Evening in the Garden Quilts

Adventures in Fabric Art

Tag Archives: Evening in the Garden


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One Lovely Blog Award

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I won an award!  Thank you to Melanie at Thousand Needles blog for nominating me!  If you don’t follow Melanie, you should.  She has a life-simplifying and a gratitude thread going on, along with progress on her beautiful quilting, and her family.

Here are the rules for this award:
  • Thank the blogger who nominated you.
  • Display the banner/sticker/logo on your blog.
  • Share 7 facts or things about yourself.
  • Nominate 5 bloggers that you admire and inform nominees by commenting on their blog.
 About Me:
  1. I’m retired after thirty years of teaching Art (k-6) and elementary (4-6).  This is how I have time to make the quilts!
  2. I’m married, for 32 years, and my husband’s retired, too
  3. We have one son, aged 21.  He has Asperger’s Syndrome/high-functioning autism.  He is currently attending college, loving it, and living with friends in an apartment.  He belongs to several organizations and is doing fairly well academically.
  4. I did my first serious machine sewing at age 11, when I made my Easter dress, with my mother’s help, with set in sleeves and a back zipper.  For the fabric, think Peter Max depicts a flower garden.
  5. In spite of being a successful garment sewer for many years, I don’t like to anymore.  I don’t even really like sewing bags.  Give me flat fabric in small patches.
  6. I like to cook, sometimes, usually when I’m inspired by fresh produce from my garden or the farmer’s market.
  7. I’m a Girl Scout.  I went all the way through the program as a girl, then led troops for many years.  I’m still registered.

I nominate:

http://www.sewexcitedquilts.com/

http://www.120blocks.com/

http://www.artquiltmaker.com/blog/

http://slikstitches.com/

http://quiltinspiratie.blogspot.com/

I know you’ll enjoy all of these!


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Sunday Stash Report: 10/25/15

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Here is a photo of a shop where I didn’t buy any fabric!  It was a nice little shop, but nothing tempted me from my fabric diet.

I sewed two baby quilt tops, but can’t count them till they’re finished, so nothing in and nothing out.

This week:  + 0 yards,  – 0 yards
This year:  + 110.25 yards,  – 142.25 yards
Net fabric destashed  in 2015:  32 yards

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Instead of buying fabric, we spent the weekend looking at the beautiful leaves in West Virginia and southern Ohio, and watching our son perform with Marshall University’s Marching Thunder.

Hope you had a great weekend.  I’m linking up to Judy’s report at Patchwork Times.


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Sunday Stash Report: 10/18/15

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Greetings on a very crisp fall morning!  This week I finished the Turquoise and Gold Quilt, which used seven and a half yards,  and no new fabric came in.

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I finished the back for my Droid Quilt Along quilt, over at The Stitch TV Show, but that project won’t be finished till the movie comes out.

This week:  + 0 yards,  – 7.5 yards
This year:  + 110.25 yards,  – 142.25 yards
Net fabric destashed  in 2015:  32 yards

Sure, I’ll make it to fifty!  How are you doing?  I’m linking up to Judy’s report at Patchwork Times.


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Turquoise and Gold Quilt Finished!

IMG_2480Here it is, on a sunny morning on the fallen leaves.  The colors fit right in for fall, don’t they?

2015-09-24 10.01.36This was one of my few UFOs, but it was an old one.  I’m guessing six years it sat in my cupboard, but I can’t really date it for sure.  It started as a wall hanging.  I pulled it out earlier this year and asked the Twilters if they saw any potential in it, and they were enthusiastic.  This doesn’t look like anything I’m doing now, does it?  Playing with color and value, looks like I spent lots of time with it on the design wall.

2015-10-15 07.48.47The center had some already cut borders and binding with it, as well as a couple yards of backing fabric.  I still wasn’t feeling the wall hanging, so I decided that all that fabric should become a quilt.  Notice I worked with much bigger triangles.  After I sewed that bottom section on right side up it didn’t look too bad.

2015-10-15 07.49.09I quilted it with lots of feathers, some stippling, and some orange peel.  The mid-tone areas are done with Superior’s So Fine in a variegated mustard/navy color.  I tried that on some of the lighter areas, but it did not look good, and I don’t ever want to rip out feathers again.  Ugh.  I know that, forced to decide, I always prefer the thread to be lighter than the background instead of darker.  I know this.  I just need to believe it and practice it.

2015-10-15 07.49.18I replaced that stitching with a golden Living Colors thread on the yellow and light gray areas, and used a Sulky dark gray on the dark gray to black spaces.  The bobbin thread is Bottom Line in a medium gray.

2015-10-15 07.50.23I really love the back.  This was narrowish JoAnn fabric, so I had a chance to piece lots of scraps into it.  I think it pops.

IMG_2479When I was trimming this quilt to bind, it suddenly told me it wanted to have wavy edges to match the half feathers I had quilted into the narrow border.  I told it no, though.  After days of stitch picking, I was ready to finish it up quickly, and I already had all the straight grain binding cut.  So it has straight edges.

2015-10-15 07.54.08I managed to use up almost all of the fabric, except for some of the turquoise, which I am eyeing for an upcoming project.

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I’m linking up to Whoop Whoop Friday and WIPs Be Gone.


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Boxes of Elephants is Finished

2015-10-04 09.04.53This fun little quilt was commissioned, based on a quilt I made in January.  It makes up very quickly and is super simple sewing.

2015-10-04 09.05.34I can no longer find the original elephant fabric to purchase, so we agreed on this one, in which the light and dark is reversed (cuter print, too, I think!).  That necessitated a little redesign so the colors would look good together.  The elephant print is on home dec fabric, so it makes an interesting combination of textures with the soft Konas and prints.

2015-10-04 09.05.03I quilted this entirely with the walking foot.  I first stitched in the ditch between all the blocks with silver Bottom Line on top and a teal Masterpiece (because I didn’t have teal BL) on the bottom.  Then I switched to a variegated Coats and Clarks that I used to sew a serpentine stitch along all the seam lines, crossing through the plain blocks.  I finished with nine inches of thread left from that spool!

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I used a few inches of large-scale chevrons for the binding.  This quilt is now winging it’s way to Texas.

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I’m linking up to Michelle’s Let’s Make Baby Quilts.

Baby quilts


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Sunday Stash Report: 9/27/15

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Lots of sewing this week, but the only finish is the last dozen of the Hashtag blocks for the #Twilters exchange, for two and a half yards.  If I was misleading in the last report, I’m sorry.  We are trimming them to 12.5 inches square.  (Oh, and a tiny, super secret block that used almost nothing.)

And then one and a half yards came in, some teal with white elephants that will go out again soon in a commissioned baby quilt.

This week:  + 1.5 yards,  – 2.5 yards
This year:  + 93.25 yards,  – 127.50 yards
Net fabric destashed  in 2015:  34.25 yards

Did you see that The Quilt Show is showing a 2 hour Feather Fundamentals program for free today?  I may need to watch that!

I’m linking up to Judy’s report at Patchwork Times.


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Finished Baby Quilt

2015-09-07 08.27.17This quilt began with rummaging though my 6.5″ scrap bin.  I pulled together these pretty florals and semi-solids.  Some were more recent, but some were OLD and needed to go.  It is nice and square, even though it didn’t want to hang flat for the photo.

2015-09-07 08.28.22Yes, I cut the four-patches different widths.  That was a… design choice!  I kind of like it.  I was originally going to use all twelve Disappearing Four Patch blocks for the top, quilt it, bind it, and be finished.  No matter how I turned the blocks on the design wall, they looked like…well, not good.

2015-09-02 09.26.00Sashing was in order.  The #Twilters and I looked at a number of choices.  The deeper ones were appealing, but not soft for a baby quilt.  In the end, I went with a soft blue dot for sashing and a two-tone green for borders.

2015-09-07 08.27.44Quilting was lots of vines and flowers, with minimal marking.  The largel-scale quilting left it nice and soft.  I used a variegated So Fine by Superior for all the quilting.  It shows up, but echos the soft colors.

2015-09-07 08.29.15A special thank you to my photography asisstant, Yuri.

2015-09-07 08.30.34This is headed for Project Linus.

Linking to Michelle’s Let’s Make Baby Quilts and Free Motion Maverics at  Lizzie Lenard’s.

Baby quilts


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Sunday Stash Report: 9/06/15

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Got a couple of things finished this week, and no new fabric came in!  I used three and a half yards for this baby quilt (currently in the dryer, more pictures later), and about half a yard for the PEI wall quilt.

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This week:  + 0 yards,  – 4 yards
This year:  + 91.75 yards,  – 123.25 yards
Net fabric destashed  in 2015:  31.5 yards

So, creeping along toward my goal of 50 yards for this year.  How are you doing?

I’m linking up to Judy’s report at Patchwork Times.


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Prince Edward Island Art Quilt

IMG_2441Early this week I finished the little art quilt I’ve been thinking about for a long time, and working on sporadically for the last few months.  This was taken from a photo I took of traps (lobster?  crab?)  on P.E.I.  when we visited a few years ago.

QA1012I used a photo-transfer process from an article by Liz Kettle in Quilting Arts, Issue 48.  It involved making an ink jet print on water-soluble stabilizer (Paper Solvy by Sulky) and transfering it to the fabric (Kona Snow) using matte gel medium.

2015-07-26 10.30.17The process was messy and didn’t go flawlessly, as you can see in this picture.  It is forgiving, though, and I was able to straighten out and adhere most of the image, and to wash off the remaining paper.  Next time, I would apply medium to the fabric only, not the print.  For the bits that were missing, I worked back into it with fabric markers.  I have a print-making background, and was excited about the transfer process. I did find myself wondering what was the advantage of this method over simply printing on ink jet fabric.  Do you have any thoughts on this?

2015-08-27 16.01.23IMG_2442I used a number of variegated and solid threads to add dimension and definition, especially to the traps, which had gotten a little muddy.  I liked the random effect of the variegated So Fine from Superior.  I did not like that when I shaded in the side of a white float, it became flat from the close stitching.  I have a lot to learn about working with thread.

IMG_2444I’m very happy with the fabrics I found to use for the borders and the way I quilted them.  You can see it better from the back.

IMG_2440I think this was pretty successful.  It has some personal meaning to me, so I may keep it and make another version to sell.  We’ll see.

I’m linking up to WIPs Be Gone at A Quilting Reader’s Garden.


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That’s No Moon!

2015-08-26 11.22.23 pmA long time ago… no, I won’t go there.  But this is the saga of the baby quilt commission that occupied a lot of August for me.

2015-08-26 11.19.20The order was fine.  It took a number of emails back and forth to work out the design and fabrics, but that was no problem.  Neither was the construction.  I had made the basic design three times before, so all went well.  Then I washed it.

wpid-2015-08-19-11.14.20.jpg.jpegI always prewash my fabrics, with Color Catchers.  I always wash the finished quilts with Color Catchers.  I so seldom have a bleed…  I checked the front to be sure that all my Crayola Washable markings had come out.  I forgot to check the back, and I dried it.  Big mistake.

I tried Shout and two different approaches with Oxi Clean.  I never made it to the blue Dawn, because the Oxi took all the color out of my silver light saber.  Sigh.  I’m ready to do the bleach-on-a-Qtip thing before donating it, but I’m just leaving it sit for a while.  Sigh.

2015-08-26 11.21.05So, I remade it with different blue fabric, different silvery fabric, and no blue ink jet ink on the applique sheet.  Whatever it was, it didn’t happen this time.  And the finished quilt has reached it’s destination.  Whew.

2015-08-26 11.19.54I will say that my quilting improved on this last one (#5 of this design!).  And I like how the trimmings of the chevron backing fabric made a striped binding.

2015-08-26 11.21.59Anyway, stay safe out there, and watch your backs.