Going on Vacation

I'm leaving tonight to meet up with Bruce in Cody, Wyoming!  He's been on the mainland for three weeks and I MISS HIM LIKE CRAZY! I cant believe tonight is the night to fly out.

I'm leaving you with a picture of "Huelo Sunrise"  - a quilt I finished this week to take to Viewpoints Gallery.  It is approximately 50"x24" and is made with silk that my friend Robin hand dyed.  I have a new love, and it's name is SILK!

Hope your summer is off to a great start.  I'll post when I get back!

Side Projects

I've always wanted to print some cards using images from my quilts, and I finally got to playing around with it.  I like how these turned out.  The pictures are printed on photo paper then spray glued to the card stock.

I'm taking an online quilt class with Laura Cater-Woods right now.  She asked that we have a sketchbook and a notebook for the class, so here are mine:

What kind of quilter would I be if I didn't make a couple of book covers?  The one on the left features scraps of my Kaffe Fasset collection - I knew I was hanging on to those tiny bits for something!  Besides, I love those colors and just looking at the fabrics makes me happy.  The one on the right is made of leftovers from my November class with Carol Taylor at Art Quilt Tahoe.  That reminds me, I'm going to have to finish my quilt from that class - SOON.

BEHOLD!

A new tool! No, it's not for rolling Fimo clay...it was actually purchased for its intended purpose: pasta making.

I must say, I am quite pleased with myself for locating this exotic tool on our quaint little island (do you detect the sarcasm?). After I discovered the delicious recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash and Spinach Lasagne in THIS fabulous book, I was on the hunt for a pasta machine.

I originally thought I would buy the pasta rolling attachment for my Kitchen Aid stand mixer - alas, I did not want to spend $149+ in the event I was once again discouraged from a career in pasta-making. Let me back up a bit...

Many years ago I found a recipe for tri-color pasta ribbons and thought they would make fabulous Christmas gifts for friends and family. Over the course of a very long weekend, I cooked the vegetables for the colors, mixed the pasta, rolled and cut it (using my hand cranked pasta machine much like the one pictured above), and lovingly laid it out on the kitchen counter to dry. We came back to the kitchen several hours later only to discover that our very fluffy Persian cat decided that the pasta made a wonderful bed. EEUUUWWWW. After a good cry, the pasta was dumped in the trash and the machine unceremoniously tossed onto the garage sale pile.

Fast forward 15 or so years, and here I am again with the urge to make fresh pasta, but not at considerable expense just in case I am thwarted again. I found it at Ross for $16.99.

UPDATE:  Pasta turned out great!  Although I don't intend to make a career of it, I'm glad I have the machine.

The Process for Hana Sunrise

I'm back! It's been a LONG TIME since I've posted.  Seems like I just haven't had a single spare minute to do this.  I've really missed it!

The last quilt I finished, Hana Sunrise, was 42"x56".  It was one of the largest pieces I've worked on in my tiny studio, so I thought you'd like to see some of the process.

First, I needed a new, larger design wall.  There wasn't room in the laundry room, so we came up with this:

It's in the garage, but I have a sheet that I can drop over the entire wall to keep it clean.  Plus, I don't leave anything up in there.  I just needed a place to SEE this quilt and stand back from it.

After I fused the bamboo pieces to the background, I stitched them down:

I do this kind of stitching on a layer of batting so I don't get any puckering.  When I go to quilt, I add another layer of batting, then quilt.  My friend Joan turned me on to this concept.  It makes for a nice, sturdy wall hanging.  She discovered after using a single layer of batting that, over the years, the wall hanging tends to lose it's "freshness" and can hang limp.

Then it was time for the quilting, which required a lot of THIS:

Thank goodness we have our own espresso machine now!

The intricate quilting took many, many hours.  Thankfully, both of my machines behaved beautifully during the process.  I was under a very tight deadline to get this completed before the clients returned to Canada, so I was very happy everything worked as it should.

I opened up my folding cutting table to support the weight of this quilt as I sewed.  The silk and two layers of batting were very heavy and the quilting process was exhausting physical work!

Here's a detail shot:

I'm working on one more bamboo piece for the gallery, which I hope to get finished this weekend.  I wanted them to have it before I leave on my trip a week from Friday.  Good thing I have a three-day weekend coming up.

Hana Sunrise

Quick peek at the latest commission: Hana Sunrise.  

I'll post a whole lot more this weekend!