Go West Young Man!

My friend Lynn was expecting her baby in April.  But Baby Vincent decided to arrive early so this project became a rush job!  I asked Lynn what color/ theme/style of quilt she would like for her sweet baby and she said she did not care so much about the style as long as it had something to do with California.

Lynn grew up in California and her parents still live here but she went off to NYU to Grad school about 10 years ago.  I think she really enjoyed living in New York City for a number of years but as the time for parenthood grew near she realized she'd really like to be closer to her parents,  And back in the Sunshine state!

                     I knew right away I had the perfect fabric for the project!  Randy over at     http://barristersblock.blogspot.com gave me this fabric a while back for my B-day!   I thought the                                    "Welcome to California" signs fit Lynn's request perfectly!

      And with a little applique magic I turned the aerial sign into a special message to Lynn's baby!

 I quilted it with those wavy lines I've been quilting lately.  I think it worked just as well with this                                                     fabric motif as with the triangle quilt here .

I used a wonderful fleece backing to make it extra squishy.  The motif is a nod to the new babies dad who is of East Indian heritage.

                  
    It is really a simple construction, but when I make baby quilts I want them to be loved and cuddled                                     and as I said Baby Vincent caught me (and his parents) by surprise!
                                                                 Have a Great Weekend!
                                                                      Cheers, Claire W.

March 2017 PVQA BOM

Exploring the Self Portrait..." Where in the Heck did I leave my Sunglasses?"

Have you ever spent 20 min. looking for your sunglasses when they were right on your head?!

The inspiration for this BOM was a group of caricatures from this book:

My local guild is doing a program based on the work and humor of Jean Ray Laury.  It seemed fitting to pick a project from one of her books.  I thought that I would use one of Jean's face patterns but then my friend Jan sent me a link to funny faces on pinterest and that really got my creative ideas going...  

here's the link:https://www.pinterest.com/search/pins/?q=funny%20quilt%20faces&rs=typed&term_meta[]=funny%7Ctyped&term_meta[]=quilt%7Ctyped&term_meta[]=faces%7Ctyped

Check it out...thousands of ideas, your imagination will run wild!

I discovered that caricature, no matter how you approach it,  can be a lot of fun!  

Here's a challenge! How would you characterize yourself in a humorous way?  

Here are the instructions I included for my guild:

PVQA MARCH 2017 BOM-  Tribute to Jean Ray Laury- Portrait                               10” unfinished

USE THESE IDEAS TO MAKE A PORTRAIT      

You may make any kind of portrait you wish.  Self portrait, abstract/ Picasso or use one of Jean’s designs; whatever tickles your fancy.  If you want other ideas the web is a great place to start.  Visit Pinterest “funny quilts”.  I got a lot of ideas for my self- portrait from that page. 

Use any combination of applique and embroidery techniques with cloth that you need to get the effect that you want. (no puff paints please).  For example:  I used a black sharpie marker to draw in the pupils on my portrait.  It was the easiest way to get the look I wanted. (no pun intended!)  For applique I used a glue stick and narrow zigzag to sew everything down and for details I used my embroidery foot and just doodled. Since my background was darker than my face fabric I cut 2 layers of face fabric, glued the 2 layers to each other and then glued it down to the background.  The whole project took me about 2 hours.  It does not have to be complicated!  HAVE FUN!

Sew a ¼ inch Stay Stitch around the edge of your background block to help keep it from 

fraying and keep it square.

Here's some more inspiration: 

 

A few more finishes...

Where did the time go?  I've been scrambling to finish a few quilts for my local guild show.  Last weekend in Feb we had our show.  It was a good show but the weather definitely effected the gate numbers.

There were lots of great quilts, vendors, and programs.  Our featured speaker was Roderick Kircofe the author of Maverick quilts.  He's a fun speaker and it was interesting to hear how he developed his collection of Mid last century Quirky Quilts!

Here's one of my entries,  this quilt was still in pieces when I left for India.  Fortunately the construction was pretty simple.
And since this is Such a scrap-o-licious project I'm linking up with Scraptasti Tuesday: link is to the right!

I used my Scrappy techniques to construct blocks that accommodated the paper template.

Once the first triangle was cut from the block the right triangles could be rotated arount and sewn to make another equilateral triangle.

I was surprised at how easy these triangles were to piece together.  

Here's the final result.  I was really happy with the color scheme and general mechanics but I backed it with minky and tho' it feels soft and wonderful it did not quilt as well as I would have liked.  Oh well, Ya got to try new things, right?

More on the Fair next.

Cheers, CW