Exciting News!

I recently sent a submission for the Canadian Quilters Association National Juried Show.  I have been waiting to find out if my quilt had been accepted.  It was the first time I had entered a quilt into a national show and one that is juried.  Imagine my excitement when I found this in my mailbox:

"I am pleased to inform you that your entry has been accepted in the CQA/ACC National Juried Show 2013"

Let's just say, I spent 20 minutes dancing around the house!  Now I just have to calm down enough to fill in the required additional documents and figure out how to package the quilt so that it arrives safely for display.

On another note, I finished up a quilt that consists of blocks made by some friends.  Here is a picture.

I've called it Scraps of Value.  Each of us were given instructions to select dark and light scraps; we could choose any colour and had to precut our scraps to predetermined sizes.  We also didn't know what colours the others had chosen, nor were we given the pattern for the block until we got together.

After setting all of our pieces out to share, we discovered that the majority of the colours chosen were within the "cool" spectrum.  We were given block piecing instructions and each of us made a "dark" and "light" block.  Here is a closer picture of what I mean.

 

Look closely... the block with the dark star has a dark border; the light star, a light border.  Initially we thought that the blocks wouldn't work well together, but when put up on the design wall all of us noted it was the value that created the pattern.  Of course it helped and was an added bonus that we had picked colours from the cool side of the colour wheel, but I think it would have worked even with multi colours.  It just would have projected a more vibrant mood rather than the calm one these blocks did.  Its the value that did the work!  Who would have "thunk" it.

 

Till the next time... pieceful sewing!

A Blue reveal

It's reveal day over at the Tangled Textiles blog.  You can see what others are revealing today relating to the "blue" theme.    Here is mine. 

TA DA!!! A Blue Delft Tragedy! I learned some valuable lessons with this one.

I found this fabric and thought it was perfect. With a bit of fussy cutting it could work for the images on the mask.

It was tricky cutting all those tiny shapes, but here is a close up of some of the pieces that I fussy cut.

 

I had to figure out how to get the shadow on the mask and at the same time have the blue flowers on the mask show up.   I tried several different fabrics but thought I would be able to get the best result by using organza for the shadow.  I could fuse the organza, but what to use.  I experimented with Wonder Under and Misty Fuse. 

 If you look closely, you can see that the Misty Fuse piece shows hairline webbing and I didn't want to have that showing on the organza.  But how do you cut up the organza so that it doesn't fray....

with a wood burning tool. It works beautifully. But I learned that it was easier to burn it if the fusible web paper was left attached to the piece.  So now I had all the pieces for the mask, but what about the background. A sense of tiles for the background would be good. The grid created with blue satin ribbon, looked a little flat.  Some FMQ helped.  Here's a close up.

It was time to apply the mask to the background.  I fused the mask to the background and discovered that I not only had "shadow" on the mask, but some shadowing from behind too.  Look closely....

See it there on the forehead?  Oh well...I'll know better next time. 

Hey! I'm featured!

Welcome to those that have stopped by from The Needle and Thread Network.  I am thrilled to be featured on the site's Feature Fridays section.  Another good opportunity to share a little more about what I've done and where I would like to go. 

So here is a little more of what I have been doing since the year 2013 started.

I made some blocks for my local guild's community quilt.  This year the coordinator asked for predominately "dull" fabrics.  She clarified saying that she wanted no bright jewel tones.  So I chose these scraps that look like reproductions.  Here are two of the blocks that I made.  What do you think?

Just before 2012 ended, I had to come up with a quick gift for a colleague at work.  I remembered that I had a little gadget that I wanted to try.

 

I had some additional Christmas scrap fabric that I could use.  So I came up with this little number.

 

I made five of these but only finished four in time to give as gifts.  I love the way these pinwheels tesselate.

Well that's a bit of what I have been up to.  Till the next time, happy creating!!!