Q&A: Ben Venom - my love for you is a stampede of horses.

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Q&A: Ben Venom - my love for you is a stampede of horses.

Pojagi Curtain

"I don't know whether I like it, but it is what I meant. "

Ralph Vaughan Williams 

Well, that may be a bit dramatic of a sentiment, but it is close to how I feel.  This project actually came out right in line with what I had envisioned, but now that it is done, well, maybe my vision was flawed.  I don't know, I have keep mulling this one over for a while.  It is not that I'm unhappy about how it turned out, but rather assessing the choices I made in designing it.  For the size of the piece, I think some of the smaller pieces are too small and the smaller color blocks in particular might be more effective if they were larger.  One consideration I had was that I wanted this to let as much light through as possible, so that led to smaller colored blocks.  The purple one really doesn't look as dark in real life as it photographed.  Still, it is a bit out of character with the other.  But, overall, it is what I imagined and I am pleased I was able to create what I imagined and it was fun.  Ain't that the point?  Now, to work on my design skills.

Just playin'

So, clearly I'm on this solids kick.
I like to go down to the basement and play.  Pick some colors, start sewing, cutting, see where it takes me.  Right now, since I'm trying to figure this whole quilting thing out and find my way or style of doing it, this is a lot of fun for me.  Just messing around without a lot of expectations or some set pattern to work from. I learn better by just doing stuff, so, I'm trying to just do stuff.

There's not really much to say about this quilt. It was play time.  Playing with colors, shapes, quilting, etc.  The over all shape was dictated by the piecing.  It just kinda happened to fall into this general shape, so I trimmed a bit to hopefully improve the balance. I think my favorite part is the 3 lines of colored thread in the quilting.

Pojagi Curtain Sorta Thingy...

I saw these Pojagi style pieces in BooDilly's (Victoria Gertenbach) Flickr stream and they are fantastic.  You should check them out. (When you're done here of course. In fact, look at ALL of her stuff. She does amazing work, one of my favorites.)  So, anyway, they seemed like a great way to try something new and come out with a curtain for my office window.  I had been stumped as to what to do for that window for months.
Since I'm trying to get the hang of this blogging thing and post about works in progress, things I'm trying, heck, post somewhat regularly...

Here are the beginning stages.

 And, yes, still playing with solids.

You'll see the seams are a bit different. She had a tutorial on a couple of seam options posted on her blog. I'm trying the first option and there's certainly a learning curve, well for me at least.  But, I do like the look of it.  I think part of the trouble I'm having has to do with our machine.  It's a cheapy, low line model that just may not be able to be as precise as I want it to be.  Oh well, the machine works great over all, especially for my skill level and needs.

We'll see how this turns out. I held it up against the window pane earlier today and it is shaping up pretty well. I think it'll be neat.

Regardless, check out BooDilly's blog!


Oh, and leave me a comment or something.....please...

More instant gratification.

As I mentioned a while back, free time had been at a premium.  So, along with the couple of mini quilts I posted, I experimented with a case for my new glasses.

Basically, all I did was make a mini quilt and roll it up.  Too easy.  I'm not going to dare to call this a tutorial for something so simple (especially since I just kinda wing everything), but here are the basic steps:

1. Determine size for your glasses. 

(All I did for this was roll them up in a piece of fabric and measured out what seemed to be right. For mine, it ended up being 6 1/2" h. x 6 1/4' w.)

2. Piece a mini quilt top.

(You see below, I went kinda modern with some solids.) 

3. Before you quilt it, make sure to trim the batting about a 1/4" shy of 3 of the edges. Leave the top edge normal, you'll just bind this one, but trimming the batting back from the others will keep it from bunching up too much when you stitch it together.  ( I thought I was real smart for thinking of this before hand, but Ang told me that's pretty much standard practice for what I was doing...oh well)

4. Bind the top edge.

5. Fold the little quilt right sides together and stitch the bottom, then the side together.

6. Turn it ride side out, and there ya go.

Ang liked mine and asked me to make one for her. Of course, none of that modern stuff for her! "I want mine cute though!" 

Ugh.....

Okay, people...

I put a quilt into the Quilting Gallery "Weekly Themed Contests."

This week is "miniatures" and so I sent in my mini "Improv 1" 

(such an artsy name for it, more like lazy).

Anyway, click the "Quilting Gallery" button on the right, go take a peak at the weekly contest and vote for me!  Well, vote for what ever one you like the best, really, it's cool. 

(The last time I put one in, I didn't vote for mine either!)

Voting is Friday through Sunday.

Sneak Peek!

Okay, here's a sneak peek at something we're working on.  Well, at this point only Ang is working on it, but I will be soon as well.  

I just had to put this up, I'm very proud of her work.  Look at this, it is nowhere near done, but already very cool. 

That tree is one piece. I can't believe she was able to cut it out, let alone applique it on like that.

This section is about 30"x30", so we gotta big one brewing here.

Been a long time...

The last month or so has been pretty crazy, not a lot of time for quilting or blogging.  But, things have slowed a bit and I've had a chance to have a little fun in the basement.

Since it had been a while and time was at a premium, I decided to make a couple mini quilts.  I've had some solids laying around that I was wanting to play with, here was my chance.  The pic on the right is an improvisation I did.  Just picked some colors, started cutting and piecing.  Lot of fun!

I really enjoy a lot of the Amish quilts, there's something so appealing about the simplicity of design and their use of colors.  So, in search of some instant gratification, I decided on another mini, this time "Amish-ish."

Working on these mini quilts has been great, I just kinda dive in and see where they go.  I guess that's one of the beauties about not really 'knowing' what you're doing.