Project QUILTING Fat Quarter Shop BONUS Challenge Progress

Posted by PersimonDreams on Apr 10, 2013 in fatquartershop, Featured, off season, Project QUILTING, quilt challenge, wip | 2 comments

In the back of my mind I’ve been contemplating what I wanted to do for the Fat Quarter Shop BONUS Bundle Challenge – Tradition Times Three.  I’ve had many ideas go through my mind – one quilt incorporated different sized hexagon flowers with a free form quilting background. Another quilt I was going to weave some of the blocks (which I do think I’ll still do eventually) and then I went back to the hexagon quilt idea….

And then, four days ago I saw this quilt on Pat Sloan’s Facebook Page:

“Composition II” by Shoko Sakai

I was instantly inspired!  I knew I ad to do something like this for my challenge – I would incorporate squares into making my design.  What is going on with me and all that tiny piecing lately?

First I needed to figure out what shape I wanted to do.

Not a star since it had already been done – and seriously – look at how well it had been done.  No need to compete with that.

Next, since the Fat Quarter Shop fabric bundle is pretty nautical I thought sailboat quilt…which would be cute…but not me.  In my heart I knew I needed to go with tree.  So much of my world right now revolves around tree I might as well keep with it and be inspired by that that surrounds me.

First I sketched the outline of the tree on graph paper and then added the squares to see how it would work.  I’m pretty sure it’s going to be awesome and I’m pretty sure it’s going to be a lot of work.  I’ll be making courthouse log cabin blocks at 3”, 6” and 9”.  I’m not sure if the background will be all squares but there will be at least a few in there.  Since the main colors of our bundle are blue, red, and a creams here is my color plan.

I used copper and bronze paintstiks to make the red fabrics more of a brown tone for the tree.  They are currently drying in my sewing studio and will hopefully be dry and ready to go by tomorrow.  I’m using creams/white for the ground and the blues in the sky.  To some of the creams and blues I rubbed some silver onto them just to have a decent blend of metallic glimmer in the background too.  I can’t wait to see how this all actually turns out! It’s amazing in my mind…but you never know!

Wish me luck!

Keep an eye on the special Flickr Group to watch for projects as they come in.  There’s already one there!

A Lovely Year of Finishes–April Goals

Posted by PersimonDreams on Apr 3, 2013 in a lovely year of finishes, Featured, wip | 3 comments

The ‘A Lovely Year of Finishes’ goal setting party that Sew Bittersweet Designs and Fiber of All Sorts are hosting this year has really helped me focus each month.  Granted..I still have LOTS going on that is not finished but at least I’m accomplishing at least one thing each month!  I love the inspiration and the temptation of a potential prize is pretty nice too.

There’s a lot going on this month – including celebrating my 31st birthday (pretty much all month…), Lodi Quilt Academy, the Sun Prairie Quilt Show, planting over 300 apple trees, celebrating my daughters 2nd birthday and a RAW show where I’m showing my art quilts.  With that…I’m going to try to keep my goals to a minimal this month so it will actually be possible to do!

Goal 1:

My main goal this month is to finish piecing this Granny Square Quilt Top that I’ll be gifting to my daughters’ babysitter.  I started this last year…and it’s time to take this off my ‘to do’ list.  I’m thinking I want to make 20 blocks for it so I just have 7 left to go and the sashing of course.

Goal 2

I’m one of the featured artists at the RAW Madison Marvel show on April 24th  I’ll be showcasing my art quilts.  (Be sure you buy your ticket and support artist ‘Persimon Dreams’ – that’s how I pay for my spot in the show…)  I price my quilts as I would art so they are definitely not inexpensive.  I was trying to think of ways to make things people may potentially purchase.  I first thought pillows…but they take up a lot of display space. I also printed out some cards with quilts on them and made some beer cozies…but it still wasn’t quite what I was dreaming.  So…I’m going to make some quilted bags.  I want to do them in different styles that mimic some of the quilts that I’ll be featuring at the show so people have an opportunity to own some fun, usable art.  Above is a picture of part of one of the bags I’m working on.  I would love to have at least 5 by the 24th but I’ll honestly be happy with whatever I can get done.

Goal 3

April Off Season Project QUILTING Challenge – What’s Your Sign?

I have no idea what I’m going to to do for this yet but I know I’m going to come up with something!

And that’s it – just 3 goals for this month!  Wish me luck!

Ziggin and Zaggin with Spoonflower

Posted by PersimonDreams on Feb 22, 2013 in Featured, spoonflower, wip | 1 comment

I saw this really cool simple quilt on pinterest the other day and  I just couldn’t get it out of my head.  I finally gave in to my head and decided to make my very own chevron quilt.  I’m making mine by cutting 8” square from 10 different spoonflower fabrics that I designed.  I really like it.  Jared thinks it’s too much.  He’s probably right.  BUT then I thought of course it’s busy – it’s a quilt that I’m making – I make busy, crazy quilts.  I do feel that even though it’s busy it’s a really unique way to showcase some of my original fabrics and how they can actually be pieced together to create some pretty dramatic effects.  If I don’t ever cut my original spoonflower prints up and make something with them it’s going to b hard to show people why they may want to buy them right!?  So – here it is…

Ziggin and Zaggin with Spoonflower – a Work in Progress.

Hexagons!

Posted by PersimonDreams on Feb 21, 2013 in handmade, quilt, wip | 3 comments

Happy Thursday everyone!  How is your week going?  Things are decent around here.  Cedi had a fever on Monday and stayed home from school.  She was much better already by Tuesday though so that was good.  I’ve had this nagging cough and low energy but haven’t been really ‘sick’.  It’s more annoying than anything.  Anyway – enough whining!  I wanted to share with you some photo’s of the progress of my 2013 ‘on the go’ project – hexagons!

By ‘on the go’ project I mean something that I can sew by hand when I’m not at home or near my sewing machine.  I may have a small problem staying focused or sitting still so my hands need to be always moving.   This year I got sucked into making Hexagons. One Tuesday at #talknt quilters were mentioning how much they loved the hexagons from the website Paper Pieces.

I headed over and order hexagons in a variety of sizes so I could then decide on what I want to do. The hexagons I first started with are 2” hexi’s – pretty big.  I’ve been using 5” squares of my scraps to baste my hexagons.  During gymanstic practice, waiting for the bus and at a meeting I worked on my hexigons.  Above is a snapshot of the hexagons I made at a meeting – I know that sounds crazy but I truly cannot focus if I’m not doing more than one thing.   This past Tuesday, I finally had my first 150 hexagons made!

I laid them out on the floor to see what I had.  First – I realized I’m going to have to make a lot more than 150 hexagons to make a decent size quilt.  Then, I started grouping the hexagons together by color groups.  I think they’ll create a really cool color wheel-esque quilt.

For the remainder of my time ‘on the go’ on Tuesday I managed to sew together two hexagon flowers.  I can now make 2 more hexagons!  It’s going to be a tedious project that will probably take me a long time but I’m grateful to have a fun, easy project to take along with me and I can make it without the machine.  Hand sewing is relaxing to me and good for my soul.

I would love if you linked up below projects you’ve done with hexagons!  Maybe I’ll decide to make lots of smaller hexagon projects instead of one big quilt…you never know…

A Lovely Year of Finishes – Mid Month Check In

Posted by PersimonDreams on Jan 17, 2013 in day to day, Featured, quilt, wip, work space | 4 comments

I know I’m over posting this week.  I would love to just one a day but there is just too much going on in my creating world right now and I need to keep up with it all!

I need to do my ‘Mid Month Check In’ post for the Lovely Year of Finishes over at Sew Bittersweet Designs.

I started the month out with the goal of finishing the quilt top of my 1930s sampler blocks.

My first step in accomplishing this  was to add borders to each of the blocks and make wonky squared up 15” blocks. The was the step that had been nagging at me forever and once I actually did it I couldn’t believe how fast it went!  It was such a simple thing to do that took me less than an afternoon…looking back I have no idea why I didn’t just take the time months ago.

The last step was to sew the 12 blocks together.  I was going to quilt this one myself but I won a quilting prize from Marcia’s Crafty Sewing and Quilting and I decided to use it on this quilt.  I’ll admit…the white fabric sort of scared me away from doing it myself…

The other goal I had this month was to reorganize my craft area.  I was looking for my before pictures but I can’t find them right now…here are my after pictures.  Look!  You can see my cutting table (lower left)!  It’s a miracle!

Here’s the other portion of my area…everything is off the floor.

My 2012 scraps are organized in their proper scrap bins…

My fabric shelf isn’t perfect but I can still find everything so I’m going to wait awhile before I do an entire reorganize of that.

This is just a cool picture of my thread shelf.  I was having fun with my fish eye lens.

I’m pretty proud of what I’ve accomplished so far this month!  This ‘goal setting’ is working for me!

also linked up to Team Quiltsy Blog

Make a Wish

Posted by PersimonDreams on Jan 8, 2013 in Project QUILTING, quilt, season 4, spoonflower, wip | 2 comments

In 2012 I became slightly obsessed with Spoonflower and printing my own fabric.  Sometime this summer they changed their pallet and had a deal on 8×8 swatches.  I may have ordered quite a few of my prints to just see what they looked like.  A personal challenge of mine this year is to use some of the fantastic spoonflower prints in my quilts so I can ‘show them off’ to everyone and maybe even sell a few yards.

For the ‘Square in a Square’ Project QUILTING Challenge I’m using pieces from my ‘Dandelion’ swatches.

dandelions

dandelion dreams

make a wish

dandelion dreaming

I’m not as far along on my quilt as I would like to be but hey – life happens!  I know I’ll get it done even if it means an all nighter for me. 

I’m really loving how it’s coming along so far and I already know that the name of my quilt is going to be ‘Make a Wish’.   How are your challenge pieces coming along?  Don’t forget there’s a ‘linky’ at the bottom of the challenge post so you can link up your blogs about Project QUILTING!