Sometimes I find myself way too deep in quilting and fiber-related blogs and web sites. But some of our best design ideas come from outside the fiber arena. Nature is a great inspiration source for most people. Another great source are design sites and blogs. I thoght this week I would share a few of my favorites:
Design*Sponge is a blog that I have shared before, but it deserves another mention. It is a daily website dedicated to home and product design run by Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney. It's been around since 2004 and has a very large following.
Decor8 is dedicated to sharing honest opinions, fresh decorating ideas, beautiful interior spaces, independent art and design, products and services, and articles meant to inspire readers to live a more fulfilling, authentic and creative life.
Design Spotter highlights new trends and products in interior design and architecture.
Swiss Miss is ablog that lets you into the mind of the designer. Tina Roth Eisenberg shares the things that she finds inspiring and interesting.
Design Milk is another site of cool new design ideas, inspirations and products
Automatism is where a Canadian collage illustrator shares photos of a wide variety of of her design inspirations.
Sometimes I find myself way too deep in quilting and fiber-related blogs and web sites. But some of our best design ideas come from outside the fiber arena. Nature is a great inspiration source for most people. Another great source are design sites and blogs. I thoght this week I would share a few of my favorites:
Design*Sponge is a blog that I have shared before, but it deserves another mention. It is a daily website dedicated to home and product design run by Brooklyn-based writer, Grace Bonney. It's been around since 2004 and has a very large following.
Decor8 is dedicated to sharing honest opinions, fresh decorating ideas, beautiful interior spaces, independent art and design, products and services, and articles meant to inspire readers to live a more fulfilling, authentic and creative life.
Design Spotter highlights new trends and products in interior design and architecture.
Swiss Miss is ablog that lets you into the mind of the designer. Tina Roth Eisenberg shares the things that she finds inspiring and interesting.
Design Milk is another site of cool new design ideas, inspirations and products
Automatism is where a Canadian collage illustrator shares photos of a wide variety of of her design inspirations.
Good Morning, and welcome to another week. Already we are well into March and most of us in the northern hemisphere are looking to the promise of spring. The show season is upon us and I hope many of you are considering sending a quilt or two to a show this year.
As we work on those quilts, sometimes marking the designs can be a challenge. Now I know we have discussed this topic before, but we have many new members and there are always new tips and tricks to be learned even for those of us who have been around for a while. I had a message from Cynthia Mars on this very topic recently, and she is most
interested in hearing what all of you have to say. So the question this week is from her... and best said in her own words:
"I just finished quilting a quilt for a friend. It had busy prints in bright colors plus some dark prints, less busy. The marking became an issure. I wanted to use some simple stencil patterns as the quilting won't show anyway. I'm pretty new at the longarm. I have the pounce system for marking. I read what I could find on this system. The problem of bouncing the chalk off before you can get to the quilting seems to be common.
So then I "pounced", then marked with a water eraseable marker over the pounce lines. This helped a lot. The marker lines stayed put.
I also made my own stencils from paper copies. This worked very well. I took the paper design to my DM and, unthreaded, sewed over the lines. I used these "stencils" with the pounce. Worked great to transfer the design. There are zillions of designs that can be copied, sized, and used this way. I even made a kitty face of my own design.
I'd like to find out how others are marking their quilts. There are so many kinds of markers out there. I have invested in so many kinds, my notions organizer is full of them."
So, let's all help Cynthia out here by discussing all your favorite ways to mark as well as any tips and tricks you might have. I'm sure we are all interested in hearing how others deal with this issue. So join us in the forum and share your ideas. And thank you Cynthia for raising this topic.
