I listened to this fabric speaking to me for a couple of weeks before I finally had some time to play. Here’s texture piece number one:(...)
Read the rest of Embellishments are a girl’s best friends (351 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 12 comments
Post categories: Creativity, Featured, Inspiration, Quilting
Tags: creative spirit, design, embellishments, fabric, texture, workshops

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Today is Boxing Day, but not the one that comes after Christmas in some parts of the world. I spent some time the other day pulling fabrics and other bits from my stash to send to Iraq for the Iraqi Bundles of Love project masterminded by Kristin La Flamme’s awesome husband Art. I pulled out bunches of yardage that I know I’ll never use, as well as some threads that were hanging around and a few trims and bias binding packages that I don’t even know why I have anymore. I’m sure that someone in Iraq will find a good use for these things!

So, Mr. IBOL Guy, there are four boxes headed your way this week! I know that a couple of these boxes are bigger than I think you’d like, but you know how it is ’round here. You can’t always have exactly what you want when you want it. These were the only boxes I could find! And can I just say one more time, “You’re awesome, Mr. IBOL Guy, and an inspiration to the rest of us!”(...)
Read the rest of Operation IBOL–Packaging Up the Love (74 words)

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Post categories: Inspiration, Life, Quilting, Tips
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I was a dressmaker before I was a quilter, so I’ve worked with linen before, but it’s probably been about 20 years since then. And of course, I was sewing clothing with a pattern that was pinned to the linen and cut out, not trying to rotary cut straight strips for a border. This was interesting. The linen kept moving in unanticipated directions at inopportune moments, and generally being a bit odd to work with. My mom would say it’s a PITA; Dad would call it “squirrely.” (...)
Read the rest of Luscious Linen (446 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2009. | Permalink | 14 comments
Post categories: Featured, Inspiration, Quilting
Tags: creative spirit, embellishments, fabric, linen

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(Click on the photo for a larger pic and detail shots.)

I made this quilt for the MAQS New Quilts from an Old Favorites Contest at MAQS; the block theme for the 2006 contest was Dresden Plate. The purpose of the contest is to showcase innovative interpretations of traditional blocks. I’d had two other quilts accepted to the contest in prior years and I really wanted to enter, but couldn’t come up with a design I was happy with until really late in the game.

I’d really sort of given up on entering, and then I was digging through my stacks of in progress work looking for something else entirely, and I came across the pieces for the medallions that were made using a 9° wedge ruler. The idea took shape and I managed to complete the quilt in time for the contest, and the quilt was awarded a Third Place ribbon.(...)
Read the rest of Paisley Pavane arrives home safely! (474 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2008. | Permalink | 4 comments
Post categories: Creativity, Inspiration, Quilting, Shows & Contests
Tags: contests, crystals, Paisley Pavane, Swarovski

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I looked at this piece in the shop, and all I saw were the designs. In my mind I could see these designs on The Misery Quilt, translated into quilting. I’ve been getting closer and closer to the machine quilting on that project while I’ve been trying to figure out what I wanted to do with quilting, and now I know.

The more I look at these pictures now as I’m loading them up, the more I love this piece of furniture. It’s not likely that it will make it’s way home though, for a number of reasons. For one, it’s bigger than a bread box, so there’s no room in the house for it. Two, ITMan doesn’t like it (he said so when we looked at it together) because it has too much carving.

“Too much” was my initial reaction as well, even though I love the designs and they are inspiring my own quilt art. But the more I look at the pictures and think about it, the more I can appreciate it. This thing would completely dominate a room, and you’d just have to plan for that and let it have it’s way. To be honest, I’ve realized that I don’t even know what it was, really. Was it a sideboard, a dresser, or what? I obviously had eyes only for the details!

I can’t wait to start drawing quilting designs!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | One comment
Post categories: Creativity, Inspiration, Quilting
Tags: antiques, machine quilting

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Soft-Edge Piecing,
by Jinny Beyer

After a few really grouchy days (I get like that when I’m creatively stumped), I finally threw in the pencil, and headed to the bookshelf for inspiration. As I’d already been through all my books on borders and design, as well as all the books like the MAQS Founder’s Collection with all its prizewinning beauties, I pulled out Jinny Beyer’s Soft Edge Piecing for starters. I’m working with a border print and the soft edge piecing technique was in the original plan for the quilt way back when, maybe ten plans ago now. I really didn’t expect to have a flash of inspiration at that point, but desperation had set in.

Maybe the quilting goddess is smiling on this quilt (finally!), because I did see something in the Soft Edge Piecing book that had me grabbing for my fabrics to try it out. Here’s the result (click for a larger view):

I really, really like it! I had that “this is it” feeling immediately. The border print looks prefect between the light and dark borders, and I already know exactly how I’ll quilt parts of it, too. (Oh, and you see that tiny little satin stitching? I used the same technique on another part of the borders for this quilt and I used my Pfaff machine. I tried it on the Bernina this time, (...)
Read the rest of Retreating to the comfort zone (493 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 5 comments
Post categories: Creativity, Inspiration, Quilting
Tags: appliqué, creative spirit, design, Pfaff love, quilt plans, The Misery Quilt

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Quilting has been in short supply here since the quilt day with Kristin, but with good reason: I’ve been working fast and furious this week to get a new website up and running for The ALS Association New Mexico Partner. I began researching ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease), when a family member was diagnosed with the disorder early in 2006. It’s really hard to be this far away, and not be able to see her or be with her, or help out if needed. It’s early days and my aunt is doing well, but I wish I lived closer to her. We purchased fabric together when I visited with them in 2005 for a quilt I would make for her and her husband (the quilt that became Stars in my Hand). I had already started work on the quilt, but after the diagnosis, I wondered if I could do more to make the quilt even more special than I already planned for it to be.

I decided to photograph parts of the quilt as it was finished to create a special collection of note cards, postcards, ornaments and treasure boxes for sale called Quilted Whispers, with proceeds to benefit the ALS Association New Mexico Partner. Hoping to reach more people about this special collection and the cause, I created the Quilted Whispers Contest, which you can still enter until the end of June, 2007, and a press release which, sadly, was never picked up by any newspapers as far as I know. At one point, I contacted The ALS Association to try to work with them to start a larger fund raising campaign involving quilts and quilters, somewhat like the Alzheimer’s Art Quilt Initiative created by Ami Simms, but The ALS Association declined my proposed effort.(...)
Read the rest of Stars in my Hand, ALS , and Bright Eyes (234 words)

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Post categories: Inspiration, Life, Musings, Quilting
Tags: Quilted Whispers, Stars In My Hand

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The uncut version: Kloster Schöntal is about one hour from my house, the last 20 minutes or so through little towns and scenic curvy roads. The Black Forest Quilt Guild has held it’s spring Quilt Retreat there every year for the last three, I think, and it’s just wonderful. The monastery has been modernized of course, but not to the point of losing it’s essence. We had a giant well lit room for quilting, and single or double rooms for sleeping. They feed us five times a day (yes, FIVE!): breakfast, coffee and tea break with pretzels and savory pastries, lunch, coffee or tea break with sweet cakes, and dinner, and drinks are available anytime. There’s plenty of room for everyone to spread out everywhere, for relaxing, quilting, talking, quilt basting, Irish dancing (really!), whatever.(...)
Read the rest of Quilt Retreat: Quilt, Eat, Sleep, Repeat! (290 words)

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 3 comments
Post categories: Inspiration, Machines, Quilting
Tags: Bernina love, free motion quilting, machine quilting, quilt days, quilt guild, quilt retreat, UFO's

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Make no mistake, the almost-perfect fabric is indeed here, there’s just not enough of it.

Okay, here’s what happens all too regularly lately when I start quilting (it used to be that I never started quilting, because I never stopped quilting, but lately, life gets in the way most of the time :(): Last night as I went to sleep, I finally had an idea forming about what to do with the in-between parts on this Feathered Star quilt that I’m working on, the one with the borders that prompted the appliqué experiments. By “in-between parts” I mean the parts in between the star in the middle and the appliqué borders. So this afternoon, I sit down to draw out what I want to do on paper, and proceed to play with fabric, and begin to be happy that it looks like what I imagined it would be.

I’m playing along happily and enjoying the process (except for the fusible web part anyway), until I start looking at the whole thing together, the Feathered Star in the middle, the setting blocks around it, and the appliquéd borders, and I decided that the green is too, um…green and boring and there’s too much of it all together there, and I’d rather use something lighter between the center and the border.

A search ensues, and I find nothing in my stash that will work, it’s Sunday, and even if the Gussy Goose was open today they probably wouldn’t have what I needed anyway. Make no mistake, the almost-perfect fabric is indeed here, there’s just not enough of it. I say “almost” perfect, because if it was really perfect, it might not have flowers on it. This could be the story of my quilting life, and it happens so often that when it doesn’t happen, it’s a Quilting Warm Fuzzy Feeling occasion. If I had enough of this lighter green, I’d use it in the curvy parts on the setting squares around the star, and in the space between the star and the borders as you see it here. It just adds more sparkle to the whole thing. Sadly, it’s not to be, at least not today.

This is one of the problems that can come up when you design as you go along, I suppose. This search for the perfect fabric is sometimes comical, really. I decide I need something else, and start digging through my carefully-sorted-by-color stacks of fabric, and sometimes, like today, I find the perfect (or almost perfect) thing, but there’s not enough yardage to make it work. Further digging yields nothing, and I continue to paw through stacks, and even look at other projects in progress thinking to sabotage them in favor of the current one. Usually I know better from the start, since I have an amazing memory for fabrics and patterns and I have a really good idea what’s in my fabric stash, and I know in the beginning that there’s probably nothing there.

There are those occasions when a fabric shortage and the resulting desperate search produces serendipitous creative solutions to the problem and the quilt is better for it in the end, but that just doesn’t happen all the time. It’s not happening today, for sure. I’ve looked and looked, even tried to sabotage, and it’s just not going to work. So, my creativity has been derailed completely, and I think I have to find something else to do at this point, like cook dinner or something equally boring. This project is officially on hold until the two quilt shops nearby are open again on Tuesday. sigh Hear me Birgit?? I’ll be coming your way on Tuesday!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments
Post categories: Creativity, Inspiration, Quilting
Tags: appliqué, creative spirit, fabric

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And it’s even mostly finished! This is the new project that I started so that I would have a quilt to use for the Swarovski crystals demo at the guild in March, and I do love the way it turned out. I think if I had to do it again, I would use a different batting, probably a very low loft cotton or something like that. I used a chunk of polyester that I had around, and it’s kinda over-puffy, which I usually like, but for an artsy quilt like this it’s not quite right. I think I discovered this once before, maybe, but as I usually don’t do these types of quilts, it didn’t stick in my head. Live and learn, again. That’s what I love about quilting: there’s always more to learn, and sometimes you even get more than one opportunity to learn something!!

My mom liked it so much, she said “Oooooo - I LOVE that one!” and “As a matter of fact, it would be perfect on a wall in the new house…” Since I had thought that I would eventually ask if my Mom and Dad liked it enough to have it, I took the “hitting you over the head with a brickbat” hint (as she put it!) and told her it was hers!

It really needed to be their quilt anyway, since it made me think of the aspen trees in Pine Valley, Utah, where my parents and I used to camp and hike when I was a kid. I do have some fond memories of those camping trips when I was little, even though camping wasn’t (and isn’t) my thing, and I’m positive that I was a complete pain about it all back then (and oh, am I getting paid back in spades by my own daughter now!).

I could hear the breeze in the aspen trees in my head when I looked at this piece, so I quilted tree trunks in the left border area, waving lines in the middle for wind, and aspen leaves in the right border. I will add a few Swarovski crystals to it before it becomes part of Mom and Dad’s collection. I named the quilt Aspens on my Mind. See bigger pics in the Gallery and let me know what you think!

© Nadine for DreamWeaver's Quilts Quilt Epiphany Blog, 2007. | Permalink | 2 comments
Post categories: Creativity, Inspiration, Quilting
Tags: batting, crystals, finishing, gifts, Swarovski, variegated threads

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