My Fabric

This is my fabric storage closet.  It's 6 feet wide and just 12" of shelf space.  I sort by type of fabric (it's mostly batiks) and by color.  There are some prints on the bottom shelf you can't really see here.  I also have two bags of black and white prints as I can't stop buying them.  Can you tell I like bright colors?

I try to keep my fabric limited to this space.  EXCEPT...

I have a bureau which has a drawer of leather, a draw of hand-dyed, and a drawer of silk/specialty fabric.

I also have three bins of my Island Batik Ambassador fabric upstairs.

Oh and a pile of Tula that doesn't have a home at the moment.

I guess I need to do some sorting again.  But I'd rather quilt, so it will have to wait.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

My Least Favorite Color

When I did Bonnie Hunters On Ringo Lake Mystery a few years ago I actually had to buy brown.  I don't like brown.  I like CHOCOLATE brown, but that's it.  Every once in a while I find one I like and buy a piece, but as you can see most of my brown pile is creams.

I love this one though....so fun!

I hope you get to quilt today!

Suzy

My Favorite Color...

It has to be ORANGE.  I love orange.  I thin kit's because it's so cheerful.  I love lemony orange, red orange, peachy orange.  But not gray orange.  It always make me smile.  It's my husbands least favorite color so my orange quilts tend to hang in my sewing room.  Lol.

Here's an orange shadow trapunto wholecloth I did once upon a time that hangs in my sewing room.

And an orange sunset quilt I made in a class.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Most Impactful Class

My most impactful classes are always free motion quilting classes.  This year I took my first one from Bethanne Nemesh and it was a game changer even though I've been doing this for a LONG time.  It was fantastic.  Here's some of what I stitched that day.

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Top 5 Books

My top five books!  This was hard to pick.  Of course this one is my favorite...for obvious reasons!  It was such an adventure to write and publish and truly an accomplishment for me and a lifelong goal realized.

My two most recent purchases were in Houston and from Bethanne Nemesh.  She is a fantastic teacher and I highly recommend both her books and her classes.  Such fun!  This one, Quilted Textures from A to Zen is a fun filler pattern book.

This second one is all about feathers.  You can NEVER have too many feathers!

I love this book by Karlee Porter.  It's such a modern technique and very fun.

Phillipa Naylor is the queen of applique and this fantastic book explains a lot of her amazing techniques.

Susan Clevelend is extraordinary.  I also have her new Dresdens book I can't wait to play with.

There you have my top five.  What are some of your favorite quilting books?

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

Island Batik Ambassador's 3D Challenge

3D.  Three Dimensional.  What to do?  I was stumped.  Then, as I was scrolling through Facebook one day I found a tutorial for this block in the Quilting group.  You can watch the video on how to make this block here.  It is from a European quilter and has no words.  It was a bit of a challenge to figure it all out, but fun too as I'd never done fabric folding like this before. 

I love the coral and purple Island Batik fabrics I picked for this project.  They're so cheerful.

Part of this process is folding back the fabrics as shown below.

Once the top was done I was ready to quilt.  At this point none of the fabrics had been folded back.

You were supposed to topstitch down the folds, but I decided to do it while I was quilting it and skip a step.  

Some places had a LOT of layers of fabric, but I persevered.

The middle was a bit messy for my perfectionism so I decided to add some decor.  I picked a button and added some purple beads while I stitched it on.

You were supposed to tack these points at the end by hand.  I decided to stitch down their centers.

Quilting complete!

Of course I used my favorite Aurifil Threads and Hobbs 80/20 Blend batting.

So pretty and cheerful. 

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy

My Favorite Tip

Doodle!  Doodle!  Doodle!  If you want to get better at free motion quilting you have to get the feel of the stitches into you muscle memory.  Just like with anything else, you have to practice and drawing is a great way to get that feeling into your muscles to improve your skills

I hope you get to quilt today!
Suzy