Rosey Posey Block 4

I love this time of each month when the new block of the BOM Midnight Posies is posted. It is so fun to see all the bright colors and this simple Rose block is one of the brightest and most cheerful. And never was there an easier rose block than this one.

Download PDF block here.

This quilt has 12 blocks plus a machine appliqued floral border. Block #4 stars row 2 of the quilt. No new techniques are added to this block but the color placement becomes increasingly important as we explore all the possibilities of the versatile nine-patch block to create lots of different flowers. Next month we will introduce quarter square triangles to add to your repetoire of skills in this simple quilt. If you are a beginner you will be amazed at how this simple addition multiplies the possibilities in your quilts. Experienced quilters will enjoy how fun and easy it is to create such varied blocks with minimal changes in piecing technique. No matter what your level of experience, I hope you will love this month's Rosey Posey Block.

If you are joining us late and still want to get the first three blocks and the supply list, click on the image of the quilt in the side bar at right and you will get access to all the blocks todate. I will only leave the earlier links open for a few more weeks, so if you haven't saved the pdf files for those blocks, please do so right away. After June 1, only the current month's block will be available!

Thanks to all of you for your wonderful support of this project. Enjoy!

Kaw Valley Quilt Guild Quilt Show

This Saturday and Sunday, April 25 and 26 is the Kaw Valley Quilt Guilds's annual Quilt Show at the Douglas County Fair Grounds in Lawrence, KS. If you are in the area I encourage you to attend. The theme of the show is "A Quilted Garden", and there will be lots of fabulous quilts to see, vendors to shop with, and free lectures, workshops and demonstrations. There is also a silent auction for miniature quilts made by guild members, with proceeds going to local charitable causes. Hope you can make it.
This was the first public exhibition of my new Color Wheel Quilt! I made its first informal showing at a color class I taught in late March and again April 21 and 22, when I spoke on Color Confidence for Quilters at the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild monthly meetings.

I am debating wether I should bring this out as a pattern or as a kit. I thought some might find it fun to find all these fabrics, but others might prefer to have all the colors supplied. Which would you prefer? Thanks for the suggestions.

Quilt Studio -- A view on the veranda

I thought I would share a few pictures of my quilt studio. When my son went to college his large basement bedroom was immediately appropriated as my new quilt studio. The dark long and narrow room got new wallboard, insulation, and a coat of paint. The old carpet was pulled up and fresh wood-grain vinyl flooring was rolled out. The best part, for me anyway, was my new "view". The veranda in the picture is a wallpaper mural that covers all of one end of the room and wraps around one corner about 2 feet.
I arranged my machines to face the veranda so that I can "look out" at the sea while I sew. It really gives the space a sense of spaciousness and warmth. I used parts of an old computer desk unit for my machine tables and have my Bernina, serger, and Jukie at hand, with my ironing big board right behind me. It is a great space to work in. The 2 table mounted Ott Lites and the new overhead track lights really give me great light for sewing.My storage area for stash is one of the 2 closet in the room. I installed wire shelves and organized my stash by color in clear bins. I really need a second closet, but so far I am managing to contain my stash -- well most of it -- in this closet. The drawer units hold large cuts, quilt backs, and UFO's. The small stool allows me to reach boxes on the top shelf without breaking my neck!
The "Book Nook" is my favorite corner of the room. My quilt books and magazines are stored here and I often sit in my rocker and look through books for inspiration or research. The kitties often curl up on this rug -- a bargain at an outlet store (the rug not the kitties) -- and keep me company while I read or do hand work.
The last picrure is the view of my studio from the far end. My cutting table stands in the middle and has 2 leaves that come up when I need more cutting room. The drawers and cupboards are perfect for rulers and rotary cutters and all my tools store nicely in stacked bins inside the cupboards. Since taking the picture, I have added an antique pie safe on the wall where the ironing board is and it is filled with quilts, extra batting, and works in progress.

As for my son, not to worry. Not only has he graduated from college and officially moved out to start his career in Texas, but I have a guest room upstairs for him when he comes home! But I sure love my new studio and find it a wonderful workable space. Now, if it was only this clean all the time! My Easter wish for each of you is a spacious studio of your own to work and create in. Thanks for taking a look at mine.

Home From Retreat

What fun it is to go to a 5 day retreat! A group of friends from my online quilting group, SewManySwaps, attend a retreat twice a year in Winslow, Arkansas. We have been going since 2002 and it feels more like family than friends each fall and spring when we make the short trek from Kansas to the beautiful Boston Mountains in the Arkansas Ozarks. The scenery is spectacular, our hosts at Sky View Lodge are welcoming and wonderful, and the time with friends oh so precious.

I was able to finish this Merry Go Round Quilt in sweet baby fabrics. Shhhh, don't tell, but this will be a baby gift for my Nephew Corey and his wife Jeniffer who are expecting any day now! Wow, I better get it quilted this weekend! I was so pleased to get my color wheel quilt finished while at retreat. It came out just as I hoped it would. What a challenge it was to find just the right fabrics for each hue, tint, shade, and tone. I ripped out the whole center wheel and replaced it with darker tints, as the first set I had were too pale. I used those 12 tints to make piping around each of the dark shades in the outer ring, making the grayed tones between them really show up.

The outer border has the 3-D effect I was hoping for, altho the dark green is a bit darker than I had hoped. But now it is ready for quilting and I am looking forward to having it completed in time for a quild presentation I am giving this month at the Kaw Valley Quilt Guild in Lawrence, KS on "Color for Quilters." I am going to bind it with a fabulous multi-color stripe cut on the bias.

This wonderful version of my Midnight Posie Block of the Month Quilt was completed by my amazing editor and pattern tester Kathi! Of course she always puts her own spin on the colors and block placements, which I think is great. She also found a major error in one of the later block patterns which I have now fixed. . . yippeee. My sincerest gratitude to her for finding and fixing all my errors. Well, really there was only one, which is pretty amazing. Not that I made a mistake, but that I made only one! (cheesy grin!)

I finished this set of indigo and white blocks for a block swap I am participating in. They really came out nice and were a lot of fun to make. I still have another set to make and then off they go.

I do so love going to retreat! It charges my creative batteries and refuels my soul. I hope each of you have the opportunity to attend a sewing or quilting retreat as often as you are able to go. It will do you so much good. Oh, and get a massage while you are at it. Our wonderful masseuse gave me a "hot rock" massage while I was at retreat. AHHHhhhhh, I thought I had died and gone to heaven.

I am working on my next 2 patterns that will be published this summer. I will provide a sneak peak soon, when I get the tops done. Hope you are having a wonderful spring. My daffodils are blooming!! How about yours? Would love to hear what you are up to. Please post a comment and share your spring projects!

Midnight Posies featured in Quilting Gallery

Today my blog and my free Block of the Month are featured in Quilting Gallery!

Go take a look!

In honor of the first day of spring, I have posted the third block in the Midnight Posies BOM a few days early. I hope you enjoy the block and my blog. Thanks so much for your support and enthusiasm for this bright spring-filled design.

Blue Willow Teapot Quilts

I love all things blue and white. Raised by a mother obsessed with Blue Willow China, I naturally picked up the eye for seeking out chards of blue and white china poking out of sale boxes under tables at garage sales and antique shops. To celebrate my mother's collection I made a few Blue Willow teapot quilts featuring Kay Mackenzie's wonderful Appliqued Teapots. The result was this little wall hanging. I gave this quilt to my friend Gail to thank her for helping me finish up a series of these in time to attend the International Willow Collector's Society annual convention, where I sold these. My mother has been gone for many years now, but my sister inherited her collection and still attends the IWCS meetings. I go along now and then just to sate my blue and white fix.

It was fun to find fabrics that would go with the blue willow fabric I purchased (Lakehouse produced a willow print in several color ways a few years back and I bought a bolt of it!) It also gave me a chance to use some of the decorative stitches on my sewing machine to quilt these little quilts.

I enjoyed combining elements from other patterns or inventing my own elements to embellish these quilts. I especially like using gold thread for some of the decorative stitching.

The quilts with the "welcome" headings were the most popular and I sold quite a few of them. I did a number of custom quilts in special sizes or colorways (including pink willow and blue with yellow) for specific collectors.

If you are a willow collector and would like a Willow Teapot Quilt, I still have a few left -- or could make up one just for you!

They were such fun, and gave me a chance to enjoy the memories I shared with my mother, all those years ago.

This is a quilt I made in honor of my mother's love of blue willow. That is a picture of her in the center, printed on fabric, holding her favorite teapot. Don't you love the little tea bags in the corners? This quilt was a round robin and several friends put rounds of teapot inspired motifs around the center block.

I just finished this quilt this winter, and it hangs in my sewing room to remind me of where my love of blue and white came from. How about a cup of tea?

I hope you have beautiful things in your life that reminds you of your family and friends.

Midnight Posies Block 3 Posted

Welcome Quilting Bloggers! In honor of having my blog featured on Quilting Bloggers I am offering my 3rd block in my Midnight Posies BOM a few days early! Thanks so much for dropping by to take a look!

I am so excited to be able to bring you the third block in the Free Midnight Posies BOM. This block is a simple friendship star flower in pink, blue and green. Even simple blocks can look anything BUT simple with the addition of bright colors accentuated by the black or dark navy background.

Download Block 3 Pdf

Let me know how you are enjoying this Block of the Month quilt. I will leave the first two blocks of this series up for a few more weeks to give everyone joining me a chance to get all the blocks for this quilt posted to-date. If you click on "free BOM" in the key word list at right you will bring up the posts with the other blocks. I really appreciate your feedback on this quilt, as I will be publishing this pattern later in the year and would love feedback before I do. Thanks so much for your interest in my patterns.

I am working on more free patterns which I will be adding in the near future. Hope you have fun stitching up these colorful posies!

Color Class Color Wheel Quilt

I am working on a new quilt. I teach a class in color for quilters and I have been wanting to make a color wheel quilt for a long time. I have designed lots of them over the years but never found one that I liked enough to make, or that illustrated all the color theory ideas I wanted to cover in the class. Here is what I came up with finally, and have been assembling the fabric to start making this weekend. The central ring of points depict tints of each color (white added) and the middle ring of points depicts the hues or pure colors. The outer ring of large points are the shades of each color (black added) and between the shades are the tones of each shade (gray added). The border juxtaposes each hue (larger triangle) with its shade (smaller triangle) to demonstrate how the contrast of light and dark (value) creates depth and three dimensionality.

The idea of color schemes posed another challenge, so instead of making a series of quilts or blocks in various color schemes, I decided to make black flanel overlays I can put on the quilt with holes cut out to reveal each of the color schemes, ie. complementary (across the color wheel from each other), tertiary (3 colors equi-distant from each other), etc. I could move these to change the colors in each scheme by lifting the overlay and pivoting it, showing different color combinations.

The quilt will be large (70" square) so that the colors will be visible in a large guild meeting room. The overlays will be made from foam core with black felt coverings so they can be easily moved and applied to the quilt with velcro dots. I thought it would be easier to move an overlay, than to make the quilt out of foam core and move each color piece. I could just picture myself in the middle of a guild presentation and having all the color triangles fall on the floor! I would love to know what you think of my idea, and how you think this would be as a prop for my presentation. I have done this presentation several times, and use power point slides to illustrate all the ideas. But I thought that a real quilt might make a better visual aid than slides, especially when answering questions after the presentation. Let me know what you think. Thanks in advance for your feedback.

Working on Projects

I cleaned up my studio this weekend. . . at last. . . and finally had room to unpack several recent projects from classes and a quilt show. I wanted to finish up a few projects so I could start on another major project or two. I taught a class on making tote bags recently and finished my second class sample yesterday. It came out quite nicely, altho I used a fusible fleece for the inner lining that was a bit too stiff. Next time I will use something softer and easier to work with. I love making tote bags and have made quite a few, but admit I have given away most and only have pictures of a few. You can see pictures of some of my bags here.
Another project I am working on is this Winding Ways quilt, made from a John Flynn precut kit. I have made 2 of those now, and I just love the precision of the precut pieces. His system of marking the patches with small cuts to match centers makes stitching so easy and precise.
I am currently quilting it myself on my Bernina 153 in concentric circles and really like the look. I am struggling with how to quilt the plain borders, and have thought out any number of ideas. Any suggestions? The 6" turquoise border needs something interesting, but I am more of a piecer and designer, and am only learning to do my own machine quilting, especially on a quilt this size. So what projects have you been finishing up?

A Beautiful Day

It was 70 degrees in Kansas today. Sunshine, birds chirping, it felt like spring. My tulips and daffodils are up about 5" and I pray that they don't get their little noses frozen before the risk of frost is over in a few weeks. All last week it was below freezing so I have no illusions that spring is REALLY here. But to help urge it along, I made a small needlework quilt to remind myself that spring is just around the corner. A wonderful quilter and designer Angela Prince-Bex designed the needlework and I designed and made the setting and quilted it. The stitchery design is available on her Country Cellar site, along with lots of great primitive stitchery patterns. When I first saw it I fell in love with the dainty flowers and whimsical style of the piece. I wanted something that would fit on my front door to herald the coming season and this was just the right size.

I used cross hatching on the background and McTavishing inside the stitchery. The yellow lines were from the chaco marker, and they dusted off when I was done. I used #16 Perle Cotton to embroider this and really love the ease of only dealing with one strand instead of having to use multiple strands of traditional floss. I was able to find Finca Fresencia No. 16 at my local quilt shop. A bit pricey, but worth the convenience and ease of handling. It doesn't come in as many colors as traditional embroidery floss, which is a shortcoming, but still has a nice selection, including variegated styles.

So now Spring can come since I have my Happy Spring Quilt on my front door to welcome it in.