"Love You Mark"

My dear friend, Mark Lipinksi, has not been feeling well.  I've been thinking a lot about him, and as I have, I've wanted to practice some of the things I've learned from his Slow Stitching Movement:

--Intention--I am focusing my mind and heart while I am stitching...on Mark getting well!
--Awareness--I want the needle to go in the perfect place with each and every stitch I take.  This leads to being careful and producing better work.
--Relaxation--There is no rush.  The process of outlining each letter was a slow unfolding and I really enjoyed it.

The square is 6" X 6".

Love you, Mark!

Vintage Tobacco Silks Photographed for Your Use

My cousin just sent me these six authentic tobacco silks.  As she wrote in her note accompanying them:

The tobacco companies used to issue series of silks and one came in each package--like baseball cards. They were highly collectible and supposed to encourage tobacco users to kill themselves faster, apparently. [She has a dry wit.]

They did a series of miniature Oriental rugs, Native American chiefs, etc. Even back when I bought the butterflies years ago, the aforementioned were out of reach."

In the crazy quilt world, these images are prized as motifs within blocks, but no one uses the "real thing"--scanned images of them are printed up on fabric.
So I thought I would take high resolution photos of my six butterflies and post them here, for you to save, scan, and do with what you will!

If you click on these photos you will see that they are really large.  Hopefully they are good enough quality for you to print and enjoy.

Mary Jo Hiney Silk Ribbon Craftsy Class Giveaway

***Update, September 10***
Our winner was Maria, and I have emailed her.

Thank you all for your interest in Craftsy!
I would like to extend the offer of $20 off my class on Crazy Quilting to you.  Click this link.

Happy Stitching, Everyone!


Craftsy is giving me the opportunity to give away the Silk Ribbon Class by silk ribbon artist Mary Jo Hiney!

Isn't that luscious ribbonwork?

Mary Jo’s Mom began teaching her to sew and hand-embroider at age three and she’s been doing both ever since, eventually leading to a fascination with ribbon.  Her easy-to-follow class introduces you to the basics by exploring simple stitches, their variations and the subtle nuances of this particular type of embroidery.  Mary Jo’s students appreciate the clear and concise lessons in ribbon embroidery that lead to a great pay out.  That includes me!

In addition to teaching, Mary Jo is the owner of Mary Jo Hiney Designs, producing a thorough line of hand-dyed silk ribbons and fabrics for the textile artist, as well as a designer for Vogue Patterns. 

Here is the giveaway link:

http://www.craftsy.com/ext/Allie_Giveaway 

Just click it and you are entered!
Craftsy will be choosing the winner on September 9th at midnight and will let me know right away.

Mary Jo makes this form of embroidery doable and satisfying.  You will love her class!

The Making of a Magazine Cover: Modern Quilts Unlimited Summer 2015

Who me?  A cover girl?  No way!!!

But it happened, and I am thrilled beyond measure.  Here is the story....

 

"Crazy Dresdens" began last fall, when I wanted to have some blocks to demo on in the Wonderfil booth at Quilt Market.  They make such superb threads.  I especially love their #12, Spagetti, for combining machine and hand stitching.  Their #8 rayon threads, Razzle and Dazzle, are great for adding extra handwork with lots of glimmery style.

I loved getting to know the Wonderfil folks as I demo-ed in their booth, and learned a tremendous amount from them. 
Because I would be showing how you can use their thread in both the machine and with handwork, I had to have some blocks ready.

Here are some of the blocks up on my design wall.  I assembled the Dresdens onto plain backgrounds using trims in between the blades.  This is a super cheater way to make Dresdens and you know me, I am not a piecer!
My goal was to include some crazy quilt elements--decorated seams, "random" selection of stitches, threads, and colors (though nothing is really random in my world)--but keep a fresh and simple affect and lay-out.

Here's a detail of a mostly stitched up block.

 

That line of stitching that looks like quilting is actually a running stitch.  I machine quilted on either side of it later in invisible thread to make it pop up.

Before I put the centers on the Dresdens and in the sashing, I had to do some practice to get my tension right and stitch length where I wanted it.

But once I was in business, away I went!

You can't imagine how much I enjoyed this.  Having an AccuQuilt Go circle die added to my enjoyment, believe me.

I chose a wool batting for it because A) I wanted this to be a warm couch quilt and I love how wool batting just radiates a nice warm glow and B) I wanted the quilting to be very dimensional, to show off that handstitching.

Basting away with pins here.
My Sweet Sixteen made the quilting really enjoyable too.  What a blessing it is to have great tools.

That backing fabric is pretty perfect, too, isn't it?

Here's a quilting detail.

There may be too much "open space" for today's quilting trends...but I wanted this quilt warm, and that means I needed air inside the layers to warm up when the quilt is draped over my snuggling body on the couch on a chilly winter's day.  Plus, the quilt didn't need it a ton of quilting, design-wise.

To see how the rick rack binding was done, you will have to buy the magazine! ;-)

It goes on sale August 1st.  Subscribers will be receiving their copies this coming week.

My thanks to Carol Zentgraf, my editor, and Vicki Case Anderson, the owner of Meander Publishing, for giving me the opportunity to write for them.  I loved every second of this project.

***************************

Well, obviously I haven't blogged in awhile.  I am working full bore on my book for C & T, and it is Top Secret!  All I can say is it is not crazy quilting!
It is very hard for me not to share my work, but I want you to know that I am fully documenting everything as I go, and will have an extensive "behind the scenes" look, like this blog post, after the book comes out. 

Meanwhile, I am posting away on Facebook under Allison Aller--friend me!  And I'm on Instagram too, under alliealler.  Lots of garden posts these days... 

Some News! and a Garden Tour

I have been busy for the last 4 months preparing and then submitting a book proposal to C & T Publishing for my third book with them.  It is with great joy that I can report that the proposal has been accepted!

This is why I have posted almost no work since the beginning of the year, and why I will also have to keep what I'm sewing on under wraps for the rest of this year too.  I hate that part, not being able to share what's happening!  But the book is not what you might be expecting, and therefore risky...and that really adds to the fun for me.  So it will be a surprise.

But when I am not working on it, I am gardening.  The two passions feed off each other, as most quilters will tell you.

So here is a brief garden tour...we are 4 weeks ahead of most springs because of the mild and dry season.  It's been heavenly.....

Things have only just barely gotten started out here!
Lots of color and sunshine to come....
And thanks for being patient...  ;-)

"Jersey Girls" for the Quilt Alliance

Every year the Quilt Alliance hosts a contest/fundraiser, where people create 16" X 16" quilts around the theme for the year.  The quilts are auctioned off after winners are selected by a panel of judges, and tremendous prizes given!

I have loved making these quilts over the years, and have learned a lot from them as they are small enough to free me up for great experimentation.  For a detailed overview of my Alliance quilts, check out this post on their blog for lots of process and pictures:

https://quiltalliance.wordpress.com/2013/05/11/growing-quilts-harvesting-support/

This year's theme is "Animals We Love".  The contest rules are here.  You still have time to enter!  Deadline is May 1.

Most of you know I spent ten years as a dairy farmer and I still love Jersey calves the best...I miss them!
So I loved making this quilt, "Jersey Girls", because I could look down on their sweet faces the whole time I stitched.

I started by printing up a photo and playing around with the lay-out.  Those white flowers were crocheted for me by my daughter-in-law, Esther, for Christmas.  I really love them and had to use them.

The antique block was perfect, cut in half, to make part of the frame.
I ended up using the lace a different way, though.

Here we are midway through. I've quilted around the calves' faces before appliqueing the photo to the background fabric and surrounding it by trim.
Those little green dots you see are stuffed velvet circles...

...that became the centers of silk ribbon flowers, made with 13mm RiverSilks.  I had to really restrain myself on the frame, not overdoing it or making the colors too bright.  I wanted all the attention to be on those darling girls.

This was a quick 3 day project...you don't have to always spend a lot of time to realize your vision..or enter the contest!

Joyful Embellishments Quilt Progress

I have been putting time into this quilt as a vacation from a ton of other work going on...so I haven't got every day's stitch on here but there are a lot of them.

It really is a happy quilt!

Here is a detail....

Wish I had more to show you, but all in good time....
Happy Spring!

The Joyful Embellishments Stitch Along Series

Hi Everyone!
I love being published but the downside is that when I am working on things for future publication, I can't blog about them.  So you haven't seen much of me here on the blog lately.

But the Joyful Embellishments Stitch Along, hosted by my co-author and dear friend Val Bothell over on Facebook, is purely for the personal pleasure of it, so I'll be posting my stitches once a week here.

We are already a month into it.  The way it works is, Val presents a photo of a stitch variation every week day, and then we either replicate it or use it as a jumping off point for our own designs.  You can kind of guess which way I'm going with that one!

Mostly this is because I have a pieced crazy quilt top all ready to receive the stitches, but the scale I want to use is much larger than Val's delicate fine stitching.  Plus, all these flowers started creeping in on mine.  Wouldn't you know it!

Here is the quilt top:

Well, there is another border but I'll show that at the end.

In order to catch up, here are my first 19 stitches (not in chronological order, sorry!)  There was one seam I just could not photograph well!

These are ALL variations on the feather stitch.

 

And here is the quilt with all those seams in place:

It might grow another border before the year is out.  Because yes, this series is going to go on all year.

February's stitch is the herringbone.  My favorite!