Workshops

So this was from my first day at the free motion quilting workshop.  It is amazing to me what just simple doodling and some practice can produce!  These are mostly feathers, peacock feathers, flower, a couple of hearts and some leaves.  Don't worry if you are having a hard time picking out anything specific.  It was just a practice piece!

And this week for my art quilt class I spent six hours, from the time Andrew left for work until he came back home again working on this part of the statute.  That's right, you can't really tell too much of the detail yet because it is so small but that is actually two rows of tiles at the bottom.  I just couldn't believe it when Andrew walked through the door and I realized that I had been at this project for a day and this was all I had to show for it.  But the pieces are so small that you have to place them using tweezers and then trying to get them ironed on in the right place is not always the easiest of tasks.  But believe me, trying to remove them is even harder!

And this is my day of work actually at art quilt class this week.  Again, six hours of work represented here.  This is the beginning of the background for the statute.  I also learned that the quilt will be built in layers and quilted in layers.  By the time it is all completed I will have quilted around four to five layers to get the desired effect.  Here's hoping I finish it and it is even half as good as I hope it is.  I already know this one will be a keeper!

I am still trying to figure out how to get about another six hours out of my day.  Twenty four just doesn't seem like enough these days!

An engineer's mind at work,

Our quilt group flew in a lady, Cheryl Olssen, from Vancouver to do workshops on quilt design and free motion quilting.  I have a couple of tops in the closet but nothing that I wanted to practice on so I asked Andrew to help me cut out some fabric to assemble quickly into a new top.  My only challenge was that the fabric I chose needed to be fussy cut and then the squares will be positioned on point.  That means I need a very specific portion of the fabric and it has to cut so the square sits point-to-point instead of level.  Does that makes sense?  Anyway, I put Andrew on the task and not only did he figure it out but he came up with the great ideal that we should draw the outline of the horses on the ruler with a dry erase marker so that we could easily line up the square again to cut more.  Just another great bonuse to being married to an engineer!  So, hopefully, I will be turning these squares into french braid runs and will have a top to take to the workshop and learn lots of new technics to incorporate into my quilting.  As a bonus, we have just been asked to help host Cheryl so that should give me some great one-on-one time with the teacher and she can help me with my working on my quilt frame.  Our very first house guest here.  Things just keep getting better!

 

Now, for those of you who are suffering with the cold weather, I thought I would share a photo of the plants outside our front door in the sunshine.  We have had a really mild winter so far and I am really enjoying the color that it adds to the front of the house.  Our houseboy, Abbas, planted these before Christmas and they go down the stairs on both sides of the house.  And an extra treat is that he bought several basil plants and added them into the pots as greenery and now I have fresh basil to cook with!

This a picture from our friends in France, John and Jane.  They live about 20 km away from our house and a little further up on a hill.  But I thought it was beautiful the way the fog is frozen in the air outside their front door.  Of course when we are living there in the cold it might not be so beautiful!

Art Quilt and Hubby Sewing

A lot of you know that I started an Art Quilt class in December.  I took several photos to class as possible projects and the one that Paramjeet (teacher) and I picked was a statute in front of the Grand Palace in Bangkok.  Actually what we decided was that I would try to do the statute from the neck up and that this would probably take me about six months to do the construction and then another six months to do the thread work to complete it.  If at the end of that part I feel motivated I may continue with the rest of the statute.  I know it probably doesn't look like much but this is one month's work and all those different shades in the ear and beginning of the helmet are individual tiny pieces that have to drawn and then cut and attached in exactly the right position.  Andrew has shown a little interest in this project as it appeals to his engineering side with all the angles and shading and he likes to use the exacto knife to cut them out.  If he agrees to help me some then I may be able to move onto the background and let him work on the actual statute part.  I am really hoping that it works out this way as at our last quilt group meeting of the year Paramjeet announced that her husband's contract expired December 30th and they will have to return to India soon.

Andrew has had a few days off work during the holidays and we haven't really left the house much.  Between baking, sewing, french lessons, band practices, and band gigs we just felt like spending the rest of the time chilling at home.  We loaded the floral kaledioscope onto the quilt frame and I needed some side leaders to take up the tension.  I told Andrew what I was thinking about and he took over the project.  He cut the dow rods to size and found an old garment bag that had reinforced binding on the edges and attached that to a piece of canvass to make the leaders nice and strong.  He is sewing it all together here and I have to say he did a great job!

Now, I just need to finish quilting the kaledioscope and get the french braid on the frame in order to finish it in time for the Dubai show!  I could have entered the Kuwait show last year but we were out of the country.  The show isn't until February but I have to deliver the quilt to Dubai by January 20th.  I am really nervous as this will be my first show and the judges are Ricky Tims and Bonnie McCaffrey.
Oh, and behind Andrew you can see my new design wall in the sewing room.  It's huge and I love it!  I have been playing around with a challenge that we have for January which is to create a mini quilt that represents our country or origin.  As there is more then one American I have an idea to incorporate both America and Texas into my quilt.  Now, just need a few more hours in my day.....