pillow and more

Hi, I just got home from a busy few days in lovely Beaumont, TX where the guild there treated me to their southern hospitality and cajun cuisine.  We had a lot of fun learning free motion quilting on a domestic machine.  The ladies were very skilled and they had lots of great tips for me.

Here I am demoing how to quilt a large quilt on my small machine, and I'm doing the hardest part - the middle 4 blocks.

If you want to learn this here in San Antonio, I will be teaching a beginner Free Motion Quilting Class at Memories By the Yard on February 5th: Memories by the yard newsletter  see page 9.

I made this pillow last week, it was a kit that I bought at our quilt show in September.  It was a fun little project.

And I started a new quilting project for a friend - just because I wanted to:  

Carol made this from a pre-fused kit that you may have seen in catalogs.  It's beautiful, BUT, the fusible web is so stiff that my threads are breaking very often and I am finding it very difficult to quilt!  I don't know how these companies expect us to quilt these projects???  Not only is the one layer stiff, but in some places there are several layers of this stiff stuff.  I am determined to do this for Carol, and I will put on my big girl panties and be patient, and just keep rethreading and plugging along.  

This is one reason I loooooove Misty Fuse.  But heck, I have quilted through 5 layers of steam a Seam II and the lite version also.  It doesn't have to be so hard...  

One of the ladies from Beaumont , Anne, is the inventor of these tools: strip stick  Check it out, they are so simple and yet so genius.  You have to try these!   

slow start to the new year

I am going slow this month.  too many projects that are overwhelming me!  Slowly working on this DWR quilt.

I thought I would do something like this...  but it just wasn't right.

so I tried another design, and fell back on my old standby - feathers and curved cross-hatching.  I just love that look.  So I ripped the first design and now I'm slowly working on this 100+ inch beauty.  

It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.  ~Edmund Hillary

I better get to conquering myself, Karen

how to fix free motion blahs

I am doing some intense quilting on a quilt with busy fabrics... first of all, what a waste of time!  Why don't I just do something simple since nothing shows up on this fabric anyway.  But it's for a friend, and she wanted something wowie on her top.  She did give me carte blanche with this (you're going to wonder about that soon!)

so here is part of the quilt.  All that work and it's just blah....  So what to do?  

What if I put in a tight tight scribble fill around  those star points instead of a looser fill.  It really popped that star after I filled it in.  of course, it took a while...

And whoops, I did a ton of "Nemeshing" around this flower.  Can't see it?  neither can I!  I could see it fine while I was quilting it and looking closely.  Oh will I never learn??  So what to do?

How about a little tsukineko paint dabbed onto the feathers with a fantastik?  I think it worked perfectly.  But you see why I needed to have carte blanche - to do whatever I wanted.  Can you believe I painted on a friend's quilt?  Me neither?  It had to be done though :)

In my defense, this was a quilt top that she had for many years and never got around to quilting it herself.  She said to "work my magic" on it.  Hope she doesn't regret that!

I have a finish too!  

This is a dupioni silk quilt top that my friend had embroidered.  It too, sat around in a closet for years.  I am going to surprise her with this finished quilt at our Christmas party.  (It may not be a surprise if she sees this...)  

FYI, I quilted in the red with a pink metallic thread.  It quilted beautifully one day, but the next day it tangled and broke and snarled, arggg!  I changed needles, even tried a different sewing machine, fiddled around forever to no avail.  Then I looked out the window and realized that the weather had changed dramatically.  A front came in and I had the heater on, when the day before we actually had the AC on.  So I got out my Sewer's Aid silicone lubricant and smeared it on the thread spool.  Wow, I finished the quilting without anymore trouble.  I bet I will remember that trick next time, I hope you will too!  Later, Karen

 "Keep your sense of humor, my friend; if you don't have a sense of humor it just isn't funny anymore." - Wavy Gravy

Thanksgiving blessings

Happy Thanksgiving!  I am taking a break.... turkey is in the oven and the other dishes are ready to go in when the turkey is done.  Pies are all waiting to be eaten, we have as many pies as we do people at this feast!!  Yum...  

I wanted to share my small town fame.  14 of my quilts are hanging in the hallways at the San Marcos, TX Chamber of Commerce for a few weeks.  Here is the newspaper article:

So if you're in the lovely town of San Marcos this month (maybe hitting the outlet malls), maybe you will get a chance to come see these.  

Have a lovely day, Karen

Christina finished!

This quilt is from a photo that has been in my family for years - since 1917 actually.  This is my grandmother Christina Joly Comiskey when she was 16.  I finished it (well mostly, there's a little more quilting to do) last night.  It debuted at my guild meeting this morning and was well-received.  Thanks ladies...

I am going to call it "Christina".  It is very closely quilted around the face, body and even the wood on the furniture.  I used gray organza to make the mirror shimmer.  I cut out pieces of organza to fit in the mirror frames and stitched them down.  This piece also has a light brown tulle overlay on the whole piece (inside the frame).  

Looking at this photo, I can see a bit of her reflected hair that could use a little more quilting, sigh.  I quilted this on my little bernina 153, no regulator.  Wanna see my setup?

The machine is inset in a gidget table (very stable yet portable table) and surrounded by conference tables.  If I shut that closet door, I can quilt even bigger quilts without it falling off the table.  This little sewing machine is THE BOMB.  Mix and match threads and it just keeps on sewing with perfect stitches.  

I do have a few little tips.  I use a single hole stitch plate and a Little Genie Bobbin washer - no mess on the back or backlashing or thread vomit (Hollis Chatelain's term for the mess on the back).  

16 or so of  my quilts are going to be featured at the San Marcos Chamber of Commerce from Nov. 17, 2015 until January 20th, 2016.  Stop by and see them if you are in the area.  I will post photos when I go to hang them on Monday.  

Next project?  nancy's huge metro wedding ring....  Gotta get on this one, may take a while.  

Isn't it beautiful?  96 x 104", aye yi yi!  

Happy quilting ya'll, Karen

another portrait started

I have this family photo of my grandmother when she was a young girl. Very blurry, but I am hoping it can be translated into fabric.   

Look how long her hair was!  It was always shoulder length when I knew her.  Her name was Christina Joly Comiskey and she had 10 children which she raised alone after her husband died of a heart attack while there were still 7 children at home.  I loved her dearly and am feeling her peaceful presence while I work on this piece.

I started with her face, hair and arm...  ooh getting excited...

Put the whole thing on a muslin base...

This is how far I got today.  Going to work on her image in the mirror tomorrow, can't wait!

I finished this project this weekend in between portrait playtimes.  I painted this in April at Hollis Chatelain's class at Asilomar.  I played with some zentangle designs for the quilting and tried out some new fillers.  Glad to have this done - no clue what to do with it though :)

Going to Houston on Thursday to the International Quilt Festival.  Maybe I'll see you there!  Karen

shams for double wedding ring quilt

I did finish something this week.  My cousin asked me to make her some shams to go with the quilt I made her last year.

I didn't do such a great job getting photos.  My cousin sent this one to me after the fact.  Guess it was such a relief to finish, I plain forgot to get pics.  

thank goodness I had a couple of blocks (bits and pieces of blocks, anyway) leftover.  I made two of these shams.  

You can almost see the quilting here, it's the same design used in her quilt.  It's from a stencil made just for DWRs.  

Another finish,  this strange little project is from a workshop that I took with Hollis Chatelain last spring at Asilomar, Empty Spools.  It started with a cute photo that my bro-in-law took at his local pool with his underwater camera.  He played with the original on photoshop a little, so this is what I had to work with. Isn't she cute?

So, in Hollis' class, we learned to make and use her paints, how to paint strokes, etc... and then how to quilt the finished project.  

Needless to say, my painting skills are pretty sad.  And the paints were kinda hard to come by.  It took a long time to prepare the dye paints, so when you ran out, you had to find someone who had some of that color left over.  I guess that's why her face is cantaloupe and her chest and arms are hot pink.  oh well, it was a learning project.   It's about 15  by 18 inches.  Hard to tell in this photo.  It's still kinda cute and I always wanted to do something with that picture.  It reminds me of my daughter, even though it's not her.  I could always find my daughter at the pool, because even when she was 4 and 5, she always had her goggles on!  (None of the other little girls that age wore goggles)

Those are bubbles on her chin and in her nostrils.  Might need a little paint or something to look a little more like a bubble.  I trapuntoed them and everything.... sigh 

on the last portrait quilt I made, the quilting was so dense that it made the quilt too stiff.  So on this one, I thread sketched it...  I put some of that wash-away applique paper under it and went to town with the quilting on her hair, face, flesh, and swimsuit... everywhere but the background water.   I even stitched the word Speedo :)

Then I basted the whole thing with blue tulle on top and a thin cotton batting. My plan was to quilt the water swirls all over her face and everywhere.  Ooh, bad idea though.  I ripped it off of her face and just quilted her features and then gave the water some ripples and bubbles.  She just needs a binding or facing and I can move on to another project. There are many to choose from.

Oh yes, update on the auction.  I did not win the bid on my wholecloth quilt, shoot!  But I got another lovely quilt in the auction.  Well, I was talking to the gal that bought "my" quilt, and she really wanted the quilt that I got.  She has a shop and it would make a great sample for her pattern and fabric line.  I suggested we make a deal as we got the quilts for the same price, isn't life weird.  maybe she will let me take the wholecloth to my trunk shows and workshops, and I will let her hang the one I got in her shop for a while.  It was a good auction with lots of pretty quilts and supplies.    I got this quilt at the boutique for $25... (after I bargained at the end of the show)

I loooove this... hand appliqued and hand quilted and loved on so much.  There are a couple of tears and some brown stains.  But who cares when it looks like this on my stand, right?

A little motherly bragging now.. My son just completed his hike of the Pacific Crest Trail, from the border of Mexico all the way to Canada.  He left last April and has been keeping this amazing blog along the way (using only his phone, no less).  Take a peek at the mountains in Washington... wowzers...  Ken Lambdin's Walkabout

He likes that quote thing too... but I was first:)

The purpose of art is washing the dust of daily life off our souls.

Pablo Picasso

Happy quilting, Karen