Safari and Moebius knitting

So I haven't been a total slacker of late. Safari is a fun kid quilt (made with fabrics from Laurel Burch's Secret Jungle line) for a friend who is expecting in April. I promise to get a better pix when it comes home (its hanging in the quilt shop right now).... free pattern on line for everyone http://www.clothworkstextiles.com/pdfs/patterns/secretjunglequilt.pdf- I had it all ready to quilt in a weekend.

With the opening of a new yarn shop here (and conveniently located inside the LQS), I'm back in my passion for fiber and knitting (esp good on cold winter and windy spring nights).... this is a felted purse that was big enough to pack up a small village before I felted it. The strap is a moebius strip and its all knit in one piece... fab button, too! The moebius is the brainchild of Cat Bordhi, who I think, stays up nights thinking of new ways to torment knitters (and we love her for it)....

Click on the images for larger views.....

Stepping Stones

Last summer, I bought a jelly roll. That's 50 cuts of 2 1/2" strips of various fabrics. It was all batiks (one of my favorites) and in colors I would have never dreamed of putting together. A great creative challenge. After unrolling them, and putting them all on the design wall to see the choices, I decided on a simple log cabin variation. The result is Stepping Stones.

Front and Back

And since it's a bed quilt for ME (first time since 2003), I decided to have it machine quilted, and my quilter did a fabulous job. Yes, that's some trapunto in the alternate blocks.

Now, to remake the bed with my new quilt!

NeedleNooks

So lately, I've been pretty dry in the quilt inspiration department.... and so since its winter, I've felt more like knitting. We have a new yarn shop in town (conveniently located inside the quilt shop!) and I've been playing with samples and hats and little projects. I opened my knitting box and found a nest of needles, and I wasn't able to really tell what was what or what I had. I've seen fabric needle holders and decided I could make them! Here are my three, all folded up and easy to store. This one holds my smaller metal and plastic needes (single and double pointed): This one has my larger wooden needles and circulars:

And the last one has my crochet hooks, rug hook, cable needles and other small assorted accessories (in the small pouch on the left):

And NeedleNooks were born..... now the yarn shop is carrying them and I'm taking special orders!

Muses Shoes

An online friend of mine has enlisted the help of our gals group to create wildly decorated shoes for the 2009 Mardi Gras Parade. Since this has been a week of bad weather, and 2 days that work was closed, I decided to rock and roll. I donated the surviving pair of stilettos, the ones I can put on but not walk in!

First, spray painted them purple, inside and out. And then add lots of glitter, sequins, fabric, glitz, bling, glamour. Not to mention burnt fingers from the hot glue gun, and a glitter explosion in the kitchen. I just to to add a coat of clear coat (I'll get that when the roads clear... maybe tomorrow, Saturday for sure, we've had 36" of snow in the past few days). And then I'm ship them off to Crawbaby!

Not bad for a first attempt!!

Oh no, here comes the snow plow again.... that means the fourth time I've dug out today!

Halloween - Totally NQR (not quilt related)

Goofy Halloween Fun at the Campus Health Center The nurses: Me: I'm a Nuva Ring! Me and my adopted son Tony (he's Fast Food Fred)

Andromeda

I've been ignoring this blog since summer... job changes and life just get in the way. But I did find time to make Andromeda, which is now hanging at the Coconino Center for The Arts in Flagstaff AZ.

The current show is "Night Visions III" and celebrates 50 years of Flagstaff being a dark skies community (we have several planetariums and astromony centers in the area, so street lights and other lighting is either a yellow light or an other hue that won't interfere with star gazing. This quilt had a strange start. One episode of this season's Project Runway (I am addicted to that show!) featured a challenge where the designers took photographs of New York at night and based their garments on their images. Leeann Marshall, who went on to win the season, based her design on a photo of a tree grate, which suddenly sent me into the "what if" mode. I searched the net for pix of tree grates and manhole covers. From those images, I drew the foundation pattern for the 279 individual pieces in the arch. Placed in a starry sky, its up to the viewer to decide what it really is! Could be a star ship, could be a virus, could be a manhole cover!

Hoffman Challenge 2008

Path of the Lotus

The Hoffman challenge fabric for this year was a curious print of a large peacock. and a strong Asian feel. The coordiates included a black metallic stripe and some nice blenders, but I knew that I didn't want to focus on the peacock, just not my style! I've been working on ideas for labyrinth quilts since last year's Challenge and this seems to be the next installment! Challenge quilts have to fit a certain size (width and length) but there are no restrictions on shape, so I decided to start drawing a path. It almost drew itself! The half starts are all fussy cut from the challenge fabric and a darker colorway. The corner points are foundation pieced and the lotus at the top and bottom centers are stablized, hand beaded, and sewn on as 3-D elements. I was inspired more by the colors than the print in this case. Picture courtesy of Karen Pharr, and taken at the first public showing of all of the Hoffman Challenge Quilts for this year. Mine is off traveling for a year... to places I can only dream of. And the first labyrinth should be home at the end of month!