Showing posts with label blog hop. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blog hop. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 15, 2017

A Discussion About Walking Foot Quilting



Practice Piece On An Orphan Block

Life in a small town can get very busy, and pulls me in harder than I'd like sometimes. The balance between quilting & blogging, and taking care of the every day things is tough. One thing I've found that helps me is having an online Craftsy class to watch in my spare minutes. We all have those dead minutes we're waiting for something, and this keeps my brain engaged about quilting even if life prevents me from actually doing it. I download lessons to my iPhone, and they're ready when I am.

Monday, January 23, 2017

A Lesson In Value & Fabric Choice and a Hop




Using Value to Create Brilliant Blocks

Thursday, October 13, 2016

Halloween Quilt & Eerie Nights Blog Hop



No, you're not lost! 
I'm working out of my comfort zone, 
and trying a more traditional design.


I have to chuckle to myself because I have succumbed to quilter's peer pressure. At last weekend's retreat, I watched as my friends picked up fabric in the stores. Not just what they bought, but what they needed to touch. It was not necessarily what I would have chosen, or in my color palette or style. I normally choose brighter hues, and silky smooth fabrics like Art Gallery and Michael Miller solids are glorious to me. But I saw fingers touching wovens, flannels, and fabric printed to resemble burlap. (Burlap=chills!, and I am allergic to all jute products.) Texture is a big deal for me, and I started wondering if I avoided more traditional fabrics because I associated them with certain textures.

Tuesday, March 1, 2016

Celebrate International Craft Month with Giveaways and a Quilted Cross Body Bag Tutorial





What's the big buzz about?

March is International Craft Month,
and that means it's time to Bee Creative!

Tuesday, February 23, 2016

Craftsy Sweetens Up My Quilting Life! Winners




Pardon our one day delay, but we're 
here with the official list.
Drum roll, please...
Woohoo!

Monday, February 15, 2016

Color Play for Quilters-Final Day of Hop



Color Play for Quilters


Welcome back to the final day of "Craftsy Sweetens Up My Quilting Life!" blog hop. I hope you've gained useful knowledge about classes and products, entered Craftsy's big Giveaway, and the other giveaways sponsored by our own bloggers. Check below for more information.

Sandra from mmm! quilts and I are wrapping up today, but the Giveaways will remain open for another week. All class discounts remain in effect one week from posting so take advantage of them soon! The entire blog schedule can be found here.




My first encounter with Color Play by Joen Wolfrom was while searching for books on color theory. The book reviews were outstanding, and it stayed on my radar.

Imagine my delight finding the book offered as a class taught by the author herself at Craftsy! Plus, the book I was after was a free download with the class--a win/win!


 Personal Insights
  • Comfortable speaker with extensive knowledge
  • Lecture intensive with strong visual aids
  • Heavy use of hand dyed fabrics lending itself well to both traditional and art quilters
  • Materials list supports the class well
  • Over 4 hours of instruction
  • Excellent question and answer portion relevant to the class
  • Most comprehensive course in color theory I have seen to date




"Do what you see. Not what you know."

Many of us struggle with picking out colors for a project, and to a large degree she teaches us why. She stresses the value of experimenting with colors in the form of acrylic paints creating your own samples. Blending colors and working with a color wheel was not new to me, yet she took me beyond what I'd ever done before. I had to learn how to see colors all over again, and by doing so I could use them to my advantage.



Luminosity

By far, the most interesting thing I learned was creating luminosity within a quilt. Luminosity refers to an area of light or glowing, and Wolfrom explains how she found it by mistake. Even so, she stopped to figure out why it happened so she would be able to recreate it. 




 Practical Application




Let's face it. Classes don't do any good unless you can use what you've learned. That might be the one downfall with taking a live class. One, it's hard to get your questions answered, and two, we forget things once we've gotten home. That doesn't happen when you can go back and repeat the segment for a brush up. 

I want to briefly share how the class has changed the way I look at fabric. This is a FQ bundle of Tokyo Train Ride by Sarah Watts. I've been saving it for something special, but nothing jumped out at me. I wanted to figure out why.

Normally I would lay my fabric out so I could stand back and take a good look at it. If I thought it needed something more, I'd throw some more colors down with it like in the first picture on the left. This fabric collection was leaving me stumped, so following Wolfrom's instruction I brought in a color wheel to see where most of the fabric were. I believe it was a double-complementary scheme. (middle picture above)


Building on Wolfrom's examples of adding a variety of values, I continued to add and subtract more fabrics. Another 'problem' I found with this bundle, and is often the case when we buy a single line of fabric, nearly all the the fabrics were the same scale. I tossed in dots in a variety of scales, and some micro prints. The last photo bottom right shows you what I wound up with. There's a balance between the lights, mediums, darks, and in scale finally. It's still a double-complementary color scheme, but a bit more balanced too. We shall see how this one works.


Someone who has made a quilt, and couldn't figure out what was wrong with the colors


Someone who wants to know how a color wheel works, and how it can make her much more successful at choosing fabrics

Someone who is ready to go beyond constructing from a kit

Someone who wants to delve deeply into color theory

How about YOU?





Buy Color Play for Quilters this week for 50% off its regular price. While visiting Craftsy, sign up for the chance to win one of two free classes, or the grand prize of a quilt kit, and fabric bundles. 





The Giveaway entry to Craftsy can be found both here and on each post throughout the hop. One entry per person. Enter until Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 11:59 MST. Winners will be announced February 22.


Hope you had as much fun hopping as we have!


Come on, Doxie girls.
Let's go sew.

Sunday, February 14, 2016

Craftsy Sweetens Up My Quilting Life! Blog Hop Day 5

Uppsala Stars: A "Sew You Learn" Teaching Pattern


Uppsala Stars

A "Sew You Learn" Teaching 
Pattern on Craftsy

Happy Valentine's Day from someone with a little crush on hearts! Quilters seem to embrace the heart motif in their work, and I'm no different. I have some heart projects to share along with new bloggers posting about their own crushes with Craftsy. 



Yes, I'm still down with the flu, and the good man has been doing everything he can to help out. A true Valentine is someone who shows their love even when you haven't gotten out of your pajamas in a few days. 


Did You Know This About Craftsy Classes?


You control the video speed.

I've been spending some of my couch time watching Craftsy classes. I shared with Sandra that I really liked the ability of speeding the class up if I needed to. What? Where? At the bottom of the video screen is the play button, to the right it says '30 sec repeat', and to the right of that 'normal speed'. You have the option of going 0.25x, 0.5x, normal, 1.5x, and 2.5x. This is a huge benefit for me if I just want to speed back through, and hear it all one more time. 


Classes are closed captioned.

Lara at Buzzinbumble had this to offer, too:


"I love Craftsy classes too! I especially love how perfectly they are closed captioned. Lots of websites have videos that say they are closed captioned, but turn out to be terribly done and you just can't follow along. But Craftsy is excellent! You can even click right on the sentence you want to go back to and the video will sync right to that point. It never blocks any of the video either... like I said, it's perfect! 

Featured classses are 50% off for one week after each blog review.


Today's bloggers: Preeti at Sew Preeti Quilts will tell you how to enhance your stash at Craftsy without breaking the bank by buying a Kaffe Fassett 6" strip! And, she's got a terrific quilt she designed with that strip.

Beth at Cooking Up Quilts learned that appliqué can be done in many ways.  Read her review of Amanda Murphy's "20 Fresh Appliqué Techniques."  Save major bucks with a 50% discount on this class through Beth's website!

Please don't miss visiting Sandra either at mmm! quilts, as today's post is about S.E.X. and Education, and a Sunday Stretch. (Stash Enhancing eXperience--seriously a real term at Quiltbug.)

The Giveaway entry to Craftsy can be found both here and on each post throughout the hop. One entry per person. Enter until Sunday, February 21, 2016 at 11:59 pm MST, and all winners will be announced Feb. 22 .



Surprises!

Check back daily at mmm! quilts or here at Pink Doxies for the updated daily link to each day's featured posts, and take advantage of surprise giveaways by the daily bloggers, too! 

Check out these posts for some fun mini projects adapted from a Jen Kingwell pattern, and see you all tomorrow.



Memorial Day 2015




Modern Heart Zip Bag

Come on, Doxie girls.
Let's go sew.

Saturday, February 13, 2016

Craftsy Sweetens Up My Quilting Life Day 4




Double Cross Block - by Cindy of
Stitchin At Home available here for free


Dear Reader,

I beg your forgiveness, but I'm on the DL. That, according to Sandra, is the Disabled List. I'm down for the count, a whole 24 hours into flu. To keep you up to date on the hop, Sandra has kindly written the post for today, and shared with me.

Enjoy, and I hope to be back in a day or so.

~Julie @ Pink Doxies



It doesn't take much to brighten someone's day: a word, a deed, a small gesture.  I hope to brighten the designer of this block's day by making her newest block as my random act of kindness.  More below because we have a certain hop to discuss!



It's hard to believe we are already on Day 4 of the Craftsy Sweetens Up My Quilting Life! Blog Hop. Today we have Tish and Anja weathering the snowstorms in their areas to take you into some other areas of Craftsy you may not know about.

Tish at Tish's Adventures In Wonderland is reviewing "Dot to Dot Quilting" with Angela Walters, and then takes us out of the quilting realm a bit with reviews of two photography classes: "Product Photography at Home" with Jessica Marquez and "Shoot It! A Product Photography Primer" with Caro Sheridan, great for us quilter bloggers.  Enjoy 50% off these 3 classes on Tish's site!

Anja at Anja Quilts is showing us some patterns she's picked up and made that will most assuredly warm our hearts and hands:  Postcard from Sweden, 1 Hour Basket, Star Bright, and Reusable Handwarmers.

Sweet Giveaway On Now - over $500 of free Craftsy products

Enter the Craftsy Giveaway here as well as through any of the bloggers in this hop.  The main schedule can be found here or by clicking the Heart Button on the sidebar.

Click here to enter.  That's it!  
THREE prizes:
  

One entry per person.  Enter until Sunday, February 21, 2016, at 11:59 pm MST.  The winners will be announced Feb. 22 here and at mmm! quilts.



Did you know that RAK Week, Random Acts of Kindness Week, is February 14-20 this year?  Be kind.  It really is easy, and like FMQ, the more you practice, the better you get, and the easier it comes.  Random Acts of Kindness has a great site.  I love all 10 items on this list.  Number 6, "Give compliments" is one that has always come naturally to me.  I think one of the best compliments one can give in QBL is making another quilter's design.  I hope you like my rendition of your design, Cindy, and I hope it makes your Saturday!  It was a fun block to make, and Cindy's directions are clear.  Does anyone else see the star there too?!  My favourite block is a star, so I tend to see them everywhere.

There is also a great RAK FaceBook page here.  When I was teaching, we always celebrated this week in various ways.  My class would pick a charity and we'd sell baked goods at school lunches and then donate our proceeds to that charity; the Crimestoppers group I ran for a few years would do a locker check, reminding students to fully lock their locks with a "AHA! Protect your stuff! Lock your lock!" sign we'd tape inside after locking back up the locker.


Got a new app today... possibilities for Cindy's block!
"Imagine" by John Lennon comes to mind today as I write this.  Can you imagine if we could all, starting with ourselves, simply be kind.

Be kind.  It costs nothing to smile.  To hug.  To tell someone how great they look.  Notice their outfit or their pretty hair.  Tell them you love them.  Write a thoughtful comment on a blog post rather than simply "Great quilt!"

Julie: Sandra's post reminds me of a card hanging on my wall, given to me any years ago by a friend.

Now pop on over to Tish and to Anja for some not-so-random information about Craftsy!

http://www.shareasale.com/r.cfm?u=1074126&b=253536&m=29190&afftrack=&urllink=www%2Ecraftsy%2Ecom%2Fext%2F20160210%5FQuiltingBlogHop%5FGiveaway

Until tomorrow...
Be well and sew.





Friday, February 12, 2016

Craftsy Sweetens Up My Quilting Life! Blog Hop and Slow Stitching



Pin basted, and ready to quilt! Finally.

We're still hoppin' and showing our love, but flu has hit this household. It means a minor change in plans for me, and a good reason to find something portable to stitch while playing nurse. Check it out below. But first, let's 'talk hop'.


Are you registered for the Giveaways?
 Over $500 of Craftsy products!






Two more talented ladies are ready to show their discoveries on Craftsy.

Zenia at A Quilted Passion is enamored with FMQ and her review of three classes, "Start FMQ" with Elizabeth Dackson, "Secrets of FMQ" with Christina Cameli, and "Help! How Do I Quilt It?" with Angela Walters will open your eyes to the benefits.  Buy any of those classes through Zenia, and get 50% off for the next week! 

Jayne at Twiggy and Opal has a sweet heart deal from Craftsy to show you: her pressing/cutting mat and mini iron.  We quilters adore our tools!  Let Jayne point you in the direction of some pretty terrific finds!



Sweet Giveaway Details

Enter the Craftsy Giveaway here or through any bloggers in the hop. The main schedule can be found here or by the button in the sidebar.

Over $500 of free Craftsy products up for grabs

Boundless Solids Crown Jewels by Amy Gibson Quilt Kit - None


One entry per person.  Enter until Sunday, February 21, 2016, at 11:59 pm MST.  The winners will be announced Feb. 22 here and at mmm! quilts.


This project is based on Jen Kingwell's block 'Mrs. Bannister's Stars', but beyond the center has been add-as-you-go. It's been waiting for the perfect moment to finish. You may remember it starting here, the next post here, and adding borders here. Then I got sucked into the Moda Building Blocks quilt, and this beauty sat on a shelf.


No need to go into details when the fabrics are so varied, and so dear. There are pieces from Depression feed sacks...


...recycled dresses from the 1940's, and every decade to the present. The fabrics range from contemporary to traditional to modern. The initial goal of this quilt was to blend all of them without fussing. Would it work? I think it has. All that's left is the quilting.



Enjoy the guest bloggers, and stay healthy. 
I'll be keeping the chicken soup warm.

Come on, Doxie girls.
Let's sit and stitch.