An update

This is from my EQ6 class down at Cutting Edge Quiltworks, my LQS. These pictures are not posed, they are actually helping each other and very engaged. I have taught many EQ6 classes but I think this one was one of the best. It is always fun to see students begin to understand a new concept and to have fun. Plus it is such a great program they get all excited to see what it can do.

They want me to work up an advanced class, so I guess I better get on the stick. I have been so busy lately that I feel almost out of control. I'm trying to be balanced and not over do, because we all know what happens when you over do. So I feel like I'm only chipping away at things but that is better than nothing.


Here is the progress I made on Will's stocking. Can you see how much I have done!! Two lines of stitching is better than none. Opps I forgot I was suppose to go to the right with this picture! I'm not changing it now.


And last but not least here is my progress on my pin wheel borders. This will make two 20 block borders. Getting closer.

The big accomplishment for the week was to sew on two hanging sleeves and two labels on two quilts for the Arizona Quilter's Guild show Friday the 12 & Saturday the 13th at the Mesa Convention Center. I knew one quilt had made it into the show so I sewed the sleeve last Saturday night and the label on Sunday. I had returned home from delivering the quilt to the drop off person and I had visited with a friend. The phone rings and it is the quilt coordinator who asks were is my other quilt. I said I have never received the paper work on it and I thought it wasn't chosen to be in the show. It was and if I could get it down to the Mesa Convention Center I could have it in the show. I asked for a couple of hours to sew the hanging sleeve on and a label. I had it down there and was back home in 2 hours and 40 minutes. Record time. I did not turn on the TV or anything to keep distractions to a minimum. I spoke with a friend on the phone just to keep me company. Sorry no pictures of the sleeves or labels. What a relief you think. Watch for pictures of the quilts at the show next weekend!

First Mini Quilt of 2010 Finished

I don't know why I agonized over this little class sample so much but I did. Now it's done and I will take it to the shop tomorrow. I'm happy with how it turned out. The next step is to make my handouts. I do have to redraw it in EQ6 since I changed it a little while I was making it today. Oh in case you are wondering what that little mark is on the bow of the large sail boat is, it is FL. If I was going to have a sail boat I would want to be in FL with it, not here in AZ.


Since I am going to the shop and I'll be teaching EQ6 in February I decided to remake my EQ6 class poster and take it down tomorrow. I like the layout of this one better than my original poster.

Now all I need is for students to sign up for the classes.

Do you every change your mind?

Well that is the question of the day. I have been dreading making this class sample for a Beginner's Paper Piecing class. The shop wanted me to use certain patterns and I'm not against that but I just couldn't come up with a plan. Well I finally came up with a plan and I really like it but it has problems. Here is my plan I really like.

Now to list the problems with this little quilt. The light house is not from the pattern set, I drew it in EQ6 from the book Paper Pieced Little Landscapes by Shirley Liby. Of Course we all know how students are they have to make just what the teacher makes, the same colors, same design and all. Well I can't copy the pattern as it is copy righted. I could change it but it is a little complicated for students that have never paper pieced before. Then I looked at those boats with the water around them, which in reality wouldn't have water around the sails. I'm sure in the world of quilt art it would be OK. Then I decided both boat in the background that are far away needed to be 3 inches instead of 4.5 inches. I had already made a 4.5 sail boat with sky around the sails. Do you see how complicated this is getting?



So here is what the class sample will really look like. Than I think self, isn't it always better to keep it simple!! Of course I have to go to work now and who knows what I'll come up with by the time I get home. This is also enough blocks that some students can make it in a three hour class and maybe even maybe join them together, so they could have an almost finished product, which makes students happy! The best part is it saves me time and I can get it done and down to the shop by Saturday. Since my class is on January 30th. I need that sample down there.

Anniversary Give Away

A few weeks ago I mentioned a Give away to celebrate the one year anniversary of my blog. I was originally thinking I would buy something and give it away but that feels so impersonal. So instead I have decided to make a small wall hanging for Christmas. I just decided this yesterday so it isn't ready yet. I have drafted it in EQ6 so you can have an idea. If you think it looks a lot like my Dear Jane Christmas Quilt you are right. I even have some of that lovely border fabric left. I'll mail it to the lucky winner as soon as it is finished.


Here it is as of 11.29.09, well on it's way. I will update the picture as it is completed.

So here are the rules:
Look at the list of give away activities below and decide how many activities you want to do. Then add up the points after you've done them, and then email me the information below to enter this give away. Your name is entered for leaving a comment and for each five points you earn I'll place your name in the drawing for the little quilt. That gives you up to four chances to win.

Copy & Paste this information in your email to enter this giveaway.
Then send your email to me at mebowden at cox dot net.

My Name is:
My Email is:
My Blog Address is:
I completed the following requirements:
I have _______ points.


Point Actives:
1 point for leaving a comment on this post. So even if you don't have a blog you can do this, but you will need a Google account to leave a comment.
5 points if you want to add me to the blog list on your sidebar or if I am on your blog list.
5 point for creating a post on your blog and linking to my giveaway.
5 points for being or becoming a follower on my blog or if you are one.

The giveaway will END on Saturday, December 5th at Midnight.
I will then pick a WINNER on Sunday December 6th in the early afternoon.

Now to go make my spread sheet to keep track of all your points. I better print those paper piecing patterns for those blocks also and get sewing.
Well Good Luck and Have Fun!

Monday Quilting Update

Well I was working on my newest project last night and I was about ready to take my update picture but the battery in the camera was dead. Such timing?!?!? So it was not charged by bed time so I had to wait until tonight.







This is my newest project which is also one of my goals for this year. It is from a Dear Jane Christmas Swap from 2001. Yes, that long along. I had 35 blocks so I made one more to make it an even 36. I designed it in EQ5 the year after I did the swap and purchased the fabric. I made 4 different sets of 10. I'm planing on doing scalloped borders so I can have more practice as doing a scalloped binding.



Here is my progress to date. I did struggle over which I color I liked better for the sashing the red or the green with the opposite color as the corner stones. So after making about 15 versions of the quilt in EQ6, I finally decided to use both colors as sashing and to use my back ground as corner stones. I'm liking it. I really like the green next to my border fabric. So I wanted to save enough of that to use as a resting border and the binding. My spacing sure did get wider towards teh bottom.

Well have fun and take care!

Arranging Furniture for a Room in EQ6

I'm on an email list for EQ6, the quilting software. One of the list members posted a question on how would you plan furniture for a room. I did this quick little quilt drawing and wrote these really quick instructions to give her an idea of how to this. I wanted a place to show her the picture, so here it is.
1. New Quilt
2. Use a custom quilt setting
3. Size it the same size as your room. For example my Hobby room is 30 x 10 ft, so I would my EQ6 room 30" x 10".
4. I would measure the space my furniture takes up. Example for quilting frame is 10 ft x 4 feet so it would equal 10" x 4" I would make that a block and color it.
5. I would make blocks to represent each piece of furniture and move them around in my room until I had the placement I want. You can also copy & paste blocks and re-size them to make your furniture.
6. Realize this is a bird's eye view of your room.

If I wasn't so tired I might make the directions a little clearer, but I need to go bed now to get ready for another busy day at work tomorrow.

Yes this is pretty much how my furniture is placed in our hobby room. There are pictures of the hobby room at my webshots link on the side bar if you want to see the real thing.

I hope this helps and stimulates some imagination. Have fun!

It is so hard..

...to be a talented artistic type person and live with or know others who have no artistic anything.
Our daughter Kierra has a window in the living room by the front door. I offered to make a little quilt for it, to cover it, since she has it covered with a plastic bag. Her colors are black and red. I took pictures of my stash of black & red, I draw up a quick little bargello quilt in EQ6. I sent her the pictures and this is what she wants. Double Click on it to see the larger imagine.

I tell this to my husband who has no understanding as to why I would call this the ugliest quilt I will ever make. He also told me I should cut it up and sew it back together again as if it would have had different colors. Of course I'm thinking he is a little off his rocker with this idea. He thinks I don't get it because I won't cut it up and sew it together like a quilt.
So since this what the kid wants that is what she will get, I'll quilt it with a straight lines cross hatching and call it done. It will service it's purpose to cover a window and she will know I care because I made her something how she wants and likes.
Meanwhile I will know she could have had something nicer and I did my best...

Here is how it would look in black & gray. As well as the black & red version.

I guess that is why they make 31 flavors of ice cream we all have different tastes.

Quilting Update

I'm just so excited I have to do an extra post. I have had a very productive day quilt wise. Plus I worked a full eight hour day! This morning before I went to work I drew a few more blocks for my Caribbean Sea quilt and started working on the quilt setting in EQ6. I like it so far, but I might have to add another border. I finished four drawing four more blocks this evening and getting the setting set up right. I wanted to get this done, so next week while I'm going up to quilt camp and I stop in a couple of quilt shops I can find my material for the quilt setting. I really do try to plan ahead.


After dinner and drawing the last of the blocks I tackled the DJ Halloween Swap. I wanted to do the six blocks on the diagonal and I did. I first did a test sew with some muslin to make sure I had my dimensions right. I did and I'm very pleased with how they turned out!! Plus I sewed the background fabric around the blocks in the upper right corner. I decided to remove the one black strip next to the zipper strip and the corner blocks. I like how it sets the blocks off.

This sure has been a fun quilting day!! I hope you had one also. Back to work in the morning and that will be it until the 15th! Vacation here I come!!

Sunday Quilting Upate

Well I designed it last Sunday and I finished it today. I did purchase the border fabric and the paint for the numbers, the rest I have in my stash. Always a good thing to do is use your stash! I'm very happy with how it turned out.



While I was working on the September Mini, my husband asked me to make him a little quilt for his cubical at work. I went to my trusty EQ6 program and they had some wonderful computer images for me to use. Now if I can just find 1/2 a yard of fabric with computer thingies on it, I'll be all set. He works as a desk top engineer, he fixes software and hardware issues at work. He also repairs computers for friends and co-workers. He is always happy fixing computers. He is trying to recover some files on some one's computer right now.



The really big project I decided to work on is my Dear Jane Halloween swap from maybe 2003?? It is one of my goals to finish this year. I had a tilted blocks plan but when I was in CO, I found this book Beyond the Block. I found one design in there I really liked, it looked like it would hold about 20 blocks. Here is the picture from the book of the design I like. You can double click on the pictures to enlarge them.



Here is my custom quilt plan I made in EQ6, I did not draw it exactly, but just enough to give me an idea. It isn't a good picture but you might get an idea of what I might do. You will also notice some hand written notes on it, of where I plan to put what blocks. I have 36 Dear Jane Blocks, all 4.5 inches big or is that small. It also has a water stain, one of the cats jumped up on the ironing board and knock over my spray bottle of water.


And here is my progress so far!! It's going to be a busy quilt but I have this collection of fun Halloween fabric that I picked out for this quilt, so I'm going to find a place for all of them.

Sunday Quilting Upate

Today was a lazy day after a busy Saturday. I designed this little Monthly Mini to go with the other minis I have made. The designer from Patch Abilities made some really cute monthly designs, but she had pumpkins for September and they just don't work for me. I made that design last year and made it for November. This is from her series #1. So I had this bright idea last night just before going to bed and I finished designing it this morning. I have printed all my applique pieces and found the fabric for the applique pieces. I really want a bright border in a school theme or primary colors. Nothing like that in my stash. Or darn I have to go find some fabric.
I spent the rest of the day doing the binding by hand on one of my panels for the French doors. I have one long side done, two short sides and a half of the second long side. I was doing the binding while watching the PBS Sense and Sensibility DVD. Just too engrossing to sew fast.
This week I also joined all four flying geese borders. The are not attached to my Washington Medallion yet but hopefully this week. I just felt like hand sewing today. I'll have to take a picture in the morning. I'm off to bed now, I am beat. I stayed up too late last night (12:15 AM) and I have been up since 5:20 this morning. That's a short night for me and it is my fault. Some nights I just don't know when to quit.

Sunday Quilting Upate

The first thing I did for quilting this week when I came home was go to a quilt store for their Christmas in July sale, everything was 30% off. That was on Friday. On Saturday I drew the 11th block in EQ6 for my Caribbean Sea Block of the Month. I probably won't make it until I finish my August monthly mini.


I did finish all my flying geese and pin wheels for the Washington Medallion while in CO. I finished all the half square triangles but I haven't made the blocks yet. So I didn't take a picture of them. That also will wait until I finish the August mini.


Here it is the August mini, the Sand Castles. I pieced the background and the borders last night. I had traced the designs for the sand castles on the fusing material before I left for CO. Tonight I fused the sand, and cut all the pieces and fused them to the background. I hope to have this finished to take to work on Monday August 3rd.

An EQ6 Moment

As you might know I like EQ6, I have used it to design and make a few quilts I submitted one of them to Electric Quilt Company and it was posted on their User Gallery. Here is the link EQ6 User Gallery. My quilt is number 26, Witches Undies. I scanned my fabric into EQ6 so it it hard to tell the difference between the two but the quilt is the one on the right.

Here is the original quilt I designed, but it still needs borders and to be quilted. I just couldn't cut up the Mystical Horse fabric by Laurel Burch. I only had fat quarters of all the fabrics. I only bought yardage of the black with the gold dots for the resting border and some of a purple and pink both with gold dots for the outside borders, also Laurel Burch fabric. I'm thinking I'm going to make each border a different color. The first picture is from EQ6 the second is the quilt center.
You might notice in the actual quilt I added another row of blocks, I wanted it longer. I hope to some day publish this quilt as a pattern. This darn full time job just keeps me too busy.

Now I'm remembered there is another quilt I designed but it was designed in EQ5. I was teaching a class on curved paper piecing. I was using the book by Jodie Davis on Curved Paper Piecing. She didn't have a sample of all the different blocks and I wanted a sampler for my class sample. So I designed one.
I designed this one and purchased the fabric I needed afterwards. Using the Fabric Yardage feature to decide how much fabric to buy.

You will notice that my design has an extra block in it. When I made the block it was a mess. I emailed Jodie about it and she replied that the Gizzards and Heart block did not loan itself to being reduced. So I have it in my copy of Jodie's book of learning examples of what not to do. Even after designing the quilt in EQ6 I do a lot of design wall work.

As I look at this picture of my quilt, I noticed it is upside down from how I would hang it. On the large block the light color travels down to the darker color. Not that it matters too much.

Sunday Quilting Upate

I have finally done some sewing and have some time to post about it. The first thing I had to do when I came home from our wonderful vacation was prepare an EQ6 club lesson. I had my monthly club meeting on the 18th. So I spent some time in EQ6.

Here is block 8.
Then I drew the next two Caribbean Sea blocks in EQ6 and sewed them. For block 8 I even scanned the fabric into EQ6 I was going to use to see how it would look. Even at the last minute I did change one of the colors. I used a less busy light purple. It turned out to be a better choice. I made those two blocks.
Block 9

Next it was time to work on the next section of the Washington Medallion quilt. This is a checkerboard border with a floating border in between it and the previous sections. I still have to figure out the math for the floating border. So the checkerboard is just hanging for now.

Finally one of my friends from church asked me to quilt a baby quilt for her first grand baby and since a daughter is getting married on the 11th she asked me to do the binding also. I like the quilting but I was paying more attention to being artistic, and it maybe quilted too heavily for a baby quilt. I have the binding on two of the four sides, all by machine. Here it is just before I took it off the frame.

A very Late Quilting Update

I had planned to do this Monday night after work, but I was working on cleaning out my EQ5 files and moving them to EQ6. I had done some of this re-organizing on Sunday also, between cooking Easter dinner. I also was working on my handouts and lesson plan for tonight's EQ6 club meeting. Last Saturday I also taught an EQ6 Beginner's Class. I had four students and they had a very good time. I love teaching this class because I can see the lights come on when they start to understand how the software works.
I only had one student for the EQ6 club tonight, but she sure enjoyed her private lesson. We got a lot accomplished and I was able to teach her lots of tricks and answer a lot of her questions. We had a good time and I missed my other regulars.

Here is a link to an interesting blog. Every Tuesday she posts a tool tip. Today it is a carrier for sewing supplies while traveling in the car. It's a cute idea.
Tool Time Tuesday

Of course I did have some machine time and did the machine applique on May's Monthly Mini quilt. I was also able to finish the hand embroidery for the stems on the flowers.