Vote for Turtles!

Vote For Me! "Turtles at Sea" (MQ) Quilt Design Star 2012/Professional Creative Crafts Group Go to the McCall's website under Professional Design Star Challenge!

McCall's Designers Quilt Challenge 1 posted!

They have posted all the Challenge 1 quilt tops and are they ever creative!!

Above is the quilt top "Turtles at Sea" - my entry!!  The rich batiks give the illusion of the "turtles" swimming!  Add a few applique turtles and you have trove of turtles - just like in the pond out back!

Above is a closeup of one of the turtles swimming with a friend!

McCall's Quilt Design Star Challenge 1 - throes of points!

Quilted Cora here - and in the throes of making "Storm at Sea" mine!  Not only does the block have all kinds of sharp corners and points - but it has to fit together with other like blocks!!  Good friends at lunch today, Carolyn Goins and Cindy Simms, gave me a hint about making it all fit together - steam, steam and more steam!!  Since the blocks have been blessed with water and steamed (sounds like cooking veges), I'll just have to let it sit overnight and sees what comes out tomorrow!  I hope Challenge 2 will involve something more simple - like the codes to launch nuclear warheads.  Or, maybe applique!  Back to the salt mines!

McCall's Quilt Design Star

Quilted Cora here!  My "peep" Renelda is working hard on he quilt to for Challenge 1!  I hear a lot of 4-letter words coming from her side of the studio - words like "iron" and "points" - OK, maybe not all the words are 4-letter ones!  She is having a great time matching up all the points and making sure she cuts out the correct fabric with the correct template!  I think she said she has half of the blocks done - that means I need to go and snooper-vise her or she'll never get finished on time!

McCall's Quilt Design Star 2012 Challenge 1

Quilted Cora supervising blocks for the McCall's Quilt Design Star 2012! 

Hi! Quilted Cora here!  As my "peep" Renelda writes this I am hard at work with McCall's Quilt Design Challenge 1.  I have to use the "Storm at Sea" block for the challenge.  I am good at designing and constructing quilt tops - I usually go with something more original.  I have never used the Storm at Sea block before and am looking forward to trying my hand on this one.  A lot of points, a lot of matching points!  Hopefully the next challenge will play to my strong suit - applique.

McCall's Quilt Design 2012 Challenge 1 finalist!!

Quilted Cora is proud to announce that her "peep" Renelda has advanced and is now a McCall's Quilt Design Star 2012 Challenge 1 finalist!! Thanks to all who voted for her and the Colonel's Star quilt.  I'll keep everyone posted about when to vote for Challenge !!!

 

Thanks to everyone who took time out to write!  Thanks to all of you who voted for the Colonel's Star quilt for the McCalls challenge - you can still vote (everyday - until 20 May).  Just go to;  http://ck.upickem.net/engine/Welcome.aspx?contestid=54018     click on VOTE, my quilt is #18.

Marcia won the free copy of 100 Blocks from Quiltmaker!

Quilted Cora said for everyone to stay cool! Thanks.

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks

            Quilted Cora here welcoming you to the Quiltmaker’s 100 Blocks blog tour!!  For those of you who don’t know me, I am Renelda’s alter ego.  Anyone who knows both of us will tell you that I’m the better looking of the two, snappier dresser and better accessorized!  Well, enough about me (who typed that?) let’s look at Renelda’s block: Block #412 Blooming Hearts.

            Before I give you some inside construction info about the block, please look at 100 Blocks, volume 5, page 14.

             In the Designer’s Gallery, the #3 quilt is a bed runner using the Blooming Hearts block, yellow background and blue “flowers”.

            1. Hearts: Determine the size and number of blocks in your Blooming Hearts quilt.  I’m constructing the quilt to the right!  

            For this demo I chose to do a 4 block x 4 block wall hanging, so I have 16 blocks, 2 “flowers” per block means I have 32 flowers.  Each flower is comprised of 7 hearts which means I’ll need 224 hearts.  (I always cut more hearts than I need!)  I checked through my stash of batiks, thank you Hoffman Batiks of California! and pulled out about 20 different reds and pinks.  I try to create a balance of 1/3 dark hearts (75 hearts minimum), 1/3 medium hearts (75 minimum) and 1/3 light hearts (75 - you get the point).

            Determine if you will machine or hand appliqué the hearts (a lot of work) or fuse them to create the flowers:  Steam-A-Seam2 saves time and frustration!  My quilt will be a wall hanging which will not be handled much so I choose to fuse.  If your Blooming Hearts will be used on a regular basis it should be machine or hand appliquéd.

            After selecting fabric, cut it to fit fusible backing.  Fuse to back of fabric and trace hearts on the fusible backing.  Cut out the hearts.  The hearts are duel-directional, doesn’t matter if you trace from the front or back – the stems are uni-directional, it does matter how you cut them out.  After you check which direction to trace the stems, trace and cut out stems.

                     2. Make Flower:  Trace the flower template onto a fusible safe surface, peel the Steam-A-Seam2 off the back of the hearts and arrange them over template.  Press using a low iron just so hearts stick together, but not hot enough to melt the glue.

            3. Prepare Block:  Because you are making multiple blocks and you want the flower placement to look consistent throughout the quilt, make a block template.

           Trace the flower and stem twice and adhere them to an actual size block insuring flower and stem placement is the same for both (even being off ¼” - ½” will make your quilt look off center).

  Darken the template so you can see through light fabric.  Place the flowers and stems on the background fabric, align it with the template, and slide it onto the ironing surface and press.

      The placement template is next to the ready-to-fuse block!

Other possibilities, colors, combinations:

 Pansy with Stems

McCall's Quilt Design Star 2012

Quilted Cora here!  My "peep" Renelda has done it again - submitted a quilt for a challenge!  In a few days you can go to www.mccallsquilting.com/contests  and look under Quilt Design Star 2012.  Her quilt is called Colonel's Star - please vote for it!

Thanks for voting for the Colonel's Star!  Now my peep can get back to work!

Quiltmaker's 100 Blocks, vol 5

Hello!  Quilted Cora here!  I'm happy to announce that my peep ("peep" is short for "support personnel") Renelda has a block and quilt in the soon-to-be-released Quiltmaker's  100 Blocks, volume 5! Join her on 2 May (Quiltmaker's Blog Tour) for fun and prizes.  We are all excited about her block, which is called Blooming Hearts, it is an applique heart design that turns into a flower, which turns into cool secondary and tertiary patterns!

 Check out the "Quilt Gallery" in vol. 5 for her Blooming Hearts quilt to see the patterns develop.

Look for the Quiltmaker's 100 Block button and join the one hundred of us designers who have a block in this issue.  See you the week of April 30 - May 4!

Pink Quilt

Quilted Cora is assisting me in constructing a Pink Quilt.  Can't show a picture of it just yet because it is headed to a magazine for an October 2012 issue!  I can describe what it looks like though!  It only measures 24" x 30" and has a nice big pink ribbon in the middle.  The white background has inspirational sayings printed directly on it and then pink T-shirts were stabilized, cut up and sewn to the quilt top.

Inspiration for the Pink Quilt comes from my Unfinished Quilt which is currently traveling with the Text on Textiles exhibit for Quilts Inc.  The reason I call it the Unfinished Quilt because I have a few more years of walks and pink T-shirts to add to it before it will be a Finished Quilt!  Then it will be used as a fundraiser with all the proceeds going to the Loudoun Breast Health Network (LBHN)www.lbhn.org.  The Pink Quilt will also be used as a fundraiser to support the LBHN.

Quilting a Bed Runner

Have been pretty busy quilting a bed runner, finally finished quilting and now I have to tie threads and attach the binding.  What is a bed runner?  Glad you asked!  According to my S-I-L Anne, bed runners have been around for many years.  They are the strip of fabric which runs along the bottom part of the bed.  Anne says back in the old days before wheeled suitcases, Colonial travelers had trunks and travel bags which usually got dirty and dusty while travelers were traveling!  The traveler would place the dirty trunk or bag on the bed runner to pack/unpack.  The bed runner would keep the bed clothes and quilts clean, one would only have to shake out and clean the dirty bed runner and not the quilt! Possibly the earliest quilt preservation devise!

Waterford Quilters Guild

Just wanted to let people know that I stopped by the Waterford Quilter's Guild for a presentation and demo yesterday for WQG's January meeting.  It was a lot of fun!

Looks like Rebecca, the WQG's VP, is adjusting my mike!  My peep (short for "people" - for those of you you who don't know who my "peep" is, it is my support staff whose real name is Renelda, but this blog is about me, not her, so..) did a presentation to the Guild members based on an article she wrote for the magazine Quilter's World (Feb 2011 issue).  For the "Just Add Fabric" feature she created a mini-quilted Valentine's Day Card which introduced her technique on how to transfer computer text to fabric.



Not only did my peep talk about

Quilted Valentine's Day Card as it appeared in Quilter's World

why she created her technique to transfer text onto fabric (to make the quilt Sarajevo Rose which appeared in the "Text on Textile: Words as Design on Quilts" special exhibit at the Fall International Quilt Festival 2011) but she also demonstrated the technique to the Guild.



There was a lively discussion about printers:
1. Yes, fabric will go through a printer if you talk to said printer and get the printer's OK! 
2. No - you never tell your husband you are sending fabric through the printer.
3. Never, never, never tell your husband fabric got stuck in the printer (most printers have several pull-down doors, simply open one of these doors and yank the fabric out yourself).
4. Take the time to get to know your printer and your printer will reward you with a beautiful, finished product - text on textile!

There was a brief portion where the peep dazzled her audience with a brilliant display of tech savvy, explaining how to format the text and then an actual display of printing on fabric! 

During the presentation several members did remark upon my cuteness and marveled at my coordinated accessories, I am available for autograph sessions and do appear at the peep's presentations so I can blog about all the new people and places.



Thanks ladies!!