I am so excited to share with you that I got nominated for the Around the World Blog Hop!!! I am subtitling mine … Quilty Pleasures 🙂
A very special thanks to Kymberly Pease of Peas in a Pod Creations blog for nominating me in THIS post 🙂 Kymberly is a great quilter and does many other crafts too! I even won a cute little pouch I use for a bag on her blog 🙂 I was so excited to get nominated by her!
So are you ready to get to know my crafty side better ?? lol
What do you excel at?
Hand quilting is my major and quilt designing is my minor. I love having needle and thread in my hands… so much that it has driven me to learn to better piece my projects to hand quilt!!! I had to recruit help to improve my piecing as I don’t have a local teacher I trust… and my friend Wendy who blogs here has become my piecing mentor! She lives in Australia, I live on Florida’s east coast in the US… we communicate via fb chat and with LOTS and LOTS of pictures … but with my perseverance and her diagnosing skills I am improving my piecing by leaps and bounds…
What is your current project?
This is what I recently finished piecing and am hand quilting now…
I designed this flimsy and the backing using fabrics I collected over a years time. I focus on the recipients when I plan/design/make a quilt… this one is just very personalized to the recipients… my brother and his family of 6!
This is a large queen quilt at 94″ square and is the largest quilt I have pieced and made thus far. I am very proud of these flimsies 🙂 I have called this a 2 flimsy quilt in a previous post! lol
How does my work differ from other quilters?
To properly answer this you much know more of my crafty history…. I started needle work very young under my grandmother’s tutelage… I was never taught to use a hoop or to somehow stabilize my work so I learned to do it without naturally.
Fast forward to today… I don’t use a hoop or frame of any kind… I make nice even stitches this way too with no excess or loose tension noted in my finished work… and I don’t use a thimble but use “udder ointment” each night/morning on my hands and when they get sore with too much hand quilting I will use a bit of tape on my fingertips… works wonderful and is very affordable! 🙂
<<<< Here is how I work out in my "Florida Room" … I have soft tunes, water fountains and nature all around me while I quilt! LOVE IT!!!!
Why do I quilt what I do?
I feel very driven to make quilts for those around me… I have yet to sell any work but have given some away! 🙂
I also believe quilts talk to me and will tell me how they want to live quilted for their lives.. lol! So I try to listen to the quilt and the design and let the design/piecing/quilting all complement each other!
How does my creative process work?
Every quilting adventure is different… for the quilt I am currently working on I collected religious and otherwise meaningful fabrics based on the colors my sil wanted in this quilt… blues and beiges.
I found the centerpiece amidst the fabric buying and that decided that this would be a medallion style quilt… but I wanted more meat to the design and instead of just adding interesting borders I added layers of their life memories and their family important moments in this quilt… it was a my fave designing process yet on a quilt! And again, I had Wendy’s help to get this level of intricate designing complete… but I did all the final designing!! Yippee 🙂
The real fun was having that center fabric when my brother and his family stopped in for a visit while in Florida (they live in Tennessee where I am also from). I had prepared for their visit getting a few little things for my nieces and nephew and found fabric paint… we painted hearts down the center of the tree making this even more special and personalized! I embroidered by hand all their initials down the tree before the quilting started too! Awwww 🙂
I am linking up this ending to a great Blog Hop ( it started in 2008 with writers first… thus mine is a quilty edition! lol) to Kathy’s Slow Sunday Stitching HERE… I love hanging out there and plan to hand quilt my weekend away.
Hope you have enjoyed getting to know me and the Byrum Family Quilt better!
Don’t forget about MY LINKY PARTY coming up at the end of this month… info is on my right sidebar 🙂 Just make a blog post of your met goals and upcoming goals to meet.. link up here September 26, 27 or 28 and get a chance to win LINKY LOOT!
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