Month: April 2011

Recently I was going through the closet by the front door, to find out where my projector was that I take with me when I do lectures. We couldn’t find the dang thing anywhere.

But this is not a coat closet, or a closet where we keep the vacuum or the Swiffer — it’s the closet where I keep my quilting stuff, silly. I hang quilt tops, pieces of quilt tops, lengths of yardage on hangers, along with bags with recent purchases that I want to hide. Usually they’re gifts for snoopy family members and they never think to look in there. Why would they — nothing in there belongs to them.  Ok, so after shopping for Kirsten’s birthday  — a really cool book of fashion trends from the turn of the century — I found the empty bag with tissue paper in it.

Pulled it out off the hanger, and as I was preparing to stuff it into the recycle bin, I spied something black in the bottom. Hmmm, what could this be?

This is what I found:

three fat quarters, all the same fabric.

none of them had the selvage labeling on them, so I have no idea what collection they’re from or who the manufacturer is.

Even more curious is WHY I bought them! and WHERE did I buy them? I have no recollection of these fabrics, although I remember that I was shopping in Pacific Grove two years ago, which is when I bought the book for Kirsten. (I even forgot to give it to her for THAT birthday, so she got it last year)

ok, so this is a cute little print, looks like fireworks, good colors for a focus fabric color palette…

So what to do with this fabric…?  hmmm….

I really like playing with a selection of fat quarters, like the quilts in the previous post (podcast #187), so I went to my studio and looked in my fat quarter shelves:

(My fat quarter shelves are recycled CD racks that we no longer use in our house. They’re from Mexico and we got them back before Y2k. If you fold your fabric just right, they are the size of a CD and fit perfectly on those shelves. I like re-purposing home items that we no longer care to use in the house. My studio is filled with items like this. They work really well)

And this is how I started:

I like this red with black… but I think I like the next one  better:

Yeah, I do like the second one better.

Then, I chose the rest:

Tone on tone white, black and white print, a splash of yellow for an eye-catcher, orange, red, green and blue. Those are all of the colors in the fireworks fabric, which I am going to use as the background fabric in all of the blocks so the colors can really come forward.

And here they are in value order:

So now I think I’ll have some fun playing with these fabrics. I busted my stash — no new fabric will be used. Even the fireworks fabric isn’t new — it’s two years old, for peet’s sake!

I’ll show you the blocks after I get all the fabrics cut and I start designing the blocks.

On another note, I want to congratulate Lyric Montgomery Kinard of Cary, NC for being selected as Teacher of the Year!!

To celebrate, I’m going to review her book in tomorrow’s podcast and then give it away to a lucky winner.

This is going to kick off a series of podcasts and blogs that have a give-away-a-day. I have a treasure box filled with the coolest give-away items and it’s about time to give them away, to YOU! So, starting tomorrow, there will be a give-away each day and you need to leave a comment before midnight each day because the lucky winners will be announced in the next day’s post.

Stay tuned!!

©2011  Annie Smith   All Rights Reserved

 

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Running time: 00:41:30 Size: 40 MB

Yep, it really happened. No pictures, no saved emails, no email addresses — so that means I lost your’s. If you sent me a picture in an email in the past, please resend it to me so I have it.

My Boy Wonder, off to see the world:

and here he is in Cuernavaca, Mexico with his Mission President and Sister Spannaus:

He’s doing well, battling spiders and dogs — and is as happy as a clam. No quilts… it’s too hot there!

Exploring Fabric Choices Quilt series. All of the blocks in these quilts is the same — only one block design used. Only the layouts are different.

Red and Black Quilt

This one will be familiar to you. This is the first one that I did, where I learned how to use fork pins for perfectly butted seams and created batting boards. I love the drama of the red and black.

#2 – Metro Blue Summer

Created from Marcus Brothers’ Metro Blue fabric line and made the summer that I visited them in NYC. I love turquoise and chocolate!

#3 — Low Tide

Made with Marcus Brothers Surf and Sand collection. Low contrast, no real true dark fabric is used here. Perfect for a nap at a beach cottage.

#4 – The Quilt Show quilt

Here are the blocks that I used for Episode 209 of The Quilt Show. I had these blocks for the last three years and finally decided to make the quilt top. This is a very special quilt for me — a memento of a dream fulfilled. I made 6″ versions of the block for Alex And Ricky’s keepsake quilts that each of their guests make for them.

#5 — Picnic with Sue

I used Susan Branch’s Martha’s Vineyard fabric collection for this one. I got the fabric when I interviewed her. I love the bright colors and Sue’s style. I hand appliqued the Grandmother’s Flower Garden hexagon flowers.

#6 — Pink and Chocolate

Civil War reproduction fabrics. Loads of fun. Instead of using 10 fat quarters to make a 9-block quilt, I decided to make a bed-sized version and used 20 fabrics to make the 20-block quilt. It works! Kirsten has decided that she needs this one ; )

#7 — Black and Bright

It never fails when I teach this class that I end up finding another fat quarter collection to make a new version of the quilt. I love using solid black as a canvas and then allowing my quilter to create beautiful quilting detail.

#8 — Williamsburg quilt

I bought these fabulous Revolutionary War reproduction fabrics when I visited the Champlain Valley Quilt Guild just before Cambria was born and used them for the online class instruction. I love this collection of fabrics!

There are still more quilts in the series to come. I have two that are waiting to be sewn into a quilt top and one that will be cut up to sewn into blocks this week. There is just “something” about this block, this quilt, that I love to work on. Don’t know why — except maybe that it has something to do with the changing nature of ONE block and where you put the light- medium- and- dark that changes these quilts so dramatically.

And speaking of Cambria, here she is now — 16 months old and as precious as ever: