Quilting Arts 10th Anniversary Postcard Quilts

Years ago I made a list of goals that I wanted to accomplish during my life. I don't know what happened to the list, but I do remember one of the items. I wanted to have a quilt of mine on the front cover of a quilting magazine. Haven't achieved that yet, but when Quilting Arts was celebrating their 10th year anniversary, they put out a request for tiny postcard sized quilts featuring the number ten. I decided that not only did I want to feature the number 10 for them, I wanted to feature my 40 some years of quilting, sewing and embroidery so I made this little quilt. Today while checking out the Quilting Arts website, I discovered that they had posted my quilt! You can see it here.
In such a small project, it was difficult to show everything, but two of the fabrics were from my first two dresses that I made for myself that I then used for scraps in my first quilt. Hard to believe that I still had some of those scraps after all this time. Other fabrics were from other quilting projects. One was a piece of batik that I picked up on a cruise with Doreen Speckmann years ago. Many significant bits and pieces.

Well I haven't had a quilt on the front cover yet, but one has been published. I haven't written a lengthy article on sewing to be published,but have had many letters to the editor published. I feel that these are all small steps towards achieving my goals and someday hopefully I will get there. If I don't, at least it wasn't because I haven't been trying!

Missing Art Quilts

Please help 4 quilts come home! Following a quilt exhibition, 4 quilts remain missing. Please check this blog to see pictures of the missing quilts and to find out how to contact the owner if you see them up for sale or at any other place. Two of them were made by Sarah Smith, who just posted a 3-part article on the Jamone site about free motion quilting.

Quilt Ideas

Just as I was going to bed last night, I was hit with an incredible idea for the art quilt I am making. Of course, I then laid in bed trying to figure out how I could accomplish it and then couldn't get to sleep. This latest project of mine is so much fun as I attempt to use as many techniques as possible without making a hodge podge of it. The theme is "A Few of My Favorite Things". So far it includes fabric weaving, applique, piecing, decorative machine stitching, hand embroidery, and 3 dimensional work. Lots to do for it yet, but it is so nice not to be working under a time pressure and instead of chopping ideas because of lack of time, I'm eager to work on as many different things as I can. Hoping tonight to finish up a needlepoint piece that will be incorporated into the piece. What fun! Every should have a great creative hobby like sewing!!!

I'm so glad for inspirational books that allow me to dream and then help me to figure out how to make the dreams reality. Quilting Arts is a good one especially as I just discovered the magazine this year. I'm going to try to get the back issues as apparently some of the stories are included in this book which fascinates me.

Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter

This is a review of  Design Explorations for the Creative Quilter: Easy to Follow lessons for dynamic art quilts by Katie Pasquini Masopust that I posted on Amazon. I think it is a great book and gave it five stars. If you are looking for help in making art quilts, this book should be a big help to you.

I have long held an interest in quilting after having started my first quilt around 40 years ago. But at this point all the beds have quilts and so do most family members. Time to do some more creative quilting. As I have studied Art Quilts over the last few years, at times I have found myself not understanding at all what the quilter was intending and even why anyone thought that ugly piece was worth a prize. I still find some art pieces to be truly ugly but with the help of instructional books I am beginning to understand more about what the quilter was trying to accomplish and I have decided that I too would like to make an art quilt. So this book along with others got put on my Wish List and this one became a Mother's Day gift to me from my son. Realizing he only got it because of its location on the list and the price, all I can say is he did a great job picking out a book!

This book talks about art quilts in ways that are understandable and then has activities to do to break those binding fears of "I'm not an artist" and "I'm not creative". Reading through the different projects, I realized that yes I could do these things and maybe I too could be successful at making an art quilt. Consider that one of the projects in the book is to paint blindfolded with an assistant playing different types of music and helping you to move and have the color of paint you want for the tune. I'm sure they are also there to keep you from accidentally painting the walls and wayward children and pets but that isn't the point - you will be painting with a blindfold on! Then you take off the blindfold, observe what you have done, find spots on the paper that you especially like and make it into a quilt. I told my husband about this and he got enthusiastic and volunteered to help paint with me and I already have bought my paints. That is just one of ten exploration exercises the author has in the book. The book is filled with many color photo illustrations of the author's exercises and the finished quilts made from them and also her students work.

The only real weakness I found in the book was the actual making of the quilts themselves. I would have like to see more detail in making them as these aren't your typical patchwork quilts, they are basically machine pieced or appliquéd and she only spent 4 pages on that part. However, I have plenty of books on making quilts in my reference library, it is the creativity lessons that I need and appreciated as they give you a jumping off spot to venture out into the great unknown or art quilting.