Now To A REALLY Nice Birthday Gift

In one of my friendship groups(The Wanabe Quilters), whenever a member has a birthday with an "0" at the end, the group presents her with a quilt. This time, TODAY, is the birthday celebration for friend Karon. We titled this really big table runner "There Must Be 60 Ways To Leave Your 50's !"... and each member filled a flower pot with 5 needle turn applique flowers using their own fabric choices(5 x 12 pots) = 60 flowers. It was organized by the last "0" birthday girl Carol Brodie and quilted by pro-quilter Phyllis Reddish. This was great fun! This thing is so big ("let's just call it a quilted table cloth"), I couldn't get far enough away to get the triangular pointed ends of the runner in the picture.

I'm posting this as I head out to "the party"... so as you read this.... "Karon will hopefully be a happy birthday girl."

Reducing Fear

YEP! It's my goal. I am always trying to think of ways to help newer art quilters continue their journey. Since the fear of quilting a painted piece often seems a big roadblock to finishing, on this piece for Houston, I have photographed how I tackled Santa. I purposely simplified the quilting on Santa so as not to scare anybody. If someone wants to give it a go on their own... they will have a guide or have a guide to possibly hand off if they hire quilting done. Then ofcourse, there's always the option of ignoring my approach and do their own. I REALLY like that idea too!

Click once or twice for closeup view.

Some Are Seldom Satisfied

That would be me, I'm afraid. I periodically tweak my classroom drawings. This week, I'm working on putting together kits to pre ship for my Houston International "Santa's Secret" Class early next month. I do almost all my drawings at 8 1/2 x 11 so I can save them in my master drawing notebook in a sleeve protector. This afternoon, I'll take my 8 1/2 x 11 inch drawing to my printer to copy as an enlargement at 205%. That translates to 18" x 24"... a perfect class size.

Honoring Our Great Heroes

Well how often do we get to do this? My hubby and I recently had the true honor of celebrating the 91 years of life of our dear friend Paul McCay from Glenkirk Church in Glendora, Calif. Paul served and survived WWII in France, and promised God if he got out of there alive, he would serve Him for the rest of his life. He did and he has served the Lord ever since. Glenkirk's homeless shelter is beloved by those in need and is the brainchild of Paul. Shown here at Paul's 91st birthday party is my hubby Ray on the left and birthday boy Paul in the kilt. Pretty handsome guy,eh?

Paul was a nice looking young man in uniform as well.

Not many men can say they still fit in their military uniform, but Paul can. I've never before seen a purple heart. God Bless you Paul McCay for your service to your country and our God.

This Made Me Soooo Happy

When you have so much stuff, you can't find any one of the several same tool you need... It's time to honor Libby Lehman ( the worlds most efficient organizer of quilt stuff). For my working area of my studio, I bought stainless steel shelving from Lowe's, plus extra casters that fit, a new package of peel and stick label for my P-Touch labeler, and got to it. This is pretty self explanatory, so I won't bore you, but I will tell you every minute invested was worth it. I WON'T however tell you how many trimming scissors I found I own though I do now know where all are! ;-)
The benefit of the casters permit me to temporarily roll this shelving to another side of the room when I am painting on the adjacent table or conducting private instruction.

I'd like to think Libby would get a chuckle. She loves labelers.

Ben's New Face... actually Facing.

I often enjoy facing my art pieces as opposed to binding them. It admittedly takes longer but usually seems worth the extra effort. To see the entire process of facing... CLICK HERE to see the April 2009 step by step facing of my mountain lion titled WINTER HUNT!
The brief desciption however is that once the quilted quilt is completely blocked and trimmed/squared, I add a finished edge 2" border of sorts to YES a finished quilt top. Then side by side, I roll the border facing to the back, press, pin, allow to dry, then hand stitch the loose edge as one would do with binding.


I most often use the same fabric used on the backing to create the facing but on this piece, the black and white backing (animal print) might have been distracting from a side hanging view, thus a black facing was used on Ben

You are looking here at one side of facing, rolled to back, steamed, pinned, and drying.

Ben is now done but for sleeves and label. I've posted enough of Ben in full view. I'll add an eye close up here as I am pleased with the emotion in his eyes.

If It Makes It Better- Just Do It!

As I prepared to finish (face) the edges of Ben... My Gentle Giant... I had a small fight with myself. After trimming the quilted top of excess batting and quilt top unpainted fabric, it became clear to me that I had painted and quilted an outside edge area I really didn't need. Knowing that area I knew was not needed represented about 2 hours of quilting,so the fight was with myself for quilting it in the first place...NOT whether I would remove it. So... I measured/ measured... then cut off the unneeded area that would have created an excessive imbalance of Ben's face.

It's gone and it feels right!

So.. I'm busy facing Ben and will post shortly.