Free Motion Practice

Several women in my Fibervision group are doing a free-motion quilting practice round robin. I had a pile of three pieces I needed to do and send along. Yesterday I finally had a chance to do it. Interestingly enough, I seemed to get worse as the day went along! I'm almost positive that is not the way practice, practice, practice is supposed to work.

The blue pattern, Pebble Ripples, is one I saw on Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project blog. If you are a machine quilter and you haven't heard about Leah's project, you ought to check it out.

A different Arrellaga Tree

Photo of the Day

This very tall tree has the most amazing blooms at the very top.

Guess The Decade

Photo of the Day

There are several panels of this architectural detail on a building I pass on my daily walk. I'm thinking it was built in the 60's and it is amazing that it is still there.

Mystery In the Park

Everyday when I walk to work I pass Alice Keck Park Memorial Gardens (Alice Keck Park Park). This morning as I walked past the Arrellaga Street gate, I saw these three paintings set in various locations. Who painted them? Why were they there? Is somebody releasing their masterpieces to live freely in the world or discarding failures? I don't know the answers to those questions, but it was fun to see art in the "wild." It was all still there when I walked home for lunch. Wonder if it will still be there tomorrow morning.

A Lovely Gift

Photo of the Day

From a huge bunch of organically grown roses given to me as a gift. Not only were they incredibly beautiful, but the fragrance was heavenly.

Progress on Filtered Light

Today my friends, Mary and Linda, and I got together to work on our pieces for the upcoming Fibervision exhibit, On Our Way, at Pacific International Quilt Festival in Santa Clara, California. They are a lot further along than I am. They spent the day finishing bindings and hanging sleeves and I spent the day finishing the actual quilting of the piece. The other day I showed some of the free-motion work I did on the piece and today I worked on the straight lines.

This piece had some new challenges for me. I usually do all-over quilting in order to avoid the piece being distorted by different densities of stitching in different places. I wanted to quilt this piece to emphasize the idea of light filtering amongst trees and had very specific quilting patterns in mind. I am very pleased with the results and finally believe I will have this piece ready in time for the due date.

More to follow.

Out of Practice

Was lucky enough to have an extra day off this week and spent most of the day machine quilting my newest piece, Filtered Light. Well, not most of the day because I did some serious procrastinating first. Early in the day I washed and reorganized the plastic containers I use during fabric painting and dyeing, changed a light bulb and thoroughly washed the fixture, scrubbed a kitchen step ladder that has needed it for weeks, etc. You get the picture. When I am cleaning everything in sight, you can be pretty darned sure there's something else I am not dealing with!

Finally, I sat down with my machine and my quilt and began with the quilting I planned out last week. Not only am I out of practice, but apparently sewing machines can get out of practice, too. It took us a bit of concentration and patience to get a good rhythm going and still, I am unhappy with the results. The only cure for it is to quilt something more often.

The top photo is closer to the correct colors for this piece. More photos to come as things progress.

A Quilt Begins

Today my friend, Mary, and I went to the Creation Station in Buellton, California to pull fabrics so I can make a baby Trip Around the World quilt for my new grandnephew, Brom. I felt like I had really lost my TAW juju and needed the support of my color-gifted pal. We had fun grabbing fabrics and tossing them around until we found this fun combination and I'm looking forward to putting it all together. There's some great flannel for the back with big green frogs, will post some photos soon.

Arrellaga Sidewalk

Photo of the Day

It was a very cold and grey morning in Santa Barbara today, this piece of stone off to the side of the sidewalk seems to be reflecting the sky in its coloration.