A New Year's Post

Well, 2015 has gone down the tubes and now it's the start of a shiny, brand-new year!  I hope everyone had very happy holidays.  And I hope 2016 will be a good year for all of us, with all the quilty goodness one could hope for.

I'd like to take a moment here to say "thank you" to all my readers who stick with me, through the dry spells when I don't post.  December was one of those times.  I just had so many things going on that blogging just kind of fell off my radar.  But I was sewing and having fun times.  

My granddaughters did another year of ballet, with the December recital being, as usual, selected pieces from the Nutcracker.  It's fun to see them in the different roles and watch how they've progressed from year to year.

We had a very fun Christmas over at DS #1's house with the granddaughters.  We must have been good this year, because I think Santa was kind to every one of us.  Another aspect of Christmas I enjoy is seeing how the girls' Christmas lists have changed over the years.  Our oldest DGD has now become a teenager, and it's so fun to see how she's growing up.  I think the best part of Christmas Day was playing games with the whole family after dinner.  That was so much fun!

The big, fun sewing project I was doing in December was making a Secret Santa gift for another member in the Tacoma Modern Quilt Guild, that I joined this last year.  Her choice of style matched up with mine very well, so it was easy to make something for her.  The guild gave everyone a list of possible hand-made gifts to choose from.  We were to pick 5 things from the list.  That actually made it a lot easier.  So, one of the items my recipient chose was an insulated lunch bag,  And she likes text fabrics and brights with white. That sounded easy-peasy to me! 

I took an idea from Quilting Modern by Jacquie Gering and Katie Pedersen, one of my fave books.  I was doing the improv piecing of the sew & flip triangles.  Very fun and easy.  This was test block #1.  It was so soothing to be doing improv again, just sitting and sewing bits together and then seeing how they worked together.  I want to do more of that! 

test block #2

test block #3

It was interesting to see that, even though I thought I was being totally random in my placement of the triangles, they all came out at similar angles.  I don't know if that's good or not, just interesting.

And this is the design I went with.  It was more fun and less expected than the layouts in the test blocks, which pleased me.  The pattern for the lunch bag I was using was this one from All People Quilt.  It was a pretty good pattern and easy to do.  The only thing I would change the next time I make this bag would be to make the bag bigger.

Once I had the front and back put together, I did simple straight line quilting, and I used Thermolam, the insulated batting that one would use for pot holders.  I thought that would insulate the bag pretty well.  I also used a layer of cotton batting, which in retrospect was too much.  Just the Thermolam would be enough, I think.  Of course, making the bag big enough to account for all the batting would help too.  The pattern didn't call for any batting, so that's one reason why it seemed to be on the smaller side.

Here is the completed bag, with the top open.

And closed.

Here is the back of the bag.  My recipient's first name starts with G, so I thought it would be fun to personalize it for her.  I used Tonya's book Word Play Quilts, of course!

Here's a closeup of the text fabric I used in the center of the G.  If you  click on the picture, you can read what it says.  

The inside of the bag.  I used some plastic canvas in the bottom to help the bag hold it's shape. 

And I made a mug rug to go with, using the leftover scraps of the piecing.  I wish I had done the join of the binding a little better than that!  Sheesh!  That's kind of embarrassing.

Here is the entire gift.  G. said her fave designer is Amy Butler, so I found this little jelly roll to include.  

We had a fun Christmas meeting with the Tacoma MQG, and my recipient loved her gift!  Next time I'll share the wonderful gift that I received.

Avoidance Technique Projects?

I was lucky enough to snag a copy of Andrea Balosky's book "Transitions: Unlocking the Creative Quilter Within" (the link will take you to Amazon) at the Puyallup Valley Quilters guild's annual book sale for only $2!  Score!  (if you get the chance to read this book, do so!  wonderful insights into the artistic process!) So, this morning I was reading the part where she discusses the Creative Process and . . . *gasp* I recognized myself.  She was talking about when you are faced with doing something to your project that you'd really rather not do so you go into "avoidance mode" and do something else, like cleaning the studio or something.  Anything but what you'd rather not do.  I know you know what I'm talking about . . . I think we all do it sometimes.  You can call it stalling as well.

Well, I have to admit - mostly to myself - that I was stalling.  I need to do more to my Cherrywood project (see it here)  and I don't want to.  I've decided that I need to add more of the little inserts, which involves undoing parts of the top.  So, major avoidance is occurring.  I know I'm just being stubborn and I'll eventually get it done.  But it's truly amazing what else I can get done when I'm in avoidance mode!

17 1/4 in x 21 3/4 in without borders

Avoidance Project #1 - my Ugly Fabric Challenge quilt is nearing completion!  And about time, too, as it's due on July 11th!  I finally made up my mind what to do with the hideous fabrics I received.  I flailed around for awhile, and then I remembered Bonnie Hunter's saying "if the fabric is still ugly, you haven't cut it small enough".  Bingo!  What's the best way to use it?  Little pieces.  What's the best way to disguise it?  Put it with similar fabrics.  Thus, the log cabin.  So far, without the borders, the top is at 17 1/4 in. by 21 3/4 in.  Those center squares are 1 1/4 inches finished.  The border triangles will also be that size.  Pretty darn little, and kind of pain to make those HST's!  

arrows point out the Ugly Fabrics

This is a close up of the Ugly Fabrics and how I used them.  The middle fabric isn't too bad, so I used it as is.  The other two I've used the wrong side up.  Makes them play better with everything else.

At one point, after I had taken a break (the next day, I believe), I needed to cut more of the center blocks.  Well, apparently I didn't  measure correctly.  But I didn't discover my error until I was trying to assemble the blocks.  These blocks have a center square that measures 1 1/2 inch cut instead of 1 3/4 in.  That 1/4 inch is hard to see, but so important to the finished size of the block!  So, I have 10 extra blocks the wrong size.  *sigh*  We'll see what becomes of these blocks later, when I decide.

So, now I'm stalling about cutting more of the little HST's for the border.  Fortunately, I didn't fold and put away the fabrics yet.  So, that's what I'll be doing very soon.  That approaching due date is starting to motivate me!  So, even more Avoidance is going on around here!  (It's getting pretty bad, huh?)

Modern Disappearing 9 Patch
50 3/4 in x 64 in at this point

In the meantime, here are my other Avoidance Technique projects.  A.T.P. #2 is now assembled and ready for borders.  Fabric has been purchased for said borders and binding.  I need to get this done P.D.Q. so it can get to the quilter and back in time for the quilt show in October.

17 in x 24 1/4 in

A. T. P. #3: another preemie quilt.  I got it quilted at a guild workshop on Friday, now I need to find binding and do that.  No rush on this one.

detail shot

I don't have any baby fabrics, but I thought these worked OK for a little girl.

44 in x 58 1/2 in

A.T.P. #4: the String X quilt got borders!  I went to see the Keeper of the Guild Fabric the other day and found something that works.  It's not what I initially had in mind, but I like it.  Nicely bright and cheery.  This will go to a local facility for seriously ill and frail children.

The yellow fabric has little tiny bees all over it.  

So, I guess I've stalled long enough now!  But, didn't I get a lot accomplished??  Not finished, but accomplished.  Two different things - in my world anyway. *grin*  I amaze myself sometimes.  hee hee!  I really need to finish the challenge quilt because of the looming due date.  So, that is first on my agenda.  Then I think I'll move on to the Mod D9P so it can go to the quilter.  Then maybe I can actually pick up the seam ripper and work on my Cherrywood project so it can be done in time for the quilt show too.  Wish me luck!  Or maybe you should come over and give me a kick in the butt!

So, inquiring minds want to know:  what do you do when you're experiencing the Avoidance Technique?   Do you recognize it when you're doing it?  How do you move past it?  

Building A Wall

We're finally getting some nice weather, and some flowers are starting to bloom.  This is the first white foxglove that I've had here; mostly they're purple.  We have an abundance of foxgloves this year - they're everywhere in the yard.  I love them, and I love that they just happen - I don't have to do a thing!  Yes, I'm a lazy gardener nowadays.

I'm finally getting started on my challenge quilt.  I've been thinking about it (and stalling) for quite a while now.  The challenge this year is to do 'an element of nature', using textures and fibers, etc.  There are no requirements for size or color for this challenge, which is challenging in itself.  I've had 3 different ideas and couldn't make up my mind what I wanted to do.  My initial thought was Trees or Leaves, but I though maybe too many people were going to do that. I also thought of Grass, but I've waited too long to do that one - no time for all the embroidery that I planned on doing.  So, I've finally decided on Rocks.

First off, I printed some photos of rocks on fabric.  I had some great rock photos from our trips to Nevada and the ocean, both of which are great places to find rocks.  Then I made a trip to the bead store to buy some polished and drilled rocks.  I'm not sure where I'm going with all of this yet.

  

When I visited a new local quilt store I saw this Texture Magic and had an idea that this could work too.  I had to play with it first.  I used some ugly scraps that I found.  You quilt through your fabrics and the Texture Magic.  Then you steam it with the iron and it shrinks up 30%.  It reminds me of Shrinky Dinks!

Then, using my photo of a rock wall, I started building a fabric rock wall.  I was surprised to see how many fabrics I had that would work for this, and my friend M~ let me use some of her Stonehedge fabrics.  My technique: I just looked at one of the rocks in the wall, and tried to copy it by cutting with my scissors.  I had a hard time getting them to be rock-y enough, but not too round or square.  I used a charcoal fabric for the background.  Black seemed to be too stark.

More rocks!

Then I decided that putting batting between the background fabric and the Texture Magic would be better.  It would fill the "rocks" nicely.  Then I stitched around all the rocks.  I did one continuous line of stitching.  It was a giant puzzle.  I had to do quite of bit of backtracking to make it continuous.  It took me two sessions of stitching to finish this!  But, finally it was done.  Time for the next step!

Making the magic happen.  In other words, steaming the fabric with the iron. 

Here it is - all crinkled/poofed up nicely.  I think it looks pretty much like a rock wall, all things considered.

Now for the rest of the quilt.  That will be the real challenge, because I only have a vague idea of what I want to do.  And the project is due Friday at noon.  You know what I'll be doing this week!  *grin*



Purple foxglove



Plaidness

As you can see, there is plaidness happening in my quilt studio!  I got a bunch of wonky 9-patches done to go along with the plaid kitties, and now I'm working on wonky stars.  I'm kind of stalled at the moment, as I was finishing the name banner for my granddaughter.  More on that in a moment. . . .

I'm really not sure quite where I'm going with this piece.  I'm trying not to stress about it, but it's trying to creep in on me.  I don't know why. . . .this is supposed to be fun.  But this working improvisationally is actually kind of hard to do.  Fun, but also hard. 

If you remember from my previous post, I'll be adding the names of all my kitties to this quilt using Tonya's Unruly Letters.  I considered using a different plaid for each cat's name, except for 2 things.  One, the plaids are all woven and many are the loosely-woven homespuns, so they'll be difficult to work with for the little fiddly bits.  And two, I think that the plaid will be too difficult to read.  So, I looked for some fabric to go with this quilt. 

What goes with every color of plaid??  I finally found a fabric that I think works.  I've had it in my stash for years, waiting for the right project, and I love it.  It's a small check in purple with tiny different-colored hearts on it, but the print is so small and subdued that it reads as a solid from a foot away.  I think that it will work just fine.  But, I have yet to make one of the names to test it.  That's up next, I guess.  I really need to figure that out so I can know what direction to go in next. 

Here is the finished name banner for my GD, all bound labeled and already gifted.  We gave it to her on Saturday (along with some "spy" walkie-talkies!).  It seemed to be a hit.  We were watching the girls while Mom and Dad went snow-shoeing.  When the parents came back, this was the first thing she showed them.  And then she asked her Dad if they could hang it in her special reading spot.  I think that's a success! 

I put 5 little tabs on the top edge of the back so that we could put a dowel in there to hang it with, and so it would be evenly supported.  At 31" inches long, it needed the support.  That took a little thought from me.  I caught the tops of the 1 inch wide tabs in the binding and hand-stitched the bottom edge of them down.  For my little quilts, I just hang them with straight pins, but I don't think my son and DIL would do that.  I wanted to make it easy for them to hang this up.  I need to remember how I did it so I can do it again, so I took some pix of it.

And now, I need to make one for little sister, who's birthday is next month.  I have the border fabric picked out, and just need to find the fabrics for the letters.  Oh, and find the time to do it. 

I seem to be having an explosion of creativity lately, which is good.  Except for the fact that I can't sew fast enough to keep up with myself.  And my quilt studio LOOKS like there was an explosion in there!  *grin*

On Monday, I took a class on how to use my new (in November) Brother sewing machine.  I finally learned how to use the needle threader - Yay!!  I also learned other useful stuff, but this was something I just couldn't for the life of me figure out from the directions in the manual.  Now I get it.  I'm a visual learner and I need to "see" how it's done.    

I've got some links to share with you.  I've been spending probably too much time looking at quilt blogs etc. lately, and have found some fun stuff.  Maybe I'm late to the party and everybody already knows about all these, but for those who don't, here ya go:

First up, Tonya has started a new blog for all things "Unruly" - called, amazingly enough, Unruly Quilting.  It's a place to share all your Unruly-ness.  She's also requested "Bah Humbug!" blocks in Christmas-ish red and lime green.  I'm just blown away by everyone's creativity on this blog!  You should see the wonderful bugs and letters that everyone is making - it's just awesome. 

Leeann at Quilt Whangarei has a great tutorial on how to do the Disappearing 4-Patch.  I'd seen some quilts made with this block around the internets, and couldn't quite figure out how it was done, so this is great to know.  Another fun, easy quilt technique!  Check it out and give it a try. 

The Bent Objects blog, by Terry Borders, is just so inventive and funny.  He does some amazing things with wire.  His creations are difficult to describe, so it's best to just go take a look.  Terry also has a book out - "Bent Objects: The Secret Life of Everyday Things", which is available at both Amazon and Borders.

More in a similar vein is Stupid Creatures.  John makes stuffed toy monsters and clay "Beasties", some of which are pretty darn cute and some are funny.  Check out the toys here and the clay Beasties here.

Over at BoingBoing website, they had a competition to take something that is usually computerized and remake it with natural media.  Be sure to note the QR Code Quilt made from recycled clothes.  (No, I don't know what QR Code is!)  But all the entries were inventive and fun.

Do you like to take quizzes that purport to tell you about yourself?  Well, here's a couple for you.

First is the free on-line quiz to find out what your Meyers-Briggs Personality Type is, in case you don't know.  This is fun and gives you a description of your personality type.  This is a good tool to help you understand yourself and how you act and react in the world.  Enlightening! 

Second, How About Orange blog has a link to a quiz to find out what your design type is.  This one is a visual quiz - which picture appeals to you the most.  Different and fun.

Well, enough folderol for now.  Time to get busy!

The Challenge Reveal

I made it! I finally got my challenge quilt finished, with about a day to spare. I worked on nothing but the quilt for almost a week.

Why do I do this to myself? I know I'm not alone in this either. I had a whole year to get this done - well, not really, due to the broken arm and the Spring thumb injury. But still, I stalled. I'd like to say next year will be better, but we'll see how that works out. (We've already gotten our "assignment" for next year . . . more on that another time . . . )

If you haven't noticed on my side bar, I've taken the Process Pledge. So, I'll discuss my process some here. Here is the quilt top with the borders I showed on my last post. Guess what? I didn't like this! I love these borders, but I thought it was too busy for this piece. It kind of took over from the letters, which I wanted to feature. Plus, it really wasn't going to work with buttons all over it. It was just too much. Fortunately, I had only sewn on one border.

So, what to do next? I pondered that for a day or so. I decided an inner border would work well to seperate the words from the border, and I was hoping the lime green batik would work. I think it adds a nice little zip!

Then, what do to for the outer border? I was running out of my fabrics. I only bought a 1/2 yard of the light batik that I used for the letters (I have no idea what I was thinking!) and one yard of the background, that I thought would be more than sufficient (it was just barely enough!).

Then I remember Melody of Fibermania's Process Pledge tutorial on her Fused Piecing. Voila! That would do the trick! Thank you, Melody! You saved my bacon. To piece in these tiny strips that finish @ 1/4 inch, I would lose 1/2 inch in the seam allowance. So, by fusing these strips, I saved time and fabric. Yippeee!

Here is the first border. This was just what I was thinking of. In fact, it was Just Right. So, I kept going.

Here are all the borders on. Now I just had to quilt it, and then sew on a bunch of buttons. (technical term: 'bunch')

So, for the back I used something from the stash that I had a lot of, and proceeded to quilt. I kept the quilting simple. Just some squiggling around the words, and straight lines in the border that echo the fused strips. I knew the buttons would secure the border enough that only minimal quilting was required.

Then, to help stabilize the quilt, I added some interfacing on the border areas on the back of the quilt. So many of the quilts I've seen with buttons on them get saggy. I was hoping the interfacing would help with that. And I think it worked pretty well.

After I sewed on the 'bunch' of buttons, I added a second back to hide all the ugly knots from the buttons and the interfacing. I quilted around the inner border to secure it in place, then basted the edges and sewed on the binding. The binding fabric matches the fabric that I'll be making my studio curtains from. It just worked out that the colors go together, so this quilt will hang in my quilt studio. It went really well . . . I was terrified that I would run into difficulties, but it was slick. So, big Happy Dance! It was done and I even had time leftover to make my pot luck dish and get a good night's sleep!

Ta Dah! Here it is at the Challenge Quilt Reveal party. I didn't end up with as many buttons on the quilt as I thought I would. The big button in the lower right hand corner is my tongue-in-cheek poke at myself. It says "Quilters don't do buttons". *grin*

Many of the buttons on here are special to me, like the buttons from the very first piece of clothing I made for myself after I got my very first sewing machine back in 1975, buttons from projects for my children, buttons to represent my Mom, where I grew up, etc. I did some stacked buttons, and some fancy ways to put the buttons on, all kinds of stuff.

Oh, and I ended up with a 3rd Place ribbon in the Pieced catagory. That was better than I was expecting!

I thought you might like to see the other Challenge quilts. We didn't have a very big turn-out this year; there are only 13 quilts. And I missed getting a photo of the pieced pillow that won Viewer's Choice - rats! The quilts range from tablerunners and wall-hangings to bed-sized quilts. (the envelopes were for the voting ballots) Here they are, in no particular order:

Now that the challenge quilt is done, I've taken some time to recouperate. I'm catching up on some stuff around the house, and cleaning up the studio. Next up is some things I've gotten behind on.

Have a creative day!