UFOs - Finished the Gloria Loughman Wall Hangings

I finally finished the 2 wall hangings from the Gloria Loughman workshop that I took back in the fall of 2008.  It's great to see them finished and have a couple of items no longer be UFOs. Unlike some people in blog land who I see have long lists of UFOs, I find personally that if my list of UFOs gets too long it starts to give me anxiety.  I think in part it has to do with my upbringing which was working class and there were many a time that things were tight because factories had layoffs during down times so you learned to live frugally and with purpose. So when I see too many UFOs on my list I start to question myself why did I decide to do tht project if it's just going to lay around collecting dust and never get finished. 

There are many legitimate reasons why projects get put on hold but for me I like to keep those numbers down to a dull roar. Also every now and then I will take a hard look at what is there and decide if something will ever get finished or is there something about a particular project that in my books it will likely remain a UFO forever.  If that is the case then it is time to donate it to someone who can put it to good use and finish it.  Why should it collect dust in a box for decades.  So I have decided that the Kaffe Fassett diamond quilt project will never get done.  I have lost complete interest in it and have no desire to complete it. I will donate the cut diamonds to the guild that I belong to for their charity quilt group where someone will gladly make it up into a quilt for charity.  I'll even make sure to provide some fabric for the back and binding and hopefully there will be someone interested in working on it.

So here are the finished wall hangings.  This one is called Colour is Magic.

This one is called Layer by Layer.

Here is a close up of the quilting that I did in the borders of both of these wall hangings.

So now to decide what I will be working on next, stay tuned.

UFOs

Well there's not much time till the end of the year and I knew that if I started a new project that there was no chance of it getting done before 2012. So I looked through my list of UFOs from my post at the beginning of the year titled "2011 New Years Goals". There I also listed what UFOs I had at the beginning of the year.  I noticed that I had 2 wall hangings from a class that I took from Gloria Loughman back in Dec 2008.  I think it is about time I got these finished.

I got the one sewn together since it was still in pieces, and then the borders attached to both of the wall hangings.

I now have to cut fabric for the backings, cut batting and make the quilt sandwiches.  That should get done in the next day or so.  I likely won't get the quilting done until sometime between Christmas and New Years eve, but the plan is to get these two finished before New Year's Day.

Gloria Loughman - Colour is Magic

The Saturday class was Colour is Magic and as the title kind of implies, it's working with colour. We spent the first hour reviewing colour theory which actually was very good since I haven't done that since high school art classes back in the "dark ages" :-). We also studied the pictures that we brought in to determine what colour scheme they represented. Mine was analogous. Then based on our colour scheme we were to take one of two patterns that Gloria had and create our small wall hanging.

Below is the result of my efforts. It's not quite the full analogous colour scheme of the picture I selected since as I mentioned I was kind of short on the pinky purple coloured fabrics.

I had problems with the small tree to the left with the fusible web product and it got kind of munched. Tomorrow after work I have some time so I'm going to try an experiment with Misty Fuse and freezer paper to see if that will give me better control over the process. I will let you know how that turns out.

Here are a few samples of some of the other gals work and as you can see how different colour schemes can give the same design a completely different look.

Gloria Loughman - Layer by Layer

I have been cat sitting for a friend and last Friday as I left her place early Friday morning to go back to my place to gather all my stuff for the Gloria Loughman class Layer by Layer I ended up with car trouble. So instead of heading home I headed off to the car dealership and got there just before they opened at 7:30. I explained that I was suppose to be going up north for a class and if there was anything they could do to get me out of there as soon as possible I would really appreciate it. fortunately they found the problem and I was out of there by 9:30. I still had to get home, get packed and was on the road by 10 which would get me up to Cookstown by 11, but the class started at 10. I called up the shop and left a message and explained that I had car trouble, but the problem was fixed and am on my way but will be late.

So even though it was a very frustrating start to the day, I still have a very enjoyable time once I got there. For this class you had the option of working on your own design or pick one of 4 designs that Gloria had created. Given my time constraint I picked one of her designs. Gloria has an interesting way of working on her quilts where she breaks apart her design into sections, works on each one separately then at the end sews the sections back together. Working in these sections it certainly makes it easier to manipulate the pieces, work on the embellishments and then in the end merge the pieces together.

I do have a question for anyone who has experience with fusible web products. What do you use and do you like the product or do you experience and challenges with it. The one that the shop Country Connections had for sale was called "Steam a Seam 2" and it proved to be a bit problematic and several of us has challenges using it. When you peeled the one side off and placed it on the fabric and ironed it on things appeared to be OK. Later when you were ready to place that fabric on your design and you went to peel the second backing off, often the glue layer didn't stay on the fabric but was still stuck on the paper.

Below is a picture of my sections of design. It's actually the tree design that I posted on Tuesday November 25th. Angela does the seaweed fabric in the bottom section look familiar? So for the time this will be a UFO since I have to get the Christmas quilts finished. Once they are done then I will come back and work on this.

Here are a couple of pictures of what two of the ladies who sat in front of me did. I didn't get to see much more of any one's else work because by the end of the day for what ever reason the other ladies were very quick to pack their work away.

I found my images

I found my images for the Gloria Loughman "Colour is Magic" workshop. I'm going with the two images below which have similar colour schemes of turquoise, green, and pinky/purple tones.

The other images that I was considering were these 2 of the forest with the purple ground cover. So I figured I'd use this colour scheme for the abstract workshop "Layer by Layer".

So I booked a vacation day today to go through my stash and pick out fabric and get things packed and ready to go for tomorrow. I have to leave early for the class since it will take between 1 - 1 1/2 hours to get to the town where the workshops are being held provided the weather behaves. If it decides to snow, I could be in for a longer trip. It's interesting that even with all the boxes of fabric, I still feel like I don't quite have the right combination of fabrics. I'm a bit short on the pinky/purple tones. I guess this could be an excuse to go fabric shopping at the shop.

I'm looking forward to the next two days and I should have some interesting things to post for Monday. Stay tuned and have a great weekend.

Upcoming Workshops with Gloria Loughman

I have finished the work on the back of the Oriental Mosaic quilt. My next project will be the quilting of the Curious Kitties quilt but that won't be until next week. This week I'm actually living out at a friend's place looking after her cat Niki while she is on vacation in Los Vegas. Not my first pic for a vacation, but at least the weather is warm compared to the rain and snow mix that we have been having here.

This coming Fri and Sat I'm taking 2 workshops with Gloria Loughman From Australia who wrote Luminous Landscapes http://www.glorialoughman.com/ .

One is called "Colour is Magic" http://www.glorialoughman.com/work_11.html and for this class I need to find a picture, card or image that I love for the colours that are used in it. the design isn't important, only the colours, since we won't be making the actual picture. the colour scheme will be used and we are to bring an assortment of fabric in the colours of our picture. Well this has proved to be a tough challenge. I keep changing my mind as to what picture I like because after I pick a picture I go to my stash to see what I have in that range. I have some of the fabric but I seem to be short on one of the major colours in the scheme since we have to bring a range of lights, mediums and darks of the colours selected. Here are the samples for this class:

The other class is called Layer by Layer http://www.glorialoughman.com/work_7.html and this is more of an abstract design project. for this one I just have to bring 2 or 3 colours of fabric that work well together. here are here samples for this class: