Today's gem comes from Rene Iannarelli. Rene is a master of this style of art quilt. You will want to go to the Customer gallery and check out her other work.
Low Tide was inspired by Boca Chica beack in Brownsville, TX. At low tide you can see pilings, shells and rocks. She primarily used the Beach Walk gradient in this piece and added bleached palm tree bark for the grasses. If you have made anything using my hand dyed fabric I hope you will consider sharing it in the Customer Gallery. In return you will receive a 20% discount coupon that's good for 3 months. Marcy and I had a great time yesterday while she did my work. She quilted 2 veterans quilts for me and I did all kinds of other things. It was like having a magic quilting fairy for a day. Generally I do not do anything to the quilt tops that I receive. They must come to me pressed and ready for quilting. This one had all of that border fabric on one edge. You know I'm a person who needs symmetry in my life so I did take 10 minutes to cut half of that slab off and sew it to the other side. I think it looks a little more planned now. I taught Marcy the wavy crosshatch with this one. It's my go-to design for for quilts with blocks smaller than 6". When the block is bigger I usually want a denser motif. Marcy said that she sometimes struggles with making the switch to moving left and right on the longarm (as opposed to how she quilts on a domestic machine). So to help her get in the left-right groove I had her quilt simple wavy lines back and forth across the quilt. I don't know who made this quilt but I really like it. The block is really simple but putting it together alternating direction makes the quilt look complex.
At the end of the day we both called the session successful. Marcy quilted both of these in about 3 hours and I can already tell that she is more comfortable with using the longarm. We have her next session already scheduled. I have 2 friends locally that are new Innova quilters. One purchased a machine and one rents time at Virginia Longarm. Both have taken classes of mine and have asked for additional help or private lessons. I don't give private lessons but I have come up with an ingenious way to help them while mostly helping myself. It involves veteran's quilts! Last week Tina came over to practice some ruler stitch-in-the-ditch and today Marcy is coming over to practice free-motion. I load and baste the quilts and then they quilt them for me. They get a little lesson and practice time and I get some veterans quilts done. Since I have 16 waiting to be quilted this is a huge help for me right now. I've got these 2 quilts loaded and the thread picked out. Marcy will be ready to get started as soon as she arrives. There will be no dilly-dallying. Well, maybe a little dilly-dally will be OK....and then we must get to work. If I work on my wall while she is quilting I can be close by but not looking over her shoulder. Or I can be a few feet away loading more bottles on the kiln. Over the next couple of weeks I'm going to try to get a lot of my stockpile of bottles slumped in case any of you want bottles for Christmas (or other) gifts. Looks like this poor bottle moved as it heated. I had it perfectly centered on the mold but it rolled a little left and now it's a reject. Maybe I'll donate it to the Country School trash-to-treasure sale next week.
After all of the excitement and fun today we will get to end the day buying a new HVAC system. Oh joy! In between plugging along on the ornament I'm also plugging along on the applique. My last update was a couple of weeks ago and I've surprised myself with the progress I've made since then. I'm on the second border and each has 10 blossoms. I start in the middle. After the last update I finished the last blossom on one side. Then back to the center to start the other side with this red one. Then two more! Only 2 more left to do on this border.
There are 10 on each border and one larger blossom for each corner once I sew the borders on the quilt. I've finished 18 so I'm 40% done! The fabric if the week is Fire Line Gradient. This fabric is on sale 25% off! If you want some for your stash get it before it sells out. Through Sunday (or while supplies last) this fabric is 25% off or $6.75/half yard. Patricia Caldwell's art quilt, Catching a Dream shows the Fire Line gradient in action. New Stash Packs!I've got 2 great new Stash Packs to introduce this week. Stash Packs are designed for the art and scrap quilters in mind. Each Stash Pack has 10 fat eights of highly textured (color texture) fabrics in a theme color or category.
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I'm Vicki Welsh and I've been making things as long as I can remember. I used to be a garment maker but transitioned to quilts about 20 years ago. Currently I'm into fabric dyeing, quilting, Zentangle, fabric postcards, fused glass and mosaic. I document my adventures here. Categories
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March 2024
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