Applique is my Passion

This past two weeks or so, I have been working with my niece, who is also my graphic designer, designing a banner to hang in our booth at quilt shows.  We collaborated to get the finished design to the printer.  My major in college was Fabric Design...before computers, Katherine's major was Graphic Design with courses in Illustrator.  For me to learn Illustrator would be a steep learning curve.  We started out with the purpose of the banner: to explain why our patterns are loved by our customers.  I wrote the benefits and she designed the layout which went through quite a lot of changes.  Without trying to hurt her feelings, I asked her why she chose the background colors she chose.  She replied that choosing colors was not her forte.  I suggested that she look at www.design-seeds.com.  She suggested that I research the colors I wanted.  I came up with this as my first choice: I loved how the animals looked in silhouette, but Paul...

I don't know what took so long.  Usually it doesn't take a month to finish writing a pattern, but I guess I wasn't as focused as I usually am.  The Crows pattern has 17 pages, seven pages of which are of crows drawings and one page of feather drawings for the quilting in the border.   Crows pattern  is up on our website ready to fly to your house as a PDF pattern or a printed snail mailed pattern.

This is the Crows quilt with the appliques sewn through the backgrounds and cotton batting. At this point I have added the backing fabric so the quilting of the backgrounds goes through all three layers.  Each block has a different quilting design.  This is a study in variations of quilting patterns as they relate to my subject matter. All the crows have beaded eyes using  "iris" colored glass beads.

I haven't fallen off the face of the earth. On August 28th, a tree fell on our carport destroying it. That set off a chain of events.  We had a visit from the tree surgeons to chop down the offending 60' maple tree and an ailing 60' walnut tree across the driveway. We ordered the new carport.  That company abandoned us, with no communication for 6 weeks when, lo and behold, they called and said they wanted to install on October 31st.  They never showed up, but they called at 8:30 at night, promising to install the carport on the next day.  At 8 AM they worked like a well choreographed dance for 1 1/2 hours and they got paid and they left.  Meanwhile, we had some renovations in the kitchen and bath that took three weeks.  Then I got shingles, from the stress of the mess, I think.  The medication made me dizzy and forgetful.  I finished the meds, and the house is getting back to order. I am starting to plan the next few patterns which will be smal...

My newest pattern is out.  I chose the subject because I have friends who adore foxes.  I've even seen one in my yard.  I guess he didn't like it here since I only saw him once in the seven years we've been living here in Southeastern Pennsylvania.  Click on the photo to see a larger image. This quilt is 35" x 32".  Yours made from this pattern could be a different size or shape depending on how you combine the blocks. Foxes are beautiful animals but they have mean streaks.  I read when they get into a chicken coop, they kill all the chickens.  I guess killing is a sport to them.  My cat does the same thing, one mouse at a time. This quilt is raw edge stitched and has hand embroidery in the backgrounds where I drew flowers and trees. In my quilt,  the chickens are on the outside, creating tension.  I tried to keep the hand embroidered flowers in scale with the foxes.  It is amazing how many you can draw with pearl cotton embroi...

Look at what I just made this week.  The sheep faces are appliques that have been felted with curly and combed wool fibers.  I used menswear wool fabrics and orange pearl cotton for the feather stitching, and wool batting from Fairfield. People are always amazed at the detail that can be achieved with felting.  It is so easy to shade to get dimension, by adding a little bit of gray to the color you are working with.  The gray needs to be mixed in your hands (push and pulling it to mix colors in your fingers).  The sheeps face patterns are part of the Crazy Sheep  pattern.

I am playing with foxes now and I can't decide if I like wool felted fox best or cotton machine appliqued fox.  On the cotton example I thread painted the fur.  With the felted example, I mixes the gray and orange fiber before felting in the tail.  Both examples need white added to their faces and bellies.  This is the beginning of a new pattern for Critter Pattern Works .