HERE I AM IN CHILLY ATLANTA

I thought they called this place HOTLANTA.

Just arrived in Georgia this morning -whew it's cold & windy. Of course I left all my warm clothes in NH.  Murphy's Law for traveling -no matter what you pack, the stuff you wish you packed is not in your suitcase.

 Already hit a great quilt shop today

 Intown Quilters in Decatur - www.intownquilters.com

Lots of eye candy. Beautiful fun,fresh fabrics & patterns, especially if you like the Modern Quilting trend, which I love.

( Noticed that they also have Phyliss Anderson's templates there!)

 Tomorrow night I'm looking forward to presenting a lecture/demo for the

Spirited Quilters Guild in Duluth,GA

Here is a very nice promo for my program:
 Nancy Graham is a New Hampshire fiber artisan.  She has been quilting for over twenty years.  She is from a very crafty family – "they were always doing some kind of project".  She has done almost every form of crafting from sewing clothes, leather work, and tie dyeing to quilting.  There is nothing that she cannot make, but fiber arts have become her main focus.  She dyes and stamps fabric and machine quilts her projects.  One of her batik works has been displayed at the

New England Quilt Museum in Lowell , MA . 

Her lecture will provide the guild with several of her printing and stamping techniques and secrets.  Her style involves using found objects and making stamps from recycled materials.  This may provide guild members some ideas for ‘green’ projects. 

Soo Nipi Quilters

We had a wonderful guild program this week presented by Phyliss Anderson.

Phyliss has just written a new book, due out in June, titled  Sweet'N Sassy Templates Diamond Quilts.

Along with her new templates, she has created a foolproof method for creating diamond patterns with ease & accuracy. Although I'm not a traditional quilter I can't wait to try her templates with some hand dyes and bright wild fabrics.

This is the antique quilt that inspired her to design a way to simplify this pattern.

Her trunk show was wonderful and abundant - however I was assisting in holding the quilts and  just didn't get many pictures. The quilts were gorgeous.

Catch more here  www.silverthimbleonline.com

THE GIRLS

Art dolls made from fabric that I've dyed and stamped.

The stamps are handmade, super simple AND FUN. This doll pattern was in Quilting Arts Magazine Issue #8  Winter 2002

I've been dinkin' around with paper clay and air dry clay and these cool face molds. Very easy - just glued onto the dolls. The clay & molds can be found in most craft stores (ie. Michaels or JoAnn's ) usually with the Fimo clay stuff.

*** The face on the 3rd doll is pewter from Artchix  www.artchixstudio.com

MORE...

My friend Jann has made several beautiful Square Dance quilts. Jann is an accomplished weaver, beader and quilter. She has a wonderful mastery of color. She uses primarily batiks and hand dyed fabrics in her quilts. I am so happy that she uses lots of my hand dyed fabrics because I love seeing how she brings them to life in her quilts. And best of all, I get to machine quilt her pieces so I get to enjoy having the quilts in my studio for awhile.
Click here to see more http://jannblock.wordpress.com/category/quilting/

FAST FUN EASY QUILT

 Last November, at The Gathering  http://www.aquiltersgathering.com/

in Nashua, NH  we saw this pattern over & over. Several vendors featured it using different pattern names, tools & techniques.

My friend, Sandy has been intrigued with this design for quite awhile, so we had a mini retreat & we each made a wallhanging.

We used the basic techniques from the book Square Dance by Martha Thompson and then tweaked them a little.

I started by sewing 49  6.5" blocks together ( 7 blocks across x 7 rows ) Add a border all around - I used 6" wide, to be safe, but actually trimmed off quite a bit.

I made my own template using a 4.5" ruler. Measure 3/4" from each corner of the ruler

and connect the dots with lines drawn with a marker. *Use some clear tape on your ruler & draw on that if you don't want to permanently mark your ruler.

Next, position the  template (ruler) with the lines matching the seams on the blocks; as shown below.

*TIP - I found that my small rotary cutter was the easiest to maneuver when cutting around the template AND I put some sticky-back sandpaper dots on the back of my ruler because the ruler tends to want to pivot and skitter around in the middle where all the seams are joined and raised up a bit.

As you cut your new "pinwheely" blocks line them up on a design wall AS YOU GO ALONG -so you don't end up with a big jigsaw puzzle of mismatched blocks. 

Now, just sew your blocks back together.

Use care in sewing and pressing your new blocks as they are now cut on the bias. I really didn't encounter any problems with the bias issue at all.

You will have some waste blocks to use in some other project or use in your border - These are on the bias so use care sewing them.

Add a border or two.

Machine quilt.

And......

TA DAAAAAA !!!!!!

Here is Sandy's top. She used a package of 10" squares. It is gorgeous.
This fabric just sparkles. I love it !

SPRING IS ON THE WAY

Well we finally have some snow-just in time to usher in the first day of March.

A good time to hunker down and do some projects

I just mailed this out to my sister for her birthday

hope she doesn't see my post today.

I've been stamping up a storm

These are a few of my handmade stamps

Notice that I'm taking close up photos - I don't want you to see the total mess that I create when I'm working.

This is a more realistic view here. I haven't eaten a meal on a real table in years - Isn't that why they invented TV tray tables anyway?

I'm always in awe of those perfect studios in magazines. How does anyone get anything done in those studios ?  I mean REALLY!!!! The only place that I ever saw a studio that I could relate to was Robbi Joy Ecklow's in STUDIOS magazine (Spring 2010) in an article called "Disorganized Organization"

VERY COOL !