After finishing some fun projects for Timeless Treasures today, I dove into updating my website. This is something I promised myself I’d do before the end of summer, and I seem to have procrastinated long enough.

While enrolled in a course in HTML at the local community college this spring, I purchased Adobe Design Premium CS3 with my student discount, but I have absolutely no clue how to use the Dreamweaver program, and only a little experience with Photoshop. Suffice it to say that I didn’t let that hinder me, but jumped in and started changing things around. In a matter of an hour or so, I had managed to remove EVERY image from the site. After crying real tears, I phoned my son, boy genius, who fixed the problem in about 3 minutes. (Is every generation smarter than the one before??)

Now I am happy to say that I have actually added 3 quilts to the gallery where you can click to see a larger image. Check it out at http://www.cherylrosecreations.com/gallery  There are still a few kinks to work out, but I’m happy to be on my way.

For three years I’ve had this blown up drawing of a photo I took hanging on the back door of my studio, blocking a lovely view, while I wondered how I was going to proceed. Not being an avid appliqué fan, I was stumped, or at least hesitant to start. Should I use dyes or Paintstiks to paint fabrics? Or just color different fabrics in with thread? Should I do raw or turned edge appliqué?

But SHHHH! My personal motto is to never let the quilt know that you don’t know how to make it!

This last year, I’ve been working on a book with C&T Publishing, my 3rd with them, that is about little quilted cards, Quilt-O-Grams, due out in October. It gave me the opportunity to try some new things and experiment on a small scale with different processes. One of the things I tried was printing directly onto fabric. It was pretty fun, and the pictures turned out very clear, so I decided that was the thing to do with this little quilt that wants to be made.

Since I’m new to blogging and having a bit of a time finding material, here I am committing to blog about the process. (And working on this will be an easy way to avoid other pressing work like adding the photos to the gallery section of my website, which I also committed to do this summer!)

This next week I will spend in Sisters, OR, for the Quilters Affair and the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. I room at the middle school, where the high school band puts on a very fun B&B for about 50 ladies from all over the country, and sometimes the world! I have decided this is a good project to work on there, so I’m doing some prep work here and then will have a good project for my free time in Sisters.

Check in with me–I promise to let you know how this works out for me!

When I was little, the only one who could call me me Rose or Rosie was my maternal grandpa. He was funny and I knew he loved me so it was okay. But I hated that middle name. Until I grew up and got Malkowski for a last name. Rose was looking pretty good about then, and my husband, Tom, calls me Rosie. So when I was looking for a business name, Malkowski got voted out pretty quickly and cheryl rose creations was born.

In 1993, I started both quilting and sewing cheerleading uniforms. My daughter had just made the freshman squad and I couldn’t bear the idea of spending $50 on a little tiny piece of –wait for it—polyester double-knit?? Weren’t we over that? Somehow I convinced the other mothers at that first meeting that I could sew those uniforms. Problem was, then I had to do it! That started 10 years of sewing uniforms for almost every cheer squad in my county. It translated into about 8 weeks of working 12 hour days every summer, with the small satisfaction of seeing the girls with uniforms that fit them nicely and earning enough money to fund my growing quilting addiction for the rest of the year.

In 2001, I did a personal inventory at a church retreat where participants were asked to put all kinds of events, activities, people and places on little sticky notes, and indicate whether we felt like it was a positive or negative influence in our lives. It was a real eye-opener to see my whole life laid out on a poster board, and I could see patterns forming. We were asked what we would do if money were not an issue and if we were guaranteed success. My choice was overwhelmingly to quilt. Realizing that quilting was what made me happy, I decided to follow that passion. Sewing those uniforms just had to go, I decided, and it didn’t make any difference if I never made any money the rest of my life. Not that I was getting rich off them, but although they were taking a large toll in stress and were grueling work, the income was guaranteed since the garments were pre-sold.

Within 6 months of making that decision, after giving myself time to pursue quilting as much as I wanted, I came up with the idea for chenille color sticks, which became the design basis for 3 patterns and led to my first book with C&T Publishing, Easy Chenille Appliqué, which came out in 2005. Since then, I’ve written 2 more books for them, Fun With One Block Quilts, 2007, and Quilt-O-Grams, due October, 2008, and have several ideas brewing for more. I also work with fabric companies, designing quilts for new fabric lines, and occasionally do a quilt for a magazine.

Did I mention I absolutely LOVE my job? This is the best, the perfect way for me to spend my time!

My husband, Tom and I live in Roseburg, OR, about 3 hours south of Portland on I-5. People say, “Oh, I’ve driven through there!” Exactly. Driven through. Unless you are a hunter or fisherman, hungry or out of gas, there’s no remarkable reason to stop. But we like it. It’s quiet where we live and we can see the river out the kitchen window.

Bosco is 40 lbs of unreasonably happy dog. A Keeshond, he has a pretty short attention span, and at 8 years old, still rodeos (bucks around like a crazed bull) even when all by himself in a room or outside. He is a happy distraction for me. People who think dogs should lay in the corner and sigh once in awhile find him annoying. He is sure that everyone who comes to the door is here to play with him, and only him. If he’s not getting the attention he thinks he deserves, he will go to the middle of the room, assume the begging position and bark if necessary.

I have 2 grown children, a daughter and a son, married to wonderful people. My son lives in the Silicon Valley of CA and my daughter is closer, up near Portland, OR. She is currently taking some time off to raise my first grandchild, a boy.

So there you go, that’s probably more than you were interested in knowing. Thanks for visiting my corner of the world!

With the exception of a few days in April and May that were in the 90’s here in southern Oregon, we’ve had a very wet and cold spring. I guess that’s why it’s so green here. … But it’s so sad to see the flowers all bending down instead of lifting their little heads to the sky.

This weekend DH and I planted some seeds–green beans and 2 kinds of sunflowers. On the flower packets it said the soil had to be 60°. So maybe they’ll germinate by July!

All that to say that right outside my studio window is my little garden, where I get a lot of my inspiration. There’s a tiny fountain and lots of roses and daylilies among the perennials and other flowers. It is safe from the deer, who are sure people plant flowers for their dining pleasure and who have no mercy…And it is safe from Bosco, the dog, who thinks a daylily is just another tuft of tall grass to be sat upon, and who can’t resist getting all 4 feet wet when drinking from the pond. It is my sanctuary in brilliant color, where birds of all sorts come to bathe and drink. The garden calls to me when I need to avoid working on a manuscript or quilt design, where I can stretch and smell and enjoy my life.

When I first started quilting, I spent many years on a quest for the perfect way to do curved piecing. Having come from a garment making background, I have no idea why I was so afraid of the idea, but I was, so off I went to class after class. I learned techniques that involved registration lines, freezer paper, lots of fabric marking, masking tape, glue, bias tape, light boxes and many variations of machine appliqué.

Of all the techniques I learned, the one I’m going to show you is by far my favorite because it is easy and the rules are simple. Just layer the fabrics to be pieced right side up and cut through all layers with a gentle curve, then stitch them together with a narrow seam. Although it’s not a technique you can use for all kinds of curved piecing, it works great in the Central Park quilt I made for Timeless Treasures that was released in May, 2008.

Download Free Central Park pattern from Timeless Treasures

When making the Central Park quilt, I have you cutting 7 layers at once, which works great with a rotary cutter, but for this example, we’ll just be using 2 fabrics so you can get the general idea.

1. Start with 2 pieces of fabric sized generously larger than your finished block size. We are using 9″ x 14″ for the blocks in Central Park, which finish at 7″ x 13″.
2. Stack the pieces right sides up.
3. Find the center of the short end of the stack and mark with a crease or marker just at the ends.

   

4. Place your ruler so that its outside edge is about 1 1/4″ from the center on each end of the fabric and cut a gentle curve with a rotary cutter, moving out about an inch from where you start in the widest part of the curve, and then going back to the ruler.

   

5. Repeat for the opposite side of the block. The starting and ending points of the cuts should be approximately 2 1/2″ apart at the ends of the blocks.
6. Separate the stacks. Lift out the center section of the top fabric and set it aside, keeping it right side up.

   

7. Move the top layer of the piece of fabric to the right of the center over onto the remaining center piece, right sides together and aligning the top edges.

   

8. Take the to the sewing machine and take 1 or 2 stitches along the curved edge with a seam allowance slightly smaller than 1/4″. The smaller the seam allowance, the easier it will be for your block to lie flat when you’re finished, and the 2 curves will argue less with each other. So try to keep it between 1/8″ and 1/4″.

   

9. Put your needle in the down position and put your right hand on the bottom fabric to control it as it feeds into the machine. Use your left hand to hold and control the top fabric. You will need to adjust each piece separately as you go along your seam, stitching slowly. Keep an eye on that bottom fabric so it doesn’t squirrel away from you.
   1. When the curve on your bottom piece bows out to the right, the bottom (right)hand moves toward the left and the left hand with the top fabric moves toward the right.

      

   2. Reversely, when the curve on your bottom piece bows inward to the left, the bottom (right) hand moves toward the right and the left hand with the top fabric moves toward the left. This becomes really easy after you actually start doing it!

      

10. When you finish stitching, check to be sure your seam is a fairly consistent size–less than 1/4″ all along. Make adjustments if necessary.

1. Repeat for the other side of the center with the top fabric from the remaining stack. Press seams to one side.
2. Make another, opposite block from the remaining center and 2 sides.
3. Stack the blocks again and trim to 7 1/2″ x 13 1/2″.

   

   

Now that I’ve seen how really easy it is to make this type of seam, I marvel at how many years I wasted not doing them. I hope that you will be braver than I was and dive right in. They look so much more difficult than they are, you’ll be glad you did!