Creative Play

Journal Quilt, Week 50

julieneu — Fri, 18 May 2012 11:50:10 +0000

We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary this week, which is the tin or aluminum anniversary, though we’ve been joking that we didn’t realize that it was actually the “baby” anniversary.

Journal Quilt, Week 49

julieneu — Thu, 10 May 2012 13:18:57 +0000

If you’ve been following along with this project since last Spring, you’ll remember that we signed up with Berkshire Organics for a weekly fruit and veggie delivery that often brings things we’ve never seen before. Last June, we got some garlic scapes, whose shape inspired a journal quilt. Well, this week, the fiddleheads are in season:

Design Wall Monday

julieneu — Mon, 07 May 2012 22:32:12 +0000

Still hanging in there and able to belly up to the machine so I had another productive quilting weekend. I finished the pieced blocks in one of my cowboy quilts.

Journal Quilt, Week 48

julieneu — Fri, 04 May 2012 13:20:59 +0000

Another baseball quilt this week. With a baby on the way pretty soon, my DH and I have most of our Sox tickets for the year in the Spring so we went again to Fenway. This game, however, was THE game of the season, not for the game itself (which was horrible), but for the pre-game festivities. This game celebrated the 100th Anniversary of Fenway Park with a very moving ceremony that began with 212 of the living Sox players and coaches walking onto the field “Field of Dreams” style. That’s the part of the ceremony that I chose to commemorate here. There were also musical performances led by John Williams and Keith Lockhart, a toast led by Kevin Millar and Pedro Martinez (who seem to have been toasting quite a bit earlier in the day), and a flyover by a WWII bomber and a F-16. It was a marvelous thing to be a part of and, as always, we stayed to the bitter end of a lousy game.

Journal Quilt, Week 47

julieneu — Wed, 02 May 2012 12:15:01 +0000

During Week 47, my DH and I went to Fenway Park for our first game of the year, which, surprisingly considering our start this year, the Sox won. The weather was unbelievably warm and sunny for an April game and we had a great time with good friends. I did take a few liberties with the quilt, however. To keep to my principle of not rushing out to buy the perfect fabric when I am working on a journal quilt and instead making use of my stash, I used a fabric to represent the crowds that was a close as I could get in my stash. There really aren’t flowers in the outfield at Fenway.

Design Wall Monday – Superior University 104

julieneu — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 15:33:38 +0000

I was definitely more excited about Superior University’s Lesson 104. I picked it up from the post office on Friday morning and started working on it on Saturday. This month’s lesson used fusible thread in the bobbin and MonoPoly as the top thread for fusible applique. It’s a cool technique because you draw your design on the right side of the fabric (thus no need to think about mirror imaging anything), then you sew just inside the drawn line. After cutting out the applique piece, you iron it down to the background and the fusible thread, which is on the bottom of the piece since it was in the bobbin melts to hold the piece down and at the same time, releases the MonoPoly on the top so that it just pulls off. Superior Threads has videos on their site to show you just how this works. Here’s the project for the month (a still-to-be-quilted wall hanging):

It seems like a great technique, but I have to leave the review to any real machine appliquers out there. If any of you have tried it, please share your thoughts on it.

I also really like the MonoPoly. In fact, I liked it so much that I have two, unused and still the in plastic,1200 yd spools of YLI monofilament, one each in White and Smoke, that I will gladly give to anyone who wants it. I have used it in the past and have open spools of both still in my thread drawer and found it to work fine, with patience enough to play with it to find the right needle and tension combination. But, my next spool will definitely be MonoPoly. So, if you’re interested, send me an email or leave a comment and I’ll get your address and then pop the threads in the mail. First come, first serve.

Mystery Solved – Superior University 103

julieneu — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:53:23 +0000

I posted a picture a while back of Superior University’s lesson 103 shipment containing a bit of leather, some black floss, and what looked like a bag of sand. Well, the mystery is solved! Those were meant to be part of a hedgehog pin cushion.

I dutifully started on my pin cushion because I am such a good student, but dawn finally broke and I thought, “Why in the world am I spending some of my last precious quilting time before the baby arrives making a pin cushion that I don’t want and am clearly not doing a good enough job on to sell?” So, I gave myself permission to skip this lesson, threw the beginnings of the hedgehog into the trash and went on to do more productive things. If I ever get inspired to make a pin cushion (doubtful), I still have my bag of sand.

Design Wall Monday

julieneu — Mon, 23 Apr 2012 16:17:02 +0000

I got started quilting baby quilts this weekend. Here’s a close-up of the first one:

I did some in the ditch stitching with lime green thread around the green windmills and then did the circles in a variegated blue, green & yellow thread. I still have not perfected my machine quilting, but I am happy with the way this is coming out.

Journal Quilt, Week 46

julieneu — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 16:50:50 +0000

I had a lovely afternoon yesterday working on my journal quilt for Easter. I got to play around with all kinds of fun threads and decorative stitches on my machine. I particularly love the Superior Threads Glitter thread that I used for the grass. I just love it when a quilt ends up looking exactly like the one in my head! What do you think?

Journal Quilt, Week 45

julieneu — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 13:58:03 +0000

This one will look familiar. We had another baby shower the week following the one in Boston at our second home in the Berkshires. This one had a Red Sox theme, hence the colors on the umbrella.