Guilds... your source for quilty friends.

After my sis dropped by for a small holiday in March I realized that there was a lack of quilty friends in my life that would serve as motivation to get things done. With that in mind I head to the web to find a guild in my area.

There were two guilds I would think about joining in my area. One close - One far. since I missed the meeting for the Bear Creek Guild (Keller, Tx - 15 minutes from my house) in March I decided to look at the Dallas Guild (45 minutes away).

The Dallas Quilt Guild puts on one of biggest Quilt shows in the DFW area which Brenda and I had a chance to go to it during her visit (check out the pics here: Quilt Celebration 09). When I visited the Guild website I noticed that they were having Sharyn Craig as a speaker for the month of April. They also had TWO workshops!

I must note that Sharyn Craig is a scrappy queen in my book. She has several books on setting blocks into extraordinary quilts, so you can take your orphaned blocks and incorporate them into cohesive quilts that wow you. What made this a temptation that I just could not pass up was the fact that Craig retired from teaching last year. She was coming to Dallas because she had to cancel a previous commitment with them last year and was making up the classes. In other words, this would be the last chance I would have if I wanted to take a class with her. Her book Setting Solutions is a staple in my work room because it serves as inspiration as well reminding me to think outside the box.

I immediately emailed the coordinator of programs for the guild and got a spot in both classes. I then went ahead and dropped by for the trunk show Craig was giving at the regular meeting. Needless to say I was not disappointed and was all psyched out for my workshops the next couple of days.



The first workshop was on design. It was about taking your orphaned blocks and making them more. Craig has two books on the subject Setting Solutions - which is out of print but can still be found in eBook format from the publisher, and Great Sets (she joked about this one since it 'sounds' like a whole different type of book when said quickly). I love this type of class because it's not about walking out with one project but about walking out with the knowledge to make many different projects. Everyone brought a few UFOs and they were put on the wall so we could decide what to do with the blocks. It was a great workshop on ideas and how to 'think' outside the box.


The second workshop was more traditional and all about the Northwind block. Craig showed us the potential this particular block had and showed us a quick way to get it done. It was the first time I ever used a template to cut a regular triangle and was impressed at how easy it was. I'm usually about cutting in bulk with my rotary cutter and ruler but the way this block is made you really can use an acrylic template to get the more precise cut.


Note: Every block in this quilt is the same block but the triangles are layed out differently.

So my experience with this guild has been great. When you find a guild in your area my recommendation is not just to go to a meeting but sign up for a workshop they are sponsoring or join a committee or volunteer for something. Guilds can be an impersonal thing but these smaller activities give you a chance to meeting guild members on a one on one basis and you can develop a friendship with someone that just might inspire you.

You can find more pics of my classes here: Setting Sets and here Northwind

More Finished Projects...

Another quilt I 'finished' was one that I owed my sister Brenda. When I went to visit her in October she mentioned how much she would like to make a quilt that she saw in the Quilt Sampler magazine (spring/summer 2007). What was holding her back was that she was not much into piecing and the background of the quilt was pieced. This is the finished piece as it appeared in the magazine:


So I volunteered to make the background and send it to her to complete the applique portion. Among all the fabric I walked away with at the time (See Here - Runaway Stash) were a few charm packs to use for this project. When Brenda dropped by for a visit at the begining of March I saw the opportunity to get this project off the ground.



Before she left I had the large background completed but I still needed to work on the flying geese and the small squares on the top and bottom of the background.

Well this one did not sit around very long. I did work on getting this one out the door sooner than later. I knew that when I finished it the quilt would still be half done but I don't like letting people down and especially my sister who never let's me down. I put this project on the top of my list of things to finish and last weekend I completed it!


Now it's off to Brenda's house for the finishing applique.

If you liked this pattern and don't want to buy the back issue from American Patchwork and Quilting, you can find it at The Cotton Shop which is the shop that was featured in the magazine and who designed the quilt.

Finished projects...

There are a few things that I did finish recently (yeah me!!) so I need to chat you up about that.

My daughter (Dre) fell in love with a pattern by Thimble Blossoms and while she was visiting her aunt Brenda in NH convinced her to supply her with the pattern and a kit from her shop (Pumpkin Patch Primitives) to make the quilt. The original pattern is called Wallflower and can be found at http://www.thimbleblossoms.com/ under patterns.
Dre changed it a bit to make it her own.




I helped cut the larger (thicker) pieces and helped by teaching Dre how to Machine Applique using a zig-zag stich. she took it from there and built the quilt on her own. When quilting time rolled around she did all the stitch in the ditch and I took over with the free motion.


Unfortunately time ran out and Dre needed to head back to school so it was up to me to finish the quilting and bind the quilt.

She finially received the quilt in her Valentine's day care package.

The A is for Andrea.

The back of the quilt is pieced with the same fabrics that can be found in the front.

It was an excellent weekend project and yielded a beautiful lap quilt (that she appears to use!)

Work in Progress...

It's been a while but I'm still alive and kicking. I was telling my sister Brenda that I could either update the blog or quilt. Hmmm... tough choice. NOT!

Sorry guys but if I'm on a roll I can't just put on the breaks to update, thus the long time between posts. But I have tons to tell you all!

First an update on Alba's quilt. The quilt previously known as Alba's quilt will now be known as Pinwheels and Posies. That is because Brenda found one of my unfinished quilts among her stash and enlisted JoAnna to finish the quilting. This lead to Alba recieving a quilt much sooner than the one I had started for her.

I made the top when I worked with Bethany Reynolds on her second Stack n Whack book (I was one of her testers) but never got around to quilt it. JoAnna took care of that with great talent and efficiency. Brenda then wrapped things up by binding the quilt during her trip over the holidays.

The label read: Hands united to bring lots of love and faith to Alba Delgado's heart. Completed November 2008 by Sandy Mercado in Texas, Brenda Mercado in NH and Johanna Martinez in NH. (yeah I spelt JoAnna's name wrong!)

Anyway, here is a pic of the quilt

and a close up of some of the quilting!



I am still working on my Pinwheel and Posies quilt but with no specific recipient it has been pushed to the end of the current project list.



Here I was completing the pinwheels. I have since finished all the pinwheels and I'm framing them in the square within the square layout. Then I will be moving on to make the posie block.

I have made a resolution to finish the projects I recently started before I start on a new one. I have 3 projects I want to start (three kits!) but I still have a rag quilt to complete and the pinwheel quilt.

A Free Quilt by Camille Roskelley

My daughter just brought to my attention that Camille Roskelley creator of Thimble Blossoms designs is giving away a quilt. She was originally brought to my attention by Brenda (my sister) a while ago when she had a similar giveaway.

My daughter just fell in love with her quilts and made me give her patterns a second look. The designs are simply and the quilt pieces draw your eye to them.

Her blog is filled with great photos of her, her family and her work. My sister Brenda says she reminds her of my daughter, Nyshma (she goes by Andrea or Dre for Short). I don't see the similarities but when I was reading her blog the other day Camille was talking about how her mother tells her she scrunches her face in her pictures and I almost fell off my chair laughing because I tell Dre the same thing all the time!! LOL!

If you haven't explored Camille's designs, head on over to her site at Simplify and while you're there sign up for the giveaway.

Runaway Stash

I recently went back to New England on a business trip and had a chance to visit with my sister, Brenda. I love New England this time a year and I had not seen my sis for close to two years since she didn't visit us last Thanksgiving.

I hadn't been to her house since the day I left New Hampshire for warmer climates in Tx. She was just starting her Quilt shop business and had purchased her first inventory. BTW: My sister is owner of Pumpkin Patch Primitives Quilt Shop - If you haven't had a chance to discover her great shop you are missing out!!!

So when I got to her house and discovered the treasure trove of fabrics and patterns it was a little freaky. I don't know where I thought she would hide the goodies she has on her site but all of a sudden they were everywhere. Needless to say I wanted to take it all home with me (except for that funky line of patterns with the bunnies).

The thing is that this is her business and guilt was riding hard when she was generous enough to offer me some stash enhancers and started cutting. It was even worse when she just wouldn't stop cutting. Well, guilt go to hell because I still took home all she wanted to give and then some!

I arrived with a duffel full of clothes for her and left with a duffel full of beautiful flannels, charm squares galore and a few jelly rolls too!

Don't you just love it!! She has the best packaging and the work she puts in making every kit is incredible. I don't know where she gets the energy and the time!

Well, I couldn't just walk away from her house with all these goodies and not offer something in return so I promised her that I would construct the pieced background to a quilt she wanted to make. It is heavy on the appliqué but the background is pieced so she was not going there. Since she loves appliqué and I love piecing - it all evens out in the end. So some of the stash will go into making the background in question.

Time vs Accuracy

Making Alba's Quilt has made me wonder about some of the techniques we piecer's use to speed up our work.
The quilt uses many half square triangles to make the pinwheel blocks but also for the posies. With today's innovative thinkers we have choices as to how to approach the construction of these blocks. But in each one you still have to sacrifice something.

Time: I don't know about you all but the statement time is money is always accurate in our house. I have a short attention span and honestly, if it's going to take me too long to make, it sits in a UFO pile.

Don't get me wrong, I will do very time consuming things - like edit a video to make sure the subtitles on it pop up at just the right time, or tweak with a digital image until I can see no flaws in it, or change the color on an html script over and over again - but I hate doing something that is mindless over and over again.

But some quilter discovered that you can skip rotary cutting a square into triangles so you avoid working with bias edges (now that is a nightmare on itself). All you need to do is draw a line where you would have cut (across the square diagonally) and sew the light and dark square together by sewing a quarter of an inch away from the line you drew. You do this first on one side of the line and then you go back and sew again on the other side of the line. When you are finished you cut the square on the line drawn to yield two squares constructed of half square triangles.

Are you confused yet?

The problem with this method is that it is soooo time consuming drawing those dang lines on each of the 212 square you might have. And if you have small squares it's even worse. So you think, forget this crap, I'm just cutting the dang things and winging it, choosing to sacrifice something precious to most quilters...

Accuracy: When you cut the squares and 'wing it' you still need to align each triangle with it's mate and pull the small triangles (if you think the square were small - think of the size they have after you have cut them in half) across the feed dogs of your machine and then pressing them open. Results: You end up with squares that have a seam more curvy than Marilyn Monroe.

I know, I tend to over think things but when I keep procrastinating working on the quilt I get to a point that I ask myself why? Just like the dress that never made it into my sisters closet because I HATE to hem.

So the question is do I sacrifice the Time or the Accuracy?

If you know how anal I am you don't have to even think about my response. I would rather spend 10 hours of numbing, mindless work than have a seam out of place.




These are my blocks all cut and ready to go with the damn line across each those ivory squares. This is just the fabric for the pinwheel blocks.






These are the pieces for all the posies that will be on the quilt and if you can't distinguish the ivory fabric in the little ziplock bag, I'll tell you there are over 200 - 2" squares, all with a fucking line through them.


~~~ Off to sew some squares!