New Bag

I purchased a pattern about a year ago by Pink Sand Beach Designs, and cut out the pieces for it during quilt camp last summer, but didn't get a chance to sit down and sew it.  After being at the quilt show last week and seeing the pattern on display at multiple vendors, I decided it was time to sit down and make it.  (I really could have used it last week at the show!).  This bag is called the Barbados Bag.  It ends up about 9.5x11 inches, has multiple pockets (which I love) and is big enough for an iPad to fit inside.  When I bought the pattern, I was thinking of that use primarily, but now that it is done I know I will use it as a purse as well.  It is made with fusible fleece and decor bond interfacing so it is pretty sturdy.  The main body of the bag and 1 pocket have zippers so there is security for the most important stuff.

On the left is the pattern and on the right are the front and back sections during construction.  The spiral fabric is a purchased piece out of my stash; all the other fabrics I used are some of my hand dyes.  These were both snow dyes and ice dyes.

 Above is the front, with the zippered pocket and a second pocket where the pink ends.  There is another zipper on the top.

This is the back, which has 2 tall pockets; if you look closely you can see the double row of stitching.  The pattern company also sells the hardware used to attach the straps.  They could have just been sewn in without the hardware, but I chose to add it.  There are also 2 pockets on the inside.

And then to finish it off, I remembered I had these 2 great zipper pulls, purchased years ago!  See, there's a reason for all this stuff I accumulate; it does get used eventually!  I love the design of this bag, and the colors of the fabrics!

Recycled Clothes Quilt

I'm currently working on a commission for a friend, who wants a quilt made from her 7-year-old's clothing.  The saved treasures also included a crib sheet, and child's chair cover.   I've spent a few weeks (off & on) taking things apart to be able to cut the fabric into usable pieces.

These are some of the shirts, cut apart into fronts and backs. 

Here are some of the other pieces - some cotton knits, flannels, and part of the chair cover, which yielded a surprising amount of fabric.

 And some of the cut pieces, ready to be sewn into blocks.  Stay tuned to see how this evolves!

Quilt Camp 5 Underway

Here we are on the shores of Lake Winnipesaukee for the 5th year of quilt camp!  (aka my friend Elizabeth's family summer house)  For anyone new to my blog, this isn't a real "camp", it's just what we call our annual summer play time to experiment with surface design, fabric dyeing and any other technique that piques our interest.  It's been a slow start with the creativity this year, we spent a lot of the first week taking care of some PG Fiber2Art business which ate up a lot of time.  But there were things that needed to be done, so that is good.  And we took a day last week to go the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, MA, so now in our 2nd week we're getting into the groove and I'm finally getting a blog post up.  We've done some dyeing and printing, worked on some unfinished projects and started a few new ones.  Here's some of what we've done so far.

 This is a piece I started back in March in a VCQ workshop, so what you see above was done before arriving.  It's a technique called fractured view.

This is what I've added to it - I'm calling it Winter Oaks.  In a another post I'll show how I got from the 1st to the 2nd photo  It's now ready for quilting.

I wanted to try out some new colors of dye, so these are fat quarters to see what the colors look like.  The 4 on the left are low water immersion of coral, cobalt blue, turkey red and teal; the one on the right is ice dye using coral, yellow & turkey red.

 

The 2 pictures above are both practice using thickened dye with a thermofax screen.  The colors are not as intense as I'd like but I'm glad they didn't wash out!  The one on the left is done with one of our gear screens (over a piece of fabric previously used for breakdown printing which is what you see in the background); on the right, both pieces were printed first with a screen of a sewer cover and then some graphic rectangles.

 

Molly the Mannequin is modeling a circle scarf that I dyed last year.  I knew it needed something else but wasn't sure what. After taking a block printing class right before coming up here, I thought this wooden block print would be just the thing.  This is also done with thickened dye, so the hand of the fabric stays softer than with paint.

Stay tuned for more over the next couple of weeks.

Fractured View

Saturday was our March VCQ meeting (Virginia Consortium of Quilters).  We had a great day in Culpeper with about 75 members attending.  I took a class called Fractured View taught by Deb Schupp, which involves building a background of strips and then inserting wedge shaped pieces at various angles. .  We had lots of fun and produced some interesting pieces.

The one above is mine.  It still needs another border, and maybe some other additions.  Stay tuned!

Brand New Year, Brand New Start

2013 - Brand new year - wow, I remember thinking about 10 years ago how far away that date seemed, it being the year I reach full retirement age with the state.  And now its here.  Happy, YES! But also more aware of how quickly time passes.  9 more months (till retirement) but it will fly by. 

I've also been contemplating what to focus on creatively for this coming year.  Not sure I've come to a conclusion, but have a few things I would like to pursue.  Sketching is one.  I've tried rather unsuccessfully to keep a sketchbook, but I think this is the year to try harder.  I've gotten some inspiration from a few sources - books and blogs - and would love to say I'll make a daily sketch, but realistically, once a week may be more doable.

I just read Lynn Krawczyk's post on her blog about an idea from the JustB blog - a month's worth of creative prompts.  Think I'll have to check that out.  Maybe ideas for sketching prompts.  Hmm....  And posting to this blog more regularly...starting today.

Finishing projects is always on the list.  Thought I'd share the process for one I'm working on now.  It's a quilt guild challenge based on top songs from 40 years ago to celebrate the guild's 40th anniversary this year.  All the participants chose a song from the billboard top 100 of 1974 - I chose "Song Sung Blue" by Neil Diamond.  One of my favorite singer/songwriters.  The piece was originally going to be all block printed, but after doing the background, I decided to combine screen printing, stenciling and block printing, similar to a piece of fabric I created last summer. (Truth be told, it was going to take longer to carve stamps than I had time for!)

Here's the first step, with the sky and grass block printed for the background.  There is actually  more layered printing of the grass than shows in this picture; it looks like I didn't take a picture with that additional printing, but you can see it in the image below.

My vision is a garden of blue flowers, hence the blue flowers printed above.  "Song sung blue, everybody knows one.  Song sung blue, every garden grows one."  These are all thermofax screens made from photos of flowers.  More on the process tomorrow!

Holiday Tags

I haven't made many holiday projects this year, but one thing I did was make these little gift tags/ornaments.  I drew 2 small designs for thermofax screens - holly leaves and a pointsettia; printed them on red and green fabric, and then fused them to 2 1/2 inch squares of timtex, red on one side, green on the other.  After a bit of trimming, I satin stitched the edges and added some elastic cording.  A quick and easy project!

November VCQ Meeting

Last weekend I attended our Virginia Consortium of Quilters meeting in Martinsville, VA.  In the previous post I showed some quilts from the Piedmont Arts show we attended Friday evening.  Our meeting/workshop day was held on Saturday and I took a class called Gift Bags Plus taught by Abby Geddes.  This was a fun class!  In the 5 hour class period, we made a gift bag, a zipper pouch, a notebook cover - actually, we finished all 3 of those before lunch! After lunch, we made some bonus gifts - a gift card holder and a coaster; I made 2 of each.  So it was a very productive day!  All quick and easy, but it was so nice to end the day with finished projects!

One of the other classes was focused on our VCQ charity project, which is making pillowcases for foster children in Virginia.  42 cases were completed that day.  A large number of foster children are boys, so the focus was on making cases appropriate for them.