TyQuilts Designs

Do you listen to music when you quilt? Watch TV?

I have finished my piece for the feb TIF challenge. I am enjoying working in this small format, With the smaller investment in time, I am getting them finished, and with a smaller investment in fabrics etc, it is easy to experiment. I like the way this turned out. The binding fabric is one of my favorite fabrics, and I would never have thought to use it for this piece normally but when the unfinished piece landed on top of a scrap of the stripe on my very messy work table, I knew I had a winner.

When I am machine piecing in my studio I like to listen to music, but I have just recently discovered podcasts and listened to an interesting one today on the Lion Brand yarn craft site. Like many people I do many different needle crafts including knitting so this site is interesting to me. Today they had an interview with an author I like, Sue Grafton. They also talked a bit about the meditative quality that the repetition of knitting brings. I find this also happens in hand quilting. I recently came home after a very stressful day at work, there are big changes happening there and everyone is tense and on edge because of them. Also, the very nature of the work I do as a nurse is stressful, add to that a hospice patient that I am doing

It was -7 when I was driving to work yesterday with

Wow, when I read Sharen B’s take it further challenge for Feb

Now that the holidays are over and January has come and gone it was time to get out the quilt frame and my labor of love quilt. Or to use a currently popular term my “slow quilt” (more on my thoughts about slow quilt below). This is the quilt that challenges and satisfies me. It is the wedding quilt for my son and daughter in law. It is particularly special to me as my son is the child who through his teen and early adult years didn’t want a quilt. He worded it nicely “It would get ruined in my dorm room/ apartment mom” but the basic message was he didn’t want a quilt. So I was very excited when he got engaged and wanted a wedding quilt. He left the design up to his fiancee and me. She loves orange and loves stars so that was the starting point. She wanted it earthy without being too autumnal and wanted “real stars” thus the 8 pointed stars. Now in 22 years of quilting I had always avoided designs with set in seams so it was time to learn a new skill and I wanted this quilt to be my best work. Many emails later, and the design was finalized and I was on my way.