Pin It Weekly #147

Happy Weekly!  Have you been pinning? 

Yeah? 

What?

I found a pinner who--well, actually, she is a follower, so she found me. Thank you to all of my followers!--but I digress. Helen is a fabulous pinner! No, seriously, fabulous and organized and prolific. So a couple of stats:

• 211Boards
• 13.6kPins
• 96Likes
• 1.5kFollowers
• 5.7kFollowing

But the number of pins, while impressive, is not the thing. No, the thing is that Helen's boards have titles like "Quilts: Amish;" "Quilts: Tula Pink;" and about 70 others. See how organized her quilt boards are? Impressed yet? I am. Want to know how to find her? Well, it's easy! Go to her site.  Of course Helen has many other boards, and many are also about sewing of some nature, but others have recipes, beautiful spaces, and people.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I have.

Scrap Quilt ~~ Finished!

It's done! It's finished! Well, I do need to add a label, but I can't come up with a name that I love, so for now, it's done. I may add a label without a name but I prefer to have a name first. 

Anyway. Here we go, a few photos from inside the studio because the weather is not cooperating with photographers today. Imagine what it is doing to non-photographers!

One of my favorite things about this quilt is the small bits of Kona Indigo that I incorporated into the pieced background and also used for the binding. This is it all neatly pressed and rolled up. I discovered a pretty little gift box that is the perfect size to hold the binding until I was ready to sew it on.

You may remember that I struggled with this quilt for a while. After sewing the scraps to make slabs of fabric, I cut them into 5" squares and framed them with Kona Cream, Tan, Indigo or Bison. I liked it at the time and had about 12 blocks completed. Then I had to put it aside for a while and when I returned. Blah! I hated it enough to rip almost all of it out. Then I got smart and started cutting frames off. I used the cut frames.

I left some of the inside frames. Some of the others I sewed back on, leaving them exactly as they were, even the odd shapes.

The indigo pieces that came from the frames made for fun little accents and the rest got cut up into binding, so very little was wasted.  The Kona Bison, along with the indigo, was just too dark, so I rolled it up to use later. Luckily, it's mostly 2½" strips, so it will fit for lots of applications. 

I just played and had fun putting it all together. I could not recreate it exactly because there's no way to figure out how I got this. But I like it: it's bold and different and was surprisingly fast to make, well, once the fabric slabs were made.  

Edited to add: The title of this quilt is (finally) A Tisket, A Tasket and is part of the Nursery Rhymes series. 

Quilt Stats

Name:   A Tisket, A Tasket 

Size: 65" x 77"

Fabrics:  Scrap fabrics--blue, green, yellow; Stash fabrics--various Kona solids

Binding: Kona Indigo

Backing: blue, green, yellow flower prints from stash

Pattern: scrap slabs, improvisational piecing

Quilting: Custom Free Motion Quilting – wavy horizontal lines (side to side) 

Completed: March 2016

And the back of the quilt: blue, yellow and white flowers with a bit of green tossed in. The styles do not match but the colors do and every inch came from the stash. So there's that! 

Linking up with 
Ad Hoc Improv Quilters
Needle and Thread Thursday at My Quilt Infatuation

Crazy Mom Quilts
TGIFF hosted by Celtic Thistle Stitches
WHOOMP There it Is by A Quilted Passion

Happy Quilting,

Sunday Quilt Inspiration: Good Doggy!

Our puppies (Maltese) are just the sweetest and cutest. Of course, I'm biased and have loved one for twelve years now, so he's extra special. It occurred to me that everyone probably feels the same way about their puppies. Then why not let them inspire us! 




To that end...Sunday Quilt Inspiration: Doggy Style

Sewing inspiration...(and a few quilts)

!!! NEW !!!

Have you noticed the new look of Fleur de Lis Quilts?
It's been a couple of weeks in the works. I haven't a clue how to save the changes without actually making the changes happen. So there's no big reveal, just a change here and there when I get a moment steal an hour to work on it. 

Aside from the big difference of the newer, cleaner photos across the top (figuring out how to do that was difficult interesting), there are a few other changes or additions.  

• The tutorials page is organized! Check that out because I worked really hard.
• A new linky party page is available for those followers who like to crash a party or two.  They are arranged by weekday so that it's easy to figure out who, what, when, where AND every party has a link. I've been working on this page for a while and have over 50 links, but if you know of  an error or a party that I've missed, please shoot me a note or email. 
• I've added a poem or two to my poetry page. The poems are all original and penned by me.
• I don't know how many tips/techniques were up the last time you visited the page, but I now have 11 and plan to add more. By all means, check back.
• Finally, I hope you visit my quilts page. Nothing there has changed but while I'm tooting my horn... 

In other words, hang out a bit, look around, leave comments, ask questions, join in the conversation. If you'd prefer, you can still send me an email at mary.marcotte@gmail.com. 

And as always, thank you for coming. I'll gladly visit your blog and follow, especially if you leave me a note. In fact, for that, I'll comment on your blog as well, and I generally have lots to say.  

Quick and Not-so-quick Finishes

Today I have two finishes: a quick one that I made this afternoon, and a not-so-quick one that I worked on over the course of several afternoons.

 First the quick finish...a little sewing assistant for when I'm sitting in my recliner with some hand-stitching. 

I have been working on the Quilty 365 circles for a couple of months now and often find that I've lost a pin, or the scissors, or papers. It's been making me a little nuts. So today, finally, I decided that I'd try to end some of the nutty problems. I pulled out this pretty piece left over from a pajama pants project of a couple of years ago and left-over muslin from who-knows-what project.

A small pincushion on the topmost section, two pockets on my side of the arm and another pocket on the outside of the chair arm to slip the freezer paper patterns into will keep most of my things tidy and organized. Or so I hope.

The second finish, which took quite some time at school, is a painting of a cotton plant. Our students are very lucky since we have a wonderful art teacher. However, Leta's strongest skills are in drawings and graphic arts. 

Leta readily admits that painting is not her favorite or best medium, so she asked a painter to come in and teach a class or two. Since I know Kay, I asked to sit in on the lessons, and Kay graciously encouraged me to do so. Unfortunately, that couldn't happen because I had testing duties and a meeting to attend. 

Leta helped me out by applying the gesso and texture mediums to the canvas. I dropped in one afternoon to block out the painting and begin the background. I had the idea of painting the background blue, purple and yellow, but that did not turn out as I had hoped. 

It was pretty bad. The blue/yellow mixed into a greenish color and the purple/yellow made a horrible greenish color. I did not like it, so when I was able to get back into the classroom, I covered most of the green with shades of blue, leaving small bits of the original colors. 

A few days later, I was able to get back to the painting and enjoyed playing with the cotton bolls.  It took another afternoon of tweaking and cleaning up the painting. I'd have liked another class to get it closer to what I planned, but I decided to stop on Wednesday so that I could bring it home when we began our spring break on Thursday. 

And there we are. Two finishes, both of which I really like and hope you like them also. 

Linking up with

Crazy Mom Quilts
TGIFF, which is at Anja Quilts this week