Carli The Quilter

When you live somewhere as beautiful as the Bulkley Valley of Beautiful British Columbia, you can be overtaken with a new realization of our spectacular home. This photo shows the most prominent of all mountains, Hudson's Bay Mountain. Home to powder skiing, x-country and downhill only minutes from down town. This photo was taken in about January one year, not much ice frozen on the river this year. This photo show the Babine Range in the background and this small but lovely set of cabins is a great place to catch lake trout. Thanks for visiting!

Just a quick flower photo from our beautiful Bulkley Valley. Hudson's Bay Mountain with ski runs with little snow left. Wild roses are prolific in the valley, alongside roads and lakesides. I hear that moose really like them in the winter. Anyway, quilts friends have a great day and if you're wondering what has happened to my crazy quilting, no fear lots of finishing going behind the scenes. More on that later. Happy Quilting!

Hi, I'm Carli and I'm a fabriholic.  I've been a quilter for two decades and it was only during our last move that I really began to realize how bad it was. I know this is very important step for me to take. I need to declutter my pallet of fabric. To me its a reawakening and I've got so much it must  be done. The bins contain years of seeking and finding just the right fabric for the kind of quilting art I make. I didn't really have much time to do more until recently. So here is goes, I'm culling my stash and let me know if  you are interested in some awesome dated fabric. Yes, I'm mot going to buy fabric for the first 6 months of 2014! WOW, I'm getting a little nervous and I'm resisting the pressure in my little brain to delete it. But know, once I make a statement I intend to keep it.  So our lovely, talented Jess of The Elven Garden has decided and taken action to cull her stash. So I'm getting on board too...

When I teach crazy quilting classes, I like to expose quilters to a variety of ways that making a single block can be achieved and there are many ways such as in the posting by SewKatieDid where she used little bits and bites of fabric and used them up to make a unique small zippered purse. There is really no right way or wrong way of piecing. I use my own method and many of you will find your preferred way. All my images of my work are copyright protected and everyone reading this knows it. So the above block is an example of using an orphan block and making it the focus of the block.  While in this example of an organized quilter who decides to use all of a cinnamon bun of Kaffe Fassett fabrics. The quilter who made this quilt below, my friend Yo, started with a whole bedding sheet and just added chucks of fabric appliqued onto the whole sheet as she went. Yo told me it was done over several winters. A modern quilter might sew strips of scraps tog...

 I began the work of completing "A Dresden Summer." Go to my tutorial on Freestyle Dresden Plate Fan here. here. I played around a bit with the creation of the Chevron braids that originally were to encircle the center portion with the 4 Dresden Plates. But when it was all said and done. This left me feeling like a bit overwhelmed with too much colour. I felt the outer border braids took all the love from the Dresden Plates. What do you think? So I decided to give A Dresden Summer a better presentation. I have so far added another inner border   I chose a deer scene print. I didn't have more of the lemon or the beige check print, so I improvised! Now, I'm setting it on the other side of my room to view while I work on other projects. Tell me, would you continue with the bright outer border of the Chevron Braid? Carli

I couldn't really wrap anything up until I finished them, so here are the project that I've pulled out of special boxes to begin finishing them and while I'm finishing these lovelies, I'll prepare a bunch of tutorials which I'll link up to from my blog. First up is the "Summer on the Range" quilt with 4 large 21 petalled Dresden Plate quilt that I started in late 2011 and then began organizing the mega project in early 2012. What was I thinking? There was absolutely no way I could do a quilt along and sincerely, my readers knew this, right? Thankfully, my loyal and faithful followers have continued to listen to my ramblings as I took on the Smithers Centennial Quilt. What did you think of that particular quilt, I'd love to hear your thoughts? Then onto my little project on hand applique tiny Dresden Plates from my favourite quilting magazine "Quilt Mania" Unfortunately, I cannot find this magazine now to comment...

Summer is fabulous for keeping up with visits and your own vacations. Recently, we had a lovely visit from our son Paul and his girlfriend Melissa. Both live in Edmonton, Alberta. Its quite a drive to our home in the Bulkley Valley. We celebrated their arrival and had such a good visit. And then we went fishing. Little did we know how hard it was going to rain the first night we were there. Paul and Melissa were in the tent on the shore, lovely spot, but proved to be a bear walk and spent that night listened to our dog growl and patrol around the tent. Paul and Melissa kept warm  by the fire and being silly! Even Rusty got in the silly act with her bored tongue look! lol:) I carried on, bug dope on and into the threads, I relaxed and visited on the shore. No fish this trip but a great little get away! Paul and Melissa endured it with such grace and preparation~hoodies!! Thank goodness we had those or we would have been doing some other dance, the mos...

Garage sales are fun, they provide a welcome little look into a person's life. You are laying out things that were once important. And the rain didn't stop anytime soon. More tarps just went up and the wind played havoc with our tarps. The puddles grew larger. By 8 am, we were wondering what kind of a dismal display of 'garage salers' would even come by. We are located 31 km's from Smithers and this is a long way to go. But people came and laughed and talked, lots of stuff went off our property. Lucky for us, our karma swarmed with interest in both our garage sale items and our property. It was awesome fun to give away things, just because and to accept a lower price just  because you knew they couldn't afford anything more.  :) You know? Its not always about how much money is made from your garage sale! Its about community, talking, joking, selling to friends and letting things go. Letting the past wash away into the...

The Bulkley Valley is an awesome place to live. Really, I'm not just saying this because I am making this quilt that commemorates the 100 years it took to become the lively and industrious town today. Our valley is full of musicians and astists, hence, we sometimes call it the "Nelson North" and only those who live in the Kootenay area of BC would know what I'm talking about! Festivals happen year round in the Bulkley Valley. Music, art and cultural festival are ongoing! When I began to represent the choices of flora and fauna from my facebook page when asked what did people think of the most important areas. I took this to  heart and began trying to vision what my skills and descriptive artwork of floral began in my head. I tried to think of the colors to choose for one area of color, in respect to the other interesting and vibrantly colored blocks that the Centennial quilt displays. Artists from my home valley contributed to this qu...