Day 74 - of 100 Days of Quilts

Splintered Arrow


Every day I wonder which quilt I should post on the blog. And everyday I walk past this quilt, hanging over the banister of my house...and today, it actually clicked. We haven't shown you Splintered Arrow!

This was a quilt featured in American Patchwork & Quilting, way back in August of 2000. It was our second quilt to be published, and I was more anxious about this second quilt than I was about the first. To me, getting a second quilt into a magazine had more pressure tied to it. What if getting in the first time was a flook? What if they don't ever like any of our designs ever again? What if we were just a one-hit wonder? What will my mother say?!
But it all turned out well, and we slowly built up our confidence.

The quilt is complied of hundreds of little triangles (I think I tend to do that a lot) and it was ment to have a more masculine feel. This quilt, and our first magazine quilt both are a little more special to Cori and I because they are wonderfully hand quilted. Back then, I guess there was time to do that.

And I can't wait until I get a phone call from Cori about this post. I had to include our photo that appeared in the magazine with this quilt. THAT is what we looked like 8 years ago?? Through all of our childhood, Cori always had short hair, and I always had long hair...and now, we kind of meet in the middle. Sometime it is good to stop and look back on where you have come from. At least it will make you smile.

See you tomorrow.
myra

Day 73 - 0f 100 Days of Quilts

For today's project, I picked our little 'sign of summer' hanging. I know that I have posted the sign for winter and spring, and I hope that by posting this sign - summer might show up.

All you need is a fat quarter of fabric for the background, a few little scraps for flowers, and a bit of gray for a watering can, and in no time at all, you will have your project finished. And because we framed it over stretcher bars, there is no binding! What could be faster?

See you tomorrow.
myra

Day 72 - 0f 100 Days of Quilts
Autumn Joy

























Why did I pick this quilt for today? Because I was thinking of one of our friends who was at retreat this spring. Shannon took up the challenge of making this quilt, in awesome new colors, and I am wondering how her quilt is coming together. I hope all these little pieces are fitting for her, and that she will love her quilt as much as we love ours.

This quilt was one that Cori and I designed about 10 years ago, but we didn't use it until we found a spot for it in our 4th book.

And yes - those little stars are paper pieced, but they are worth the effort, because they add the spark to this quilt.

See you tomorrow.
-myra

Extra post
I knew it was bound to happen, and sure enough it did. I used the same quilt twice during our 100 Days of Quilts. But nothing gets past Karen! We might have to add 'fact checker' to her long resume of things that she does for us.

So I decided to add an extra quilt into the mix, and I am sure that NO ONE has seen this one. It's not a true quilt, but rather a very large wallhanging - 4' x 8' to be exact.

Last year our Church reach it's 70th anniversary, and we have also had a large addition built on - and so, someone on a committee thought that we should make a hanging to commemorate all of these milestones. Whenever the Church needs a banner, they ask my mother. And whenever my mother needs something designed, she volunteers me to do it.

I really stuggled with this project for most of last summer. I felt the pressure of designing something 'nice looking' but that would reflect our Church's past. So after much debate and annalysys, we decided to represent the buildings, and to use a timeline to show who worked in the Church, but what we really needed was to give recognition to the pastors who lead our Church, and lead us forward. And so I designed what I call 'the Mount Rushmore of Pastors'.

I wanted to show this hanging, to give you another idea of how to applique faces. Ususally you take lots of different fabrics to make the skin tone, and the eye color, and the lip color....but if it isn't done right, the person can end up looking like a clown. When I saw a black and white photo of the first pastor, I realized that this was the perfect way to depict all of them. By changing the faces to 'two-tone', they would look more uniform, and it would make the job a lot easier. Their faces are actually the background color, and we simply added the dark area of fabric, and a few embroidery lines, and suddenly there was a face. The hardest part with faces is trying to get the person's character to come through. Here you can spend hours tweeking lines, so that it looks like them. An old artists trick is to turn the photo, and your drawing upside down. When you do that, you stop looking at the 'person' and start seeing where your lines are wrong. So the next time you are asked to make a wallhanging of a person, keep it simple, and it will turn out better than if you riddle it with details.

See you tomorrow.
-myra

Day 71 - of 100 Days of Quilts
Daisy Chain
Our quilt for today, is one that we designed to go with our new kids fabric collection. I do like the way it turned out, but this was a quilt that was done in many different color combinations at our spring retreat - and they all looked amazing.

And speaking of babies and our retreat - congratulations to Kari-Ann! (and Kris) Kari-Ann stopped in to visit us at retreat, but she felt that she couldn't attend for the whole weekend, since it was the due date of her first baby. (I can't find your new e-mail Kari-Ann, so I hope you read this!) And congratulations on your new baby girl - Scarlett, who I am sure will grow to love playing with fabric, just like her mom.

See you tomorrow.
-myra

Day 70 - of 100 Days of Quilts
Baby Blocks
I picked this fun little baby quilt to post today, because the pattern for it is waiting on my cutting table. I need to cut more kits of the quilt to put into our shop, and to take along to Pine Ridge, where we will be speaking very soon.

When Cori and I created this quilt in our EQ program, I was a little unsure as to how it would look when it was done. I love creating using a computer program, but sometime when the quilt is done in actual fabrics, it can look different from what we had thought. When our new fabric like arrived, we need projects done very quickly, so we packed up the fabric, and sent this project off to a friend, who pieced it, and sent it on to the machine quilter. We didn't get to see this quilt, until it was completely done, so if something looked odd, then that is just how is was going to be. To my great surprise, when I opened the box to see the quilt, it looked stunning. Pictures don't do this quilt justice, so I hope that somewhere down the line, you will all be able to see it in person.

See you tomorrow.
-myra

HOOKED

It's great having friends who share their quilting addictions with you. And I have to thank Marcy for getting me hooked on this new site. It's a site, all about fabric! Who knew there were so many prints that I had never seen. Check it out for yourself, and you might just get hooked too.
http://www.trueup.net/


See you tomorrow.
-myra

Day 69 - of 100 Days of Quilts
Summer's Day
The snow has finally stop falling, and we can now look forward to the bright summer that is starting to peek through. Cori has been on a (small) rampage the last few weeks, to photograph our new quilts, and to get these patterns out to the distributors. So, any day now you should see all of our new projects on your store shelves.

I picked the Summer's Day quilt for today, because it was bright and sunny. Does it look a little familiar? It is based our our Dragonfly Baby quilt that can be found in our 4th book - Four Season's of Quilts. It has alwasy been a very popular quilt, so we decided to expand the size, and use our new fabrics, to make this layout for a twin size bed. It's another project that is fast and fun, and you will be able to finish it done before summer is gone.

See you tomorrow.
-myra

Day 68 - of 100 Days of Quilts
Scrappy Circles Baby Quilt - The Blessed Home Quilts

Where has the time gone?! I can't believe how many days worth of stuff I need to blog. The good news is that I will have plenty of time to do it. Cori and I finished up a lot of commitments, and we had our (awesome, fun, inspirational) retreat. We walked away from that weekend with a lot more ideas, and we were rejuvenated by our friends, so now we want to start on new designs again.


I was looking for a different kind of quilt to post today, and I found our one and only "30's" quilt. I do have a found affection for 30's prints, but so far I have collected more prints than I have ever used. A stereo-type that I am trying to break, is that only 30's prints can be used with 30's prints. Why? I have a great little teal/blue print that I want to use with some very contemporary prints. I think those fabrics would look really great together, now I just have to invent the project. Hey Cori, got any idea's?

See you tomorrow.
-myra

Our 5th Retreat Group

Thanks for a great time...
~cori & myra

13. - Autumn signs flannel quilt made by Cathy Pedden






















14. - Amish Bars meets lady bugs made by Judy Greaves.

15. - Amish Bars done with Completely kids fabrics - pattern coming soon!





Hope you enjoyed the show!

~cori

9. - retreat '07 made by Joan Godfrey. (miodified design!)
10. - another quilt by Joan made with Bohemian Rhapsody fabrics.
11.- Holly and berries table runner from our "Four season's of Quilts" book, made by Shannon Jolly.





















12. - Retreat '07 made by Shannon J.

5. a quilt using our love joy peace fabrics made by Judy Greaves.

















6. - Judy's '06 retreat project using Bohemian Rhapsody.
7. - Jackie Smyk's earthy lemon slice quilt.
8. - Bargello (from McCall's magazine) made by Peggy.

Does this count as part of our 100 days of quilts??

Here are some more pics of our show and tell. I just picked a selection of show and tell of bmd projects.
1 - miniature of lemon slice made by Peggy Groves.
2. - Love Joy peace retreat. quilt made by Denise Groves
3. - Retreat '07 made by Sara & Peggy Groves





















4. - out of the blue baby quilt, made by Judy Greaves

Retreat '08 Portage La Prairie MB

We are on day three of retreat and I just thought I would share pieces of our weekend with those of you who could not be there (missed you M&L!) Here goes...the first picture is of a miniature version of Oklahoma Twister. I bought this quilt at a mini quilt auction in Dryden Last weekend. It was made by Karen Greaves.

The second picture is of our display. Our new fabrics and patterns are available on our website or call me with your order.

The third picture is our "gadget grandma" a laptop, touch ipod, ipod speakers!! We love it.

The last picture is our 5 year member group. Alice, Sandra, Peggy & Sylvie have been at all 5 retreats!! HOORAY! Thanks ladies for your support and loyalties!

We had a show and tell on Saturday evening and I will load those pictures next...so stay tuned.

I could tell you more but then I would have to....you know...top secret.

Cori

p.s it's snowing AGAIN!

p.p.s all photo's by "gadeget Grandma".

Catching up

I know that we are falling behind again on our blog, but we have been going from one event to another. It feels like we just got home from last weekends quilt show in Dryden, and this morning I have to finish packing, to head out to Portage La Prairie for our retreat weekend.

So I am going to do my best to give you a little glimps of last weekends road trip.

It's a 5-6 hour drive to Dryden Ontario from where we live, and we thought that we should stop in Kenora for a bite to eat. As we were heading into town, we came to a screeching halt when we saw this sign on the edge of the road. A new quilt shop! And it is very new. They have only been open since Nov. and they are a beautiful new shop, filled with beautiful new fabrics. The biggest surprise? We walked in, and they knew who we were! We met up with some old friends inside, and met some new one's. This shop is definitely worth the stop, and you can find it in Keewaitin (did I spell that right?) and it is conveniently located directly beside the highway. You can't miss it, and we are glad that we didn't.


Some of my other picture don't want to be uploaded right now, (I am having technical difficulty) so I will talk about the pictures that did load up. This is part of our booth space in Dryden. They do an awesome quilt show every two years, and I must admit, that I have been to almost every show since they started. I love going for the quilts, but meeting up with friends, and buying fabric from other vendors is another great treat.

The one big surprise of the weekend was the enourmous amount of snow that fell. We were all surprised by that, but then again, this is Canada. The snow came as one huge dump during the night, and in the morning, I was up to my thighs in snow trying to get into my van. We fortunatly were snowed in at a quilt show, but we felt bad for all the quilters who were snowed in at home, and were not able to see the quilts.

And we wanted to say a special Thank-you to all of you who did shovel out, and came to hear us talk at the banquet Saturday night. We had a great time (buying miniature quilts) and sharing some of our insights.

And I can't wait to see what stories will come out of THIS weekend.

See you soon.
-myra