A little R&R

I am at the gorgeous NC coast for the rest of this week. We have had such a stressful 2012, with the loss of my dear MIL in February and crazy upheaval at my job. My sewing has been quite frantic lately as a way for me to cope with all that. I did bring a machine, but I may not sew a stitch unless it rains. Here's to sitting in the sand, watching the birds, and just existing for a few days.

3 of 3, whew, why do I do this to myself?

And now, "Little Nipper" a smaller companion to "Canis Major" which used up the scraps of my dog fabrics.

This is the 2012 Raffle Quilt for Stokes County Humane Society and like the previous quilts I have made for them ALL of the proceeds go to the programs of SCHS.

I love that I could use all my left-overs. I made this star based on setting the squares 4 by 4, where "Canis Major" was set 5 by 5.

Smaller at 58.5" square. I FMQed it in my all-over swirly wave. I love it too!

June FMQ challenge

This month's challenge was by Cindy Needham. I love the way she writes. I also love her method of "divide and conquer". This lesson and challenge really seemed to build on the others.
Here is my sample for this month:

I did not like my quilting while I was stitching. I felt my "lines" were uneven, jerky. But once I finished and stood back, wow! I love that it looks more like a drawing. I do not believe that is the intention, but I like it! Cindy mentioned finding inspiration in Zentangles, and I really think this looks like a zentangle!
I also liked reading about Cindy's "Favorite Things" and her tips on beginning and ending quilting lines. She provided a lot of great information.

We are at the half-way point in this challenge so I laid all my samples out together:

I have really enjoyed this and look forward to each month's challenge. I have learned to practice more, and it is okay to mark! I have been using my chalk pencil for dark fabrics and my water-soluble marker for light fabrics.

I have also been marking out more traditional designs and practicing on those:

sewcalgal gets my gratitude for putting this together. I feel like I am getting a personal, one-on-one lesson from a major quilt superstar each month. I have met so many awesome quilt bloggers as well. It is not too late to leap in. If you want to improve your FMQ skills, check out sewcalgal's blog for more info.

Completion 2 of 3!

I had the Made in Cherry quilt on my list for this year. I know, all the excitement over it has long passed, well, I am on my own schedule! Anyway, I had looked at all the others in the Flickr group for inspiration, but nothing really seemed to excite me. I had thought about doing it all scrappy, still may as that would make a dent in the scrap bin.

If you have been reading this blog for any time, you know I have dogs, and love dogs. I am always on the lookout for dog-themed fabrics and this quilt shows them quite well.

I have 3 colors of "Puppy Dog Tails" from Aneela Hooey's "Sherbert Pips" collection. I bought them years ago, and just held on, waiting for the right project. I also had the mustard color of dogs from Heather Ross's line "Lightening Bugs and Other Mysteries". I have been zealously hoarding this yardage. Her fabrics are so cute and notoriously hard to get! At the quilt show in Statesville in January, I added to my stash by buying 4 patters from Hoffman Fabrics "Patches the Dog" collection, in black and gray.

I kept the fabrics together and waited for inspiration.

And waited. Then I found my yardage of Kaffe Fassett's Paperweights in mustard. This is an awesome little print that also had the red and teal from my Aneela Hooey dogs, and the mustard like my Heather Ross dogs. This print just brought all my other prints together! I threw in a cute little poodle on red print I had picked up from the City Quilter. I had enough yardage for the background. Then I could see the whole quilt made in my head.

I had to make it. So, here is "Canis Major-the Dog Star":

I love it, it is just as I visualized. Each square is FMQed differently from the next, took extra time, but I love it. The only change I made on the pattern was the way I attached the back ground pieces.

It measures 74" square.

Completed! (1 of 3)

Here is "Aurora":

23.5" by 23.5"

I am so enamored of multiple layers of batting. On this I started with a base of cotton batting and then 2 layers of wool batting (the last of my wool stash, must obtain more!)

I love the dimension and poof it gives.

*Why yes, if you look close, you will see dog hair used as an embellishment! LOL! We jokingly say there is an additional dog work of fur every time we sweep!

I have been exploring stars a lot this year. It is still not out of my system, you you will notice from the next 2 completed quilts! This star is made of batiks, a paw-print and Kona Snow solid. FMQ in the solid and border is 50 wt white Affinity thread, the thread in the batik areas is 40 wt variegated YLI thread.