A Day at the Drag Strip

When its a day off from quilting, we are at the drag strip.   Tim enjoys drag racing in his 1957 Studebaker.  Way cool, huh?  He purchased the truck with the roll bars already in it but everything else he pretty much did himself.  With a bit of help from his drag racing friends, of course.

Here is the truck, it has such a different look, I absolutely love it.

Here he his with many others staging for their turn.  Mostly we run in the Nostalgia Series which is cars/trucks older than 1970.   He races in the Hot Rod 1 series which is 1959 or older, no stick shift.  Remember, the only thing old about most of these cars is the body

Headed to the track….

The burnout.  Gotta have those tires hot and sticky.  Something about traction.   Needless to say I’m the total novice at this.  Starting to learn the lingo and understand how the truck runs but….do we have to buy new tires every year?  Yep

At the line and getting ready to mash that peddle to the floor.

The reader board is his time for the 1/4 mile and his speed which is actually from 2 weeks ago.  It all got much better this Saturday.    Lowest reaction time was 0.016 which is outstanding.

His racing friend, Jim, drives a 1940 Ford with a 4 speed.

Another friend, Dan, in his Plymouth.

Tim, all decked out with his helmet on.

We do enjoy the race weekends.  Visiting, enjoying the old cars.  Pretty fun what people do with them.  Hobbies….we all need one.

 

 

Freshly Quilted

Okay….I know I have been quiet but,  those machines have been humming.  Of course it is spring in Oregon and that means time to get outside in between rainstorms.  Perhaps it would be better to say, during brief periods of sun.  A few less quilts were quilted but the carrot seed is in, lettuce planted and you should see the tomatoes in the green house.

Here are some of my customer quilts I have recently finished…..enjoy the show.

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My Little Blue Quilt

Needing a bit of inspiration, I purchased a new DVD by Lisa Calle called Divide and Design, The Cure for Quilter’s Agoraphobia.  Basically she takes those wide open spaces and divides them with curved or straight lines to break down the areas into manageable areas to quilt.  So….I created a small quilt with an applique block left over from some long forgotten project to create larger areas for quilting.   This little quilt is only 32″ square but  it provided me with many hours of pleasurable design and quilting time.

The entire quilt.

Quilting detail of the center portion.

Outer triangle and interior swag.  Those straight, or mostly straight, lines are 1/4″ apart and theoretically line up with the interior straight lines.  Filling that differently would have been a bit easier and it seems a bit crowded to me.

For my fellow thread collectors, I used Isocord and So Fine threads.  Batting is wool and Quilter’s Dream cotton.

I highly recommend giving this technique a try.

 

Diana’s Glacier Star

This is the third Glacier Star quilt I have had the pleasure of quilting.  Each one has had some differences in the quilting influenced by the fabric choices primarily.  In the first picture I quilted flames from the center of the star out int the background.  The border has a piano key border, double lined because it is so wide.   It looks great this way and once on the bed it creates a nice straight drop over the sides.   The center quilting is also a departure with feathers through the flying geese blocks and up to the diamond patchwork.  Enjoy!

FLAMES AND FEATHER QUILTING DETAIL

 

QUILTING DETAIL IN BORDER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

QUILTING IN FLYING GEESE BLOCKS

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trying to fit a round peg into a diamond shape is always a challenge. The little swirlys at the top of the feather do the trick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ELABORATE PIECING IN CENTER

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

GLACIER STAR

 

 

Scrap Quilts are Beautiful

Sharon H Scrappy Triangles

Don’t you just love scrap quilts?  All those favorite fabrics in every color of the rainbow.  A mainstay of our ancestors scrap quilts were usually made from every conceivable type of fabric and every little tiny bit of it was used.  Now we get to be a bit more picky about our scrappy quilts but anyway you cut them up…..they are always colorful.

This one is made with 2″ finished half square triangles, 1″ finished sashing and a 6″ border.   I think we all have leftover half square triangles taking up space somewhere.  This would be a quick and easy solution to putting them to good use.

First Daffodils

Glacier Star 2

Another beautiful quilt.  This Glacier Star, a Judy Neimeyer design, is 60″ square in bold vibrant colors.  Even though the design is the same as the prior Glacier Star I quilted, I have altered the quilting designs to reflect the fabric choices.

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Fresh off the Long Arm

These are a few of the client quilts that I have recently finished.  All three are Judy Neimeyer designs with all those pointy points.  Beautiful quilts, difficult to piece but the finished product is always worth it.  Not that I have made any but I get to enjoy many of them!

This first one  is an Amazon Star pattern.  All 116″ x 116″ of it.  Quilted with an all-over fern style design it is very unobtrusive leaving the piecework to shine.

This blue/green marvel, made by Alice, is Glacier Star.

A detail shot of the piecing and quilting.

Here you can see where I marked the feathers in this shape.  It is a bit large and straight on one side so marking helped me keep the feathers where I wanted them.  I use chalk which brushes right off and don’t worry much about staying exactly on the lines.  More of a guideline for me.  The full on view of the quilt shows how they quilted out.

This is how I filled the space along the violet shape along the flying geese.  All those curves!

This smaller quilt is called Golden Harvest.  Dense spirals fill the white portion of the quilt with flame style quilting in the pointy points and a vine of leaves in the border.

A detail shot of the center.

I love these designs for their complexity and movement.  Needless to say they are also a pleasure to quilt.

 

 

 

A Play Day With My Friends

Tuesday was the monthly meeting of my long arm quilting group.  We are all professional long arm quilters meeting each month to share tips, techniques, discuss problems and success.  Needless to say this usually means actual quilting discussions.  This time we got to be little girls playing with crayons.  BIG boxes of crayons, lots and lots of colors.

We all gathered for a workshop led by Terrie Kygar who is the author of Creative Quilts from Your Crayon Box.   Terrie has developed a method of painting with crayons totally different from any I have ever seen.  We actually melted the crayons into little puddles and then blended them onto fabric.

This is Terrie, thanks for the fun day!

First the fabric is cut out into the applique shape, in this case a pear, and placed on an applique sheet.   We then heated  the fabric and applique sheet with the iron to get it very hot.  Rub the crayon on the applique sheet and it melts.  Look at the puddle of melted green crayon.

Using a folded napkin, a very high tech tool, the melted crayon is picked up onto the napkin.

Shading onto the pear.

Outlining and adding detail.

We also did a turned leaf shape.  Think of a day lily or daffodil leaf.  Each picture shows the progression of shading and the detail where the leaf turns.  The shadow makes it look so real.

Here are our completed projects.  With the exception of the Bosh pear, we all used the same crayon color for our shading but what a different look each one has.

Looks pretty much like a pear to me!

This was a fun technique which I highly recommend you try.  Totally different, easy, inexpensive materials.  Terrie’s book walks you through each step right down to the color of crayon to use and the order to use it in.  I am scheduling some time to make a little quilt, hope you do to.

 

 

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More Pics from Rd to California Quilt Show

There are far to many fabulous quilts at the show to photograph them all but I always manage a few.  The quilts I choose to photograph were interesting to me for various reasons but you will notice I always photograph closeups of the quilting.  I am forever amazed at the talent of quilters everywhere.   My thanks to all who entered their work,  I know we all enjoyed seeing each and every quilt.

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