quilting

A year with fewer arts festivals

I took a year off from doing festival shows in 2017 except for a few very local, one day events.  This was due to a variety of things from the physical activity required for packing, set up and tear down along with the unpredictability of selling, often influenced by the weather.  I think if I
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Free Motion Machine Quilting Landscape Quilts – Mountains

One of the things most fun about free motion quilting is the freedom to do so many different designs with thread, your sewing machine and your creativity.  It really is boundless!  If you work in the abstract arts as I do, these freedoms allow you to pick and choose how to accentuate colors or designs
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Free Motion Quilting TREES in Landscape quilts

I’ve created about 30 different art quilts with trees, some birch but many just brown/grey trees.  In some of my earlier quilts I would try to quilt each tree in the quilt differently.  THAT became a challenge I couldn’t maintain and I wasn’t sure it was necessary for the artistic quality of the quilt.  
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First Quilt Workshop a Success!!

I had an awesome time with 17 eager quilters today.  I presented my first quilt workshop for the Juniata County Quilt Guild.  I taught them how to piece using curved cuts and to design a quilt in a more contemporary style.  The three hour workshop was just enough time to piece the art quilt itself
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Four Poppy Quilts Finished

Last week I posted four poppy quilts I had finished piecing but not yet quilted.  Here are the photos of the finished quilts.  If you click on the photos you should be able to see them large enough to see the free motion stitching. Three Red Poppies on beige/grey background:  I quilted the petals so
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Festival Season 2017 and some changes

I am in the midst of applications for 2017 arts festivals though this year will be very different from years past.  It is a lot of physical work to load and unload and load again at the end and unload at home upon return.  When you add to that the cost of the booth, and
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Importance of Fabric Selection

I must have 600 or more different fabrics in my studio!  Thankfully I’m getting better about buying fabrics which work well in my art quilt designs as opposed to buying every piece of fabric I like.  When I start a new quilt, I get out all the fabrics I think I might want to use.
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QUILT STITCHING free motion for curved piecing

I’ve had the most fun with a wide variety of quilt  stitches in abstract curves art quilts.  I like to make these art quilts by starting first with an interesting, often modern print, and then building the other fabrics and colors around that print.  Sometimes I put on a significant border into which you can
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QUILT STITCHING free motion curves on blocks

This blog is about quilt stitching for mosaic quilts comprised of lots of smaller blocks of fabric so definitely “blocky” looking in design.  I enjoy designing and piecing mosaic quilts, using different color combinations ebbing and flowing with the colors.  All are abstract depictions of color. For some of my mosaic art quilts I emphasize
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