Please Follow Me on My New Blog Site

I moved my blog last year because I was having issues with blogger.  I hope you’ll follow me at https://marylandonquilts.wordpress.com/

I moved my blog

I had to move my blog to Wordpress.  I can't post pictures to blogger anymore.  Please consider following me at my new blog address: http://marylandonquilts.wordpress.com

Loving Life

I'm still limping along with blogger, but posting here is becoming more and more cumbersome.  It just doesn't like to work with my iPad, or my photos, but I'm persistent.     Life is good!  I've not been able to complete many projects that I can show at this time, but I've started plenty.  We've been doing a lot of traveling, too.  

The picture above  is one of the big Montana sky.  

This one is the view from our condo at Bear Lake in Utah.  So much snow this year!

This piece is a sample of playing around with paintsticks.  Meh.

A beautiful sunset from our room in Morro Bay.  I added a filter with my phone.  

Change in Venue

I'm stitching from our place in California now, and I find it's easier to finish things because I don't have all the distractions of my other life with grandkids, kids, longarm, quilt guilds, etc.   this is the second of four eye spy quilts my grandkids and I have started.  Two of them have the same busy sashing to make it harder to 'spy' and the third will have more of a solid sashing because I ran a it of this polka dot fabric.  I don't want to buy more fabric, and didn't bring much with me to CA.  

Before I left Montana, I was busy blocking, binding and bleeding a quilt.  Oh, my, that was scary.  All that work only to find that the red had bled all over the white. Well, thankfully for Vicki Welsh Publishing an article on bleeding a quilt, I followed her directions and it worked beautifully.  

 

Here are the foam boards I tacked the quilt to.

The quilt is soaking in a hot bath of Dawn dish detergent.  

 

I'm still struggling with publishing to this google blog from an Apple product, so my posts are few and far between.  One day I'll have to make the leap to a wordpress platform...Well, thanks for stopping by and I hope all is well in your world.

 

 

 

 

Challenging Myself

 

  

For 2017 I have challenged myself to accomplish 12 tasks.  Not to finish UFOs, or to make 12 quilts, but to accomplish 12 things.  

 

In no particular order, this is my list:

1. Finish the modern quilt design I started, piece and quilt it.
2. Dye Fabric
3. Use one piece of silk I purchased last year.
4. Finish one of the wholecloth designs I started, mark it and stitch it out.
5. Use Derwent pencils on something
6. Use Paintsticks on something
7. Design and  complete the challenge quilt for Big Sky Quilt Retreat
8. Use EQ7 to design a simple quilt
9. Bind, Block and Remove Bleed from quilt.
10. Use new panto on a UFO
11. Use new panto on a UFO
12. Finish grandkids eye spy quilts
13. Make a charity/comfort quilt from stash.
14. Make a charity/comfort quilt from stash.
15. Use class notes from Sue Heinz' class to stitch on a quilt.
16. Stitch some gridded fills on a quilt.

 

 

 

A couple weeks ago I was coloring with my grandkids.  They wanted me to doodle something that they could color.  This is the piece I kept for myself.  Ironically it's the same colors of the fabric that I purchased last!          

 

And then to make it even more ironic, I rarely design a quilt in which the predominant colors are reds, (okay, one time I made a red and site quilt for a fundraiser) and I just painted over all the red in our house and replaced it with gray. (See all the red and gray in my colored doodle?)

 

New paint colors 

 

 

 

 This picture was from the real estate listing before we bought the home.

  I guess all the painting made a lasting impression on me, huh? 

See, we really are influenced by the colors around us!  I hope you're having a great start to a new year, and I just may need a reminder to follow your blog.  If you are reading this, take a moment to comment so I can check out your blog.   

Inspiration and Blogger Issues

First, I have to vent.  I sure hope that this app will allow me to post.  I've been trying for weeks!  I am trying a new mobile app to start logging again since my blogger app keeps crashing, and my blog has been linked to Google plus.  Since Google hijacked my blog, I cannot add photos.  I can't post from Internet explorer, either.  That might be because I am an Apple user?  When it asks me to choose a place to get my photos, none of the options work.  So frustrating.  Do you experience problems posting to your blogpost blog with Apple devices?

 

Now, getting back to blogging about quilty things!  I haven't finished anything lately.  I have many irons in the fire, and many quilts in various states of completion, but nothing I can show right now.  

 

This picture shows some Kona solids I pulled from the shelf to see how they might work in a new quilt.  

This was my inspiration I pulled from Pinterest.    

 

I have been so busy.  I'm still playing my guitar, and have found a fabulous teacher.  He has really motivated me to practice a lot.  Yesterday I spent a couple hours transcribing one verse.  It doesn't come naturally to me, but I guess it doesn't matter.  I am enjoying myself.  

 

Well, let's hope this post actually works!  Thanks for stopping by!

 

 

Getting Back in the Groove

First, I'm sharing a photo I took one morning about 7 am when I dropped my husband off to work in the Mohave Desert.  The desert always shows us the best sunrises and sunsets, doesn't it?  

I just arrived back in Montana, and that means I've got a studio with a longarm.  And a quilt that is 80% done and waiting for me to finish!       It also means I've got to get reacquainted with everything in there, and unpack my bags of quilty 'stuff' that I haul between Montana, California, and Arizona.  It takes me awhile to figure out what to take, and then I have to find places for everything when I get home.  It's the story of my life for awhile, and I'm not complaining...much.  I am a bit irritated when I can't find things.  For instance, I know I uncovered my chalk and ounce pads in a bin in California, and was so happy!  I had been looking for them for ages in Montana.  Well, now that I am back I can't find them.  I could have sworn I packed them.  Oh well...    

It's Okay to Give Up, too...A Series?

In my lsat post I said that it is okay to change your mind, at least I was giving myself permission to do that!  Well, today, I am giving myself permission to give this up, and move on to something else.  It was an experiment and I'm not terribly unhappy that I've decided to quit this.  I didn't buy any fabric, in fact, I made myself just use stash.  I learned some new circle techniques, as well as appliqué ideas.  But this little project is going in a bag until I decided to toss it, or maybe I'll use that background for something else another day. 

 

I am going to try some different techniques in the next few days.    

Thinking I might like it if I organized the circles.  Not.   

 

Here are a couple earlier versions.

It's Okay to Change Your Mind

I'm so glad that this worked out!  It's done, every row has been finished with stitch in the ditch (SID) and I've tidied up the edges.  I learned a lot with this quilt. 

 I know that next time I spend this much time on a quilt, I want it perfect before I start, so if I decide to show it, I can.  I also learned that I will do all my SID with Superior's monopoly rather than thick Omni.  What was I thinking??  Haha!  

My daughter learned that she will speak up next time and suggest I go a different route if she thinks something isn't quite right.  The S.  She knew it was going to get lost, and make it look a bit off, but didn't say anything.  Didn't want to hurt my feelings, I think.  I wished she would have!  It would have saved a lot of time.  

Oh well!  It's done now and I've already forgotten the pain.  

Thanks for looking!!

Liking it Much Better Now

So after I removed all the quilting I didn't like, I began to enjoy myself.  I'm not worried about how this will look now, I'm sure it will be good enough.  This is not for a show, it's not for a paying customer (it's for my daughter), so I can do what I want.  I've chosen some fun fills, and also some time-consuming semi-fun ones.  You know how that goes, right?  You start on a dense area, fun for the first hour, but then you begin to lose interest and by the time you're on the home stretch, you're absolutely sick of it!  Kind of like winter snow, right?  You love the first snowfall but are sick of it by February or March!

I was driving home from my daughter's house on Wednesday evening and I stopped to take this picture.  Not a lot of color, but I thought it was pretty.

And this is a picture of what most of central (where I live) and eastern Montana looks like.  The Yellowstone River is down below the rims.