Kristin Shields Quiltmaker

Handmade Holidays Part 2 :: Artful Oven Mitts

When I did my post yesterday about handmade gifts I completely forgot about these!  I have been reading Maria Shell's blog for a while now.  If you have never seen it, go look now!  Her work is really amazing.  

Way back in November 2013 Maria posted about her Artful Oven Mitts.  I was smitten with them and as luck would have it she was offering her mitt pattern to the first 100 people to request it.  I was one of the first to do so and have had the pattern sitting here for way too long.  A few weeks ago I decided to make a pair for a dear friend of mine.  We have decided to forgo giving a holiday gift to each other starting next Christmas, but I wanted to make her one more special thing for this last time.  I had the patchwork partially sewn together in my scrap bin and it didn't take long to quilt them.  I was happy that I already had the thermal batting in the stash as well as a heavy cotton for the linings.  These were perfect and I'm sure they were well received.  Thank you again Maria for your inspiration!

A Handmade Christmas :: 2014 Edition

This Christmas was filled with handmade gifts as usual around here, but maybe not the sort you'd expect.  Above are Chloe's new earrings handmade by my sister-in-law Anna (they match her hair!).  Below is the tiny bit of sewing I did this year- a hooded scarf for Chloe.Chloe's 2014 edition hand carved Santa for me does not disappoint!  This one is so sweet, about 4 inches high.  His beard goes down and curls around the base along with the fur on the edge of his coat.  Chloe's previous hand carved Santas can be seen here.

I had Cheryl's family this year so they got several handmade's including the painted ornament above, a knitted Bandana Cowl for Cheryl, a knitted Turn-a-Square hat for her husband Mark, and a quilted zipper bag for Mark's mom, Marge.  I also made two other hats for my Mark and for Ryan.These next few things were not really handmade by me, but include handmade effort.  I got one of Ryan's old paintings custom framed for him.  He was happy to see this one again!My biggest project this Christmas was making photo books.  I used two services to create the books.  Blurb is my go-to for a fantastic family photo album.  I started with a photo album of our trip to Ecuador last Christmas.  I spent hours and hours (and hours!) organizing and editing thousands of photos.  Over 1300 photos went into this book for Mark along with text from my journal.  I used every single one of the allowed 240 pages too!  Whew!  While I worked on that I thought it would be neat to do a much smaller, simpler book for Ryan.  His is called Ryan's Galapagos and includes his favorite part of the trip, lots of animals.  Shown below is the back cover.  I use Adobe Lightroom to make the Blurb books which always requires a bit of relearning since I don't use it that often.

As if that wasn't enough, while I worked on the Blurb books I discovered another service called Artifact Uprising and wanted to try it.  They offer smaller, more intimate soft cover books that have a great price.  I decided at the last minute to make one for my sister and her husband.  Below is that result.   

First I had to get the photos, so I searched their Facebook accounts and saved the best photos of them and their animals to my computer.  I used Photoshop Elements to square the photos, then used Lightroom to change the color to sepia to unite all these different photos.  This little book is called an Instagram book.  While these photos are not all from Instagram, some of them were and were already square, but some needed to be formatted to fit the square templates in this book.  I think it came out really great and I think they were very touched to see photos of their current 2 dogs and 2 cats as well as some of their previous pets that have since passed.

Well, our family is a pretty creative one and many of you may know that my sister is a fused glass artist.  She had my brother and his family though and I haven't seen any of those gifts yet.  I'm sure they are wonderful.  So, did you have a handmade Christmas?  Tell us about it! 

I Love a (Christmas) Parade!

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I know this is late, but that's how this December is going.  Enjoy!

A Digression :: Maple Pepper Pecans

Are you enjoying the holidays?  I love Christmas and have music playing whenever possible.  I have been busy as a bee this past week.  Thankfully, the shopping is done, cards are sent, and these lovely little packages are ready to gift to the neighbors.  I thought I'd also post the recipe here if you'd like to try making these sweet and spicy pecans (see below).  Beware, they are addictive!  They are perfect for a salad with fruit, cheese and mild greens.  They are also great cocktail party nibbles.  Enjoy!

Also, you can see my newest tablerunner on the table. While there's so much I can't show on the blog right now, I'm happy to share this little project that I made a few days ago.  I needed a new Christmas tablerunner and found a little Moda charm pack called 25th and Pine in the stash.  I backed it with a bright red reindeer print, so it's double sided.  Fun!

This is just a small selection of my Santa collection. Most of them have been hand carved.  All of the small ones here (6) were hand carved by Chloe!  I've done previous posts about them if you'd like to see more.

I haven't forgotten my promise to show photos of my quilts that didn't make it into QuiltCon.  In the meantime, go and read what some other bloggers are saying.  I'll be back with that soon.

Quilty Habit

The Silly Boodilly

Stacey in Stitches

Latifah Saafir

Kristin LaFlamme

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Ho Ho Ho, Merry Christmas!

Hello!  Popping in again for a quick post to wish you a Merry Christmas!  Thank you all for being readers of my blog. I really appreciate you being here in such a busy world.   

If you are still shopping for gifts (or yourself), please consider buying local and/or from an artist.  Here's an Etsy coupon code for my shop just for my followers (shop link above): DEARSANTA will get you 10% off a minimum order of $30 (expires 12/18).  The shop will be on hiatus from December 19-January 5 for some holiday fun.  Happy Holidays to you!

Modern Machine Quilting by Pam Raby

Last week I took a two day class that was probably one of the best I've ever taken on technique (rather than design).  It was Modern Machine Quilting with Pam Raby at the Stitchin' Post.  Pam is a quilter from Corvallis, Oregon and she teaches at a shop there as well as one up near Portland.  Now she's teaching in Central Oregon and I know the Stitchin' Post will have her back after the raves about this class.  Pam used the book, First Steps to Free Motion Quilting by Christina Cameli as the main text, but added lots of her own handouts and freebies.  The class was organized around doing a sampler/practice piece and 3 projects (pillow cover, fabric bucket and zipper bag).  The project patterns are in the book and are really well written, easy and satisfying!  It's worth buying the book for that reason.  In addition, Pam gave us a handout with measurements to make several other sizes of the fabric bucket.  I learned a lot about machine quilting, but also about sewing in general.  So good, I tell you!For my sampler/practice piece I brought this small quilt top that got started at the Modern Quilt Guild Sew Down this year.  I just realized that I never did a blog post about the Sew Down!  How could that be?  Anyway, it was great fun on a crazy, snowy weekend in Portland.  All participants did all four classes and my favorite was the one with Sherri Lynn Wood.  The class was called Improv Round Robin.  

We came to class with a box of fabric and a signature fabric that we would add to every quilt that came into our hands.  At the start of class we had 15 minutes to create a center for our piece, then passed the box to the next person, adding our signature fabric to whatever was in the box.  Every 15 minutes we passed the boxes.  It was hectic and fun and only a 3 hour class, so I think 7 people worked on mine.  Both of my friends from Bend worked on mine so that's cool.  Also, Sherri herself did part of mine.  So, this little top was waiting around to be finished.  I took it out, fixed a ripple and added the borders and it was ready to be quilted.The main reason I took this class was because when I am faced with a top to be machine quilted I usually go to my standard meander or try some basic other stitches, but mostly I just don't have any good ideas.  I liked Pam's class samples and thought I'd at least get some good ideas for patterns, but it was so much more.  Most important is that I have increased confidence with the machine quilting.

I hope that when I sit down with my next top I can dive right in and try something new!

The pillow is now in my Etsy shop.  I grabbed fabric without thinking and realized after that this particular green isn't quite right for my living room.  So, if you are interested, check it out here.  Also, remember to use the discount code Birthday25.

Lastly, Pam gave us a little bonus pattern & fabric for these nifty gift card holder ornaments.  Aren't they cute!  So quick and easy to make and I can think of all sorts of other uses.  How about for candies, gift tags, 24 for an advent calendar?  It was her gift to the students, but she also shared with all the Stitchin' Post employees. Pam was a great teacher, so supportive, enthusiastic and giving.  I would highly recommend her as a teacher!

Scrappy Christmas

Amongst the many old projects I've finished lately is this one.  I started this so long ago, I can't remember when exactly.  Could be 10 years or more.  Anyway, I had most of the house and star blocks done.  I only had to make 4 more houses and one star to finish it.  I don't even remember what the original plan was, but there was no way I was going to do more blocks than absolutely necessary.  So, I found the Santa panel for the bottom, leftover from something else, to finish it off.  The final star had to be made from scratch, so instead of a regular star, I made something more liberated which you can see below.  The blocks were quite a mess with uneven edges so I had to cut them down to a uniform size so some points got cut off.  No problem!

I'm glad it's done and I kind of like it.  What old UFO have you finished lately?

Okay, now for the winners of the calendar raffle.  Drum roll please!  Beatrice and Susan, please get in touch with your address (see the Email Me link on the left).  Congratulations!

It Just Makes Me Happy!

In case you are wondering if you've landed on some other blog by mistake, yes this is really my blog!  Last week I found all these tiny canvases in the art cupboard and had a brainstorm to make a bunch of little painted ornaments.

Although these were painted individually, it was fun to realize that I could link them together in scenes.  They go together pretty well, despite having too many moons!

I just had such a good time painting these, don't be surprised if you see more.  These are all for sale in my Etsy shop and I started a new section just for them.  Please check it out.  Also, I will be closing the shop on December 12th, so get any orders in soon.  I will be shipping any last minute orders on the 13th.  Oh, and there are also some new fabric ornaments.  Check them out here.  I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and are ready for a lovely holiday season!

Greetings!

Greetings from Overwhelmed Land!  Sheesh, it's been the busiest fall yet.  I am so happy to report that I have done the real grunt work in creating the new blog/website for my quilt guild.  Check it out if you're interested.  That took several long days.  Then, I managed to get a few little Christmas goodies made.  These are so much fun to do.  Sometimes, I wish I could spend all my time making little projects like this.  They are so doable compared to the big art quilts I keep getting myself into!

I made a couple of brooches with some new techniques I learned in Art Quilt Maps by Valerie S. Goodwin.  What a fabulous book!  I also managed to finish my actual map quilt made with techniques from this book, but am keeping it under wraps for now.  The technique involves crinoline, textile paint, sheer layers, hand and machine stitching.  So much fun!

These are all for sale in my Etsy shop, except the large rectangle bird and the heart shaped house ornament.  Both sold before I could even get them up on Etsy. Gotta love having very supportive friends!  Thank you Sarah!

So, now I can breathe a sigh of relief, at least about those things above.  Life is further complicated by my hubby's very bad back and surgery that didn't quite fix it.  There are deadlines and a trip to get ready for in December.  So, sorry about the sporadic posting this fall, but I guess that's the way it's going to be.  How's your November going?

My 2012 Santa

Chloe outdid herself for my 2012 hand carved Santa.  This one is amazingly detailed and larger than the previous ones.  It made a difference that we bought a new and larger carving block last December!  Of course, while I knew she was working on this I had no idea what it would look like.  She estimates about 30-40 hours of work went into this one!

I love the face and beard and that adorable little quilt block he is holding!

I also love that he is wearing green instead of red.  Above is the lineup from years 2007 to 2012.  Amazing!

I am a lucky mom to have such a talented daughter.  This year I don't really expect a Santa.  Chloe will be studying abroad in Ecuador this fall and we plan to visit her after the semester ends.  This will likely mean there will be no carving time, but I am so pleased with the treasures I have already.  Thank you so much Chloe!