Friday, August 26, 2011

Sorry for the delay

If you have been reading my blog for a long time you may remember that one of my jobs is taking care of my aunt who has MS. My aunt is a couple of years younger than me and we grew up together, more like sisters. She even lived with my family for a couple of years when we were in high school. She has been dealing with MS for about 18 years.

Recently, she has had a few setbacks and has spent months at a time in a nursing home. She has decided she no longer wants to go to the hospital for any treatments and has put herself on hospice care. Her husband told me my role has now gone from caregiver to "comforter".

I still plan on posting pictures of my technique for how I would have liked to do the block for my quilt called Zanzibars but I haven't had a chance to do it yet. I hope you will check back and I promise I will do it as soon as I can.

Sunday, August 21, 2011

There's more than one way to skin a cat...er, I mean...piece a quilt

This is my latest design published by Quiltmaker magazine. Its called Zanzibars and is a paper pieced quilt. There are nine blocks in the quilt and each block is a 4 patch. It was much simpler to piece than it looks.

When I make a quilt with the same block throughout, I do it "assembly line" style, which means I piece all of the same units at the same time and then move on to another unit.

When I pieced this top I made all of the quadrants of the quilt first and added the half square triangle to each one before assembling each block. But, this block is the perfect opportunity to try paper piecing a "Y" seam.

By using a "Y" seam, there is less fabric used, less seams coming together and less matching necessary. I will show my process in photographs, hopefully later this week if I get the chance to piece one of these blocks and can FIND MY CAMERA!

Monday, August 01, 2011

Back at Chautauqua! Yay for me!

I'm back at Chautauqua Institution to teach again this week and I remembered to take a picture of the sign next to the chair that I took a picture of the last time I was here!



I love this!

While I was on the grounds of CI yesterday, I tried to take a few more pictures but my phone said my memory was full. So I have spent the morning at my cottage sending photos from my phone to my computer and then erasing them from my phone so I am ready for the next time.

Here are a few of those photos:
I know this last photo doesn't show it well, but this was a double rainbow around the sun!