Carli The Quilter

This is the first of twenty four posts in this anniversary year of writing Good Earth Quilting. This special year of 2017 is Canada's 150th Birthday! That makes this a wonderful year to celebrate why I started writing a blog in the first place. Its been ten years since I started sharing online by writing my thoughts, my processes and methods even, to an open door of further creativity.  We, who do share blog posts are "passing along our culture" our way of doing things. If we were back in the Cave Dweller Days, we'd be hulking around the edges of a fire, seeing new angles and uses of the new discovery with wary eyes.  Much like Boo Boo in this photo below. Geese are strongly committed to their flock and its not just for other fowl, for Boo Boo this includes people he loves too. This process started me thinking about it in a searching kind of way. I wanted to promote reuse and recycling of textiles into quilts in an effort to educate about the to...

Hi to all my quilty friends! First, I have made up my Beginner T-Shirt Workshop sample for March 4th, 2017 at the theMakehouse.ca in downtown Victoria! I'm very excited about all the teaching opportunities for 2017. I have also been working tirelessly on my Quilty 365 Circles blocks and I'm almost there! I have also worked on a new crazy quilt for another upcoming workshop. What do you think? I have made up some blocks to make into give away Pincushion gifts for students attending my Beginner T-Shirt Workshop at theMakehouse.ca on Fort St in Victoria, B.C. This new Crazy Quilt starts off at a regular crazy pieced block and goes onto new horizons. Also, for some strange reason Google has changed or its a conflict between my phone updates, my laptop and other computers I use at home and its resulted in me not being able to "Reply or Comment" on any blogs anywhere. So this is why no one is hearing my comments on yo...

Happy Sunday!  I love getting to "my time" with Lucinda Williams softly playing in the background, the iron is warm, it looks like rain outside and I'm quilting! I'm really digging how this quilt is finally coming together. The continued scrappy feel of this quilt as colors and prints have collided into a happy smile on my face. I've been trying to figure out what to name this quilt. I'm seeing a 'happiness' factor speaking to me. These Dresden Plate blocks are coming together and its fun to see them get into the dance together. I've got some really "fun finishes" for December that I'm building in the back ground and hoping that your time for quilt has been a great time. Stay tuned for these upcoming posts. Off to go keep my iron warm! Today, I'm linking up with one of my favorite link-up party: Slow Stitching Sunday

The clouds have lifted into a beautiful evening sky last night! I made awesome progress on Sunday with machine quilting three projects waiting in the wings for a completion date. Remember this one below?  This Christmas Table Runner has reached the point of binding it and then its complete. Its so fun to machine quilt smaller projects! I'm just glad to have reached some finishing in this crazy womb of quilting! You know who will relate that room being called a womb. Cheers my friend Nola. I tried different techniques to reacquaint myself with machine quilting again. I'm planning on a special Christmas post, that will give this lovely Christmas Table Runner a nice place to show off. Hope you are all having fun quilting!

It feels good to return at the day end to my sewing and quilting. I adjust the music sound level and I zone into my stitching. I take a deep breath and plunge in.  I'm not alone with hearing from all of you. But I did take a wee fork in the road of "Scrappy Dresden Quilt" and I've made a decision to agree with the comments around choosing a color scheme for the background sashing of this quilt. As I pulled the blue selection I could choose from, I found fabric yardage discrepancies and decided the earlier layout of Scrappy Dresden Quilt required a wee adjustment to "more scrappy is better." You can see the change I've made. And of course, I have some new crazy quilted cushions coming along with a new bit of a slant on crazy quilting. It was quite by accident that I decided to move into placing 2.5 in squares I purchased from a lovely UVIC student who was so sweet to help me find her using our phones on that ...

I started playing again with 28 blocks of assorted blues, browns and red background  blocks. What to do with these blocks, I wonder aloud. My time is spent mostly editing and writing these days and its a joy to get back to stitching! You get the idea. I didn't have all my normal range of felts or pencil crayons, nor dare say absolutely only three pages of graph paper, so I improvised.  The blue sashing or the light sashing color on point is where these next photos describe. What do you think? I'll not say at this point to which one I prefer, I have one favorite though, but I want the feedback from you? I found this ufo hanging out in a bin of fabrics that I had reserved for improv applique that I'm working on. I may cut it open like I did with Modern Makeover. This was wee bit too dark for me. I needed more light and sunshine in the layout. Do leave me a comment, even if you read this years from now, leave me a comment on...

Do you remember this wild bunch of Scrappy Dresden Blocks? Recently, I was ready Mary Huey's post on finishing up half done projects.  She inspired me and this project is on again. These are all blocks that were quickly picked without any plan what so ever!  In my mind, I was thinking about getting onto a full sized quilt.  I dreamed of seeing these Scrappy Dresden blocks in a quilt laying across our kind size bed. Like this king sized Canadian Birds quilt. If you have yet to play around with Dresden Plate blocks or 1/4 corner fan blocks, then check out this tutorial I did on the method I use to make up all my Dresden plate blocks.  I do normally hand applique the Dresden plates to their background block. But sometimes, I just want to get it done and move on machine applique which is way faster for me. This is where I believe that something really mellow colored fabric for sashing between these Dresden blocks is in order. ...