Winter Workshop Preparations`

Last week, I got a reminder from the Lake Farmparks Quilt Show coordinator that it was time to submit a supply list for my February workshop and then the brochure arrived for this winter's classes.  Time to drop everything and organize some more for this workshop.  Registration begins on November 13, so there is time to consult your calendar and make plans!  I hope you'll consider joining me to start your own version of Lorena Uriarte's Opal Essence!

My first contact with the pattern was via Instagram when it was first released in Desert to Sea, a compilation of original quilt patterns from 10 Australian designers.  I ordered the book as soon as it was available and have leisurely been making blocks.  This week, I pushed my dodecagon blocks to one side of the design wall and put up the large scale tumbling blocks for Opal Essence!  Lorena made the pattern available this past year as a digital download -- you can order your copy HERE .

I was so inspired by Lorena's color scheme that I'm using it, but there are other possibilities in my head!  At this point, I've decided to make a large lap size quilt using 15 blocks (though it might get larger). With an eye to "what colors are missing", I prepped another stack of pieces yesterday.

Last year when I was re-organizing the studio (again), I set up a hand stitching area with a much loved wooden rocker that fits me perfectly by a window overlooking a little wild area of my yard.

However, since I do most of my hand stitching in the evening in front of television, I have rarely used this cozy corner.  Yesterday, I changed that and spent a happy hour doing the hand applique and enjoying the sounds of a warm fall day. 

Adding the arcs to the diamonds can be machine pieced, but I have decided to ease myself back into hand applique (big project waiting on the "to-do" shelf) so this project is a good preparation.  I'm doing needle-turned applique.  I baste the arcs in position and finger pinch the line before I begin to stitch.

Lorena uses freezer paper templates to prepare her appliques and describes it on her blog HERE. 

A thimble is a must use tool for me -- I hear lots of protests about the awkwardness of a thimble from new hand stitchers but after pushing the eye end of a needle into my finger many, many years ago, it only took me about 3 weeks of daily practice to fall in love with thimbles!

This is my favorite and it belonged to my husband's grandmother!

I am listening to a book on tape, but I'm not loving the reader of this one, so after about 30 minutes I'm ready to take a break.  I was glad that the weather was warm enough to have the window open and enjoy the sounds of the foraging birds below the window. 

Once the hand stitching is complete, I remove the basting thread and cut out the diamond behind the applique. 

I recently invested in this collection of MasterPiece thread and this is the first time I've used it for applique -- love it!!

No matter what color the fabric is, there is a color in here that will blend nicely. 

Once the applique is finished it takes about two minutes to stitch the block together and of course, I'm applying my "set-in piecing simplified" technique at this point!

Chain-piecing for the quickest most secure assembly of y-seams!

Order my new downloadable version of SET-IN PIECING SIMPLIFIED from my Etsy Shop.

Making a few blocks at a time and adding them to the mix is the best way to maintain color balance.  I've seen other color palettes on Instagram and have an idea in my head to work with a collection of green, aqua, and blue backgrounds with yellow and orange arcs.

You can explore Lorena's students' work on Instagram by searching the hashtag - #opalessencequilt -and I will continue to share my color experiments here on the blog.

I just need one more block and then I can begin to cut the fill-ins for the outer edges.

I'll look at it over the weekend and decide if the size is good before I start the final assembly.

The surprising aspect of this quilt is how easy the block is to construct. 

The scale of the blocks is large so the quilt is coming together faster than I expected!

(Look back up at the picture of the block with my hand on it.)

My Opal Essence Workshop is two days (Friday, 2/16/18 and Saturday 2/17/18 from 9:30 to 4:30) at Lake Metroparks Farmpark during the annual show, Quilts 2018.

The fee is $125 plus you will need to purchase the pattern from Lorena ($12 Australian which is about $9 US).  (If you are looking at the workshop booklet, ordering the pattern yourself is a change since the descriptions were written this summer.) 

 I advocate shopping in your stash for the majority of the fabrics but have determined that one can cut six large diamonds from a fat quarter so thinking some swapping could happen during the workshop to help everyone expand their range of backgrounds.

The website for the show is live so you can review it HERE and has all the information including an entry form if you'd like to show off a quilt, but registration doesn't open until 11/13/2017.

If you live in Northeast Ohio or Western Pennsylvania -- this show is accessible.

For those farther away, I'd be glad to help you find accommodation locally.

Since yesterday might have been our last pleasant day before winter, I headed to the closest woods once I was satisfied with the day's stitching progress.  I often feel a little guilty about these escapes but that evaporated quickly when the first sight waiting for me was this young red-tailed hawk!

I think he was trying to catch a squirrel but the squirrel was too feisty (this time).

We watched one another for about 10 minutes and I hope we'll meet again during the course of the winter.

I hope your weekend includes time with the world around you!!

I'm anticipating the "big leaf drop" any day now and want to be out in it!!

Think yellow leaves falling all around you while scuffling down a trail!

Mary

Two Finishes!!!

My teaching samples for the Lake Metroparks Farmpark Quilt Show are finished and will soon be hanging in the visitor center!!  I stitched the binding to my Glitter lap robe over the weekend at my retreat.  I love that I was able to finish it -- it's too pretty to become a UFQ!!

I'm very pleased with the Dresden Star sample.  It was made from an assortment of "layer cake" pieces of Moda's Good Karma that I won during an Instagram giveaway earlier this winter.

I decided I'd try an outdoor photo shoot once I arrived at the Farmpark -- lots of fences!!  By the time I arrived, there was a light dusting of snow -- made the photos even better!!

I used (almost) every bit of the stack of 10" squares.  For the border, I trimmed all the bits and pieces to the same width strips.

Then I used my Marti Michell 60 Degree Triangle Ruler to cut them up -- just pick any horizontal line and trim the right and left sides. 

Don't forget to trim off the corners of the "polygons" -- it makes matching them easy and keeps the row straight!  I joined them end to end randomly and made four strips for my borders.

It was my intention to make the pieced border the final one but it didn't "feel" finished.

Much to the astonishment of my stitching sidekicks for the weekend, I decided on one more border of white!  Surprise!!  It's works!

One of my quilting friends who finishes everything she starts in one continuous stream most of the time sat with me for a bit on Sunday and we imagined quilting designs so when I got up Monday morning, my brain was in gear!  After quilting the stars, I started to experiment with ideas for the background diamonds.

In the end, I stumbled onto a way to mark and stitch "mazes" that worked really well!!  And I'm going to walk you through it for two reasons -- first, so I can "remember" how to do it again and second, in case you'd like to try it.  First, you have to promise to let me know if this doesn't make sense -- if it doesn't make sense to you, it won't make sense to me in a couple months!!  And I'll have to edit this post!!

Sketch it out on paper first.  Begin with a drawing of the shape you are going to fill with the maze.  The first step is to divide the space into an odd number of segments.  This is trial and error -- I divided my diamonds by 7 and 9 -- decided 9 was too dense so went with 7.  I find it easier to do this with a metric ruler -- centimeters are easier to break down than inches. 

I made dots across the space and then parallel lines going both directions to make a grid. 

It worked best for me to stitch the inside of the maze and then around the outside -- my red line shows where I entered the diamond and the direction I traveled.

 

The markings on this diamond correspond to my red lines on the sketch above.

That was all I marked on each diamond.  I experimented with marking more but found I got confused about where I was going.

In this drawing, you can see the full maze.  I entered along the red arrows, then exited along the black pathway and back to the edge of each diamond.  Once I reach the edge at the end of the maze, I stitched in the ditch to the next diamond where I repeated the maze process. 

To mark the starter lines, I laid my small ruler on the sketch and noted how far from the seam line those first three lines needed to be drawn -- it was 7/8" from each side. 

I used my straight edge tool to keep the lines straight and kept the presser foot centered between the first lines and seams as I stitched back out of the maze.  After a few diamonds, the process became quite smooth and only having the first three lines eliminated lots of confusion about where to go!

I quilted this piece with Aurifil 40wt cotton, yellow -- you get the feel for it in this photo.

And these two quilts represent two finishes from my list of goals for the First Quarter of the 2016 Finish-A-Long!!  Wahoo!!   Three down and three to go!!  You can check out my original list HERE.

Number four is cut and patiently waiting for me in the studio!! 

I'm off to stitch!!

Mary Huey

Workshop Teaser -- Jen Kingwell's Glitter

As soon as I saw Jen Kingwell's book, Quilt Lovely, I recognized that this delightful block which she has named Glitter would be a perfect workshop project using the y-seam technique that I teach.  Participants need to have already taken a basic workshop on the technique with me or used my DVD, Set-In Piecing Simplified to learn it.

I started out with this little group of 4 blocks and have been adding to them all summer and fall -- what fun it is to pick out the fabrics!  Each block is it's own little quilt-let!

One of the skills that is part of the workshop is learning to make templates and set them up for easy, accurate cutting and matching! 

I decided to make a lap size quilt -- there are 66 blocks.  I have not seen anyone put borders on this quilt but I auditioned it just to be sure and decided not to add them.

Last weekend I layered it up with Tuscany Wool batting -- love the loft of that batting -- and began to quilt.  I wanted to keep the quilting simple -- easy for me to complete and easy for my students to duplicate if they want.

My first idea was straight line channels from top to bottom.

As it lay on my work table, the long ovalish shape where the blocks come together caught my eye and I decided to emphasize that with the quilting.

After laying down a grid of horizontal and vertical lines, I used my favorite pumpkin seed motif to create a flower that fits gracefully into the oval.  The best part of this quilting design on this quilt was that every line started at an edge and ended at an edge -- no threads to bury!!

This weekend, I'll bind the quilt at my annual January quilting retreat and then send it off to the Farmpark to hang with the other workshop samples! 

There are open spaces in the workshop and you can register by visiting the Lake Metroparks website HERE.  You already have plenty of fabric so all you'll need to purchase is Jen's book, Quilt Lovely.

Don't live in near me?  My DVD, Set-In Piecing Simplified, will take you step-by-step through the process of learning this exciting method of y-seam piecing.  Just last week, Michele in Kentucky wrote this note to me after purchasing the DVD -- "Thank you, thank you, thank you.  I had a chance to watch your DVD today and used your technique to finish a quilt that was headed to the trash.  I think it has been in a box for at least 3 years.  The instructions left a lot to be desired and I was struggling with all of the y seams.  After watching the DVD, I wanted to practice on something right away.  I pulled this quilt out, followed what you did and everything fit together and the top is now done and ready to be quilted.  The DVDs was fantastic and I'm so glad I ordered it."

It's exciting to know not only was Michele able to understand the technique from the DVD, but she was able to rescue a doomed UFQ!! 

I hope you are able to do as much stitching this weekend as you want!!

Mary Huey

Workshop Teaser -- Dresden Stars

 This is a unique block that a friend, Karen at Little Red Quilt House near Medina, Ohio shared with me last year.  She was looking for the pattern and I was right in the middle of making new teaching samples with Marti Michell's Kite and Crown template sets.

It took about 2 minutes for me to get excited about the possibilities of cutting this block with Marti's templates and piecing it using the y-seam technique I teach.

It will be one of my workshops during the Lake Metroparks Farmpark Quilt Show which opens on February 12, 2016.  This workshop will be Saturday, February 20 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m.  If you live in Northeast Ohio or Northwest Pennsylvania and would like to join me that day,

GO HERE TO REGISTER.

My first sample is a single block that is centered in a big (silly) six-pointed star.  One of the topics we'll be discussing during the workshop is figuring out a setting for this block so I am currently working on a larger sample with seven full stars and four half stars.

As good fortune would have it, I won a sampler packet of Moda's Good Karma fabric line by Stephanie Ryan (love that Instagram!!) a month ago so I had this up-to-date group at hand!!  It came as a bundle of 10" squares.

After pressing all the pieces and gazing at them for a bit, I started to sort and shuffle the pieces into possible pairs.

It didn't take long to cut all the pieces I needed.

And with the chain-piecing approach to y-seams, I soon had little piles of diamonds ready to set together into the stars.

There was a pleasant evening spent picking out motifs and creating the center hexagons by basting them EPP style for applique to the finished blocks.

The blocks are now on my work wall being moved around and shifted this way and that while I work up a setting for a small quilt.   

It will be a bright quilt for sure!!

I think the blocks would also look great in 1930's reproductions -- I wonder if the quilt Karen showed me was from that era?  It's a perfect scrap quilt for sure!

Once I get all the kinks out of the instructions, I'll offer a pattern for all you Michell template lovers!!

Now I need to get back to the studio and play with this layout some more.

Think about joining the workshop!!

Mary Huey

Looking ahead and a happy story!

It's the third day of fall in the Northern Hemisphere -- in this spot, it's mild and sunny with a light breeze.  The crickets are singing constantly and the leaves have started to drift slowly down out of the white oak outside my office window.  It's time to review the summer gardening efforts and make notes for next year before cleaning up the beds for winter.

 

I've been traveling more than stitching the past couple weeks and one of the events I attended was the annual meeting of the Ohio Natural Areas and Preserves Association at Dawes Arboretum in Newark, Ohio.  This group of outdoor enthusiasts (mostly botanists) are coming together all over Ohio working alongside the Ohio DNR to support and monitor the network of natural areas of which there are 125 or so.   

 

I donated this original wallhanging to the Saturday evening fund raising auction and happily it sold to a very happy couple.  But there is a happy story that will now travel with it.

Upon checking in at a local hotel, the desk clerk remarked that there was a Mary Elizabeth Huey in the building -- I assumed it was an employee and laughed with her that Elizabeth is also my middle name.  Now this is not the first time I've encountered another Mary Huey -- at one point, I determined through a quick internet search there are at least 57 of us.

 

An hour later, when I arrived at the banquet and picked up my nametag, Mary Huey, I noticed there was also a nametag for Mary Elizabeth Huey.  Now this is getting strange -- we are staying at the same hotel and now we belong to the same group?!?

 

Shortly, someone tapped me on the shoulder and we were face to face -- we are about the same age and live in opposite corners of Ohio.  Both of us acquired the Huey part of our names through marriage.  And we are both nature lovers.

 

The evening progressed and after the program, the names of auction winners were announced and everyone made their way to claim their treasures.  I heard Mary Elizabeth's name announced but didn't see her until we stepped into the elevator together back at the hotel.  I made some inane remark about our good fortunate in placing winning bids and asked what she bought.

"Your quilt!"

So now Mary Elizabeth Huey owns a quilt designed and made by Mary Huey.

Her friends will be having lots of fun with that I suspect.

 

Fall also brings a change in my stitching priorities.  Winter workshops move to the front of the line and I'm currently working on samples for the workshops I'll be offering during the 2016 Lake Farmpark Quilt show.  This is a link to the Farmparks webpage and eventually you'll be able to find information about the 2016 show under "events".  If you've taken one of my set-in piecing workshops or worked your way through my DVD, Set-In Piecing Simplified, you might be interested in joining one of these workshop.

 

On March 17, 2016, I'll be teaching GLITTER from Jen Kingwell's book, Quilt Lovely.  If you haven't discovered her fresh approach to mixing and matching fabrics, this book will pull you into her web!  We'll be learning how to adapt patterns with y-seams for chain-piecing without manufactured templates.  This skill will open up all sorts of new possibilities for you. 

The other workshop will be on February 20, 2016 and focuses on the star in the center of this quilt below -- I've dubbed it Karen's DRESDEN STAR.  Karen from The Little Red Quilt House near Medina, Ohio first brought the block to my attention and I found a clever use of one of Marti Michell's kite templates to cut the pieces.  There are lots of y-seams but they are effortless with the chain-piecing technique! 

It's the same block I used recently in my Kaffe Mini Quilt Swap.  Read more about that HERE.

You can't register for the workshops until early December, but if they tickle your fancy, pencil the dates onto your 2016 calendar and keep the dates free so you can join me to expand your mastery of Set-In Piecing Simplified.  Haven't tried it yet?  You can order the DVD using the link at the top right corner of the blog and be ready for these workshops!

 

I'm itching to stitch and hope the next few (nearly) empty days on my calendar present lots of opportunities!!

 

Mary Huey

 

 

 

What is your fabric hoarding weakness?

One of the aspects of quilting that we all seem to have in common is the accumulation of a "stash".    Last week over at Amy's Creative Side, she shared this quote.

 "The thing is: if you are never going to chose your own fabric, why do you have a stash at all?"  (April Rosenthal) 

 Reading that has triggered a landslide of thoughts during the past week about my own stash. 

 

I've been on both ends of stash development -- I've sold it and I've bought it. 

As a shop owner for 26 years, I suspect I've single-handedly built some pretty awesome stashes out there -- conservatively, I estimate that my contribution to local stash inventories might surpass 125,000 yards of high quality cotton fabric. 

That's a lot of fabric!!

 

And my own stash has the potential to keep me going for another 20 years though those last couple years will be frustrating as I'll be challenged by lots of "ugly" fabric.

 

As I get ready to set up my display for Vendors' Weekend at Lake Metroparks Farmpark Quilt Show this weekend, I'm pushing to finish this quilt. 

I know that when quilters see it, the first thought that will pop into their heads if they like it is to make one "just like that". 

And that is what diverts us from using our stash. 

We want to make that quilt in those fabrics. 

So my fruit and veggie Tessellated Windmill quilt will send someone on a quest to find all the veggie and fruit prints out there so she can make this quilt.  (If you can't find the tool locally, I usually have some in stock -- e-mail me at maryhueyquilts@hotmail.com)

But you are better served by using the inspiration of quilts that catch your eye to use your stash and here's how I do it. 

 

 When I see a quilt that inspires me, I take a deep breath and try to identify why I love it!  

What seems to catch a quilter's eye about this quilt is the way I used a set of fabrics unified by a theme contrasted with the "neutral" black prints.

 

So if that's the inspiration, how can you take that and apply it to your stash? 

What style of prints do you hoard?  (Hopefully, you use them once in a while as well!) 

 I hoard bird prints. 

 I hoard them in fall colors.

I hoard them in Christmas prints. 

I hoard them in Oriental prints (in fact, birds make up about 1/3 of my Oriental stash).  I'm already thinking my next Windmill quilt (love to make this quilt) needs to begin with this stack of Oriental crane prints. 

So find your hoard and contemplate using it this time.  And don't let these issues side track you!!

 

Have you ever heard yourself say, "if I use it, I won't have it anymore". 

If you use now, you are the one who got to use it --

 not some unknown quilter who grabbed it up at the yard sale for 25 cents.

How about this one?  "Its too beautiful to cut up." 

If you use that gorgeous large scale print on the backing of a quilt you are going to keep, 

you'll always have it!!

"I'm looking for the perfect pattern for it.

Really?   How long have you been in that mode?

Watch for opportunities to use those hoarded fabrics because it's more fun to play with them than it is to refold them. 

 

Once this weekend is over, I'm going to make a small wall hanging using this panel (love, love, love) to participate in the Tree Bird Blog Hop from March 13 to 23.  It's been on the "scared shelf" for over a year now and I'm looking forward to chopping it up!!

It's back to the quilting for me!!  For those of you living in Northeast Ohio, I hope to see you at the show this weekend.  My booth will be in the classroom just past the milking parlor. 

Stop by and say "Hello"!!

 

Mary Huey

www.maryhueyquilts.com