Catching Up and Moving Forward

Despite my best intentions, I have not been blogging bi-weekly as I intended. Why? Because I'm once again out of balance. I'm spending all the time I have making rather than doing the business-y side of things. I have so many ideas, and they take so long to make (as many artists know), and because of my strange process (more on that in a subsequent blog) I'm always really excited to see what they are going to look like, so I get caught up in the making. This is why I really have yet to actually launch a business. i don't really know what I should do to make it happen. But that is also another post...

Let's start with a catch-up, I wrote about my Summer Moons quilt, but never followed up on the quilting. Boy that was a dilemma for me!

I couldn't decide whether to just choose an overall type of quilting or to quilt each "moon" differently. Of course I knew what would have been easiest, but rarely do I choose that option.

So I ended up quilting each one individually. And I'm so glad that I did. I tried to match the quilting to the feel of each one. Where the Glacier fabrics are, I followed the movement of the fabric.

The background was a little scary, too. i decided to echo quilt it and let it overlap a little. It is more quilting than I had originally intended- I didn't want to feature the negative space, really. I hope it doesn't draw too much attention to itself. I kind of want the moons to POP!

Made two of the Watercolor study quilts from Audrey Esaray of @cottonandbourbon. Here they are below - Super fun!

I rarely make other patterns - not because I don't love them, but because I have so many ideas of my own waiting for me to get to them. But these were fast and fun makes, only took one day to make from start to finish. I made one for me out of my fave fabrics (@cherrywoodfabrics) and I did light to dark just for fun instead of dark to light, and one for my son out of the amazing Malka Dubrowsky's (@stitchindye ) hand dyed, yummy fabrics. Enjoyed myself immensely

I also finished a quilt I'm calling Angled Diamond Decisions, which I have entered into Quiltcon, so I'm not sharing it. But that baby took quite some time to make - lots of decision making and revising as I went along. I'm very pleased with the result, though. I'll show you a sneak peak - these three pictures above and adjacent are close-ups of the piece, made with 95 percent @allisonglass fabrics. The colors are so amazing! I'll blog about making this one some day - it was, shall we say interesting?

Literally the day I finished that piece I started on my Skyggnisvatn quilt, inspired by a terrifically beautiful glacial lake in Iceland. I just finished that one and I feel I may have over-grammed it, but here it is below just in case you somehow missed it.

My friend wants to buy it, but I can't sell stuff to my friends! (How do you feel about that? Please leave a comment below). She's an amazing stained glass artist, so I told her I would trade the quilt for some of her art. Stay tuned to see what we trade. i've never seen stained glass art like hers. It's breathtaking!

Now for the moving forward. I have a couple of patterns coming out in Make Modern next year, one of which I have already sent to them. Be looking out for it in issue 38 in January. It's a scrap-buster type project that I think has just the right amount of challenge to it...I have other iteration ideas for it, but haven't gotten around to making them yet.

Currently I'm working on a piece I call Kapow! I had gotten some of the Basic Mixology fabrics from Moda (man I love the colors and designs on them!) and was sketching different ideas for them when I came up with this idea - completely wrong for them, but perfect for my @guiceyguice Declassified and Spectrastic Fabrics. I also mixed in some of my leftover favorite @stitchindye fabrics and some random solids to add some punch to it, and I'm so loving the result. I'm definitely going to be writing a pattern for this one. I can see a lot of different ways to make it. Not gonna share it until the quilt is complete. Be on the lookout for it on Instagram and here soon, tho.

I've also working on (which means figuring out how to make) a new pattern i'm really excited about using these hand-dyed, bright, super soft and satiny solids from Free Spirit fabrics - Handcrafted by Jane Sassaman.

I seriously want to dive into these - maybe live there for a little while. YUMMM. Can't share my idea for it because it's only in my brain. The construction will prove...interesting and challenging I believe - just the way I like it...Plus these fabrics will make great additions to my stash - they are just the kind I LOVE - bright and super saturated.

There's so much more to say, but I'm stopping here. - I want to keep these short so people will actually read them! I am vowing to publish at least every other week. starting today.

Next time's blog is a little about my process of creating. i think it's a little bit weird, but it works for me... So hopefully I'll see you back here - and please, tell your friends whom you think might enjoy it to come check out my website and blog and follow me on Instagram (@thezenquilter). I'm really trying to build up my followings and mailing list, so any help you can give is greatly appreciated...Thanks for joining me - TTFN!