Portrait of a Panamanian Parrot

Introducing my Portrait of a Panamanian Parrot!  This guy is my challenge piece for the KVQG Annual Quilt Show and I am extremely pleased with how he turned out.  The theme for the 2012 KVQG show is"It's a Small World" and the challenge isan 8.5" by 10.5" piece that represented a country.  To get a country you picked out of a hat.  Just so happened that I picked Panama and a girl I taught with 10 years ago had just returned from Panama on her March break trip.  I asked her if she had any neat pictures that I could use and this is the one she sent me (she is a fantastic photographer!):

A real Panamanian Parrot!



Thought I'd show a side by side comparison.



Shona's photo.



Here are a few close ups of my quilted piece:



You can see the Angelina fibres in this photo.  I tried to leave enough open space in the bottom feathers so that you could really see the fibres.





I love the bright colours of this guy!




Tried to get one to show the bamboo background.



The Big Girl Bed Quilt Continued...

I've finished up the stippling in the centre of the quilt plus the free hand flowers in the border on both sides so needed to flip the quilt around in order to quilt the top and bottom borders.   This is the largest quilt I have put on this frame so far and I can't say I am super impressed.  The rods are only aluminum and seem to sag pretty badly in the middle so the fabric tension is off and I ended up with some puckers.  I also ended up with fairly small quiltable area by the time I finished the stippling in the middle, even though I mounted the quilt on the frame lengthwise (so I had the length of the quilt attached to the frame and rolled the width of the quilt).  I am a little nervous about the king size I have planned next.

The Big Girl Bed Quilt

I've got our baby's big girl bed quilt on the frame and I'm working away at getting it quilted.  I started with some free motion daisies in the mauve border, I forgot to take a picture before I advanced the quilt.  I decided just to stipple the middle, however, I already think that I have made it a little too dense.  We'll see how it looks when it is done and off the frame.

Inspiration

Thought I'd share a little more of my inspiration to start blogging. 

A friend of mine, Barb Crawford, blogs about her passion of shopping regularly at http://www.barbbarbbarb.com/ and I think it is fantastic!  You can tell through her posts that she is doing something that makes her extremely happy, with both the shopping and then the sharing on her blog.

A Quilter's Lament

This must be the most common complaint of every quilter I know, 'where do I find the time to sew?'.  It certainly is one of my major roadblocks!

Practice Piece

I thought I'd share a little about my Bali Scrap Practice piece (the background photo) and how it came to be.  I found a pattern in McCall's Quilting magazine and was really pulled in by the fabrics used; I truly am a sucker for Bali's and anything really bright.  I am also drawn to geometric patterns, probably a function of my brain type (insert typical engineer joke here). 

Christmas comes again!

So it was like Christmas at our house yesterday, my fabric package came in the mail!  Ann from The Country Quilter chose some fantastic fabrics for me and I can't wait to get working again on the three quilts I have on the go. 

Square One

I have decided to start a blog.  Not a very momentous statement but a large commitment on my part.  I love quilting and want to start keeping track of what I'm doing.  I also love to talk about quilting and share what I'm working on but don't have many friends who share my passion (unless you count my 9 year old who is starting to get interested herself).