IN WHICH WE HAVE OUR FIRST DAY OF SNOW! 

Tonight's temperatures will reach -10 F.  It is good to be inside and watch the snow swirling out there where it cannot reach me.  The cats have taken to their kitty heating pads and the birds are crowding in at the feeder.

I have been making progress on Sweet Surrender.  I am slowing working away on the pieced triangles intermixing that with FMQ practice.  Here is SS so far:

None  of the applique and pieced sections are in their proper place yet-I will do the layout when all the triangles are finished.  I have 6 more big triangles to piece and and 6 half triangles for the edges.  This paper piecing is very hard on my hands and shoulders so I am taking it slowly.  Appliqueing never bothers me probably because that work requires more movement of hands and shoulders but for epp, one sits and stitches in the same posture continuously.

Finishing the pieced triangles will probably take me a few weeks.  I alternate this tiresome job with the fun one of Free Motion Quilting practice.  I told you I have been taking a wonderful class from Christina Cameli-Wild Quilting on the Craftsy platform.  I cannot say enough good about this class.  We begin by making 6 fat quarter quilt sandwiches and use these to progress thru the lessons.  I have completed lessons 1, 2, & 3.  Quilting from lesson 1 was shown last post and here is lesson 2:

This lesson was on grouped combinations. This has been liberating for me as I am being more spontaneous and less critical as I quilt.  For a person who began this blog 6 months ago describing her terror at FMQ, this spontaneity and its associated feeling of freedom demonstrates so much growth.  The actual quilting may not be spectacular but the ease with which I did it was.

Here is lesson three-blended combinations:

Christina is such a lovely person and her lessons are so instructive.  I really recommend this class!  It is a 10!

As I said, the snow is falling and winter is definitely here.  The birds are arguing over the sunflower seeds and we cannot kept the feeders full.  Here is a pretty wren:

And here is one of the many goldfinches visiting us right now:

He is waiting his turn at the feeder.  The sparrows are such greedy, aggressive birds that it is harder for the smaller goldfinches to claim a perch.  In the winter, the pretty yellow of the goldfinches dulls to this muddy yellow.  But wait until spring!

The next couple of weeks will be very busy for everyone.  I send out best wishes for everyone to have a merry and happy Christmas time!

If you can squeeze it in your busy schedule, happy quilting!

I am linking up with:

Slow Stitching Sunday, Bambi's Blog,

Patchwork Times,  Em's Scrapbag,

Esther's Wow, Let's Bee Social,

Free Motion by the River, Whoop Whoop,

and Off the Wall Friday.           

 THREE IS HOW THE GARDEN GROWS!

 I received a couple questions asking how these triangles were appliqued without getting warped out of shape.  You can see from above how it is done.  2 more triangles will be fitted between these three only will be upside down.  After a soaking to remove the glue and blue pen marks and a good pressing, this section will be cut into 5 nice triangles.

Here are close ups of the triangles:

This one is my favorite-I just love the berries.  The stem is just basted down at this point because I don't have a good shade of thread.  I have started using 100 wt silk thread which is so wonderful but I have limited colors.  Nothing seems to be right to me.  A couple new greens are arriving tomorrow so maybe those will be better but it is very hard to determine exactly what color the thread is from the photos on line.  It helps to pull up several sites which sell the same thread but have different photos of the colors-you can come to a general consensus as to color.

I like the bell flowers on this one.  I am using more Kaffe fabric aside from just the leaves.  This stem is still basted also.  I have had requests to see the evolution of a design instead of just the end product.  Here is an earlier version of the above triangle. 

The only difference is the yellow/pink leaves in the upper right.  You can compare the two and see the green leaves are much more effective as they set off the pink bell flower rather than compete with it.

I had a devil of a time getting the color of the blue flower right.  It looks a bit electric but it is not really.  This triangle also went through some translating.  I did not like the original hexie in the center of the blue flower so I sewed a Kaffe circle over it.  I still may change out the blue flower as it is not very strong.  However, is replaces another hexie flower which seemed to argue with the purple bells.

I kept the hexie flower and will use it sometime.

Here is what everything looks like so far:

There are 18 of the appliqued triangles and 4 half triangles so you can see it is going pretty fast.  Gretchen at Gretchen's Little Corner blog is doing foundation piecing for the big pieced triangles instead of epp.  She sent some good links for me to check this out and foundation piecing will be so much easier than epp.  I am so grateful to her as all that epp was really frazzling me.  It frazzles some people to applique and others to epp-just depends on what you like.  The end product of epp is spectacular and such fun designs can be made when fabric is carefully chosen.

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On to free motion quilting practice..........

  All but one of the stitches comes from my new book Fill Harmonics by Sue Heinz.  This book is really helpful in learning and practicing fmq.  One advantage is that the printing is only on one side of the paper so that page can be laid on your light table and traced to acquire muscle memory.  The circle pattern is called potted pasta and does not really show to best advantage in this piece.  It looks better in this piece:

The Martelli hoops arrived.  I ordered a set 8" and 11" but soon realized the 11" would not fit on my machine! Duh! So i sold it on ebay and kept the 8".  I can recommend these rings-the cheapest I found was on the Allbrands site (49.99 for 8" and 99.99 for the set of 2).  Here is what it looks like on the sewing machine:

It has a slide in for the hopping foot and two handles to help move the quilt sandwich. The gripping is excellent with enough weight to hold firmly without compromising on ease of movement.  I have bad shoulder problems-I had rotator cuff surgery and while the shoulder is fully rehabbed, nothing is ever "as good as new".  One advantage is my hands are further apart and the rim is about 1" tall and the handles another inch.  There is no stress about pressing down with my hands and pulling and tightening the fabric while I am quilting.  I cannot say enough good about this ring.  I looked at several but this was the one that looked like it was for serious.  It is worth the price.

Look at this photo to get an idea of quilting area which I found to be more than adequate.  

All and all, I am very pleased with my new book and new quilting aid.

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We will part with a bird photo-Here it is the middle of October and we have hummingbirds at our feeder.  I like to think that the travelers know they can get a bite to eat in our backyard before they continue their long migration.  We get so many hummers in October!

Okay, quilters and other interested parties, a new week.  Continue to enjoy October and find pleasant activities for yourself.  I personally will again be battling facebook which has it out for me-I have not even been able to access facebook for about a month! AARRRGGGGHH!!!!! Sometimes I think facebook is a malevolent dark force.

I am linking with Silent Sunday, Em's Scrapbag, Patchwork times, Esther's blog, Let's Bee Social, Bambi's blog, and Whoop, Whoop!

MY QUILT IS MORPHING!

The stonefields quilt is becoming a Chuck Nohara quilt!  I wish I had begun using Chuck's blocks from the very beginning and no Stonefields as Chuck's blocks really speak to me.  I find them imaginative and lively. When it is finished my quilt will have about 1/3 Stonefields, 1/2 Chuck and the rest will be from my inner reaches.

Some one asked me what I meant when I said I adapted blocks.  I will demonstrate.  The basket block above is pretty much verbatim-a close replica.  The pattern is 2 inches x 2 inches so needs to be enlarged to 6X6 inches which, if you are interested, is 265 on the copier. I just choose the fabrics and went for it.

 

This block is also pretty close to the original.  The only change I made was to make the tendrils more delicate with embroidery thread instead of bias stems and to add an extra tendril.  When I quilt this I will add definition to the leaves. So this is a block with only a small adaptation.

 
You can see the adaptions here.  I made two changes.  I did not make the saw-toothed edges on the flowers as I was working on too small a scale to make it work.  Ditto the leaves.  I tried to capture what Chuck was doing here-blossoms on the outside and leaves all clustered in the center of the block.  Very effective.  I had to make it simpler with less leaves but still try to capture the concept.  Its up to you to decide if I succeeded.

Okay, I love this block!  I have a real fondness for squirrels.  We have as many as 14 in our backyard at one time.  They are so fun to watch and they have the world's greatest tails.  We have red squirrels so their tails are copper colored.  The squirrels use them as umbrellas in the rain and to signal when the cats come near.  I changed this block more than the others.  I thought I could improve on the squirrels body and make the acorns more definite.  This was a tricky block because of the neutral coloring.  The squirrel is all yellow-gold and I felt the block wanted more color variation.  So I added the oak leaves and made the acorns green and newly hatched.  Also I like to put eyes on my various critters so I did that.  So this one is close to the original but with lots of adaptions.  I like the fabric I choose for the tail.

Here is Chuck's book for those of you who are not familiar with it. It is published and sold by Quiltmania.  Matter of fact, Quiltmania has a 2 block of the month going on now using Chuck's blocks.  It is called 

"Les fleurs du mardi" or Tuesdays Flowers.

You can see it on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n-6FaRRykLg



I have been working on the free motion machine quilting sampler and have finished lesson 4-feathers.

This turned out well I think.  While I have never quilted feathers on a quilt, I have practiced them a lot in all their various forms so was a step ahead on this block.  Here is the sampler so far:

If you want to join in with this sampler group, go to the facebook group Sit Down Free Motion Quilters and sign up.

We have lots of Blue Jays around the birdfeeder and squirrel feeders.  They are so funny on the birdfeeders because they do not fit at all and use all kinds of tricks and gyrations to get the sunflower seeds.

If Blue Jays weren't so common, people would be excited to see them.  They are so pretty.  The photo below is copied from the Audobon site.  Look at this bird-turquoise, powder blue, slate, grey.  Really it looks like an exotic from the steamy jungles of South America.


I will have my new camera soon so will be able to take photos of birds such as the one above instead of the lame fuzzy ones I always show you.  I hope also that this new camera will be more sensitive to color of fabrics.  My current camera has a devil of a time trying to get colors right.

Okay, I'm  off now to begin a new week of work.  Maybe I will do some simpler blocks this week.  However, as you know if you follow Cathy's Slow Stitching Sunday, the adventure is in getting there not the destination so enjoy the process!

HAPPY QUILTING!

Linking up with Slow Stitching Sunday, Monday Making, MCM, Oh Scrap, BOM, Esther's WOW, NTN and Whoop, Whoop!  Thanks for hosting and giving us all a chance to share and see what others are working on!