Red & White Inspiration

As a redhead I have had an aversion to red most of my life.  We were told not to wear  it because it clashed with our hair. I do remember as a young child, having a red room. The carpet was red and I also remember having a record player with a red cover that zipped to close.  My mother was not afraid of color.  But, I never wore red and I never used red in any of my quilts, unless it was a patriotic quilt.  I did admire others who wore red or made beautiful quilts using red fabric. 

In 2011, there was an amazing exhibit in NYC with 650 red and white quilts on display in a most unusual setting.  It was called "Infinite Variety: Three centuries of red and white quilts".  I took the bus up from Philadelphia to New York with a few friends. When I walked into the  Park Ave Armory, I was overcome with emotion.  The sheer vision of all of these two color quilts hanging from the ceiling spiraling down to the floor, was breathtaking and brought me to tears. 

That was more than 6 years ago.  It inspired me and from then on, a red & white quilt was on my bucket list.  Now I can finally check it off. Here's my original pattern, Funkytown 

and meet Funkytown Version 2.0

I love this quilt.  It is so dramatic in scrappy red and white fabrics.  Funkytown is one of my Curvalicious patterns, but instead of it having a vertical orientation, it is block based, 16 blocks.

Is a Red & White quilt on your bucket list?  Did you see the quilt exhibit in NYC?

If you want to read more about my visit to the exhibit and see more of the quilts, 

CLICK HERE.

Beach Therapy

Who doesn't love the sound of the waves crashing at the beach, or the smell of the salt air, or wiggling your toes in the wet sand?  This is what inspired my June quilt.  As an Island Batik Ambassador, we are given an assignment each month to complete with fabric that they sent me back in January.  This month the theme is Curvalicious! 

How perfect for me and my Curvalicious template!  

I have created lots of different Curvalicious items, so I thought it would be fun to create a different quilt for this monthly challenge. I had a stack of Island Batik fabrics that just arrived in quilt shops.  They had lots of fun designs.

 There was a wide variety of fabrics and  I pinned a few of them to my design wall and let it marinate for a few days.  With the 4th of July coming up some of the fabrics made me think of the beach, so I pulled out the lighter fabrics that reminded me of sand. 

I thought this would be a good opportunity to share a tutorial to create another variation on a Curvalicious quilt.  Usually the quilts are vertically oriented, but what  would it look like if the strips were placed horizontally? The concept behind a Curvalicious quilt is a pieced background with fusible appliques placed over the background.  The first step is to piece together 5- 1/2" strips.  I used 8  cream colored fabrics to make strips.

The next step is to cut 4" strips, the same length and iron paper backed fusible web to the wrong side.  I used pale blues.  

Remove the paper, fold it in half with the fusible side out.  

Place one edge of the Curvalicious  template on the fold and cut out the Curvalicious applique using a 28mm rotary cutter, The result is fusible curvy strips - one less than the number of pieced strips.

Start at the center and place on the of the applique strip over the center seam.  Press.

Stitch the strips down as they are fused with a machine blanket stitch.

This Superior Fantastico  thread was also given to me with the fabric.  It's a shiny polyester and I do love shiny.  It really stitches beautifully and I will definitely add it to my thread acquisition list.

Proceed to add the rest of the fusible strips, working out from the center, using Curvalicious for placement. Press.

Keep going until all of the seams are covered  with the fusible strips.

For the top and bottom borders, I used the font AR Christy, font size 500, to create fusible letters and stitched them down with the same blanket stitch that I used above with a blue/green Fantastico thread.

Then add the word borders to the top and bottom and quilt!

Wouldn't this look great in a beach house?

I grew up on Long Island and we called the ocean/sane the beach.  I live in the Philadelphia area and it's called the shore. I'm curious, what is it called where you live?

If  you are interested in seeing lots of other quilts that you can make with Cirvalicious, check out its website:

www.Curvalicious.net

You can buy Curvalicious from my Etsy shop.  Click HERE.

It's Monday, Again

It felt so good to sleep in my own bed last night after arriving home from the BIG quilt show in Paducah. There are two not to miss in a lifetime quilt shows in the US.  One is Paducah and the other is located in Houston.  When I was asked if I would like to have a booth at Paducah to sell Curvalicious, I said yes without hesitation.  Then I found out my spot was located not in the Convention Center, but in The Pavilion, affectionately known as The Bubble.  Paducah was a whirlwind of activity.  The entire city supports this show.  As a vendor in The Bubble, my view of the show was limited.

But, it turned out The Bubble was a great place to be.  There were lots of other vendors, easy parking and a great exhibit of Victoria Findlay Wolfe's quilts.

This is a quilt she called "The Beast".  I needed to be in the photo so that you could see the scale.  It measures 9' x 30' and is really called "A Garden For All Seasons".  I saw a photo of her on Instagram stitching the binding on by hand!

The nice thing about being located in The Bubble was that there was lots of light.  I never order electricity because it costs beaucoup bucks, so I don't have electrical lighting.  This natural lighting was the best!

So The Bubble became my entire world during the length of the show. 

The crowds were crazy at some times during the day.

Whenever I am vending, I try to get to my booth early before the show opens so I can walk around and see what the other vendors have, maybe do a little shopping and to see some quilts on exhibit.

The city of Paducah is quite artsy and they really support the quilt show.  We rented a house to stay in to accommodate my travel companion, aka Bailey, so I was able to see parts of the city while driving back and forth to the show. Here is a view of my visit from the passenger seat of my car.

Paducah had Pop Up Shops  before they became the current rage. Lots of empty stores get rented by small independent business owners for the week.  You can walk down many streets and run into a sale or a specialty shop.

It's a wonderful experience and I saw lots of girlfriends shopping together and laughing together and eating together.  There was a group of 9 women who met and came together as Air Force wives.  They meet every year at Paducah and choose a challenge for the next year.  A connection happened in my booth and they decided that Curvalicious would be their challenge for next year.  I was so thrilled and excited. I told them I would supply a prize. 

 I have a year to come up with something special.  I can't wait!

We arrived home on Sunday, and I wish I could chill on Monday, but  on Tuesday and Wednesday, I'll be at Byrne Sewing Connection in Doylestown, PA for 2 lectures and a workshop.  I think there are still spaces if you're interested.  215-230-9411

On Friday, I'll be starting a new feature on my blog called "Stitchography".  I'm hoping you will really enjoy it and it might inspire your entrepreneurial spirit.  There will be interviews with various professionals in the fiber industry.  Stay tuned.

It's Monday

I'm always on the lookout for ways to improve my communication with people who are interested in what I do and to grow my audience.  Recently, I was reading an article about how to have an unsuccessful blog.  Who would want to spend all that time writing a blog post, thinking about interesting content and moving the photos into the right spot for uploading if they wanted to be unsuccessful? It sounds silly, but I guess the title was to grab your attention, and it grabbed mine.  I felt pretty good reading the article.  The tip that would make me an unsuccessful blogger is that my posts are erratic.

The other day, this message was brought home to me.  My husband is not really into much soial media, but the other day hes mentioned that he was looking forward to someone's blog that he reads every Friday.  That surprised me, but it showed me that people do indeed look for certain blog posts on certain days of the week.

So starting with this post, I am committing to blog every Monday, thus the name "It's Monday".  Now that I have a monthly newsletter and post frequently on Instagram, a weekly post seems just the right frequency to blog.

This is my quilt that I created with a new line of fabric from Riley Blake, designed by Betz White called Juxtaposey.  The llamas caught my eye, and I have a certain DIL that loves llamas.  I named the quilt " Llama Kisses" and I constructed it with Curvalicious both to make the blocks and to create the scalloped border.

I started out with a plan to make a 9 patch.

I wasn't happy with how it looked so I eliminated a bunch of blocks and made it into a 4 patch.

It looked a little plain to me.  Curvalicious to the rescue to create a scalloped border.  I find that it's easier to attach  the binding to the border after it is quilted and before trimming.  

The first step is to mark the border.  Any pen will work because it will end up being the cutting line.  I  like to use one that I can see easily.  

To form the corner curve, use a circular template, like a plate or plastic templates in one corner. 

Copy it onto a piece of parchment paper and use it to create identical curves in each of the other 3 corners.

Since I had a limited amount of fabric for the binding, I had to use straight grain binding, even though I would have preferred bias binding. I make double fold French binding.   I lined up the raw edges of the binding with the line I drew using Curvalicious.  The good news is that since the curve was so gentle, straight grain worked just fine.  After stitching, trim along the marked line being careful not to cut into the quilt and then turn the binding to the back and stitch it down.

I do have a video on YouTube that demonstrates using Curvalicious for binding. 

 Click this LINK to be redirected.

And I created the backing to use up the extra fabric.

 What a sweet little quilt and it looks like Spring is finally here! Check your local quilt shop for Juxtaposey and maybe you'll make Llama Kisses.