Monthly Archives: May 2010

Addition of the Quilting Annex

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Our son bought his own place and moved out on his own in April. When he was living at home, his bedroom was the room just off my studio. Once the space was vacated, I seized the opportunity to occupy the additional real estate and my Quilting Annex was born!

My husband and I got busy and painted the walls in the new space and made a trip to IKEA to buy some more cabinets to add much needed storage. These are pictures of the new space.
This is the view you see as you enter my longarm studio. To the right is the door to my new Quilting Annex.

This is the view from across the room looking back towards the door into my longarm studio.


This is the view from the side of the longarm studio. The picture was taken while standing in the doorway of the Annex.


This is the view of the opposite side of the room looking into the Annex.

This is a picture taken from inside the Quilting Annex. Storage surrounds my worktable.


The bottom half of the shelving units houses my stash. Fabrics in my stash are organized in colour groupings. The top sections of the shelving units are open and house UFO’s and fabrics that have been committed to projects not yet started.

The white boxes in this picture house UFO’s. The clear totes to the right of the white boxes house strips and squares organized in various size groupings. These boxes are used to make the scrap quilts that I love so much.

I have room for all my quilting books and magazines within reach of my worktable.

And here I am working on my Scrap Chevron Log Cabin blocks. You can see my laptop on my work surface. My laptop allows me to quilt and chat with my quilting friends living in Alabama, Oregon, and Wisconsin via Messenger.

A tour of my studio would not be complete without checking in with Joey. This is Joey’s favorite spot to sit in my studio–the windowsill. From this vantage point Joey can keep an eye on everything that moves through the yard and down the street.
This picture is for Linda. Our rhubarb seems to be enjoying the rainy weather we have had this spring. Those large leaves are so suited to trapping the rain. Rhubarb grows like a weed here. I wish I could send you some, Linda!

Progress on my Seminole Quilt

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This is my Seminole quilt so far.

I ended up re-doing the first row. The fabrics I had originally made this row from ended up blending together too much – not near enough contrast.

The problem I had with this quilt was that I had way too many chicken fabrics that I wanted to add to this project. I kept adding bits from my stash and in the end I have ended up with a piece that is 42″ x 71″. At this point I should be adding borders. However, to keep this quilt from being just a long skinny quilt, I may have to add some Seminole piecing to the side(s) before adding the borders.

This project has really challenged me. I continued to modify, rearrange and change options right up until all the rows were finally sewn together. As I took the picture tonight of the progress so far I find myself contemplating more options. This project will definitely not be “finished” for a while yet!

Seminole Workshop

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On Saturday, I attended Carol Piercy’s Seminole Cinco workshop. The first two pictures are of Carol’s quilts. These quilts were beautiful — far more beautiful than they are showing up in these pictures.

To see more of Carol’s great quilts, visit her website at: http://www.carolsquilts.ca/
Carol is a great teacher. She showed us a few tricks that we can use in the assembly of our Seminole pieced rows. Several people could be heard oohing and ahhhing as she explained some techniques that make assembly of the rows so much easier.
I decided to use some of my chicken fabric collection and this is what I have come up with so far. I have two complete rows of Seminole piecing and part of a third row complete. There are 5 Seminole pieced rows and several filler rows between those rows in this particular quilt pattern.
I have started to lay out my pieced rows and filler bits on my design floor to see what my quilt might look like. Carol warned us that it would take a while to figure out the order that we might want to sew our rows together. Carol explained how to audition the various colours and fabrics for our rows so that we can achieve balance in our finished project.
This was an excellent workshop! I have already picked out the next piece of border fabric from my stash that will be the inspiration point for my next Seminole quilt.
And lastly, a picture of blossoms on my African Violet. The contrast of the purple flowers against the deep green leaves is beautiful!

Strips, Strings, and Leftovers

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I have been busy playing with my bin of strips, strings, and bits again. I love making blocks from that jumble of fabric. This time, I have been making half log cabin blocks. These blocks are rather mindless and low stress. There is no matching of intersections or points, just fun sewing! Once I had a few blocks made, I tried out some layouts on the “design floor”.

This layout was inspired by, “Mumbo Gumbo”.

Linda thought this layout looked a little dimensional–like blocks that are overlapping one another.

This is my favorite layout–on point in a chevron design.

The funny thing about that bin of strips, strings, and leftovers–no matter how many blocks I make, the pile does not seem to go down at all! I swear these things multiply when you aren’t looking!