El Coqui!

In Puerto Rico there is a small frog with a huge sound.  Found only in PR, the coqui, mates by finding another coqui with the perfect pitch.  The male goes 'co' and the female responds 'qui', but it sounds like one frog making one contiguous sound

My husband has a cousin, who along with his wife live in Trujillo Alto, PR.  Their backyard, or outdoor living space is a wonderful, live in garden, that is a natural continuation of their indoor entertaining space.  At night you can hear what seems like millions of coqui's chatting away in the garden.  They sound almost musical.

Well this cousin and his wife are wonderful hosts.  Whenever we are in PR, they take such good care of us, that I wanted to bring them something special when we went down last month.  Last year as I worked on my Jungle Paradise quilt featuring the parrott I would frequently post progress on Facebook and she fell in love with the quilt.  While they were in NY for the Thanksgiving holiday, she saw it in person and she made my heart sing with her praise of my work.  So, I decided to make them a nature scene featuring the coqui.  I thread painted a coqui and created a natural garden scene incorporating some of the plants from her garden that I had taken pictures of on our last visit, along with some other nature inspired greens.  I printed the plants on fabric and along with the coqui, I appliqued them into the garden scene.

I added butterflies in both an applique and 3D effect, as well as ladybugs.

As always, all of my quilting is done free motion and I used a wide variety of threads...  Aurifil 50 wt Cotton; Superior SewFine! and Nature Colors; Metler Twists (to be honest I have used this thread in yrs, but I only needed a little) and some Sulky.  As I have mentioned before, I have 2 favorite brands of thread.....Aurifil for the perfect lint free cotton and Superior for their non-cotton specialty threads,...... but sometimes, you need to pull out something that is hidden in your stash, for either the right color or the right texture.  It is called finding the right tool for the job :-).

This was the first time I tried doing circles in an inner border, where they all had to be the same size.  Remember, I don't mark my quilt tops.  I love the end result, but I must say, it took a while to get the swing of it :-).  There was a lot of 'frogging' going on in that border...  LOL!

This is the end result.

As you can see it looks like she loved it!  And, she immediately recognized the plants from her garden on the bottom right and left hand corners of the wallhanging.  She has told me it will hang over her TV in the family room, so she will look at it everyday!

Here's to family and El Coqui!

Cheers!

I can't believe I haven't posted this yet...

Boy.... have I been delinquent.  You saw my last post was from something that happened in May and I just posted about in on July 19th!  So I will be in catch up mode for the next week or so. :-)

Here is the finished piece of Robert and me, in 'Can you see me?'.  I thought I had blogged about making it here, but it appears I never did!!!  I started the piece as part of a Craftsy class by Lola Jenkins, called Thread Art, using a picture of my son taken while on a family vacation last summer.  I made the piece at the end of 2012 and still can't believe I didn't blog about it, as I love my reflection in his eye glasses.  (Facebook friends have seen it, so sorry if you are seeing this twice.) 

You know how you have an idea of how to do something, but when it works out, you are like WOW, I like that!  :-).  This is a whole cloth quilt, with one exception.  The eye glasses are appliqued on top of his face.  They were made by enlarging the original picture and printing just the glasses on fabric, then appliqueing them down.  His profile, the hair, mustache and beard are all done via thread painting on the top only.  I then colored everything else in using Inktense pencils.  I had the top completed and quilted everything except his face back in the December/January time frame, because I couldn't get the courage to do so.  I was afraid of messing him up..  I finally got the inspiration and courage to quilt the face, then decided to make it 'not square'.  I looked at quite a few other portrait quilts online and I must say, studying them, really helped!

Anyway, here are some pics, I thought I would share..

I really love the quilting in the nose and chin area.

The face is quilted using YLI Silk thread that I had brought a few years ago when a local shop was closing.  So happy I had it on hand, as it worked perfectly for such dense quilting.  Lucky for me I have another 30 or so spools of it in various muted pastel colors!

I think I will do more portraits to get more practice on how to truly represent the faces natural contour.  :-)

It is amazing how much they control you...

I started my parrot piece at the Spring 2010 Country Quilter Retreat. I spent most of the weekend creating the bird and thread painting him, creating his background of leaves in the forest setting.  I was in love with the progress I made. The colors were gorgeous, the thread work a joy. I was really proud of myself.  He is thread painted with Superior Masterpiece thread.  Masterpiece is fine enough that it allowed me to layer on the color without adding bulk.  Plus the colors were a perfect match for the underlying fabrics.

Well the joy faded shortly after I got home.  I put my lovely parrot up on the design wall and I couldn't figure out what to do next.  I didn't think he was ready for a border, but what?  It hung there for months, eventually getting taken down to make way for other projects.  I must admit, I took him out of hiding every once in a while and starred, but I had nothing.  Not one real clue of what to do next.  Then it dawned on me.  I really didn't like the piece, him yes --- the piece no.  Yes he was colorful, yes I loved the thread play.  But something about the piece just didn't work.

So back on the design wall he went, just to be starred at for months all over again. I figured it was the background, but ughhh....  I had spent a lot of time making those leaves and doing all the thread play on them as well.  Did I really want to cut the parrot out and start again?  No, I just couldn't bring myself to do that.  So away he went....  again.

Then last July I took him with me to Quilting On the Lake.  I figured with all the creative juices flowing in that place, something would shake loose and it did.  Philipa Naylor saw me staring at it and asked me what was wrong.  Quickly we realized that I didn't need to rip it out.  I just needed a place for the eye to rest.  It was so busy that although the parrot was gorgeous, you really couldn't see him with all the leaves going on.   So I decided to take the plunge.  No one believed I was going to do it.  I cut out a section of the leaves and off I went shopping in the vendor mall :-) for a hand dyed green that had movement but at the same time, allowed the parrot to be truly seen.  What a difference it made.  I didn't do any sewing or fusing there, I was too busy in class, but I fixed him up quite nicely when I got home.

Well I made a vow to work on UFO's this year, so last week out he came.  I found the best hand dyed brown in my stash for a boarder and over the last few days added trapunto and got him all basted.  I even made a 3D bird of paradise that will be added to the side once it is quilted.  Friday evening I sat down and didn't think I would ever get up!  I am so enjoying quilting him.  He is finally coming together.


I spent some time over the weekend quilting.  The parrot is done, as are all the leaves.  I should get the piece totally quilted this week.  Can't wait! 

So far 98% of the quilting has been with Aurifil 50wt cotton.  I like the way it adds to the piece with not being too flashy,,,,  dimension and texture for interest, but not in your face :-).

He will also be accompanied by butterflies and a Bird of Paradise flower that I will add after the quilting is done.  Both will be 3D, to add some additional interest to the piece.



Oh and I have submitted him to New England Quilt Festival (MQX East).  I hope he gets accepted!

Catchng up....

So earlier this month I promised I'd share some of the things I have been working on.

Well the first project I can only share a corner as it is a challenge piece for one of my guilds.  It is another piece done with my mother as my inspiration.  This time it is a salute to her strength and fortitude.  I can't share what just yet, as it will give away my piece, but here is a quick peek at some of the quilting.  I love the piping, as the black polka dots on the fabric are random, so the sliver that shows in the piping is truly sporadic.

This piece is quilted with Aurifil 50 weight cotton.

Once that piece was done and ready to be turned in to the challenge team, I picked up another UFO from last fall (yeah, shamelessly I have more UFO's than I care to admit.  I remember when I made sure I never had more than one other piece in process.  Oh well!)....  It is a piece that was started during my semi-annual Friday Night Fun at the CQ Getaway.  Yes, this piece took more than just the Friday evening.  I didn't actually finish the top until mid-day on Saturday.  But I finally took it out of the bag and finished it.   At the retreat everyone kept coming up to the piece to see the chickens running loose in the yard (by the base of the tree).

I did a bit of thread play on the top before quilting this piece.  More than half of the sun rays, as well as the little patches of grass on the hills and all the stitching on the leaves were done on the top only.  (disregard the little bit of lint...  it is amazing where these lint balls try to call home)

I enjoyed adding dimension to the piece as well.  The beige tablecloth in the laundry basket is sticking out and just hanging over the edge, as well as the purple one behind it.  The quilt the ladies are hanging on the line is a full quilt (all 3 layers). I still have to add the handwork to represent the 'clothes pins'.

I should have took a close up of the boulders I quilted in the boarders.  I love the texture it gives the piece.


"Laundry Day" as I have named it, is a true testament as to why as a quilter you probably need more thread than fabric :-)..  This small 24" x 26" has 10 different threads in it.  Sulky solids and variegated, Aurifil 50 wt cotton, Superior Masterpiece/Sew Fine/Rainbows, Mettler Twists, Gutterman and Isacord.

 I used Quilters Dream batting in both pieces.

Cross one off the list, but I have about 8 other UFO's sitting there waiting to be finished!

Country Quilter Spring 2011 Getaway...What a great time!

So last week was a whirlwind!!  I was in Mexico City, Mexico for work Monday through Thursday.  Then Friday afternoon, after only about 15 hours home, I picked up my friend Lorraine and headed north to Interlaken Inn in Lakeville, Ct for our bi-annual Country Quilter quilting retreat.  Along with 55 other quilters we had a wonderful 3 days of eating, laughing and quilting, thanks to the ladies of the former Country Quilter in Somers, NY.  Even though the shop is closed, Claire Oehler, Nancy Mirman and Noreen Lipolis (CNN to their friends) have kept the retreat going.  Claire was the owner of the Country Quilter for over 20 years, so she knows what it takes to make quilters feel at home.

As is the norm, I thought I would share some pics of the weekend.  For the life of me, I can't remember the names of all the ladies, but as you can see, we are a big group :-).

So if you are reading this post and I don't identify you, please know that it is merely a senior moment.  You know one of those times when the world goes blank and all the thread seems to just jumble up and clog the gray matter we call our brain.

At least these ladies by Donna Chambers have hats on to keep their brains together.  Donna is always doing something different to keep us on our toes.

Now completely different, Donna is working on a collage piece in prep for a class she is thinking about offering.  Just wait until you see the work she did on our Pelham Quilters Round Robin...  a collage heart that will blow your mind...  unless you pull your hat over your eyes :-).

 

And here's Ashley working on the back to her green and white quilt.  She was intense, determined to finish a bed quilt she'd started at the last retreat.

Eileen is just starting a new piece, squaring up her center for each square.

Maria is at the other end of her project.  All sandwiched up, by Sunday, Maria is beginning to machine quilt her weekends project.

Ever have a hard time deciding on baorders?  Pat is getting help from her fellow quilters (senior moment here... sorry).

This is a piece that I worked on this weekend, translating a picture of a parrot I took at Jungle Island in Miami into a quilt.  Still need to fix the beak and add more leaves....  but I love all the thread art used to create the parrot.  I will probably also add more definition to show his ruffled feathers.  I might even have to define his perch a little more, it seems to be blending into the background...  oh well, that is why photographing your work, can really help you to see what a piece needs.  Love having a digital camera :-).

Yes, we have hand quilters in the group as well.  Doesn't she look so relaxed...  hmmm maybe I need to take a page from her book.

Funny thing, while Mom sits peacefully with her hand quilting, daughter is busy at her machine creating a new quilt.  Will she machine or hand quilt it?  Guess we will have to wait until October to find out.

Smiles all around with this cheery yellow quilt.  With kaleidoscope blocks on her design wall behind her, she holds up her latest completed block.   Oh yes....  triple senior moment with the last three photos :-).

Claire is busy using the left over fabrics from two other quilts to make a third blue and white quilt.  The colors must agree with her...  she is all smiles for the camera.

Oh yes, here is our fearless leader.  As you can see by Sunday night many retreaters have packed up their machines and are relaxing with hand work.  Claire Oehler, the mastermind behind our wonderful weekend.... WOOHOO!..... is chilling doing some hand work on one of her quilts.

Nancy, one of the N's in CNN, is 'chilaxing' as well....  yes, I picked up some slang from my great nephew.... I think she is working on a binding, winding down a quilt, as we all wind down for the weekend!

Now it is count down until Oct 14th, when we all head back up to Interlaken Inn, for another wonderful weekend with good friends, lots of food and laughter and all the quilting you can imagine.  Interested in joining us?  Just email the ladies at cqgetaway@gmail.com.  I think I heard there are only 17 spots left!

Hope to see you there!

A Star in Miami!

Many have followed my progress since October, when I started this piece at the Fall Quilt Escape Retreat hosted by The Country Quilter. I have many post as I worked along the way, with the first post back in November, here.

Well Raven...  I hope your Google Reader sends you an alert on this piece, but here it is finished and hung....  I know, it doesn't belong here... it has to make it's way to Miami, but I had to hang it to take a picture.

 

It needs to be hung properly, so that the waves continue gracefully across the 3 pieces of the tryptych.  But I really enjoy the way it looks.

Ricky Tims and Libby Lehman, a huge Thank You! for teaching me how to do the ribbons when I attended the Ricky Tims Super Seminar!  I will use this technique over and over again :-).

My friends are telling me that it shouldn't go to Miami just yet, that it needs to go to a few shows first, but we will see.....

P.S. I have started quilting my initials in my quilts...  really making me feel like an artist...uh oh :-)

98% Done....

Well, it is quilted, blocked (no more wonkiness :-)) and bound! My experiment has just three more steps: some crystals in the star centers, a label and maybe some crystals outlinging the center star (which is barely visible in the photos). Unfortunately, I really didn't want this piece to be a square. I thought Octagon or Hexagon... but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't to so without cutting off a ribbon and I wasn't about to do that. So here it is....


The ribbon effect moving around the top was fun to do. I learned not to use tear away stabilizer in these as it is now a permanent part of the quilt. Good thing it is Ricky Tims stabilizer, as it is soft and scrunchy.. you don't feel it inside of the quilt. Next time I will use a hoop and not worry about a stabilizer. I do like the highlighting done on the edge. The pink segment has two shades of pink. The green segments are highlighted in white as I couldn't get a light enough green to show enough of a difference.


I like the purple waves in the center square. I used the width of my open toe embroidery foot to help keep an even distance, but I learned that when free motion quilting on the 830, speed control is key! It was very easy to control the movement at the right speed, since you had plenty of room for the quilt and didn't have to stop and re-adjust constantly. Gotta love that large quilting area :-).


The swirly-ques were easy as I do these all the time, but you will notice I added starburst inside the stars since the last post. When the top was all quilted, I decided they 1) really needed something and 2) they were a little puffy, so they needed something to hold them down.


I liked the fact that I changed the quilting motif with every round of the square in a square. These loops are soo easy to do and provide a great motif for when you need to quilt around other design elements. I used a mix of Madiera, Isacord and Superior threads on this piece. All worked equally well, although I definitely needed to lower the tension setting on the 830.

Now... feathers... sorry the photos aren't very clear....


And here are my freeform feathers. Yes! I think I am finally starting to get in the groove with these. Although they are pretty basic, I was able to turn and twist them to fill in the space as needed. I really felt good making these.


I do think I will practice other type of feathers, but for now am ok with my progress. Oh another thing... if I made this a hexagon or an octagon I would have lost all of these... hmmpphhh... maybe there was a reason why those shapes didn't work.

So now, to add some pizzazz in those stars. Oh, by the way... I have named my experiment. Celestial Enlightenment. This practice piece taught me alot. As I said in an earlier post, funny how when you let yourself just go, what you can come up with :-).

Yes, I am smiling...

How many times does something that you thought was ruined or a waste of your time turn out to be so much fun? Well, that is how I feel about my 'experiment'. You know the quilt where I didn't measure twice, cut once, so it is wonky, because two sides of a square are longer than the other two :-).

Anyway, I quilted the pink square (the wonky one) tonight and it went pleasantly well. I feel as if I have found my groove on my 830. I know the right speed, I can hear when I am going to fast or too slow, and my foot doesn't get tired. I quess all that playing and practicing has paid off. Here is a close up of the pink round.



Then looking at the black, I sat wondering what to do. The bobbin play going around the 'sphlat' began to look like the spine of a feather, so I decided that I was going to do feathers in the black. Hey, I have been practicing them quite a bit. Well, I must say, I am pretty pleased with the first go round.



I have gone all around the quilt, with one row of feathers. Now, I have to decide, if I continue adding feathers mirroring the first round, do free form feathers in the remaining black area, or if I echo quilt the first row of feathers, or ???? But as usual, I will go to bed and let the quilt talk to me in my sleep.

Good night all!

I knew it would tell me what to do....

Last night I couldn't tell if I had completed my experiment. That is until I tried to go to sleep. But, as soon as I laid my head on my pillow and closed my eyes, I knew exactly what it needed. I knew the top wasn't finished. So today, after entertaining my patient, by playing Dominos for a few hours and prepping Sunday's dinner, I sat down and followed my vision.

Exactly what did I see, when I closed my eyes? Two pink stars floating in a sea of lime green. That's right. I had added lime green stars on the pink background, but there were no pink stars. The first six stars had been made from variegated purple, green and pink thread. Then I added the four green stars, but without the pink it wasn't balanced. As soon as I added the pink stars, it said OK, I am Done! Since I had already picked out my backing fabric the last time I thought the top was finished, it was easy to get it pin basted and ready to be quilted. I decided to pin baste it, instead of my usual spray basting, because I knew it needed the gently easing as I quilted it.Well, here it is with the purple and lime green section quilted.



I am definitely pleased with the way this piece is shaping up. Especially for an experimental piece :-).

On with the experiment...

So, I did get in a little bit of quilting while home on vacation. Not as much as I had hoped for, but unfortunately, the night we returned from Aruba, my son injured his knee while working with his football trainer. We have had x-ray's and know that there is no broken bones, but the Orthopedic said it is definitely NOT nothing. We are going for a MRI, but at this point, he says it could be anything from a severe sprain to a torn ACL. As you can imagine, we are praying for the former.

Anyway, with the hiccups of life, I did get some quilting in. I added stars to my experimental piece, using a variegated Superior Rainbows thread. I had to play quite a bit with the tension, to keep the bottom thread from showing through (got to go buy some extra bobbins for the 830... I am wasting much too much thread as I move from color to color). I have the tension set to 1, which seems to be my standard, whenever working with the Superior Rainbows thread on the 830. I think I when I quilt this piece, I will quilt stars inside of the thread appliqued stars. We'll see....
Next, I finished adding the highlights to the green ribbon segments. I got impatient and didn't wait until I picked up the light green Madeira. Instead, I just used white. I think it works fine.

Then I decided to figure out how to loosen the bobbin tension on the 830, so I could try Bobbin Play. Hey, this is an experimental piece.. right? Much to my surprise, after actually doing it, it is much easier than I thought it would be... the directions gave me a little scare. First, in the USA, not sure many of us know what a 'lug' is, screw, nut, bolt... yes, but a lug? So it took me a second to figure out what they were talking about. Once I did, I used the universal tool, moved the bobbin lug 2 spaces to the left and away I went.


I am not sure I like the look. It is a Superior Razzle Dazzle. While I like the Razzle Dazzle and the effect, I think this particular color may be too dark for this piece. But I will wait a day or two to decided before ripping it out.


What do you think?

Now remember this piece is wonky, because the pink piece was cut the wrong size. (If you missed the earlier post... I couldn't get the top squared to save my life. After ripping it out more than a couple of times, I realized that the pink piece is actually 1/2" larger than it should be. Of course, since the black was on, I decided to leave it.) The piece was not being made for any particular purpose, so instead, it became a learning or experimental piece. None of the thread play techniques had I done before. When it is finished, I will do a 'lessons learned' post, as I have learned quite a bit on this piece.

I am going to try to block it tomorrow. First to try and get it to behave a little and second to give me some time to think about how I will quilt it. I have been thinking about trying a square feather inside the center square. But who knows..... I know I am thinking about not making this a square piece... if I can at least get it to lay flat, I don't care it is a square, rectangle or ??????

OK... Good Night... it is back to work tomorrow :-)

Highlights

I got a chance to the highlighting on the pink ribbon sections tonight. They are coming out pretty good.

I decided that after doing the scribble (my term) that you need to outline the inner curve again so that it is smooth. But other than that I like the look.
They no longer look flat, it really does give them a feeling of being on their edge. Unfortunately, highlighting the green sections will have to wait until I order some thread, because I don't have any Madeira Rayon that is lighter and the LQS around me don't carry Madeira thread (the one that did closed in March)... ughhh.

That's ok, I will just have to work on another part of this project... like adding some satin stitch designs or something. Will have to get out the sketch pad and doodle on it for a few days :-).

Back to my experiement...

Hi... well with the initial learning phase on my 830 behind me, I am back to the piece I was experimenting with as a result of the Super Seminar.... my Libby Lehman thread painting. I am making progress..... I used water soluble thread to transfer the 'splat' from the freezer paper to fabric.

I stabilized the segment first, then outlined it and began filling the segment with little circles.

It is coming along. Tonight I hope to finish the green splats and start on the pink ones. I am using Madeira Rayon's in Hot Pink and Lime Green. I found some Razzle Dazzle in the my draw in just the right colors (purple, pink and green) and I may echo the design using bobbin painting.

I have some purple/silver metallic that I might outline the rectangle with as well... Who knows, it is an idea.... :-)