More Pam Kellogg Goodies.

Some of you may remember I'm a fan of Pam Kellogg I have a small colletion of her Crazy quilt purses. Back in July I showed off a few pieces, as well as a new purse which I recieved as a birthday gift. It didn't stop there, I have 4 more pieces now. I've been going to share two of them for ages but never seemed to get around to it.

I've had this little beauty stashed away for a while, I loved it before it was even completed, it just looks so cold and crisp, just like fresh snow.




More recently I got my hands on this second Christmas piece. Very pretty, I'd been eyeing it for a while and last month I finally purchased it. Though it took a while to get here due to postal strikes in the UK.



Pam does stitch such beautiful peacocks. I love this guy. It's a cell phone purse, just big enough to hold my phone and a little cash or my card. This is my second Pam peacock.



This last piece I bought as a gift for someone, I've had it stashed away for nearly a whole year, it's a christmas gift. Pam made this cell phone purse to raise funds and awareness for Breast Cancer research. It's so pretty and feminine.



All week I've been proud to carry my own Breast Cancer purse which Janet gifted to me for my birthday earlier this year. It's much larger, and can hold my keys, money purse, phone and a few other items.
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Each one of Pams works has her signature Kitty on it, on the breast cancer purse above it's in the bottom right corner. Can you see it on the other pieces? Sometimes he can be quite hard to spot, though he's not bad on these pieces.
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Getting back to my own project. I've gotten a second turning nine top made, here it is on the floor...er... work table waiting to be tacked. Hmm spot the mistake! I'm not going to undo it, too lazy! Besides I want to get this finished and into the mail.



Question is, how shall I quilt it? I enjoyed doing the flowers on the pink one. The backing on this one is plain off white fleece, so no pattern to follow. There are assorted flowers and bugs on the top, nothing that really inspires me. I quite like Tazzies peacock feathers, would they work on this one? And more importantly, can I manage to do them?
Time to go and practice.

Take care all.

My Sisters quilt.

As I mentioned the other day, my sister Moya has been busy again. She has opted to put a fleece backing onto her scrappy quilt. She has started to quilt it by hand! With a contrasting yellow thread she is working two rows of running stitches in the straight up and down seams and the left to right seams of her pin wheels.




So only alternate blocks are quilted. I thought at first she had used far too much fleece, but she says she wants to add a border and may use any remaining fleece to self bind. I'm not sure I'd like to go about things in that way but, it looks ok so far so I'll say nothing. Did I mention she choose a really bright fleece.



I must admit, it is cute, and certainly rivals the flowers I choose when it comes to cheerfulness.
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What am I doing? Well, nothing to be honest, I still haven't done last months scrappy block of the month and this months is due. I have some Katies choice blocks all cut waiting to be pieced. LOL And I have the other half of the pink creation waiting to be turned into another turning nine! I set out to do a twenty remember? Then realised how big it was going to be and changed my mind, after cutting of course. Never mind lesson learned I hope.
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The other day while hunting through the charity shops here in town, Searching for buttons, I came across yards and yards of a pretty Laura Ashley fabric. It was too good an offer to miss £2.00 for about 5 meters of the stuff. I thought at first it would do as a backing fabric but since then I've decided I'll use it to make a Cathederal window quilt similar to the one Shelina makes here. I'd like to use lots of different colours for the 'fillings' so I'd better get started collecting scraps and maybe a few more charm packs.

I finished it.

I'm having to start typing down here today, because whenever I try up above that pic, blogger insists on turning it into a link! Hmmmm?
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Meet the pink turning nine.
It looks awful up there, like it's been screwed up in a ball somewhere! I assure you it hasn't. I've backed it with a flower patterened fleece, and used some of the flowers as a guide to my quilting. You can sort of see the flowers showing through on the front, and if you click on it you surely can, but the creases get bigger too!
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I asked Hunney to model it for me, but he's really not well poor soul, he has a nasty head cold.

He said he didn't want to get up off his lazy fat a** to hold it up for me, and no way was I putting a pic of him wearing a pink quilt on the net! (Wanna bet?) However, he also says he can definately vouch for it's snuggliness, and pinkness!
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So in order to let you all get a better look at it, I've draped it over my usual model, as you can see no expense was spared I got the best.


My sister is here with her scrappy/ smeggy /charm (What ever she's calling it now) quilt, so I'm off to have a look, I'll take pics too.

Back to it!

Hunney has had to go out to work today. I have a whole Sunday, all to myself. So I got stuck into my lovely pink quilt. I finished tacking it the other day so the first order of business today was to sort out some off cuts to practice on. I wanted to try to stitch around some of the flowers on the fleece back. I picked on the ones with the black outline.


Here's how it looks front and back. I choose a plain white cotton to practice on so I could clearly see how it comes out. I'm fairly happy with this, I hope it looks as good as this on the patterned fabrics in the quilt.

I'm on my way. There's a heck of a lot of flowers here! I'm putting little curly cues in the larger gaps between flowers and trying to concentrate on one patch at a time.


I'm hoping to get this finished today, we'll see.

My sisters been busy.

I still didn't manage to do anything much. I have the same pink top, on it's pink fleecy halfway tacked. I know, I know, I've had plenty of time now to get it done, but that nasty habit work keeps getting in the way!

But my sister has been busy again. About a year ago she started making this yellow creation, for our youngest sister Neenee. Sorry it's not a great photo, I had real problems getting anything that wasn't completely washed away. Neenee choose the fabrics used here. The 5 inch charms were hand quilted to produce this pillow case.


While Moy and I are both saying, ''Not on my bed'' Neenee loves it.

Do you remember the pin wheel blocks Moy and I made using what she called her smeggie charms?




She did eventually take them home with her, where she continued to work alone. She got tired of pinwheels so varied the triangle theme a little and came up with this beauty.


Ironically, now she says she likes it! I've seen many bloggers saying they have used their most hated fabrics or colours in scrappy quilts, then later admitting to liking the result. I have to say I like it too. Moy is now in a quandry, she has seen me working with fleece and would like to try that, but is pulled toward the more traditional wadding and backing, and doesn't have a clue what to use for the binding! I'll keep you posted.

Right, I'm outta here, gone! I should have time to finish the tacking stitches in the pink creation before I have to be at work.
See ya! Bye!

Pink

As usual, my plans have changed! If you remember, I gathered together 20 very pink and girly fat quarters with the intention of making a turning twenty quilt for a 2 year old girl. Then realised my mistakes and rethought my plans.

These are not the greatest photos, but you get the message, this quilt is PINK !


Once again I have used a fleece to back it rather than wadding and more fabric. I like the lightness of the fleece, thats it on the left, and below.


I'm still basting at the moment, when I come to do the quilting I want to try to follow the outline of some of those flowers. I feel that the top is flat and lacking a focus, so I thought that I may make some felt flowers and pop them onto the top, over the quilted flowers, or maybe between them. I'm still not decided, and not sure I should make any firm plans! I'll only change my mind. LOL
I should have had this basted and half way quilted already, but life and work are horrible at the moment and I really haven't felt like doing much with my time off,.

I'd like to introduce you to my youngest. His name is Joe. He is the proud owner of the second Autumn Charm quilt.

He got up very early that day! For the island inter school wugby (Rugby) tournament! He played in four matches before coming home victorious! He had just enough energy to say Hi mum and tune into the Simpsons before he dozed off. Aaaw! Cute. :-) I had a hard time waking him to eat his dinner.

Thanks to those of you who visited Kaiys blog, I know she appreciates it. If you haven't had a look yet please do, there is a link in my previous post and another on the side bar.

Take care all.

Like Mother, like Daughter.

Have I mentioned my 19 year old daughter? She's an art student, and don't I know it!
She has just started her 4th year at the islands technical college. She is a great little artist and I love it when she draws or paints 'real' pictures for me. But since starting at the college these have become fewer and fewer as her tutors encourage her to explore other mediums and disciplines. Now her work seems to involve any manner of strange and wonderful objects, we had half a forest floor in one piece, her fingers seem to be permenantly stained with black ink and at the end of each year as we sort out her portfolio in order to decide what should be kept and what could go I find everything from tiny colourful scraps of paper to huge great collages and oil paintings. Last years final spectacular went straight into the bin, she hated it herself, said that she felt her tutor had pushed her away from what she wanted to do.
So, this years project? Synaesthesia.
Did you ever close your eyes when listening to a piece of music, or the sounds of the world around you? What did you see? For me certain pieces of music trigger fantastic light shows, I see wonderful rich warm colours in billowing velvet curtains. Nature does it for me too, birds singing and trilling away create odd dots and splashes of bright colours, while harsher sounding birds like rooks and crows create jagged cartoon lightening streaks. This linking of two senses is called Synaethesia. My DD shares the same ability. Her project involves trying to put the images and colours onto paper. No easy task.
While searching for victims to listen to her selection of music, (Actually it wasn't that bad) she became disheartened, not because people couldn't see anything, but because people just couldn't be botherd helping her, not even the other art students! In the end she managed to round up enough of us to get a few results for comparison. Obviously trying to convert my words into an image won't work. She has to make images from her own synaethesia.
The first couple of weeks back at college she got busy with paints and the printer, her fingers have gone black again and a multitude of very colourful three dimentional pieces have appeared to be photographed.
So now she wants feedback! Hunney suggested a blog, great idea, but........how to get it noticed? There are quilty rings, stash buster rings, crazy quilt rings, heck we got loadsa rings! But there are no synaethesia rings! I'm sure there are art rings, but I can't find them!
So folks, PLEEEEEEEAAAAAASE help us out here, go visit my babies blog, be honest, tell her what you think, leave suggestions and ideas. Please visit more than once, the ramblings of a teenage artist are difficult I know, but she would love to have comments and know that her words are being read and her art is being seen. LOL And unlike me, she has pictures! Cause she had the camera all weekend!

Someone nudged me!

Sorry it's been so long, life really does have a bad habit of getting in the way at the moment. Thanks for the nudge Janet.

I managed to do a little quilting though. No pics, sorry, the camera batteries need charging.

As usual my plans have changed, (I don't know why I bother with plans!) My very pink turning twenty with Sun Bonnet Sues, has become two turning nines! LOL When I sat and thought about it a turning twenty was going to be huge! Far too big for a two year old to cope with. Also when I read the instructions properly my ready made Sue blocks were far too small and I couldn't be bothered to sash them, (There's a lesson here I'm sure) so as I said, things have changed. I cut nine very pink fat quarters according to the turning twenty guide and put it all together, I've gotten a beautiful piece of very pink girly fleece, it's patterned, which has inspired me to try a different kind of quilting, so far all I've really done is a meander, this time my meander will incompass, I hope, the flowers on the fleece, I'll have to have a practice first.
Although the pink fabrics I've used are all patterned I feel that the top lacks any kind of focus, there is no large pattern, (thats where my Sues were supposed to come in.) I'm hoping that the quilted flowers will help out there. I considered doing some fancy stitching on the seams, but I think that would just emphasize the straight seams and lack of focus in the blocks. I wonder .............. Just having the beginnings of another idea here, would felt flowers stitched into the quilted flowers work? I feel a trip to the crafty shop coming on.

In the meantime, I'll get on with basting the plain top to the bright and colourful back!