Creative Cue : Texture

I have a "thing" for texture. Bark is one of my favorites to photograph, study, and examine. Enjoy some of my favorite specimens from this summer. ;-)

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Creative Cue : Wet

Doesn't this beautiful grapefruit make your mouth water?

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Creative Cue : Home

Nothing says "HOME" like one of Gramma Pickles' grilled cheese sandwiches, made with Mrs. Karl's white bread, real butter at room temperature (which was 80 degrees at their house), and government surplus cheese (or Kraft Singles), grilled over a gas flame.

That is one of her famous refrigerator pickles on the plate.

And because I had to play with the image in Paint.net :


This is the Twisted effect. You can move the vortex around.
It's a fun effect.


This is the Dented effect. It kind of makes it look like marbled paper, or like you're looking through rippling water ...

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Jacqueline's 4-Patch

The other thing I wanted to finish at Quilt Camp this fall was this 4-patch stacked posey. I had intended to make it for my mother-in-law last year, but she died before I could get it done. On Friday night, I squared it up and finished the binding. [I think it's my best binding to date! Quilting is as much practice as anything else.]

I will be donating it to the Cancer Center at my hospital. I washed it so the batting looks nice and antiqued. I love that effect! This is the one I quilted on the Tin Lizzie in August.


Detail of 4-patch stacked posey blocks with quilting.

Quilt Camp 2010

Back Row, me and Carrie Zelazoski (another of my quilting buddies).
Front row : Holly (my mom) and Rosita (my Aunt) Matucheski.
Beautiful Lake Lucerne is just out the windows behind us. We had gorgeous weather all weekend long. It was even warm enough to sit out on the deck.

I am just back from Quilt Camp at Lake Lucerne, hosted by my local Lake Side Quilters' Guild. I got done what I expected to accomplish, and I'm not too exhausted, either! There were a number of mother-daughter combos this year. Nice to see I am no longer the youngest person who attends these weekends. There were also a number of people who brought traditional hand-quilting to work on over the weekend. Although, I can't say I am a hand quilter, I appreciate those who have the patience to do it (Cheers to you, J!)


One of the things I wanted to get done was the quilting on this quilt. Last year, my Aunt Rosita made this Twisted Bargello Quilt top in a class. I liked it, so she gave it to me. ;-) Here it is on my machine with quilting underway. I like to use these quilting discs to grip the quilt and push it around. I've tried the gloves, but I spent way to much time pulling them on and off whenever I need to undo basting pins, or whatever else can't be done with gloves. It still needs the binding, so I won't show you the whole thing until it's completely finished.


This gives an idea of the quilting design ... I used Leah Day's enlarged "Matrix" pattern as an edge-to-edge. This is the thread -- It's orange and green and blue and yellow. It's not something I would have ever thought to purchase--It looks pretty awful on the spool (I think I won it somewhere), but it seemed to blend well with everything happening on this quilt.


Here's the back with the backing thread--variegated browns that blend in.


I also did some more work on Cinnamon and Sugar. I worked on fusing this at an earlier Quilt Camp. Since then, I added the split rail fence in the background, and stitched down all the raw edges. Next weekend, I'll be in a thread-painting workshop with my art quilt group, Conversations in Cloth. I'm hoping to have these horses all done by Christmas so I can give it to my Dad, who will no longer have horses by then. This pattern is 4 Ever Friends by Toni Whitley, modified slightly.

Red Spice Blocks


I also put these blocks together using Annie's Wicked Easy Quilt Patten. This puppy goes together fast and it covers a lot of area with 16-inch finished blocks. Annie seems to have removed the pattern from her website, however, it's similar to (but different from) the Turning Twenty or Yellow Brick Road or Sweet Sixteen quilt patterns. [Please don't ask me for Annie's pattern. If Annie took it down, she must have a reason she no longer wants to make it available, and I will abide by her wishes. She has a different Wickedly Easy Quilt pattern. the one I'm using is a different vintage.] It IS a fat-quarter friendly pattern.


Here's a teaser of the blocks all in a jumble. Yummy rich colors-good enough to eat!
The batiks I used are the Red Spice set from Hancock's of Paducah :


Lovely rich colors!

This year, I think I did a good job of pacing myself. Some weekends, I bring so many projects and push push push to get as much done as possible. This weekend, I worked, took breaks when I was tired, and went to bed at decent times. As always, they fed us well. I love Quilt Camp!

October Dyes : Sky Blue to Dark Orange

Sky Blue to Dark Orange 5-part Gradation Dye on Dharma's Pimatex Cotton.

Thank you very much to Vicki Welsh for sharing the secret to these colors! I LOVE the browns in the middle. Who knew you'd get these gorgeous rich colors from orange and blue?

I'd like to do much bigger pieces in the 3 middle colors -- all in one piece of fabric.