Are you a Downton Abbey fan? I AM! Big time. So, when the series ended, I decided to throw a viewing party for the finale. Of course, there would be tea and china, and flowers as well. I had great fun deciding on the menu and prepping the table. The menu included hot tea with…
The prize winners at the Daytona Beach AQS quilt show were quite wonderful. These are some of my favorites. Claudia Pfeil’s Fern Rising won Best of Show and it was very well deserved. The shadows added to the fern shapes made it look extremely 3D. Plus, the use of sheer fabrics (for the spirals) and an…
For me, one of the highlights of the AQS Daytona Beach quilt show was SAQA’s exhibit “People and Portraits.” Even though I had seen these pieces before, I thoroughly enjoying studying them again. Mary Pal’s cheesecloth portraits were some of my favorites. This one is called Homeless Love. As you can see, she shapes tiny bits of…
After studying my quirky fabrics, I decided to work with the yellow-green silk that had been screen printed. I knew I wanted to play up the red design with more red accents. Then, I threw in blue and yellow for good measure. After just a little arranging I remembered, “Oh yeah, I’m not really good…
I’m very comfortable using commercial and hand-dyed fabrics in my creations, but I have a few quirky fabrics that I have to treat differently. Things that ravel, ones that melt, and thin silks. I recently pulled out a few of these to think about how I might use them. The yellow-green fabrics are the result…
If you’ve done much machine quilting you’ve probably had some “friendly” quilts. You know, the wavy ones? This is pretty standard for me so I correct the problem by blocking my quilts. Take this quilt for instance. Pretty bad, right? But, a combination of stretching, pinning, and steaming turned it into this perfectly flat quilt….
My sister and I had a great time attending a recent scarf dying class. Taught by my good friend, Jo-Ann Jensen, she provided me with plain silk, knowing that I’d want to use it in quilts. Of course! She first taught us how to do a tie-dye sort of thing. She calls her geodes. Well,…
My latest piece, Coastal Overlook, is now complete. It’s about 30″ x 40″ and I’m pretty happy with it. If you’ve been following my blog you know that this quilt was inspired by a drive along the Pacific Coast Highway in California. I wanted to abstract it and, for me, that’s the tricky part. I want to hit…
To say that my Floral Improv students rocked it is an understatement. After a little instruction, they jumped right into drawing and cutting free-form flowers. Then, they learned a little about composition and design considerations and gave that a try. Along the way they were not afraid to try new things and they received suggestions beautifully….
Color was everywhere as I taught Floral Improv for the first time. Just look at the backdrop I had for my demo board! After only a short while students were making free-form daisies and poppies in a myriad of hues. Oh what fun we were having! Even the scraps were beautiful. This was a “guinea…