Fine Arts Quilt Exhibit

The Dunedin Fine Arts Center had a very interesting exhibit recently of art quilts.  If you read this blog, you know that I never make art quilts … mine are, at best, nice-looking (I hope) utility quilts for children.  But this was an especially intriguing show because of two special sections.

The first was called IQ: Masterpieces.  The format was the quilter’s interpretation of a painting by a famous artist (originally done in oils, watercolors, etc) using fabrics, threads and embellishments.  These are a few of my favorites:

The other special section of the show that fascinated me showed selections from the works of Betty Busby.  She translates magnified images from the cellular world into fantastic fabric creations.  Here again are some of my favorites:

But back at my house, I remain in love with my new quilting system.  We are beginning to understand each other (yes, there is a large learning curve!).  I can now distinguish between an operator error and a possible glitch in the system.  The operator errors are slowly being identified and eliminated – LOL.  This is a hint from my first finished quilt without a hint of help from my instructor:

And I almost forgot the deer in the yard.  There are actually two little ones – one is having a love affair with my dog.  One of the little fawns comes up to the screen to try to get the dog to come out to play – the other fawn is properly skittish.  The doe comes and gets it and chases it back into the woods.  Too funny!

I Went to a Guild Meeting

Several friends from my Quilts of Valor group wanted to check out a local quilt guild’s meeting and they invited me to join them.  That was the perfect opportunity for me to go to my first ever guild meeting.  I am too shy to ever just walk in alone!

The guild is close by and is very active.  They hold a semi-annual major show, hold weekly sessions (some workshops, some educational and some sit-and-sews in addition to the monthly business meetings).  They are actively supporting several charity efforts.  And, best of all, they were very nice!

These are some photos of the Show and Tell at the end of the business meeting:

 

Spicy Spiral Table Runners from a recent workshop

cute vest - see those prairie points?

they support a local woman veteran's shelter

art quilt - painted canvas - more in a later post on these

My friends signed up as interested in joining, but I did not put my name on the list.  Due to the meeting room’s size and some other constraints, the guild limits its membership to just under 100.  If I joined a group such as this, I know I would want to jump in with both feet, especially for the charity/philanthropic projects, and I just don’t have time for that right now.  There are only a few slots open and I wanted my friends to have a chance at them.  I wish them luck!

Sometimes I go by this fountain early in the day on my walk:

And sometimes I go by in the evening:

If it’s in the evening, I can almost guarantee that I am pooped and dragging my feet  on the way home, but I had a good, long walk …

Long Time – No Post

I haven’t been sitting around doing nothing!  I have been trying to kill off my new quilting system.  At first it was a blast, then I ran into some problems.  Now I am frustrated …

This is the lovely kid’s quilt that I did with the instructor by my side.  I had a few of the usual – thread breaks, start and stop, but those were valuable learning experiences.  Glad the instructor was here to walk me through it all.  We finished it up and it looks fantastic. 

 

Maybe you can see the butterfly and swirls!

The next day, I loaded up another kid’s quilt:

I picked a different quilting pattern and calculated out the repeats and set it up.  Easy-peasy.  I love this quilting system!  It was stitching beautifully through the first repeat … then the thread broke - I thought it was a simple fix - I learned that yesterday, didn't I?  But instead,  I hit the troubles from Hades.   It would not go back to the correct starting point.  Bummer.  Learning curve turned upside down.  I tried to correct it a hundred times.

Finally, I unplugged the computer and checked the machine itself.  It was being erratic – would appear to be running but the needle wasn’t moving up and down.  Bigger bummer.  It would be set in constant mode, but acted like it was in stitch regulated mode.  Biggest bummer.  Called the instructor.  Got a fix. 

Fix worked temporarily.  Got eyelashes from the bobbin threads.  Easy fix.  NOT.  I changed the bobbin, I changed the tension, I changed the needle, I changed my clothes (hey! It was worth a try…) – nothing works well now.  Needs a new switch in the handle, but I think there are multiple operator errors occurring from my trying to fix it.  Gotta wait for the instructor to come over and set it back to square one.   Oh well.

So meanwhile I try to fit in a few walks.  So much rain has caused lawn service companies fits (and I thought I had troubles) – see the high grass here as this little cattle egret hunts for lizards:

And we’ve had some spectacular sunsets:

And things are blooming:

So things can’t be THAT bad!

I finished up my kits for Quilts Beyond Borders:

They’ll be in the mail on Monday.  So, as soon as the instructor comes and whips this little operator into shape again, I'll be back to Happy Land.

Changing Sewing Room

The big changes in the sewing room continue!

The new machine/frame has arrived and is all set up.  I haven’t had the instruction on the computer yet, but I wanted to practice FMQ on just the machine anyway.  I loaded a large sandwich of good quality muslin to play on and went to town!  The top is being floated - something new for me to try.  And I took the photo when I was rolling the top up - I hadn't made it more taut yet.

I had to force myself to stop and try to put the sewing room back together a little bit.  It was just too much fun playing with quilting designs.  I will need practice since this machine is heavier than the one I was used to, but "practice" has turned into "play" for me ....

Two of the members of my Sunshine Online Quilt Guild are regional coordinators for Quilts Beyond Borders that will have a table at the big Houston quilt show in October.  We will all pitch in to help make kits for QBB to have available to give out to visitors at the show to take home and make up a quilt to donate to QBB.

Here is the start of my third kit:

I will cut 35 of these novelty squares and add 35 bright solids to make up a kit that will make up a top 42 x 60.  This is a great use of my smaller pieces of fabrics.  I am pleased to have these fabrics moving on and being useful.

And speaking of moving on – on my walk, I took a photo of these lush Coleus plants.  Why don’t mine ever grow that plump?!

Then I ran across this weed – another giant.  Now THAT’s what I can grow well …

Too funny!

Having Trouble Staying on Task

I'm getting a new quilting machine and frame!  I'm so excited ...
I'll have my first lesson on the new setup this Tuesday while it's still in the local quilt shop.  And the thing is huge.  Make that HUGE.  I've been doing this to clean out some things and make room for it:

that dresser in the back will be leaving the premises

The mess is even worse now.  But my tabletop machine is still active and I've been finishing a UFO.  I need more fabric to add borders (can you say "shopping"?!).  And that light purple block in the dark star is making me nuts, so I'll have to rip it out and move it.  It'll take a little finagling since I can't just replace it with that dark blue square above it - that would put 2 dark blues together in the dark star, but I'm making progress at deciding what to do - it might take a Rubic's Cube puzzle person to solve it for me!

this will go to Quilts of Valor

Waterspout and Continuation

Waterspout over Tampa Bay last week:

 Amazing photo by Michael Peddington from:

https://www.facebook.com/AgeOfInformation

I've seen small waterspouts out in the Gulf of Mexico and occasionally over Tampa Bay.  I'm sorry I missed out on this one that was seen by lots of people since it was visible from three main bridges in/out of Tampa/St. Petersburg.  It was spectacular and mainly stayed over the water.  There was some damage when it came ashore (a the term "minimal" is meaningless if it was your damage ...), but it soon broke down.

And the continuation of the previous post about the Indecision Quilt.

It has grown – thanks to all of you for the suggestions – I auditioned several alternatives and this looked the best:

This design wasn’t what I had started to make with the squares a very long time ago, but it had been sitting in a box for so long I decided to just go ahead and make something, really – anything,  with it.  I have a lot more of the square 4-patches made up so I might just get away from the preferred dimensions of a donation quilt and keeping adding rounds.  I’ll keep you posted!

Indecision

Indecision is a terrible thing.  I had to walk away from this top and think about what to do.  Right now it does not appeal to my sense of symmetry.  I need to either add another row of 4-patches to the top or delete the row at the bottom (inside the borders).

Right now it is the right dimensions for the group I donate to and to take either action will change the size.  Have to mull it over tonight and maybe fix it tomorrow … indecision …

Sunday’s Sewing

So, the local quilt shop had a sale – 30% off if you bought the end of the bolt.  And if you were lucky enough to find good stuff, what’s a girl to do?  Well, I found a few bolt-ends and then the book jumped into my bag – that’s my story and I’m sticking to it!

These are the 4-patches I’ve had around for a long time and this book will help turn them into something:

This was what I had shown previously to be my work in progress:

And, this is what the 9-patches morphed into:

It is very loosely based on this modern quilt design from Elizabeth Hartman:

http://www.ohfransson.com/oh_fransson/2010/02/ninepatch-lattice-quilt.html

I was bored with the first photo and liked the asymmetrical look of the modern quilt.  Someday, I’m going to move into modern …  first I have to use up a lot of stored fabric!

Oh, and this is the bunny I saw on my walk:

We don’t see as many of these as I would expect.  He was in a side yard, just munching away.  Cute little devil … unless it’s your garden, of course!

Happy Independence Day!

Happy Birthday to the USA !!

Another Box in the Mail

Well, if you don't keep up the blog postings, you fill another box with quilts apparently!  I have four ready to go to Wrap-a-Smile.  Our group was discussing how easy it is to work up lots of "girly" quilts and how it's harder to find good "boy" fabrics (without skulls - it's just not appropriate for tiny surgical patients).  Often the trendy comics-themed fabrics are licensed and therefore too pricey for donation quilts.  It just turns out that three of my quilts in this box could go either boy or girl since they're jungle animals or nautical.  But I'll be keeping my eye out for those boys!  These are in the box:

baby jungle animals

nautical

more jungle animals

3 Cats on the Brick Path - a bear to quilt!
Don't know why it got so messed up ...

This is the current WIP now on the design floor: