Audrey - finished at last!!

This has been by far my biggest and most ambitious quilting project ever!

I started with this pixelated image:

Using YouPatch, I generated a pattern with just over 2000 pieces and, over the course of about 50 hours, I made the quilt top.

Here she is half-finished at the Melbourne Stitches & Craft Show last year

Bubbles!!!!!

So as you may have seen in our recent post, we are introducing HSTs into the YouPatch quilt design suite! Here is the first pixel quilt I've made that incorporates triangles:

The original image was a pic I took about a year ago of my daughter Ella blowing bubbles.

Rather than go with my usual bright solid fabrics, I wanted to incorporate a palette that was a little different so I asked my dear friend Louise (who usually goes for a softer palette than I do) to select the fabrics for me. Not only did she select something gorgeous and a little different, she went with textured fabrics.... all purchased from Amitie.

From L-R: Robert Kaufman dot in pink, Quartet Collection by Faye Burgos for Marcus Fabrics, Zenith by P&B Textiles, Robert Kaufman quilters linen in silver, Robert Kaufman quilters linen in platinum.

Introducing ... TRIANGLES!!!

YouPatch has, until now, provided pixel quilt patterns using only squares and rectangles as component pieces. We have recently been dabbling with the idea of adding half-square-triangles (HST's) to improve the capacity for creating smoother curved and diagonal lines.

My clever husband Dan Prager (the brain power behind this idea) has written about it in his blog post and we have re-published it here ...

Adding triangles to YouPatch

The Racket Logo

Following my talk at RacketCon 2014 a few participants expressed interest in getting a quilt based on the Racket programming language logo (right).

Since I used Racket extensively both in inventing and developing YouPatch (www.youpatch.com) I thought it would be a nice gesture to make a free quilt design available to members of the Racket community.

However, just running the Racket logo through the YouPatch process (as it stood) made for an unsatisfactory result on two fronts:

Reflecting on a crafty year

2014 was a super busy crafty year with the launch of YouPatch in February.

Loads of pixel projects and quilts for friends and family.

Thank you to everyone who helped to make YouPatch a wonderful experience and to everyone who made my 2014 interesting, fabulous, challenging and creative.

Happy new year!! I hope it's s stitchy one!

Andi xxx

PS The song in the video is called "Ho Hey" performed by the very talented Indi Eisner. You can listen to it here!

Doing good things

When Dan and I had kids, we dreamed about our children being peace-makers, do-gooders, kind, caring people who make a difference in the world.

In day-to-day life, this doesn't always feel like a reality. Sibling squabbles and childish selfishness can get in the way of ideals and dreams.

So, we endeavour to do good things with the kids, in very overt ways, so they can see how good it feels to do good for others.

Our kids get a generous weekly allowance but they don't get to spend it all. Some they have to put aside for savings and some they put aside for charity or (as it is known in this house) Tzedakah. In past years, we have taken the saved up Tzedakah and the children have chosen a large toy to place under the charity Christmas tree at our local department store. Their gifts have gone to children their own age who otherwise might not have received a gift at Christmas time.

This year, we did things a little differently. Jake expressed a desire to do something for the homeless and to be able to give a gift in person, rather than leave an anonymous gift. He wanted to make a personal connection.

So, inspired projects like this one,  we took the children's Tzedakah money (and some of ours also) and we bought five backpacks and went shopping for useful and nice things to put inside.

Yee-haw! A Texas quilt

Well, if we are going to take an Aussie quilt to QuiltCon, we'd better have a Texas one too! ;-)

This succulent was the closest thing I could get to a cactus at short notice ... lol

This is the first pixel quilt I've made that has the added element of applique. It's not easy to create a 5-pointed star using squares and rectangles! :P