Rainbows On A Cloudy Day

Yay!  I have finally finished and am able to post my project that I started back in March of 2017, in a class (the last class!) with Gwen Marston.  You can see where I started this project on this post.  

I actually had this finished for the guild quilt show at the end of September, but this is the first it's been posted anywhere.  It's so difficult to get a decent photo here - it's usually so dark and gloomy.

Rainbows On A Cloudy Day
37" x 45"
Hung sideways at the quilt show

That's why I call this quilt "Rainbows On A Cloudy Day".  It's cloudy here, more often than not.  I've also never seen so many rainbows as here in the Northwest - more than I've ever seen anywhere else I've lived.  No matter how many times I see a rainbow, they are always magical!  

I actually picked out the colors for this before I'd decided what pattern to use.  That was my sister's suggestion, as I had no idea where to start for something for this class.  I was a little intimidated to use only solid fabrics!  

So I decided to break out of my usual color palette and try something a little different.  I picked what seemed to me like kind of tropical colors.  The grey background came about because I was using a grey wall at the workshop to pin up my blocks on, and I really liked how the dark set off those colors.

You can see here that I used a little bit of the raw edge "fluff" on a few of my middle squares.  Just something fun and different to do.  I probably could have used more.  Oh well.

And I like Gwen's idea of letting the colors "bleed" from one area to another.  I think that makes the blocks a little more interesting.  I also randomly changed colors in a number of the rounds in the blocks - again, just something fun and interesting.  

And for the back, I used a piece of fabric that had been given to me.  It was just the right size!

I quilted this in a hurry, to be done in time for the quilt show.  But I think it came out OK in spite of that. Those not-real-straight straight lines do take some time to quilt!  And then I decided, for something a little out of the ordinary, to have the quilting lines turn the corner in the border.  The quilt crinkled up pretty well and I haven't even washed it yet.  

This ended up being a little too big for the space I had in mind, so it doesn't have a home to hang in yet.  I'm still thinking of where to put it so I can enjoy it.

On a personal note, the MRI I had last Wednesday told me that I have a broken ankle!  It's a very difficult-to-see incomplete fracture.  I now am using crutches and have a boot to wear to support the ankle.  I see the Orthopedic doctor next week.  And actually the ankle feels better than it has since the accident.  Some of that is staying off of it, like I'm supposed to, and some it is ?  Maybe healing?  That would be nice!  It will be interesting to hear what the doctor has to say.  I'm not enjoying the crutches, and I'm not really enjoying the forced inactivity either.  I want to go sew!  I keep telling myself to be patient.  Wish me luck with that!  Hee hee!

Last Quilty Project for the Year

 It's the end of the year, and I've got one last blog post for 2018.

I hope everyone had a happy Christmas and have been enjoying the holidays.  On the 20th we watched our granddaughters dance in their ballet school's Nutcracker selections.  They both dance on-point now and they each had their first solos!  A very exciting time for them!

We had a great time Christmas Eve at our oldest son's home with his family, and then a quiet day on Christmas, just the 3 of us at home.  It will be a quiet New Year's for us too.  We're going to watch the Dr. Who special and play board games.  I'm looking forward to it.

Fortunately, we had some honest-to-God bright sunlight this morning for the first time in days, so I could get some photos I've been wanting to take for a while now.  It's been so very dark and rainy here, and just terrible lighting for photos.  So this was a wonderful opportunity!  Plus, sunny makes us happy here!

 My last bit of quilting this year was a gift for the Tacoma MQG Christmas gift exchange.  It was secret sewing, so I couldn't share with you until now.  I made a tablerunner in my recipient's favorite colors.  She requested tropical blues and greens. (some of my favorite colors!)

This is based on a couple of quilts in Alexandra Ledgerwood's book Improvising Tradition.   I had to use mostly batiks to get the right tones of tropical blues and greens.  Fortunately, I have a small bin of batik scraps, which came in very handy!  I just sat down and started doing some improv log cabin-y blocks, which is my favorite kind of creativity!

When I liked what I had with the blocks, then I had to figure out the right proportions for a tablerunner.  It wasn't too hard, and I'd like to do another one of these.  I made notes so I could repeat this!

The quilting design was courtesy of my DS.  He drew a sketch and then was kind enough to draw it on the quilt sandwich with a hera marker, making the quilting very easy.  

Leigh Ann seemed very happy with this!  

side 1

This was gifted to me, and made by LaDonna.  A great tote bag!  I love that off-set pocket!

side 2

inside view

I love all the pockets on the inside!  Those are always handy. I think all tote bags should have multiple pockets - LaDonna must have read my mind! And the fabrics she chose are so fun!  Kitties and then goldfish swimming in bowls for the pockets.

I don't talk a lot about myself on here, but I will say that I'm glad to see 2018 end.  It has been a tough year.  Dear Son was sick for a lot of it, Dear Hubby was traveling for a lot of it and I got to take up the slack.  Which didn't leave much time for quilting.  :(  Then I broke 3 toes in July and found out I have osteoporosis.  DH retired the end of August, which he really needed.  All that world traveling was taking a toll.

Fortunately, he's around now that I need him, because in October I injured my foot.  The doctor thought it was a sprained ankle.  I rested it and used a cane to walk with and then in November I started physical therapy for it.  But by December, it was much worse!  So I quit P.T. and went back to the doctor.  

I've been staying off of it as much as possible and using a cane to hobble around.  Wednesday the 2nd I'm going to have an MRI to find out what is going on and how bad it is.  I'm kind of dreading finding out - I don't want to have surgery!  So, I'm hoping for good news in January!  Cross your fingers or say a little prayer for me, please!

Goodbye 2018!  Hello 2019!

Since I made my tablerunner with a bin of scraps, I think it qualifies, so I'm linking up with Oh Scrap! over at Quilting Is More Fun Than Houseworrk.

And Happy quilting!

Just Poking Along

Still not much going on around here, but I did manage to get some sewing accomplished.  Yay for me!

My quilt guild was having a workshop on the Falling Charms quilt (which I first saw on Crazy Mom Quilts blog here, and then found out that Missouri Star's Jenny also has a tutorial here), so I decided to play along.  After some consideration, I realized that I didn't have 2 packs of charm squares that weren't already spoken for, so I decided to use my 40 Crumb Blocks that have been languishing for a few years.  At 6 inches, they were an inch bigger than the pattern calls for, but if you know me, you know that I don't do well at following patterns anyway!  So, after some quilt math and a few adjustments, I knew what I was doing and was hard at work getting fabric ready for the workshop!

Here are some of my blocks - just easy peasy!

Needless to say, I didn't complete my project at the workshop ( I just don't sew that fast!), but I kept working when I got home and eventually I completed the top.  I have to say, as easy as the blocks were. it was surprisingly difficult to get the blocks in the right position!  Suzanne, who led the workshop, gave us the tip that the white on the blocks should be "L"'s and "7"s.  That tip saved me some grief!

At that point I started thinking about borders.  I also had some 8 inch Crumb Blocks that I thought I should use up too.  They're not my favorites somehow.  So I considered how best to use them.
   

First I thought of slicing them into rectangles.  Ok, but not what I wanted.

Then I thought of cutting them into smaller squares.  Better, but not quite IT either.  But I like those crumb blocks once they're cut smaller! *grin*

Eventually, after looking at all of this laying on my "design floor" (the living room) for a few days, I got the idea to offset the squares some, just like in the body of the quilt.  That was IT!  More math was involved and I figured out how I wanted to accomplish that effect.  I'm no math whiz but for some reason, I can usually do quilt math!

So I've been sewing.  I went to my sister's and did more sewing there!  No photo yet, but soon!  I'd like to have one border on before my quilt guild meeting this Friday.  And then I can show you my progress. *fingers crossed*

Right now we're having a terrible heatwave and I cannot sew up in my quilt studio as we don't have A/C.  It's just too hot to sew anywhere at the moment! I'm crossing my fingers that the heatwave will break soon, hopefully on Wednesday, and then I can do some more sewing.

Recently my DH traveled to Israel for work.  He brought back some candy bars for us to enjoy.  We've eaten two of them and they were both excellent!  A little different from American candy, more like European candy but not quite the same either.

What was really interesting, to me at least, was the contents labeling on the back.  If the flap is folded one way you can read the Hebrew words.

But if you turn the flap the other way, you can read the label in Arabic.  Very clever!  It's always interesting to see how other countries are just so similar and yet different from Americans.  And bonus!  The candy is yummy!

AHIQ Linkup Plus More!

Last year about this time, Debbie of A Quilter's Table blog hosted a quilt-along, mostly on Instagram, doing the Crosscut Quilt.  I had just gotten the prompt for my local guild's yearly challenge, which was "Get Creative With Black".  There were no rules for this challenge other than a minimum size of 24" x 24".  So, I decided that it would be fun to play along, using black fabrics for the background.  Maybe not the most creative way to use black, but I thought the quilt looked like it would fit the criteria.

I promptly ordered a good selection of what I'm calling "low volume black".  In other words, black with a subtle design on it.  And I thought it might be fun to use some of those fabrics I've hand-dyed and hand-marbled, so I used those for the inserts.  I love they way they look with the black fabrics!

Crosscut beginning

I decided to make my quilt a little bigger than what Debbie was doing with the Quilt-Along and what the Challenge size minimum was, just in case the quilt shrunk up too much with quilting to end up at 24" x 24".  This was my start.  Each black square is cut at 9 1/2 inches and the X's (inserts) are cut at 1 inch.  Then the *magic* happens!  *grin*  And that's the fun part.  You'll have to go look at the tutorial on A Quilter's Table if you want to know how to make your own.   It's an easy introduction to Improv quilting.  And a lot of fun too!

The Value of X
24 " x 30"

I got the top made in pretty short order, and then put it aside because 1. I had a year to finish and 2. I couldn't decide how I wanted to quilt it.  So, along comes June this year (my deadline was early July) and it was still sitting there waiting to get quilted.  Yikes! Time to make a decision!  I hemmed and hawed for a little bit, then finally realized that, since I've always admired the quilts I've seen on blogs, IG & Pinterest that have quilted spirals, I really wanted to do a spiral on this quilt.  I thought the spiral would be a good contrast with the geometricality (yes, that is a word now - I just made it up, maybe) of the piecing.  I was a little intimidated, but went for it anyway.  

I had kind of a rough start, perhaps because I started in such a small circle.  I traced around a spool of thread.  It was hard to see the line with the walking foot because it was such a tight fit with such a small circle.  But once I got a few rounds done, it was much easier.  It was actually kind of fun!  And I love the way it came out!

You can see the quilting really well on the back of the piece.  I used up some older stash fabric on the back, including one my mom gave me years ago.

Can you see the two skulls by the arrows?
Can you find the other skulls in this photo?

When I was quilting, I decided to add a few accent lines of a blue/purple thread.  They don't really show much, but I found out that this particular fabric not only has some dots in metallic but some of those dots are actually little skulls!   What a fun discovery!  I have a small quiltlet I made with the leftovers that still needs to be quilted, so you'll see that later.

I had so much fun with this pattern that I made placemats for myself which you can see here.  And now I want to do this pattern again, maybe on a slightly larger scale.

I'm linking up with Ad Hoc Improv Quilting linkup today.  Go check out all the other bloggers giving Improv a go.  There's some good stuff to see!

my 1st Raspberry Kiss block
4 1/4 inches

The Tacoma Modern Quilt Guild was having a "white elephant" exchange at the meeting last week.  I remembered from last year that these are actually pretty awesome handmade items, so I knew I had to rise to the challenge.  The theme this year was "Make It Modern".

I've been wanting to make some Raspberry Kiss blocks that I saw on Pinterest, so I thought now was as good a time as any.  

I changed my mind about what project these blocks were going into many times during the process.  But then it jelled and became a pouch!

Inside of the pouch

Blogger won't let me place this photo where I want it, so you get to see this first!

the "cool" side

the "warm" side

I love this so much!  But now it lives with Roxanne.  I'm planning on doing something more with the Raspberry Kiss block for myself!

Here is the "white elephant" that I came home from the meeting with....a beautiful pillow made by Leigh Ann.  I love it and it has pride of place on my living room couch.  It looks so summery and it makes me smile.  I love these colors!

Here is my newest addition to my collection of sewing machines.  A 1950 Singer 221 Featherweight! (the same age as I am!)  I received this wonderful gift from my friend Judy.  She taught me how to oil and grease her up and now she's ready for me to play with.  I've been wanting a Featherweight for a while now because I've heard (and seen) what a wonderful straight stitch they make.  I'm so excited to own this!  Now I have to go shopping for some fun (and some not-so-fun-but-necessary) accessories for her.

Happy quilting!

Gwennie-Inspired Liberated Medallion Reveal!

 Today is the day!  The stars have aligned properly and I can finally show you my completed quilt.  Yay!

This was the beginning block - a liberated basket

This wall quilt was the result of my participating in the Gwennie-Inspired Medallion Quilt Along with Lori at Humble Quilts blog.  Since I love all things Gwen Marston, I thought it would be fun to play along.

We were supposed to begin our quilts with a liberated basket.  I had the basket already made - I had made it in a Liberated Basket class with Gwen I took a couple of years ago.  I thought that was perfect.  The fabric that the basket is made from is some vintage fabric from the 1960's or 70's.

The second round was "childhood memories", the third round was log cabins, the fourth round was stars and the final round was "something fishy".

Ta da!
26" wide by 30" high

For the 2nd round, I thought of that childhood game Pick Up Sticks and also stilts.  I always played Pick Up Sticks at my aunt's home, as it was one of the few kids' games she had. (My cousins were grown and gone.)  And my sister and I spent a lot of hours trying to walk on our stilts.  We never did get very good on them!  I'm not sure I ever got to the end of our short walk from the front porch that ended abuptly in the middle of the lawn.  *grin*

Third round was easy - I love liberated log cabins!  Once I had decided on keeping the black polka dot consistently in the center of the log cabins, they just flowed.

For the stars border, I really wanted to continue the black dots fabric from the log cabins.  So I thought that just a limited number of stars in that border would be good.  It was looking very static, so I got the idea to have those stars "dance".   I love the way it turned out!

By this point, the quilt was looking finished to me, so I had a hard time figuring out how to do the "fishy" part of the 5th round.  I considered adding a border of flying geese pretending they were fish.  But in the end I decided that the fishes had to live on the back of this quilt. 

I had to include more dots too!  Of course!  It makes me smile that the dots remind me of the bubbles coming from those colorful fishies' mouths.

I decided to do one of my favorite quilting designs for liberated quilts.  Just not-too-straight straight lines.  I love that it doesn't disrupt the looks of the piecing and just seems to almost disappear.

highlighted to show the quilting

The center of the quilt is quilted this way.  I decided that in the black border, I would outline the stars then do straight lines parallel with the edges.

I'm not sure how well you'll be able to see the quilting here, because I used black thread on the black fabric.

I love my little Liberated Basket quilt!  And, when I showed it to Gwen, I got her "Seal of Approval"!  That really made me happy! 

I need to say a big Thank You to Lori for getting this QAL off and running, and to Katy, Cathy, Cynthia, and Wendy for the additional prompts.  It was so much fun to participate in this QAL and to make this quilt!

You can see the grand reveal of all the participants' quilts on Lori's blog here.  Lots of fun, wonderful quilts to see!  It has been so fun to see how everyone else interpreted the prompts.  

I'm going to be sending this quilt to Lori for a display she is doing at Quiltworks (in Bend, Oregon) for their 'First Friday' and monthly exhibit for May 2017.  If you live nearby, be sure and go visit!  You won't be disappointed!

New linky party:

Sew, Stitch, Snap, Share

AHIQ March - Improv with Gwennie & a Sneak Peek

I'm a little late to the party this month, but better late than never!  I'm linking up with Kaja, and you can see all the other improv at the linky here.

I was late because I was finishing up the quilting and binding on my Liberated Medallion quilt from the Liberated Medallion QAL with Lori at Humble Quilts.  I got it done!  Yay!  For right now, here's a sneak peek.

I'm really pleased with how this little quilt came out.  The sun is supposed to actually shine here on Friday and I hope to get the official portrait then.  You'll just have to wait to see the "full monty" until then.

I got to really play with some liberated improv last week, when I went to La Conner, Washington and took a 3 day class with Gwen Marston on Abstract Quilts in Solids.  It was so much fun!  I made new friends and played with my fabrics.  What is better than that?  I will do a post all about this class later, but right now, I'll "show and tell" my work/play from the class.

I had seen the exhibit of Gwen's abstract quilts in solids at the Northwest Quilt and Textile Museum the day before the class, and I had drawn out a few ideas.  So I knew where I wanted to start.  The night before the class, I came up with some color schemes, so I got right to work in class.

I have to add here that I was kind of freaked out about working with solids.  I haven't used solids in a long time.  They seem so "flat" to me - I'm so used to the prints in the fabrics doing some heavy lifting for texture and interest.  I made myself only bring solids - no prints of any kind!  After viewing Gwen's quilts, I realized that the actual quilting gives the texture and I really need to plan for that when working with solids.  It helped me to calm down and realize that it really wasn't too scary.

I knew I wanted to do some of the "unequal equilateral triangles", as Gwen called them, so I started with that.  And I wanted to include a curve and some floating squares.

Here was where I stopped at the end of the first day.

The next day, I changed things a little.

I decided I liked the green better than the purple/pink I had in there.  That strip across the top is actually light blue and it just looked glaringly clunky.  

And here is where I ended up at the end of the 2nd day.  That light blue strip was too much, and my table mate suggested trimming it down.  Now I like it!  This still needs to be squared up, and it's possibly not finished.  I'm still thinking about what else it needs, if anything.  Maybe another round of borders?  Maybe just some snazzy binding.  We'll see.

I wanted to try something else before the class was over, so I got started on my 2nd color scheme idea. 

I wanted to try some half log cabins, which I had never done "liberated"/improv before.  I cut some random width strips and 3 1/2 inch starting squares and just started sewing.  It was very fun and relaxing.  I'm trying to channel the Gee's Bend quilters here.  *grin*

Gwen said she'd never really used the half log cabin before.  She and Freddy used some in their collaborative quilts, but only with prints, not solids.  

I liked those so much, I made some more!  I'm not squaring these up too much yet.  These blocks are pinned up on a carpet-covered wall that was in the classroom.  I'm kind of liking that dark "background" in there.

And here they are on my design wall in my studio, in a more mixed up layout.  Looking at this photo, I can see that they do need some more dark in there.  Maybe sashing?  For right now, I'm still thinking about where I want to go with this.  More rounds on each block? 

I'm hoping to get back to this pretty soon.  However, we have to get through taxes before I can do much more.  I'd rather be sewing!

AHIQ and Random Stuff

It's time for the monthly Ad Hoc Improv Quilt challenge link-up and I'll be linking up with Kaja at Sew Slowly.  I missed last month as I was in Las Vegas, and I don't have a lot to show this time, but I will share what I do have.

I was inspired, around Valentine's Day, to make some wonky hearts!  A "squirrel" project.  You know what  I mean.... an-out-of-the-blue, wild-hair hankering to make some little hearts.  I decided to go with bright solids with text and low-volume prints.  I do so love that combo!  Well, I'm a little rusty at making wonky hearts and the first two hearts didn't quite make the cut, but I kept going and the hearts  have improved.  I'm starting with 5 inch squares of the solid color and when I'm done, I'll cut all the hearts down to a common size.  I think.  I have no plan for these, I'm just playing and having fun!  I used Lazy Gal Tonya's tutorial for the wonky hearts.  You can see it here.

The other improv project was also hearts!  I made some blocks for the Block Lotto drawing in January.  Improv "slabs" were the basis for the hearts. The pattern is here. They're not the most improv-looking, to me.  If I were to make more, I think I'd get a little crazier.  *grin*  Sadly, I didn't win the Lotto, but I had fun making the heart blocks.

and even more hearts!

DS and I were going to bake Valentine's Day cookies, but as we were preheating the oven, we heard some strange noises coming from it.  The electric element was on fire!  It was like arc welding going on in there!  Yikes!!  I turned off the oven, but the fire was kept going.  So, not knowing what else to do, I called 911.  The nice firemen came and unplugged the oven/stove and told me not to use it!  Fortunately the cookie dough was still in the fridge, so we didn't lose it. Not having the stove top or the oven made making meals a little challenging until the repairman got there.  We went out to dinner a couple of times and BBQ'ed and microwaved.

In the end, we got a new element installed in the oven and we finally got our cookies baked about 10 days late.  Better late than never... and they were still yummy!

These Japanese X and Plus blocks were the January Block of the Month for the Tacoma Modern Quilt Guild.  We used this tutorial at Christine's Color Connection blog.  They were easy and they came out the right size with no problems!  You can see the finished quilt here.  (That committee is some fast sewists!)

Boy blocks

And these string blocks were the February BOM.  For these blocks we used the Scrappy Strings tutorial from Cluck Cluck Sew.  We adapted the pattern by using a few more strips than called for to end up with 10 inch blocks.

Girl blocks

Most of our Blocks of the Month go to the charity quilt committee to be made into quilts to give away.  This month the call was for blocks for kids' quilts in particular.  I think these came out so cute!

My other quilt guild makes quilts for a local hospital's babies.  Most of them are small to be used for preemies and also early demise - the  little ones that don't make it.  This is one I made from hand-me-down scraps.  I've gotten it quilted and found a fabric for the binding....now I just have to do it!   Hopefully by the guild meeting on Friday.

Remember this one?  I started this in January 2015 and it was meant to be a long term project.  You can see the beginnings here.  I've had the blocks done for a while (see them here) and I'm finally starting to sew them together.  Two rows done!  Moving right along....    I want to have this finished for the quilt show in September, so I can't stall too long on this.  But I have a 3 day workshop coming up the middle of this month and that has me kind of distracted. 

Another scrap project.....some badly needed new hot pads.  I even used scrap/leftover bindings.

And, my giggle for the week, a Star Wars Tie-Fighter Tie!  I love it!

Tomorrow I'm going to Sew Expo with some friends.  That will be fun!  I haven't gone for a few years.  It's so massive that it's sometimes hard to find what I want, but I have fun looking. It's not as big as Pacific International Quilt Festival that I used to go to in California, but still big enough to do some damage.  $$$!  Let the shopping begin!