Tag Archives: Quilt

Jan13

Leisurely Sunday of Quilting

Posted on January 13, 2013 by texasboxerlover

Boy this was a lazy Sunday. Some sun here in Houston but mostly cloudy skys. It has been nice though, probably upper 60’s, lower 70’s. I spent most of the day playing with a machine applique block that has been laying on my worktable for a couple of months. I also finished up a quilt belonging to Sandy K. It s so cute, a casual baby quilt with lots of applique and hand embroidered cats and dogs. I have attached pictures of the whole quilt and some close-ups of the blocks. Check out the quilted border – I thought the houses looked great as an accent to the houses in her blocks. I will give it to her on Tuesday – hopefully she will be thrilled.

This week is scheduled to finish up the solo costumes for my daughter’s dance team and hopefully make a big dent in the team modern dresses (27 of them) that she needs. I also plan on getting back to my Adobe Illustrator for Dummies book. I have to learn this program!!!

Enjoy the week and, most of all, BE HAPPY!

Karen

Jan12

Using colored pencils with embroidered redwork

Posted on January 12, 2013 by texasboxerlover

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Well, here is a project that I decided would be a fun way to experiment with these pencils. I have sewn out a series of redwork designs on my embroidery machine. I backed the fabric with a thin layer of cotton batting, hooped both pieces and sewed out the design. RJ is my up and coming cowboy so this will eventually to him. My plans are to color each design with my Derwent pencils, then work on an unusual setting for the blocks. I have cut the fabric large enough to give me some leeway on block size for the final arrangement. When I quilt the finished top I will quilt it using another full layer of 80/20 Hobbs batting and will do some fairly tight background fill around the designs. With the two layers of batting and the tight background fill, the designs will look like they are trapunto. Neat huh? Here are some pics of a few finished and a few left to color. Learning more with each block.

Until next time…BE HAPPY …Karen

Jan10

Technique for this week – coloring your quilts with pencil!

Posted on January 10, 2013 by texasboxerlover

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COLORING WITH PENCILS

72 Colors to a box

Borders Colored with pencil

This was an auction quilt I made for our guild auction. I wanted something different so I found a wonderful pattern for quilting the border and then used my Derwent Inktense pencils to color the border to enhance the quilt design. Using the Derwent pencils, which resemble water color dependent upon how much water is applied is so simple. Color the areas you want, you can shade to your hearts content, then brush with a small brush dipped in water until you get the effect you want. Just be careful (ask me how I know), too much water will run the color thru to the back of the quilt. So Easy! AND IT’S PERMANENT!!! This is the container that the pencils come in if you buy the 72 color box. I highly recommend them. Other pencils, like Prisma or even the cheapest from the grocery store will work with this technique but will not give you the intensity of color that you get from the Derwent pencils. Most other pencils must be sealed with a textile medium of some sort. Tomorrow I will show you how you can use these pencils to make a quilt, combining them with embroidery from your embroidery machine.

QUILT FOR THE DAY This is the quilt for today that I am quilting. It is much like a t-shirt quilt and as little quilting as possible was my objective. There were a lot of memories built into this quilt that I felt needed to be the highlight.

Until tomorrow….BE HAPPY

Karen

www/karenthequltingdiva.com

Jan7

Easy Street – What an experience!

Posted on January 7, 2013 by texasboxerlover

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Easy Street ready to quilt

This was an incredibly fun adventure and I want to thank Bonnie for her generousness. Easy Street was the first of her quilts I’ve done since discovering Quiltville.com So much information, so many things to try. Now, I don’t know if I would have started it if I’d had any idea there were nearly 2500 pieces in the quilt-thank goodness for my Sizzix cutter. It was a challenge but worth every minute!

Karen

Jan5

Rain, rain go away!

Posted on January 5, 2013 by texasboxerlover

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Gosh I am so tired of the rain. It has drizzled for days and been gray and miserable. Oh well, it has kept me busy working inside and I am getting lots done for a change. Even so, it snowed about three hours from Houston. That, my friends, is a very exciting thing in South Texas! TV is showing kids sledding in laundry baskets.

Meanwhile I finished the top to my Bonnie Hunter Quiltville Mystery quilt, Easy Street. I love the way it came out. It is currently on my longarm table very close to being finished. The pattern and fabrics are very busy so I am just doing some circles to give the quilt texture. I have already prepared my grey binding and will be ready to go with that when I finish quilting it. This is my first mystery quilt with Bonnie and I really enjoyed the process and love the quilt. Everything went together like bread and butter. Here is a picture of the top before I put it on the longarm to quilt it. No more quilting tomorrow. Have to get busy making drill team costumes for my daughters high school drill team. 😦 Until tomorrow…BE HAPPY!

Easy Street Top

Jan1

Project Bonnie–a mystery quilt from Quiltville.com

Posted on January 1, 2013 by texasboxerlover

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I am having a great time working on my first Bonnie Hunter Mystery Quilt. This one is called Easy Street and it is tons of fun, and very relaxing, just piecing away. This is a block from the quilt that has some small “wasted” corners. I have sewn an extra 1/4” seam and then cut the small finished 1” block off and put them in a baggie for later… Sew easy and lots of fun. Here is a picture of the steps to completion – a 2 in 1 project for sure. Hmmmm, I feel a miniature quilt coming on!

Dec31

Welcome 2013! and the first post to my new blog!

Posted on December 31, 2012 by texasboxerlover

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Karen The Quilter

Welcome to my brand new blog, hope you will bear with me while I learn how to drive this thing! I feel like I have just gotten a new car with a manual transmission – scary stick shift! I am hoping to be able to post something of interest each day – wow, sounds like a New Year’s resolution to me. Because I am always running and multi-tasking I thought I might try to document some of my days. Primarily my life revolves around quilting and making quilts, dying fabric and playing with design options for the hundreds of quilts I want to make. My bucket list is way to long! I love checking out new techniques, have almost all rulers ever invented (most of which I haven’t used much if any), and am overrun with patterns even though I want to design my own.