10-10-10

Today is brought to you by

 the number 10!

This date is so fun I couldn't pass it up.  It just called for a blog post!

It's been so long since I last posted (again), I have too much to show and tell you! 

Yesterday my quilt guild had a progressive lunch, which was a lot of fun.  We went to 3 different houses and had 3 different quilt-related activities or demonstrations.  We had about 12 to 15 people participate, and I think we all had a lot of fun.  And too much yummy food!

At the first house, we had scones, fruit and coffee.  Then we got to dye a silk scarf, with these fun dyes that were new to me.  These dye silk instantly, are non-toxic dyes and need NO heat setting and are permanent while wet.  It was so easy and fun.  Even the people that were a little scared of it were quite successful!

At the second house, J gave a little demonstration of yo-yos and hexagons, as many new quilters had asked her about them.  She was so generous - she had quite a few vintage 1930's Grandmother's Flower Garden units that she had received from a neighbor.  The neighbor had them from her grandmother and didn't want them.  Joanne had made many little projects with the yo-yos and was not going to use the rest.  So, we got to take home the rest! 

I fell in love with the graphic ones first, the ones at the top of this post.  I couldn't pass up that stripe nor the dots!  No one was taking the ones with the cheddar centers, so I took them too.  I think I'll make some small table mats with them.  I've already ironed them and started basting the edges under, which you might be able to see in the right-hand GFG above.

At the last house, we got to play with her long-arm!  I wouldn't call my attempt successful at all.  Oh well.




20 inches wide by 17 inches high

As I promised in my last post, here is the 'sister' quilt to Faultlines.  It remains unnamed, because I can't think of a good name for it!  (any suggestions??)  It was made for the same color challenge.  This is another log cabin, although this is the Courthouse Steps variation. 

This one was harder than it looks!  I have lots of left-over false starts.  This was paper-pieced and I kept getting the fabrics in the wrong place.  It was frustrating, and I sure wouldn't want to do a big quilt in this pattern!  At least not paper-pieced.

In this photo, you can see the quilting design I came up for the border.  Even after something like 10 years, I'm still happy with it! 

I was bothered by the empty white corners, so I decided to put buttons there.  I was inspired by a book on Crazy Quilts by Judith Baker Montano that my DD had.  I had fun doing them all as differently as I could think up!  I also added beads to the buttons.

Here's Shade, playing with his fleece mousie.  He's been begging to play lately, which just amazes me, as he didn't care for a long time.  He cracks me up - he's a goof-ball with his mousie!

Another One Finished!

Here's my latest finish! This is one I've been working on for awhile. I posted about this one previously in this post. (I also show some of the blocks in closeup.) I've named this quilt "Carrie's Quilt". That was my grandmother's name, and this quilt reminds me of some of the quilts that she made. These are authentic 1930's fabrics (except the blue solid), and that was the time period that she was making quilts for her family. So, I thought that was fitting. This one won't get used a whole lot, as some of these fabrics are a little fragile.

I had the top all done, and sent it off to my long-arm quilter (Hi Shari!). It came home right around the time I broke my arm, so I wasn't able to get the binding done.


When my sister came to visit in October, she offered eagerly to take it home with her and put on a binding for me. I didn't even have any fabric picked out for the binding, but she seemed to have a plan. I just got this back from her last weekend. She did a wonderful scrappy binding, and I love it! Thanks, Sal! I think it "fits" just right!

My long-armer did an awesome job on the quilting. She did an over-all Baptist fan pattern that we agreed suited the quilt.

I've had kind of an extended absence here lately. I was visiting friends in Oregon last week, and now that I'm home, it's hectic to get ready for Christmas and my father-in-law visiting for the holiday from out of state. Plus, now I have a sinus infection that is slowing me down.

Fortunately, I'm mostly done shopping and I'm not the hostess for the big day. So, now I just have to wrap the presents, clean the house some (nothing too strenuous!) and bake cookies. No sweat, right? hee hee! I'm doing much better with the arm and am finally able to do some of the work around here.

The cats were traumatized with the stay at the kennel, so I have little "Klingons" to deal with. Lots of love required! Slows me down some, but I'm also enjoying the attention. It seems like every time I sit down, one of them wants to be picked up and loved (Shade) or played with (Dunkel).

Well, back to work! I'll hopefully be posting more often now. I've got lots more to show you!

More Vintage Fun

As promised, here are the other projects that I did with the 1930's scraps I was lucky enough to acquire. (see previous post)

This first one, Tumblers, is the smallest one. It was paper-pieced with the tiniest scraps. I wanted to use as much of these fabrics as I could, and there were some fabrics that all I had were tiny scraps. Some of the tumblers had to be pieced to have a big enough piece of fabric to use and they're 1.25 inches at the large end of the tumbler and .75 inches at the small end! The whole tumbler is 1 3/8 inches long, and the entire quilt is 15.25 inches by 18 inches. Not the smallest one I've ever done, but pretty small!

A close-up so you can see some of the fabrics.
Can you see where some of these are pieced?

And here's the last project with the 30's fabrics. The yellow border fabric on this is the feedsack found at the bottom of the grocery bag. Some of these little squares had to be pieced also. The smallest squares measure 1 inch finished and the 4-patch is 2 inches. This whole quilt is 21.5 inches square.

Some closeup so you can see more of the fabrics.
You can see how many plaids and graphic designs were in these fabrics. That was surprising to me based on the reproductions. I had no idea there were so many plaids available then!
I hope you've enjoyed seeing these little treasures!

The quilt tops from the previous post are having their backs made now. I tried to shop my stash, but it just wasn't working. So, 40% coupons from JoAnn's to the rescue! I've kind of lost my momentum at the moment, so it's not going as fast as I would like.

I found a copy of "Liberated Quiltmaking" at the library and so have been re-reading it. I just wasn't seeing some of the things in the quilts that Gwen was talking about, until I realized that many of the quilt pictures were printed upside down! Oh yeah, NOW I see it!

We've got a bird feeder outside the kitchen window. I try to keep it filled with sunflower seeds. We've had so many little Mountain Chickadees visiting us! And there's been another little bird that's about the same size as the chickadee that comes. It's so small and so fast, it's hard to get a good look at it. We haven't been able to identify it. Finally, I found it on What Bird web site last night. It's a Red-Breasted Nuthatch! If you click on the link, you can see what it looks like, because I can't get a good picture of it. Be sure and listen to their call too. I've been hearing this call all summer and it's been bugging me that I didn't know/remember what it was. And, just so you know, a group of nuthatches is called a "jar" and a group of chickadees is known as a "banditry" and a "dissimulation" of chickadees! (I learn something new everyday!) The kitties seem to think that all these birdies are a show just for them.

Speaking of TV, we finally got to watch "The Sarah Connor Chronicles." We think it's very well done! Even has good continuity with the movies. We've watched 2 weeks worth of "Fringe" as well. It was well-done too. Very X-Files like. We were really surprised to see John Nobel on there! He played Denethor on "Return of the King", in case you don't recognize his name. However, I don't think we're gonna make Fringe "must-see" TV for us. We've gotten burned out on "Lost" and I can see this is more of the same un-ending mystery. Oh well. "Heroes" starts next Monday - Yay!

The Bee's Knees

All done! Yay! I got the borders finished on this uneven 9-Patch from the last post. I was inspired by Gwen Marston's chunky applique from "Collaborative Quilting". I thought that the dotty wavy "vine" really makes this a fun, happy quilt.

The applique was pretty easy to do, and I don't do much applique! And I think the dots add just the touch of whimsy that I was looking for! I had a hard time not putting too much on - I kept telling myself to leave room for the quilting.

This block has real, old fabric in it. I think it's from the 1920's. I love those frantic mice. They're very angular and spiky. And I have a closeup of two of the dots that use real 30's fabrics. The first one was from an old apron, and the second one is/was a feedsack. Most of this quilt is reproduction fabrics, with just a few old fabrics thrown in.

As I was finishing this quilt, I remembered that I have another 1930's quilt that needs to be finished. So I pulled it out and looked at it. I had been stuck on whether or not it needed a border. I decided to put a small border on it. This quilt has all old fabrics, aside from the solid blue (that one is new). I decided, because these are old fabrics and kind of fragile, that a border would help protect them better than having them right on the edge of the quilt.

This quilt has kind of a story with it. When I worked on the charity quilts committee of my quilt guild in California, we got lots of donations of fabrics. One of these donations was a paper grocery bag mostly full of old fabrics. No one on the committee wanted to deal with them - they were going to throw them away! So, I volunteered to take them. I was stunned when I got home and started going through the bag. I realized these were someone's scrap bag with real fabrics from the 30's and 40's! On the very bottom of the bag was a feedsack that hadn't seen the light of day in many, many years! It was in pristine condition! (see the second dot up above - that's the feedsack). Also in the bag were fabrics from the 1950's and 60's. (I haven't dealt with them yet other than to wash them- they're patiently waiting their turn.)

I gently hand-washed everything because it was kinda smelly, put them on towels on the floor to dry, and they came out great. The scraps and towels totally covered the living room and family room floors, and I think DH thought I had lost my mind! *grin* I've made two little quilts with the smallest pieces of the 30's fabrics (which I will show you another time), and then I used the largest pieces for this one. I still had to do some piecing to have enough for these squares, which finish at 2 inches. (6 inch finished blocks)

My inspiration for this quilt came from this book by Mary Mashuta. This one is chock-ful of pictures of old quilts.

This is the picture that inspired me.

Here's a closeup of one corner. Following are some of the blocks. Can you see where I had to piece some of these squares?

What really amazed me about this collection of fabrics was how many plaid fabrics there were! I guess this lady really liked plaid, which is great because I do too! You hardly ever see a plaid or a graphic fabric in the 30's reproductions, and they complement the little flower prints so well that you'd think at least some would be included. Also, this lady had a lot of orange-y fabrics. That's not my favorite color, but yet these all work together so well. This is a great pattern for getting everything to "play nice".

I think some of these fabrics are from the 1940's as well, because they have more intense color to them, and larger prints. But I'm just guessing on this.

Aren't those cool fabrics?? I really haven't been too "into" the 30's reproductions. I'm not a pastel person, and I'm not quite old enough to have them be contemporary to me. But I love history, and I love seeing the real thing!

We've been having bees in the kitchen for a week or more now. DH keeps killing them, and more keep showing up. I don't want to know why. There may be a nest in the skylight in the kitchen. Ewww! At least they're not aggressive. I can ignore them if they leave me alone. If this keeps up much longer, I may have to call an exterminator. Ugh.

Well, it was a good thing I posted about the nanny geese when I did. A day or two after I posted, a whole big blizzard of Canada geese came flying into the lake in the morning, honking and carrying on. They flew out that evening. I think "our" geese left with them. We haven't seen them since. So, their job was done, I guess. They must be going south for the winter.

Sara over at Sara's Scraps has posted about her experience at Gwen Marston's Beaver Island Quilt Retreat. She's got lots of pictures of Gwen's quilts from Gwen's new book Ideas and Inspirations, Abstract Quilts in Solids.

I found an interview with Joss Whedon, Eliza Dushku and Tahmah Penikett about the new show "Dollhouse". There's also a trailer available to watch. "Dollhouse" premieres in January 2009 on Fox TV. I'm looking forward to it. There doesn't seem to be much good on this fall. I had to tape "Sarah Connor Chronicles" to watch later, because DH isn't available to watch it right now. I also taped "Fringe" tonight. Anybody else seen it? What do you think of it? I'm dubious. I don't want to get involved in another "Lost"-type show, and it's by the same creator. We're not real big on the TV anyway. Much rather sew (or do pottery, for some of us) or read!

Speaking of that, time to head for the quilt studio!