
I am using the rail fence pattern. It seemed to lend itself well to the patterned fabric I chose.
Here are some of the squares.


Here is the quilt laid out on the floor, almost done, I have to make one more row and the borders still, then I can send it off for quilting!

Those blank squares at the bottom are for another fabric that I have picked out...

The TIF challenge is up and I am stuck on it, I have to think about it for a while, and figure out how best to express how I see change. Stay tuned!