One last update on the quilt I made for my niece’s graduation–it’s finished! Thanks to all of you who gave me your opinions and encouragement as I worked on it. If you missed the first two blog posts about it  check Opinions, Please and Update.

So here it is, what do you think?

And just for fun, here’s the back:

In a continuing effort to finish UFOs, I recently came across a bag full of these units.

The problem was that I couldn’t remember what they were for. A mystery quilt seemed to ring a bell, so after poking around the web, I decided maybe they’d been intended for a Bonnie Hunter mystery, probably the first one, called Orange Crush. I’m not sure why I would have completed Step 2, when it seems I didn’t complete any of the other steps. I guess that’s part of the mystery.

So I looked through Bonnie’s steps and decided on a color scheme of sorts and started sewing. I made these:

And I made these:

I wanted to incorporate these yummy poison greens:

The blocks started coming together. There are two sets of blocks. One set looks like this on point:

Up to now, I’ve been happy. I love the way the indigo blues play with the poison greens, and I love the accent of bubblegum pink.

The other set of blocks looks like this on point:

I don’t like these quite as much, but I have high hopes for putting them all together. Except that when I put them together, I didn’t like the effect at all!

So what would happen if I set the blue/green blocks straight?

Or what would happen if I set the yellow blocks straight?

At this point I’m letting it all percolate. I’m not sure they’re exciting enough when separated, but I don’t like them all together either. So in a fit of creative rebellion, I put them all aside and made these funky doodads.

They’re cut freehand and they’re weird but I think they have potential. Or maybe they’ll become part of a guild program called “Miserable Failures.” I’ll keep you posted on both fronts. If you have suggestions for any of these projects, I’d love to hear them.

I don’t know about you, but it’s been a busy week in our office. We’ve got four issues that we’re working on right now–and two of them have us really hopping.

Nov/Dec is in final proofing and there’s no time to waste when the printer deadline is looming. I can tell you we’ve got some very fun holiday projects coming up–and more contests in this issue–still working out the details to get them in the issue.

100 Blocks is a newsstand special that will be onsale at the end of November. The QM staff is scrambling right now to get it ready. We’ve got 100 original blocks from 100 different designers–and we’re very excited about this one. We’ll tell you more about it soon.

In the meantime, we’re already starting to see completed projects from the Sept/Oct issue! We’ll share pictures next week–and if you’ve finished something, post it in our gallery or your blog and then leave a comment to show it off for all to see!

Have you been thinking about buying any Quiltmaker product? Now’s the time! Free shipping for all domestic online orders until August 19 at Quilter’s Village.

• Sept/Oct ‘09 featuring Any Witch Way, Winding Road, Great Ball of Fire and Part 2 of Bonnie Hunter’s Christmas Lights Mystery

• Quilting Motif books (volumes 1-7) available individually or in cost-saving sets

• QM’s Exclusive Patterns including Turning Leaves, Construction Zone, Cat Nap and more

• Back issues (2005-2009) available individually or in bundles by year

Plus this offer includes all products from other CCG titles: McCall’s Quilting, Quilter’s Newsletter, Quilter’s Home and Quick Quilts.

The offer code to use is FREE-SHIP-OFFR. Start shopping!

If you’ve ever made something from a Quiltmaker pattern, may I have your attention? One of my jobs at Quiltmaker is to find quilts for our Spotlight feature–that’s when we show a full-page photo of a reader’s quilt with copy about her experience–usually on the last page of the magazine.

Falling Leaves by Carolyne McCauley was the Spotlight quilt for September/October (No. 129).

My file for potential Spotlight quilts is running low. I’m inviting you to submit digital photos of quilts you have completed from a Quiltmaker pattern. If we feel your quilt has potential for Spotlight, we will notify you and pay for the quilt to be shipped to us for photography.

Your quilt has the best chance if you made it your own by tweaking the pattern in some way, large or small. The quilt doesn’t have to be difficult but it should be well executed. It must be quilted and bound.

I’ll look forward to receiving lots of mail: editor@quiltmaker.com

or

Quiltmaker, 741 Corporate Circle, Suite A, Golden, CO 80401

A few quilty tidbits for today…

1. I was in Nebraska (where I’m from) a few weeks ago and made my first visit to the International Quilt Study Center and Museum. It’s a wonderful facility and if you have the chance to go, make the most of it! It’s worth noting that you can view their entire collection in an online gallery, and the search engine they have is fantastic.

In the gift shop I picked up this interesting fabric with blocks of geometric designs and some airplanes thrown in.

I had selvage information so I googled “echino ni-co etsuko furuya kokka” and found the whole collection by Kokka. I love this blend of 45% cotton/55%linen. I’m thinking I’ll make a bag. Stay tuned…

2. I’ve been wanting to make some Spiderweb blocks so I did a trial run the other night. But I think the block (above) is just plain ugly. Maybe it’s because the red fabric leans too much toward orange. It’s a nice fabric by itself but it didn’t work with the scraps I grabbed. Moral: everyone makes some ugly blocks.

3. In stark contrast are the blocks below:

When I was in Nebraska, I led a UFO (quilters’ lingo for UnFinished Object) session and Julie from Hastings brought these amazing hand-pieced sunburst blocks. She also brought along a seed packet from which she drew her color inspiration. What a wonderful idea! Julie’s stitches are so tiny I had to look very closely to see that they were not machine stitches. Lovely work–and she’s well on her way to a fabulous art quilt. Julie used Marti Michell’s Perfect Patchwork Templates, Set F Sunburst.

That’s it for tidbits!

When we had our Fabricadabra workshop a while back, I tried marbling fabric with shaving cream. I had gotten a kit with all the supplies from Quilters Treasure.

It was a fun process, even if it was somewhat messy. I guess if you don’t want a mess, you shouldn’t be trying to create your own fabric! The first step is to spread shaving cream evenly over the work surface. I didn’t stress about getting it perfect.

The Tsukineko inks are applied next. They come in lots of colors. You can use one color or more. I dropped ink (pink, blue and yellow) onto the shaving cream with a toothpick.

Now you get to make the designs which will eventually end up on the fabric and look pretty and swirly. You can drag a comb through the shaving cream/paint, or you can use your fingers, a toothpick or whatever you have on hand.

Here’s another version using different ink colors:

It’s getting interesting. Take the fabric you want to marble and lay it carefully right side down on top of the shaving cream/paint–kind of pressing the fabric into the shaving cream. Pick up the fabric, lay it flat with the painted side up and use a squeegee to remove the shaving cream.

The fabric I used was plain white cotton. I wasn’t crazy about the way the white showed, so I decided to add some paint.

This might not have been the best idea, but I figured I didn’t really have anything to lose. Later I decided to use Jacquard paints and paint the whole thing pink, which got rid of the white background I was disliking so much.

Here is my finished fabric. The nice thing is that if you don’t like what’s happening, you can paint over it! The kit from Quilters Treasure was helpful—it saved me from running all over town to gather supplies.

I decided to cut up the fabric and do a couple of mock-ups, just to see how it would behave in a block.

Here it is with a deep blue Tonga batik from Timeless Treasures:

And another with Nana’s Garden from Red Rooster Fabrics:

And finally with luscious Ricky Tims’s Rhapsody Colorée III, also from Red Rooster:

I’ll be doing more marbling. It’s easy and fun!