Tag Archives: Mighty lucky quilting club

A Weekly Update

This week I have continued to work on the challenges set forth in Amanda Jean Nyberg’s lesson for the Mighty Lucky Quilting Club.  She suggested a few ideas for creating fabric pulls; not so much to create an actual project, rather just to go through the exercise of gathering fabrics for a certain element. This has been a lot of fun, not as easy as one would think, and a total mess making experience in the sewing room!

For one pull, I selected two pieces of fabric and pulled a selection that would work with them. This is the fabric I selected as the basis.

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Both of these fat quarters are Dear Stella prints. I bought them a long while back and they sit, along with so many others, waiting to be used. For the initial pull, I just quickly selected pieces of yardage or larger scraps  in grays, blues and greens that might work with them.

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Next, I pulled some pinks and reds that complemented the fabric and added different scale and density to the mix.

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I also took a quick minute to put a grayscale filter on the pictures to check for value differences.

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Finally I just put them all together and took out those that were misfits. The Allison Glass text print was a red that leaned to orange. I wanted reds that leaned to pink.  The green floral print looked weird and the Henry Glass light blue print (with the keys on it) was the wrong shade. Ultimately, I kept these in the group.

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This would be a fun pull for a project, right?

Another idea from Amanda was to take a pretty photograph and develop a pull around it. I chose this picture from our peach tree last summer because there are a limited number of colors in it.

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I thought it would be a good challenge to work out a grouping with greens and orange to peachy tones. Here is the first pull.

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Working quickly, so as not to overthink it, I removed both the brightest green and the green/yellow check – both shades were wrong. That left this set of five greens.

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Next I pulled the from the orange, yellow and peach grouping, leaving these.

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All three of the brown fabrics were kept, making this the final pull.

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This is a good pull of cohesive color, different values and large to small scale fabrics. It was very easy to sort through, leaving me convinced that it just takes practice. I doubt myself when I am putting colors together but these little exercises have really been helpful. I think the second pull is more interesting than the first. What could be added to the first one to make it more exciting??

Playtime is over and I forced myself to put all of these pieces back where they belong and get back to the sewing machine. It was fun though and an easy task to do while I endured a wicked cold that Julia so lovingly shared with her mama.

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A few more quick things… I want to share what I think is a really cool event that is coming up next week. Mari, of Academic Quilter is holding a Gratitude Sale. She has decided to do a huge destash (after recently moving, she unpacked her quilting stash and realized there are lots of pieces of fabric that she doesn’t want or need, as well as quilting books and notions). Rather than do a destash sale on IG, she wants to hold a “sale” where the buyer selects the items they are interested in, contributes to a charity and once Mari sees the receipt, she will ship off the fabric. I think this is hugely generous on Mari’s part. She has a list of three very deserving charities for you to choose from. She asks that the buyer pay for the shipping which won’t be terribly expensive with the use of the flat rate envelopes that the post office offers. If you think about it, purchasing fabric in this fashion has now made it a tax deductible event. It’s absolutely a win-win. Mari’s sewing room will be less chaotic, your stash will grow, charities will be supported, and you have another tax deduction come April 15th. I can’t find a problem in any of it! Check out Mari’s sale, running for the duration of next week! See you there. 🙂

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If you want an idea for any book lover on your Christmas list, I just read the sweetest book.

Provided to me for review by Blogging for Books, I read through this book in an enjoyable afternoon. Light and interesting, this book takes approximately 50 sayings from various cultures and explains them to the reader. Ella Sanders, the author of the book, does an excellent job of tying the phrases to a similar phrasing used in the English language. It was entertaining to get this small glimpse into other culture’s idioms and colloquialisms and gave me a bit of insight into what that culture values as important. She chose a collection of phrases and proverbs that are sometimes humorous and always very descriptive. Where possible,Sanders gives a bit of history around how the saying came to be. I think this is an excellent book to gift to a lover of language and vernacular. The illustrations are adorable and the brevity of each page (there is a different colloquialism on each page) makes it a fun book for the coffee table.

Another book I just finished is The Girl on the Train, by Paula Hawkins.  I picked up a copy at the thrift store and it grabbed me from the very beginning. Have you read this? It was a thriller that is along the lines of Gone Girl. Crazy good and on the dark side, this was a gripping read. Just a suggestion if you are in need of a suspenseful, somewhat twisted, read. It has been made into a movie which was just released. I haven’t seen it yet though.

Linking to Lorna at Let’s Bee Social today as well as a few others. Find the URL’s at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Weekly Planning

Last week I hosted To-Do Tuesday for Christine at Stitch All the Things. This was good for me as it gave me a reason to organize my thoughts and make a plan for what I would accomplish that week. List making tends to keep me on task and it worked well last week. I didn’t put very much on the list because my first priority was to finish up the vintage quilt for my guest bed. That took a bit of time but I did finish it. I also finished item two, cut out the second Washi dress I wanted to make and number three, select a book for the Fall Book Share (which I am loving and will tell you about soon). Done and done!

This week, I have ambitious plans.

  1. Finish painting the deck railings for the upper deck of our house. The caps on the railings are forever exposed to cold winters and very warm summers. The wood is constantly contracting and expanding so the paint doesn’t hold well.  I am currently scraping, priming and painting them. Just the caps though. Not each picket because that would take about 907 years and I don’t have the patience. This is an early morning job though because it gets really warm out there after about 10:00 am.
  2. Continue working on my Mighty Lucky Quilting Club challenge for July. This month the challenge was developed by Cheryl Arkinson who is a very talented quilter. I am enjoying this month’s challenge. To be honest, I have been really disappointed with most of the previous month’s challenges. But this one is fun. She talks about creating with only one fabric, using a directional print or large focus fabric. Here is where I am so far.IMG_6836If you follow me on Instagram, you might have seen a post about this. I love where it is headed. Putting all of these blocks together creates an effect that is almost dizzying. Remember the vintage pink striped pillow cases from two weeks ago? This is the same fabric and I will make a throw pillow with this. A modern project to put on my vintage bed. I think it will finish at 21″ square – I can’t remember for sure. My quandry is the same as usual, how do I quilt this? I am at a loss. I want to retain the effect of the stripes, but how? I would really appreciate ideas on this one.
  3. Finish and take photos of the second Washi dress – I’m almost there.
  4. Prep a project for hand stitching. We are going to spend a few days on the coast soon and I want to have something to bring along. I started last night. Remember the Row By Row project I bought in Maine? The two outer blocks are traditional log cabin and I have those about half way there. The center block is a wool applique and I want to work on it during our trip. All that I need to do is finish cutting the shapes and fusing them in place.
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5. Finally, if there is time, and there might not be, I picked the fabrics for the quilt I am going to make for my nephew’s wedding gift. I didn’t have all of the solids that I need so I took advantage of a sale over at Green Fairy Quilts, Judi Madsen’s online shop, and ordered some Kona solids. But I definitely have enough here to start cutting. It is all set up on the dining room table so I can do a bit of cutting here and there. I am pretty excited about this project. This is the first one that I designed myself, using the Quiltography app. (If you are unfamiliar, see this post.)IMG_6839

That is more than enough for this week. Wish me luck and then tell me what is on your list. Also, if you have a second, take another look at my dizzy stripes and tell me how you would quilt it.

Linking to Let’s Bee Social and To-do Tuesday – find the links at the top of the page, under Link Ups.

Looking Forward to 2016!

Happy New Year everyone!!! We enjoyed a very quiet New Year’s Eve with just the three of us at home, a big pot of French Onion Soup and some lazy movie time. The perfect way to end 2015. Between my mom’s heart surgery and my sister defeating breast cancer, our family looks forward to a year of peace and good health.

Last year I wrote a post to set some goals for myself in 2015. I want to take a quick look at those and then set up a few for 2016. Here is what I had hoped to accomplish in 2015:

  1. Finish my three UFO’s
  2. Sew only from my stash
  3. Improve my piecing by slowing myself down while sewing
  4. Improve my photography skills
  5. Study up on quilt restoration

Here is what actually happened.

I did finish all three UFO’s, check! Sewing from my stash was a miserable fail. I was only kidding myself with that one. I think I lasted about ten days before I purchased fabric!  I believe I made huge improvements on my piecing – partially through slowing down, which made the process much more enjoyable. But even more than that, through joining up with Mari’s BOM, Classic Stitches. She chose blocks that had lots of pieces which forced me to really practice a lot. I used a lot of chain piecing with her tutorials and overall, my corners and points are improved. Thank you Mari!! I worked on photography by using a light box at times (mostly for product photos for my Etsy shop), taking a class with a friend who is a photographer and buying a 50mm lens which I absolutely love. The last goal, quilt restoration? Nope, never happened. Not once did I work on this, read about it or even look at the two quilts I want to restore.

The year seemed to fly by.  Here we are again with a fresh new year just ahead. I have a few simple goals, several of which build on last year’s goals.

  1.  UFOs – I have three quilts that are nearly done.  My Kaffe Fassett strip quilt top is finished. I need to sandwich, quilt and bind it.  The baby quilt that I made from the thrifted blocks needs the same; sandwich, quilt and bind it and then send it off to Project Linus. Finally, my Classic Stitches row quilt. The quilt top is not yet done but I have it nearly sashed. Then it needs to be finished as well.  So these three projects are at the top of the list.
  2. Improving my quilting skills. This will be done via a great group that I just subscribed to. It is called The Mighty Lucky Quilting Club. So named because the subscription is sold through Lucky Spool. This is a one year subscription where I will receive a new lesson and project, based on a certain skill, with support and inspiration from a different quilter each month. Some of the twelve awesome teachers are Amanda Jean Nyberg (Crazy Mom Quilts), Allison Glass (fabric designer/pattern writer), Angela Walters (Quilting is My Therapy), and Jacqui Gehring (Tall Grass Prairie Studio). These teachers and the rest of the group are sure to provide some really great instruction and should help me to really advance in my quilting. The cost is very reasonable at $5.00 per lesson or $50 for the whole year.
  3. Write some tutorials. I have only written two and would like to practice this skill. It is also a way of giving back to this community. I have learned so much from other’s and want to contribute.
  4. I will carry over the quilt restoration goal and hope that I will take the time to learn about this so I can work on the two quilts of mine that need restoration.

These goals seem reasonable, thus attainable.  I am especially looking forward to the monthly lesson from the Quilting Club. I have a feeling this is going to be a great way to learn and have fun in this community of ours!  What are you looking forward to in the new year? Whether you are one to set goals or not, I wish you all the best in 2016.