Sweet dreams, little one

Our home is wonderfully tucked into an acreage of birches which fills our view from every window. We are blessed to share the space with many, many birds (we’ve named a resident partridge ‘Danny’) as well as an assortment of critters including turtles, otters, beaver, rabbits and fox. I’m delighted to catch a glimpse of any and all but most recently have been captivated by the sight of fox.

When I came across this adorable Foundation pattern for Sleepy Fox from Andrea Tsang Jackson of 3rd Story Workshop, I purchased the pattern and set about a plan to incorporate it into something special. Andrea explains the story behind the pattern and the quilt in which she made it. She also shared how she made improv birch trees. With all that information and the birch out my window for more inspiration, I ‘grew’ some of my own.

Sleepy Fox and Birches Quilt 37″ x 43″

For the quilters out there, I decided to appliqué the trees on the background rather than piecing them in. My version of the fox pattern includes black and white pieces of Minky in the ears, black vinyl for the nose and white Berber stabilized with fusible interfacing in the tail. I reworked the tail section of the pattern to remove a seam so that a single piece of Berber filled the space.

Sleep tight

NQD 2014

Today is National Quilting Day. Seems like a good time to share my most recently completed quilt. For more information about the quilt, go here. Happy stitching!

Sleepy Sheep Quilt for Macy

Just a little something

Happy National Machine Quilting Day!

Besides playing with pixels, I spend a lot of my leisure time playing with threads. Quilting has been a satisfying pastime of mine for quite a while. I particularly enjoy the creativity of stitching the layers of fabric together. I do this on all sizes of quilts using a regular, domestic sewing machine. In honour of National Machine Quilting Day, I thought I’d share some shots of my latest project. Others may be added in the future and archived on a new menu page: Threads FiberArt {I changed my mind}

Prairie Lily is featured on the cover of “Little by Little, Quilts in Miniature” by Mary Hickey (That Patchwork Place 1988) and has always charmed me. I decided to make it for our local quilt guild mini quilt auction which will take place at this year’s quilt show. I drew the block pattern (flower part) in EQ (Electric Quilt software) so I could print out paper foundation pieces. This allows for a ‘sew by number’ type of construction. The machine quilting was all done free hand (no templates or marking).

This was the first time I changed the threads on the back to match those on the front. That way I didn’t have to deal with the top or bottom thread showing up on the wrong side which was what was happening as seen below. I removed the heart border stitches, put pink thread in the bobbin and decided to do a feather border instead!