IN WHICH I FIND I HAVE LEARNED HOW TO MAKE PAGES

I would still be wondering around in the dark re: pages if it were not for excellent instructions and advice from Gretchen at Gretchen's little Corner and Cheeky Cognoscenti aka Rebecca Deming. Originally I wanted to enable a click on the quilts on the sidebar to take one to the quilt details but I think blogger is not sophisticated enough though blogger is excellent at doing what it is supposed to do.

I am also getting better at mastering tension with monofilament.  I am using wonderfil 80 wt deco-bob in the bobbin.

I decided to go with a striated quilting for this sky with this beautiful fabric from Jennifer Sampou's sky collection, as it seems a layered sky.

Beautiful sky and leaves

Quaking aspens is what my trees are.

November foliage 

We are going backward in time...this is October

I stuffed the pumpkins.  Love the delicate foliage

For this sky, I jaggedly outlined the orangey sunset streaks to add some drama

This sky fabric is perfect for an October sunset.  It took several months of searching to find an orange casted sky fabric which was not overwhelmed by the color orange.

Glorious colors for the leaves.  Some are variegated threads and some are not.

An owl on the lookout for mice.

Yesterday on our drive to the nature trails, we saw a huge hawk in someone's yard.  We thought at first it was a statue so unusual it is to see such a thing.  As we watched, the hawk struggled to its wings and took off in a low flight with a heavy grey squirrel in its talons.

Backwards to September. 

This sky is another of Jenn Sampou's sky fabric-I used 4 in all.  It is not as dramatic as some of her skies so I decided to do a windy look.  Quilting with Helen Godden has taught me lots of techniques and ways to approach a subject.  One of the tips she gave us is to have the quilting "disappear" behind the forefront in this case the trees and also to have the quilting slip off the sides of the block as it the sky goes on but you cannot see it.

The moose among the turning foliage

This tree fabric I think is perfect to do what is it called upon to do.  Trees turn so many beautiful colors in the fall..purples, oranges, roses, rusts...you know the rest.

Swirly skies.  Fall is my favorite season.

3months remain to be quilted-the summer months of June, July, and August.  Then the crazy quilting......

Before I do that however, I will return to Helen Godden's Midnight Magic quilt.  I ran out of the black background fabric ,which appears to be out of print now, and since it is patterned, however subdued, that specific fabric was necessary.  I finally found some and it will arrive on Tuesday.  Whew!

Post linking up with:

Patchwork and Quilt at www.quiltingpatch.blogspot.com 

Sew and Tell Monday with Bambi at http://bambisyr-evaj.blogspot.com/
Monday Making at http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
Design Wall Monday at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

LongArm Learning at http://cheekycognoscenti.blogspot.com/

Free Motion Mavericks at http://lizzielenard-vintagesewing.blogspot.com/

Needle and Thread Thursday at http://www.myquiltinfatuation.com/

Finished or Not Friday at http://alyciaquilts.blogspot.com/

Off the Wall Friday at http://ninamariesayre.blogspot.com/

Whoop Whoop Fridays at http://confessionsofafabricaddict.blogspot

Keep creating, stay well, stay cheerful

 IN WHICH I THOUGHT I WAS THE QUEEN OF MONOFILIAMENT AND THEN REALIZED I WASN'T 

OR 

THE STORY OF TENSION

What a pretty quilting pattern!  The month is april , windy April shaking the cherry blossom branches.  HOWEVER....the tension is too tight.  I have a cool attachment on Queenie, the greatest quilting machine ever, which tells me the number of the top tension:

The readout is really helpful as it tells me the relative numbers of the tension.  No matter how I set it though, the tension was off.  SO...following Helen Godden's instructions for using gold metallic thread, I took my heart in my hands and adjusted the bottom tension.  Here is the clever part tho which is probably obvious to most everyone else....lets say clever for me.  I took a phone photo of the original setting so I can always find it again.

Am I good or what!

April was the first month I quilted :

Even tho the first thing I do with my quilts is wet them and then put them in the dryer to shrink and crinkle, you can see the tension is too tight.  It looks nice and crinkly but the quilt design pattern is lost.

onwards....January....

This is a bit better but I still have not adjusted the bottom tension so there is more drawing up by the quilting than should be

I liked how the snowy ground turned out

The idea behind this sky was to create a puffy snowy cloud appearance

You can see from this one that the fabric looks like a snow fall.

Onwards...December...in which I adjust the bobbin tension

There was not much sky quilting on this block-mostly outlining and foreground.  

Silver thread on the snow for glitter and pretty pinecones

Tension was pretty good on this one

Onwards...May

You can see the tension is looser

Going for a bit of a stormy sky here .

Onwards...March

Lots of sky here

My cat Alyosha's spring activities

A clam and wavy sky

"blue" birds guarding their nest

 

And lastly, February...Sunset in the cold and frosty pine forest

So here are the first 6 months and I have completed some of summer and fall seasons also.

It turned out that the thread I had bought for this project-invisafil 100 wt in antique worked really well but showed up too much.  I then bought a huge spool (don't) know what I was thinking-it will last me a life time) of  clear Superior Monopoly 100 wt which is much more difficult to work with than the invisifil.  Then was when the tension problems occurred. As I said these were solved pretty well by loosen the bobbin tension.

I WANT TO THANK ....

Gretchen of  http://gretchenslittlecorner.blogspot.com/

and

Rebecca of https://www.rebeccagracequilting.com/   AKA Cheeky Cognoscenti

for their answers to my request of help on how to do pages in a blog.  I might be able to accomplish this now with their excellent help.

Post linking up with:

Patchwork and Quilt at www.quiltingpatch.blogspot.com 

Sew and Tell Monday with Bambi at http://bambisyr-evaj.blogspot.com/
Monday Making at http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
Design Wall Monday at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

LongArm Learning at http://cheekycognoscenti.blogspot.com/

Free Motion Mavericks at http://lizzielenard-vintagesewing.blogspot.com/

Keep creating, stay well, stay cheerful

 LIFE IN OUR STRANGE TIME DAY 173

AND GETTING STRANGER ALL THE TIME

Moth block from Helen Godden's Midnight Madness.

I changed this block quite a bit as the original has a moon and I want my moon to be in another place on the final design.  I thought a lantern would be suitable for drawing moths to the light instead of the moon.  As Helen pointed out to me, it has strong diagonal lines which will limit it's placement in the overall layout.  I may change it as I work with the concepts I have for the final piece. Unfortunately, for the background I choose a fabric which is out of stock everywhere seemingly rare as hen's teeth (so many of our aphorism are dated from the time when 90% of Americans lived on farms).  Hancock's says they will have some soon.🤞

Here is another question for everyone....I have been attempting to add pages to my blog and have added two.  I have several more in draft form but no matter what I try, i cannot publish them.  I know some of you have pages-please tell me the secret to this.  All advice welcome.

******

Speaking of the plague in our times. I am one of the best suited to isolation which we rigorous maintain due to our ages and health concerns.  My life in isolation is not too different from other times-I am a home-body , a bit agoraphobic, with a busy and creative internal life.  In the past six months , I have not entered any building but home and rarely spoken to anyone outside of home.  I value the on-line world of blogging and on-line quilt classes and quilting/painting facebook  groups (I am a moderator for one quilting group).  These are a real outlet for my social side and I am glad for it.  Each blogger/facebook member has interesting stories of how they are faring in this time and what they are working on.  We creator/quilters are a lucky group.

Since I have to wait for black background fabric, I am going to start quilting (gulp) the tree blocks.  Have the thread, have the backing, just need the courage.

******

AND NOW....

YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

I collect staircases.  We go around in our everyday lives , see the everyday world but I see no reason why  beauty or interest cannot be injected into it.  Street art is one of my favorites as you can probably discern from the zen moments.  Why isn't street are everywhere?  

Over the next few posts, I will share my staircase collection-here are some....

Do you feel the little girl's happiness that these stairs are there for her to run up and down on?  Photo by Abe Kleinfeld.  I think the stairs reside in my old stomping ground in hilly San Francisco.

Why have an ordinary balustrade when you could have this strange and lovely piece.  Photo came with no attributions as to place or photographer.  

Staircase to the Uni library at Univerzitet Babamand

Looks like the most calming place in the world. Transport me there, Scotty!

Post linking up with:

Patchwork and Quilt at www.quiltingpatch.blogspot.com 

Sew and Tell Monday with Bambi at http://bambisyr-evaj.blogspot.com/
Monday Making at http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
Design Wall Monday at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

LongArm Learning at http://cheekycognoscenti.blogspot.com/

Free Motion Mavericks at http://lizzielenard-vintagesewing.blogspot.com/

Keep creating, stay well, stay cheerful

 SNOWFLAKES IN AUGUST

December block from Piecemaker's 2002 Calendar quilt.  I had the background fabric left over from another project and thought, how perfect for a snowy winter scene.  The pine cones , raccoon, and cardinals make this a charming block.

The hardest part of making this block was finding frosted fabric in spring as this fabric is used primarily for Christmas quilts and hard to find other times of the year.

The pattern called for cardinals made from ribbon embroidery.  That was beyond my skill level-no matter how much I practiced making ribbon cardinals, they all ended up looking like red blobs.  So back to my default skill-applique.

Pretty cute raccoon, yes?  I had to practice the pine cones also until I came up with this stitch which is kind of like a herringbone stitch which turned out very effective.

I have ordered the thread to begin quilting these blocks.  100 wt invisafil in antique white for top thread and wonderfil 80 wt deco-bob for the bottom.  We will see.  Next week I will show you the last block February, also a frosty winter scene, and my last remaining problem child.

AND NOW.....

YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN

A beautiful building which is the proposed Wetlands (what? wetland in the desert?) Visitors Center in Abu Dhabi.  

Photos from Davis Edwards Design

There is a lot of new cool architecture these days.  All structure-bending and looking unbelievably impossible that it does not collapse.  New materials and methods I suppose but what a feast for those who dislike predictability.

******

Post linking up with:

Patchwork and Quilt at www.quiltingpatch.blogspot.com 

Sew and Tell Monday with Bambi at http://bambisyr-evaj.blogspot.com/
Monday Making at http://lovelaughquilt.blogspot.com/
Design Wall Monday at https://smallquiltsanddollquilts.blogspot.com/

LongArm Learning at http://cheekycognoscenti.blogspot.com/

Free Motion Mavericks at http://lizzielenard-vintagesewing.blogspot.com/

Keep creating, stay well, stay cheerful