Wonky borders

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

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!

Rainbows, flowers and poltergeists

The rainbow strings blocks are done! I think they're wonderful!


I would never have been able to make this from my own fabrics since I don't have much of a stash (yet!), but because this is for Project Linus, I used fabrics donated to the guild for charity quilts. I did raid my own stash a few times, especially for orange and purple. The blocks are so heavy that I had to pin them to my design wall. I think I'll leave them there a few days just to look at them!

My sample origami flower is also done. There are some raw edges from cutting out the back that are a bit troublesome at the petal tips. I hope I can deal with it when I applique the flower. Right now it's just lying on a piece of fabric, and the button is one that -- oops! -- fell off my shirt. I'll find something a little more appropriate for the final project.


And now for something completely different ...

Good photos make good blogs. Well, that's not all there is to it, but some blogs are just gorgeous to look at. Lisa Boyer at That Dorky Homemade Look recently posted a photo tutorial that sounded pretty simple, so I thought I'd give it a try. She calls for two pieces of foam core, but I could only find one stashed behind the recycling in the garage, so I thought for the time being I'd use a white afghan for the backdrop. Bad idea. I chose origami as my subject, since I think my last origami photo (a couple posts ago) may be in contention for the Worst Photo Ever prize. I put a few pieces down and looked through the lens expecting to see this:

Instead I saw this:

The poltergeists that made me cut the rainbow blocks the wrong size and finished the carrots when I wasn't looking must have pushed a button somewhere on my camera. I can't find that button (and I can't find my camera book, which I think they also hid), but I finally was able to locate a reset button and return to the default settings. Actually, I am very glad to discover this feature and once I figure out how to control it, it could be quite useful. By then I'll have bought a second piece of foam core.

And finally, more on the Chicago Quilt Show. Many of you seemed to think the batik blocks in my other post were all I bought. Oh my, thank you for crediting me with such restraint! But do you think I'm nuts? How could I leave my little town and go to the Big Quilt Show in the Big City and not come home with bags of scrumptious fabrics? Here's a fat quarter pack of African fabrics I picked up.

I love African fabrics but I don't know how to use them. One of my first quilts was an African Coins quilt for Jocelyn (my older DD), but I used batiks.

And here's another photo from the show. My poltergeist seems to be working at Blogger for the moment because I cannot get this photo to load right side up, so tilt your head to the left when you look.

This quilt is Floral Fortitude by Pat Doyle Mikrut. It's such a happy quilt!

Chicago Quilt Show 2007 - part 2

This quilt was amazing. When you see it in person, it feels like the bird will swoop out of the quilt! Again, I like quilts that ARE quilts -- the dynamic background is a vibrant log cabin variation, and the whole quilt is pieced. Just love it.


This quilt was arresting -- partly for the color, partly for the immediately recognizable Monet look. I'm not completely sure what I think, but it's definitely intriguing.

This quilt is so different from the others, but I really liked it. The colors are great. The layout of the design is so interesting, and the simplicity is wonderful. It's both lively and calming. The background fabric is perfect.