It's new to me.....

A couple of weeks ago I bought a used Bernina Artista 180e to keep at our house in NC. Here is a picture of all of the stuff right after I wheeled it into our house in GA. It came with 8 different feet, embroidery software and hoops and all of these cases full of miscellaneous stuff. I bought it from someone who works at the Atlanta Sewing Center. It has 87 hours on it and has been serviced every year so it has been well cared for. The owner was upgrading to a different Bernina. I have never owned a Bernina and am excited about the machine. Any tips from some of you Bernina owners. Also, how is it for free motion quilting?

Impression Reveal

Here is my quilt for latest Fiberactions challenge. I made this based on the above photo that I took in Venice a couple of years ago. I was trying to go for a more abstract look but as you can see my brain does not do abstract very well.

For this quilt I was also inspired by a new book that I got early last week. It is 'Quilted Symphony ' by Gloria Loughman and I highly recommend it. I was working on another quilt for the challenge but I really was just not excited about it so I started this one last Tuesday. First I cropped a section of the photo and printed it with the tile option on 4 sheets of paper. I used this as my pattern.

I then traced it on freezer paper and used the freezer paper as templates to cut the pieces. I used Steam-a-seam Lite as the fusible and after I was happy with my fabric choices I ironed them in place on a muslin backing. Of course this process took much longer than expected and I put in some late nights to make the deadline. I cut the dome pieces from 1 piece of batik and this took quit a bit of fussing to get the colors like I wanted them (it has over 50 pieces). I am not a big fan of fusing and I did find the quilting a bit challenging with the extra bulk of the fabric. Maybe one of these days I will tackle a quilt of the entire photo......now that would be an accomplishment!

What to do with this?

This is another UFO from almost a year ago. I was sick with an ear infection last year and still wanted to do something. I painted these 12 squares of fabric over a couple of days while recovering. They were then pieced together to create this quilt top. I liked it at the time and even started to quilt it (the four squares in the upper right are quilted). Now when I look at this I wonder what I was thinking.

The question is now what, if anything, to do with this. I have it hanging on my design wall so I can ponder it in passing. If I just abandon it I can salvage most of the batting and backing fabric. I could also use the unquilted squares as backing for another quilt. Of course the real challenge would be to rework this and turn it into something I like. I think this may be on my wall for a while since I am working on my Fiberactions piece that is due on the 15th. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

UFO Attack!

I am really itching to start something new but I also have been feeling the pull of my UFO's. Can you believe that I have finally gotten around to quilting my 'Flight Over Greenland II'. If you have been following my blog you may recognize this piece as a whole cloth that I painted in the summer of 2009. I am almost embarrassed to admit that. The problem I was having was figuring out how I was going to quilt this. You can see the original post on how I painted this here.

I put a layer of Warm and Natural on the backing and then a layer of 50% wool/cotton batting for the next layer. Next the top.


I started the quilting with white Isacord thread for the mountain tops, then light blue for the rest of the mountains. For the water I used a medium blue and clear thread for the sky. I must say that I love how this turned out. I was really excited about the piece and called my husband down to look at it.....he burst my bubble and had a very cool reaction to the piece. Guess it is hard to evaluate your own work but not to be discouraged I entered this in the Indiana Heritage Quilt Show.

This will be my 4th year entering this show and I have won a couple of first places and a judges choice so wish me luck. You can see a couple of up close photos and I really think it looks 3D. What do you think of this piece? I would really appreciate you true opinion. Thanks!

City and Guilds Award

Here is part of the email I received yesterday:

I am pleased to inform you that you have achieved your City and Guilds Award in Creative Techniques in "Sampling - Exploring Potential of Ideas and Materials". Your work was of an excellent standard and you have achieved the highest grade of Distinction.

I am excited!!!!

'Journal Spilling' on fabric

I just joined a small group of art quilters that meet every other month and create a small work based on a theme. This challenge was 'inspired by fruit' and was one of the pieces I was struggling with when I wrote the previous post.

One of the books I love is 'Journal Spilling' by Diana Trout. You can see it pictured below and read about it here on Amazon. I decided to journal spill on fabric and made this 9 1/2 x 10" little piece.

I used the Pastel Dye Sticks pictured (these were great and only $3.99 for the box of 15 colors!) to draw the apple on a square of PDF fabric. Then I wrote random thoughts about an apple with different colored markers. I dry brushed on different colors of fabric paint and finally did some thread painting and quilting. This was a fun little project.

Looking for inspiration...

I have been trying to get some ideas for a couple of projects that I need to work on. Sometimes I just seem to get stuck and spend time in my work room aimlessly looking through books and fabric trying to come up with an idea. Friday I was having just one of those days .


I made myself a salads for lunch and then noticed the ends of the romaine lettuce that I had just used. Loved
how they looked like flowers and
decided to try some vegetable prints. The fabric on the left is one I pleated and painted a year or so ago so and used it for the background for printing. I have no idea what I will do with this but it was fun. Still no great ideas so I just kept looking at stuff and pulling out more books and fabric.



I found the scrap below on my painting table. I have been using it to test colors and clean my brushes. I am sure it has possibilities for something. What do you do when you are having a creativity block and how do you get past it?

Aftermath of the creative process...

I don't know about you but when I finish a project my work space is a total wreck! I took this picture after I completed the quilt below and this is what my work table looked like. I should have taken a picture of the floor in front of my design wall since when I do free form cutting I just let all bits and pieces fall to the floor and based on the project it can get pretty deep. I have actually tried to do the 'clean as I go' approach but somehow it seems to distract from my creative process. Maybe I will try to work on this again this year. Do you also make a big mess????

'Environment' Reveal

Here is my quilt for the Fiberactions group challenge. The word was 'environment'. To me nothing is more important to our environment than the relationship between plants and animals. Each supports the existence of the other and hopefully we can find peace between us. A few years ago during the house building boom in the Atlanta area, I read an article stating that this area was losing on average 40 acres of trees per day due to new construction. Maybe something positive can come from the downturn in the economy.

I love creating trees so I really enjoyed making this piece. I started digging through my stash and found the border fabric first. Next came the background and tree fabrics. I placed the background fabric directly on a piece of wool batting on my design wall and then created the design. I work free form by cutting pieces of fabric as I go and placing them where I think they should go using pins to hold things in place. This is an iterative process and I move things around until I am happy with the design. Then I use a glue stick to secure all the pieces to the background using just enough so I can get it to the sewing machine to sew thing in place.

I usually don't place the background on batting but I wanted to see if I could add more dimension by adding the extra layer at this stage. I then did some highlighting with thread sketching, paints and pastels on the branches. I quilted it and after trimming it and zigzagging the edges, I placed it on the border fabric that had been layered with another piece of batting and backing fabric.

Now I sewed around all of the elements again. The branches really popped. I tried to hold a light at an angel and take the picture from the side so I hopy you can see this in the picture below.

Adding the bird was a suggestion made by my husband. I painted it on a piece of white cotton, cut it out an the stitched it to the quilt. I wish I would have added it earlier since it does not have the dimension of the tree limbs.

I then added the yarn trim around the center panel to cover up where I had stitched it to the border fabric. Now I quilted the border, painted some highlights on the water and gave the branches a few more high and low lights.

Sneek Peek

Saturday is reveal day for the Fiberactions group. The challenge word for this round is 'environment' and I am almost finished with my quilt. This may be my favorite of the 8 I have created for this group. Stop back on Saturday to see the entire piece.

Record snow in Atl

Nice day to stay home. This is the most snow I have seen in the 13 years we have lived here. Lucily we still havd a snow shovel from when we lived in NJ. Now it is sleeting which is much more common for this area. Even more amazing is that we actually had a white Christmas....the first in over 100 years! Think I will make some homemade vegtable soup.

Missed deadline

"Holiday Ham"

I had fully intended to enter the Quilting Arts calendar contest this year. The deadline for having pictures of your entry in was today. This years theme was 'feeling petty' and above is my would have been entry. I finished this on Wednesday..... 2 days 2 late to get it to MA in time. I am really upset with myself. I have been sick for the last 2 weeks and have been having a difficult time getting anything done but still this is no excuse. My procrastination has always been an issue.

Now I do think that this quilt would have had a slim chance if any to be selected as a winner since it is so holiday focused and would have to had been chosen for December. I still did just want to enter. So water under the bridge and lesson learned. Now let me tell you about the quilt.

While enjoying the holidays at my brothers house a couple of years ago, he brought out the smallest member of the family dressed in her best holiday outfit. Skipper is one of the funniest dogs I have ever seen with a personality to match and added even more joy to the day. She loved ‘hamming’ it up and really made us laugh.

This quilt is based on a photo I took. I posterized and printed the photo and then used 3 commercial fabrics to create Skipper. I did heavy thread sketching for the dog’s hair, eyes and nose. I placed Skipper in a night winter scene to complete the quilt.

Here is a detail shot of Skipper.

Does this background look familiar? I knew I would be cutting it close on time and also knew I had to put Skipper on some sort of background. The above photo is of a UFO that was hanging around from several years ago when I was just learning to quilt. I cut off the dancers hair and then placed Skipper on top. I stitched her down, added the thread painting. quilted it, cut it to 12" x 12" and zigzagged the edges. So maybe in 100 years someone will ex-ray this and see the dancer underneath..........just like one of the old masters paintings........ I am still mad at myself!!!