Sticks and Stones

I am trying to get some things caught up in my studio. Last week I wrote about my Ocean Blue piece for the A4 challenge group.  I was late with that piece, but am on time (I think!) with this theme. Sticks and Stones.

Threads everywhere!

I decided to do a piece using the phrase "Smile stone". The full story of the Smile stone is on the A4 blog post, I won't repeat it here. I decided to use trapunto to poof out the letters. After layering with a batting and backing I went around each letter with black thread to highlight the letters.

All tucked in

I am a thread tucker. I feel that it makes a more polished finish to quilting threads.

Stones

I am not very skilled at free motion quilting, but I can do pebbles!  I was pleased to see the letters pop after quilting the background.

Finished!

I did a line of stitching then rough trimmed the piece. I soaked it to remove the wash away thread I had used in the trapunto letters. I laid it out flat to dry and went off on errands. I was pleased to see how the soaking had improved the texture of the piece. At that point I came up with a wonderful idea to "bind" the piece using sticks!

Check out the A4 Challenge blog to read the full story of my smile stone. Also take a look at the wonderful challenge pieces the group has posted.

This is my off the wall post for this week.

Friday at Quilt Fest

 





Some of the wonderful designs of my students in today's Emerald Pools class! I loved that everyone had a different color scheme! I am pleased with the progress that everyone made today!

Marilyn's Margarita Monkey Apron

Barbara's Stuffed Monkey

Lisa's Last minute ATC

Mitzi's Story book

Kathy's Monkey Bars (I can't get it to rotate, UGH)

Sandy's Snap Bag

Helen's hurt Monkey

Close up of hurt Monkey

My "Socky and Friends"

I challenged my friends to make something, anything using a chunk of sock monkey fabric that was from an old pair of pajamas. I am thrilled with the variety of the ideas everyone came up with! We all voted and Marilyn's Margarita Monkey apron was the favorite project!

This is my off the wall post for the week.

Off the wall

I haven't been posting enough lately.  More internet issues which I will not bore you with.  I belong to a small quilt guild in Wales, UT.  We have members from all the small towns in the area (Wales has maybe 100-150 people).  It is a fun group.  Our fearless leader, Brenda, gave out challenges last year.  The last one we just finished up and had the reveal on Wednesday.  Brenda passed around a bowl that had slips of paper with children's book titles on them.  We each drew a title and were instructed to make a quilt inspired by that book.  Each person had a different book.  I got "Treasure Island".  I haven't actually read the book, but I thought it was about pirates and treasures.  Even though I had an idea right away, I waited until Monday to start my piece.

Treasure Island

I need to add more "treasures" but I ran out of time.

It was a fun challenge!  We had a lot of fun interpretations of the theme. The rules were very simple, even just using a fabric that went with the theme of your book was legal.  See the rest of the quilts at the Quilt Keepers blog.

My tub of UFO's

I am heading off to a quilting retreat with friends next week. There are 5 of us and we just rented a condo and plan to spend 5 days and 4 nights quilting, hiking, drinking wine and who knows what other hi-jinks we will get up to.  I decided to bring some UFO's to work on.  This is a big plastic tub filled with bags of partial projects.  Good, easy, mindless sewing ones that I can work on without having to stress.  I will check back next week and let you know how many I got sewn.

BTW, I am going to be teaching a very fun, small town retreat the second week of March.  It is always a good time!  Check out the details at my schedule.  Brenda and her daughter, Bonnie are Pie Plate Patterns and they have been doing this Super Spring retreat for about 5 years now. 

This is my Off the Wall post for this week,  check out what everyone else is up to at Nina-Marie's blog.