Daily Blog

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What a week! Each day we had a morning chat and explored our creative assets as well as our creative obstacles. Each one of these beautiful quilts was created by the artist and in doing so they attempted new techniques. Each individual is encouraged to follow their on vision for the week. The LQVR retreat does not have a typical agenda where everyone does the same project. The results are great, but the internal results are what makes it such a unique event. I´m very proud to show you what these students accomplished. Naturally, much of it is in the details of their techniques and cannot be seen in these photographs. Nonetheless, I think it is great!

MKNavy90 has a daily Member Blog journal of her days here. Check it out.

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Well, here we are mid-way through the week and lo and behold we got a package from DLQuilter. She attended LVQR back at the end of May. Dana went home with an idea spinning in her head that became a quilt. She sent it along with a message. I got the whole thing on video. Hope you will enjoy! Thanks Dana.

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We´ll, we´re nearing the end of day one. A lot of drawing and designing was accomplished today. Kansaspatches brought some pieced diamonds and has created a setting that will include curved piecing and paper piecing. Desertquilter is doing an original design with pieced curves. MKNavy90 is working on her machine quilting, and Quilter01 is designing her own Rhapsody quilt.

Justin paid the bills and treated himself to an ice cream cone. It´s not his birthday, but if your marking your calendars, it is August 25th.

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Four TQS Members are in La Veta, Colorado this week to experience a true quilting get-away - we call it, the La Veta Quilt Retreat. From left to right are: desertquilter, kansaspatches, quilter01, and mknavy90.

Today is their first day together. Some of them had connected via TQS, but none of them had ever met each other. I´ll attempt to bring you a journal of their progress over the next five days. If you have questions, add a comment and I´ll be sure to report back. Hopefully you´ll learn something along the way too!

BTW, MKNavy90 has already created a Member Blog - read it!

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Dad´s Lone Star has been featured a couple of times recently in The Daily Blog, most recently in the photo with Gregory Case. We get questions - so here are the answers.

Many of you know that my dad, Richard Tims, began quilting the same time I did in 1991. The week we started our first quilt, neither of us knew the other was doing so. Yes, that´s weird!

Dad´s first quilt was a Broken Star. TQS Member WiAndee has a beautiful example of a traditional Broken Star quilt. A Broken Star is not generally recommended as a first quilt, but my dad´s mother made three of them (one for each of her children) when she was 85 years old. Dad decided if she could do that at 85, he could do it at 65. I don´t have an image of his first quilt, but you can see it in Episode 211, in Segment 4. In this special field piece, dad is working on a quilt we call Papaw´s Choice. The pattern for Papaw´s Choice is on our TQS Projects Page.

Years later dad decided to do a Lone Star quilt, similar to the Broken Star, but without the surrounding diamonds. See a beautiful Lone Star made by TQS Member altazimuth. Dad was attempting to cut individual diamonds from my hand-dyed scraps. When I learned this, Justin and I immediately went to the dye room and dyed yardage for him to use so he could utilize the much easier strip pieced method for making a Lone Star. While dad was working on all the diamond units, I designed the setting for the large central lone star. Mom and dad both helped cut out the ´Ricky Feathers´ applique. I stitched the applique with double blanket stitching and outline bobbin embroidery, assembled the quilt top, and machine quilted it on my Bernina. The quilt finihed at 93" square. It won a third place in the 2004 IQA show Houston and a second place at the 2005 AQS show in Paducah, KY. It also won a first prize at Quilts on the Waterfront in Duluth, MN. Could this be the first father/son quilt to ever win a prize in an international quilt competition?

The dark portions of the quilt utilize my "caveman dark-hand-dyed fabrics", but the luminous, almost mystical parts of the star are created from my "caveman pastel-hand-dyed fabrics". Most quilters will breeze right by these iridescent light fabrics because they don´t draw you in (just as we skip over the lights in our quilt shops), but when used properly, it is a glorious background ´light´.

This quilt was recently featured on the front cover of Machine Quilting Unlimited. The quilt would never be for sale, but a limited edition of large, signed and numbered giclee´ fine art prints are available through my website. A giclee´ fine art print (pronounced zhee clay´) is created using archival inks and archival paper. If you ever see one in person you will think you are seeing a real quilt behind glass - the printing is so detailed.

Dad is now 81 and quilts almost every day. Mom (rickysmom) and dad (rickysdad) will celebrate their 60th wedding anniversary on August 7th.

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Hey everyone. As mentioned over the weekend, the Kool Kaleidoscope DVD is at the manufacturer and we have been told a shipping date of early August. This means good news for everyone who is interested in getting a copy hot of the press. The DVD will regularly sell for $24.95 but you can pre-order an advance copy that will ship directly to you when they are in the warehouse for only $21.95. Don´t miss out on the pre-order special.

Watch the trailer below. If you missed the Kaleidoscope Music Video - click here.

Order your copy today through the Ricky Tims Online Store (not TQS Shoppe)- click here.

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Some of you may be familiar with the Kool Kaleidoscope that I´ve been teaching since 2001. Two years ago I began a DVD project that shows how to make these dynamic, easy-to-make, quilts. However, a little thing called The Quilt Show came along and the Kool Kaleidoscope project had to take a backseat for a while. Well, I´m happy to announce that the DVD is at the manufacturer and it will release in early August!

For the DVD I composed a new piece of music called Northern Lights - not to be confused with Pam Holland´s video on the Adelaide Northern Lights. I used my new music composition to create a music video featuring the quilts from the DVD gallery. The DVD and the printed insert for the DVD feature 21 Kool Kaleidoscope quilts. However, this music video version features them in a very unique way. Hope you will enjoy it. This video is also contained on the new upcoming DVD.

In addition to the piano and keyboards, I dug out my trumpet and violin for this piece. Turn up your speakers or put your headphones on. Not recommended to watch if using mind altering drugs.

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A month or so ago it somehow slipped out on a blog that Justin and I got a new dog. You wanted to see her - so here she is. It´s not the greatest picture, but it was taken on a rainy day at Autumn Rock so she looks a bit worse for wear. Mabel had been abandoned in La Veta back in April. We saw her and tried to feed her for days. She would take the weenies and run into her hidey hole under a porch next to our ´quickie mart´. She would not get closer than twenty feet to any human - even though her tail was wagging.

Long story - short, we told the town hall if they could catch her we´d take her, but we were heading to Paducah and New York and they would have to keep her in the pen for almost a month. We arrived back in La Veta and the next day the code enforcement officer said, "We got yer dog!" She was very, very shy and we were afraid that if she got off the leash that she would again be very difficult to catch. However, that was not the case.

She is very friendly, still a bit shy, and it is obvious that she had been abused. She has learned that she is in a good home - and now that she is house broken, and after a few pillows ´got ate´, she has settled down and is proving to be a really good dog. When we got her, her ears were still droopy, but now they stand straight up. The other three dogs are finally accepting her as well.

Mabel? We´ll Mabel-een, for her eye makeup. I don´t know much about eye makeup, but she needs someone to help her learn to put it on a little bit better. Doesn´t four dogs constitute a pack?

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Taos Pueblo

During the recent holiday weekend I took a trip with an old friend from high school and his family to Taos, NM. Taos (rhymes with house) is less than a two hour drive from La Veta. It is a wonderful old town built in the Sante Fe, adobe, style. The town is centered around a plaza and many shops and fine art galleries abound. The famous frontiersman Kit Carson lived in Taos and his house is now a museum.

However, the jewel of Taos sits just outside the town proper. The Taos Pueblo is the only living Native American community designated both a World Heritage Site by UNESCO and a National Historic Landmark. The multi-storied adobe buildings have been continuously inhabited for over 1000 years.

The Taos Pueblo is an amazing place and no doubt the photos I took will inspire my quilting in some way. I hope the images will inspire you too. Three Purple Pueblos is a quilt I designed and made in 1991, my first year as a quilter, that was inspired by pueblo imagery, but long before I knew about the Taos Pueblo.

The music is "Journey" from my Sacred Age CD.

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It´s that wondeful day of the year when Americans celebrate Independence Day - the Fourth of July. Twelve miles up the valley from La Veta in the village of Cuchara, the festivities were in full swing for the 41st Annual Curchara Fourth of July Parade. Cuchara has about 75 year round residents but summer homes in the mountain valley drive up the population considerably - like to about 350. However, for their parade, 3000 people show up and the village is swarming with visitors.

I hope you enjoy the photos. The children are precious! ... and the dogs? - we´ll... the picture of the dogs is worth a thousand words. I am excited to have my best friend from high school and his family here to celebrate for a few days. if you celebrate the 4th of July, what did you do to celebrate today?