Week in Review 2013 - 10/10

Detail from Express Your Love II

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

"When life gives you lemons, make lemonade." I have been doing my utmost to make it a lemonade week. I had high hopes for starting work on ZenBlossoms when I tracked my thread shipment on Sunday and saw it had left Billings, MT and arrived at a shipping center just outside of Milwaukee, two hours from my home. For sure I would have my order by Monday, Tuesday at the latest. When it didn't arrive on Tuesday I checked the tracking again. The lemons rained down. The package was sent back to Billings, MT.  GRRRR! Not only don't I have my thread, but I have the added pleasure of having to explain the situation and seek a resolution from the vendor. The jury is still out on how this is going. So, where is the lemonade? I have spent the week working on Express Your Love II and trying out a few more free motion quilting motifs. I wouldn't have been nearly so far along with these projects, if I hadn't had the "bonus" days to work on them.


1) Finish a bobbin's worth of FMQ on each of my three studio days on ZenBlossoms - No thread yet, so this project remained on hold.

2) Leah Day's weekly assignments


Do whatever assignments Leah comes up with next. 



a) Foundation Piecing - Boy did I get a lot done on this. I finished piecing the red braided section and turned the edge(s) on all seven pieces in preparation for appliqué. It is just loosely positioned together on my photography backdrop to give you an idea of how the seven foundation pieced tresses will look together.

Tresses for Express Your Love II
are pieced and turned.

b) Free Motion Quilting - I experimented with three different free motion quilting motifs. Front and center is my own design that I am planning to fill the petals of ZenBlossoms with. It reminds me of undulating seaweed. Just below the seaweed is a horizontal version of Leah's Wiggly Maze. The tear drop shapes on the right is Leah's Fractured Paisley. All three motifs allowed me to practice my travel stitching and the Fractured Paisley is a great one for echo quilting practice.

The sampler using variegated polyester thread was a good
place to learn a few more free motion quilting motifs.

3) Visioning Project - Read and practice the next two Facebook tutorials. - I set up a Fan Page! I need to flesh it out more. I plan on updating my Fan Page weekly, just as I do my website and blog. 

I will be taking the next two weeks off from blogging. When I return I plan on: 

1) Finishing a bobbin's worth of FMQ on each of my three studio days on ZenBlossoms

2) Leah Day's weekly assignments


Do whatever assignments Leah comes up with next. 

a) Foundation Piecing

b) Free Motion Quilting

3) Visioning Project - Read and practice the next  Facebook tutorials. 


I am now linking up to two blogs on Friday's. The first is Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and the second is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.

Week in Review 2013 - 10/04

Tips, Thoughts and Techniques:

I spend a fair amount of time organizing, prioritizing and pondering things I want to do. Sometimes my plans can't be carried out due to happenstance. Sometimes, more often than happenstance, my plans don't get done because I am human. Life is full of so many delightful distracting pleasures. Just this morning I was mulling over how I would start this post. The quote "Life is short. Eat dessert first," sprang to mind. I figured I better find out who said it. This of course led to surfing the web where I learned that the original quote was "Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first." It was Ernestine Ulmer who is attributed to be the originator of the quote. Ernestine Ulmer? I'd never heard of her. Naturally, I had to find out who she was. Surprise, surprise, she is best known for being the originator of "Life is uncertain. Eat dessert first." Now we all know. Let's get to dessert, which for me is working in my studio and getting my art out in public.

My dessert consumption for the week went like this:

1) Complete Call for Entry for Nestling Oysters - Done!

2) ZenBlossoms  

a) Transfer pattern for ZenBlossoms to fabric. - Done!

Back side of ZenBlossoms

I have been dissatisfied with every method I have tried in the past to transfer a pattern to black fabric. I was convinced that there must be a better way. Here is what I came up with:

1) Instead of transferring my pattern to the black background fabric, I transferred its mirror image to white muslin. Why? I can see the pattern through white muslin, but not black cotton.

2) I layered the quilt starting with the black cotton, then batting and finally the white muslin.

3) I pin basted the quilt sandwich white side up.

4) I machine quilted/basted along the pattern using a pale coral thread as my top thread (I can't see white on white) and a mid value blue thread in the bobbin, so I could see it against the black and it would blend in with the secondary colors I will eventually quilt with.

5) I removed the pin basting from the white/backside. Then I pin basted the large open areas on the black front side.

b) Layer and baste quilt. - Done!

c) Stitch pattern from the backside so that the bobbin thread marks the pattern on the top side. - Done!

This is the front side of ZenBlossoms.
It will finish at around 48" H x 32" W

d) Let the free motion quilting begin. - I am still waiting for my thread order to arrive. 

3) Leah Day's weekly assignments


Do whatever assignments Leah comes up with next. 

a) Foundation Piecing - Done!

Confession - One of the reasons I struggle so with Leah's free form foundation piecing methods is that I am spatially challenged. I find it excruciatingly difficult to work out how fabric will flip from back to front. Since this method is done by "eye" it took me 45 minutes (I actually timed it) to figure out how to layer the first piece that required thought. The section you see here has taken more than 4 hours. Practice is definitely helping. However, even in the groove I only add 10 swatches in an hour. I figure I have another 8 hours to go.

Start of the braided tress for Express Your Love II

b) Free Motion Quilting - Done!

Feathered Noodle motif

Free motion quilting is a totally different story. I barely have to watch Leah's videos before I have worked out the pattern. Some I can work out just by looking at the finished project. I might have named this latest motif Elephant Ears. It reminds me of the pastries.  Before I started practicing free motion quilting on a weekly basis, feathers were as diabolical as free form foundation piecing. Now, I don't even have to think, Feathered Noodle flowed easily. This is one I think I will return to again and again. 

4) Visioning Project - Read and practice the next two Facebook tutorials. - Guess I should have checked my list. I did one tutorial and thought that was all I had scheduled for myself.

5) Pictorial Painting - Face "Canyon." - Hip, Hip, Hurrah! - DONE!!! 

"Canyon" was made as one of the assignments in Pictorial Painting,
a class of Craftsy.com taught by Annette Kennedy.

Facings is one of my least favorite aspects of quilting. It definitely doesn't count as dessert. It is more like eating liver. It does feel great to be done with it.

I'm hoping next week will be a dessert buffet, but it looks like quilting ZenBlossoms may have to wait. I just checked my thread order and see it headed to Montana instead of Wisconsin. My zip begins 549 and it went to 594. Thank goodness I have Leah's assignments to fall back on.

1) Finish a bobbin's worth of FMQ on each of my three studio days ZenBlossoms

2) Leah Day's weekly assignments


Do whatever assignments Leah comes up with next. 

a) Foundation Piecing

b) Free Motion Quilting

3) Visioning Project - Read and practice the next two Facebook tutorials. 


I am now linking up to two blogs on Friday's. The first is Leah Day's Free Motion Quilting Project and the second is Nina Marie's Off the Wall Fridays.