Archive for November, 2007

Since our move to Minneapolis we’ve been living in an apartment downtown and we’ve decided we’ll stay here another year. It’s very convenient to Keith’s office and with our condo still for sale in GA, my son and his wife renting our house in Marietta, and the housing market still dropping we’re not ready to buy right now.

So…since I’m not sure how much sound carries when I’m using the longarm, I’ve made it my policy NOT to quilt late at night. My sewing machine is in a room that is bordered on 3 sides by other rooms in our apartment and the 4th side is an exterior wall so I feel pretty safe sewing late at night knowing I’m probably not bothering anyone.

My routine many nights is to come into the sewing room after Keith and Chesty head to bed and work for a while. Tonight while I should have been trying to finish up the blocks on my July QFAH top, I made another postcard. Before I started my journal project I’d made 2 cards depicting the birch trees I saw on our trip last month to Duluth and the North Shore that I sent to my sisters Deb and Ann. Here’s the one that will stay with me as part of my journal project.

I think I’ve finally learned that when I’m having problems quilting to walk away for a while (or a night) and try again at a later time. I had to re-thread my longarm yesterday evening after my thread broke – some freaky thing on the cone got caught up. For some reason I could NOT get the tension readjusted so I could get back to quilting. After making several adjustments that didn’t help I shut down for the night.

This afternoon, I walked back in the room, unthreaded the machine and started from scratch – a quick tweak of the tension dial and I was back in business.

Each year I’ve been quilting I’ve made an autumn quilt – this year it happened to only be 4×6 inches.

This Rail Fence was made my 2nd or 3rd year quilting and remains one of my favorites. I’ve added instructions (slightly smaller version with fewer leaves) to my MaryQuilts.com site – Autumn Leaves

It’s been much colder this week and yesterday we actually had snow flurries! I took this photo of the Basilica of St. Mary’s from Loring Park but the flurries had stopped by then. I love the colder weather and have taken time for a walk both yesterday and today.

My aunt asked me to quilt one final top before Christmas and it arrived in the mail yesterday. I told her I’d only do a quick pantograph and since I knew it was a nautical quilt I’d planned on doing Ebb and Flow. However, when I opened up the package I realized that Waterworld would look much better on it although it would take longer to quilt (thanks Deb). Luckily, it was a small top and I finished it about 30 minutes ago.

I won’t show the finished quilt but here’s a photo starting out earlier today.

I had a couple questions about the fabric I used for the photo transfer on the anniversary postcards. I had some Printed Treasures sheets in the house but felt they were too *white* to give the aged look I was after. When I attempted to use the sepia option on my photo editing software I didn’t get the result I wanted either.

So my solution was to print the photos on a photo transfer sheet and pull a spotty beige fabric from my stash to iron them on to. I LOVE the look although Deb didn’t like the darker spots – I thought they made the photos look more aged.

The top photo on last night’s post was definitely my favorite of the two although I think I liked the one I sent Mom pictured below the best of all and it was the first one I did. You can click on the photos to see a larger view.

Since I made my postcard earlier in the week for my journal project, I decided to take two leftover photos from a previous postcard I’d made and try some other framing options. One of the two didn’t please me at all – care to guess which one I liked and will probably use again?

Imagine if you will, my putting the final stitches in this quilt of Mom’s and dancing around my studio with my iPod blaring Barry White…..Oh happy day!

Anyone want to vote in the $100,000 Quilt Challenge?

I attended a quilt show in Hudson, WI today. I know Kathy, Teresa, and Rhonda from my HeartStrings group and their guild is having their show this weekend. It was very nice -lots of beautiful quilts, vendors, and I attended a lecture by Darlene Zimmerman.

I also met Nancy, a quilter who reads my blog and recognized me which is pretty amazing because I make sure the photo on my profile is the MOST flattering one I can find. Nancy is a quilter who lived in Japan for many years and was making a cord on a Kumihimo disk while we were waiting for the lecture to start. She was answering a lot of questions from nearby quilters watching her work and she mentioned this site BraidersHand as a resource.

Patchwork Harvest Quilt Show
November 3, 2007 – 10AM-5PM
November 4, 2007 – 11-AM – 4PM
1300 Carmichael Road
Hudson Middle School