Working Out The Fabric Details

Started working on my Dahlia quilt some more. I traced around the templates for each fabric and hand pieced them together.

I don't know about you, but hand piecing with batik fabric is murder. I despise it. Then I remembered I have Thread Heaven. That REALLY helped and I was able to get the rest of the row done.

I started off with white thread and realized that it was visible. I switched to a brown thread and it disappeared . Especially as my hand piecing is awful. It started getting better as I got toward the last piece.

This was a test section. I think the darkest pink needs to be last. Or the light pink needs to be in the middle. What do you think?

I got brave and started a blu-ray blog. It's just my ramblings on movies and nothing terribly technical. I'll leave that to experts. It's called A Girl's Point Of Blu

Fabric Choices For The Dahlia Quilt

I started picking out fabric for my dahlia quilt. It's been SO much harder than I thought it would be. I know what I want..it's just finding the fabric. I went through my stash and went "blah". I went to the store and found two magenta colors that I fell in love with. That changed the entire color scheme.

I got out my handy dandy "3-in-1 Color Tool" and looked up Magenta. Hmmm. Complimentary is green. I pull open my drawer. I don't have "Green" I have spring green. I have yellow green. I have blue green. Remember.. I have all my fabric labeled with their color. Nope. Nothing. How can you have a whole drawer full of greens and not have a true "green"?? Sigh.

Plan B. Try some of the "other" options. Analogous. Not enough fabric or it just looks "off". Split Complimentary. Dang. Need that green. It's not that the greens I had didn't work..they just needed something else inbetween.

Yeah. I know. I'm anal. I'm left with triadic. I pull out some turquoise.. wow. That doesn't look too bad. Yellow..don't have true yellow..but this sorta works. Okay. I got a plan now.

After two trips to the fabric store I have this plan:

From Quilted with Love

It needs some more tweaking. I need to take out a green..just couldn't decide which one and add something else to the back. You can see the actual size of the Dahlia in the background. I did make templates. The question is... How accurate are they?

Depression has been really bad. This is the most I've done in two days and I'm not sure I'll get any farther for now.

However; I have been watching movies. When depressed, pop a blu-ray movie in and stare away. What have I watched:

1. Leon. Here in the USA it's called "The Professional". Hubby has the French blu-ray so he could have the international version.

2. The Last Starfighter. Cheesy..but it does look pretty good in High Def

3. Big. Watched the extended edition.

4. Les Visiteurs. French comedy with English subtitles about a knight that comes to 1993 after a wizard sends him there by accident.

5. Hotel For Dogs. Actually pretty good

6. Fanboys. Liked this one.

7. All Pirates of the Caribbean movies

Only 700+ movies to go before I get through the entire collection...

Giant Dahlia Block

I got to puppy sit Daisy/Libby (the English Pointer mix..something) today for an hour or so. My friend said she was chasing her kittens and getting in the way and I offered to take her and her daughter. LOL LOL Talk about fun. Finally wiped her out and she crashed on my couch for 20 minutes or so. My depression just lifted and I've been feeling tons better since then.

I got playing with EQ6 and got my "EQ6 Pieced Drawing" book by Patti R. Anderson and drew out a Giant Dahlia quilt. Fabulous, fabulous book. All of the EQ books are great. Get them. Patti is also one of the best teachers. Take a class from her.

This is one of my final versions. I LOVE indigo blue but the colors are really hard to find. I think this is way too strong in the indigo department but my EQ6 palette isn't the greatest. I don't have indigo in my stash so I'll have to play with what I have. At least I have the block drawn out and can print out templates.

I also think it needs more petals. The design was drawn for a 12x12 inch block. I'd have to play with the circle size and partitions. I wanted something small so I could use my scraps. I'll use a bigger size block. Maybe a 15x15. The templates for this have to be a bear to deal with. I don't have any template plastic and I'm not sure paper ones would hold up. Maybe I should do a cheater one..LOL. Gotta love fusible webbing and maybe add black bias tape over the seams.

It's SO nice to be back in action for quilting. I've been dragging for months. Maybe I'm coming out of my cave. Even if it's just for a short break.

A Few Of My Favorite Quilts

It's actually really hard to pick favorite quilts but I thought I'd show some of my favorite ones that I have made.

This on has so many triangles in it I thought I'd never get it done. I tried to make the border but it didn't fit. It was just easier to bind it. The only thing I hate is how I quilted it.

From Quilted with Love

This one is paper pieced, my first time doing it. I hate paper piecing and avoid it when I can. The pieced border is my own design as the one given was too much of a pain. My aunt and uncle own this quilt.

From Quilted with Love

This is the cheater cathederal windows quilt that I made for my daughter. Everyone was so kind to send tons of blue fabric for it. I did a blanket stitch around each piece. Wow..that was a lot of work.

From Quilted with Love

This is an original design from EQ6. It's machine appliqued and I never want to see circles again.

From Quilted with Love

This is my Lone Star quilt. The last thing I expected were all the ribbons. My aunt and uncle now have the quilt.

From Quilted with Love

Another original design for a bargello quilt. I did this the hard way. I guess the easy way is to make a tube and rotary cut different widths. I did each one by hand as I worked through the quilt.

From Quilted with Love

My "Touching Stars" quilt turned out fabulous. I LOVE this quilt.

From Blogger Pictures

Puppy Proofing Your Sewing Area

With Emma, I haven't had a chance to do any quilting. She's exhausting. She's MORE than exhausting. She loves fabric if she can find it though. She'll run down the hallway as fast as she can with a fat quarter daring you to catch her. Then it's a tug of war game of "Drop it" until she does. All fabric has been located (I hope) and put away. She is learning "Drop it".

I've had to put up the foot pedal and the machine cords so she doesn't eat them.

I've had to puppy proof the entire sewing area. Pins, needles, threads, anything hanging over the table, pens, pencils, stencils, etc. It's probably the cleanest it's ever been after getting her.

My house is the cleanest it's ever been and she STILL manages to find something she shouldn't have. ARGHH!

For those of you who have pets, how do you keep your sewing area pet safe? Potential hazards that I haven't thought of?

Assuming you can't just shut the door.

Elly Sienkiwqicz's Books

While in a quilt store a few weeks ago I picked up Elly Sienkiewicz's book, "The Best of Baltimore Beauties, 95 patterns for Album Blocks and Borders".

Elly does exquisite hand applique work and this is my first book by her. It's not a "how to" book but has the designs from her books.

She has black and white photos of the designs and 1/4 of the design unless it's not symetrical. I don't care about not having the fabric colors, just having the designs themselves are amazing. Getting it at 40% off is even better.

Even if you don't do hand applique and see her book in a store, check one out, you'll be amazed. If I ever get around to doing a quilt by her, I'll do it with machine applique.

Getting Up And Running

Sigh. I think I got it fixed. I feel awful. Most of my friends deleted it knowing something was "off" but a couple didn't. I spent the afternoon making phone calls, doing scans and updating software.

I have a couple of things I'd like to do tomorrow:

• Make a You Tube video on doing Y seams (inset seams)
• Put away my Janome 350e..need big strong hubby for that
• Stitch out the last panel for my Christmas wallhanging

If I manage to get at least one of those done, I'll be proud of myself.

Oh..I need to call the doctor and see if he'll call in a weeks worth of sleeping pills. I haven't slept in 3-4 days. I need to get back on human night hours, not on whenever I can fall asleep hours. I'll end up having seizures or go manic. If I'm not heading to a stage of mania already.

Off to attempt to sleep..