Mama Bird & Update

Some of you asked what kind of bird I would make for my Mother. She has always loved yellow, so this bird, with its spiffy red legs is totally appropriate.

My Mom also loves sunflowers so this bird would also be good, but I like the top one better.

She's back in the hospital again, and none too pleased about it.

I am really glad I decided to extend the flooring project to the dining room and the short hallway to the guest bathroom and the office. It looks so nice and will be so much easier to clean.

I have been putting as much of my house back to rights as I can, and that included rehanging my quilts. They look the same, but before I had the rods resting on push pins I stuck into the wall. They stayed just fine until someone or something (like a strong gust of wind) knocked them down, This, of course, was hardly ideal.

So I took a drive to the big orange hardware store and got some curtain rods and installed the brackets. Now the quilts hang just fine, and won't come tumbling down even if something pulls at them.

Incidentally, I'm letting my hair grow. This is me now. I'm not sure how long I'll let it grow, and I don't know how long I want it to get, but it's a work in progress. I am not sure I recognize myself in the mirror, but part of that is how much silver I have, I know I should probably change my profile picture, but I have to get used to this first!

Family Birds

 I have been making family birds for the bird quilt my Mom wants. This is my mom's boyfriend bird. He worked as an electrical engineer, and the brown fabric reminded me of circuit boards.

This is one of my brothers - the cabinetmaker. He's pretty chill, so the color is cool.

This is the rock climbing brother. The round colored dots reminded me of rocks.

My sister has never met a multicolored fabric she doesn't like, so her bird is made from multicolored fabrics.

My Mom spend a couple of days in the hospital this past weekend, so we are all concerned about her. They changed her medications, and she tires easily. She recently celebrated her 92nd birthday. I am under no illusions. I know I don't have a lot of time left with her, but she says she isn't ready to depart this earth just yet. I try to make every minute count.

All this has been happening in between the construction going on in my kitchen and dining room. It's going well and I am very happy. I'll be happier, of course, when it is finished and I can put my house back together.

If you want to make birds, they are an awful lot of fun. You can get my tutorial here at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download and you can get started right away.

Kangamangus, Finished!

 

This is a close up of the Kangamangus quilt. You can see some of the warm brown fabrics, the creams and the spectacular quilting. I've had this for a few weeks, waiting for me to add the binding and finish it up.

I finally got to it, and actually took it out for beauty shots the next day. Such is summer in NH. 

Sometimes you arrange it, back up, and you just know that you've got the "definitive" shot. That's what happened this time. I looked at this and I thought, Yup. That's the one. Funny that.

I didn't stop though, because I have learned that sometimes what I THINK I see is not what shows up in the camera, and there's nothing more irritating than getting home and looking at the pictures on my computer and thinking they suck and knowing I'll have to go out again. At at rate, this is pretty good too.

Long time readers know I dislike brown, and I hate, loathe and despise beige, so this quilt is rather a departure for me, but I really like it. I'm keeping this one.

Yeah, I know. Live and learn.

This is a Scrap Slab Triangle quilt, and I have made a few of them. You can see them here. If you want to use up some scraps, you can get my tutorial here. I am continually surprised at how many variations of this quilt there are.

Carnelian, Binding

 

I added an orange binding to the Carnelian quilt.

Now I am hand sewing it down. 

Yeah I know, boring boring, boring.

Matchy Matchy

Bridget made a comment about students making birds that matched the clothes they were wearing.

Let me tell you a story...

WAY WAY WAY back when I was a freshman in college, I took a Printmaking class. It was at 8 AM three mornings a week. I remember our professor telling us one morning, "Class, please put your tools down and take a step back from your worktables." We did. "Now look down at what you are doing, and look at what you are wearing."

Every single student in the class was working with ink the color of the clothes we were wearing. In my case, it was red.

I never forgot it.

I've noticed it many times, and in fact, at that class at the Night Owl, I pointed it out to my students. They all laughed.

I remember years ago, when I worked in an art supply store, a local commercial artist would come into the store first thing in the morning with her two small sons. (This was before the advent of the personal computer.) The supplies she bought was not what got my attention. This lady and her two boys got my attention because they were always dressed in the same colors. If the Mom was wearing yellow, so were the boys. If it was blue, they were all in blue. Red and white? Didn't matter. I started to watch other mothers and kids to see if if happened there too, and it did, but only for very small children. I figured out that once a child was old enough to express a desire to dress themselves, the matchy matchy thing stopped happening.

I caught on to the "morning" part of it when the same commercial artist would shop in the middle of the day. The kids didn't match their mom. I surmised that they had gotten dirty and had had to change their clothes...

So my theory is that the color of something you reach for when you're getting dressed first thing in the morning stays in your head somehow, and when you reach for fabric shortly afterwards, your brain often goes for the same color. (Assuming, of course, that you were starting from scratch, and didn't have a particular color chosen already.)

Funny, isn't it?

 

Birds @ Night Owl

 

I taught Bird making to the crew at the Night Owl Quilting Studio recently. They had a great time.

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What always excites me is the bright smiles on their faces!

You too can make birds. You can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

Niece Bird

My niece is tiny. I mean, tiny. She is small boned, short and rail thin. She may be small, but she is fierce.

For a bird based on her, I gave her really long legs. She is very focused on the environment, so this bird is green.

If you would like to make some of your own birds, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

 

The Second Nightingale

 

The second Nightingale quilt is back from the longarm quilter and has had the binding added and is now complete. This one has a home and it will be going there soon.

It's bound with bright dots on a black background.

I know it's "black" but it's amazing how bright it really is! This is the easiest quilt to make - you just need a wide variety of brightly patterned fabrics on a black background. You can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop.

I'll be speaking and giving a workshop at the Connecticut Piecemakers Quilt Guild on September 8 and 9th this year in Trumbull CT. This particular meeting of the guild is open to visitors so if you are nearby, come on down!

My Mom Wants

 

My 91-year old Mom has asked me to make her a bird quilt. Who am I to say no? Her timing was perfect. I have just finished the Big Red flimsy. So I dug out my bird bits bin and found a lot of extra birds I had made and threw the up on the design wall. But then my brain kicked in. My students love making birds based on people they know. I would have to make birds based on family members for my Mom's quilt.

So here is the first one, it has a dinosaur on it, so CLEARLY it is to commemorate my granddaughter. And I gave this bird long legs because she is going to be TALL!

I have been thinking about how I would make birds for each of my siblings, my niece and nephew and of course, Mom's boyfriend.

Stay tuned!

PS, if you want to make birds, and lemme tell ya, you really do, you can get my tutorial here, at my Etsy shop. It's an instant download so you can get started right away, and it's a great way to use up scraps.

Big Red & More

 

I finished sewing the Big Red flimsy together. I knew I would add a red binding to it, so I added a white border. When I started this quilt I didn't expect to like it as much as I did. But now I really like it.

I picked up three quilts from Janet-Lee Santeusanio, my long arm quilter. This is the second Nightingale quilt.

This is the Needle in a Haystack quilt. The quilting on these is very nice, but you may need to click the photo to enlarge so you can really see it.

This is the orange Carnelian quilt. I like all three quilts, and I don't really have a favorite, but I like this a lot.

I've already made the bindings for all these quilts, so I have quite a lot of binding in my future. 

Which is fine, because I've got new flooring being installed in my kitchen and hallway, and I'm also having the carpet removed in the dining room and it will be replaced with a hard surface floor. I'll need to keep out of the way of the workmen, so I will be in the studio.

Stay tuned!

Assembling Big Red

 

I've done a tiny bit of rearranging, and then I started sewing the blocks together. I'll finish sewing this together in the next few days. 

I've got to pick up a couple of quilts from my long-arm quilter over the weekend and add the binding to them. 

I've also got some long planned work being done in my house next week and I have to clear out some areas so I have had to figure out where I am going to put the stuff I have to move.

It'll be a busy two weeks, and I may not post as regularly, but I'll do my best to keep up!

Big Red

 

When I was cutting blocks from the Lights bin, I was surprised to find how many red-on-white fabrics I had, or how many blocks I cut. It seemed obvious to make a RED quilt. So after I finished sewing up the Nonchalant flimsy (White Macnas) I went through all my bins and cut up red Macnas blocks. I cut up blocks that were mostly RED or Red with White.

Then I sorted the blocks by print. After that was done, I started pairing blocks, matching a white one (at the top) with a red one below. I started at the upper left of the white stacks, took one piece, then picked the red at the top left of those. I matched up the next white with the next red, and kept going that way until I had 112 pairs. I need 270 for a quilt the size of the Nonchalant quilt.

Then I sat down and sewed them up, then pressed them, and then put them up on the design wall in no particular order.

I stopped for lunch, then went back into the studio to match more pairs, sew them up and put them up on the design wall. I need to cut more blocks, but you can see where this is going.

Lynne's Liberated Letters Class

Here are the ladies from the Liberated Letters class on Saturday at Night Owl Quilt Studio. They had a grand time and they did great work, as you can see.
 

Nonchalant is a Flimsy

 

The Nonchalant Macnas Quilt is a flimsy. It is 56" x 72". I guess there were more creamy WOWs than I expected. The sun was hiding behind the clouds when I took this picture.

But the sun came out briefly so I could take this photo of the quilt in the sun!