Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Tulip Applique

Several months ago I took a hand applique class from one of our quilt guild members.  I have appliqued for years and am satisfied with the needle-turn method I use but this class offered a different technique so it piqued my curiosity.  The instructor does tons of beautiful applique and she uses interfacing to line her individual pieces.  It was a nice technique but I think I'll stick to my method even though it seems like I rarely do applique any more.

I recently purchased a Bailey's Home Quilter and this was the first thing I quilted on the new machine.  I love quilting on my old c-1996 Bernina but the harp just isn't big enough and this machine has much more space although it really didn't matter for this little wall hanging since it is only about 20 inches square.

Here is a close-up of the quilting.
And a photo-bomb by Merlin.
Cheers!

Debi



Friday, April 25, 2014

French Fabric Purchases

Montmartre is home to lots of fabric shops and I visited them a couple of times.  My favorite shop was Tissus Reine as it reminded me of the shops we have around here with their fabric selection and the way it was displayed.  I was amazed at the price of the quilting fabric as it was just over 15 Euros a meter which is probably around $22 or $23 for a little over a yard.  Needless to say I didn't buy any quilting fabric while in Paris since it was so expensive and it is exactly what we have here!

I did try to find fabric that was made in France and found a little which was only 5.50 Euros which makes it less than $10 a meter!  I plan to make window toppers out of one and the other will possibly be a whole-cloth lap quilt which will allow me to play with machine quilting.
I also couldn't resist this Macaron fabric.
Just as I can't resist Macarons!
These Macarons were from Paul's and they were okay but Gerard Mulot has the best ever.  Sadly I wasn't able to snap a photo of what I bought as they were gone in no time!
Cheers!

Debi





Monday, April 21, 2014

UFO's

Before I went on my trip I went to the Columbus Metropolitan Quilters quilt show which is a quilt guild I used to belong to.  It was lovely and I should have taken some photos of the quilts, but I didn't as I just get to busy looking and forget to pull out the camera.  They had a "garage sale" area at the show and I couldn't believe what great stuff was available for sale at really great prices.  Now mind you I have plenty of UFO's myself but how could I resist another quilter's UFO's?

For some reason Christmas items caught my eye and I came home with this little quilt.  So cute!

I couldn't leave these blocks at the show, after all they had kitty fabric in the centers and each block is signed by the maker with the date 2010.
I also bought these applique blocks because I knew four of the five quilters.  Sadly, most of the quilters have passed away so it was nice to have a little bit of their history.  The blocks were made in 1982 and I joined the guild in 1984 and quilted with them for many years.  They were lovely ladies and I sure miss those Saturday afternoons when we got together for quilting and friendship.  
A large wall hanging also caught my eye as I liked the colors and the little bee in the heart. 
The applique is fusible, which is something I don't do so I have to try to figure out what to do to make it a little more permanent since one of the pieces is starting to come off.  I will attempt to re-fuse it, but I may end up doing some sort of stitching around each piece just to secure it a little more.  I just hope the fusible that was used is something that can be stitched through otherwise I am not sure what I'll do.

Finally, there was a little bag of 40 of the cutest blocks.  The maker had a quilt in the show made from these blocks and now I can just kick myself for not taking photos of the quilts because it was one of the quilts that I really liked.  The workmanship is excellent and I can't wait to play with them.
All in all it was a great show and I just love the UFO's I came home with.  Now I just have to take the time to work on these as well as so many of my own. 

Cheers,

Debi




Thursday, April 17, 2014

Montmartre Cats

Last week was a pretty exciting week as I was in Paris!  Trip planning kept me pretty busy a few weeks before we left so not much sewing happened around here.  Our trip was wonderful and we visited the touristy stuff and a did a few other things as well.

We stayed in Montmartre instead of Central Paris this time and it was the best.  On our first day we ventured out to Montmartre Cemetery.  The cemetery is beautiful and is situated below the city so it is really peaceful and quiet. The stonework is just amazing.  Maria, my fellow traveler, took tons of great photos and of course I don't have them yet so you are stuck with what little I did take.

No sooner had we started our way through the cemetery when we ran into the friendliest man who was feeding a large cat colony that lives in the cemetery.  I do volunteer work with cat rescue groups and help out with trap-neuter-return (TNR) so it was such a surprise to find a like-minded cat purrson in Paris.  He took us to one of his stations to see the kitty but the cat was no where to be seen.

One would never know that there is a cat condo tucked in between the graves.  Here is the side entrance--so clever!

One of the Montmartre cats waiting for his meals-on-wheels!  Yes, the caregiver did have a cart with all of his care items available so he could easily go from station to station. 
As we continued to stroll through the cemetery we did see quite a few cats that were most likely waiting for their daily visit from their caregiver.

We also got to meet a very special cat named Minute who lived right around the corner from our hotel.  As we ventured out each day we would see this big orange kitty curled up on a motorcycle sleeping the day away in front of a little grocery.

Every time we would stop and ohhh and ahhh over the kitty we noticed we were being watched by someone in the grocery so of course we went in and introduced ourselves and everyone became fast kitty friends.  Minute is 11 years old and is apparently much-loved in the community.  He spent a lot of time on the motorcycle sleeping away but he also took advantage of any vehicle that was parked near the grocery entry as well.
Of course we want to send Minute one of the catnip mice we make for rescues so when we got home we searched online to see if we could get the exact address of Sitis Market and found a video!  It is just too cute.
Now if I only understood French!

Cheers,

Debi