Creating a Garden Bed Quilt-style

What do you do with your leftover egg cartons? Here's what we do: we make beds!

I didn't do a great job distributing the colored flats, but hey, let's cover that up!

Now no one can see the beautiful masterpiece underneath. The box on the upper right is filled with old telephone books. I ripped those up and used them the same way for the other bed.

Is anyone impressed?

Thanks Jack! I'm excited, too!

Remake the quilt (even when the binding is on)

After making this Intuitive Pieced quilt, I bound it and took it to class.

The reaction of the class was that the diagonal strip needed to go. It just doesn't fit with the rest of the piece. But it was already bound! So I ripped out the stitching of the binding and rotary cut the strip out. The binding had to be cut and repieced, but it only took about an hour.

The color is a off a bit in this window-lit picture. But can you see the difference?

Now how about we add a kitty?

That's better.



Need a Little Christmas?

Our Row Robin group is a lively bunch of women who quilt like crazy! When we have Row Robin meetings, everyone brings a row. The picture above is a compilation of all the rows my friends made for me. Because I started with a Christmasy row, each row complemented it perfectly. For those of you in the Camano Island guild, bring your first row to the June meeting. For all those who would like to start up a Row Robin group, here's how we do it:



1. Plan a meeting time and place. Usually we meet once a month at a home, a restaurant, or a quilt shop.

2. Each quilter brings a row in a big bag or box. The row dimensions can be limited if you want.

3. The quilter can add fabric to coordinate with her row. This option makes the quilt more cohesive in the end.

4. The first meeting is a show-and-tell. At the end of the meeting, each quilter takes home a different bag/box.

5. Each quilter works on a row that complements the previous row/s. Do not sew them together.

6. Each subsequent meeting, during show-and-tell, the original row designer steps out. That way the final reveal will be a surprise. Switch the bags/boxes again so a different quilter gets to work on each one.

7. After 6 months and 6 switches, have a reveal party. Show off all your hard work and bring food!

How do you create Transparency?

At another great Lorraine Torrence class, we learn about creating depth in a 2-Dimensional work. Many of these techniques you are familiar with, such as overlapping a leaf over a stem...

or depicting the moon as a small circle in the sky.

To create transparency, a change in value is required. What if you overlapped two leaves?

Have these leaves changed color? No, but their overlapping position changes the values in those areas. A sense of depth by the nature of the placement of color. Here is my attempt at transparency with fabric:

This isn't the best picture, but you can see the changes in color when the circles overlap. I simply cut out a shape of another color to create the illusion of depth. I knew yellow and blue made green, so I inserted an arc of green fabric in the overlapping area. Here it is quilted:

Are they parasols? Flowers drifting along a river? Or Japanese lanterns? Intead of landing flat on the black background, they are flimsy and see-through. That's transparency. Fun, right?



Finished my Yin-Yang!

I finally finished my Yin-Yang from two years ago. Sometimes it makes sense to put quilts away or on the design wall when things aren't going right.

I had quilted this machine applique design with a back that had uneven edges. When I turned it over, the lines were wacky toward the edges. I put it away.  When I pulled it back out, I decided to cut the border from 5 inches to 2 1/2 inches. Now the back looks great.

After binding, I created a Tyvek bag for its storage underneath the bed.

This bed is now full!

Happy Quilting!

End of Year Performance

 Marnie is performing her year-end dance with the Camano Island Dance Academy. It's wonderful to see her develop her dancing skills. I didn't do well in ballet at her age. It requires too much muscle control for me. Marnie likes the exacting requirements of ballet.