My First Blog Award!

Molly Fryer at Molly's Place has bestowed this award on me.
It is the "Its a Major" award. This award goes to anyone who
likes to smile and or laugh and just generally spreads that along in this blogging community in which we all travel.
The quilt I am making for my sister is a design created by Molly. I took a few liberties with it but it was the perfect foundation for this quilt which I am happy to report is finished and ready to be given to my sister. The label is on and the quilt has been washed and dried so that it has that wonderful crinkly look and that fabulous soft feel. More about the this quilt's significance can be found here or click on Rose on my sidebar to read all the posts about this quilt.



So Thank you Molly, not only for the award but for creating such a wonderful quilt pattern and sharing it with us all.


Now I think I should pass this award on as well.
So to Kathy of Kathy's Quilt's...........I really enjoy your blog, you are a busy, busy gal who always makes me smile.
and to the Comic Book Lady at Quilt as Desired who shares my enthusiasm for art quilting and is a constant source of encouragement.
To Jaye at ArtQuiltmaker for her creative prompts. Jaye has made me realize that I have a wealth of original designs just waiting to emerge.

I am really not quite sure what the rules are for passing along awards of this type but I think I'll stop here even though there are so many more bloggers out there who keep me focused, encouraged and entertained as well.

Almost Caught up.

Ever since I was contacted by Linda M Poole and told about the Creative Prompts Project at Jaye's ArtQuiltmaker blog, I have been doodling away trying to get caught up. I am pleased to say that I have now all but one finished. I also finally figured out how to get Clara the Cow to live on my sidebar, click on her to learn more, see what others are doing or catch the doodling bug just like I have.
For the prompt Beginning I did an egg




For Excitement I doodled an exclamation mark



Kindness is represented by a heart that contains
the words "lending a helping hand"



Air?............. how about the way a dandelion's seed float
through the air even on days with little or no breeze.



It was when Linda came across this postcard I was showing, that she invited me to join their group.But since the postcard
had been done before I learned of these prompts I wanted to do something a little different so here is a Spring



For Bubbles I could not resist playing with a Lava Lamp,
Okay, I know that those are really wax blobs in there but
they still kinda look like bubbles to me when I was a kid.






The last and most recent one I have to show is for the word
Look, I chose to draw a magnifying glass................
click on it if you want a closer look :-)





Something I have just this moment realized is that I have not signed any of these................do you sign all of your work? I make labels for my quilts but I almost never sign anything I try to draw or sketch. Do you really need to sign a doodle???

Sneak Peak

I am making progress on the quilt for my sister Rose. I hope to complete the quilting and start binding it by the middle of next week.
I almost never mark my quilts for stitching and rarely plan anything. I quilt on my domestic machine where I just begin in the middle and work my way out.

Here is a sneak peak at the back. Hopefully you can see some of the detail by clicking on the image.

I like to vary the stitching, so you will see some meandering, a little McTavishing, a few feathers......I have never done feathers on a quilt before but I LOVED doing them and I am quite pleased with how these turned out so I just might get a little more brave on my next project.












I also added a few little "hidden" things like this sail boat and hammer, each are only two and a half inches in size. For these I drew my outline with a black sharpie marker onto some water soluble stabilizer, once pinned in place, I simply stitched the outline and then tore away the stabilizer.


Just a couple of borders left to quilt.

A few more doodles

I can't stop the doodling. Jaye at ArtQuiltmaker challenges us each week with a new prompt, read about how it works here. I have to say that I had never tried anything like this before and had no idea that I had this sort of doodling in me. I am finding this to be an absolutely fabulous exercise. Now that I have started I just can't stop.
A friend, fellow guild member and blogger, the Comic Book Lady is challenging herself in a similar fashion, check out this awesome art quilt she came up with and see what she plans to do with it.

Okay ya, I know this is a quilt blog but I assure you many of these doodles will find their way into my quilt projects and I am actually keeping that thought in mind as I put pen to paper. If you are a regular reader you know I am still trying to catch up so instead of posting one at a time, I post several and will continue to do so for a little while yet.

Here are some of my responses to a few of the more recent prompts. The "footprint" you see above is for the word journey.



Here is my answer to........ time
I knew immediately that I wanted to use an hour glass but as I worked I decided to add all sorts of words that might precede time.



The word percolate led to this



................and finally you see my doodle for circle

Creative Prompt Doodles

The following doodles/drawings are the result of an exercise I came across on ArtQuiltmaker's blog, where you can read more about it all on the creative prompts page, scroll down toward the bottom and you will see a list of words, by clicking on each word you will find links to others terrific responses to these prompts.
I am just going to show you some of the doodles I have done so far. I have plans to take each of them a step further. I see a wonderful opportunity for art quilts, stamp carving, stenciling, free motion embroidery and creating batiks using resist and dye. I'll post the next stage when I get time to develop my ideas further. I got started a little late so I am first going to show some of the earlier prompts and in a day or so I'll post some of the more recent ones. I hope to eventually get caught up and have something done for each of the weekly prompts.

The one you see above is my response to the word "source" ..............a hand can be the source of many things, two that come to mind are pain and comfort.

At times, I just like to play a bit with lettering so here you see my responses to Beacon and Dream.















Sometimes I have to think a while about what I will draw and at
other times it is immediate as in my response to the word, light
how about "light as a feather"



Some of my responses are pretty self explanatory, like in the case of words such as trees or orange.










While others likely require you to know what I was thinking as I scribbled. In this next case I happened to be enjoying a
gorgeous afternoon at the beach and the thought occurred
to me that I was being rather "bold" wearing a bikini at my age when I absolutely do NOT look like this.


I must admit that I am completely enjoying this exercise in creativity, why not give it a try yourself?

Quilt Top Finished

If you have been following my most recent posts you know that this quilt is being made for my sister. I have never attempted to make a quilt using shirts before and it is a challenge to combine soft flannel of varying weights with T shirts made of interlock, jersey and in one case a fair bit of spandex. So in addition to using some nice crisp cotton to help stabilize seams I also used a product called Quilt Fuse. Have you ever used this stuff? It has been around for some time and is basically a light weight fusible interfacing with grid lines. I got mine at Fabricland. Quilt Fuse is sold by the meter and is about 48 inches in width. The idea is that you cut your fabric squares, lay them onto the quilt fuse, press with a hot dry iron and then you fold on the line and stitch a quarter inch away, you do this to all the vertical lines then clip all the intersections and repeat with the horizontal lines. This came in quite handy when making the 9 patch blocks using knits and flannels. I also used it to stabilize fabric anywhere that the seam would be flannel to knit, knit to knit or flannel to flannel. It is lightweight enough that you still get a nice drape to the quilt.


The other dilemma in making a quilt with shirts is that you don't really know how much fabric you have to work with so I used a pattern designed by Molly Fryer as a starting point to create that beautiful center and then just continued designing borders as fabric would allow.

I am pleased with how the quilt top looks, Okay so I know it would not pass the scrutiny of judges but more importantly I know that my sister will love it.

The quilt top measures 72" square and once I have it batted and backed I will machine quilt it.

Progress

You can read more about this very special quilt for my sister in my previous post. I had originally not intended to put this up on my blog because this is so personal but it occurred to me that perhaps this may inspire others to do something similar for someone close to them who has also suffered a loss.

If you read my previous post, you know that I began using a pattern created by Molly Fryer and although I love that pattern, I really could only follow it to a certain point ( beyond her beautiful applique border I am kinda on my own) Why? Well because I am working with mostly shirts that have been cut apart and not yardage, I don't have the luxury of following this pattern exactly as it was laid out so now I am simply adding and creating borders as fabric allows. I just need to be "creative" that's all. I must say that Molly's quilt was the perfect starting point for this project.

I am pleased with the look of these wide and narrow borders that I have added.
The completion of this quilt is definitely a priority so I am off to see what I can come up with for the next border.

A quilt for my sister

I am in the process of making a very special quilt for my sister. You see, in March of this year, cancer took her husband and best friend. He was a terrific guy, truly one of the "good ones".
A couple of weeks ago I visited her and brought home several of his favourite flannel shirts and some T shirts as well. I thought that I would make a quilt with these for her and perhaps it will provide some comfort as she can wrap herself in it.
I'll just show a little of this quilt's progress so far.

I am using a pattern that I absolutely love and will some day make for myself. It is called "Down the Garden Path" designed by Molly Fryer and in 2005, was published in Quilt Almanac magazine. Of course, this version for my sister is going to deviate somewhat.

To the shirts, I have added a few fabrics that I felt would lend extra "meaning"
For example, my sister's name is Rose so I have used a tone on tone rose print for the applique border.

He loved to spend an afternoon playing pool, so you will see a few pool balls, (cut up my husband's neckties for those.......shhhhhhhh! ) they once owned a sail boat and enjoyed many summers on it, so I used a print with a mariner's compass, he played guitar and enjoyed attending jazz festivals. He loved his home and family, he was especially happy spending hours in his garage woodworking. He crafted wonderful wooden dragonflies for each of us to place in our gardens, and yes there is even a story to go with the pineapple.

Mixing soft flannels, T shirt knits and cotton is a bit challenging but I think it will all work fine together when quilted. Time to get back to the next border.