July Challenge and a Story

Next installment in the FMQ Challenge!  This is compliments of Angela Waters and her Tiles tutorial.  First, standard tiles with a fill:

Next, I created increasing size tiles filled with my favorite motif, intersecting curved lines:

Finally, I worked with my number one theme, stars.  I'll be doing a lot of work on patriotic quilts, so I'm trying to come up with a huge stockpile of star designs:

And of course, the doodling continues.  I always have a pile of paper and pens on hand when ideas strike.

Time for some humor!  You can't make this stuff up (might be the name of another blog...). 

I call this story "High Strung in Edwardsville."  Soooo, I'm zipping into the McDonald's drive-thru to throw food at my kids on our way to Little League (or soccer, or a swim meet, or Scouts, who knows) and I pull into the parking lot.  There are two entrances, one from the front and one from the back.  If you come in the back and are lucky, there's space to get into the drive-thru without going all the way around.  Well, rush hour was starting up, so they had a person out there taking orders and the order station.  Someone was ordering back with the person, but in front of her, the order station was wide open.  No one else was in line, so I pulled in ahead of her to order at the same time.

I know, it wasn't exactly kosher, but she was aleady ordering so I figured it wasn't a huge deal.  Of course my children admonished me for "cutting."  Just as I was explaining that it wasn't "really" cutting, the woman in the other car is standing at my window screaming at me!  Seriously! 

"I was ordering!  I've been waiting like I should and then you just cut in front of me!"  I'm trying to stay calm and apologize, but she just kept screaming at me,

"What is WRONG with you!  How dare you!  I'm in a hurry!"  I must admit that at this point my desire to stay calm was waning and I might have thrown out a comment about "getting a grip, it's just a McDonald's drive-thru."

After High Strung got back in her car, my kids just said "See?"  Damn kids.

More Free Motion Quilting

In caes you missed the last post, I am working on improving my Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) skills. I'm participating in the FMQ Challenge organized by sewcalgal: FMQ Challenge

sorry, I don't know how to make the link so you can click on the image, use the underlined link above

There are monthly tutorials by FMQ experts. It's incredible! And once you do the work, take a picture of it to post and get entered into a drawing for awesome prizes each month and then grand prizes at the end of the year!  sewcalgal is a Goddess for putting this together and our experts are Angels for sharing their knowledge with us.  Every time I talk to someone about quilting, I tell them to get on the website and join the challenge!

Oh, I LOVE this challenge. I can hardly believe what I'm learning to do! I've completed a couple more of the tutorials and I am on fuego, baby.
Here's my favorite so far, June challenge with Cindy Needham.  She works mostly whole cloth quilts, and you can see why.  Her quilting alone is an art form.  A pieced quilt would take away from the quilting itself!




Here's my first attempt to fill various spaces with different patterns in each area.  It's so fun.

I also did the January tutorial with Frances Moore:

And now I have enough purple squares to assemble a crib size quilt.  I'll assemble and bind it then send it off to Project Linus to comfort some small child in the hospital.

Well, kids are off with a friend all day, so time to sew some more while I'm free...

Free Motion Quilting

Remember that studio I was all excited about moving into?  Of course I posted pictures right away.  NOT.  Oh well, now it's even better.  Why, you ask?  Well, I'll tell you.  My wonderful, loving, spoil-me husband sprung for a top-of-the-line sewing cabinet for me.  All you sewers out there, I got a Koala!  Uh-huh, be jealous because it is SEW sweet.  It's a DualMate Plus, which means a place for my Ellegante embroidery machine and my Eclipse serger (I'm a Babylock girl).  And my wonderful, loving, spoil-me parents paid for the upgrades, like the shelving and storage package and the outback extension.  Then I spent hours attaching shelves and deciding what goes where (yes, a little OCD in the genes, thanks Dad!)  I'll spare you the fifteen iterations of potential furniture layouts I created before choosing the model, or the four iterations of furniture layout once I chose the model.

PS: My Mom was wrong, it doesn't take up the WHOLE room, just 40% of it.

So what am I sewing now that I have my first ever sewing cabinet?  Yes, sad but true.  I've been sewing since I was what, six?  First time I've sewn with a machine inset into the table top.  It really rocks!  (Duh).

Anyway, I am working on improving my Free Motion Quilting (FMQ) skills.  I'm participating in the FMQ Challenge organized by sewcalgal: FMQ Challenge

sorry, I don't know how to make the link so you can click on the image, use the underlined link above

There are monthly tutorials by FMQ experts.  It's incredible!  And once you do the work, take a picture of it to post and get entered into a drawing for awesome prizes each month and then grand prizes at the end of the year!

Here are my quilt sandwiches for the challenge so far.  I'm doing my practice work on quilt sandwiches, but when they are all done I'll be combining them into quilts for Project Linus and Quilts of Valor.

February Challenge, Diane Gaudynski, www.dianegaudynski.net  Her work is gorgeous and so detailed.  It's the perfect example of more quilting is better.  Her lines in this piece are a scant 1/8 inch apart for the fill!

My Echo Feathers with "meandering" fill around them:

...and then I tried a different shape. I need star patterns for the Quilt of Valor I'll be doing. I doodled a few ideas, but following the star outlines gave it a very boxy look. I played with it and came up with these waves, giving a waving flag look to the fill:

The May challenge was by Anne Fahl, http://annfahl.blogspot.com/ I used her continuous fill to create a daisy fill that matched my fabric on this adorable Lazy Girl's design Miranda Day bag. I left out the spiral in her centers so they would match the fabric daisies.

 And my last pictures to post today are from Leah Day's challenge in May.  Her blog is incredible, with hundreds of FMQ design ideas.  If you're not sure what to use, she'll have the perfect design and tutorial.  Her books should be next to every FM Quilter's machine!  http://freemotionquilting.blogspot.com/

When I did the "railroad ties", I sewed across a marked line, but I didn't sew the line itself.  I think it looks a little more like straight line stippling that way.  The wavy line was very relaxing to work on!

The most valuable advice I got from these tutorials is:

stop and catch your breath, don't try to just keep going

and

doodle doodle doodle!

OK, time to take the kids to swim team practice!

My Best Cakes

Had to post my best cakes real quick!

Lazer Tag

Wow, way to keep up on the blogging, eh?  Se la vi (no, I don't know Frech, so I'm sure that's spelled wrong, but I don't have time to google it).

Today is Bryan's birthday party.  Yikes, he turned TEN yesterday!  Can you believe it?  I cannot.  As he pointed out, a decade already.  By the way, he plans to live ten decades.  Awesome!

Here's the cake, not my most precise work, but he loves it and claims I am the best Mom ever, so there you go.  Those are glow sticks shooting out of the guns.

Last night he was in heaven opening family gifts.  Lego, legos and more legos!  Then Call of Duty for the computer, he went crazy over.  I thought my embroidered polo would suffer in comparison, but he was so thrilled that I made something for him after weeks of sewing for my booth!  It felt great.

Speaking of the booth, here's a photo of me at my first "show."

Below is my latest re-creation.  Before and after:





So, wore this little ditty to a charity event in town.  The owner of a local boutique (home decor mostly) was gushing over my skirt (along with everyone else), so of course I had to tell her about my business and give her my card. She got all thoughtful and said, "you have me motivated again, I've been thinking about opening up a clothing boutiqe and local artists like you are just what I want in my shop!" I almost fell over! I'm supposed to bring some stuff to show her next week. Whee!

Off to birthday preparations, party photos to follow.