Friday May 2nd

Fri, May 2nd - 11:52AM

Ooops!

Well, apologies that I wrote that last entry when I did, I didn't realize that my blog would go live immediately and my site was still in the works, but now my site: www.ltquilts.com is quite live. I'm still plugging away at getting the merchandise up, and some of the other pages are as yet under construction. But I hope you'll look around anyway. I'm getting stuff done as fast as I can :)

I was away at my quilt retreat this past Friday-Sunday, hence the lack of communication (I was quite braindead on Monday due to sleep deprivation).

My favorite thing about my retreats is that they actually let me sew too! And sew I do. I also do demos (glittering and cut-a-rounding this retreat), help people with their troubles, chat, and eat. Stress on the eating there :) This spring, I sewed from noon to 1:30AM on Friday, 7:30AM-1:30AM on Saturday, and 7:30AM-noon on Sunday. I'm lucky I don't have bed sores on my butt.

Anyway, here are a couple of the projects I worked on. My Not-So-Giant-Dahlia that I made a while ago using Marti Michell's rotary cutter templates: I only worked on appliqueing it onto the background (a girl's got to sit in front of the fire sometimes :).

I even used my stash to make this one and may end up selling it, as I have someone who quite loves it :) (aside from myself).

It was a surprisingly easy quilt and the method I recommend as an introduction to curved piecing.

Unsurprisingly it has two different fairy-frosts :) and two other metallic pieces. I'm like a raccoon, if it sparkles, I have to have it!

You can see I didn't get all my hand-stitching done :)

Oh well, it's still pretty.

This is the body of my Crazy Eights sampler. I haven't finished it's pieced border yet, but it has three borders, ultimately. I love the Crazy Eights method of eight-pointed stars: you'd never guess that all these stars were strip pieced.

Almost every piece of fabric in this top is either metallic or glittery. Sparkly sparkly sparkly sparkly :)

Note: if you make this quilt--make sure to use Best Press or spray starch to keep those bias edges from stretching (I didn't, and I have some nubbed off points.)

I would also suggest using higher contrast fabrics for your strips, but I was young and silly when I bought these fabrics, and obviously really liked the selection of reds at the time.

And finally, I worked on the Double-Wedding Ring that I'm making for my oldest sister, Morgan. When she got married a couple years ago, she wanted a quilt. I told her to send me some patterns that she would like. So here is a pattern she would like (she only sent it three months before the wedding, so I knew that wouldn't happen). I got these three rows joined, and the other six rows made, so I'm getting close. The joining of blocks is much easier than I thought it would be, but time-consuming. I used rotary cutter templates to cut this bad boy out, and combined with my rotating cutting mat, that part was a breeze. I'm glad I'm making this quilt, but I don't know that I'd ever make another one. You never know, I suppose. This will ultimately be a wedding, Christmas, and possibly first-fifth anniversary present for them. We shall see, I'm sort of on a roll with it.

So, those were my main projects. I also cut out a Giant Dahlia (yay for spinning cutting mats!) in shades of bright orange and yellow with a very pale spring green background...I don't have a quilt for my bed and I thought to myself, "This is ridiculous, I need to have a quilt on my bed" so I'm making a queen sized Dahlia for my bed. Also Marti Michell templates. I cut out some pieces of a quilt I'm making for my baby brother (who is now 20) that has polar-bears in it. All in all, I had a wonderful time, a productive weekend, and got to enjoy the constant inspiration of other quilters' work.

Until Monday: Happy quilting!!