Stair Steps

I have made some progress on the little quilt I am working on.  I am hoping to drum up some interest in a tutorial. Someone said "If you write it, they will come!"  The writing of the tutorial is in progress.  
Meanwhile, I will entertain you (I hope) with some pictures of the quilt top.  
First here is the top without the borders:

Next is the top with the borders I have added to it:

And there is nothing quite like finding your "humility block" while you are writing the blog post.  It is a minor "oops" so I am leaving it.  Just looking at the actual top, no one has noticed it. I see it in the picture, but most people (non-quilters anyway) won't see it. 

Men Quilt Too!

This post is especially for the "Men Quilt Too!" Quilt show. There is also a link to the show in my sidebar. 


I grew up thinking of quilting as "something my grandmothers did." But then a co-worker gently coerced me into taking a piecing class.  I got hooked hard and fast. 
I started the quilting journey in March of 2008.  The class was on foundation paper piecing.  When I went to the class, I didn't have a clue.  She told me that I would need an acrylic ruler with a quarter inch mark.   So I took a clear school ruler that -yep sure enough had a quarter inch mark on it. Ha ha. Fortunately she loaned me a ruler for the class. We made one simple block in that class- a square in a square. 

In the next class we made a table runner. I knew that in May my niece would be graduating and going off to college.  So, she needed a quilt.  I made her a quilt, but was unable to actually quilt it - it was too large to drag through my tiny sewing machine,  So I tied it. 
Here is a picture of my first finished quilt.

Since then I have made many quilts.  

I have also made purses, more table runners, pillowcases, eyeglass holders and even a cover/pouch for my Kindle. 

One of my paintings with the pillowcases I made to "go with" it. 

Kindle pouch

Table runner

Purse - check out that free motion quilting!

Purse with fabric birds

Table Runner

Purse and eyeglass holders.

Other quilty/sewing endeavors include designing quilts, designing fabric and I have even written one quilt pattern. 


Of course,  as you may have guessed from the blog title, I am from Alabama and still live in my home state.  I have gone to college in Ohio. I have traveled as a repertory actor and actually got paid to be on stage.  Interestingly, I have worked many jobs from cook to janitor to asssembly to acting to secretary, but I have never waited tables.  (What an actor who doesn't wait tables? ha ha - yes true!) 


I have visited England and Mexico.  I like a lot of diversity in my life.  I love music. I enjoy singing in a choir and I play penny whistle, piano and guitar (with varying levels of success.) 


I also love comments and new followers. So if you are visiting from Pigtales and Quilts, or if you just wandered in, I hope you have enjoyed the visit and will follow me. 

Finally Feeling Better - So I made some Quilt Blocks

After a couple of days feeling blah and wishing I felt better, I have finally rounded a corner.  I am doing the AccuQuilt GO! Quilt Along hosted by Ebony at Quilt Possible. The first block was posted back of February 17th.  Yikes!  I am late. At least block two hasn't been posted yet. 
For block one we were to make eight of the Whirlwind blocks.  Here are four of my completed blocks laid together so I could see this secondary design. I love it, I could make an entire quilt of this block. 

Since I cut the pieces for this block with the AccuQuilt Go! cutter, all the pieces fit together wonderfully and the cutting was fast. My points are near perfect and I am happy. (Disclaimer: I don't stress over perfect points; but I do like them.)  

For this quilt along, we were to pick two neutrals and six other fabrics. The other fabrics are 3 sets of two in light and dark, as are the neutrals. My light neutral is a natural muslin, the dark is a tan. 

The fabrics in the dark triangles are a bit confusing as they did not photograph well. The triangles that form the center pinwheel are a hand dyed fabric that is burgundy with a bit of green in it. The light that goes with that is the mottled light burgundy/pink.  

The dark outer triangles are a mottled purple that goes with the light purple/white floral. 

There are two colors that are NOT shown, as they didn't come into play this round.  I have a solid light green and this green with purple and yellow in the foreground:

I think the purple in this will play nicely with the other fabrics. 

If you are on FaceBook you may want to "like" AccuQuilt.  It will let you see what other people are making with the GO! cutter and occasionally they give away some great prizes. Tell them "Gene Black sent me over here" if you want to.  And you might mention that I should be on their "Blog Friends" wall, too. (Yes that is shameless self-promotion) 

I just spotted this: If you sign up for email updates at the AccuQuilt website they have a $100 monthly gift certificate giveaway.  I am glad I am signed up. I would love to win one of those! 

Thanks for all the 'get well' wished over the past couple of days. You have really made me feel loved. 

The pattern is complete!

After more hard work than I realized it could possibly be, my pattern, Dance of the Japanese Lanterns, is now for sale on Etsy. 

I have added a link on the sidebar at the right of this page so you can get there easily. And here I am repeating it:

While it only shows five in stock, I will have more available.  Right now I am "testing the waters."   

If you are international (not USA) and would like to purchase a copy you may email me, or leave a message here asking me to email you.   But be sure if you ask me to email you, that I have your email address.  We can determine shipping costs and I can list one just for you. 

Thanks to everyone who has been so supportive while I have worked on this pattern.  You are the wind beneath my wings...oh watch out or I will start singing! ha ha.  I do appreciate you all.

And so it begins - The Dance of the Japanese Lanterns

The Dance of the Japanese Lanterns - formerly known as "Dancing Accordions"  is under construction. Yaay!
One of my blogger buddies, Sewmeow, suggested "Asian fabrics etched with gold."  We emailed a couple of times and she also said something about a black "smeary" background.  ---I think "Ooooh, I like it!" so I went shopping.  I got the black and a bit of Asian fabric, more is coming later.  Tonight I cut a number of black chisels and enough of one Asian influenced fabric (oh yes etched with gold!) to make one nice lantern. This block is a big old 18" by 18" block.  WOW. 


Wanna see?  Well of course you do! (or else be nice and pretend so you don't hurt my feelings, okay?)

Now this is the same block just rotated so you can see both ways easily. I really wish the photo showed the gold on the Asian fabric. it is very pretty.  You may notice the lower left corner of the bottom picture looks dark, it was hanging off the edge of the table. Sorry!  The lanterns will be in alternating orientations in the final design.  If I have enough different fabrics, each one will be different.  This will be the sample for the pattern I am writing up. 

Are you as excited as I am??? probably not...but that is okay.  When I get the pattern finished (and the quilt finished too) I will be doing something special to celebrate.  (hint hint) So a word of encouragement along will be good.  

What do you think?  Do you like the idea?    I certainly do.  This was a fun block to make and it went super fast since I cut all the pieces with the Go! cutter and chain pieced them. 

My latest design

I took the "Flies in the Butter" block and made a slight adjustment to it, then laid out a quilt from it.

 I am calling this the ShooFly quilt.

Wish I had time to make it.


(((NOTE: I edited this to include the link to the block, it is my design.
I had to after Jandi made her very funny comment.  And to answer Pat's question, yes I did it in EQ5 )))

Off to see the Longarm woman!

I don't know if any of you remember this top I made quite a while back

It has been sitting in a bag wondering if I had forgotten it.
Today it headed out on a trip to see someone who will tender work on it until it becomes a real Quilt!

I sent it to one of my followers who also does long arm quilting for NON-show quilts. After all, I am going to put this on the bed and use it so that is what I want!

Joanne has a blog (or two) one is Insanely Cheap Quilting   And the other is her personal blog,  Splitting  Stitches.    So when I get this quilt back in my hot little hands, I am going to tell you how Joanne did on my quilt. (How is that for putting on some pressure?)

If you are wondering, I made up the pattern for this quilt.  It is really pretty easy to do, but I wanted to use the FQs and Jelly Roll of fabric so it was all matchy matchy.  I downloaded the fabric swatch images and put it in EQ.  Here is how it looked on my computer screen.

  Okay, so I didn't use exactly all the fabrics, but I did stick with the COLORS so it is really close.  Ha, I can't even follow my own pattern exactly!

Yep, I am waiting to see what Joanne does with this.  I am thinking an overall meander --maybe I could do it myself, but I really REALLY didn't want to wrestle this queen sized quilt thru my domestic machine!

Humility Quilt -Take 2

I took the humility blocks and drafted them so I could play with them a little better.  I did an alternating layout and I really like it. I tried it with sashing AND without. Then I added a single block version (but with every other block mirror imaged) with sashing.  I really like it all three ways.  

This "lemon" has really sparked my creativity.  Sometimes the best thing you can do is make a mistake and find a great idea in it. Like say, post-it notes (read about more "accidental inventions" by clicking HERE)

Which do you like better?  Do you like either one enough to want to make it?

My latest project

So, my Nonna (adopted grandmother) is moving to be near her son. She will be moving into an apartment above the wine bar that he and his wife own. For several years she has admired a quilted wall hanging in her minister's home. She did her best to describe it to me, however, we are wingng it. She did tell me that it is cross made up of half square triangles. I decided to draw up some "patterns" and let her choose the one she likes best. The really good news is that she chose the one I like best also. I have started quick-piecing some HSTs using a method I found online. http://www.qorsite.com/technique/hst.htm It works well but they are not coming out exact in size so I am having to trim them. C'est la vie! I will post pictures of the HSTs and the pattern later. And when I do, you are more than welcome to play along and make one for yourself or a loved one. The background for the cross will be white and the backing and binding will be navy blue. In my pattern the darks are represented by blue and the lights by white. HOWEVER, the darks will be various colors (even though I started with blue as you will see) and the lights will be batiks and light fabrics with small patterns. There are 70 HST units in my pattern. (just in case you want to start making them in advance of seeing the pattern.
More later
Gene