jovaliquilts

Circle of Life

2012-02-13T12:34:00.000-06:00

There is so much exciting stuff going on in the quilting world that I jumped at the chance to join the newly formed Modern Quilt Guild (Central Illinois chapter). Our first challenge was to make a Circle of Geese block and turn it into a finished piece. You can find the free Piece by Number pattern here.

I made mine a circle of life (geese, after all, qualify as living!) and went dark to light in the circle, and then made borders that went light to dark on two sides, and dark to light on two others. The outer red isn't part of the quilt, but the white borders didn't show up on my white design wall!

My friend Mary made a tote from her geese block. The front is the basic block done in purple and teal batiks, but running out of fabric made her get creative on the block for the back -- look at the amazing star that forms in the center when you do it in a different fabric from the background. Wow! (Sorry about the poor lighting in the photo.)

I've been doing a lot of quilting and no blogging lately, so I'm starting with the most recent and will catch up in subsequent posts. Here's a Project Linus top I just finished -- it had been almost done for a couple of years and when I finally pulled it out, it took only an hour or so to finish it up. It's a Disappearing 9 Patch with a bear theme for a local summer camp for children with cancer.

Love and a swap

2011-05-31T20:44:00.000-05:00

I'd been putting off making a block for Julie's White Coat Project because I didn't know how to do it. I decided I wanted to make something using selvages since Julie has made quilts with them, but I've never worked with them before. I also wanted to make something with free-pieced letters, but I didn't know what I could do in a small block. Finally, I decided to try Tonya's classic LOVE block.

This is 6-1/2" unfinished, with each letter block finishing at 2-1/2". The selvages are stitched down only in the seams -- is that how it's done? Well, it's how I did it! I hope it plays well with the other blocks Julie receives.

I participated in an I Spy swap, so much fun! I make lots of I Spy quilts and a swap is a great way to get a variety of fabrics. I had a few plans for what I'd do, but the squares started out at 5" (so they finish at 4-1/2"), and that's awkward for using them with other blocks. I've been seeing some rainbow I Spy quilts -- like this stunning one at Mermaid's Purse --and thought I'd like to try one. The swap didn't provide me with 10 squares of each color, so I had to supplement from my stash, but that just means I have leftovers for another quilt! I bordered each square on 2 sides with solids and arranged them stepwise (the picture is sideways). I've sewn much of it together, just haven't taken the photo yet. It's fun and quick.

Zig zags

2011-05-19T14:41:00.000-05:00

I really hated that strippy quilt I posted yesterday, so I am inspired to post something I like better! I wanted to put a zig-zag border around my sticks and stones quilt, and thought maybe I'd use black and white fabric that's mostly black for the zig zag, and use scrappy reds for the background. But my quilt group convinced me that a multi-colored background would be more fun. One hundred and twenty-eight HST's later, I started laying them out. (There will be an inner border, not shown here.)

The zig zag did not pop -- too much distraction! So I put the same colors together and it does emphasize the zig zag more.

But of course, being scrappy, I didn't have even amounts of each color, and I found that a little too boring...so I started joining different fabrics of the same color and similar tone.

And now I'm thinking of perhaps stretching it a bit further -- same color but tones just a little bit further apart.

Aren't design decisions fun?

Jelly rolls and t-shirts

2011-05-18T11:27:00.001-05:00

Things do pile up when I don't post! I have several projects underway, but here are just two.

First, I saw the Jelly Roll races video and thought it would be a fast, fun way to make quilts for Project Linus. And in fact, my guild had a worknight and made several -- you can see photos here, and Maggie's race-winning quilt (with explanation of how it was put together) here.

Unfortunately, I couldn't be at guild that night (though I was having a great time instead at the Chicago Ethnic Grocery tour!), so I decided to make one at home (photo above). I had purchased a roll of twenty 2-1/2" strips of child-friendly fabrics at a quilt shop in Indy and thought I'd use those. With an added border, it ended up just about the 40" x 60" standard for Linus. I think it's bright, cheery, quick to make, and I really don't like it!! I'm great with scrappy and with letting things happen while I make a quilt, but with this, I had absolutely no control over the design. By using only 20 strips -- half what's in a jelly roll -- the strips end up going vertically, and there is just not enough space in the quilt to compensate for odd groupings when fabric strips end up overlapping themselves in the next row. The most successful jelly roll race quilts I've seen have been mostly monochromatic, or black and white with a single color added. You can see some of these, as well as some tips for making this type of jelly roll quilt, on Floribunda's blog. I think next time I make a strip quilt, I'll try a design where I have more control -- I really like the design of the strip quilt on the Butternut Street blog.

I'm also working on a long-promised project -- a t-shirt quilt for my sister and her husband. I didn't want to use the standard same-size blocks with sashing, and I've been having a bear of a time figuring out how to juggle the pieces to fit everything together. My small quilt group gave me some great ideas, and that has helped me to finally get going again! It's my first t-shirt quilt -- should have started by making a less-complicated layout, but where's the fun in that?

Accidental Landscape

2011-05-02T12:57:00.000-05:00

So much fun! Karen Eckmeier taught her accidental landscapes class at my guild recently, and I made this.

It's not quite finished -- I want to tack down the wave so it looks like it's breaking on the rock, and I think I want a little more embellishment before I quilt it. Can you see the one sailboat off in the distance? I think I may put another set of boulders into the border, too, not quite sure yet.

Karen's technique is really fun and improvisational. You can control what your landscape will end up looking like, but you can also just play around until something serendipitous happens -- or do any combination in between. Karen also has a clever way to make a wavy inner border, which you can see on my friend Mary's blog, Comfy Quilts and A Good Book.

Yvonne Porcella quilt exhibit

2011-04-23T09:01:00.000-05:00

I so lucked out! I saw in The Quilt Show newsletter that Yvonne Porcella was having a quilt exhibit on Stanford campus right when I was heading to California to visit my daughter, just a few minutes from campus. Yay! I love her style. This is one of the first ones I saw, and there are so many things I like about it -- the piecing, the applique, the quilting, the use of color, the binding.

The lighting was not great for photos, but I wanted to show this flower basket quilt...

...because I love how she interspersed broderie perse with her own flowers, as you can see in this closeup.

I really like the one below. Yvonne Porcella's quilts are free and fun, but not chaotic. I love her mix of black and white with brights, and it seems to me it's not overdone.

Here's a closeup to show her amazing quilting -- really enhances the design.

Another fun one, with people and chili pepper appliques (again, lighting is not so great, and I had to use the camera on my phone since I dropped my other camera):

And I think you can see the quilting in the closeup, especially if you click to enlarge the photo. This is much more lightly quilted, and I love how the lines work -- they don't follow the checkerboard or stripes, but are a design of their own that fits the quilt. Never would have thought of this, but it looks terrific.

This is a closeup of Purple Dog Green Hair -- awesome!!

You can see the full quilt hanging here (with another of her quilts, Moo 2000). I love how these quilts were displayed -- a few quilts along a wall, in several hallways, on a few floors, of 3 neighboring buildings on campus. There were also two other artists, working in different media, whose works were displayed with hers. Wouldn't it be awesome to sit in this lounge to study and look up from time to time to see the quilts?

You can see more of Yvonne Porcella's work here.

The other New York City quilt show

2011-04-05T09:28:00.000-05:00

I was in NYC in March to visit my daughter and my inlaws, but our flight home was the day before the big red and white quilt exhibit opened. Aargh! Fortunately, it's The Year of the Quilt at the American Folk Museum (right next door to the Museum of Modern Art), and I took in quite a show there. And they allowed photos! No flash, of course, so some of mine are a bit blurry, but when I was there for a Paula Nadelstern exhibit a couple years ago, they didn't allow any photos at all. Here are a few of my favorites.

This double wedding ring quilt was made in the 1930s by an unknown quilter (guess that's why we should label our quilts). I loved her use of color.

I thought this quilt was amazing -- it has an incredible look from a distance...

...and up close you can see the tremendous amount of work that went into it! Unfortunately, the photo I took that gave info about the quilt is too blurry to read.

Low lighting means I also can't read the info on this quilt. It has a very elegant look to it, but the close-up below also shows how wonderfully scrappy and homey it is.

Below is Jessie Telfair's famous Freedom quilt. It really packs a whollop when you see it in person. I was really moved by it.

Take a look at the close-up to see how it was constructed.

This is a late 19th century crazy quilt map of the US -- what's not to love? The piecing in the background is pretty amazing, too. My photo is a little blurry, but there's a better picture of it on the museum website, click here.

After seeing the exhibit, I stopped by the City Quilter. They had just expanded into the space next door, and they're going to turn part of it into an art quilt gallery. As I looked around, I saw one of Karen Eckmeier's Happy Villages quilts -- this one of NYC, quite a village! It was a great find for me, since I was taking a class from her at my guild the day after I returned home. More on that in another post. I really like her Happy Villages quilts.

And finally, walking to meet my daughter later that day, I went by the most amazing shop filled with old, old, old (even treadle!) sewing machines. Wow! It's a boutique clothing store called All Staints.

And just last week The Quilt Show website had a video of the interior of this store, which they also discovered when in NYC for the big Red and White quilt exhibit. Take a look here.

Another B

2011-03-30T13:26:00.000-05:00

I wanted to make a B with a spiral base for Brenda's Big Birthday -- I imagined lots of swirls and elegance. Not so easy to stitch since I don't do applique! But when I looked at my drawings, the swirl looked like a cat's tail. And the top could be a cat's head, couldn't it?

So I added ears and voila, a cat! I'm thinking about adding embroidered eyes, but am not sure. Thoughts?

I made the cat by cutting 1-1/2" strips. I was going to cut some squares to make half square triangles (for the ears and the indentations in the B) when I remembered my Easy Angle Ruler. It lets you make HST's using the same size strips as your squares. I learned about it from Bonnie Hunter's website and absolutely love it!

Brenda's Big Birthday B

2011-03-14T13:20:00.000-05:00

Happy Birthday, Brenda!

Brenda at Scraps and Strings is having a Big Birthday, and she's asking fellow Bloggers to send her a Big B for her Birthday quilt. Happy Birthday fabric seemed in order, so that's what I used for my Big B. I'm toying with the idea of another B but don't know whether I can pull it off. I may give it a try, and if it works, you'll know.

This fabric is for valences for our bathroom windows. I knew the fabric I wanted (I had designed it in my mind), but of course no designer had read my mind. This fabric has the right colors and is cheery, so it will do -- especially as it was on half price sale! It's outdoor fabric and fairly stiff, which got me thinking that it would make a wonderful satchel. I think I should have just about enough fabric left over for that, too.

At home with Sweet Baby James

2011-03-11T17:36:00.000-06:00

How cute is sweet baby James? Adorable! See what he's lying on? That's right, that's his very own quilt!

This is the "back" (aka, the fun part). My friend Joe Filer quilted it and did an amazing job!

To appreciate the quilting, you have to know that the front is a matching game. There are two squares of each fabric, and James (when he's older!) can try to find the two that go together.

So Joe made 6 matching pairs among the starbursts in his quilting design -- and he did it with glow-in-the-dark thread! Awesome!

Sleep tight, Sweet Baby James!

Twists and embroidery

2011-03-07T19:40:00.001-06:00

My friend G has an embroidery machine with some mola-inspired designs and she made this one for me! It's beautiful -- much more vibrant than it shows in the photo. I think it will make a great panel on a satchel.

All my strip twist blocks are now spider blocks!

I had to rummage through my stash to find fabrics that coordinated with the jelly roll strips I was using in order to get enough blocks, but I think they worked really well. I'm going to join them with white sashing and borders to make a summertime twin bed quilt. Woo-hoo! I haven't made a real bed quilt yet that I'll keep in my house -- this is my first!

Also, I have been trying to redesign my blog but the template designer shows only grey no matter what I do. Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong? Thank you!! **UPDATE -- After much searching on the help forums, I discovered that the new template is incompatible with the older version of Firefox that I was using, so I updated that and now I can play around with the new templates!**

Flimsies and fun

2011-02-27T17:14:00.000-06:00

How do you recover from knee surgery? Well, the first few days, you keep your knee elevated -- but then you keep your spirits up by quilting!

I can't do anything where I have to crawl around on the floor, or stand up too long while cutting, so I'm finishing up some UFOs. Today I pulled out the strip twist quilt I started a couple years ago. I needed more strips, couldn't find fabrics I was happy with, and put it away. Today I laid it out, thinking I might just use what I have to make a small throw, but then I played around a bit with the layout. The traditional layout is below, but what I'm thinking of now is on top -- setting the blocks differently and putting white sashing between them. I'm a little concerned about some of the dotted whites in the outer edges of the blocks, but I think I like it. Thoughts?

I needed to work on that bright, sunny quilt today because I spent yesterday piecing together blocks I won in a block lotto about 5 years ago. Yuck!! I hate how dull they are, how boring. Not my style at all. The colors are not quite as bad as they appear in this photo, but I didn't enjoy working on it. But it feels good to be DONE! Someone will like it -- I'm donating it and asking that it be quilted with bright thread and butterfly designs (most of the bigger squares have flowers).

I also made some blocks for the Block Lotto that Julie at Floribunda told me about. They do some wonderful blocks -- February was wonky string hearts. Fun! And more fun when I took the huge bandage off my knee. What's that beneath the wrapping? BATTING?!?! Sure looked like it!

And how cool is this?

It's from a wonderful site called Dornob that has design ideas. It's not a quilting site, but has lots of inspiring stuff. The photo above is from their page where they show vintage furniture rehabed with patchwork -- take a look by clicking HERE.

If you can't make it to a quilt show ...

2011-02-09T13:40:00.000-06:00

...the next best thing might just be a computer museum!

This is not a quilt, it's part of an old-fashioned computer. (And isn't it odd to think of computers as being old fashioned?) Many of the computer parts on display were simply beautiful to look at.

And this is not skeins of thread -- it's bundles of wires!

This jacquard was not actually on display, there was just a photo of the textile, but it shows how the history of fabric and the history of computing are interwoven (if you'll pardon the pun). The sign on the poster reads, "A complex pattern woven by the loom needed tens of thousands of individually punched cards. But once made and debugged -- like a software program -- the cards could be used many times to create identical fabric."

I went to the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, ten days ago when I was visiting my daughter. It's a fascinating tour through our computer past, with well written (and often funny) descriptions, and staff who wander through the rooms giving little presentations and answering questions.

And check out the interior doors -- their design could definitely could be translated to a quilt!

Colorful Coins

2011-02-07T21:57:00.000-06:00

I love scrappy, I love color, and I love using up odds and ends.

At one of our Project Linus worknights a few of us dug through our string bins and started sewing coin stacks by color. We got a few stacks done but then the project just sat waiting for almost a year.

Today I pulled out the stacks and finished them up, then reined in the colors with a dotted white.

It's so easy for coin stacks to get crooked and w-O-b-b-L-y, so I like to sew small chunks, trim to size, and then add the trimmed stacks to each other. My gridded ironing board is one of my favorite sewing tools--it's so easy to see what's straight and what's not! Wonky is wonderful as a design element, but not so great as a construction flaw.

This is just the top, not yet quilted. I think I'll use a rainbow of strings in the binding to give a little line of color around the edge. I like this layout color-wise -- in many rainbow patterns the colors are offset by one in each row, which gives you a color diagonal. I offset these by two, which breaks up the color lines and keeps your eye moving around the quilt more.

Project Linus gets this quilt, and I hope it makes a child happy. It made me happy to make it! And I like it so much, I may make a version for myself.

James's quilt is ready to be quilted

2011-02-06T14:22:00.000-06:00

IMade some wonky stars with the fabrics used in James's name. In the star above, every "square" in the 9-patch is a different size -- whew, that takes awhile!

Made some more wonky stars.

And then pieced the back!

Potholders

2011-01-21T09:47:00.000-06:00

I made these potholders a few weeks ago, and am about to make some more.

I played around with lots of things -- they're the best size for practicing, and you get something useful in the end, too. The one on the right is quilt as you go, and the one on the left was quilted after I pieced the top. They both have different types of bindings and different loops. It's easier to see the loop styles on the back.

The next set (I'm about to make another pair) will have a combination of the binding method on the left and the loop method on the right. Any suggestions for filling? I used a layer of Insulbrite with a layer of 100% cotton batting. I was thinking of trying a double layer of old towels -- has anyone tried that?

James

2011-01-17T19:57:00.000-06:00

The letters are now a word, a name! Joining the letters into a word is my favorite part of word play -- so many options! Well, one of my favorite parts -- I like choosing the fabrics, and deciding on variations, and ... you get the idea. :) The little A in my last post was just too small, so I made a bigger one. My pile of extra letters is growing, and most of them seem to be A's. Any relative or friend with that initial could be in luck!

I love using the pattern in a fabric to make a border. I just measured 1/4" away from the line along the circles and cut, and stitched right on the line. You can see the 1/4" on the left side that will be in the seam once I stitch the backing fabric around the name.

Otto has a baby brother

2011-01-16T21:50:00.000-06:00

Yes, indeed, it's been awhile since I've been in blogland, and I hope to catch up with you all soon. I have quite a few quilting projects underway!

Remember little Otto? I made him a trip around the world quilt, then decided to put his name on the back, then decided to play a little...until the back became the front! You can see the quilt I made for Otto here. Well, he's a big brother now!

Little brother gets a match game I Spy quilt -- two squares of each fabric. And can you guess what his little brother's name is?

Sweet baby James -- remember James Taylor's song? I used Tonya Ricucci's wonderful Word Play Quilts book to make the letters! You'll see tomorrow what I did with the name.

A few things

2010-02-27T17:13:00.000-06:00

I picked up some irresistible scraps from a big bin at a homewares store the last time I visited DD1 in Berkeley. Small pieces, big prints, no way I could think of to use them. How about fussy cutting a house for Victoria's donation quilt?

I hope to get another house made tomorrow.

Since I mentioned recently that I am into piano key borders, I thought I'd share a photo of a Project Linus quilt we made.

A guild member with an AccuCutter cut zillions of squares and strips from our bugs and critters fabric. Boy, what a time saver that is! Several people sewed the strips to make rail fence blocks and pieced the center of this quilt. The layout had been my idea, but I didn't like it at all when it was made! Eek! So I added the green border to give the eye a place to rest and used most of the rest of the strips as an outer border. I just love piano keys!

Today I got back to work on a quilt I started some time ago. I love the blue strata, but it seems like water to me and it's not a water quilt. I'm going to have to to make a landscape quilt before long! It's so hard to cut these big strata up, but I now have all the strata made and most of the squares cut. The quilt will also have some wonky log cabins, which I just got started on today.

It feels great to be finishing up some old projects -- they were really weighing me down. If you're feeling that way about your UFO's, you might want to read this post on the Happiness Project blog. I subscribe to the blog and belong to their Facebook group because the posts do help keep me focused on positive things.

Sruti top done!

2010-02-23T15:46:00.000-06:00

Done! Well, except for quilting and binding, but I'm doing very simple quilting because the top is so busy (and because I only know how to do simple quilting). It is loud and bright, but I think a toddler will like it. I hope so.

Remember how I said I always put lots of extra fabric on my letters so I can trim them all to size? Well ... sigh ... I had to redo the T because it was too short. I wish now that I had redone the whole letter to make it jauntier, but I didn't and that's that.

This is the first time I've done the piano keys on a paper foundation. I saw on Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville site (sorry, I forget exactly where) about sewing strings on a page from the phone book, so I gave it a try and really like it. It's hard to make those little angled pieces form a straight line. This was easy -- everything stayed straight, easy to trim, the paper stood up to ironing and the ink stayed on the paper (whew!), and when everything was done, the paper came right off the back.

Now, back to work on taxes ...

Sruti & D9P

2010-02-22T15:00:00.000-06:00

Hoorah, I'm shooting down UFO's!

I started this for a friend's baby girl Sruti a long time ago. Today I finished the i (see how the dot is a little heart?) and put borders around all the letters. I've learned to put a LOT more border than I think I need, because otherwise I don't have enough. I'd rather whack off what I don't need than try to add more.

The border/binding fabric has all the right colors, but I'm not sure I like it. It will just be a narrow border (about an inch). If I don't use this, I'll probably do a 1" border with the same solids in 3" to 4" pieces. The closeup below shows it better.

I think as a narrow border, that dotted fabric works. It's hard to tell when I just lay the unstitched blocks on a big piece of the fabric. Thoughts? That's a wonky piano key border, which I am really into these days -- and it uses up all those whacked off pieces!

Last post I promised to show what happens to a Disappearing 9 Patch (D9P) when it disappears.

Cut the 9 patch in half both vertically and horizontally. Measure carefully -- you're going to have to stitch these back together.

Then flip 2 pieces that are diagonally opposite from each other and stitch back together for a whole new block! Since I have lots of different greens and an uneven number of ants and blue and red watermelon squares, I will switch out the quarter-blocks with other cut D9P blocks until I get a pleasing design -- I don't want all the same greens together. I like some unity in the quilt, so all my centers are the same (watermelon seeds) and all the borders are green -- though scrappy greens. But if you keep the border squares the same, and the focus squares the same, then you might want to vary the centers to keep the quilt from being just plain boring!

That's what I did with this one -- all the border squares were the same bear footprint fabric, and most of the focus squares were bears (but don't you love the s'mores fabric? I just had enough for a few squares). So I varied the center squares among several brights and then switched out the small blocks before sewing them back together.

See now? This is why we all took science. This is the Law of Conservation of Matter at work! The Disappearing 9 Patch didn't really disappear, it just got rearranged into something else.

Quilts!

2010-02-19T15:09:00.000-06:00

Project Linus. I may have been neglecting my blogging, but I have not been neglecting my quilting. Tomorrow is Project Linus Make A Blanket Day and my car is loaded with 79 quilts/fleece blankets to deliver. And NO, I did NOT make them all myself!! My guild made some of them, and others were dropped off by various community groups.

But I did make lots of kits from my guild's donated fabrics. We had zillions of squares of all sizes, and we cut more. Here I tried to make a quilt for a child who loves pink.

I don't go for just grabbing any square and stitching it to the next, so I tried to lay out this quilt (limited by the squares I had available) to have lighter ones in the center. It's really fun to be forced to use only what's at hand.

And we're always looking for something simple but different so quilters of all skill levels can sew during our worknights, and I thought disappearing 9 patches might be fun. Right now we're making Project Linus quilts for Camp Coco (a camp for children with cancer and blood disorders). We had a few different watermelon fabrics and lots of greens among our donations, so I put together a Disappearing 9 Patch kit with watermelon fabrics as the main focus, the seeds as the constant center square (which gets cut into smaller squares) and a big variety of greens to form the rectangular "border" strips around the melons. And what is eating outdoors without a few ants?!?

If you know what a D9P is, you can imagine what this will look like when it's cut up and resewn. I'm actually working on this one myself at the Make A Blanket Day tomorrow, so I'll post a photo of what appears when a 9-patch disappears. We have several D9P's in transformation at the moment.

My stuff. I'm starting to treat my Project Linus work like a real "job," so that my other quilting time is just for me. Those projects will be in another post. After tomorrow I am putting away the Linus stuff for a few days!

Geometric abstract art. There was a wonderful slideshow of early 20th century geometric abstract art in the New York Times online this morning. The pieces are part of the Newark Museum's collection (not New York, Newark!). I love this style, and I think many of them would make wonderful quilts. Take a look at the slideshow by clicking here, and check out the accompanying article here. I'd love to make a quilt modeled on the feel of this red and white one, which I pasted in here to encourage you to take a look at the others.

Winter. And finally, we have had snow, snow, and more snow. And even more snow is on the way Sunday and Monday -- another 5 to 7 inches! We weren't hit as hard as the mid-Atlantic, but I'm still sick of it.

This is what snow used to mean in our house 20 years ago! It's easier now, but not quite so much fun.

Here and gone!

2009-12-04T15:49:00.010-06:00

This is the month of travels -- 3 trips between Thanksgiving and Christmas! I'm off tomorrow but realized today that I haven't posted since my return from New York. It was a totally cool trip. I got to meet Victoria of Bumble Beans, see both my daughters, and spend the holiday with my husband's family. I love New York, love it, love it. So exciting and inspirational!
I took waaaay too many photos to post, so I'll keep this one more or less quilty. I couldn't get a photo to show this well, but at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, I saw these 3 little drinking vessels from the 2nd or 3rd century. They say,

"Avete!", "Misce!" and "Reple!"

-- meaning "Cheers!", "Mix another drink!" and "Fill it up!" How cute is that, especially decorated with all those dots? I think I'll put those words on a quilt, with grapes and wine bottles and such (and maybe a few dots). Too much fun! Makes all those years I studied Latin worthwhile. :)
And what's this? Looks like some primitive geometric design, laid out like a tablerunner. Think on it a second, and I'll show you the inspiration further down. Meanwhile, look at this:
Doesn't it look like a quilt? It's the ceiling of a Korean restaurant where we had dinner one night.
And that tablerunner design -- it's the sign (with reflection) from the Museum of Modern Art!
What a great museum! Wonderful stuff inside, but everything about its design is impressive. I loved the bridges and staircases:
And since I'm keeping this post quilty, there was a quilt on display at the MoMA!
Well, it wasn't displayed as a quilt, but the quilt is part of a piece called "Bed" by Robert Rauschenberg, and shows his own (they think) quilt, sheet and pillow, splashed with paint.

And finally, this is nice and geometric and could easily become a quilt design, but I was so annoyed to see a square pile of yellow bricks on display as art! I find it insulting.

I hope everyone is enjoying the holiday season!

Bumble Beans & me

2009-11-22T16:45:00.001-06:00

In her studio in ny!

Happy Thanksgiving!

2009-11-21T20:32:00.005-06:00

I was just pulling out our Thanksgiving leaves from years past because we read them aloud every year. When the kids were little, we'd each write something we were thankful for on a leaf to put on a tree, or sometimes we'd put feathers on a turkey. We wanted them to realize that they had a lot to be thankful for.
And what were they thankful for? Well, one leaf says:

"I'm thankful for scotch tape. It's sticky and it sticks to my fingers."

And there's a feather that says

"I'm thankful for no more world wars ... yet anyway."

They're a little more sophisticated now (!!), but they are still appreciative of things, and I am very thankful for them!
Ah, these nicely stacked boxes belie all the work -- and the huge mess!-- that went into filling them. I sorted and cut about 1 bazillion squares the last few days. They're from the Linus stash and we need to turn them into quilts.
Someone donated a pile of pre-cut solids that are just gorgeous, but there aren't enough for a quilt. So I pulled some other solids and sketched a layout. This one will be beautiful!
I got a little of my own stuff done, too -- cut my blue strata into squares (so hard to do -- I loved the big blue strata). They are much less impressive now, but they should look good again when reassembled with some other stuff. I hope so!
And what's this? At my guild's quilt show, I won a raffle! Twelve quilted placemats, one for each month of the year. Wow! They're just terrific, I love having them.

Some exciting news for the next few days -- tomorrow I get to meet another quilt blogger, and this week I see my grown-up kids!

A very
Happy Thanksgiving
to each and every one of you!

Stripping

2009-11-04T07:54:00.002-06:00

Thanks for the helpful comments on yesterday's post! I'll check my stash of blacks and reds and get back to it.
In the meantime, I did some more strip sets for the "Statavarious" (love that name!) quilt I'm making for the family room. These will get cut into much smaller pieces and be interspersed with some contrasting fabrics, so the order here doesn't matter.
And I finally took this block I made ages ago off the design wall! I love it, so I quilted and bound it to make a hot pad worthy of my best culinary triumphs. I tried a 2" strip for binding and it worked pretty well, but the corners were more difficult. There's no room for error, so I think I might do 2-1/4" (maybe 2-1/8?) on a bigger quilt, but this skinny strip finished nice and tight and it's exactly the same width on both sides.

Think ahead

2009-11-03T05:40:00.007-06:00

The living room floor is there when the design wall gets too small, but next time I'll think ahead before I lay out the blocks and try to avoid the table!
It was still dark when I came downstairs this morning so the quilt was essentially in grey scale -- like looking at a black and white photo. Sounds crazy that this would help when looking at a black and white quilt, but it did! (Maybe it was just being away for a few hours that had the effect.) So I've rearranged a few blocks since I took this photo last night, but you get the idea.

Here's the plan -- a narrow border in color, then a wider border in tone-on-tone black (the one used in those little black cornerstones), and then a big zag zag all around. I'm thinking ahead and welcome your suggestions before I start cutting and stitching. Here's a drawing of my layout so you'll know what I'm talking about.

1) Inner border. Should the inner border be one fabric? If so, I'll probably do some shade of red. I was thinking of doing lots of colors, but I'm not sure whether that will just look sloppy here. I think the eye may need a place to rest. There will be a black border next to it, but multiple colors may be too chaotic on what is already a pretty chaotic quilt.

2) Zig Zag background. I plan to do the zig zag in brights and the question is whether for the background I want to do mixed blacks and whites (like in the center of the quilt) or choose only fabrics that are more black than white. I'm leaning towards that now, and will be sure that the brights stand out against it. Thoughts?

And I loved my word of the day -- acnestis. It means "the part of the body where one cannot reach to scratch." Who knew there was such a word?

Night and Day

2009-10-28T10:24:00.004-05:00

This Project Linus quilt, put together by my friend Diane whose co-workers colored the blocks...
...turns into this at night...
...because it was quilted by Joe with glow-in-the-dark thread! Wow! The kids will love his snazzy touch.

I didn't think the photo had come out, but I "enhanced" it on iPhoto and you can actually see the quilting.

And speaking of day and night, I heard on the radio that (at least here in North America) Jupiter will be shining brightly by the gibbous moon tonight. Take a look!

Sticks and Stones

2009-10-26T12:59:00.004-05:00

I was a little under the weather last week, nothing bad, just enough to keep me from getting things done. But by yesterday I was much better and did some easy stitching.
I participated in a swap for blacks, whites and brights at my guild and stitched up a few more blocks for that. (This is Bonnie Hunter's Sticks and Stones quilt.) I think the real fun of this quilt will be designing a border. I'm thinking piano keys with brights, or maybe offset bricks in brights, or maybe even some triangles or a zig zag. Suggestions? Ohhhh....and maybe I could interrupt the center with something more interesting, too, that gets picked up in the borders! A block or two with a design of some sort, or a zig zag that borders an inner section, or ... ??? The design part is just so much fun.
I like wonky, but only when it adds to the overall design. When I have cornerstones and small strips I press them on a grid so I discover problems before I stitch. Look at the strip on the left!

Wonky Houses?

2009-10-16T18:39:00.002-05:00

Edit -- Sorry, the text didn't come through when I posted this. I had forgotten about this photo and just ran across it on my phone. I took it in NYC last summer, I think near the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. I love the wonky houses! It's not a mat, it's metal and built right into the sidewalk. Such a fun discovery on the pavement.

Color!

2009-10-14T19:51:00.006-05:00

I'm headed out of town (California, to see my mother, daughter, brother & sister-in-law), but didn't want to lose my posting momentum. So here's some fun stuff about color. This is a close-up from a Roy G. Biv heartstrings quilt we made for Project Linus -- a rainbow scrappy quilt. And here's the whole quilt.
My Word A Day chose color words a week ago, and I thought it would be pretty ho-hum. After all, I know my colors, don't I? (Well, now that I've learned vermilion ...) And indeed, Monday and Tuesday were easy color words:

ecru
russet

But Wednesday?

sorrel

I thought it must be green, like the plant, but it's a light reddish-brown color. Thursday was:

umber

Also a an earthy reddish-brown, which I knew, but how is it different from sorrel? That I don't know. But the really fun shocker of the week for me came on Friday, with:

subfusc

Subfusc? A color??? I know the word only from Dorothy Sayers mysteries (Gaudy Night in particular), where from context I divined* that it was student garb. And indeed it is, but so named because the color is "dark, drab, and gloomy". I wonder what they'll say at the quilt shop if I ask for some subfusc fabric. :-)

*If you've read Gaudy Night, do you get the "divine" pun?

Unexcused absence

2009-10-13T12:10:00.005-05:00

Oh my, the summer got away from me. I didn't intend to back off from blogging, but I got b(l)ogged down and couldn't give it the attention I wanted to. I think things are on a more even keel once again.

Since I last posted, most of my quilting has been for Project Linus. I do enjoy it, but it seems to have taken over my quilting and I am trying to contain it. And on the personal front, we had some big family celebrations this summer (two major birthdays) and both our daughters moved -- one to Berkeley, California, and one to New York City! Wow! I foresee a lot of travel in my future...but I couldn't ask for more fun places to visit.

In a renewed effort to do my own quilting, I am heading downstairs to clean up my space and get going. Here are just a few photos until I have some real stuff stuff to show.
My guild's biennial quilt show was a couple weeks ago. Very cool -- the quilts were hung among the historic aircraft in the Rantoul Air and Space museum! Here's the Project Linus booth -- you can see our string quilts and strippie quilts (thank you, Mary, for the instructions!), as well as others that we made. Almost all our Project Linus info was picked up on the first day of the show!
And this is Carol Doak, Queen of Paper Piecing, wrapped up in her special Tribute to Carol Doak quilt. She taught a class here in town, and she's a fantastic instructor. Paper piecing has never been my thing, but I feel now like I can do it when I decide I want to. She was terrific.
And the skills we work so hard to develop, Mother Nature simply gives to spiders. Look at this amazing web I saw on my walk the other morning -- and look at that HUGE green spider in the middle! There was a section of the park I have dubbed Spider Alley because it was one web after another.
Isn't this one just gorgeous?

For those of you who emailed me or just checked to see if I was posting, thank you. I'm baaaaack!

City Quilter

2009-07-01T07:14:00.000-05:00

Yesterday I visited Manhattan's only quilt shop. Wow! Not a calico or
Civil War repro in sight. The very friendly clerk told me they saw
their fabric choices as an antidote to the grey city streets. It's an
awesome shop. Tomorrow I hope to see the Paula Nadelstern exhibit at
the American Folk Art Museum. (sorry I can't make a link when posting
from my phone).

Quilt in use

2009-06-29T05:59:00.001-05:00

I finally got a photo of my MIL with the quilt I made her. This was
the first quilt I made where I had to control value very carefully and
I love the way it turned out. You can't see it well in this photo but
I will post more photos from my real camera when I get home. This was
the best I could do on my phone. I may not have computer access until
the weekend. Have a wonderful week!

City girl

2009-06-26T05:36:00.000-05:00

On my way to New York! Flying out of Indianapolis, faster and easier
than Chicago. Great new terminal here, a pleasure to use. But this t-
shirt in an airport store reminds me that Indy is not NY. At a recent
Linus worknight I got called "city girl" when I couldn't identify
( and didn't own!) any of the cows in a farm animal fabric.

Testing mobile posting

2009-06-22T15:02:00.000-05:00

Mary at Mary Quilts kindly sent me info on how to make a post from a
mobile phone and I'm trying it out. These are raspberries in my yard.

From inspiration to quilts

2009-06-20T10:49:00.003-05:00

I've been meaning to post this link all week and keep forgetting! I really enjoy Laura West Kong's blog, Adventures of a Quilting Diva. Last Monday she had a wonderful post that shows her moving from inspiration (donuts!) to several possible quilts, some artsy, some traditional. You can read it and get inspired here.

Sunshine strings top done!

2009-06-18T17:06:00.002-05:00

Thank you everyone for your extremely helpful comments on my last post! The Liberated Quilters group had a virtual retreat today, so I took advantage of that to make more strip sets for the border and to use in the second top (more on that later).
I trimmed all the blocks to make them fit perfectly so I would be less tempted to stretch a bias edge, and of course I overtrimmed one of them. Took me a bit to deal with that complication, but otherwise it went pretty smoothly. Better than that, it was fun!
And for the second top -- I'm going to use the hourglass blocks I showed yesterday in a column down the left side, a row of 3" blocks like the ones above across the bottom, and the rest of the quilt will have sets of Chinese coins using these strings. I should be able to use all the waste pieces from this quilt plus all the animal strings I've cut. I'm excited about it!

Sunshine strings

2009-06-17T16:14:00.003-05:00

Susan at Hanging On by a Needle and Thread just took a class from Ami Simms -- the same class Ami gave when she visited my guild a year ago. It inspired me to pull out my almost finished project from that class and finish it. As Ami says, the babies are cold.
I used strings from animal fabrics donated for Project Linus quilts (and this quilt will be donated), but decided to make the blocks bigger than Ami suggested so the strips could be wide enough to see the animals a little better. Because I didn't think it through carefully, I thought a 9" yellow strip would give me 9" block. But duh, it gives me a 12" block! That's a lot of blank yellow space.
I sought to liven up the quilt a bit by using the waste pieces (my miscalculation gave me lots!) to make an interesting border. I was also hoping that the quilter might practice some clever quilting in the yellow, or I thought I might cut some animals out of fabric and do a little brodie perse in the blank spaces.
But it occurred to me I could cut each block in half on the diagonal (I have more blocks than are on the design wall) and reassemble them as shown above to chop up the yellow space. But since I hadn't planned on doing that, I would now end up with bias edges on all sides, eek! I could stay stitch the edges and sew carefully. Would that be ok? Any thoughts on what I should do would be welcome!
Also sewed some blocks using pieces from a fabric exchange. These are for Bonnie Hunter's Sticks and Stones quilt. I have been getting my sewing area cleaned up by folding, stacking, organizing, and stitching UFO's. It has gotten my creative juices flowing and I have lots of ideas. Finishing up these projects so I can move on will feel great!

Class with Cynthia England

2009-06-15T10:33:00.007-05:00

Guild dues are definitely worth it when they give you the opportunity to take a class from an amazing quilter. This totally awesome quilt was pieced (NO applique, all piecing) by Cynthia in a quilt that took Viewer's Choice at Paducah. I love this quilt!
She told us that she had been using a freezer paper technique that has you work in reverse, with the freezer paper templates ironed on to the back of the fabric, but once she accidentally ironed on to the front and realized how much more forgiving it was to work that way -- if something is not exact, then you move the template to where it should be and keep going! And it's true, this was an amazingly simple technique and it's extremely forgiving. I never would have believed it!

Here's a closeup to show some snow and tree branches. You can click on all these photos to enlarge them and take a closer look.
And I love the tree trunk!
Another quilter in the class put her hand down (Cynthia let us touch and photograph) to give an idea of scale. I love her fabric choices in the snow -- that bit of pink is just perfect!
I couldn't get a good photo of the back of her quilt, but here's an angled one. Very simple, but it was also beautiful.
And here's her pieced bird on a branch on the bottom of the back. It made me realize that incorporating her technique for a small area can be very effective -- I don't know that I have the patience to make an entire large quilt like this!
Here's a detail of the border of one of her quilts, again, all pieced. You can see the full quilt on her website, here. If you go to her home page, you'll find links to videos, a step-by-step tutorial and a few free patterns to help you learn her technique. It's not nearly so fiddly as you might think!
And what did I made in the class? Here's the beginning of her Country Roads design. She asked us to make one of 3 patterns. You could use your own fabrics or buy a packet for the kit, and I did the latter. I wanted to learn the technique and knew I'd spend the entire time making fabric choices if I didn't use what she gave us. In addition to teaching this piecing method, Cynthia also showed us several shortcuts she's developed over the years and demonstrated how to take a photo and turn it into a pattern for this method. Great class!

Vicki's lovely hand dyed fabric

2009-06-14T18:56:00.003-05:00

Are those gorgeous colors or what?
I always drool over Vicki's dyed fabrics (at Field Trips in Fiber), and now that she's opened an Etsy shop, I got to buy some! I didn't know which of her color palettes to choose, but finally went for the bluebird. The blues are gorgeous and I need to broaden my stash with browns and neutrals -- and all of these will be perfect for landscapes, which I would like to make (more on that in the next post). Thanks, Vicki! I love this and could not be happier!

Catching Up

2009-06-06T18:37:00.003-05:00

It always happens -- I put off something that seems like an overwhelming task, and then when I finally bite the bullet and do it, it really isn't so bad. I was way behind in the blog I keep for my guild's Project Linus Committee, Hearts for Linus. My old computer made dealing with photos extremely difficult, so I thought I'd wait until I got my new computer to update that blog. But when I got my new computer, I was soooooo far behind, the I felt overwhelmed and just kept waiting. Finally, yesterday and today, I got caught up! Only took a few hours max.
Because I was catching up on Linus, I didn't work on my own projects. Since I showed you some of the cut strippie quilt kits in the last post, I thought I'd show one of my favorites all made up. These strippies show novelty fabrics off so well, and I had a great time rummaging through our Linus stash of donated fabrics to find things that worked together. It's great practice in design!
I didn't notice until I looked at this photo that the cats look stretched out behind those middle strips! Next time I'll be sure not to put the strips in the order they were cut -- though a kid might have fun looking at that.
And just for fun, here's a close-up of another one with really cute frogs. The colors in the photo are off (that's a beautiful lime green in the middle), but it's still fun.

Tomorrow it's quilting time for MY projects! Stay tuned...

How clever is this?

2009-06-03T16:05:00.003-05:00

I wish I could take credit for this Drunkard's Path quilt, but it was in with some fabric I bought at a guild auction.
This is no larger than a placemat, and the Drunkard's Path is not pieced, but it's fussy cut from circles. What a great result!
Along with the little quilt came the fabric that was used to make it -- look closely and you can see the holes where the circles were cut out for the little quilt. I discovered the gaps when I started to cut a strippie quilt for Project Linus with them. I'm not going to be able to cut enough strips from the Swiss cheese fabric, so I'll end up making a different quilt with them. No big deal -- they are such fun fabrics!
Here are 6 strippie quilt kits I cut today (which is why I haven't been making progress on my own projects -- we have a worknight tomorrow and I'm getting prepared). Just in case you don't know about Mary Johnson's easy but wonderful patterns for donation quilts, hop over to Mary Quilts and take a look. It's an incredible resource and Mary has generously donated her time and talents so that quilters can download these patterns for free. She also has a blog, MaryQuilts - Making Scrap Quilts from Stash, and runs the Heartstrings Quilt Project. I've decided to make strippie quilts tomorrow night (listed on Mary Quilts as Quick Strippie, under Q) because we can piece lots of tops in very little time. At the moment my friend Joe, who has a new longarm machine, is practicing on Project Linus tops, and we aim to keep him very busy!

Three at once

2009-05-31T19:32:00.005-05:00

Some might call it an inability to concentrate, but I prefer to think of it as an ability to multitask. I was busy this weekend.
I cut squares out of the first piece of string fabric I put together. There will be much greater variation when all the pieces are made, but I just couldn't wait. There will be pieces with dashes of brights, too.
I had put only 2 of the checkered borders on this I Spy. I always get bogged down when I get to the borders because the fun is over by then. But I bit the bullet today and put on the remaining 2 checkered strips and the green border, and then pieced and attached the outer border. Just have to piece the backing, sandwich, quilt, and bind!
I also went through two boxes of t-shirts that my sister sent me almost two years ago! She asked me to make a quilt of them as a memento of the various military assignments her husband has had over the years. I was going to have it ready when they returned from overseas this summer, but they came home several months earlier than expected and I had not even started! There are so many shirts that I think I'll make two tops -- one with black and gold fabrics added (the colors of the US Military Academy) and one with red, white and blue. I've sorted the shirts into those two groups and now I'm going to wash and prep them.

And for your viewing pleasure, found art:
The beautiful new Champaign Public Library has funky air vents. Aren't the different sized holes so much more interesting than row after row of identical slots? And wouldn't that be a great quilt -- each block representing something artistically interesting in the building!

Visual onomotopoeia

2009-05-30T09:03:00.002-05:00

Tonya's Halloween words are all over the blogosphere, and they look like what they are -- screechy looking screeches and eeky looking eeks. Here's my thump.
There is, of course, the inevitable post-mortem (how apt for Halloween!), but despite the things I would change -- like a smaller hole in the p -- I really like it. Thank you everyone for your suggestions! I considered them all and then tried mixing up the fabrics within the letters (Tonya's suggestion) and used the first alternate m (Tonya again -- after all the word is for her quilt). Quilt Pixie suggested fussy cutting the fabric with the clusters of dots, and I did that to make the word bottom heavy. After all the trouble with the m, it is unexpectedly my favorite part of the word! Not only is it thumping downward, but I think it has a spiderlike, creepy-crawly aspect to it. Fun!

Fabric choices

2009-05-26T09:22:00.006-05:00

The plan is to piece THUMP tomorrow. The previous plan had been to piece it today, but I'm stuck on fabric choices. Any advice?
The orange is my background, and I had thought about doing a different black with white dots for each letter, but I didn't have enough. Going from left to right, I like the first one, find the second one too regular, I like the third and think it would add interest because of the varying density of dots (or it might just be distracting), the fourth is one of my all-time favorite B&W fabrics, and the fifth...well...it isn't dotted but has a crackled look that says Halloween to me. Here's a close-up:
I would make all the letters with this crackly one but I think the contrast with the orange may not be great enough. So currently I'm leaning towards using only one fabric, either fabric 3 or 4, but every time I go to cut strips, I waffle. Please, advise!

And I have another fabric dilemma. I'm making big strip sets of blues, which will be cut into wonky squares and re-assembled. It's for a quilt for my family room, which is done in brights (yes, it's my family room, so what else would you expect?), with yellow walls and a red sofa and red, blue, green and yellow in the curtains and art and even one piece of furniture. The plan had been to intersperse bits of brights (reds, yellows, greens) among the reassembled pieces, but now I'm wondering. Here's a starting piece:
As I sew, it calls out to me, "I am the ocean, the waves, the sea...I am the sparkling blue Mediterranean...I dance with the sunshine..." and all I can see is bits of yellow playing with it, not red. Guess I will cut it and play around to see, but I need to get something up in my family room after a year of promising to do so.

For a complete change of topic, here are the earrings I'm wearing today. I love them. When I put them on this morning, I realized how quilty they are, though I bought them long before I became a quilter. Perhaps a careful observer would have foreseen it in my future...

Finally, I thought this was interesting.

If word verification drives you crazy (as DH would say, it's a short trip!), you might want to read this article in the New York Times. Seems we might have some interesting new security procedures in our future. Oops, I see blogger has cut off the upside down parrot part of the picture -- you definitely have to read the article now!

Scrap quilts

2009-05-25T13:18:00.005-05:00

Finn asked on her blog, Pieces from my scrapbag, if we would post some scrap quilts over Memorial Day weekend. My guild has a huge collection of donated fabric, mostly scraps, that we use to make quilts for charity. I thought I'd post a few that I have never put on my blog before.
I love the black and white trails in this one, and the huge assortment of bright fabrics. I believe this quilt was donated to a local children's home. As you can see, it's simply B&W 4 patches and fabric squares. It doesn't get much easier.
This quilt was donated by a guild member (I'm sorry I don't know who) and was clearly made from scraps. It's twelve 15-patch blocks joined with sashing and bright cornerstones.
This is a very sweet quilt made with lots of scrap strings, I think using Bonnie Hunter's String-X pattern. It was donated by a guild member. [Update: Just heard from my friend Bunny -- who needs a blog of her own! -- that she made this quilt and did indeed use Bonnie's String-X pattern.]
This quilt is a standard pattern that we use to make kits -- we just cut 6-1/2 inch squares from our donated scraps and strips of solid sashing, and any guild member can take a kit home to put together. I hope this one ended up in the hands of a child whose favorite color is blue!
We sort our stash into broad categories or we'd never find anything! For this easy attic windows quilt, we cut squares from our stash of animal fabrics and used our solids for the window frames and sashing. This is another one of our standard kit patterns.

Scraps are wonderful, aren't they?

Changing 'm' to 'mmmm'

2009-05-22T13:22:00.002-05:00

M's and W's are not so easy. No, indeed. I knew that when I chose THUMP for Tonya's Halloween quilt, but I am determined to make a decent M, one that will make me hummmm with delight instead of shouting "eek!" (or even "*&#^$#!!")
My letters are supposed to have very fat and very thin parts, which I thought would emphasize the heaviness of THUMP. I sketched the word to get relative proportions and auditioned a bunch of M's. At this point I think I will do it the way Tonya suggests in her tutorial instead of using any of the ones in the picture. Any ideas for an M?

Did a ton of Linus stuff recently. Things look so compact in their little bags, but those represent hours of cutting, finding fabrics, piecing, etc.
And finally, gorgeous purple! Our yard has so many irises blooming now. I love the rich color and know it will just last a little longer, so I bought a hanging basket of red, white, and purple pansies to enjoy until fall.

Happy Mother's Day!

2009-05-10T08:16:00.004-05:00

To my mother, and to my daughters who made me a mother...
and to my mother-in-law, who mothered my husband.
And happy Mother's Day to everyone everywhere who cares for someone else.

There's a fascinating history of Mother's Day at the Writer's Almanac by Garrison Keillor (it's right after today's poem).

Strings and a great finish

2009-05-08T12:25:00.004-05:00

Even infinite variety can get boring. No matter how scrappy a string quilt, eventually I want something a little different. So last night I decided to try rainbow strings at our Project Linus worknight. In my headbar you can see that I once tried rectangular ones; this time we used our traditional Heartstrings squares and made each row a different color. Not quite done, but I love how it's turning out.

Remember Tonya's Fungly challenge? We made fungly blocks at another worknight, and I joined them with red and aqua. Just got it back from Joe the Quilter today. (Don't be ridiculous, of course it's not Joe Cunningham -- it's our local Joe the Quilter!)
Check out the closeup of the quilting.
Joe, whose wife Bunny is a fabulous quilter, just got a quilting frame and started quilting himself. Isn't this an amazing job? Thank you, Joe!

Blues

2009-05-07T11:00:00.003-05:00

My stash has turquoise and aqua, but very few true blues. Just not my color, I guess.
I pulled what I had and then when to my LQS, which had a blues sale in April. I was going to use reds for wonky strip piecing for a quilt background, but with all the red in my family room, I think it would be too much to hang a mostly-red quilt there. Right now I'm waiting to see how blue the color sheet in the washer will be when the load is done.
And I finished this! Tonya, it will be in the mail today or tomorrow! What I learned from this:
1) You do loosen up as you make letters. I made these in spelling order, and the i is definitely my favorite.
2) When piecing wonky piano keys, do it on a foundation. (Some of us learn the hard way.)
3) When the fabric has a wonky design, like these chilies, the piecing can still be fairly straight and it will look wonkier than it is.

Wonky borders

2009-05-01T15:08:00.006-05:00

I joined the letter blocks to spell my name for Tonya's collection. It was a little boring with plain yellow borders, so I decided to make some wonky piano keys with the fabric I had used for the letters and some green chili pepper fabric I also had, and while I was cutting pieces it occurred to me that a little red would go a long way towards livening it up a bit.
I'm sure there's a wonky piano key tutorial out there, but it didn't occur to me to check. I cut strips of fabric, then cut the strips into equal size pieces a good bit longer than I needed, to allow for trimming the uneven edges you get with wonky pieces. After chain piecing a bunch of pairs, I laid them around the block and decided the red would be better as an accent since my eye was drawn there, so I chopped the reds down and then joined the pairs into a strip.

I knew I'd need to trim uneven edges, but this was ridiculous! (Kind of a neat curve, though.) So I frogged a few seams and paid attention to joining them at angles that wouldn't cause such unevenness.
This I can live with! It'll trim it to straighten the edges and it will lie nice and flat. I had wanted more angularity, but I now see that I would have had to have cut my pieces much longer to be able to trim enough -- either that, or use templates, which totally defeats the purpose. I could also have pieced them on a foundation strip, which would have been smart. Next time!
The pieced strip on top looks very different from the loose pairs on the bottom.

Here's one more quilt from the Chicago quilt show. This one is made from old shirts, mostly striped ones, pieced to look like furrows in a field. I really like it. Looks like the great midwest as seen from an airplane. There's a very soothing feel to it despite all the lines.

Finally, do any of you have some blogging tips or tricks to share? I'm teaching a class of active seniors how to blog (using Blogger), and want to be sure I give them as much helpful advice as I can. Thank you!

Name & Chicago & Stars

2009-04-28T19:13:00.006-05:00

It's been a long time ... so sorry! I kept thinking I would be back to reading and writing blogs any day, but it didn't happen until today. I have done a lot of Linus stuff -- my friend Bunny came over and helped me find backings for quite a few quilts, which she took off to finish. And last week I put together batting and backing for 16 quilts! It feels great to have those gone to quilters.

And as for my own quilting, I made my name for Lazy Gal Tonya. Since I like to work with hot colors, I used a chili pepper fabric for my name as a little visual pun. Still have to trim and piece them together, that won't take long. They'll be in the mail soon!
And I pieced yet another I Spy -- the final one for my nieces and nephews. This one has a checkerboard inner border and I was so pleased that the size of the checks worked with the size of the blocks -- the corners meet just right!
In my last post I mentioned that stars kept popping out of the tumbling blocks, but many of you commented that you couldn't see the stars. Maybe the following photos will help. This is "Tumbling Blocks with Emerging Stars" from The New Work of Our Hands. Each side of the tumbling block could be a point for a star, and each star point could be a side of a tumbling block.
And here's a close up:
I went to the Chicago Quilt Show a week ago. I just loved it! There were lots of vendors, lots of quilts, but I'll just show two for now. First, I was pleasantly surprised to see a wonky log cabin in the midst of quilts with more standard patterns.

And this quilt is a stunning rendition of the Museum of Canadian Civilization in Canada. My DH has family in Ottawa, just across the river from this museum, so we have visited it a few times. It's a gorgeous building, and the quilt captures its mood quite nicely.

That's a quick catch up. I will be visiting you all in blogland!

Tables and boxes

2009-03-16T10:01:00.002-05:00

Hello, hello, it's good to be back! I had a great time in California visiting my family, but came back to a loooong class I needed to maintain my professional license, and then we had to get ready for some work that's being done on our house. I hardly got to any blogs, but am starting to catch up.

Look at this wonderful woodwork!
Years ago my dad made a set of small folding tables (like TV tables) with a tumbling block pattern. They are absolutely gorgeous! I photographed them while visiting my mother. If you look carefully, you'll see that the wood grains go three different ways -- one each for the top and two sides of the block -- to give it a 3D look.
This photo is a little truer in color than the top one (the finish just glows in real life), and it also shows what I find a fascinating feature of my dad's piecing. The grains are consistent, but the shades of wood vary randomly, so a top or a side might be darker or lighter. This makes the tumbling blocks fade into 6-pointed stars in some places. In a book I once saw a quilt titled "Tumbling Blocks with Emerging Stars," and that's just what this is. What a great look! You may have to let your eyes relax a little to see the effect in the photo, but I think it does come across in the lower one if you give it a chance.
This, alas, is most definitely not a great look. We had to clear out a good part of the downstairs for the work that's being done on the house, and the remaining part is all junked up with the stuff. Of course, we had four big bookcases in the two rooms where most of the work is being done... Guess I should view this as an opportunity to clean things out!

Good to be back, hope you all are doing well.

Acres of quilts

2009-03-03T17:47:00.005-06:00

Saturday was Project Linus Make A Blanket Day in our area. There was a big gathering about an hour from here, but in our local area, 15 of us pieced 10 tops and got 8 others underway!
Isn't this awesome? We laid all the tops of this type together, and I climbed on a chair and took this photo (doesn't show nearly all the tops!).
One corner of the layout had a top of Sesame Street and coordinated character prints. Gives a very different look.
We made another Illini (orange and blue) string quilt, and also started on one with dotted green stripes.
I am off tomorrow for California to see DD#1, my mother, my brother and sister-in-law, and two nieces and their families. Fun! I hope you all have a great week, and I'll be in touch when I return.

Inspiration

2009-02-23T20:25:00.002-06:00

This little rug is in front the sink in our half-bath. I love it. Can't you see making a big cat (or big anything) with strings like this?
And I saw this ad in the most recent issue of Cooking Light. I wanted to find this image on the web, but couldn't, so I have to use the washed out photo I took of it. I love cityscapes anyway, and was enchanted by the thought of using a black fabric with spattered dots to show a skyline with lights in the buildings.
And while I was looking at the picture, I noticed the writing was upside down. So I turned it over.
Now the lights in the buildings are out, but you can see the stars in the sky. Absolutely wonderful! This is an ad for Earth Hour, which is sponsored by the World Wildlife Fund to publicize the effects of climate change. They are asking everyone to turn off their lights for an hour at 8:30 pm local time on March 28. Please check out their website for more information and to find out how you can participate. Such an incredible ad!
And finally, here's an I Spy I delivered to a friend's son this evening. So much fun!

Stitched-in corners binding tutorial

2009-02-19T19:54:00.010-06:00

A couple months ago I mentioned that I start binding at the corners and never have to join the two binding ends along the side. The few times I attached binding the traditional way I ended up with a little bulge where I joined the binding on the side, yuk. If you use the method in this tutorial, you'll never have to join the binding ends, and you'll have beautifully mitered corners.

A few words before I begin:
I took a class from Sharon Pederson about 3 months after I started quilting, and she mentioned this binding method in passing. It's in both of her books (Reversible Quilts and More Reversible Quilts), but she said she didn't develop the method -- someone showed her. I tried it and love it, and I really like the way the corners look. But a year ago I took a class from Sally Collins, who is extremely precise, and asked her about this method -- she had never tried it, but didn't think the results would be as good as the traditional method of applying binding. Her bindings are beautiful indeed, but mine never looked that good.

Ok, here goes! Are you ready?
For this explanation, I'm assuming you'll be using a 2-1/2" strip folded in half to make a 1-1/4" double-folded binding. Seam allowances are 1/4". Be sure to use thread that matches the binding! This is important as you might see a bit of thread where the miter is stitched in, especially if you are overly zealous when turning out the corners.

1. Stitch binding onto one side. Leaving about a 3" tail at the beginning, stitch the binding down one side. Always reinforce the beginning and end of each row by backstitching or doing a knot stitch if your machine has one.
Start stitching 1/4" inch from the top edge (I folded the tail back so you could see this in the photo). I measure this, because the corners look best when they meet exactly.
When you get near the end of the first side, use your ruler to find 1/4" from the end and put a dot on the binding so you will stop exactly there. (If for some reason you are using a 3/8" seam, then start and stop 3/8" from the edge.) I adjust the stitch length for the last few stitches if I need to so I stop right on the dot. Reinforce the end with backstitching or a knot stitch, then remove the quilt from the machine and cut the binding, leaving a short tail at this end also.
2. Stitch a triangle to make the corner miter. You are going to join the binding that you attached to the first side to the binding for the next side by stitching them together at the corners. You'll stitch a little triangle that when opened up will form a mitered corner.
a) Using your ruler, draw a line across the binding from the folded edge to the very end of the seam line. The line should be exactly 1/4" from the bottom edge of the quilt. If you started with a 2-1/2" strip folded in half to measure 1-1/4", then your line (which stops at the seam) should measure exactly 1". Put a dot exactly in the middle of the line, at 1/2" from either edge. If your binding is a little off, just note the measurement that you have and put a dot exactly in the middle of that. (And if you used binding of a different width, adjust your measurements -- a 2" binding folded to 1" with a 1/4" seam gives you a line that is 3/4" long, so your dot in the center would be at 3/8" from either end.)
b) Use your ruler to mark a dot exactly 1/2" beyond the dot in the middle of your baseline. (If your measurements are different, adjust that distance accordingly -- if your baseline dot is 3/8" in from either side, then make this dot 3/8" above the line.) Use your ruler to connect the new dot to each edge of the baseline. You'll have drawn a triangle like the one in the photo above. Be sure the triangle points out, not back towards the quilt!

3. Pin and stitch the binding for the next side to the binding you just stitched on. This step is the only fiddly part of doing the binding, and it's not hard because you use pins to keep everything from slipping. Lift up the end of the stitched-down binding and place the folded edge of the new binding, exactly even with folded edge of the first binding. The triangle will be on top and the new binding underneath the binding you already stitched on. Pin the binding on both sides of the triangle -- be sure to keep the folded edges exactly even. I use two pins, each at a different angle, on each side to be sure things don't slip. It sounds tricky, but if you pin, it's not. I pin far enough from the triangle that I don't need to worry about removing the pins while I stitch.
Now it's time to stitch in the triangle, which will join the two pieces of binding. (I neglected to take a photo of this in the machine, so here is a photo of stitching the last side to the first -- the only difference is that your second piece of binding won't be stitched to the quilt like the one in the next photo is.)
Start at the side of the triangle by the seam, and put your needle down exactly where the line hits the seam. Use a small stitch and sew to the top of the triangle, then turn and sew to the baseline at the folded edge. Reinforce the beginning and the end by a knot stitch or backstitch. In the photo below, you can see the triangle stitched in (for purposes of teaching, it's too bad the thread is the same color, but put on your reading glasses and look closely, you can see the stitches). See how nice and flat the bindings lie along the sides!
4) Stitch the second piece of binding down. Start exactly at the corner where the seam ended on the first side, always reinforcing the beginning and end points.
In the photo above you can see how the corners look on the back -- each side exactly meets up with the other. So pretty! Now continue in exactly this way until you have stitched the binding to all four sides and made triangles on 3 corners.

5) Stitch in the last corner. This is done exactly like the first three, except that both sides of the binding are stitched down. This actually makes it a tiny bit easier! Yay! The hard work is over.

6) Trim the seams and turn the corners. You don't want lots of bulk in the corners, so trim the seams around the little triangles. They'll look like this.
Turn the corners right side out, using a pointy chopstick to push out the end of the corner. You have a stitched in miter! Here's the front ...
...and here's the back.
7) Handstitch the binding down in the back. It's so wonderful not to worry about the corners when you're stitching -- they're done! No fiddly folding. Here's the back...
...and here's the front after the handstitching. Mission accomplished! And no joining the binding on the side!
If you have any questions, please let me know and I will edit the post to make it clearer if need be. Happy quilting!

Linus worknight

2009-02-06T15:58:00.003-06:00

So many people came to our worknight last night that we had to have some people in a different room! It was great, but a little crazy...
With so many people, we got a lot accomplished. For our string quilt this time we used blue and orange -- Fighting Illini colors because a lot of kids in this area are huge fans. Each block has one strip of Illini fabric, and we'll use a mostly-orange Illini fabric for the backing. I love randomly chosen strings, but sometimes it's fun to have a theme of some sort.
I posted this when half the blocks were made, but now the top is completely pieced and ready to be quilted!
These are oblong blocks that we ask guild members to make of their scraps and then turn in to us. I have two boxes of them! Last night we joined four blocks around a center square and now have quite a few of those big blocks (there are 9 in the photo). We'll get several tops from all the big blocks assembled last night.
And this fish top is done! Yay!!!

Thank you all so much for your suggestions on piecing batting! I am going to try it without the fusible next time.

And I had success at the fabric store looking for more fabric for my twister quilt! Some fabrics are already in there, some are not ... stay tuned!

Some very white photos

2009-02-05T15:53:00.002-06:00

This is the batting corner corner for my guild's Project Linus stash. You can see we have two huge rolls of batting (one in front, one still in plastic in the back), generously donated by the company that produced it. Unfortunately, it's only 36" wide! I think I've complained about this before.
Several people have suggested ways to piece batting, and now that I have a quilting table, I thought I'd give one of them a try. We have a worknight tonight and I wanted to know before then whether the method I chose would work. It did!
I took two pieces of batting and laid the edges so they butted together perfectly. These were clean cut edges from the manufacturer, but I'm told that with scraps you might want to overlap edges and cut them with a wavy line so they mesh perfectly. I ironed on a tiny strip of fusible web to join the two pieces (you can see the paper still on the fusing in the above photo), then stitched them together with the biggest zig zag possible on my machine. It took just a few seconds to do the whole seam and it lies perfectly flat! Sorry, couldn't get any photos that showed the stitches. But if you want to try joining batting pieces, this seems to work well. If the straight seam becomes a problem, I'll try a wavy edge next time.

One card short of a deck

2009-02-03T15:22:00.005-06:00

...and one block short of a quilt. Before I started, I calculated whether a jelly roll would make this quilt, and it would, no problem. But then I had to leave out 4 strips for lack of contrast, and now I'm half a block short. (There are 12 blocks in the quilt.) I got to this point (7 blocks) in putting them on the design wall when I started to wonder.
Fortunately, the LQS has some of these fabrics on bolts -- I hope some of the lighter ones! -- so I should be able to finish the quilt. I may even be able to switch out some of the lower contrast ones if I can find the right fabrics.

Do you love your stash?
DD#1 is a knitter, and she sent me a link to a very funny post by the Yarn Harlot (don't you just love that blog name?). She's talking about yarn, but fabric can cause the same reaction. Check out Hey Beautiful, that is your name isn't it?

And I leave you with a photo of another simple donation blanket I made a week or two ago. It's the Fringed Fleece pattern from Project Linus. If you don't have much time but want to make a donation blanket, it's a terrific pattern.

A twisted mini-retreat

2009-02-01T14:14:00.006-06:00

About a year ago I bought this Jelly Roll on an impulse. I'd never bought a Jelly Roll before and had no idea what to do with one, but those colors! I love saturated brights anyway, but it was January and I could just feel the sun shining when I looked at these. I left them on my desk near the computer for awhile, but eventually put them in the closet where they languished until my guild's mini-retreat yesterday.

I love going to these sew-alongs because it's fun to visit with everyone and I get so inspired by people's projects, but I do find it awkward to work in a cramped space without my stash. I thought I might piece an I Spy that I had already cut out, but I was afraid I wouldn't have enough space to lay the whole thing out. Then I saw Bonnie's post on the Super Bowl Twist, and I knew what to do! I stitched up a little sunshine on the last day of January.
Bonnie's directions emphasized that contrast was important, so I laid out some strip set possibilities and checked for contrast. I learned that the Jelly Roll had more darks than lights and quite a few fabrics that I would classify as mediums -- but of course, that depends on what they are next to.
I ended up with 4 strips left that just would not give me the contrast I needed. But Bonnie showed a photo of Freida B's Strip Twist quilt with a terrific diagonal border, so I plan to mix these up with the ends of the strip sets to make a border like that myself.
All the blocks are pieced (this is a very quick quilt when you start with pre-cut strips), but I haven't gotten my design wall up again since I got my new sewing table, so I couldn't lay the whole thing out.
Desperately wanting to see what it was going to look like, I put a few blocks out on the floor. So much fun! Tonight's the Super Bowl, so I may get the design wall up and the quilt laid out then. I am incredibly grateful that my husband isn't a big sports fan. Most years his football watching consists of tuning in to at least part of the Super Bowl. This year he's invited a friend who has about his level of interest in the game over to watch with him, and we're getting Indian take-out for dinner. My laugh for the day came when DH worried about having a long wait for the food because everyone would be getting take-out for the game. I think the pizza delivery guy will be busy, but I doubt there'll be a long line for aloo tikki chat!

Everyone should clean out the closet now and then

2009-01-30T13:42:00.002-06:00

A few days ago I was trying to find the right size sheets in the linen closet and decided it was time to reorganize and maybe get rid of a few things. When I lifted the stack off the top shelf, look what I found!
I had forgotten all about this little crib quilt that I made about 20 years ago! I had made a disastrous attempt at quilting in college and still had no idea what I was doing. I had some fabric scraps from baby clothes I had made, that dark blue with yellow and red flowers was from an apron I made in high school (!!), I had some scraps from my sister, etc. Most of the squares date from the 1970's, a few from the 60's. I pieced them together and then went to the fabric store for help. The clerk was not a quilter (no quilt shops in town then) and so it was the blind leading the blind. I ended up using a polyester batting, folding the back over the front to make the border, and then tying the quilt. But it has held up to many washings. I can't believe I forgot this quilt! We had it out in the family room when the kids were little, so it was in constant use for many years.
And here are the other two 9 patches I made for Bumble Beans' fundraiser quilt (you can read about it on my previous post). Digging in my scrap bin was another trip down memory lane. All the fabrics but one are from the last few years when I took up quilting, but that darker blue is from a maternity dress I made when I was pregnant with DD#1, who is now 24 years old. I was never much of a seamstress because I couldn't get things to fit properly, but that doesn't matter much with clothes for babies and pregnant ladies!

It's here!!

2009-01-29T20:05:00.003-06:00

Ta-daaa!

My new sewing table arrived 2-1/2 weeks ago, but I had to wait and wait and wait until the insert to fit my machine arrived. It finally got here yesterday evening! The table doesn't look like much, but it is so wonderful to sew on a machine that sits in a table instead of on it. I just love it. This is a Sew Perfect table, much less expensive than most cabinets, and I got a great price on their end-of-the-year, pre-inventory sale. DH gave up his Sunday afternoon to put the table together (thank you!!) so it would be all ready to go when the insert arrived.
Simple and quick seemed the way to go while I got the feel of the new table, so I decided to use my scraps to make some 9 patches. Bumble Beans is collecting them to make a quilt as a fundraiser for Love without Boundaries. Do go read about the money she and her daughter raised to help a Chinese orphan in need of medical care -- you'll probably start making 9 patches to send her as soon as you do!
Next I started putting together a sample Streak of Sunshine quilt. Make A Blanket Day for Project Linus is coming up, and I'm in charge of getting the projects ready for the event my LQS is hosting that day. We're doing Heartstring quilts, but I wanted some other projects, too. This is such an easy quilt, very cute, and perfect for using the odds and ends of donated fabric that we have to work with. Don't these fabrics look like springtime? With all the snow and frigid temps we've been having, I really needed to spend some time with these colors!

Now that I have such a great table, it's time to use it! For the record, these are the things I need to get done:
Quilt Landon's I Spy quilt -- I've been waiting until I got my table for this
Project Improv -- the quilt for our family room (finally!) and my chance to play
Erin's I Spy -- I hope to piece this on Saturday at a guild mini-retreat
Kathi & Buz's t-shirt quilt -- I thought I had until summer when they returned from overseas, but their plans changed and they came back this month
Kim's wedding quilt -- I've made I Spy quilts for all my nieces' and nephews' kids, but Kim has no children, so she gets a wedding quilt
Stroop quilt -- I just need to do it!

Happy quilting, everyone!

Sweet Treat bags and donation quilts

2009-01-21T14:52:00.005-06:00

If you've ever been to a major quilt show, you know what Sweet Treats are. They are yummy fat quarter bundles of 8 coordinating fabrics. I don't usually buy bundles because I like to pick my own fabrics, but it's a great way to get a group of fabrics that are not the sort of thing you normally buy. It allows you to sample a whole new color scheme, or do something thematic. I picked up a Sweet Treat of animal skin prints in Chicago last year, and my friend G, who also loves Sweet Treats, suggested we make bags from them. For Christmas she gave me a copy of M'Liss Rae Hawley's 101 Fabulous Fat-Quarter Bags.
This terrible photo shows the beginning of one -- the big center panel is the bottom, and when folded the top and bottom pieces become the two sides. I goofed. The two B&W prints should be on opposite sides so that they won't be next to each other in the finished bag. I have a little unstitching to do...

I have a few more MLK Service Day links for you. Seems like many of you spent some time working on donation quilts that day!

Sara made a bright squares quilt to donate, and kept working right through inauguration day!
Susan finished another quilt for Project Linus -- wow!
Mary, who makes makes most of her quilts for charity, worked with us on MLK day and that evening quilted a cute penguin quilt that her mom had made to donate.
Michele worked with leftovers from one quilt to turn them into another donation quilt.
Alycia makes so many wonderful Quilts of Valor that stitching on MLK day was much like any other quilting day!

It's not my place to thank these quilters for what they've done, but I am so glad they participated and I know their efforts are greatly appreciated by many.

Barack-y Road ice cream and donation quilts

2009-01-20T18:50:00.003-06:00

Zingerman's has a fabulous inauguration ice cream called Barack-y Road Gelato, which they describe like this:

Barack-y Road is new, our special blend made just for inauguration. Handmade marshmallows, butter-roasted peanuts, dulce de leche caramel and chocolate chips that gelato genius Josh makes himself. That's in addition to the base of fresh milk from Calder Dairy (one of the last farmstead dairies in Michigan), organic Demerara sugar and Madagascar bourbon vanilla beans.

Eat it because it's chilled and he's chill. Eat it because he's facing a rocky road but it will turn out sweet in the end. Eat it for any reason, just be sure to bring all your friends to the table. It serves twelve of them nicely.

Alas, I no longer live in Ann Arbor, so can't get a scoop of this, but I picked up some slow-churned rocky road ice cream and some caramel sauce today and we'll have a dish while we watch the inaugural address for the second time tonight.

It was so exciting to see all the donation quilts that people worked on yesterday! Thanks to everyone who let me know they would be doing this. I'll put up links that people have sent me so far, and I'll keep posting links over the next few days. Please post a photo of a charity project you worked on for the MLK National Day of Service and I'll post a link to your blog.

Roz made some great crazy blocks for a quilt for an agency that helps the homeless.
Susan finished a colorful, cheery Project Linus quilt.
Trisha worked on a bright charity quilt, a fun pattern.
Magpie Sue turned a red and white UFO into a preemie quilt.
Gari worked on a disappearing nine-patch for law enforcement to give to a child who has to be removed from his home.
True Blue Nana worked on a lovely blue and orange star quilt for donation.
Quiltdiva Julie has just finished her So Many Memories Alzheimer's quilt and got it ready to ship off.

If you participated in the Day of Service by quilting for charity, please let me know and I'll post a link. It's such a wonderful feeling to know that our quilts will be big hugs for someone who really needs one.

One blanket for donation done

2009-01-19T12:06:00.003-06:00

One fringed fleece blanket for Project Linus done!
These are quick, easy, and oh-so-cuddly. If you want to make one yourself, the pattern is on the Project Linus website (scroll down to Fringed Fleece Blanket).

If you're doing any charity quilting today for the MLK National Day of Service, please put a photo on your blog and let me know. Tonight or tomorrow I'll post links to everyone's projects. Remember, you don't have to make a whole quilt today, but if you have any time to give to making a block, choosing the pattern, cutting the fabric, etc., let me know. I have some links to simple projects in my previous two posts.

Happy quilting!

Getting ready for National Day of Service!

2009-01-18T12:11:00.004-06:00

Hi, everyone! So many of you have responded saying that you would like to spend some time on MLK Day doing some quilting for charity. Awesome! Even if you don't have the time that day, I hope you'll think about becoming involved in some charitable quilting of some sort. If you don't have time to make a quilt, you might consider making a block. Clare collects them for Quilts 4 Leukaemia and the Heartstrings Quilt Project does, too. Check their websites for details.

If you do some charity quilting on MLK Day, please post about it on your blog and let me know so I can put a link to it from my blog. It'll be wonderful to see what everyone has done! Michele at With Hearts and Hands has posted a list of people who are doing charitable quilting that day -- check it out! Even if you are not in the US, please consider participating -- there is a need everywhere.

I responded to everyone who left a comment that they wanted to quilt for charity on MLK Day, and I would have liked to post more links and updates on the Day of Service, but I was down this week with some sort of miserable virus. Our furnace broke, too, but my own personal thermostat was so off kilter between fever and chills that I didn't even notice! Fortunately DH did, and he's the one who had to stay up until midnight while the furnace guy fixed things. DH said the repairman just shrugged off being called out so late, saying it came with his career choice. I'm glad he was willing to work nights because we couldn't wait until morning -- the outside temp had dropped to -16F (that's -27C) and we we were afraid the pipes would freeze.

Since I didn't get any quilting done myself -- charity or otherwise -- I thought I'd give you a tour of my guild's Project Linus stash and works in progress.

We have a finished basement that became my sewing area when the girls left for college and I took up quilting. I volunteered to house the fabrics that guild members donated to Project Linus. As you can see, we have a lot! And we use it.

Here are some piles of projects underway -- tops that need batting and backing, tops ready for quilting, quilted tops that need binding, donated quilts that need a little fixing, great fabrics that need a special pattern rather than one of our standards (we call those "Get Creative" quilts). You can see our finished red and turquoise fungly top in the foreground -- still has to be quilted.
This big roll of batting was a donation from a batting company. We are very appreciative because batting is expensive. Unfortunately, the batting is only 36" (a scant meter) wide, and our standard quilts are 40" x 60", which means we have to piece it! Eek! I see a piecing party in our future!
But this is the only piecing I managed to do this week. These were supposed to be put together as leaders and enders while I worked on another project, but I was so frustrated at not being up to any real quilting that I took 5 minutes and strip pieced them. At least I got something done!

Donation Quilts

2009-01-12T16:41:00.003-06:00

President-elect Obama has asked Americans to participate in a national day of service on Martin Luther King Day (January 19). He and his family will be doing volunteer work, and I thought it would be great if quilters would participate by working on charity quilts that day. Just do whatever you have time for -- cut some fabric scraps into squares for a charity quilt, piece a strip quilt, tie a top you made for charity but never got around to finishing. Quilters are so generous with their time and talents that I'm sure many of you already have projects underway. It'll be fun to dedicate some time on MLK Day to charity quilting, especially because you'll know that lots of other quilters out there are doing the same.

Need a pattern or some ideas to get you started? Mary at Mary Quilts has many free patterns for simple but beautiful charity quilts, and Bonnie at Quiltville has lots of scrap patterns, many of which make wonderful donation quilts.
Julie of Me & My Quilts gathered fabric for about 15 pillowcases to donate to ConKerr Cancer, which distributes them to children with the disease. Members of my guild stitched them into pillowcases and we're sending them in. This photo shows about half of them. If you don't have much time but want to make something to donate, these pillowcases are easy to make in a short time.
This Heartstrings quilt was made at a local Project Linus worknight and quilted by a member of my guild. They are wonderful group projects! Maybe you can get a few friends together to work on one of these on MLK Day. Directions are on the Heartstrings Quilt Project website.

Post edited to include:
There are also some good quilting patterns on the Project Linus website, and Michele at Quilting Journey has compiled a list of 2,500 free quilting patterns.

I hope you'll think about participating. Let me know if you do! Together, we can make a difference.

Cucire

2009-01-10T14:53:00.002-06:00

Jacquie over at Tallgrass Prairie Studio has started Project Improv to encourage quilters to "quilt outside the lines." Her timing was perfect for me -- I'm doing a wonky quilt for our family room wall and could use the support of a group. We can make whatever we want for our own projects, but everyone commits to contributing a 12.5" wonky log cabin block for a charity quilt. I joined the red and aqua group since I love this color combination. Here's the block. I wish it had a little more sparkle in the lower left corner, but I think it will be fine in a quilt with lots of other red and aqua blocks.I have an uneasy peace with my wonky blocks about who is in charge. I (sort of) know what I want, and my fabric (sort of) knows what it wants, and ideally we march shoulder to shoulder into the fray. If either of us is too much in charge, the results are boring or disastrous. It takes some practice to work together.

For a leaders and enders project, I'm using these black and white pieces with their colored strips. They're the first installment of a fabric swap through my guild.
Our swap chair got permission from Bonnie Hunter at Quiltville to use her Sticks and Stones pattern (you can download a PDF of the pattern here), and all the swappers are providing cut squares and strips so she can make a quilt for charity. It's a fun pattern and I like having a straightforward project for leaders and enders (a technique I also learned from Bonnie). I'm thinking about something a little funkier for the border, though.

As for the title of this post, cucire is the Italian word for sew. The university here offers intensive language classes between semesters, and DD2 and I signed up. She spent a semester in Italy and has much better Italian than I do. She also has a better sense of direction, which is fortunate considering I had planned to follow the signs to the classroom.
I kid you not, this sign is actually in the hallway by our class!

Happy quilting, everyone! Ciao!

Guts and glory

2009-01-03T17:12:00.005-06:00

Like just about everybody else, I've been trying to figure out what my quilting goals are for the new year. Finish my UFO's? Get rid of stash? Take a class? Blog more often? What???

This morning I had an ah-ha! moment, a flash of insight so brilliant that it has to work for me. And here it is: I'm going to work on those projects that will make my gut feel good. I know, I know, it doesn't sound like a plan and it certainly doesn't sound brilliant. But it's just what I need to push myself and to feel good about what I've accomplished. Here's why:

Quilting is my hobby, which means it's something I do for fun. Right? Apparently not, because I sometimes stress about it. So then it's not a stress-reliever, it's a stress producer. I need to get rid of whatever makes me feel bad about my hobby. And what is that? I feel bad that I don't let myself work on projects that are really creative because I don't know whether I can be creative. In the end, that's what I will regret -- not that my sewing room was messy, not that I have several UFO's, not that there are skills I have not mastered, but that I have been afraid to follow my own creative instincts.

So I'm starting small. Quilt Pixie is doing a block a week to improve her piecing skills, and I thought I'd do something similar to give my creativity an opportunity to come out and play. I need new potholders anyway, so I thought I'd try some ideas there. How about a wonky log cabin potholder? I love how a tiny project looks great big on my blog!
My only rule for practicing creativity is that I have to start the creativity-jogging project. Once I'm started, I'm usually okay. (It's that "energy of activation" stuff from chemistry class -- it takes more energy to start than to keep going.) I don't love this potholder top, but I like it fine and I feel great about the process -- I didn't know where I was going with it, but I let it develop as I went.

And on a completely different note, I finished the three borders of an I Spy that started as a way to make use of leaders and enders, a la Bonnie. Still need to quilt it. (And don't you hate how those great big projects look so tiny in a photo? It's the same size as the potholder!)

I wish you all a wonderful 2009 -- I know my year will be better for sharing it with my blogging friends. May we all find the guts to aim for our true goals!

Quilts and history

2008-12-27T10:33:00.008-06:00

Inauguration quilts -- Going back at least to the Bayeux tapestry documenting the Norman Conquest, needlework has provided a historical record in cloth. Continuing the tradition, forty-four quilters have been asked to make quilts for the inauguration (that number because Obama will be the 44th President). The project is sponsored by the Group for Cultural Documentation, the Historical Society of Washington, D.C., and the Women of Color Quilters Network. If you google "inauguration quilts" you'll find lots of articles about the particular ones being made. To get you started, there's an interesting article about a quilt being made that shows the history of Michelle Obama's family -- click here to read it.

Blog books -- If you want to document your own quilt history, you can do that, too. Tanya recently had a post about making a blog book. The site she used no longer syncs with blogger, but I did a google search and found that other places also make blog books and some, like Blog2Print, can be used with blogger. If you use your blog as your quilt journal, it's a great way to get a hard copy.

Car quilt -- Here's a quilter who made a little history of her own with her car. If you want to do the same, you might find some inspiration here. You'll need a lot of nail polish!

And so this won't be a totally photo-less post, let me offer this proof that my new fleece blanket is truly reversible -- you can nap under it no matter which side is up! (Check the last post if you don't know what I'm talking about.)

Merry Christmas!

2008-12-24T17:07:00.003-06:00

It's Christmas in Australia, so I can post the swap gift I made for my partner there.
This is from a pattern I bought shortly after I started quilting. I loved picking out all the greens for the wreath, and enjoyed the challenge of piecing in a 3-D bow. Fun! I hope Trash likes it!

I've given so many fleece blankets away that this afternoon I decided to make one to keep. When I finished, I gave it to Val to curl up in while she was re-reading Harry Potter, not a bad way to spend Christmas Eve. One side of the blanket has stripes with snowflakes, the other has penguins bedecked in winter gear.
I'm pleased to say this blanket worked its magic in record time. Enjoy your nap, Val!

Holidays

2008-12-21T13:03:00.005-06:00

My husband and I come from different religious traditions, and we celebrate lots of holidays. I never met a holiday I didn't like, so it's been pretty wonderful. When we married, everyone told us that we'd have a lot of problems trying to deal with our diverse heritages, but it really has worked very well for us. I feel like our family life has been richer for it.

We have other differences, too: my husband is from New York and my family comes from California. And where do we live? In the Midwest. A number of years ago I found a rubber stamp of American Gothic, Grant Wood's iconic painting of middle America, and this year I decided I could turn it into a holiday card ideally suited to our situation.
Hanukkah and Christmas sometimes overlap and sometimes don't. When the kids were little it was easier when there was some space between the two, but either way we still tried to keep each tradition inclusive of the other.
That Christmas tree ornament you see is a dreidel, which is used in a game played at Hanukkah. Each side of the spinning dreidel has a Hebrew letter, one letter for the first word of the sentence (in Hebrew) "A great miracle happened here." The story goes that the Jews used gambling with the dreidel as a cover for clandestine meetings to study Torah when they were under Syrian rule. The 'miracle' refers to the oil for the temple menorah that burned for 8 days even though there was only enough oil for 1 day. Depending on which letter lands on top when you spin the dreidel, you take a different amount of winnings from the pot -- or you have to put some in!
These quilted Hanukkah placemats are made to look like dreidels. I got these before I learned to quilt, but I'm going to make some for my children once they get settled in their own homes. (If you look carefully in the upper right corner of the photo, you'll see a Christmas package that's under our tree.)

When the kids were little, we had lots of conversations about the various holidays and the girls had to come to terms with the fact that not everyone believes the same thing and that sometimes there is no easy "right" and "wrong". That's a tough lesson, but I'm glad my kids grew up learning to understand how good people can come from many backgrounds. When my youngest daughter was 6, she ran upstairs while we were decorating the tree to make a star for the top. Look carefully at its shape and at what she wrote on it.
"G-d is with both." (Many Jews write 'God' that way.) We were so pleased by the message that now this star tops our tree every year. It reminds us that whatever holidays we celebrate, life in this world belongs equally to us all.

Bad blogger

2008-12-19T10:35:00.006-06:00

Yes, that would be me. Bad blogger! I got behind in posting and blog reading, and then it seemed I was so far behind that catching up seemed overwhelming. Eek! Sorry. I got all my holiday gifts sent off yesterday, so today and tomorrow I will catch up on blogs. I hope you all have been having a wonderful holiday season!

I made two fleece blankets as gifts, but the recipients don't read my blog so I can post photos now. I made these envelope style because fringed edges seem more appropriate for children than for adults.
These are easy to make -- it just takes willingness to crawl around the floor to square up the fleece and pin the layers together. The time at the machine is very short. I love how they feel!
I received a wonderful gift from my swap partner, Marianne of Les p'tits gluons. She sent a cute fabric bag (you can see I started putting Christmas cards in there), some absolutely adorable fabric -- clearly, she looked at my blog and discovered what I like. There's also a needle case (I didn't have one), a yummy French chocolate bar, and a handmade gingerbread card. Thank you so much, Marianne!
The head of our local Project Linus chapter sent a photo of what almost 800 blankets looks like. Wow! And they had to mail all them, individually, to the children they were made for (children whose mothers are in prison). It was quite an undertaking. Fortunately, she has a very large family room.
We had an ice storm during the night. They are beautiful -- every tiny twig and blade of grass is coated with a layer of ice...
...but they are deadly. This hemlock in our yard is bent over with the weight of the ice; normally it's quite a bit taller than the yew trees you see behind it.
Fortunately, the trunk didn't snap and the tree has now regained almost its full height as the ice is melting.

Two other quick things before I head to the dentist to have a crown and a bridge put in (yuk!):

Binding tutorial -- I haven't forgotten, I just haven't made it yet.

Digital photos -- David Pogue, who writes the Circuits column in the New York Times, has a neat entry this week about taking digital photographs. Click here to check it out!

Biggest worknight yet!

2008-12-05T09:08:00.002-06:00

Last night we had so many people at our worknight that we spilled out from the classroom into the quilt shop! I was afraid I hadn't planned enough projects, but in fact we were all busy.
This fish quilt isn't finished, but I think it'll be great! Guild members took home the background squares and added whatever fish they wanted. Several people made appliques of fish cut from fabric, so those (and a few others -- note the embroided fish in the top row, second one from the left) are in this quilt. We have enough squares for 2 more complete quilts, and those will have a much bigger variety of fish types.
We also put together two tops made from blocks made at worknights or donated by guild members. They're full of child-friendly fabrics and could even be called I Spy quilts. If you look closely, you can see there's a solid red square around which 4 blocks are joined. I had hoped the identical color blocks would provide some unity to the design, but I don't think that worked. I also don't think a 3-yr-old will care!
This one has purple setting blocks.
Someone donated a lot of 30's reproduction prints, so we're cutting them into 2-1/2" strips to make a variety of quilts. The first two will be a blue and a pink rail fence. For both we'll have a common center stripe and the rest will be scrappy, although I haven't cut enough of the strip piece sets of the pink yet that you have any variety! We'll mix all the prints, including some greens and purples, in the other quilts. Haven't chosen a design for those yet, but 2-1/2" strips leave a lot of options. We can't make it too complicated if several people are working on it, because the blocks always end up very different sizes! That's the real downside of group quilts, although it can lead to surprisingly wonderful innovations in design!
And yet again, another scrappy string quilt. I got over-zealous one day and cut a zillion red center strips. I'm getting sick of those, so we'll move on to something different as soon as these are done. I won't cut so many of the same fabric next time.
My husband alerted me to the beautiful sunrise yesterday morning. I took a couple photos and was thinking of using them for inspiration. Mother Nature is pretty good at using her color palette.
I am enamoured of bare tree branches and took this one to see the color of sky behind this big tree. It's not my favorite photo, but it's a good look at the sky behind the branches.

One good dome deserves another

2008-12-02T08:31:00.003-06:00

This morning I saw Tonya's fabulous photos of the dome at the Galeries Lafayette in Paris, so I couldn't resist posting photos of the vaulted mosaic ceiling at Marshall Field's in Chicago. It's not so obviously spectacular as the Galeries Lafayette, but it was still pretty cool to see. I tried to photograph it without the Christmas decorations getting in the way, as they were big but not very creative.
The ceiling is made of over 1.5 million pieces of Tiffany glass, and Tiffany himself took charge of the work. Those two lamps hanging down are original Tiffany globes; there used to be four of them, but they were taken down to be part of a display at the store and some furniture fell over on them, irretrievably shattering two. I can see where one of them would have hung, but where would the fourth have been?
Another section of the store has a huge atrium with a skylight at the top -- at one point it was the highest enclosed atrium in the world, but that hasn't been true for many years.

Last year, Marshall Field's pulled out of the space it had occupied for over a century, and Macy's moved in. Many Chicagoans took it hard, and apparently quite a few have refused to patronize the store as Macy's is a symbol of -- gasp! -- New York. It would be a shame to see the store fail, for what would replace it? There is joking now that Chicago, the famous "Second City," is becoming the "First City" since it's the home of Barack Obama and he's handling his transition from there. Maybe this will ease the pain for those Chicagoans who don't like being #2 to New York.

The Library and the Bean

2008-12-01T07:43:00.010-06:00

I love Chicago! I've taken my readers there before (click here if you missed it), but our Thanksgiving weekend trip there has inspired me to share more photos of the city. Friday had a spectacularly blue sky, so we wandered around Millennium Park and then took the Art and Culture walking tour offered at the ArchiCenter. The highlight of the trip was the old Chicago Public Library. The building now serves as the Chicago Cultural Center, where almost all events are free and open to everyone. If you're in town this Sunday, stop by for the dance-along Nutcracker Ballet!
This gorgeous dome tops what was the card catalog room in the old library. It could turn anyone into an avid reader (at least into an avid library-goer!).
Here's the tile floor in another room. By the way, you can rent these rooms for events of your own, but I don't know what they charge.
And here's yet more flooring in the ancient River Styx pattern, which unfortunately has Nazi connotations for modern viewers.
I took this closeup of another floor because I love the way it uses squares on point to make a zig zag. I've always used HST's, but this is rather clever, especially if you're making several zig-zag rows across a quilt.

You can see the Bean from the huge windows in the catalog room of the library.
Officially called Cloud Gate, by Anish Kapoor, the Bean is a reflective sculpture that you can view from all sides and can even walk under. I showed several photos of it in my earlier Chicago post, and you can read about it on the Millennium Park website. I just can't get enough of it.
Here's the top of the Bean running into the blue, blue sky.
And here it is again, later that day and from another angle. It's never the same twice.
This is what the fountains at Millennium look like in the winter with no water and no children splashing. The projected faces change frequently, but all are photos of Chicagoans.
I love this view through the winter trees!

We had to cut our trip short by a day because of a snowstorm. I took photos through the car window as we sped by flat Illinois farmlands that were rendered beautiful by the blowing snow. Most of my pictures are blurs, but here's one that actually came out. The whole drive from Chicago looks pretty much like this scene.
And we were greeted by our snowy yard when we arrived safely home. I love the first snow!

Happy Thanksgiving! (and jeans)

2008-11-26T11:07:00.000-06:00

Happy Thanksgiving! It's such a great holiday -- getting together with friends and family, great food, lots of warm feelings all around. And there's a 4-day weekend! When my kids were little, DH and I tried to help them get into the spirit of the holiday by having a Thanksgiving tree (or turkey or cornupia) and for the week or so before the holiday and writing things on construction paper leaves (or feathers or fruit) that we were thankful for. We hung this on the wall and it became the centerpiece of our celebration.

When the kids were little, they dictated what they wanted to say, and then added their own decoration.
It clearly made an impression on the girls. Jocelyn wrote about it in her first grade class.

I'm not sure if her teachers knew what she was talking about -- here's what she wrote:
Hi im Jocelyn and -- I wunt to tel you. about my famli's thanksgiviig evrey year my famliy get's redey For tKanksg we make a tree or a tkey. and if we make a tree -- we Put levs. and if it's a -- trkey we Put fetrs.

We saved all the leaves and feathers and fruit and now our Thanksgiving ritual is to read them all aloud. We laugh and we cry -- they bring back so many memories! All kinds of things show up --
"I'm thankful I'm 5."
"I'm thankful for being able to cut out these feathers." (By Val, who had only just been entrusted with using scissors)
"I'm thankful for all the good things in life and clairanets which are good."
"I'm thankful the pilgrims escaped."
"I'm thankful for no more World Wars...yet anyway."
"I'm thankful I'm tired and sleepy."
Not all grand sentiments, but lessons on the road.

And now for some quilting content. I'm trying to have something to work on when I'm not actually in my sewing space. Just got Bonnie's book, Scraps and Shirttails, and she suggests a great way to cut up jeans. So I got my pile of old jeans and have started ripping as she suggests. So many ideas come when doing stuff like that. How much fun to incorporate this stitched-on stripe into the quilt:

And what if I sewed on the two ends of this waistband and ran a shoelace tie through them?
I think I'm going to embroider some of the pockets and jeans strips as handwork. It should be a fun quilt!

Several of you asked for a binding tutorial to show how to make stitched-in corners and not have to deal with joining the binding on the side. I'll work one up next week after the holiday.

To my American friends, may you have a wonderful Thanksgiving! And to my international friends, have a great week!

'Tis the season

2008-11-25T19:30:00.003-06:00

'Tis the season when I can't post photos of what I'm making because everything's a gift! Fortunately, I received a gift myself.
Karol-Ann sent me these luscious African fabrics! Mine was the nearest guess for how many hexagons she showed, so I got first pick. It was a no-brainer -- I love African fabrics and have a tiny little collection of them. I have always admired what Karol-Ann has done with hers, so I grabbed the opportunity to enhance my stash with some of her wonderful fabrics. Thank you, Karol-Ann!

Today I sent off my gift to my Secret Santa Pal in Chookeyblue's swap. I absolutely love what I made! So did my family, and we were all very sorry to send it off. I do hope the recipient likes it as much as we do. As usual, I had wonderful plans for a free-pieced item, but made myself stop since I had vowed not to give away any more free piecing until I had made something free pieced for myself. Instead I chose a pattern I really like that gave me the opportunity to learn some new skills, including piecing a 3-D segment (as opposed to appliqueing something on top). Fun! I'll post the photo on Christmas.

Stitching the binding on my swap quilt reminded me that I don't put the binding on the way most people do. I stitch in the miters as I go. I love the finished look, and it means starting and stopping at a corner, so there are no ends to join on the side of the quilt. My closeups were blurry (I'm asking Santa for a tripod), so here's a shot of a corner on one of my quilts.
I learned this method when I took a class from Sharon Pederson. She has the instructions in both of her reversible quilts books. The only caveat I have is that you need to use a thread in your machine that matches the binding, as sometimes you can see the thread in the corner seams.

Gmail inspiration

2008-11-20T12:11:00.003-06:00

I sometimes get inspiration from emails, but I never expected it from my email homepage itself. But Gmail has just set up themed pages. I've tried a few, am stopping temporarily at the bus stop page. Look how they write Gmail on it.
And I have the cutest giraffe going up the side, clouds and sunshine at the top, people waiting for the bus across the bottom (don't know how the giraffe will fit in the bus!). Apparently the themed pictures under each topic change depending on the location you enter. I entered my hometown, but I may try to enter another city just for fun.

While I'm at it, I'll put in a plug for Gmail -- best email system ever. It's fabulous! And things like this are just gravy. You get the feeling they love what they do. I love what they do, too!

Why is this interesting?

2008-11-19T07:47:00.003-06:00

A non-quilty post, so be advised before you read.

There is something going around the internet, though I haven't seen it on a quilt blog yet. It's a "nearest book" game whose rules are:

* Grab the nearest book.
* Open it to page 56.
* Find the fifth sentence.
* Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
* Don’t dig for your favorite book, the cool book, or the intellectual one: pick the CLOSEST.

(Other versions say open to page 123 and copy the first 3 sentences after the fifth one.)

I was hooked. I read one person's entry, googled to read more, and then decided to participate. My first problem: Although there was a pile of reading material near my chair, it was all magazines. What does that say about me? Hmmm...

Was I interested enough to get up? Frankly, yes. The first book I saw lay behind me on the kitchen table, a book I'm taking to a discussion group I recently joined:
It's The Rejection Collection: Cartoons You Never Saw, and Never Will See, in The New Yorker, edited by Matthew Diffee. I had read the introduction last night but hadn't gotten to page 56 of the text. Despite the fact that the book has teeny-tiny page numbers and I was not wearing my reading glasses, I found page 56. It was a cartoon, the only text its caption: "We had irreconcilable similarities." (If you envisioned two guys talking at a bar, you're exactly right.) Perhaps 123 would prove more fruitful? Nope. It's a photo of the cartoonist Mort Gerberg. So it appears I read magazines and picture books.

It was time to get dressed for the day anyhow, so I trotted upstairs and the first book I cast my eyes on sat on the nightstand, Freakonomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner.
The fifth full sentence on page 56 reads, "Congress, which during Reconstruction had been quick to enact measures of legal, social, and economic freedom for blacks, just as quickly began to roll them back." It's part of an insightful discussion of the Ku Klux Klan. I haven't read as far as page 123 yet, but couldn't resist this excuse for a quick peek ahead. The three sentences starting with the fifth on that page read:

"The total effect was dramatic. By 2000, more than two million people were in prison, roughly four times the number as of 1972. Fully half of that increase took place during the 1990s." Certainly makes me curious, but I didn't read more. The title of the chapter is 'Where Have All the Criminals Gone?'

So now I had it. I found random sentences from my own book, and had read context-less sentences from other people's nearest book, and why do I care at all? Is it voyeurism, seeing a bit of personal detail about someone I don't even know? Is it intellectual, seeing if I can figure out what the book is about from only one (or in some cases, three) sentences? Am I looking for a connection (I've read that book!)? Am I looking to prove myself superior (I would never read such trash!)? Do I want to feed a low sense of self-esteem by unfavorable comparison with others (They read such interesting books, and I'm surrounded by magazines)? Am I just amazed by all the diversity in the world (all of us blog, but we all have different books at our sides)?

I asked my husband, who generally can come up with an insightful comment at times like these, but he doesn't find this particularly interesting and doesn't know why anyone does. I welcome any thoughts you have on the subject. The dozen or so blogs I checked did not really comment on the activity itself, except for one blogger who simply said, "Why not?"

New Books & More Linus

2008-11-12T06:00:00.007-06:00

Yay! The two books I ordered from Gwen Marston finally arrived! It took a very long time, probably because I asked for signed copies. They are wonderful to look through, and I really appreciate the construction tips in the books.

I'm working on a couple things that I can't show photos of yet (gifts), so instead I'll share pics of last Thursday's Project Linus worknight. We made another Heartstrings quilt. (We use the pattern on the Heartstrings Project site, but instead of sending in blocks, we finish the quilts and donate them to our local Project Linus chapter.)
These are fast and fun to make, especially when you have a room full of people whisking those blocks through their machines. Our huge bin of fabric strips is in happy chaos. I had tried to keep the strips organized by color or approximate width, but after every worknight I'd spend hours getting things in order again -- it was so not worth it!

I like to keep our worknight activities varied so we don't get bored. Helen in the UK made a very cute Happy Blocks quilt, which I thought would be another great worknight project. It's a good way to use scraps of novelty fabrics, and it's a simple I Spy for young children.
Our blocks are smaller and we make our quilts a little larger than Helen does, so this is only about half done (and the two blues together will not be together when the blocks are joined!). The blue and yellow border fabrics were donated by the Calico Cat, who very generously sent us a bunch of solids for use in our Project Linus quilts.

Getting fleeced

2008-11-01T23:15:00.002-05:00

The Central Illinois chapter of Project Linus has a wonderful project to donate blankets this Christmas to the children of women in prison. And not just any blankets, but blankets made to order. The women provide the first name, age, favorite color, and their child's interests, and PL volunteers made blankets for each child. Many were quilts, a few were knit or crochet, and quite a few were fleece. This week I made these for a boy who likes all kinds of sports, a girl who loves pink, and another girl who loves purple and rainbow colors. (Can you guess who gets which?)
These blankets are quick and easy, but they have a very finished look. The Fringed Fleece pattern is on the Project Linus website. You can buy fleece on sale and make a blanket in just a couple hours for a quick donation quilt. They'd be great holiday gifts, too.

This morning I delivered 10 bags of quilts -- 6 bags for the inmates' children project and 4 for general PL use. And NO, I did not make all those quilts!! Most were made by members of my guild, and some were dropped off by others in the community. Today was our deadline, and I've really been working this week to get everything done. I also finished this quilt, shown here before I quilted and bound it. I'm not crazy about the Yellow Brick Road pattern, but someone donated a kit and the fabrics were perfect for one teenager who likes nature and outdoor activities. The backing is a leafy fern print and there's a row of leftover blocks from the front stitched in, too.

It feels great to have participated in making these blankets, and I know that come Christmas I will feel good every time I think about children clutching the blankets they received with a card from their absent mothers. This donation project is called "Here's A Hug," and I hope the kids feel loving arms around them when they wrap up in their blankets. Quilts can warm our hearts in more than one way.

Still, I'm excited to get back to my own projects that have been on the back burner for awhile. I'm off!

Happy Halloween!

2008-10-31T14:15:00.006-05:00

Happy Halloween! I wish there had been digital cameras when my kids were little -- I'd have so many more photos! Oops -- maybe it's a good thing we didn't have them. :) I made all their Halloween costumes and was going to scan some old photos and post them, but I can't get the scanner to work with my new computer. Next year!

The girls now make their own costumes. This morning Jocelyn took a photo with her computer at work. This year she's Sarah Palin.
And her sister Valerie is dressing as Tina Fey portraying Sarah Palin!

And here's a pic of my favorite Halloween earrings. They are big -- come almost down to my shoulders!
And, as promised, a bit of what I've done since I've been "Here." I finished Otto's quilt! Here's the "back."
I had wanted to put Otto's name on the back, but, as you can see, one thing led to another. I have to say that I love it. It's the first really wonky, free-pieced quilt I've made. Thank goodness it had Otto's name on it, or I might not have been able to part with it!
And this is the original "front." I like it, too. I'm pleased by my fabric selection and would have thought it was a great quilt if I hadn't started on the back...
Otto's mom sent photos of Otto on his quilt.
I think he likes it!

There

2008-10-30T08:59:00.007-05:00

The original title of this post was "Here and There," but I realized I won't have time to do justice to both this morning. Stay tuned for "Here" in the next day or two!

There is California, where I went to visit my family and the Pacific International Quilt Festival. On the last post I linked to my niece's slide show of many of the quilts there. I'll do a more in-depth presentation of a couple quilts for now. I couldn't possibly choose a favorite, these are just two that caught my attention again this morning as I scrolled through my finally downloaded photos. Don't forget to click on a photo to enlarge it if you want a closer look.

This quilt by Jo P. Griffith shows the wind farm at Altamont.
I have always loved the look of these huge windmills -- so graceful, so powerful. As I looked at the quilt, I started imagining lots of ways to incorporate that image into a quilt. But the other thing that caught my eye was the pieced background and border. I love pieced squares that are all different but all part of the same. It adds so much texture and interest!

This next quilt, The Gold Lady, was put together by twelve members of the Ocean Wave Quilters of Fort Bragg, California. (Such a gorgeous town, right on the coast!)
They enlarged a photo and divided it into twelve parts. One quilter took each part and, without consulting the others, recreated it using any materials she wished. Then they were all joined together. Much like the pieced background above, this is so much more interesting for the variation. I really like it.

At the show I also got to meet two other quilt bloggers, Tami of Lemon Tree Tales and Julie of Floribunda.
It was wonderful to meet them! My niece Laurel took the photo, and a kindly passerby took a photo of the four of us, but the sun streamed in across the top of the photo and the faces are hugely overexposed.

This little basket photo I took at home this morning, but wanted to put it up after I saw a photo of a similar basket on Julie's blog. She had just purchased a basket from Ghana to use to carry her groceries, and about a month ago I purchased a similar basket from the food co-op. I think I'll keep mine for projects in progress, as I find it's a little bulky for shopping.

The rest of the trip I spent visiting family. I won't bore you with family photos, but I met a new member of the family, born in July, and she deserves a welcoming photo. Here's Maggie (being held by my older daughter, Jocelyn).
And here's the I Spy quilt I made for her and her brother and sister. Their mom (my niece Andrea) hung it on the bedroom. I love seeing my quilts in use!

As a belated birthday present, my daughters took me to the city for dinner at Millennium Cafe, where I have wanted to go ever since it opened. Wow! Scrumptious, delicious, succulent, juicy, superbly balanced -- the list of superlatives to describe the food could go on and on! We stopped in at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art beforehand. There it is, that circular building seen from the Yerba Buena Gardens. I love the circles and stripes in that building!
And finally, on a crafty note, here's a stamped cross stitch sampler I made in high school.
My father used to love that quote, and so when I saw the kit I made it up for him. I asked my mother about it when I visited, and she still had it. I asked to see it because my niece Laurel recently changed her blog name to Set of the Sail, and I got to thinking about it. My mom has now passed it on to Laurel, which is absolutely as it should be. The sampler is clearly made by someone who knew nothing about cross stitch, but the words are powerful.

Back from PIQF!

2008-10-27T09:15:00.003-05:00

I've been back several days and still haven't downloaded my photos! Fortunately, my niece Laurel, who went to the show with me, has posted a slide show on her blog. It was a wonderful show! I was surprised at how much individual character quilt shows have -- this one was very different from the one in Chicago. The California show had far fewer traditional quilts and the vendors carried different fabric lines. There was of course a great deal of overlap, but it was really interesting to see the different emphasis.

In addition to seeing my niece, I also got to visit with fellow quilt bloggers Julie of Floribunda and Tami from Lemon Tree Tales. So great to meet them!

My quilting time has been taken up since my return with two big things: finishing Otto's quilt (delivered yesterday!) and working on quilts for the Here's A Hug project, which donates quilts to the children of women in prison through Project Linus. The deadline for that is November 1, so I'll be back to my regular quilting by the weekend. All those photos are in my camera and I'll share them soon. I just feel bad for not having posted since my return and decided that photo-less was better than photo-less AND text-less!

And a heads up for everyone -- Jill and I are cooking up some holiday fun! We'll share the news soon. :)

Not my favorite thing

2008-10-12T16:13:00.003-05:00

Once the piecing is done, quilting is next. Whoa. Not not my strength.
Otto's quilt is now about half quilted. I took Wanda's advice and am stitching in the ditch around the diamonds formed by the Trip Around the World pattern. I was nervous that it might look weird on the funky "back" side of the quilt, but in fact it doesn't seem to. Whew! For all the delaying, it's not so bad and it isn't taking too long. I need to make it a priority to really learn to quilt. And I'll have practice soon -- I have two more tops I want to quilt before the end of the month.

Tomorrow I take my machine in for a cleaning and check-up. I'll be away for a week, so it's a good time to have this done. I'm off to California to see my mother, my daughter, my brother and his wife, two nieces and their growing families, and hopefully some blogging friends at the Pacific International Quilt Festival. This year I was smart enough to time a visit to relatives to coincide with PIQF. Can't wait! I won't be posting while I'm away, but with any luck, I'll be able to get in some blog reading. Have a great week everyone!

Strings

2008-10-10T15:41:00.003-05:00

Ami Simms came to our guild a couple weeks ago and gave a really funny quilting lecture, followed by a moving presentation about Alzheimer's. I took her string quilt workshop the next day. I've made a lot of string quilts and went to Kay Capps Cross's string quilt workshop last spring, so I almost didn't sign up for this class. The last thing I need is another UFO! But Elaine Adair raved about a workshop she took with Ami, and Ami had very generously allowed us to use one of her patterns for our Linus raffle quilt, so I decided to take the class. I'm really glad I did!
I decided to use my guild's Linus stash to choose fabrics and make a quilt to donate. We have lots of animal prints, so I cut strips from those. Ami had us make strip sets, but her smart innovation (and the reason that I'm glad I took the class) is in her tube method of attaching the solid fabric for the other side of the half square triangles. So clever, so quick! I haven't finished mine yet (I need to get the solid fabric), but her method worked very well for the people who got that far during class. Follow the link above to the workshop if you want to see what the end result will be. I'll post a photo when I'm done.

I'm also working on another string quilt for Project Linus. Lots of kids around here are big Fighting Illini fans, so I thought it would be fun to make a blue and orange string quilt.
Here's a sample block with two different Illinois fabrics. I thought we'd do orange stripes in the middle of each and then a variety of blues, with the occasional strip of dark blue Illinois fabric thrown in, and then border it with the orange Illinois fabric. We may need a deeper orange strip, and I'm not sure or the range of blues. So I'm not sure if this is exactly how we'll end up doing it -- if you have suggestions, please let me know! We make lots of string quilts at worknights, but I get tired of the same old thing and am trying to make them thematic in some way (like my rainbow strings, which you can see part of in my blog header).

Color Hue Test

2008-10-08T07:28:00.004-05:00

My friend Lisa, who's in my quilt guild, just sent a link to a Color Hue Test. I looked at it and thought it would be easy, but it was tricky. As similar colors are grouped together, it gets harder and harder to distinguish among the subtle shades. I didn't have the time/patience to do more than the first section this morning, but when I clicked to score the test, it showed me graphically how well each section was put in order. Give it a try, and have fun!

New computer!

2008-10-06T13:32:00.005-05:00

Hoorah! I apologize for not blogging, or reading blogs, for over 3 weeks. My old computer had become a real pain. My photo storage was overloaded and difficult to handle, and the blogger-photo interaction was crazy. Every day I could see fewer and fewer photos on other people's blogs -- really frustrating. But my new computer moves so fast I can hardly believe it! :)

To catch up a bit:
I pieced together the fungly blocks (and have enough blocks now for another fungly top). The blocks were made by attendees at a Project Linus worknight.
The front/back or Otto's top is done and it's ready for quilting. I am so disappointed that I forgot, completely forgot, to put on the narrow inner red border! But I'm not taking this border off to do it. I got so many comments on which outer border to use -- thank you! I ended up going with this one just because it was brighter, which I think is good for a baby.
Kate at Kate's Quilting sent me backings and embellishments for several ATC's. I had never made one and wanted to try. It was really fun! Her background reminded me of streamers at a party, so I decided to add a glass of bubbly and title it "Celebrate" -- but it got a little crooked. That made me change the title to "Tipsy" and put the bubbles trailing out behind. I think it was an accident that worked out better than the original plan. Thanks, Kate, for inspiring me to try something a little artsy!
There has been a lot going on with Project Linus for me lately. This is Make A Blanket Day for the Central Illinois Chapter in late September. Wow -- 700 blankets turned in/completed/made that day! Really impressive. The women in charge of organizing this were absolutely amazing.
I also took a couple classes at the Red Cross to get CPR, AED, and First Aid certification. They had this quilt hanging in the training room. I love the story behind it. One little girl and her friends made the quilt at her birthday party and donated it to the Red Cross. I hope that eventually it gets donated to someone in need after a tornado or other local disaster.

Finally, I used my new computer to take this photo of myself! It's a computer with a built-in camera. What a blast! I've been having fun playing with this new machine, though there's some work to do transferring things from my old computer and installing various other things. My DH and DD have been a huge help! Now that I can actually see the photos that you guys post on your blog, I'll do some catching up. I have missed you!

One more audition

2008-09-10T13:25:00.002-05:00

I did make it to my LQS and got some of the white with black squiggle fabric -- it's the reverse of the one I showed yesterday. I added some red strips this time so it would be easy to imagine the inner red border.
I think I prefer this to the predominantly black one just because it's lighter and brighter. Comments welcome! And thanks so much to those of you who commented yesterday. It's really helpful to hear what everyone thinks. I've learned a lot when other bloggers post their auditions, too.

Several people have asked me how my foot is doing. It's great! Yesterday was my last post-surgery doctor's appointment and I got confirmation that things have healed very well. I can now walk fairly briskly for an hour at a time and don't limp at all until near the end. Soon even that should disappear! Thanks for all your encouragement and concern.

Auditioning borders

2008-09-09T09:15:00.002-05:00

I finished piecing the "back" of Otto's quilt (which is now really the front). Somehow I was off in my measurements in a couple places and so in the spirit of this quilt, I simply whacked some edges. It took me a few days to get up the courage, but in the end I think it's ok. I had planned on red borders, but I don't have enough red fabric and I can't get more. My first thought was yellow -- bright and cheery, and there's yellow in the blocks. But when I tried it, I wasn't too crazy about it. It just looks stuck on.
I neglected to add the red inner border and red binding when I took the yellow border photo (they are on the right side in the photo below), but I think it needs an inner border.
My memory was that this fabric was white with black squiggles, but it's just the opposite. I think I prefer it to the yellow, but I know the quilt shop has the white with black fabric, and I think I'd prefer that to either of these -- it would be brighter than this one, and fit the design on the quilt better than the yellow. Right now the top is just lying on the fabric, but I think I'd have the stripes going the long way across the top and bottom, just like they are now on the sides. The side borders will be bigger than the top and bottom ones.

Any thoughts? All help greatly appreciated!

Quilt from old clothes at Houston

2008-08-29T09:53:00.004-05:00

Before I tell you about the quilt, just had to share this photo. Any knitters out there may remember I posted a photo of this baby kimono that my daughter Jocelyn made last May for a friend's baby. Zoe was born a few weeks ago and looks absolutely adorable in her stylish kimono!

Last night was my quilt guild's annual summer picnic. I happened to sit near Charlene Bremer, a lovely woman who had seen me looking around the parking lot for the building entrance when I first joined the guild 3 years ago, introduced herself, took me in and sat with me. I am still grateful for her kindness. Charlene is also a fabulous quilter. For the first time ever she had submitted a quilt to a big quilt show, and it was accepted! The quilt depicts about 20 appliqued scenes from her daughter and son-in-law's life while they were in the Peace Corps in Mali -- and she used the clothes they wore in Mali to make the quilt. Really something. She had already sent the quilt off to the show, so I only got to see photos, but now I can't wait to see the original. I'm very pleased that Charlene is getting recognition for her wonderful work, and I'm equally happy that a primitive-style, applique quilt made from worn clothing is being shown. What a treasure that quilt will be for her DD and SIL -- memories at every level. I neglected to get the name of the quilt, but I'm sure you can find it under Charlene's name if you're lucky enough to go to Houston.

Thanks, Kate!

2008-08-21T20:15:00.003-05:00

Last week Kate noticed on Facebook that it was my birthday, so she sent me birthday wishes via a postcard that I had so shamelessly admired on her blog. She has a wonderful tree series that you can see here, and now one of those trees is mine! It's sitting next to my computer so that I can glance over at it whenever I wish, and eventually I will hang it near my sewing machine for inspiration. I'd like to do a tree series one day, too. Thanks so much, Kate!

(Sorry the photo is blurry -- this was the better of two photos. I have a hard time with closeups.)

Splendiferous

2008-08-20T17:06:00.004-05:00

The Wednesday morning farmer's market is great for mid-week restocking, but it's nothing compared to the lush piles of produce available on Saturdays. I stopped by this morning to pick up the usual stuff (though August's bounty should hardly be deemed 'usual'). What I got instead was Mother Nature putting on a show. Only two days ago I read about beets like these, and there they were, looking like purple tree trunks with their distinctive rings.
Normally I cube beets. They are easier to eat that way, and no matter how I love the color, I don't want beet splotches on all my clothes. But tonight I sliced the beets. With their concentric circles, they were begging for it. Like Michaelangelo claiming his chisel only revealed the figure already lying in the stone, my knife and I did the same with the beets. I was a kitchen Michaelangelo for the evening.

Vegetables are gorgeous, and no one quilts them like Ruth McDowell. I bought this book before I learned to quilt, just to look at her work. You can search the book at amazon. It's out of print, but used copies are available.