Tuesday October 30

Today has been a very busy day, but a very good day. Candice invited me to attend a couple of special speakers at the college here in St. George. Candice spends most of her time in the art department and is loving it. There was a Chinese cholegrapher in the morning and a Chinese watercolorist. It was fun. I enjoyed the choreographer better than the watercolorist, but both were great.

I got more quilting done on a wall hanging for a client. I still have a lot to do on it. I decided I would get things ready for the art class I am teaching at the St. George Art museum next Tuesday. Candice is going to help me teach the class and if for some reason Dave and I don't make it back from our trip in time for me to teach the class she will do it for me. The is pretty cool program the museum has each fall for the 5th grade elementary schools. It is called Meet the Artist.  I will talk a little about my art...what I do and my tools. We only have 40 minutes and it is extremely hard to get what I want to teach done in 40 minutes. I am attempting to show the kids that they can get every color they need from 3 tubes of paint. In watercolor white is the paper itself and by mixing the three primary colors a muddy brown/black is created.  Last year, with the help of my dear friend Cindi Evertt, I put the paint on the pallets at the time of the class. This worked, but is was very stressful.

This year I am trying something different. I have been collecting the little white plastic containers that dog food comes in for about a year. So I have lots of these containers. I purchased watercolor pigments from AWS wholesale art supply a while ago. I have brushes from last year as well as pie tins that can be used as pallets. I have squirted a small amount of each primary color into a container. I will let the paint dry and then stack and wrap the 3 containers each containing one of the primary colors with plastic wrap. The containers can be thrown in the trash once we are done. The only things I will have to wash out are the brushes and the containers that belong to the museum.  Hopefully that will be much more
effective.  I have the color wheels drawn on
water color paper and have my examples all ready to go. If the kids have time, they will be given an extra sheet of water color paper to do a drawing of they would like to do.

If I remember to take my camera. I will post photos of the students next week. I guess I could use my phone to take the photos. I just don't really know how to post photos from my phone to this blog.

I have another full day tomorrow. I guess I ought to go to bed.

Sandra Vogel's quilt

I finished quilting this small quilt for Sandra and Erv Vogal...I had tension issues, but it turned out cute. 

I did a bit of sketching. My one lone cosmos plant is blooming. I hope to have more of them next year. 

Verny Thompson's latest quilt.

I could not get back into the previous post to add Verny's name. I want to make sure she gets credit for her fun quilt

This quit is being taught at The Sewing Center of Southern Utah (www.superiorthread.com) tomorrow. 

 

 I thought I would add before and after shots on this one. I was going to put them side by side, but can't the  computer to do that. I am often very computer challenged.
I delivered the quilt to Verny today and she was very happy with it.  I used wool batting, Superior Thread's www.superiorthread.com. thread. Sewfine in the bobbin, Magnifico  and mono-poly in the top. I also used an Isacord  in the top. I did not need much and did not have the correct color of Magnifico. I did wined a bobbin of the Isacord for the gold section.   I decided to quilt spider webs in the corners to tie the halloween and fall embroidery designs. I ditched the star and decided that was all this one needed. Any quilting design I came up with, took away from the spiral effect.  When I looked at the quilting from the back, the quilting was evenly spaced and it looked good so I decided to not add anything to the lone star.

 I quilted bats in the outer edge of the inset pieces.

tip: if you are unsure about the amount of quilting you have done, view the piece from the back. That way you don't have all the color interference and you can decide if you have quilted yours or your clients piece enough of if you need to add quilting. If you feel you need more quilting consider if additional quilting will add to the over all quilt design. I could have added something in the lone star block, but I don't think it would have added anything to this quilt. I did give my client the option and I was glad she loved it like it was.

I finished One of  Lori Dischbein's quilts....I am very pleased with the outcome. I think she will be very happy with it too. I have one more of her's to quilt. Lori is an amazing piecer.  This one took me 17 hours.

I got one of my own tops quilted. This was a fun scrap quilt to quilt.  I am making some with different colored backgrounds. Currently doing a gray background.  I did use a full sized quilt for the backing on this one. I think it worked great. The sheet is a blend, but I was unable to find a 100% cotton sheet that was not very tightly woven. This one was 200 count. I wouldn't use anything with a higher thread count for the backing.  I paid only $8 for the sheet at wal-mart.  I have had a few clients bring me sheets for backing, we used to use them all the time. But it is frowned upon using anything that is not 100% cotton. I can see that in the top you would not want fabrics that might wear differently (poly is a lot more durable). But I don't see the problem with using them on the back. My reasoning was we use a poly batting or a blend such as 80/20 or 70/30 and that is ok...we use poly thread and that is ok to. So.......................... I would not encourage someone to use a sheet on an heirloom quilt, but really see no problem.  Just my thoughts. It does cut down on a $45-$80 sale for a fabric store. But, I think the more us quilters save the more we spend!

This week looks to be a very busy one for me. I am finishing up my Statue of Liberty quilt.... Have 3 quilts for clients. I got the underpainting done for my tall grass prairie quilts. I am doing one green and one burnt with fire.

Bobbi's quilt

I finished Bobbi's quilt today. I am very happy with the out come.   I took this class with Bobbi. This was the hardest quilt pattern I have ever tried to make. I would never attempt another like it. You couldn't pay me enough to get me to do one......well  if I was paid enough I  might con side it.  The class was taught by Margaret Miller at a quilt guild workshop a few years ago. I used   perm core thread on both the top and bottom for part of the quilt. I used gold metallic from Superior Threads in the black areas with perm-core in the bobbin.

It is very nice here in St. George again today. I am planning on doing some work in the yard this afternoon. The drain fields I had done kind of got filled up with mud. I need to dig them out and then replace the rocks. I guess I better get busy it is not 2 p.m. yet.