Carli The Quilter

I upcycled all sorts of fabric into my "Beach House Crazy Quilt" and it was selected for the 2013 Quilt Market "Oh, Canada" exhibition in Houston and LA. When I began this blog back in 2007, I wanted to educate about reusing cloth, now called "Upcycling" of all types of fabrics that we didn't normally see in quilts. I love the to play with color, texture and style. But believe it or not, but in 2007, I struggled to have anyone see anything I wrote about upcycling and I did have to make the concession to including more new fabric. This gorgeous table runner sports Dresden Plates handmade from scraps of all ages of printing, some as far back as 1980. These scrappy Dresden Plates sit on a light blue background which is new organic 100% cotton while the backing is upcycled curtain material. Myrtle and I made matching bags from a pattern she purchased and it was so much fun! And so as you read this most auspicious post, start think...

As the last bit of a chill is hovering over the Cowichian Valley, the ground, plants, trees and birds are just bursting at the warmth of spring to come. Its just not planting weather yet. I have been enjoying my altered clothing experience! I highly recommend it for anyone who knows how to sew! The purple/blue plaid shirt purchased from Hudson's Bay store in Victoria shrunk badly after the first wash. I love these colors and wanted to get more use from brand new shirt. The shirt after washing and hanging to dry was too short. I didn't want to lose the cowboy shirt rounded front style but I think most of us would prefer a little more belly coverage than this length offered me? This upcycling adventure was not the first altered clothing I had done since in my late teens. I learned upcycling from a German trained tailor while living part time on Long Beach before it was a National Park. I was quite dissapointed when I took this shirt out of the washer. I ...

Hi everyone! I woke up this morning in the Cowichian Valley to a chilly -5 C. I know to my northern friends this is "no big deal" of any real kind of chilly. But to me who craves less cold, its a chill! I was up this Monday morning to the visit my new quilting friends, women of a wide age category, wide experience in all forms of quilting and many that are Canadian Snow Birds. But none the less, they are now my support for conversations, questions, idea exchange and sharing of our mutual love of quilting! But alas, time is getting away from me again. Up first is my finished on my dining table from last week. My African Violet Craz Quilt table runner. My husband now affectionately calls it the Black Hole table runner. Over the weekend, I did get some time to actually get started on the finishing of this Mexacali Heat Quilt. I have begun making the Nine Patch Blocks for the broders. As you can see, its coming along. I found that as I cut, se...

When I first  moved to Telkwa many 14 years ago now, I met up with some wonderful ladies who quilt and I participated with one Round Robin quilt exchange with them. We all met one evening and as we distributed our brown paper bags going around the room and I handed off my quilt to the person on my right and we began. Each participant's name was entered into a ledger of the event to keep track of who would be the next participant for your starting block. As I have posted before, I made this quilt top with 5 or 6 other quilters in a Round Robin. Its a tough project to find and design a finishing border for it because its so "WOW -ish" you know? It has languished like many others in a bin waiting for me to get on with it! But I didn't due to life getting in the way of quilting. Well I've made some progress on this quilt, in the form of a graph paper design for a border. More on that later. I made this block when I received all the var...

I am having such fun with setting my own personal goals to get on with finishing the numerous tops I have. I have decided that if I take a top out of the "Finishing Drawer" then I must not start anything new until its finished and gone from my sewing womb.  I love to call my sewing room, a sewing womb. It reminds me of a good friend who lives miles away. We write real letters between each other. I started this modest foray into modern quilting by taking my obsession in crazy quilting to more solid colors as that's what I thought the early modern quilting I saw meant by the early days of modern quilting. That was I confess, in 2005.   Then I did my usual quilt as you go in crazy stitching so all that was required on this modern quilting experiment was machine embroidery stitches from my good old trusty Janome. Then it went into the drawer and another 12 years went by and for one reason or another it sat, I passed it over many times, as I was...