Monday, February 17, 2014

Celebrating our Love

On Valentine's Day, my husband and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary. Yes...we were sappy enough to get married on Valentine's Day. When we first started dating, there were two things he asked for ...some day......a short engagement and he wanted to wear tails. So, when we got engaged during a Thanksgiving weekend the year before...it seemed that given my then school schedule (I was the Associate Dean of Engineering at a University), February might be the best time to get married...well, Valentine's Day it was!! Although you can't see his 'tails' in this photo, he was wearing them. It set the 'tone' for the wedding..quite formal (he is of British heritage), so I thought of Princess Diana's wedding and some of the unique elements that I really liked, one being the signing of the marriage certificate during the ceremony.

Unfortunately I caught some sort of bug while in Arizona last week and so it ended up being a quiet, trying to recover, weekend at home.

I was notifed by SewCalGal that my comment was randomly selected to win the EQ Stash Download from the Red and White Challenges Kickoff Week Blog Hop with inspirations on how to design red and white quilts in EQ. Their new way of delivering the Stash is AWESOME! No need to wait for it to arrive in the mail, just a quick download and you're off and running to design with the latest fabrics from manufacturers. It is even priced lower than the older versions. yeah!!

I've still got until March 23 to get a red and white DESIGN (Phase 2) entered into the current Red and White Challenge! I had not made a red and white quilt before this year so didn't enter anything into Phase 1 (quilts made before 2014). There were several beautiful quilts, they are worth checking out. Maybe you will be inspired to design one!

This past week I did get one little block quilted. It is for a name tag to the guild I recently joined in Republic, WA, "Piece 'N Pals". Tried out some of the ideas learned in Judi Madsen's class while at AQS. Freehanded the name stuff and tried to mark the colored triangles, but it got a little crazy ;-) Important to try things before working on paying customer work when it really counts.

Even using 12 spi I can begin to understand why Judi likes to use an even higher spi #. Her work is so detailed and dense.





Before I sign off...just want to feature a quilt I designed a couple of years ago, but thematically is appropriate and fun to reflect on.

This is Mi Amore. A quilt a designed as the final challenge in the McCalls Quilt Design Star 2011. Our challenge was to take a popular song and be inspired. Various love songs kept coming to mind, but not one in particular. My husband has been so supportive of what I am doing and I wanted to honor that love. There was a song popular back when I was in college called Mi Amore, so I went with that one as the name for the quilt. The design is meant to represent the sound coming from a speaker when listening to those love songs. I enjoy trying to create a 3d illusion and the ombre in these cotton sateen fabrics provided the gradations of color value that worked great. I did use a solid dark red sateen for the darkest red, but could have easily used the darkest red from the ombre to make this work.

You can get this pattern as a PDF download at Craftsy.

Those who tested the pattern have had fun creating it in different combinations of colors and themes. Here are some that went different directions than the hearts. It definitely has an industrial feel to it and is easily made into a 'guy'/'boy' quilt. If you make one...I'd love to see it!




















Oh ...one more exciting thing coming up in April ....I've been asked to be the vendor at a retreat April 4-6, 2014 in Mazama, WA. The retreat is hosted by Colleen Blackwood of Laughing Lizzies Patterns who teaches each year at the Sister's show and is a major player in the Krazy Horse Quilt show in Pendleton, OR. There are still a few spots available. If you're interested, just ask me for details or check out her website and tell her I sent you!

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Have a great week!

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