Where does the time go?

Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

So… I haven’t been posting much on here lately because I have been preoccupied with what seems like a gazillion other things demanding my attention right now.  This past week has been swallowed up by me working on an artist portfolio.  Ever seen an artist portfolio for a quilter?  Neither have I, but since I have bills to pay and a porch that needs repair, I am trying to sell my turtle quilt.  S.ave O.ur S.eas is the name of my turtle quilt, and here is a picture of it.

This quilt is roughly 7 1/2 feet tall by 8 feet wide, so it’s a bit bigger than this picture.  I love my quilts and have a hard time parting with them, but this one is so big and I really have no place to hang it other than the basement.  The county I live in is building a new community center and in need of art by local artists.  What better place for this to hang than a community center where children from 1-100 years old will get to look at it.  Well… that or a library or museum or…

Anyhow, they are asking for a portfolio with an artist statement, artist bio, artist resume, 3 art career references (I have super references for teaching in the public schools, but nothing for quilting), a CD with 10 images of your item, etc. etc.  I had to think what I’ve accomplished as a quilter and that nasty little voice in my head tells me that I’ve accomplished nothing, that I’m a loser, and that my work sucks.  So, it’s been a rough week as I’ve tried to pull something, anything out to put down as documentation.  This is what I came up with in my portfolio.

 

All the information is in there, and I added a tri-fold brochure of some of my other work.  I don’t feel like I stand a ghost’s chance in heaven of getting a commission on this, but, like I said… I need the money and I have a 50% chance of them saying yes.  Gotta take the chance!  If I get nothing else out of all the time I put into it this week, I will have learned some marketing skills and now know how to put together a presentation folder.

As for what else has been going on, my quilt guild meeting is Tuesday.  Remember that “Letter Challenge” Quilt I was working on that I didn’t like the colors and didn’t think it would qualify for the challenge and then decided I would quilt our names into it?  Well… I still haven’t gotten it done, and it doesn’t look like I’m going to get it done.  I can’t seem to finish it with the colors in the house that I have there, so I need to swap that out before I can quilt it.  I’ll post pictures IF/WHEN I get that done, but I have a sneaky suspicion that it won’t be in time for Tuesday’s meeting.  I still need to finish that charity quilt I’d started.  Hopefully I will have that done by Tuesday, because our quilt show is coming up before the next meeting, and they need all the charity quilts they can get for the show.  I’ve tied up the loose ends for our last speaker (I’m the Programs co-chair for the guild) and still haven’t gotten back to the Opportunity (raffle) Quilt for 2013.  I’m hoping to finish that by mid-November so it will be ready for unveiling on December 4th.  So, my apologies for not getting back to the blob (I mean blog) lately.

Hope you had a great week!

Longarm Quilting Challenges

Cowtown QuiltsLeave a comment

Quilters Newsletter offers free videos, with a new one each week. Check out this video on longarm quilting challenges. It will be current until Friday, Sept. 14th.
http://www.quiltersnewsletter.com/videos/index.html
So, if you bring a quilt to a longarmer, please do not baste the layers together or finish the edges. This video shows us some strategies for dealing with this when customers bring their quilts to us this way.

Letter Challenge

Cowtown Quilts3 Comments

Have you ever made a craft (in my case, a quilt) that just didn’t “work” for you the whole way through?  You didn’t feel good about it to begin with, but you carried on anyway and then you couldn’t seem to make it work no matter what.  It’s happened to me several times before, but I was beginning to feel a little cocky, thinking I knew how to put together quilts.   And, here I am now, with a piece of crap that I’m going to try to pass for a quilt…  :o( <eye roll and sigh>

One of the guilds I belong to has a “challenge” that is due October 2nd.  The challenge is to make a quilt with letters on it, any kind of letters.  It could be a “Dear John” letter quilt.  It could be a baby quilt with letters of the alphabet on it?  Really… how hard can that be?  Well, teacher of reading that I at one time was… I was stumped!  I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do related to letters.  I almost did not participate.  Then I remembered a pattern by Edyta Sitar in one of her books that I have that I’ve been wanting to use for some fabric strips from a fabric exchange.  It’s a wall hanging called Family Estate from her book Friendship Strips and Scraps.  I had some beige background fabric that looks like cross-stitched letters on it, so I could easily “cheat” and use that and then add EST. 1974 (for “established” in 1974 – the year my husband and I were married) at the bottom.

Okay!  So, I had my idea and I proceeded to look through my scraps for fabric swatches.  I had fabric strips from a “strip exchange” with folks from the forum of “The Quilt Show” with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims.  I could use those for the logs on the house.  I wasn’t sure about my choice of border fabrics, so I thought I’d look while I was out at the quilt stores dropping off flyers for the Hollis Chatelain event (2 more days now, but who’s counting?).  I looked for my standard basic black background color fabric that should go with my home decor, but I found myself drawn to this brown fabric.  I think it was the red and pink swirly things that look kind of like quilting feathers that sucked me into buying that fabric.  Don’t get me wrong.  I like the fabric.  Just wait until you see the colors I put with it, though.  I got a contrasting fabric from the same fabric line for the thin inner border and started working on the quilt.

This wall hanging would be about 2 square feet, finished.  So, it shouldn’t take too much effort.  Wrong!  I started out fussing over the fabric strips from the exchange.  I wanted reds for the house, but I only had about 3 strips that would work.  And, red is funny with all its different shades, so I had to nix that idea.  So, I started looking at my strips and saw that I had a lot of blues.  Well, blue just wasn’t going to look right with that brown border.  When I looked a little closer at the border fabric, I noticed there were dots of teal in it.  Okay.  I had blues, greens, and teals that would blend together and might draw out that little speck of teal in the brown border fabric.  That should pull it all together, right?

 

 

 

Wrong!  Yuck!  This is the finished top.  I’m a crappy “piecer” too.  Good thing I do quilting for others, because I am much more tolerant of others who do not have perfectly pieced tops because of my own inability at it also.  Nothing was working for me.  The background fabric with the letters on it is barely noticeable as having letters since it is cut up and not one big piece of fabric.  And, how does that “EST.” qualify for a “letter” quilt challenge???  So, I just sat this aside and decided that when I put the layers together to quilt it, I will quilt my first name and my husband’s first name into it along with our last name.  Then I’ll add both our daughters’ names to the stitching.  Although I’m not real happy with this product, it’ll have to do for this challenge.  The letters will be in the quilting and I will call it a day… well, several days… and surely one day that will not end with an award for winning the challenge!

Good grief!  Who would have thought a “letter challenge” could be such a challenge?

Wonders of magnets

Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

I have a magnetic bracelet that my sister gave me to wear for a troublesome wrist.  Surely you’ve heard the stories of how these bracelets are supposed to help ailments, aches, and pains.  Well, magnets are also well known for attracting metals.

Here you can see that magnetic bracelets can help “attract” loose pins.

 

Now that can be a bad thing, if you are not careful, because you can get stuck.  But… it can also be a good thing; handy for picking up pins without having to stop and get your magnetic bowl.  You be the judge… Good thing?  Or, bad thing?

Adding Flanges

Cowtown Quilts2 Comments

I really like adding a chiseled edge to my quilts.  I’ve been adding piping to several of my quilts and I do like it.  However, I’ve been wanting to just put a bit of color and separation in there without the bulk of piping.  I am so glad that my friend, Tina, posted a tutorial about adding flanges.  As you look at her pictures, you can see how just that little bit of “separation” makes her blocks “pop.”  You can find her tutorial here: http://backporchquiltworks.blogspot.com/2012/08/adding-flange.html.    I am now going to have to try this!  I love the way it looks so much better than with piping!