Liberated logs and baskets

I have been wondering and trying to decide what and how I was going to  teach my scholarship class at Ogallala this year.  I took two classes from Gwen Marston - Liberated log cabins and Liberated Baskets.  When I was discussing this with my mother, she came up with the wonderful idea of using the log cabins for the basket.  ding, ding, ding we have a winner!!!   I made two log cabins with orange strips (different fabrics in each) and made one yellow cabin.  These were all from the scrap pile that I use to make "fabric" with for my intuition quilt.  I pulled some brown fabric from a stack of fabric that has finally graduated from the pile by the sofa and made it up the stairs and into my quilt studio.  I had thought I was going to use it for squares in the 6 inch square swap from a couple of weeks ago and decided that I didn't want a solid brown.  It's no really solid, but kind of muddled.  I used a different teal fabric for the handles on each of the baskets and sashed it with a brown/orange/yellow/green fabric that for some reason I really, really like.  (I have been on a brown/orange kick for a little over a year now).  I was going to make the border a large strip of that fabric, but decided that it needed a kick.  So, I went through my teal drawer and pulled a fabric that has little bitty silver strips in it.  The selvage says the fabric was made in 1999 so it is a bit on the old side, but I am so glad that I have it because it works perfectly here.  Now to decide how to quilt this baby.  I want to have a completed quilt for my project instead of just a top like last year.   Now that I think about it, the year before I had three - count them - three completed (that means quilted and bound!!)  quilts for my solids class.  Last years wasn't quilted because I couldn't decide . . . . okay, I won't lie, it wasn't quilted because most of my tops aren't quilted. 

What's New?

Even though I am not getting to sew and quilt as much as I would like this summer, I am plodding along and doing a bit here and there in my spare time.  I have an idea in my head about a future quilt, so I drew it up, traced it, cut it out and put it together to see if I would like it.  It's not totally what I wanted, but it looked good so instead of tossing it, I made it into a little wallhanging.  I had fun adding the nose, eyes and eye lashes through my quilting.  I learned alot making this little quilt. First of all, make sure you add the iron on adhesive to the wrong side of the fabric.  Both the eyes (both pieces of both eyes) and the face itself are the backside of the fabrics, because I wasn't paying attention.  After ironing the wonder-under to the right side of the purple fabric that was to become the face, I kept telling myself to not make that mistake again.  I cut out 4 pieces of fabric to make the eyes and I ironed my adhesive to the right side of every single one of them!!  argggg!!!  I used them anyway.  I think that maybe the eyebrows, which I had left out of my original drawing, are from some of that same fabrics.  The tongue was also not on my original drawing.  It just needed something else and that open diamond looked like an open mouth and therefore needed a tongue.  Like I said, not perfect, but it works and has actually quilted and bound with hanging triangles so the future owner can hang it on their wall. 

I saw a quilt on Basket Full of Scraps and fell in love.  My favorite all time block is the Monkey Wrench, aka hole in the barn door aka churn dash.  I love this block.  I once made my sister a quilt using this block and lots of plaids.  It is still one of my most favorite quilts I have made, even though the quilt is probably long gone.  So, when I saw that quilt on Basket Full of Scraps I knew I had to make it.  I recently took a liberated basket class with Gwen Marston and this quilt was the perfect combination for me to make.  So, I got started by making my fabric for the basket.

Then I began making my little churn dashes.  I made the two on top first.  They are on the small side.  So I made the three on the left a little bit larger.  Even though I thought the two on top were too small for this quilt, I may enlarge them with a few strips of fabric and use them.  We'll see what happens next.  I am liking the direction this is going, but it is not jumping up and down with excitement and letting me know that I am on the right track.  As a result, I will plod along and make a few more blocks to see what direction this will lead me. 



Liberating Weekend Quilt-In

This weekend was our first Quilt-In of the new year. Long ago, our quilt group voted not to have a traditional quilt retreat and instead we would have a stay at home retreat. We start at 3:00 on a Thursday and go until 3:00 (or longer) on Saturday. You sew when you can make it, come and go when your days are like that and run home to feed the dogs, family or just pick something up that you left. Even though we could, if we wanted, stay all night, we all elect to return to our beds and come back in the mornings. It has been a wonderful arrangement. Sometimes we have a planned project, but our favorite time is when we work on our own stuff. This weekend I worked on my Mon Ami quilt for the Le Petite Challenge. I have been meticulously squaring up every half-square triangle and it has been slow going. I should have never done that to the first one, because it turned out so perfect, that when I didn't square up the fourth one, I decided I didn't like how it looked and have gone back to squaring each one. Let's see that is 8 HST per block at 25 blocks that is 200 - 2 1/2" hst's!! I haven't even gotten to the sawtooth border yet! With having to finish up finals and getting my grades in for the semester, our meeting on Saturday, feeding the dogs and working on a rwb block (more later) I only got 10 blocks totally completed. I have the other squares sewn, but not squared. I still have a couple of weeks to get this done. If I sew a little bit each day, it will be finished in no time. hopefully.


Pictured below is my friend Diana's quilt she made in Debbie Caffrey's Stir Fry class in December. She used blocks leftover quilt blocks and made some during the year when I suggested patterns in our newsletter. She is having the best time quilting it. Just doing whatever the block speaks to her - machine quilting, hand quilting and tying. She is even going to do some machine embroidery on it! It was fun to watch her and Molly work on laying it out and fun to see the top as she quilts it.
Molly brought this quilt to show me because of all the bright colors. I love it!! Not only because of the brights, but because it is all blocks that are liberated and wonky. Molly and Diana made similar quilts using all the patterns from Gwen Marston's Liberated Quilt books. To hear them talk about their process, they each have the books, now, and they get on the phone and sew and quilt at their own houses, together! Too funny. It is a beautiful quilt. They were both jealous when I told them I was going to be taking classes from Gwen in March. I just love wonky and liberated stuff.



Speaking of which, I made a funky star block to donate to our ROTC raffle quilt. I had to add borders to get it to the right size. I had never made lopsided funky stars inside a funky star before. I was inspired by a couple of blocks from Molly's quilt. I will have to make a couple more of these for my stir fry quilt - still haven't blogged about that yet - just to have some more fun.