Archive for January, 2007

So with my current obsession for string quilts – I decided to play around in EQ6. I liked the first two OK but the stars didn’t really pop. I tried some red/white strings too but that looked too busy. I like the white star in the middle the best but I may still play around some before I decide which one to use. I’m not sure what happened to the reds in the first picture but I’m not going to go back and redo it – use your imagination!

Keith is out of town so I might as well spend the evening and night picking out the mess I’ve made of this quilt! Luckily the bar stool from the kitchen is the perfect height – which I found out last time I had to pick out a row of stitching. I’ve already warned Mom that I’m making a mess of the quilting on this quilt.

Ever have one of those days where your quilting sucks? Today was one of them so I stopped quilting and took a walk. Click on the photo to follow me on my walk to the river.

January in Minneapolis

I finished the quilting on Mom’s Block of the Month quilt. I quilted a pantograph called Popcorn – I think it looks like clouds and it suits this house quilt.

Chesty gets bored waiting for me to finish on the computer

I met today with Sandra – the listmom from Stashbuster. She suggested we meet at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts which is only 1.25 miles from the apartment so I walked over (even though it was 8 degrees!). We got acquainted as we walked around looking at their art collections and I can’t wait to go back and spend more time there.

We lunched at Ping’s, a Chinese restaurant nearby which was great too – I even have leftovers for dinner tonight. I’ll have to take Keith there one night when he gets back into town. He’s gone again – this time for a week – to Vegas for a meeting.

I came home, got right to work, and finished up the quilting on Mom’s Block of the Month quilt – Now I just have 3 left to do for her.

I don’t do these very often but this one has me nailed.

I finished the Bright Strings top tonight – I don’t have anywhere in the apartment that I can take a good picture at night so this was the best I could do – the top is folded in half and thrown across the top of the door to my studio. I REALLY miss the lighting in my studio in Marietta. The string colors are a little overly vivid – they’re not quite that bright in person.

I recently set up a Webshots account because I was spending a lot of time going back through my achieves looking for specific photo’s in response to questions. I wasn’t really happy with the setup and read in one of my groups about Google’s Picasa Web Albums. I think if you already have a Google ID you don’t even need to sign up – you can just log in.

I spent some time yesterday setting up my quilt albums and found that I could link my 2007 album right in my sidebar by just copying some code.

So far I love it and it’s much easier and less cluttered than Webshots.

Keith didn’t get around to hanging a rod above the slider for me to use to take pictures of finished quilts so I took these on the balcony this morning. These are the last 3 finishes plus the finished string top PLUS my rows of bright strings waiting to be assembled into another top.

I was up early this morning – unusual for me but I got to work piecing my bright strings. Since I was starting with fat quarters for this quilt rather than true strings, I’m cutting my strings from rectangles as show in the book. I have a few more sets to sew and then I’ll be able to start assembling my rows. I really like this technique – you’ll find it in a lot of books. I think the first time I came across it was in Jan Mullen’s book Cut-Loose Quilts: Stack, Slice, Switch and Sew but Gwen Marston also uses the same technique in her book Liberated String Quilts .

I also finished up the quilting on the 9 Patch this morning. I used the BF template again and if you look at the (L) side of the quilt the edge looks incomplete. There was not room for another arc so once the quilt is bound it won’t look like I forgot to quilt to the edge.

I finished assembling the string top tonight. I don’t have good lighting here in the apartment like I did at home so I can’t get a picture of the whole top tonight. I think I’ll just post one when I finish quilting it.

I can’t believe how good it feels to be back to work after what felt like months of quilting inactivity. You all are going to get tired of seeing this quilt but I finished the last couple rows of quilting and just had to show another picture of it even before trimming.

I also finished the 80 blocks I needed for this string top and started putting the top together. Hopefully I’ll get it assembled this weekend and then guess what I’ll be quilting on it? I need some practice turning the corners on the BF anyway – my lines are a little wobbly as I turn to go into the next fan.

I’ve had a couple comments and emails asking about linking from individual blogs to the HeartStrings website. I have links in my sidebar and anyone else is welcome to link to the site too. The more people that hear about our project the more quilts we’ll make.

Jane even went to the trouble of creating a graphic if you’d like to use that.

The website can be found here: http://heartstringsquiltproject.com/

Phyl, a member of the HeartStrings Quilt Project has been working with me on developing a website for the project – not an easy task I’m sure! She uploaded a trial version today and I’ve been playing with the format tonight. It’s basic at this point but I think we have the bones up of it up. Take a look http://heartstringsquiltproject.com/ and let me know what you think.

Our goal is to have information about the project and contact information for people interested in the project who do NOT want to join the Yahoo group.