Month: September 2017

A Church Banner for Reformation 500

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Applique, Church banners, Design Work / 1 Comment

One of my church pastors asked me to make the church a banner for an area wide celebration of the 500th anniversary of the Reformation toward the end of October.  Another pastor asked my friend Anita Born, who is an artist, to make the banner.  The funny thing is that I am teaching Anita to make baby quilts and wall quilts and we get together frequently, so on Tuesday, we discovered that we had both been asked to make the banner.  So we did what any reasonable friends would do, decided to do it together.  We had both drawn up some concepts for the banner.  I had just decided that mine was too formal, and would probably take too long, for this particular kind of celebration and I should probably start over and maybe have some trumpets on the banner when I found out she had also been asked to do the banner.  So here is what I designed at first:

My original design for the reformation banner…too formal and too complex.

So when Anita came over on Tuesday for our usual Tuesday afternoons together, she brought several drawings and one of them had trumpets!  Here is her original drawing:

Anita’s original drawing

So we worked over the design a bit.  She came back yesterday and we finalized our design concept and I redrew it a bit in my drawing software and we decided how we were going to make this. Below is the design we came up with and I just got the fabric. Anita is going to paint us some trumpet appliques and do most of the handwork, and I am going to embroider the words in my Bernina 830 LE (Gibbs). and we are going to do the applique cutting and placing together.  We decided, after talking with our pastors, that we should put the “Reformation 500, 1517 – 2017”  text on a removable text box applique so we can change the text and use it in other ways for the church…something celebratory.

Here is the final design concept. The green ferns will be made from multiple greens and placed in small sections on the banner, so may look different when finished.

 

We are having a lot of fun doing this together and it will speed up the project a lot.  I’m so glad we found out about both being asked before we got two banners made!  I’ll post more on this project as we go.  I need to get back to work now.

Sew happy everyone!  Have a wonderful weekend and week.  Find a friend to do some creative things together.

What a Fun Week!

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Uncategorized / 2 Comments

Wow!  This has been a full week.  First of all, I heard my quilt Pendragon had won something at AQS Paducah.  It turned out it is Third Place in Small Wall Embellishment category.  Now, it started out Honorable Mention but the first place winner moved up to one of the top big-money prizes…and it is a beautiful quilt…sew Pendragon moved up to Third Place, which is totally delightful.

Photo at AQS Fall Paducah with ribbon by Mary Owens.

Then I heard that Drawing Nigh had won Honorable Mention in small wall quilts at Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza (PNQE).

Drawing Nigh at PNQE with Ribbon. Photo by Lisa Calle.

I have to say, I really liked the judging at PNQE this year.  Some of my favorite quilts by some of my quilty friends won top honors.  Including Deb Levy’s Atomic Synergy, which was Best of Show,

Deb Levy’s Atomic Synergy at PNQE with ribbon. I’m not quite sure who took this picture.

 

and Lisa Calle’s A Silver Lining, which won Best Wall Quilt.

Lisa Calle’s A Silver Lining. Picture by Lisa Calle

Upcoming:  Sew Pendragon will also be at AQS Des Moines, Oct 4-7, in case you are going and want to see it.  I also have Spiral Galaxy Number 3 that will be at MQX Midwest in Springfield, Illinois Sept 27-30.  Right now, I’m working on a new show quilt, a vest and matching tote bag for me, and my books.  I also feel I need to get going on a couple of new quilts because I have plans and they have deadlines.

But amid all this delightful news about my own work, my son David’s new book The Merrimack Event, is bouncing around the top 500 of Amazon Kindles overall books and is currently about 50th in the overall Science Fiction on Amazon.  It looks to be a winner!  If you haven’t gotten yours yet you can find it here by clicking on the picture:

The Merrimack Event

Or you can wait another week or two and get a print copy, which isn’t out yet, but I’ll let you know about it.

Now that things might be getting back to normal this coming week, I will try and talk next weekend about how to take a piece of art you like and turn it, or something that inspires you from it, into a wall art quilt…or something else more fun.

Sew happy everyone!  May you have some delightful times in your own life.  Blessings!

My Son David’s New Book, Art, and New Projects

Posted on by Betty Jo's Blog / Posted in Books, Design Work, Quilt Journal / 2 Comments

David’s New Book

We had a lot of excitement in my family this week.  My youngest son David A. Tatum published his fourth novel.  it’s always a wonderful thing when a new book gets published around here.  He has his own small publishing company Fennec Fox Press, and he has assured me that he will publish my quilting books through Fennec Fox also.  His other three books are Fantasy and are wonderful.  This book is his first space opera book and is also a wonderful fun book to read.  He hired a wonderful cover artist Joel Christopher Payne, that I talked about in my last blog. He’s the same artist I bought the rights on one of his paintings to use as inspiration for a new show quilt, and no, it isn’t the same picture.  Here’s the new book cover.  You can click on it and it will take you to the Kindle version in Amazon.  The print version is not yet out, but it will be in a few weeks from now.  That takes more time.

The Merrimack Event

If you want to help a wonderful man, my son David, I would love to have you buy a copy and once you have enjoyed reading it, for I am sure you will, I ask wholeheartedly for you to go to the Amazon site and write a small review, giving it the highest number of stars you feel you can.  It doesn’t have to be long…even a single sentence is enough, but the better review you can truthfully provide, the better off he will be.  He has put a lot of himself in his writing and it is good and getting better all the time.  His writing is his career…he is a novelist.  Reviews are so important, especially in the early days after publishing.  The only money he makes is from the sales of his books, and getting people to discover his work (even know they are there) is the singly hardest thing to do in the publishing world.  His work is really wonderful, and I say that from a reader’s perspective, not a mom’s.  If you don’t believe me, buy a book and read it and see what you think.  LOL  You can see his earlier books all have 4 plus star ratings, and Amazon won’t let me write one–I’m too close to the author.  This one is so new it has no ratings at this time.  Or wait until the print copy comes out and buy it just because you love the cover art…isn’t it fabulous?  It calls out “buy me”, “buy me”….LOL

If you’d rather buy, read, and review a fantasy novel, that helps too. He has written In Treachery Forged, In Forgery Divided, and The Kitsune Stratagem, all available in both ebook format or print copy.

My New Projects

My last blog was about Joel Payne’s art that I purchased and I have already made considerable progress getting this project up and running.  I usually spend three to six months designing my own quilt.  This year I am making three quilts that the art work is already done for me—Joel’s painting, my oldest son Ken is drawing a followup to Pendragon, and then a deep space quilt based on some NASA photos.  This means I can jump right in and start making the patterns, putting me months ahead for the 2018 show season.

Yesterday I took a little time out and cut out a reversible vest and a matching quilted tote bag.  The vest will have embroidery on it that I am using from the collection that came with Gibbs, my Bernina 830 LE, that I have never used.  It’s flower designs for the front and the back. I am using different designs for each front and back, but they are all from the same collection.  I always need a project that isn’t very stressful to work on when I am making a show quilt so I can go work on that when I get stressed out over my show quilt.  It’s a nice system and it works.  Plus, I get some clothes or bags or presents for friends and family out of it. Sometimes it’s another quilt.

OK, next week I will write up my instructions for making a pattern from a painting or photograph.  So look around and find what you would like to use and I’ll tell you how I do this.  If you have either Adobe photoshop, Corel Draw, Bernina design software, or some other drawing or photo editing software, that’s what I use.

Sew happy everyone!  Let’s each make something for those in Houston or Louisiana impacted by the hurricane…cuddle quilts, pillow cases, tote bags…or make a contribution of funds, or even both.  Look around for a good organization to send them through.  I’m going to use Jenny Byer’s studio which is not too far from here. She is collecting quilts.