Wednesday, January 31, 2024
My Stats for 2023 and January 2024
Sunday, January 28, 2024
Quilt Reveal: Where Horses Dream Under Endless Sky
It's time for another Project Quilting Reveal! This week, the challenge is to:
Take inspiration from the colors of the sky, but exclude or use less than 10% of the usual blue.
"There is something infinitely healing in the repeated refrains of nature - the assurance that dawn comes after night, and spring after winter." - Rachel Carson
My quilt was ready on time, but by the time I uploaded the photos and wrote the blog post, it was too late to submit for the challenge. I got distracted while I was waiting for the upload.
I did film the process and will post the Youtube video here after I have finished editing it.
Linked with: Small Quilts and Doll Quilts
Thursday, January 25, 2024
Quilt Reveal: Rabbit's Reverie 🐰
It's my day for the Just Let Me Quilt blog hop challenge. The theme for the week is White Rabbit.
It is a perfect theme, because I was just gifted a pair of embroidered white pants. I had seen a couple of quilts that were animal shapes that were cut out of some embroidered work with batting inside them. I thought about doing just that and having a quilt that was not a rectangle, but I still had house on my mind and wanted to make sure that my rabbit had a home.
I started out with the floral background, but decided to put the rabbit on the green background and add the flowers. It looks like the rabbit is lost in reverie looking at the field of flowers.
I tried machine binding again. I still have yet to master that skill, but I like the shabby chic look to this quilt.
I have made a YouTube video to go with the blog hop. It took a long time to cut down all the footage into a reasonable length video. I still don't know whether it is better to show everything and speed up the footage, show everything in real time and have really long videos, or just chop it up enough so people know what happened and let them imagine the rest. Let me know if you have a preference.
Just Let Me Quilt
Inflorescence
Quilt Schmilt
Sew Many Yarns
Days Filled With Joy
Quilting Gail
Beaquilter
Ms P Designs USA
Words & Stitches
Lake Girl Quilts
Homespun Hannah's Blog
Selina Quilts
Karrin’s Crazy World
Quilted Delights
The Life of Grammy
Quilting Between The Rails (Facebook Page)
Quilted Snail
MooseStashQuilting
Vroomans Quilts
Domestic Felicity
Pattern Princess
Elizabeth Coughlin Designs
Highroad Quilter (that's me!)
Kathy's Kwilts and More
Monday, January 22, 2024
White Rabbit Blog Hop Challenge
The White Rabbit Blog Hop Challenge starts today. Here is a list of the participants. Enjoy the hop, and come back on Thursday! My quilt is ready and waiting!
Just Let Me Quilt
Inflorescence
Quilt Schmilt
Sew Many Yarns
Days Filled With Joy
Quilting Gail
Beaquilter
Ms P Designs USA
Words & Stitches
Lake Girl Quilts
Homespun Hannah's Blog
Selina Quilts
Karrin’s Crazy World
Quilted Delights
The Life of Grammy
Quilting Between The Rails (Facebook Page)
Quilted Snail
MooseStashQuilting
Vroomans Quilts
Domestic Felicity
Pattern Princess
Elizabeth Coughlin Designs
High Road Quilter [<--- that's me!]
Kathy's Kwilts and More
Sunday, January 14, 2024
Quilt Reveal: Haven of Harmony
I made my first quilt of the year for the first Project Quilting challenge. Project Quilting is a challenge that was started years ago by Kim Lapacek of Persimmon Dreams. It is inspired by Project Runway challenges.
Every other week for the first three months of the year, Kim's friend, Tricia Franklin, posts a theme. Quilters then make quilts based on this theme. The quilt cannot be started before the challenge is posted, and must be finished by the deadline, which is only one week later.
Where there is righteousness in the heart, there is beauty in the character. When there is beauty in the character, there is harmony in the home. When there is harmony in the home, there is order in the nation. When there is order in the nation, there is peace in the world.
The challenge this week is to make a quilt inspired by a birdhouse.
I did some cursory searches for some birdhouse patterns, but I was attracted by a quilt that someone had made on Facebook based on a quilt pattern by Cheri Payne. It isn't a birdhouse, but it is a house and does have a bird in it so it works in my book. I really liked the fact that it wasn't a rectangular quilt, and decided to make something like that.
There aren't houses where I live with two chimneys, but there are other architectural features. I am not sure whether this is called a gable, but I will call it that until I learn otherwise.
I made the house, added a door and window. I used a stiffer middle layer instead of batting. I am not sure whether this is Peltex or Timtex, but I am pretty sure I bought it for fabric bowls. Since the quilt wasn't rectangular, I think it needs more support. I thought about a binding, but decided to take it easy on myself and birthed the quilt.
I encountered a lot of obstacles in making this quilt, but I was having so much fun making this quilt so it didn't faze me. I nicked my thumb with a rotary blade. My bobbin ran out of thread, twice, because I used bobbins that weren't full. I didn't get a good camera angle for the ironing station and wound up being in the way and the camera kept focusing on my sweater. Then both of my cameras ran out of battery even though I had charged them to prepare for this videoing quilt for YouTube. (I use one for talking, watching the ironing station and the sewing machine, and the phone camera for overhead shots).
I have beautiful fabrics on the table because I am collecting them for an autobiography quilt, and they really helped me make this wonderful quilt that feels very Indian.
Here is a link to the challenge post so you can see what everyone else made. Mine is #198 so there is lots of inspiration to see.
Here is the YouTube video that shows the entire process from start to finish:
Tuesday, January 2, 2024
A Recap of my Quilting Year 2023
Image by GDJ from Pixabay.
In this post, I go over my posts during the year and give you a summary of the quilts I made, and any big events. I make a yearly recap every year. In 2021, I did not have any rules - I could start and finish as many quilts as I wanted without any guilt. The key was just to enjoy the journey. This lead to some fun finishes in 2022, but the number of unfinished quilts grew. Then I created a rule to finish more quilts than I started. I continued the rule to finish more than I started. Let's see how that affected my quilting.
January
I finished this quilt, Sonder, as a Project Quilting challenge which required the color pink. This one was a lot of fun to make. I enjoyed the combination of whimsy and elegance.
Sonder: The realization that each random passerby is living a life as vivid and complex as your own -- populated with their own ambitions, friends, routines, worries, and inherited craziness -- that you'll never know existed..
February
In February, I made Boundaries for another Project Quilting challenge. was to make a quilt inspired by the 54-40 or Fight quilt pattern, but I stretched the rules to use a different pattern to describe a boundary. These challenges really help with my productivity.
I made more Circle 365 blocks. I pressed and trimmed some Jazzy Blues blocks. I started the Boundless quilt for the Dust Off an Old Quilt Book blog hop.
I also made some other things, like these hearts, and a scrappy ball. I also started the Unallocated quilt and the Spicy Stars quilt. These starts are not helpful to my challenge to finishing more than I start
March
April
In April, I was able to show the quilted and finished the Boundless quilt which was made for the Dust Off an Old Quilt Book blog hop.
I made Whose Rights? from the scraps of the Boundless quilt.
I also worked on the Spicy Stars quilt.
May
June
July
I kept working on the Spicy Stars blocks. I made a lot of portraits for my index card drawings.
On the 29th, I started a Youtube channel, Quilt and Color, and showed my first completed art journal.
August
In August, I wasn't working, so I made some paintings and focused on learning how to make YouTube videos. It is a steep learning curve to know what supplies I need while trying to limit my investment, learn how to use the equipment, and decide how to make videos without being boring.
I started making the index card portraits quilt based on the index card portraits I was making. It was slow since I was recording a tutorial for it, but it was fun to explain the process without having a scripted speech.
September
In September, I finished the Portraits quilt, Making Friends, and published a YouTube tutorial for it. I enjoyed that so much, I brought out my Tuxedo Vest quilt to see what I can do to finish it.
October
In October, I finished Tuxedo Vest by appliquéing African fabric on top. I made a YouTube video about the process. I renamed the quilt, African Garden.
November
In November, I published videos that told the story of some of my finished quilts. I didn't get much time this month to work on a quilt, but producing videos about the finished quilts and getting ready to produce a video a day in December where I will work on my quilts for 15 minutes a day made it difficult to count whether I was successful in quilting every day.