Five Shadows

2010. My Fav quilt tops of the year.

Funky Monkey – Monkey’n Round Fabric line by Moda. The pattern is an enlarged version of Hullabaloo. They are sock monkeys! I think the finished size was 62″ x 62″.

And my second fav is another monkey quilt. Pattern by Blue Meadow Designs, Monkey Business Baby Quilt, Finished size: 38″ x 47″. This quilt reminds me of the old Barrel of Monkeys toy. Do you remember the red plastic barrel that came full of primary colored monkeys that could hand on each other in a long chain? I think this would be a fun toddler quilt in those colors along with a Barrel of Monkeys. The quilt is hanging in a quilt shop, half on the wall and half on the ceiling, so not the best pic but you get the idea.

Happy New Year Everyone!

I thought I’d bring in the New Year by giving a little tour of my studio. I am mainly a quilter, which shows up here! Over the past couple of years I’ve played with some fiber art and this year I’ve signed up for Mary Ann Moss’ Remains of the Day on-line class. Find info for her classes on her blog, Dispatch From LA. I’m so excited about taking her class! I’m also joining Julie of Balzer Designs for her Art Journal Every Day project. I’ve signed up for January and will consider doing so one month at a time. This year will find me dabbling in art journaling. I’ve seen many bloggers proclaiming “I am an Artist!” Don’t think I’m there yet, but hope to be able to proclaim that one day!

Enjoy the tour!

My studio is in a former bedroom with built-in bunk beds, two built-in desks and one dresser. As you walk down a long hallway here is the view into the room.

I’ve divided the 14′ x 24′ room in half with an office partition. As you enter the room, on the right is the ‘office’ area. The computer table backs the partition. The bunk beds on this side of the room serve as a daybed on the bottom, (great for late night computer movie watching) and the top bunk is storage for fabric and supplies for commissioned quilts waiting my attention.

As you look to the left, this is my sewing area. My cutting table/cabinet is backed up against the partition (I’ll show another angle of it later in this post.) Here you see the sewing machine on a desk, and shelves with quilt books, thread rack, misc love items. The most recently completed quilt top hangs at the bunk beds and nicely covers up a jumble of supplies!

Moving on around the room to the left of the bunk beds, is the ironing board (not in photo) at a back window (where I can watch the wildlife activity in the back yard). Just to the left of the window is a walk-in closest used mostly by my husband and housing some of my batting, you can just see the closet door on the right of the photo. Then there are two book cases, the books are my hubby’s and the fabric collection is mine! (The dark hallway on left is our starting point of the tour. Photo taken looking back across room from where the sewing machine is located.)

Standing at the ironing board and looking across the room, you can see the large white cabinet in front of the office partition. The cabinet top is my cutting area. Perfect height for me! Love it! I was able to purchase the cabinet from a quilt shop that went out of business. File cabinets hold patterns, etc.

Tis the end of the tour! Hope you enjoyed it!

Panels. Some quilters love them. Some quilters avoid them with a passion! I suppose they do come in handy for whipping up a charity quilt, or to make a quick baby quilt. I was recently challenged to come up with a variety of designs for a pile of panels. So take a look for yourself and let me know what you think. Do you like panels? Do you ever use them for a quick gift? Do any of these inspire you to use them, if they have been something you have avoided? I’m just wondering and would love your feedback. These are all now hanging in a quilt shop, so the photos are not the best. I just didn’t think to take pictures of them while I still had them at home!

Strip piecing around the panel with four patches in the corners.

Noah’s Ark, using coordinating fabrics around the panel and then pieced diamonds top and bottom.

Noah’s Ark, pillow panel. Cut into fourths, and checker board piecing separating the panels, coordinating fabric for the borders, with 4-patch in a 4-patch in the corners.

Not easy to see this one, but star blocks in the corners from coordinating fabrics. Jungle panel.

Christmas puns! Pillow panels say: Here comes Santa Paws, Merry Beary Christmas, Baaaa Humbug!, Kitty Klaus, Up on a Woof Top, and I Herd the Bells on Christmas Day. I cut the pillow apart and pieced in sashing with corner stone 9-patches.

This sweet bear panel is a soft flannel and makes a nice baby quilt. I added the blue border and then the pieced stars in the corners and used a coordinating print for the outer border.

Alphabet panel. I cut the bottom row into four squares and placed them in the corners with a coordinating print for the border. Simple as it gets!

There are a few more, but tis all for now.  Hope you enjoyed the show and tell!

What a pretty white December we are having here in NE Indiana! It is continuing to snow flurry with maybe an inch of snow on the way today.

This quilt is a woodland winter scene panel with hour glass blocks in three fabrics pieced around it. Deb of Fabric and Friends Quilt Shop has a huge selection of panels and asked me to ‘do something with them.’ I’ll be sharing them  with you this month.

December greeted us with snow flurries and it has flurried on and off for 6 days now! We only have about one inch of snow, but it is pretty!

This quilt top  Santa’s Surprises, is a shop model for Fabric and Friends Quilt Shop,

126 West Second Street, Roanoke, IN 46783 Phone: 260.676.2149. Pattern was a free download. (Not one of my favorite, and a quilt top that could benefit from quilting.) (And why won’t my words go below the picture like I want them?)

Here is a fun quilt I recently made for a new quilt shop in my area.  Fabric and Friends Quilt Shop, Roanoke, IN.  Love the shop! Owner Deb Roehm has an eye for decorating and she has a huge selection of fabrics. Wool, fleece, flannel, batiks, and of course many lines of quilters fabrics! All in a lovely old Victorian House on Second Street. This quilt is hanging, part on the wall & part on the ceiling in what Deb calls her ‘batik’ room. Pattern by Blue Meadow Designs, Monkey Business Baby Quilt, Finished size: 38″ x 47″.

While at the International Quilt Festival, back in April, I was able to take one of the Make It University! Workshops. These classes are offered by Cloth Paper Scissors and are held on the main floor in the vendors area, you win a seat in the classes by lottery. I put my name in the pot for two, but only made it in to one – Leilani Pierson‘s Small Stitch Flower Book. This was a flower pounding project. And did we ever pound! Noisy! So much noise that one of the ladies in the demo area came over to complain! One class participant had her thinking cap on and suggested we move down to the carpet to pound! We all did and the sound was muffled. Happy us, happy demo people! Leilani was so impressed that all her students just got down on our hands and knees and continued to work on our books. Leilani is a very sweet lady and great teacher!  Thanks for the fun class Leilani! I love my little booklet!

Here are pictures of my finished Flower Book:

Once I got home from the  quilt show, I looked up blogs of some of the people I met. Leilani had hosted a ‘follow me blind‘ challenge back in January. I decided to not look at those posts, but to save them for later when I could do the challenge. In May, I followed her instructions doing one step a day for three days – here are the results. (If you want to do the challenge yourself – don’t look at mine – go to this link instead!)

Day 1: Make a little rectangle quiltlet.

Day 2: Fold the rectangle in half and stitch ends together. (Day 3, I decided this was the front.)

And this is the back.

Day 3: Involved bending wire. Which I decided to embellish. I didn’t have any thin wire, so Hubby helped to bend the shape for me.

Put it all together and you get this:

Thanks for the fun challenge Leilani!

I did lots of looking at vendor booths while at the quilt show and bought a few things. I also hung out at the demo area and got to meet several artists published in Cloth Paper Scissors and Quilting Arts Magazines. Talking with these gals and seeing their work up close was great!  Kelli Nina Perkins gifted me with one of her cloth-paper book marks (thanks again Kelli!)

The first booth I went to was the Misty Fuse booth, I pulled along several friends to that booth and told them how much I love that stuff! I bought a Goddess Sheet and was given a few samples for bringing along my friends! They did make purchases and the Misty Fuse Gal (sorry, I don’t remember her name ) said what a great start to her day because of us! Doors opened at 10:00 and we had made our Misty Fuse purchases by 10:20!  I also bought some dyed cheese cloth from Embellishment Village. What a fun booth! And used a pink piece in the above Follow Me Blind challenge.

This was my first Quilt Festival to attend in Chicago, altho I have wanted to go for years! Our local quilt shop, Pieced Together, hosted a bus trip. What a fun way to travel with a bus full of quilting ladies! It’s funny because once there, I found out the festival is planning to move to Cincinnati next year! I hope to go to next year too, as I live right in between Chicago and Cincinnati in Indiana!

I joined Melissa of Ardea’s Nest in a swap challenge. There are eight of us playing. We have all swapped fat quarters, FQ, (we have one fat quarter from each lady, equaling 8 total.) And now the challenge is to use at least a recognizable piece of each FQ altogether in one project. Here are the fabrics I have received:

Can you recognize the fabrics in these hearts?

I have a plan for these yo-yo hearts using a pattern I purchased from vendor Kaye Moore while at the International Quilt Festival in Chicago last month.

But sorry, no photos to show. I hate excues, but here I go: PROM!!!!  I’m the coordinator this year and all this week has been nothing but getting everything finalized and squared away for the Prom tomorrow night!

I’ll leave you with this one teaser. This is step one of a three step ‘follow me blind’ challenge.

Actually, as a little quiltie, I could count this as a finish as is!

Hoping tomorrow I’ll have my finished work to show you!

Here is my block for the 3 Creative Studios BOM. The 7th block is called Five Spot.

I’m running late at meeting a friend for lunch – so I’ll post more later!