Putting Ideas on Paper

I spend a lot of time doodling. In fact I have a large book of said doodles that I hope someday will become quilts. I am heading to a 4 day retreat next month and needed to cut out a couple of projects to take along so I decided that this time I was going to sew on something I really really wanted to work on. In the end I couldn’t decide on just two so I have been busily cutting out all three projects. The first one up is my Bitchy and Unstable quilt. I found this tea towel at Paducah in 2007 and just knew it had to be made into a quilt. This gives you an idea of how I draft mine out. I am not a good drawer and I am not good at math so none of my drawings are done on graph paper to scale. I just draw them out on paper and write or draw the pattern or shape out and then just go with it. I have all my blocks cut out for this one and I plan on using Tonya’s freestyle letters around the outer border. Oh and to be shown at a later date I have the most fantastic quote from Joan Rivers that will be pieced on the back, well okay I can’t keep it to myself as I just love it so much so here goes….Don’t Cook. Don’t Clean. No man will ever make love to a woman because she waxed the linoleum –
“My God, the floor’s immaculate. Lie down, you hot bitch.” -Joan Rivers
Moving on to the second top I cut out, it is my daughters age 15 quilt. It is going to be on a black background and it will have raw edged pieced flowers. It will also have freestyle words (yes I am a junkie) which will say Daughters are flowers that are forever in bloom. The last one I cut out was my son’s graduation quilt. He has gone by the name T since he was born. In fact we don’t know if his dad has ever called him by his given name (Tanner). This one was a no brainer as the T block will work perfectly. I want to do single T’s instead the double ones that are more popular so I need 120 of them. Around the edge appliquéd letters will say – (HIS NAME) was born in the year 1990 and was given this freedom quilt in the year 2009. It is based on the antique quilt I am showing. So now you have a little idea of how I work. I am not real meticulous, I just draft out a rough plan and fly by the seat of my pants and more times then not it actually all comes together. I would love to hear your methods for creating your ideas.

Eagle Crib Quilt

Wow, I just experienced 8 long days of baseball and I am glad they are over as some of those days were over 12 hour days. Tonight I am going to go home and prepare a decent meal, yes you heard me right, me is doing the cooking. Anything is going to be better then nachos for dinner. While sitting at games I was able to get a block and a half of appliqué done, the binding on a crib quilt that Carol quilted for me and I read a book. The book I do not recommend. I have been trying to re-read all the Jane Austen classics. While I was online ordering one that I did not have I saw that there was a new sequel to Pride and Prejudice out entitled Two Shall Become One by Sharon Lathan. Well I didn’t like it but I kept reading thinking it has got to get better. So the lesson learned is to stay away from the sequels as nobody could write her characters better then Jane herself. The crib quilt is a free pattern I found online. I love 2 color quilts and I love crib quilts and I most definitely love quilts with words so this hit all 3 of my loves so I just had to do it. It was really simple and took no time. I really like the look of classic quilts. Well I have all of today to get my life back into some form of order as tomorrow night we start football!