Showing posts with label blogging anniversary. Show all posts

Wednesday, March 27, 2024

Celebrating 12 Years of Blogging

Hi and welcome 😊. Today is my blogging anniversary. Twelve years ago I wrote my first post. It was probably read by my family and friends. I didn't care if anyone else was reading it, I just wanted to record my quilting journey. And what a journey it's been. I want to thank all my readers for sharing this with me.

Twelve Years Ago!

My first post! 😊

Scrappy Purple Placemat

It's still a work-in progress (WIP).

Purple placemat - almost done!

It started with a couple of blocks made up of squares and rectangles. I then found the batik triangle and a great strip to work with it. That made a lovely triangle block.

Original blocks sewn together

This block was larger than I needed, so it got chopped up! I always feel empowered when I do that😁

Only half of this block made it into the placemat

At the bottom, you can see my first two blocks and half of my other block. I then decided that long, slim lines would be nice.

Original 2 blocks sewn together with half of the other block.
Long slim strips added after the blocks

On the top of those original blocks, I stitched many wonky blocks. I love it when the fabric is a weird shape within the block.

A few wonky blocks thrown in!

A couple of wonky blocks inside this block

Once the major blocks are stitched together, it's a matter of adding strips of fabric to make the placemat wide and high enough. I needed a couple of extra inches on the top, so just added the one batik fabric strip. The right side also got a few strips sewn in.

Blocks assembled to the right size

I'm sorry that the pictures are not in order. I didn't take many photos as I was putting things together. Most of the photos were taken tonight with the placemat partially FMQ.

What I learned

On 12 years of blogging

It's amazing what I've learned in 12 years!
I now have a format that I follow and that works for me.
I often refer to my previous blog posts when I'm making something that is similar.
I do wish that I had a better labeling system but as the search function in Blogger works well, I can still find things.
One of my goals is to post at least as many posts in the year as the last year. I started my first year with 8 posts (when I had no idea what to say!) I'm now writing about 68 posts a year. At this time I can't imagine writing more, but who knows. I write when I have something to share.😊
I try to update the look of my blog, at the very least the header, once a year (which I haven't done yet).
I plan to update my "Projects from Books, Mags & Patterns" page to include other media such as YouTube videos, etc.
I will also be creating more specialty pages for things such as Hand-made books.
I love the wonderful community of quilty friends that I've made through the years. It's so great to be able to share my passion with others who "get" it😁
Thanks so much for being there, for reading, commenting etc. I appreciate it so much 😍

Purple Placemat

This purple placemat is much more of an improv piece than my other placemats. It seems that my improv piecing is getting bolder. What fun!
I love alternating between larger fabric pieces and tiny ones.
Too many tiny pieces make the whole too busy, so adding strips vertically and horizontally pulls it together.
It's funny how the last piece of FMQ has influenced this piece. When I started FMQ the placemat, I was drawn to quilt the same gentle curves that I had quilted on my girlfriend's quilt.
After I realised what I was doing, I started to change it up by more intentional in my quilting.

Free Motion Mavericks

This is week 475 of Free Motion Mavericks' linking party. Last week was very busy with some wonderful quilting going on! Let's check them out.

Preeti of Sew Preeti Quilts has created another beauty! Her latest quilt is called Lula May and it was created as part of the Ambassador's Choice with Island Batiks. Below is a photo of her quilting.

Lula May by Preeti

Preeti used her favorite squiggle stitch with her walking foot.

Next we have Denise of A Quiltery with her amazing quilt that she created for the Give It A Whirl block hop. Those pinwheel look great among the many, many nine patch blocks.

Denise's pinwheels surrounded by many lovely nine patch blocks

A picture of Loki with a close-up of the FMQ

We have another participant of the Give It A Whirl block hop. Gail of Quilting Gail has created a whole quilt of pinwheels - some in colourful fabric while others are FMQ. What an wonderful fun quilt!

Look at Gail's intricate FMQ pinwheels

Here's a close-up of Gail's FMQ pinwheels

Deb, A Scrappy Quilter, has fashioned two cuddly little quilts for the grandkids to use around the campfire. They are made from many baby sleepers.

Boy sleepers used to make another cuddly little quilt by Deb

A sweet cuddly little quilt made by Deb

Kathy of Hazel's Daughter blog made a beautiful runner for Project Quilting 15.6: Irish Chain. If you're curious about her Irish Chain variation, read up on it here.

Variation on the Irish Chain by Kathy

A close-up of the quilting by Kathy

Sandra of mmm quilts finished FMQ her Rainbow Fish Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR). Her quilt and her FMQ are amazing!

Here's a close-up of some of the quilting by Sandra

Sandra's Rainbow Fish in front of a local mural

It's now your turn!

Tuesday, August 09, 2022

Sun printing and Post 500

Hi, I hope that you are all doing well and enjoying whatever weather happens to be going on in your part of this wonderful planet 😊. Discussing the weather is a very Canadian thing to do. Is it part of your culture also? In Ottawa, the heatwave has finally lifted and we now have rain and cooler weather. Yeah! I'm sure that the heat will be back, but I'm going to enjoy this lovely break.

Sun printing

Last week I was able to do some sun printing. My results were so-so but I did enjoy the process and look forward to learning more and doing better. I also read an article about over-printing so I'm going to touch up some of my fabrics eventually.

My first attempt at sun printing this year

Some interesting plants from my yard

Mixing up the colours

Results of sun printing

This first piece (at the bottom of the first image) was the first that I did. I was really nervous and trying to get the first two done at the same time.

A couple of the dandelion leaves on the left came out.
The fern in the middle was not touching the fabric enough to get a good print. I think that I needed more paint.
Next to it was a bunch of clover. It didn't adhere enough, but the two clover leaves at the top are great.
The individual leaves didn't do too badly.

Interesting results

I love the clover at the top edge of the first piece

The second piece was not very successful. There are faint images of ferns but not much else. I suspect that there wasn't enough paint and the plants were not touching the fabric enough. This piece will probably be much better with some over printing.

Not very successful sun printing

Faint outline of ferns

The little blue piece was not successful but I did better on my last two pieces. By then I was doing only one piece at a time, and was getting the hang of it.

I was hoping that the red would lighten up with more water - I would love to have gotten some pink in there. I think that I needed more paint (again) but the leaves did stick to the fabric so that the outlines, although pretty subtle, are better.

Green and red with some leaves outlined

Lovely violet leaves

This orange and yellow piece is my most successful as far as the sun print goes. Most of them are quite clear. Next time, I'll have to work on my composition 😊

Much better outlines of the leaves

Finally a pretty good image of a fern leaf.

What I learned

Sun printing is done with diluted transparent paint. I used Pébéo Setacolor light or transparent fabric paint but I think that I should have applied more paint to the fabric.
Also, since the paint dries fairly quickly outside in the sun, I should have done one piece at a time. I did spritz some water onto the fabric to keep it wet so that the image could transfer.
Plants that you can lie flat against the fabric work best. Some of the fern leaves I used were too rigid and didn't lie flat.
It's also important to work on the composition part so that if the sun prints work, that they will look nice together.
I've just found a tutorial on YouTube using the plant as a stencil to make plant prints. I've listed it below because I think that it would be great to use that technique also.
Finally, I found some articles by Lynda Heines. I've included the link below.
This is my 500th post! Youppi!!! I've been blogging for over 10 years, since March 2012. Wow, what a learning journey. I hope that it goes on for a long, long time 😎

Wednesday, December 09, 2020

Happy 400th post and Free Motion Mavericks

This last month had many special events - the 300^th linking party of Free Motion Mavericks, my first presentation about blogging and learning, and my 400^th post at Quilting & Learning: What a Combo! I hope you don't mind if I use this Free Motion Mavericks post to reflect on my blogging journey.😊

Blogging and online learning presentation

Last month, I made a 15 minute presentation for the Out of the Box Textile Artists group. The theme was doing things online related to our textile fibre art. One presenter has been trying to exhibit and sell her work online to replace the exhibits that she was supposed to be in. She had mixed results. The other presenter has been making and selling on Etsy for a while. It was interesting to hear about her experience.

I was the last presenter and I had a slideshow about blogging and online learning. I really enjoyed the process of writing the presentation since it was a great time to reflect and see what I've done, and how my blog and my art has evolved over time.

I thought that I would share some of the things that struck me as I reflected on these last eight years. Here are some of the relevant slides. You should be able to click on the slides to see them larger.

Those last few reasons for blogging evolved over time

I then went on to explain what various blogging terms mean since many of the pieces that I've exhibited with this group have come from these types of events, and many participants are not familiar with them. I mentioned:

Quilt-Alongs help me create beautiful UFOs!

linking parties,
quilt-alongs,
finish-alongs and
blog hops

This is what I ~~realised~~ learned:

Although I enjoy quilt-alongs, they have resulted in more UFOs than finished pieces.
Grandmother's Choice block
My success rate is not very good with the various finish-alongs, except for the One Monthly Goal (OMG). I'm sure that it's because we only choose one goal - and it doesn't have to be a finished quilt, just a completed step in the project.
My favourites are the blog hops, in all of their permutations. I try not to participate in too many of them. They usually have fairly broad themes so that I can make something that catches my fancy. I also love to see what other bloggers have made - there is usually so much diversity.
The biggest drawback to blog hops is everyone's great comments. I love to read them but I've yet to answer even a small percentage of them.

Becoming more involved

My blog took on a bigger presence on the web when I hosted two blogging events in 2017.

Celebrating - Fêtons 150

What I realised was that Celebrating - Fêtons 150 was the perfect event to host because it allowed me to do all kinds of fun research on the Internet and then post great patterns and events that were happening around Canada's 150th. I did make a few projects but it wasn't as intensive as the Learning Quilt-Along.

I couldn't talk about being involved without mentioning Free Motion Mavericks! I'm glad that I am co-hosting with Muv because it brings me back to my first love, FMQ! It also ensures that I blog at least every fortnight - because sometimes it's hard to do more than that.

As I reviewed my blog, for the first time I had a look at my original visitation numbers for that first year. In that first post I wrote that I didn't know if anyone would be reading this. Well, it turns out that in 2012, I wrote 8 posts and had 18 views and one comment. Thank goodness for friends and family.😊

In 2013, I got tired of posting on Facebook (I'm not a fan), so I added a "Follow by email" from Google's feedburner to my blog. I almost never check the numbers but when I did last month, I was intrigued by the results. The subscribers took a serious upward turn in 2017, the summer and fall that I hosted the two blogging events. It seems that even if very few quilters were participating in the Learning Quilt-Along, many were watching from the side lines.

Stats from my "Follow by email" link

Learning Online

The second part of my presentation was about learning online. I've been learning online since I first started quilting - from reading fellow bloggers' posts and tutorials, to the odd YouTube presentation. I started buying Craftsy courses at that time and I own a ridiculous amount of them!

This year, however, saw a huge growth in online learning opportunities. I love online courses since they are usually relatively inexpensive and I don't have to leave my studio (did I ever mention that I'm a home body?) Of course these are also responsible for a number of UFOs but as I start using some of the skills and ideas that I've developed in earlier workshops, I think that it's all worth it.

Gratitude Journal
made last week

Well, my learning journey is far from finished as you may have seen in my last post! In a year and 11 months, I hope to go back to hosting at least one blog hop a year. I'm still learning so much from my fellow bloggers. Quilters are a very generous group and I'm very grateful to be part of this little corner of the virtual world.

Thank you so much for your presence in my life. I am grateful to all of you for sharing my journey.

Linking parties

I will be linking up to many fun linking parties. Follow along if you like and spread the joy! Design Wall Monday, Monday Making, Midweek Makers, Patchwork & Appliqué, Peacock Party, Can I Get A Whoop Whoop?, Finished or Not Finished Friday, Off the Wall Friday, Beauty Pageant, TGIFF, Put Your Foot Down, Colour & Inspiration Tuesday,

Free Motion Mavericks

Wow! What a great turn out last time. Thank you soooo much! I was hoping to start on the Pinwheels and Stars quilt but as I mentioned, it's not something that I can or want to fudge right before the post 😊. For everyone who left an encouraging comment, THANK YOU! As I was re-reading your blog links, leaving comments (finally) and thinking about the "out of this world" quilt centre (thanks Alycia), I prepared a clear plastic piece to draw on, over the quilt top and am getting a plan for starting. So thank you everyone!

There were such amazing and different quilts linked up last time and as always, impossible to choose what to highlight, so I'm going very close to home to show you Sandra's The Final Season quilt about the plight of trees, in Canada and everywhere.