No fooling around here!

are my bread and butter.

For all of my professional life I've written for a living.

I want to 

you too.

I know I've been absent from my blog lately

since I find Instagram a bit faster and easier these days.

But its not about

A couple of weeks ago I explained the basics of letter making to a local guild.

Since I made the samples and got the pictures, 

I'm sharing it here as well.

To give credit: I was inspired and instructed in letter making by

Tonya Ricucci and her 2010 book Word Play Quilts.

It's out of print, but you can buy the the ebook  here.

The letters are easy to make once you think of them as wonky log cabins.

Here I've built the beginning of a log cabin and formed the letter L.

You can see the scale of the strips and letters from the background cutting mat.

I make my letters relatively small.

These finish at 3  to 3.5 inches.

If you continue all around, you've got yourself an O

If you like a more rounded look,

sew off the corners like a snowball block

and do it again with the background fabric.

This is the basic building block for lots of lower case letters

like c and u and d and b and p and h and q and g

some letters have more angles,

and its easier to slash a square of background material

and insert the letter strips.

This keeps the edges on the straight of grain and easier to work with 

when you join them with other letters.

That little bit on the bottom of  the V gets caught in the seam allowance

Here's an upper case E

And this is what you get when you put it all together.

Sharp eyed readers may notice this is a different V than above.

I made two letter sets and experimented with layout.

I also tweeked the E to get it to the right size.

Once you're happy with the shape and size, sew them together

and add narrow strips or spacers between where necessary

to make sure letters don't run into each other.

Here are both versions with strips sewn around them.

You can see the bottom V turned out just fine.

I know there's lots of ways to make letters,

but the advantage of this one is there's no set size or pattern

and you don't have to tear paper off the back once you're done.

I've written a previous tutorial on how to make letters from strip sets.

You can find that here.

Freshly quilted

Little bit of free motion quilting going on here.

First up are three letters of a larger word.

I'm outlining the letters and then quilting in filler designs.

I have a bigger plan, but these help me warm up 

and loosen up for my bigger quilting projects.

Such as this toddler quilt,

made from wof scraps in a variety of blues.

I'm not quite done the quilting on the larger blue sections.

Here's a back view with some of the quilting motifs.

I'm taking my inspiration from the prints on the front.

Another view of the top.

I'm linking up with Lee at Freshly Pieced.

Warm Words

Yesterday I attended the opening of Warm Words,

a quilt exhibit by fellow blogger Joyce Debreuil

in a gallery in Morden, Manitoba, Canada.

Joyce displayed her many words quilts.

There's lots of scrappy and creative goodness there.

No pictures were allowed, but Joyce agreed to pose for me

at the entrance of her display.

You can see more pix on her blog

or go see it in person until the end of May.

One book, three quilts

Tonya sent me a copy of her new book. It is lovely with great quilts and clear instructions on how to make the words.

I had a small part in it a year ago. I read Tonya's first draft and made some suggestions, putting my writing and editing skills to work here. (My day job is a freelance journalist for a daily newspaper.)

 This week I got out the quilt my mom gave me last Christmas. Along with the quilt, my mom gave me the scraps.

 So I made a throw and tied it to a navy fleece backing. It matches the quilt, but it's found another home as a lap blanket for a resident in a nursing home. The woman who received it was wearing the same purple as in the quilt, so it was a great gift for her.

Here's a shot of the machine quilting on my quilt.

This is my last finish of 2010: a baby quilt made from WOF strips, sent in a scrap exchange.

I practised my machine quilting on this one with some roses and leaves and feathers.

This quilt also busted some dated stash. I used up this Nancy Crow scene print for the back, and used the rest of the yardage for the binding. I know it isn't lovely or up to date, but it matched the blues in the front and it hid my not so perfect machine stitches nicely. And it used up yardage too small for a 60 by 80 donation quilt and a bit too weird to cut up in smaller bits.



A seasonal message

One more post with word quilts in honour of Tonya's new book.. I'm beavering away (is that just a Canadian expression?) on a big deadline, but I'm hearing about lots of people felled by the flu, so here's a message for you:

This was from the Liberated Amish challenge earlier this year. I made the deadline for the top, but now it's stalled while I decide if I will handquilt feathers in the centre medallion or go with the first plan and tie it to fleece.

This quilt made it safely home earlier this week, after hanging in my local library along with six of my other quilts for three months. I'm happy to see it again, and now it can keep my 14-year-old son warm.

More Tonya love

I'm going to continue the Tonya love in honour of her new book, which is released, but apparently not yet in people's hands, with some hot quilty love.

Here's a little quilt I made her, 18 inches square, using free-pieced letters in a traditional Amish square within a square pattern

It's called Angling for Love or 45 degree Love. I handquilted it in freehand Baptist fans. Click to see the details.

And here's the label on the back, made from letters and numbers.

I'm sorry to say none of my quilts are in the book, although I did help with an intital read-through, so yes, dear bloggers, I have read the book, and it's worth it.

But I did made some words for Slither Eek Boo (or is it Eek Slither Boo  or Eek Boo Slither?), the quilt she's made from words of Halloween noises, made by blog friends , which has been  (or will be? when's the show, Tonya?) on The Quilt Show with Ricky Tims and Alex Anderson.

scaring you yet? No?

I'll try again.

Words don't fail!

Let's celebrate!

Because

Words can't quite tell the whole story

Today is the day Tonya's book Word Play Quilts comes out and some of her fellow bloggers are celebrating this as International Tonya Ricucci day. Woo-hoo!!

More words on quilts

Reviewing my quilts over the past couple of years in honour of Tonya's new book Word Play Quilts,, it seems that I've been very wordy.

Baskets of News, 36 by 39 inches, combines wonky baskets with a little newspaper joke.

My first priority quilts (9 by 12 inches or smaller) for Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. The top one sold for $100. I've made another 10 or so since.

I've even sewn words for homework. This was my second word quilt, and it depicts a biblical genealogy (Matt. 1:1-17 if you're interested.) Right now, it is hanging in my church during Advent season.

And then I started piecing words for the back of quilts. This is a label for the quilt on my bed:

And this is the back of the genealogy quilt

All of these quilts, except for Ecumenical Squares, are hand-quilted, even through all those seam allowances around the letters.

More play with words

Only a few more days until Tonya Ricucci's book Word Play Quilts is released by Martingdale Books, so I'm showing you more work influenced by her.  This one was made for Lazy Gal's House and Home and Pantry challenge two years ago. I combined words with wonky houses and trees for a quilt for my teenage son, called Advice from Home, because it contains all those reminders I said every day as he grew up. (I'm embarrassed to say it is not quilted yet, but my new machine is waiting to have a go!)

Around the same time, I used up lots and lots of bits and pieces from my mom to make this quilt for my children's elementary school teacher, whose name is Sid. I showed off my skill at capital letters here.