Friday, November 4, 2016

Picking Fabrics for the next Bonnie Hunter Mystery

I really enjoy doing the Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilts.  She posted the colors on her blog    http://quiltville.blogspot.com/p/en-provence-mystery.html

I am looking forward to the mystery this year.  It will be the first one I can work on since I am no longer working and I don't have little children under foot.  Last year I used the same colors as Bonnie because I wanted to use up some red fabrics.  This year I am changing the colors because I want to make a dent in my tub of blue fabrics.

I think I usually do well in selecting fabrics.  Bonnie's intro suggests using Joan Wolfrom's 3 in 1 color tool.  I read about it and decided to buy it.  I think it is a good tool.  I wanted to be careful because when I switched colors on the Celtic Solistice mystery.  I did brown, purple, turquoise, and green.  The purple and brown didn't have good contrast - as you can see in the border of the quilt at the top of my blog.

Where Bonnie is using purple and lavender, I am using blue and light blue.  Where she is using green I am substituting orangeyellow.  She has yellow and I yellowgreen.  Finally for her constant she is using magenta and I am using purple.

 Because there needs to be contrast between my orangeyellow and yellowgreen, I decided to make the orange yellow a constant.  I thought of using a rusty orange but decided it wouldn't be a strong contrast with my greens.  It is hard to discern in the picture, but the orangeyellow fabric is a pinstripe and I think it is going to pop against all the blues in the quilt.  My constant is purple and it is a shot cotton and very pretty.  I got 30% off for purchasing the rest of the bolt which was only an extra 1/2 yard.

My thinking is that in Bonnie's colors she seems to have two sets of contrasting colors (according to the Ive's color wheel)  purple and yellow green  also  magenta and green.  So I have chosen blue and orangeyellow and purple and yellowgreen.  Bonnie's post shows pictures that were her inspiration and she will have used lots of different fabrics in each color but this is how I interpreted it when trying to chose mine.



I won a $25 gift card at a community sewing day put on by members of my guild in September.  We worked on getting tops that were made quilted.  I quilted 6 on my sewing machine and brought one home to do on the longarm.  I picked these two fabrics as constants and purchased them with my gift card but then decided they wouldn't work well with the blues...I will use them is something else.


The other shopping I did was Quilter's Select Rulers and cutting mat.  I'd been looking for a local shop that carried them and found it today when I was out and about so I decided I needed and early birthday gift.
Edit:  I've decided to change the purples as this one will give more contrast from the blues.

Sunday, October 30, 2016

Trick or Treaters

Not the best photo but I sure have some cute grandies!


Triangle Possibilities

It's been a busy month and I am behind in posting.  My sister and her husband were here visiting for a week and we had lots of fun.  My brother and his wife came also for a quick visit.

Our guild had Lynn Roddy Brown as a speaker in October. She is a good speaker and showed lots of examples.  I took her Triangle: Endless Possibilities Workshop and it was lots of fun.  She gave great  information and ideas.  This is her website -   www.lynnroddybrown.com





Sunday, September 25, 2016

Quilting Border

I got bogged down when I went to quilt the borders for the practice quilt.  Since it is being put together QAYG (quilt as you go), I could line up all borders on the longarm and that seemed like a perfect way to get a uniform design.  But, I couldn't decide on a design.  Feathers seemed too formal compared to the rest of the quilt.  I ended up just doing random designs, experimenting and improvising.  I think these will work well

The border fabric is a green.  It is woven one way green and the other orange.  I quilted it with the orange.  Colors don't show up really well in some of these photos.




Saturday, September 17, 2016

Joining Quilt As You Go Blocks

I am still working on the practice piece from RaNae Merrill's group on Quilt Mastery.  I've never done the joining of a quilt as you go project so that has been an interesting experience for me.  Somehow I made two sashings too wide so I had to do some seam ripping, but I hope to finish this little quilt this weekend.

Saturday, September 10, 2016

Screen Printing Class

Ginny Eckley spoke to our guild on Thursday.  This is her website  http://www.fabricpainting.com

There were workshops Friday and Saturday.  I attended Silk-Screening The Easy Way on Friday.  It was a lot of fun.  She is a good teacher. 

Pictures below are mostly the pieces I did though the shot of the floor show some of my classmate's work also.  I especially liked playing with multiple colors.  I am not sure what I am going to do with these pieces of fabric after I heat set them.  I do have most of the screens (except for turtles and large leaf sprigs) from the class kit.









Monday, August 29, 2016

Quilting

I didn't have the longarm set up for almost two years.  Why did I wait so long??? I love using it and it makes finishing projects so much easier.

RaNae Merrill http://www.ranaemerrillquilts.com/  of spiral quilt fame offered a 30 day Free Motion Mastery class to her email list as a trial for an upcoming book.  She has some really good exercises and ideas.  So I jumped at the chance and I am really glad I did.  I feel like I am back on top of things and I have learned some new tricks.

My practice quilt should be done in a few days but I don't know when I will be able to show the full quilt.  Here are some pictures of it: