My Book Choice: Stitched in Color
In one of my Google “research”
moments, I found a wonderfully coloured Bears Paw quilt and tracked it back to the
book, “A Quilters Field Guide to Color” by Rachel Hauser. The quilt’s owner had participated in a colour
study exercise from Rachel’s book and followed along with her blog quilt-along too
for even more tips and tricks. Working
effectively with colour has always been one of my weak spots “needing work”, so
I quickly ordered a copy from Book Depository and in between other projects, started
my own Bear’s Paw learning adventure. I’ve
wanted to do this block for ages but couldn’t decide on what colour the quilt
should be. Now it will be all multi-coloured and happy! And who would pass up the opportunity to
learn more about colour on this journey.
Not me!
Of course, the book
led to Rachel’s blog and her very generous tutorials, quilt-alongs and pattern
offerings. I’ve since decided to go back
to the start of her blog to find out more.
In the meantime, I’ve also been hooked on Rachel’s Kingfisher EPP (English
Paper Piecing) and have been cutting hexagon shapes from my scrap box. I’m hoping at some stage to add to all this
learning by putting together a colour wheel using a Carpenters Wheel block to
hang in my Garden Shed. Well, it’s a nice
plan for 2021 perhaps…
My Tutorial Choice: Tula Pink’s EPP Series
To complement all this
study, especially if you are into EPP, I found Tula Pink’s excellent series (made for the Fat Quarter Shop). Tula shows in
great detail how to best achieve very professional results (don’t lick the
thread!) and look after your well-being at the same time. Her three tutorials (the first goes for over
39 minutes) cover so much that I’ve watched them a number of times to make sure
I didn’t miss out on anything. I should
add here, that I’m not a huge EPP fan, although I did enjoy putting together my
hexi quilt all those years ago. That
said, I am open to small projects that use scraps like Rachel’s Kingfisher, so
all I need to do now is to actually start stitching all those little 1” hexagons
I’ve been busy cutting and hoarding…
Loving Quiltmania (& My To Do List)
In the interests of economy and space, I’ve been busy downsizing lately
and decided that Quiltmania was going to be my only subscription magazine. Well, that and its sister publication, Simply
Moderne. Not an edition goes by without
my adding at least one more project to my To Do List. The magazines are great quality, offer a
balance of news, articles and advertising, and contain more than enough projects
to interest and challenge quilters of all levels of expertise.
I’ve written about my To Do List before, but it’s essentially a list of the great unfinished kept in my UFO box and a note or two about progress (or otherwise). I also record where the project is located if it’s not in the UFO box, so that I can find it if I suddenly have a rush of blood to the head and want to finish that something NOW. I also add a list of those patterns I’m inspired to do or ideas that have inspired me to make a quilt. Bearing in mind that I achieve about one finished quilt a year and have been quilting for over 35 years, that list is long; rather too long. Now, I make this To Do List every year, as close to the start of the year as I can. It helps me to organise myself. (I have mentioned OCD tendencies before.) In 2020, I couldn’t help myself and added a further few (too many) pages to my wish list by noting those projects from Quiltmania & Simply Moderne that tempted me. I’ve been introduced to such luminaries as Sujata Shah, Brigitte Heitland, Kaffe Fassett and Rachel Hauser. Of course, I’d need to live to 200 to finish them all and that’s not going to happen. But it’s my happy place! How inspiring and thank you so much Quiltmania.
