The silly deer on the left is a pattern from Pattern Plus. I changed it a bit but never got around to finishing the machine buttonhole stitching around the deer, etc. I decided to do that and then I put a pillowcase backing and quick turned it to a knife edge and then stitched from the edge. Voila! Done faster than regular binding and ready to hang for the rest of winter.

The place mats were supposed to be a gift for the holidays for my son's family. They were mailed yesterday!

The star storm was a class sample from the summer! The binding is done now.

The left is a photo of a quilt that was begun in the pandemic I am afraid to say. It was from a magazine and I used a FQ package of dimples by Gail Kessler with a FQ stack from Boundless Fabrics. There was no in person shopping so it time to use the stash. I actually put binding on it last summer but when I went to sew it down, I decided that I hated it! It was a stripe that I thought would be funky. I was wrong!!! So I got Jack (the ripper) out and took it all off! I changed it to a plain navy blue. Much better choice.

The holiday table runner was actually pieced to hang in the shop for 2023 holidays. Hate to admit it but just put it in a drawer and never looked back. I quilted it with a simple diagonal pattern and bound it. Yay! Five MLTFs done!

I hope that you will make your own list of MLTF projects and set small goals likely to be finished this year. What is next for me? Finishing a village, a portrait quilt and another binding. But first some baby quilts and some kids' books for my granddaughter and some other special baby girls.

Have a fabulous January. If you are a football fan, may your team be in the playoffs. The Eagles are playing right now and leading the Rams. Thirty minutes to go! My hopes are high!

Happy quilting!
Piecefully as always,

Trisha

If you have not tried Leni's methods for translating photos to fabrics, I highly recommend her books. Her techniques can be learned! If I can do it, so can you! There are pictures of her books below: first and second revision as well. They can be found on many sites.

In the books, she gives you tips on how to choose a photograph and how to crop a photograph to create a fabric portrait. For my nana and pop-pop, I have chosen to have a single background fabric that is mottled but all one piece instead of trying to create the mottled background. I have chosen to do all black and white and shades of gray instead of colorizing it which certainly could be done. 

I decided to start at a part that I could do well right away. I had to do that hat! Leni has made it so much easier by giving you a 1-12 value card. One is the absence of color-white and 12 is darkest saturated black. I am able to match fabrics to the swatches and to the posterized pattern. Such a necessary tool. 

I have simplified their clothing a bit by choosing fabric that looked like suiting. The grunge gray for Nana and the black and gray for Pop-Pop. It allowed me to focus on the features faster than I anticipated.  

Can you tell which part I have avoided completely so far? You've got it! Eyes! They are the feature that brings the people to life so I will get to them later. 

I think that the most important thing that I have learned is to be slow in building the portraits. I also invested in a reducing glass which really gives you the best idea of the progress. I also use my cell phone camera to give me feedback. My light table is wonderful but you can use a bright sunny day at the window too. 

If you decide to try this technique, I highly recommend Leni's books. You can order them or probably find them in the library.  She also offers an online class at leniwiener.com/iquilt-online-class/  Very worth the time. Her website offers a fabulous walk through her amazing quilts and art. She is truly a wonderful artist. She is a tremendous teacher as well. You will not be disappointed. Her website is below.

leniwiener.com/ 

Well, that is all from me this time. I hope that I have inspired you to start looking through your photographs for one that might be your first photo to fabric! Have a lovely Thanksgiving! I will leave you with my turkey that I just finished! Gobble! Gobble!

Piecefully,
Trisha

This fall I have been concentrating on my villages, not just creating my own but teaching others to learn the process and have their own fun in the creation. I have been given permission by the originator of this technique, Karen Eckmeier, The Quilted Lizard, to teach it to others. She is an amazing teacher as I have said before so I was so happy to get her blessing. So many people have been asking about it since my villages were on display at the shop. I have had two classes of 15 students total who have been inspiring me as I teach! There are some pictures below of some of the villages. They had a choice of Christmas, a lakeside village, a Halloween setting., or whatever village they fancied. 

I just love watching my class participants go from "how in the world does this make a village?" to "wow, it is starting to look like a real place!"  Just Saturday, one participant was already out in the shop looking for flowers to fussy cut and others brought some amazing Christmas and Halloween fussy cuts. Look at the Santa and snowman above bottom right! Notice the fussy cut trick or treaters in the Halloween village! 

I was super excited before the most recent Saturday class even began as I received a text message from someone who visited our shop this past summer during the hop. She wanted to get my information to see if I might be able to come to PA to teach there sometime. And then today I was surprised by a lovely newsletter addition by Karen herself. I am humbled!

More student work below:  Star Storm minis by Victoria Findlay Wolfe. I personally love this pattern. Designed so perfectly to piece easily if you are patient. These students hit the mark! I love teaching and sharing. As crafters or quilters, who are you passing the passion to? For me, this passion is a stress reducer  and therapist. What does it do for you? 

I have also been playing around with some of my wedge rulers of varying degrees trying to make villages using them. I have made Halloweentown and I am finishing a Dia de los Muertos village. The Spanish teacher in me keeps returning to this important remembrance festival. Just rewatched the movie Coco again. Inspiration!

Have you retreated lately? I went to the most fantastic retreat in PA last month called the Circle of Friends Quilt Retreat. The woman who is the organizer runs a tremendous weekend. I met so many new people (19 to be exact) and had a blast! On Facebook there is a group for retreats and I found it there. Are quilters not the best people? I knew no one personally but I went anyway because I knew that I would be among my people. There were four quilters from Michigan who drove all day to get there. Lovely group! A retired seamstress from the garment district. Quilters of all levels of experience and all with something to share. I highly recommend a retreat if you are able. In these difficult days, I was most happy to disappear into an amazing group of crafters and creators for a few days. Check it out on FB. Circle of Friends Quilt Retreat! Tell her Trisha sent you. 

Well. I will leave it there. With only two weeks and a bit to the election, I hope that you all have made arrangements to exercise your right to vote. I voted early this year for the first time since I will be out of town. Where will I be? A quilt retreat of course!

Until later,
Piecefully, 

Trisha

My "to do" list seems to grow everyday as does almost every quilter's list. We all have our current projects but then those bright shiny objects come along and catch our eye! So we go off on those tangents and explore. 

While I work in my sewing studio, I love to listen to books and music. Most recently, I have been listening to a biography of Leonardo Da Vinci. It was quite a long book and I discovered so much about this master that I never knew. Did you know that he made "to do" lists? They actually still exist in some of his notebooks that have survived all these centuries. There are some ordinary things on the list but there are some unusual items as well. He wanted to know why the woodpecker had such a long tongue! Not on my list but I have others. 

This is on my list. This is a posterized version of my grandparents that was taken just after they were married in 1912 on Christmas Eve. Look at that hat! Flora was 24 and Sam was 22. Look a bit older in my opinion. I am starting to make this in fabric. It will take a while but it took Da Vinci a long time to paint many of his masterpieces. I found out that he carried around several paintings for years finishing them a bit at a time. I have done this with quilt projects. If he did it, it must have been a good idea. Leonardo also had many bright shiny objects in his line of vision that he pursued such as dissections, flying machines, paint mixtures, etc. 

This is the shiny object that caught my eye on Instagram last week. It is a plastic pumpkin from the craft store. I painted the brown stem white and then added the blue and white fabric with the MOD Podge used for decoupage. Paper napkins were used in the example but I used fabric instead. I sealed it with acrylic spray but still need to add the lacquer coating. It was never on my list but it was a cool project. 

My other big to do item is to continue to be spontaneous and be playful! I love Chick Fil A and the cow was in our local restaurant recently! The cow was doing photo ops with the children but they seemed timid so I thought again "why not?" and got my picture taken with the cow! Being playful was probably not on Leonardo's list but it is high on mine!

This is another opportunity that I wrote about earlier that was never on my list. Victoria Findlay Wolfe wrote a new collection of quilting stories written by a variety of quilters, famous and not. She gave a shout out for stories and I thought "why not me?" So I wrote one and submitted it. I never told anyone even my husband. But it's now a reality and the books just arrived at my house. I am very excited about this! So you may never know what opportunity may come your way. 

So what else is on my to do list? Here is a small portion of that list because my list is too long!
*Attend the Houston Quilt show. Never been. This year?
* Attend the Pacific Quilt Festival.
* Meet some more Instagram friends in person. 
* Create several more patterns from  my notebook of ideas.
* Return to Liberty Fabrics in London.

Last month I shared the beginning of this project. This is a fabric version of my friend Phil's snowmen watercolor. I finished it with the tulle on top and outline quilting. He received it and was thrilled to se his work in fabric. He told me that he could keep me busy for years! LOL I had such a good time doing this and now I am always looking for the next picture to fabricize! Is that a word? haha

To conclude, I'd like to return to this fabulous biography. The lessons that I have taken from Leonardo's life story are many. I will endeavor each day to be curious about new projects that I see. I will try to be more observant of other quilters' work so that I can better appreciate it. I want to keep my notebook with me so that I can immediately draw a design or write my newest idea and what the inspiration was. I will also try not to allow failure or my perceived weaknesses in quilting to stop me from trying something new. 

I will leave you with what Walter Isaacson wrote in the epilogue of the book. The woodpecker's tongue is so long that it goes back in the woodpecker's head and actually protects the bird's brain. As the bird pecks the trees with an incredible force that would give a human a concussion, the tongue is the shock absorber. Aren't you glad you know? 

Piecefully, 
Trisha

dWhile she has been visiting, I have begun to make another happy village and what dog village would not be happy? Thank you to Karen Eckmeier again for her inspiration in making yet another "happy village" using her technique outlined in her book of the same title. I have shared other villages that I have created but I think that this one may be my favorite! (of course, I think I always say that!) This is an early picture in the process. I have been collecting dog themed fabrics for a long time. I wanted to stay in the same color family and I found so many. Dogs are a favorite of fabric designers too! I had a vision of dogs swimming in their own pool with the houses sporting doggie house doors. There would have to be lots of fire hydrants and treat stores and balls to play with in and out of the pool. So I started with the houses and the pool and added as I went along.

Many people ask me if there is a pattern for these villages. There is so specific theme patterns. Karen gives you the building block templates in her book. But you are free to create from your own imagination. She gives you the spark with the ideas and templates and then you can take it as far as you want. 

dIn this photo you can see that I have added some more details. I made small slits in the pool water to slip the doggies into the pool so they appear to be floating. I found beach fabric for beach balls. I even put floaties around some of the dogs. I did do something that Karen does not mention in her directions. When I fussy cut something very small and liable to fray, I put some light weight fusible behind it before cutting. I find that it helps to stop the threads from coming apart on tiny pieces.  

After I am happy that it seems complete, I leave it for a day. When I come back, I can see what is missing or needs to be rearranged. For example, I eventually removed those pink hearts in the middle because my eye landed there too much. I will add some decorative buttons that are dog themed after quilting. Bones, toys and such. The complete village before quilting is below. If you look carefully, you will even see an intruder in the neighborhood. HINT: just northeast of the pool. There is no clock in my dog village because anytime is dinnertime or playtime or naptime! :)

Below is a picture of a fabric recreation of a water color that was painted by my son's father in law, Phil. He is an incredibly talented artist of many mediums.
For their wedding, he and my daughter in law, Alison, welded a gorgeous sculpture that stood next to the altar. It now resides in their backyard. The other piece is at her parents' house. Such a memory. 

Every year he also makes a watercolor for the holidays. The watercolor is photographed for adding to the holiday cards. This year the picture told me to make a fabric version. I received permission to recreate the drawing. This is my start. I am going to use Karen's techniques in terms of laying out and then using the tulle to cover and quilt. The original photograph is on the piece in progress. I tried to keep to his original themes. I cut the buildings freehand so they may be a bit bigger than the originals. 

I have added the snowmen who are guiding the floating balloon but no details as of yet. I used satin for the snowmen with light weight fusible to keep fraying to a minimum. I am looking forward to finishing this. Karen's technique can be used in many different ways. 

On his site, he has this quote: 

“To an engineer, good enough means perfect. With an artist, there’s no such thing as perfect.”
– Alexander Calder

I will leave all of you artists with that thought. 

Piecefully, 

Trisha

So, after that excitement, a friend from my modern guild posted that she had done an interview with Paula Chamberlain at the QuiltCon in Raleigh, NC last February. She told us that anyone may participate simply by contacting Paula at her website to sign up. Paula is looking for stories from all types of quilters! She enjoys listening to the journeys of her fellow quilters. So, I signed up and I had so much fun remembering tidbits to be able to answer her questions. I have added her website link below. If you right click on it, you can go there directly. There is information about signing up. 

https://aquilterslife.com/

She has been doing these interviews for her podcast for a couple of years and there are more than 240 episodes and it's growing! These are quilters just like you and me sharing their journey to quilting from the beginning to today. Consider doing one yourself. We all have something to share with others in the craft. It's so easy. Paula will send you a list of prompting questions BEFORE your interview so you have an opportunity to think about them. She also edits the interview afterwards so you will be able to listen before it goes live. I was super impressed with her editing skills. Smooth! Thanks, Paula for a great experience. The link to my interview is below if you would care to listen.

https://aquilterslife.com/episodes/patricia-moller

What am I working on now? Well, of course I am doing another village! I am finishing a piece for a charity auction at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas. I will share the link to bid on quilts when it is available. 

This challenge used only Cherrywood dyed fabrics. We could add any colors we chose but only those fabrics. I was happy that I could add embellishments. It also could only be 24 inches square. I cannot wait to see all of the quilts that others have made for this most worthy cause. 
I just started my dog village but it is not ready for primetime. If you would like to learn the village technique, Karen Eckmeier is offering zoom classes at her website. She is a wonderful teacher and a first class encourager!

http://www.quilted-lizard.com/

I just got back from the Mid Appalachian Quilt Guild retreat in Gettysburg, PA. More on that later as I have to dash to the quilt shop to work. It is SHOP HOP time! If you live in DE, PA, NJ, MD, WV or VA, I hope that you grab some quilting buddies and head to a few shops!

Until next time, thanks for reading! Keep quilting and crafting! Consider just saying YES!

Piecefully, 
Trisha

Left to Right: The shapes that suggest buildings are arranged on a background. I used a variety of colors and included blues as well as green and red. Then I added a frozen river with trees and some dachshunds around the trees instead of deer. I really looked at my fabric differently in order to see what would accent the village. I used baby rick rack along the river and snow fabric for a wintry scene. And of course my last addition was the caroling Peanuts characters. I really look at fabric in a new way when shopping. I look for landscapes, skies and water, etc. 

I just finished another Christmas village for a dear friend that has another friend that loves Christmas. I am still waiting for it to arrive so I can see how his friend feels about it!

So, now that I am working small, I LOVE it! I have so many ideas for other villages that I could work for years! Here are several others that I have done:
​

For Bethlehem,  or Silent Night as I have named it, I used very muted colors and stone landscape fabrics. I tried to imagine what would be on doorsteps and added plants and pitchers, etc. I chose to put the silhouette figures of the holy family in the right corner. I think that the silhouette figures are more powerful than an attempt to make the faces which I would have found difficult.

Next up? A dog village with a cat or two. Valentine's Village. Dia de los Muertos. The sky is the limit. Karen is also so encouraging to me. She has given me tremendous feedback and I cannot thank her enough. I have also been given the green light by her to teach this which I really look forward to doing. 

Thanks for reading and spending time looking at my creations. Hope that you are having a lovely creative holiday season whichever holiday is yours to celebrate. I promise not to be so long in posting next time! Lots more to share! If you would like to try one of these, I would be happy to help in any way possible. 

Until later, 

Piecefully yours, 
Trisha

I know that it has been a while since I posted last. It has been a busy summer and I have been taking classes at several places. I have learned so much! 

The big news is that I am getting a new quilting and sewing studio! We have decided to close in our garage and create a new space for me! I will have to share it a bit with a sleeper sofa for guests but it is a very large space. The work begins next week and I am very excited. The company is owned by a man who takes piano lessons from the same teacher that I use. As an aside, he is also a burgeoning musician and singer. As he is from Mexico, his songs are in Spanish and I translate his lyrics to English. That is really a fun job. And now he is going to give me a dream studio!

As we are cleaning out the garage, I have found some memories in the boxes and drawers. I found an envelope full of pictures of my quilts that have been made and gifted over the years. I began in 1994 so it has been quite a journey. As I look at some of the photos I can see how many things that I could have done better. Isn't it strange how we always look at the flaws rather than the delights? So I have "re looked" at some of the pictures and would like to share them here. Do you keep a photo record of your work? I have tried over the years but I am sure that I have missed some. I know that I should but I have been lax sometimes.

The three pictures at the top represent some of my 1990's work. I had completely forgotten about the pink and blue courthouse steps. This was a baby quilt for the sixth grade band teacher's first child. I just adored that tie dye giraffe batik. I still have a small piece in my stash. I remember using the Eleanor Burns book for that pattern. I was so excited to finish it and gift it. That baby is already in her late twenties! Yikes! Time has flown!

The middle wall hanging is a fabric interpretation of my nephew's painting. It was probably the first time that I did anything like that. I think that it was my entry into realizing that you can "paint" with fabric. I love to do this now.

The quilt on the right is one that I made for a raffle for a fundraiser for heart disease for kids. My friend's daughter passed away at nine months from ventricular failure so they wanted to have an event. She asked me to make something and I made butterflies. Quilts are not always for the happiest occasions but they are comforting in all times in my opinion. She was gifted the quilt in the end by the winner. 

On the left is Hearts of Gold that was made for a scholarship fundraiser in memory of my husband's colleague who left us too soon. Her name was Gail Gold so I had to make hearts of gold! They raised $1100 from the quilt sales and the winner gifted it back to her husband. People really are generous!

The last two pictures are of quilts made for my kids. The Broncos quilt was for my son, Kevin, who adores the Broncos to this day. I learned so much from that piece as I made so many different sampler blocks. Steve is standing in front of his green quilt. He chose those green fabrics and I pieced it. It was one of those stack and shift patterns with black in between. I learned a big fabric lesson from this quilt. Buy the absolute best fabric that you can afford. I got the black at a discount store and it shredded after washing several times. But he loved it for a long time.  

​Here is Kevin (well part of him anyway) with a wall hanging that I made for the holidays. I did it using a reverse applique technique but wow! I have learned so much since then. I would never have done it that way now. There is this marvelous thing called CLOVER fusible bias tape! I did learn a lot about batting too. I used the wrong batting as it was too lofty and should have been flatter. Lessons learned!

So, what is the quilt that you want to make but have never actually gotten around to? This is the center of the Lily of the Valley/ Rose of Sharon quilt that is very common in Amish and Mennonite quilts. I saw it at the Kutztown Folk Festival circa 1998. I just think that the simplicity of the design is beautiful. It is still on my list but I intend to modernize it some with color and shapes. 

I am excited to keep digging in those boxes as I clean out the garage. Who knows what else I will come across? What do you have lying around that speaks to your quilting journey? Perhaps you will take a stroll down that path soon too!

Piecefully,
Trisha