My kids and I spent an afternoon at North Star Mall on the north side of San Antonio.
We don’t get out very often so when we go to the mall we make an event out of it, complete with ice cream from the Marble Slab Creamery.
We enjoyed seeing all the sights and all the gadgets and gizmos available to buy. 
I was amazed to see that I could buy jeans already worn complete with holes and shredded hems. And all this time I have been getting my worn jeans the old fashioned way… by wearing them thin
I don’t think I have ever done anything like this before. That is what this whole project is about, though, right? I’m exploring new materials, new techiques and new processes while exploring the elements and principles of design and Victorian Architecture.
This month I was focusing on shape; two dimensional spaces. I chose the house I did because of it’s simple clean shapes. I especially wanted to emphasize the windows; the shutters and the decorative work above and below them. I also wanted to emphasize the triangles above the door and in the roof.
As far as construction details, the basic house shapes- the wall and the roof- are pieced. The window shutters, the door and the bushes are fused in place. I went crazy with freehand machine quilting and bound the whole thing with a dark green fabric. All fabrics, threads and batting are cotton except for a tiny bit of monofilament thread for part of the quilting.
I learned alot with this piece. I learned that I love to piece. I learned that I can fuse, even though I don’t like doing it- I have never gotten along well with hot sticky stuff! I learned that I love using hand dyed fabrics. And I learned that I need to work on my freehand stippling and meandering.
I just noticed something while looking at the photos that I had not noticed with the actual piece. It looks like the house is on fire!! YIKES!! Should I name it Victorian Inferno?! Oh well… on to March!
I finished my first quilt on the longarm! What fun! I used a pantograph called popcorn to quilt it.
The main thing that I learned from it is that the longarm is going to use a lot of muscles that I didn’t even realize I had. 
The machine is not so heavy or hard to push- I can push it with a couple fingertips- but I think it is just that I get so tense and try to hold still and move v-e-r-y– s-l-o-w-l-y. I’m hoping that as I get more comfortable with it, loosen up some and build up some muscles I won’t get so stiff and sore. But believe me, a few sore muscles are not going to stop me from starting the next quilt!
My hand quilting class for our home school co-op is moving right along. Last Friday we finished up the little heart project. The girls especially enjoyed the embellishing that we did on the heart; a little Ribbon Rose, some Spider Web Roses and Lazy Daisy leaves.
Tomorrow we will be starting on a new project. It will be more involved as it should last 7 weeks. I’ve been “working my fingers to the bone” trying to come up with a project I am happy with for them. And this is what I have so far.
There are four blocks; Four Patch, Broken Dishes, Sawtooth Star and Shoo Fly. I just love the fabric. It has pictures of girls playing, baking, quilting, and reading; perfect for jr. high girls! But it is much busier than I usually do so I am not sure about it yet. Some of the definition is lost between the blocks. And I would also like to add some embellishing. I need to hang it up on my design wall and look at it for a while.
Tomorrow we will start on the Four Patch so I can delete and add to it as I want later in the project.
I love children’s books. Hopefully, I have used them to instill in my children a love for reading. I copied this meme from Bayou Quilts. Thanks, Jen.
1. Name your 3 favorite children’s series.
Mercer Mayer’s series on fear and nightmares; There’s an Alligator Under My Bed, There’s Something in the Attic, and There’s a Nightmare in My Closet.
Beverly Cleary’s series on Henry Huggins, a kind hearted boy and his lovable friends in the late 50’s Mid-West.
Shirley Hughes’s series on Alfie and his baby sister, Annie Rose.
2.Name your 3 favorite non-series children’s books.
Roald Dahl’s Going Solo; a biography of his participation in World War II. ( Mr Dahl wrote a lot of great books, including Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and James and the Giant Peach.)
Irene Hunt’s Across Five Aprils; Young Jethro Creighton grows from a boy to a man when he is left to take care of the family farm in Illinois during the difficult years of the Civil War.
Margaret Rostkowski’s After the Dancing Days; A girl comes to terms with the effects of war as she ministers to a soldier just returned from World War I.
3. Name 3 favorite children’s books characters:
Hank the Cowdog by John Erickson
Johnny Tremain by Ester Forbes
Stuart Little by E. B. White
In my art, as in real life, I find hearts so difficult to deal with. They are so symmetrical, especially if I put them inside a circle.
I don’t want to break them.
I don’t want to crowd them.
I don’t want to sear them.
My daughter’s heart had a hole in it when she was born. But God healed it.
I’ve learned to trust my hearts to God.Happy Valentine’s Day to all the hearts in Blogland!! 🙂
And now abide
faith, hope, love,
these three;
but the greatest of these is
love.
I Cor 13:13
I took the kids to see the San Antonio Stock Show and Rodeo Saturday. What a good time we had!
If I didn’t already have a theme for my journal quilts, I could do them on pictures of grown men being thrown off of bulls and broncos!
Aren’t these feathers fantastic? They were stitched on a longarm machine by Sherry Rodgers-Harrison. To see more, see her webshots page sewfarsewgood.
Well, I learned that when they say the batting and backing have to be 4″-6″ larger than the quilt top they are right! I’m not really sure what happened except that I ended up with a hole in the fabric, a broken needle and a messed up bobbin case. It was late at night so I decided I would deal with it in the morning and went to bed.
Well, my husband- sweetheart that he is- replaced the bobbin case, retimed the machine and adjusted the tension and got back that wonderful stitch my longarm can make…all before I woke up the next morning! To check the thread tension he did this beautiful bit of freehand stitching.
Looks to me like he should be the quilter in the family and I should go back to waiting tables!!
Maybe not.
You are currently browsing the Deb Geyer, Quilter blog archives for February, 2006.
Deb Geyer, Quilter 