New Website!

It's up! Hooray! Check out my brand new less-than-24 hours-old website: www.quilts2wear.com and let me know what you think! I'm so excited!

Lisa

Curvy Bow Tie

Here is a picture of the curvy bow tie quilt made using Wendy Hill's book as inspiration. Of course I modified her technique to suit myself and used my own pattern ;-)

It was a fun and fairly quick quilt to make. It's much more striking in person as the colors are zingy and the black and white bias really makes it sing!

This is the last quilt for the spring semester. Now to get going on the summer semester, but I'm afraid I can't post any pictures here until the great unveiling on the first day of class (June 26, 27, 28). I'll try to find other things to post so the blog won't be too bare :-)

Lisa

Fashion Show and Fused Window

Still no joy in the website saga. I need to bite the bullet and call these people and explain that I don't know what the heck they're talking about so I can't change it! Either that or just choose another website name :-(

Tonight I'm the speaker at Legacy quilt guild in Santee. It should be fun! I have 40 jackets and coats all packed and ready to go. Elisia will be accompanying me to both model a few of the smaller pieces (including my Bernina ensemble) and run the back room. A tough job for a 16-year old, but she's done it before.

I have a new system to help out the models: color coordinated hangers! They're each assigned a hanger color so they can tell what they're wearing and count how many hangers before they need to be back out in a new jacket. Because of a variety of styles and sizes the show doesn't have the models in the same order all the way through and it can get a bit confusing. After I speak about a jacket the models walk through the audience and they are free to stop, pose for pictures or let people get a real closeup look. When a jacket gets a lot of attention from the crowd it can slow things down. I like to keep the show fast paced; after all I need to get 40 jackets out in 60 minutes or less!

I teach at Palomar again next week. Wendy has been doing the spring row quilt so I've had a bit of a break. Next week is a design day when people get to design their own window to fuse in place over a scenic fabric like the one below. Fun quick and easy! If you're in the class don't forget paper, pencil, eraser and window inspirations :-)

Tropical Punch and Website Woes

I'm so sad. I can't seem to get my website hooked up. I reserved a name with one company and then decided to go with another and I can't get the first company to transfer the name. I don't know if it's my own lack of knowledge or if they're being deliberately difficult, but it's getting very frustrating. Please be patient. The website really is coming soon!

In the meantime here are a few pictures of a jacket, belt and purse I made a few years ago. I love 3-dimensional techniques and Collette Wolfe's book The Art of Manipulating Fabric was a definite inspiration for this jacket. Of course I made up a few of my own techniques, too.
It was a lot of fun making this piece. I made each technique on a random sized piece of fabric without any clear idea of how they would go together. Then I had one of those wonderful "Aha!" moments and thought of assembling them as sort of puzzle pieces with bias between to delineate them and cover the raw edges.

I used a couple of special tools for some of the techniques: a pleater board and twin needles with and without cording and also did a fair amount of hand sewing.

I'm very much a machine piecer and quilter, despite having learned how to do everything by hand first, but it's always nice to have a hand project to take along to meetings, etc.. Sewing machines are a bit large to lug around and set up!

The leftover pieces from the jacket were made into the belt and the purse. It must be my New England upbringing, but I save any largish pieces left over from my projects. You never know when you might need a bit of scrunched fabric, LOL .

Floral Sampler

Here are 3 pictures of the Floral Sampler jacket that Wendy and I taught in the spring of 2006. Each section was a new lesson and many were 3-dimensional, a real favorite of mine. I also designed a quilt to use the same squares, but unfortunately I don't have a picture of it. When the sun comes up I'll try to get one so you can see the differences and similarities.

This picture shows the thistle with 3-D fringe, paper pieced tall flowers, the 3-D morning glories on the sleeves, the ruched flowers and the 3-D star flowers.

This picture shows the simply pieced tulip block, the fringed flowers and the thread painted 3-D flowers

And this section shows another paper pieced flower, some crazy roses, the 3-D raw edged hydrangeas and the dragonfly pin I made to wear with the jacket. All sections were delineated by flanges. It was a fun project to design and to make!

Migrating Geese

Not much longer now before my website is up. It's all done except for some tweaking! I'm so excited!

In the meanwhile here are a couple of views of my jacket Migrating Geese. It was obviously inspired by Caryl Bryer Fallert. Actually I was sitting at her studio tour evening lecture at Asilomar when I "drafted" it in my head. (I've never had the privilege of a class with CBF, but I'm a huge fan.) The background is a commercial fabric and the rest are my hand-dyeds. The lining is another commercial fabric that I didn't select until the jacket was all done, but looks as if it was made for the part. Don't you just love it when everything works out?

Lisa

Spring Row Quilt

Here's a picture of my version of the spring row quilt we're teaching these next few weeks in class. Isn't it just too cute? Wendy designed it and wrote the directions for each row. Hers is arranged as more of a scene, but I kept mine to the tradional row quilt format. Me as the traditional one, what a laugh!

My website update: I've selected the keywords etc, and approved all the pages. Now it's just a little fine tuning and it should be up and running soon! I can't wait!

Lisa

Retreat Pictures

I'm still on overload from the Ricky Tims' Super Seminar so here are a few pictures from our retreat the previous weekend.

Here's one of the ladies learning to machine quilt. See the look of intensity on her face? I wish I had a picture of her first project, it was wonderful!

This picture should give you an idea of the size of the room we have available. Each person gets their own table and plenty of room to spread out.

This lady just finished putting together a few Storm at Sea blocks using Wendy's amazing trimplates. She's amazed and thrilled at how easy it was! See what fun we have?

Ricky Tims Super Seminar

WoW! I had a fabulous weekend at the first ever Ricky Tims Super Seminar! Imagine 3 days with Ricky Tims, Alex Anderson and Libby Lehman telling you all their quilting tips, tricks and secrets. It was so great! I have to admit my knees (and other parts of my anatomy) were stiff after sitting so long, but there were breaks so I didn't freeze up entirely, LOL.

Ricky was fun and showed a lot of wonderful techniques. He's very innovative and I admire that about him. Alex was fun to listen to and it was fun watching her run around. She's got energy! Libby Lehman stole the show as far as I was concerned. I've always loved her work, but never heard her speak before. What a hoot! She's so talented, has a terrific color sense and a real sense of humor too!

There were about 475 people there, but with the large screen showing everything they did, wonderful power point presentations, lots of pictures, film clips and the fantabulous book we received showing everything up close and personal it was very easy to follow along. There were numerous chances to get questions answered also, via a box and index card system.

Of course the high point for the entire weekend for me as Alex Anderson casually putting her hand on my back on the way by and saying, "Nice jacket"! I gave out lots of business cards, too, so I hope to get some calls to do guild trunk shows.

AND I got a first look at the home page of my new website yesterday. It looks fabulous! Soon I'll be able to show it to all of you, too!

Take care,
Lisa