Stitch Literate

Nearly a new year

2011-12-27T11:46:00.001-05:00

I am enjoying the time between semesters, having my daughter at home, and just doing a lot of not much. Unfortunately, I have a pile of marking that I have made very little progress on, and with every passing hour that monkey on my back gets bigger and bigger. (It started off as a spider monkey when term had just ended, but if I don't get cracking soon that pile of marking is going to become a full-blown gorilla!) But here's what I really want to show you!

I have managed to get a bit of sewing done, and I want to show you my latest project because it's something I'm very proud of. This block is called Chinese Gongs. I found a drawing of it on the internet here, where it appears gridded but with no other dimensions or instructions. So this was my first attempt at drafting a quilting block that had any degree of difficulty at all. And to be truthful, it wasn't very difficult at all - the hardest part was finding a compass that would expand beyond six inches. I think it's a stunning block - I think it would make a spectacular two-colour quilt.

The block is 14" square, and the finished quilt will be a 5 x 5 layout, finishing at 70" x 70". I cut a set of templates that allowed me to mark the curves on the fabric. Directional fabric means that you can't really get more than one block per FQ and there is a fair amount of waste as a result. (I should say scrap rather than waste.) One option is to draft it down a bit smaller so that one could get two blocks per FQ, but that would make for awkward size measurements. The current block is based on a 14 x 14 one-inch grid. It is the most tedious thing in the world to trace the templates and cut out each one - six per block - so I am cutting and piecing five blocks per sitting.

For this one I am proud to say that I have shopped entirely from stash. I am using the FQ set of Heather Ross' Far Far Away III that I bought way back when, and I had a four-yard length of this Kona cotton brown that I wanted to use up. This is not my typical colour scheme, but I think the brown goes nicely with all the prints in the set, and it provides the contrast to make this block work. Alas, the weather is making these blocks look pretty pale and washed out. They aren't nearly so insipid in real life!

I have also made, over the past six weeks or so, a fleet of little zipper bags. I bought Oh Fransson's pattern for zipper pouches and just went to town on them. Her instructions are very clear and thorough, a pleasure to use. I gave some of them away to my TAs at the end of the term and a couple to my daughter, one to my secretary, etc. Somehow they found homes before I got my camera out. But I did manage to snap a photo of these two. I made them out of Amy Butler laminated cotton. It was my first time using this material and I was a bit apprehensive but everything went fine. I employed Pink Chalk's tip about using a glue stick to hold the zipper instead of pins or (my usual) basting, since these methods will put holes in the fabric. I found some cute zipper pulls at Michaels.

As the year draws to a close, I'm been thinking about my personal quilting goals for next year. I've been reading posts about similar topics, and I find a lot of inspiration in the goals that people set for themselves. That will be a topic for my next post! Signing off for now - I hope you are all still enjoying some relaxation and family time, like I am!

Happy Chanukah!

2011-12-20T18:18:00.000-05:00

Tonight is the first night of Chanukah (don't get confused by this photo which was taken last year on the fourth night)! Wishing the few Jewish quilters out there Chag Sameach! Enjoy your latkes and sour cream (down with applesauce)!

SMS Giveaway Winner Announced

2011-12-17T10:53:00.000-05:00

Wow - this past week was a crazy week on the old blog - many, many visitors and commenters! I had a blast reading the comments and also checking out the many participating blogs. I found a boatload of new blogs to follow, and I'm very, very happy indeed to welcome the new followers to my blog. I hope you will enjoy visiting me here!

The winner of the four fat quarters of Parisville is Deanna, who said:

Frankly, something deep inside me rebels at giving a prize to an avowed dog-despiser, but I will just believe that Deanna hasn't yet met the bundle of furry joy that turns her heart to mush. Deanna, I'll be emailing you shortly and asking for your details!
Currently, I'm just as happy as can be that my daughter is home from university. I never thought I'd say how great it is to see all her make-myself-beautiful crap strewn all over the bathroom counter. I'm looking forward to some wonderful time hanging out with her and doing nothing much. I sure did miss her this term!
Finally, no blog post is complete without a quilt-related photo, so here is mine; it's the new hand-sewing project I've started.

SMS Giveaway Day: Parisville

2011-12-11T23:27:00.001-05:00

Thank goodness Sew Mama Sew changed their participation policy so that you didn't have to sign up in advance - otherwise I would not have been able to play along!

Yes, today is Sew Mama Sew giveaway day!

The swag I am offering is below: four fat quarters of Tula Pink's Parisville. And bonus: since I bought these at a Canadian LQS, they are meter FQs instead of yard FQs, which means you get an extra inch and a half (and what girl doesn't want an extra inch and half?)!!

HOW TO ENTER: The last time I had a giveaway, we played the Person Below Me game in the comment thread and it was great fun, so we'll do it again. Here's how it works: I'm going to leave the first comment with a statement that begins "The Person Below Me ......" , and the second commenter will answer True or False to my statement, and then leave their own "The Person Below Me" statement. The third commenter will answer True or False and then leave their PBM statement. Get it? Pretty simple and lots of fun. EDITED TO ADD: There have been so many comments that we have moved on to the second comment page - please click "Newest" down at the bottom of the comment thread to take you to the most recent comment. Otherwise everyone will be replying to the dog person comment. And believe me, that gets hilarious but non-sequiturish. Example: "The PBM loves Real Housewives." "False. I can't stand the hair, slobber or smell."

THE SMALL PRINT:

1. Only one chance per person.

2. No need to follow me or do any other social networking.

3. I will mail internationally (P.S. Super duper thanks to all Americans who agree to post internationally - you will notice that all bloggers from other countries are posting internationally, and it is more expensive for us to mail abroad, just like it is for you.)

4. Comments that don't follow the format described above (e.g., merely say "thanks, pick me") will be removed - not because I am a cranky, power-mad witch but because the entry system is interactive and depends on everyone following the rules.
5. Comments will close at 5pm PST on Friday, December 16 and the winner will be notified by email.
6. If you are a no-reply blogger, please make sure that you have your email listed in the body of the comment. (I don't really understand these things, but someone told me that Wordpress bloggers can often appear as no-reply to Blogger even if your settings are appropriately turned on.)

Don't forget to go to Sew Mama Sew to find the list of all the other participating blogs. Have fun and good luck!

Overworked

2011-12-11T12:11:00.001-05:00

I have been seriously dilatory with blog posting lately. In my defense, however, I had the heaviest teaching load ever this past term, and this left little time for meaningful sewing. I have managed to get a few things done, however.

This weekend, I finished up a simple little quilt top that is going to be finished up for my daughter's new BFF at university, Samantha.

Sam saw the quilt that I made for my daughter and flipped over it. Eve says Sam is always petting it when she comes into Eve's room. I had started this project when I wanted some quick, mindless chain piecing, and it seemed perfect for a young woman's residence room. So Sam will be getting this when it's finished up.

If I'm lucky, I can finish it over the holiday and Eve can take it back with her when she goes back to Montreal in January.

Being so busy at work, I was often pooped when I got home, and wanted nothing more than to watch some mindless television and do some hand work. As a result, I'm happy to report that I finished up the quilt top for this hand-piecing project.

It's made using the English paper-piecing approach (although I used the plastic Quilt Patis templates). I started it in August 2010.

I thought about putting a border on this, but I'm not sure about it. I'm thinking I should just stick a binding on it. What do you think?

I sure do love the photos of quilt tops taken from the "wrong" side. To borrow from popular song canon, how can it be wrong when it seems so right?

Looking forward

2011-11-16T08:20:00.001-05:00

I have been enjoying looking at all the posts that people have been sharing with photos of all the new fabric coming out. I am trying to be dispassionate about all that eye candy, but I must share with you one collection that is getting a lot of hype. I must admit I love it, too. It's Curious Nature, by Amy Butler's husband.

And I can't wait to pair it with this other upcoming line: Nightshade by Tula Pink.

I'll have quite a wait, since Nightshade isn't coming out until Halloween 2012. Never mind, it will give me time to save up.

Got your passport?

2011-11-08T09:59:00.000-05:00

I hope you do have your passport, because the Trip Around the World is finished at last!

Here she is in all her splendour!

It finishes at 60" x 72", batted with cotton, machine pieced and quilted. I used Bonnie Hunter's tutorial, and I recommend it if you are looking for a quick and easy quilt that adds up to more than the sum of its parts.

And what about the back? I have a few big-yardage pieces down in the basement that I have bought on sale at various times that I keep for backs, and I was hoping that one of them would fit the bill for this quilt. There was one in particular that I was thinking of, a Kaffe Fassett print with birds (the recipient of this one is a big time bird lover and has several birds in her home). It would have done well enough, but when I pulled this one out, I realized that it was the only choice. Doesn't it match the top well? It even looks like I could have used it as the inspiration fabric for the rest of the initial fabric choices! But I had not even remembered that I had that fabric until I opened up my bin of backs.

The binding is some Habitat; a few pieces from that line are in the top, as well.

In my last post, I showed you my plan for straight and diagonal line quilting. It went well! The quilting is a combination of vertical and diagonal lines. Diagonal lines that trace the diamond shape in the centre and at the corners, and vertical lines that fill in the rest of the quilt. Here you can see how the vertical and diagonal lines meet near the centre of the quilt.

You can almost see it better on the back - here is the same view on the reverse.

I feel like the straight line quilting (my first time ever) went fine. Several commenters advised the use of a walking foot. My Pfaff has an integrated walking foot which is very handy and I'm glad it does. The lines were easily spaced with hardly any puckers. In the photo below the lines look wavy, but this is just the clothes pins as they hold the quilt up, pulling against its own weight.

I used a new foot that I picked up at the fall sale at my LQS. As you know, feet for the sewing machine tend to be expensive but I got this at half price. It's a stitch-in-the-ditch foot for my Pfaff. Here is a photo of it. I'm not sure if you can see it very well; it has a little metal guide that sticks out of the presser foot just at the centre, just where the needle will hit. In this photo, I am using it to stitch down my binding, you can see that it's lined up just at the ditch where the binding has been stitched onto the the quilt top and folded over. It's a great little gadget. I don't do a lot of in-the-ditch quilting, except for sewing my bindings on by machine, and this has been just terrific for that purpose. It increases accuracy and speed since it gives you an unobstructed view of where the needle is going to hit. For that reason, it also worked great for sewing along the painter's tape that I used to mark the quilting lines. I feel that I definitely got my money's worth out of that impulse buy!

This quilt is destined for a friend in the LA-area who has been through the mill over the last 18 months. I'm taking it out there in about a week - it's a surprise and I hope she likes it. Oh! Anybody know any good quilt shops in Orange County??? Do sing out, if so!

And now some housekeeping! The winners of my birthday giveaway are:

Julie, who admits that she is old enough to have played with Barbie Fashion Plates, and claimed that the person below her liked fried pickles. You win the French General charm packs, Julie!

Manda, who says that she does not like vintage sheets, and thought the person below her spent too much time blog surfing and not enough time sewing. Manda, you win the Clermont Farms charm packs!

Rachel, who can play a musical instrument, and accused the person below her of dressing her dog up for Halloween. Rachel, I hope you like Habitat, because I have five half-metres for you.

And because I like surprises, a fourth, mystery giveaway will go to Tusen, who was not going trick or treating, and suspected that the person below her had green eyes and freckles.

Ladies, I'll be emailing you for your mailing addresses. I hope everybody enjoyed the Person Below Me comment thread! I had a great time reading them all! I'll close with some more quilty photos.

Trying something new

2011-11-03T20:31:00.001-04:00

Photo, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

I'm going to LA in two weeks and I'm going to be bringing this quilt to my friend, who has suffered all kinds of personal setbacks over the last 18 months. I feel like there's nothing better than a quilt to stand as a reminder that you are loved, especially when the people whom you care about are so far away. So you've seen photos of the Trip Around the World quilt top, and now I'm getting ready to quilt it up. I'm trying something new in the quilting department! I've mostly done FMQ swirls or meanders or flowers, but this time I thought I would give straight lines a try. When I pin-basted it this afternoon I used low-tack painters' tape to mark some quilting lines. The tape is about one or one and a half inches across, and my plan is to quilt along each side of the tape that is currently stuck on there. Then I'll shift the tape over to the next row of blocks and repeat the process, so that there is quilting through each line of squares, either on the diagonal or straight. I am excited to try this - I think the quilting in different directions will give some extra interest to the final product. Wish me luck!

Colour coordinated

2011-10-29T09:37:00.000-04:00

Just a quickie to show you how well my dogs go with my new quilt.
Here's Darla.

And here's Susie.

I knew they would look cute against the fall colours in this quilt - but I didn't realize they would blend in so completely! You can hardly tell there's a dog on this quilt!

I posted this quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival - for tons of inspiration and eye candy, grab a cup of coffee and go have a look!

Paprika

2011-10-28T00:33:00.000-04:00

I'm beyond thrilled to share this quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival. This is Paprika. It was a pattern by Colleen Reale in the February 2010 issue of the Fons and Porter magazine.

It is the copiest of copycat quilts (except I added a row of blocks to make it a bit bigger than the original. It finishes at 72" x 84"). I fell so hard for that line of 19th Century Reds fabric by Nancy Gere - I just had to have them all.

I used a large-scale print for the back that was some kind of fabric reproduction from a museum - alas, I trimmed the selvages and trashed them before I realized that I had forgotten the name of the fabric. It's a tan print with big black flower baskets - you can just see a bit of the back peeking out (upside down, doh!).

I used a wool batting for this quilt, and quilted with a swirling meander. The wool gives it a higher loft than regular cotton or bamboo and it really gives the quilting some definition. It's on my bed now and is it ever toasty, now that the weather is on the turn.

I love the striped border on this - don't you think this part looks like a coral snake?

I think the colours are perfect for fall, and while I was quilting it, I had an earworm that I couldn't get rid of: that beautiful, melancholy song "Autumn Leaves". Here it is, by the late Eva Cassidy.

As I said, I'm entering this into the Blogger's Quilt Festival, and I encourage you to go see what everyone else has entered. You will find loads more blogs to follow and inspiration galore! And if you are looking for my birthday party and the loads of fun Person Below Me comment thread, it's here.

I'm getting "better"

2011-10-27T18:13:00.002-04:00

I remember that old commercial for hair colour that had the tag line "You're not getting older - you're getting better!" That's a comfort, isn't it? Especially today, because it's my birthday! Here's a card I got today from two of my former students who are both in their 20's.

Honestly, I don't fret about my age - it is what it is, and another year above ground is reason for a party!
So what do quilting bloggers do when they can't invite everyone over for a game of bingo and bottle of beer? Host a giveaway! Here's what we've got:

Behind Door Number 1: Two charm packs, one of Maison de Garance and one of Lumiere de Noel

Behind Door Number 2: Three charm packs of Clermont Farm

Behind Door Number 3: Five half meters of Jay McCarroll Habitat

Here's what we're going to do for entries. Respond "True" or "False" to the statement in the post above yours. For example, imagine the comment above yours says "The person below me has seventeen children." You would say (probably - lol) "False. The person below me [put something hilarious/poignant/thought-provoking/nosy/interesting here]." Get it? I'll leave the first comment to get the ball rolling.
This giveaway is open to all, with no obligation to become a follower or broadcast this on social media. I'll draw the winners next Friday evening, November 4.

One step closer to done

2011-10-25T09:30:00.001-04:00

Last week I finished piecing the blocks for this quilt - it is one giant step closer to being finished but it still needs a border. It's another old one; I started it in September 2009. But, hmmm.... the jury is out on this one.

I'm very satisfied to have this one finished, but I'm having difficulty working up enthusiasm for it. I'm not sure if it looks a little too country for me? I kind of like how the batiks and the cotton prints work together - why don't we see that more often? I chose these fabrics when I started quilting again after my 15-year layoff, and I didn't realize that people don't seem to mix these fabrics very much. Not sure that I would have chosen differently if I had realized it - but perhaps it would not have entered my mind as a possibility.

I took a Jodi Barrows workshop on the Square in a Square technique - it uses a specialty ruler to make all kinds of blocks. This pattern, called Souther Skies, is from one of her books and the blocks were the basis of the workshop.

It is piecing-intensive for sure. Here is a closer shot of one of the blocks - this star block has corner patches that are each composed of three flying geese that are sewn together, and then this triple-goose bit has four side pieces around it to bring it up to a 4" size. Making all these geese pieces got old fast!

It's an odd size - about 55" x 77". So, as I mentioned earlier, it really needs a border to be big enough to use properly. The pattern calls for two borders at 4" each. I'm drawing a blank for what to use. Blue and red, I guess. But I'm not feeling the love. What would you do for borders on this one?

(Don't you love those photos of quilt tops taken from the back? That stained-glass effect is fantastic!)

Getting stuff done

2011-10-23T13:42:00.000-04:00

I've not lost the urge I spoke about in my last post to clear some of the unfinished projects off my docket. Here's one thing I've been working on: quilting the Paprika quilt top that I started in the winter of 2009/2010.

My goal is to have it finished for the next round of the Blogger's Quilt Festival, which begins next Friday. Plus, the nights are getting chilly, and I'd like to have this toasty wool-batted quilt on my bed!

Backlog

2011-10-12T14:38:00.002-04:00

I only had a little time to sew this weekend because it was Yom Kippur and Canadian Thanksgiving (talk about going from famine to feast) and because my university student daughter was home, but I had the urge to drag this project out of the box and make some progress on it. This is an old photo - I have many more blocks completed now and the end may be in sight. Maybe one more weekend and I'll have them all assembled.

I know I'm not alone in having a backlog of unquilted flimsies and projects at various stages of undoneness. I have a million ideas for new projects, but I am feeling quite guilty about those languishing in the closet. And to be truthful, only one is in the closet - the others are down in the basement. Pitiful. I'm feeling like I would like to honour all the work I invested in these by finishing them up, even if the bloom is a bit off the vine. If past history is a guide, I will fall in love with them all over again once they are quilted and washed. Anyway, I need some advice - which one should I finish up first? Have a look at these, in order of oldest to most recent:

Paprika. This has been sitting around for about 18 months - a scandal.

Unnamed kaleido. I shouldn't really even put this one up because I'm going to end it out for some longarm love - but I haven't even gotten around to buying the backing.

Naked Bed quilt. I rushed to finish up this top for the Naked Bed challenge, but haven't done anything with it yet. There's lots of Greenfield Hill on sale around now - I need to buy some yardage for the back and get it quilted up.

And what about these giant Wheels - each block finishes at 30" square and there are six of them.

Must finish this Trip Around the World up because I'm visiting the recipient of this gift quilt near the end of November. But I'm not sure I want to make it top of my list.

Probably going to go with the piano key border on this Spiderweb.

Please opine and help me sort out an order of operations for these!

A New Look for a New Year

2011-10-03T18:49:00.000-04:00

I mentioned in my last post that I have just marked my second year of blogging. I have been thinking lately about making a change to the look of my blog. One change is the name - while I do love Pickledish, when I started blogging I didn't realize that this is also the name of the home of Kansas City Star Quilt Co., They are a shop, not a blog, but I still feel it's a bit close for comfort. So while the url for this blog will stay the same (at least for the present), I have given this blog a new name - Stitch Literate. I like this name because it is descriptive of me as a quilter, and it also resonates to what I do in my day job as a researcher into reading development. And having just marked Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, it seems like the perfect time to make a change.

I'm still feeling my way around this blog makeover - and I'm not quite sure that all the parts are working properly. If you feel inclined, please leave me a comment to say you can see the changes I've made to the blog. If you like them, you can thank my talented and very creative doctoral student, Lindsay. And because every blog post should have a photo, I'm posting this one of me - I don't like having my photo taken but from time to time it's nice to put a face to a name.

Take a look at these!

2011-09-18T15:51:00.002-04:00

Wow - I am utterly undone by the generosity of Sandi at Piecemeal Quilts. Look at these amazing EQ designs she worked up for me in response to my request for advice in my last post. You will remember that I had just finished my spiderweb quilt and was pondering the next step. I felt that it was too small to stand alone and needed some kind of border, but what? I had many excellent suggestions in the comments, and Sandi played around in EQ and showed me what they would look like all worked up.

Here is one that several people mentioned would look nice: a piano key border.

I quite liked the idea of a pieced border and mentioned that perhaps a border of flying geese would look nice.

A border using a colourful Kaffe Fassett print was a common suggestion.

If I had more sitzfleisch I could finish up by adding more speeder web blocks. It looks good, but I don't think it's going to happen. Time to move on, y'all.

Another suggestion for a pieced border had the pieces lying horizontally, not vertically.

And in my post, I had said I was thinking that a low contrast border that gave the impression of extending the background would look nice. Funnily enough, this is my least favourite of all the ones Sandi worked up.

So, which one do you like most? Thanks, so much, Sandi, for going to all this work for me - it is so helpful to see them all laid out!

Also, today is the second anniversary of my blog! I am going to have a celebration, but I have not yet determined what form that will take. It won't happen until the beginning of October, because I have to survive this month of teaching. Our student teachers go out on practicum in October so I will be able to draw a breath and dig up some good-looking loot.

Advice, please!

2011-09-06T09:17:00.001-04:00

What a great feeling it is to reach some closure on a WIP! This spiderweb quilt was one I started last year in an on-line bee. I got eleven blocks from Canadian quilters and slowly did the others myself. That string routine gets old quickly, and I find I can only do a little at a time. But I finally reached what I think is a good size for this quilt. It measures 60" x 60".

But wait. Is it really a good size? I feel like I would like it to be just a touch bigger. Not so much bigger to justify another round of blocks, but just a modest border.

Here's where I need your help. Can you give me some ideas about what kind of fabric I could consider for a border for this quilt. I don't have enough of the green background (it is Amy Butler's Bali Gate, in case you are interested). Right now I am thinking about something of the same value, although perhaps not the same colour, so the effect is one of extending the background rather than delimiting it. But I am open to ideas - what kind of border do you think would look nice?

I plan to back this in a nice flannel, and I am looking at this spiderweb quilt to to replace this one that no longer lives with me. It now lives with my daughter in a tiny dorm room at McGill University. If you think that it has been a sobfest here this past week as we wander around our house wondering where we left our hearts, you would be right. The empty nest is a pretty rotten deal, if you ask me.

Better late than never

2011-08-22T10:17:00.001-04:00

I have come down to the wire on this quilt, but I am beyond thrilled to report that it is finished at last. I was asked to make this quilt by a friend, whose only only child goes off to university this fall. With just under one week before the recipient of this quilt scoots off to university, I have finally completed the ogee quilt version 2.

To recap the details for this one, it finishes at 48" x 60", and I made it using a Kona cottons FQ bundle in the Hot Spice colourway, using Rebecca Johnston's pattern available here.

The batting is bamboo, my favourite, except for the way it leaves fuzzballs on the quilt after washing. This time I used a dog hair removal device to whisk those fuzzballs off quickly and effectively.

I used a King Tut variegated thread for the quilting.

For the label, I used one of those Printed Treasures sheets and my ink jet printer to create a little message for the girl from her mother. I also pieced in one of those Echino linen birds. I didn't think of it at the time, but that little bird is the one that has flown, leaving behind the empty nest.

And for the backing, I used a Kaffe Fasset print. I can't believe I forgot to get a photo of the back! But here is a shot of the label that shows the print around the edges. I used the same print for the binding.

The photos here were mostly taken in the sun, and the colours look really electrifying. They are a bit more sober, but still rich, when they are in regular or shaded lighting.

I'm so happy to be able to hand this quilt off to my friend so that she can know her daughter will be warm and cozy with a quilt in her residence room. I told her I would take no commission but a donation to the Heart and Stroke Foundation would be gratefully accepted. She surprised me with a $50 gift certificate to my LQS - that is also gratefully accepted!

Events of the spring really slowed me down on the quiltalong - and I did not provide very good leadership as a result. But I made it in the end, and I do encourage all of you who have this quilt on your design boards to finish it up - you will be so happy you did - it is a stunning pattern and makes a glorious quilt!

Laptop sleeves - the final chapter

2011-08-19T11:21:00.000-04:00

Counting the practice one, I've now made three of these laptop sleeves in the last couple of weeks. I am officially tired of making them, but, boy, do I ever LOVE these two little beauties. Here are the two of them, side by side.

I showed closer and more detailed photos of the blue one a few days ago - you can go here to see them.

For the yellow one, I used the same tutorial, same double thickness of wool batting and the same quilting motif of diagonal lines.

I also used Folksy Flannel again for a soft, protective lining.

I must say, I adore that Outside Oslo line - there is a grey colourway that I didn't buy much of and I'm kicking myself. I still have quite a bit, plus some other prints that I didn't use here, but I think I'll have to dip into the online shops again soon.
One last look of the two of them together. Which one do you like best?

laptop sleeve v. 2.0

2011-08-16T20:43:00.001-04:00

Last week I showed the laptop sleeve prototype that I was trying out, in response to my daughter's request that I make her something to keep her shiny new laptop from getting scratched in her backpack. I was beyond thrilled that she asked me to make her one, rather than going out and buying something shiny. I found this tutorial online - I like that it had the long zipper that opened the top fully and made it easy to slide the computer in and out. Here's the tester - it's fine, but nothing special.

She approved the design of the test run, and after looking through all my home dec fabric, she chose the Picket print from Outside Oslo as the main fabric, and left it to me to jazz it up a bit.

I cut a swatch from another print from the same line and pieced a couple of flowers into the front. I quilted diagonal lines two inches apart, marked with the Hera marker, but I left the flowers unquilted. Because of the two layers of wool, the quilting has super definition, and the flower detail pops right up.

I did it the same way I made the trial sleeve and, again, I lined it with Anna Maria Horner flannel. I love the gold against that deep teal colour.

It met with unreserved approval and admiration. And I'm not done yet - when her friend, Montana, saw the tester, she asked if I would make her one, too! I must say, it's great when the younger set think you're doing cool stuff!

Dogs on Quilts

2011-08-16T08:03:00.004-04:00

I have dogs and I have quilts. That means I'm a natural for the Pets On Quilts Show hosted by SewCalGal.
This is Susie. She is the elder of our two golden retrievers, at nine years old. She loves to sleep on her back like this - she spend most afternoons with her feet in her air, and often with her head hanging down off the sofa. Whoever said it was a dog's life didn't know my dogs. Susie is very sociable and she smiles and shows her teeth in greeting. It is bit off-putting for people who don't know her, but she is truly smiling. She often wakes me in the morning by jumping onto the bed on my chest and smiling into my face - I have become inured to waking to a full-on view of flashing choppers.

And, for the sake of equity, I'm going to post this photo of Darla. It's an older photo, and I meant to enter into SewCalGal's pet/quilt show last year, but I wasn't organized enough to do it in time. Darla is seven. Look at that face - you'd never know she is a murderess. Several squirrels are wearing halos and playing harps right now, thanks to Darla.

Entries to the Pets on Quilts Show are accepted until the 19th. Click on this button to take you there!

Edited to add these videos of Susie and Darla. This first one is of Susie getting her ears tickled, which she dearly loves - it makes her smile big time!

I just uploaded this video of Darla, but it is actually a few years old. We found a homeless, young cat walking down the middle of our busy street - he was about 6 months old, and, as it turned out, deaf as a post. We loved this little guy, because he fit right in with us, and he loved, loved, loved our two dogs. He got on especially well with Darla, who was about four at the time. Alas, I am terribly, debilitatingly allergic to cats, so we had to find him a new home. They played like this nonstop for the three weeks he was in our house.ploaded it, but it is a few years old. We found a homeless, young cat walking down the middle of our busy street - he was about 6 months old, and, as it turned out, deaf as a post. We loved this little guy, because he fit right in with us, and he loved, loved, loved our two dogs. He got on especially well with Darla, who was about four at the time. Alas, I am terribly, debilitatingly allergic to cats, so we had to find him a new home. They played like this nonstop for the three weeks he was in our house.

Why Quilts Matter: History, Art and Politics

2011-08-09T09:53:00.000-04:00

Did you know there are 21,300,000 quilters in America?

I learned this from watching the trailer for a nine-part documentary on quilts and quilting that is showing on PBS this fall, called Why Quilts Matter: History, Art and Politics.

The producer of the film says You can’t run out of ways that quilts reveal American history, and this documentary will show some of those ways.

I was very moved by a quote from this trailer - it certainly resonates with me: We as human beings have a lifelong love affair with cloth – this is what we’re swathed in from birth – it’s the last thing we feel when we pass away. We cannot get away from the fabric – we can’t get away from the cloth.

I certainly hope my local PBS shows this series! Watch the trailer below - I'm sure you'll be wanting to see the whole thing, too!

"Why Quilts Matter: History, Art & Politics" - Independent Production from The Kentucky Quilt Project, Inc. from The Kentucky Quilt Project, Inc. on Vimeo.

Practicing

2011-08-08T19:30:00.001-04:00

My daughter just got a new laptop to take to university. It's a very pretty MacBook Pro, with an elegant brushed metal case. In the effort to keep it nice and pristine, she asked me to make her a sleeve for it, so that she could carry it in her backpack without it getting scratched up. I was thrilled to be asked, although I wasn't exactly sure how to go about it. She said she didn't want velcro, so that meant a zipper. Even though I've made all these little pouches, I quailed at the thought. I went online and read many tutorials. Eventually I picked this one to try. And here's what I came up with.

It has a heavy cotton home dec outer layer, and two layers of wool batting for extra puff, although I only did minimal quilting on it since it's just a tester. I lined it with flannel.

When I went to source a zipper for it, I saw three grades of zippers - from the most delicate for use in apparel to some with really heavy duty teeth. I chose one in the middle. The zipper goes around both sides on the top of the sleeve so that it opens wide enough to easily slip the laptop inside.

Now that I know how to do it, I'll make her the one she wants - she's laid dibs on some of my Outside Oslo home dec fabric. It's very nice to be asked to make things for my oh-so-discriminating daughter!

Trip Around the 18 Year Old World

2011-08-06T08:29:00.001-04:00

I am astonished at how quickly this went together. The whole top from cutting to piecing went together in two after-dinner sessions. Wow! And it's a great stash-buster, too! The colours aren't as vibrant in this photo as they are in the ones from yesterday, but this is due to the leaden, overcast sky. I pinned this up to the line before breakfast, just to make sure I got a snap of it before the imminent downpour. Remember yesterday, when I said I wasn't so sure about the colours of the fabrics I chose - they are growing on me. It is a low-contrast Kaffe-like composition, just as I intended, so I am warming up to it. I forgot to measure it, but each square is 3.5" finished, so that makes it about 65" square, more or less. Again, I used Bonnie Hunter's tutorial for this quilt top, and I recommend it if you are interested in making a TATW. I will definitely make this again - probably using my precious stash of Marcia Derse fabrics.

And about the 18 years referenced in the title of this post: We are celebrating my daughter's 18th birthday this week. I am astonished at how fast these years have flown by. From a tiny baby, under 6 lbs, she has grown into a gorgeous young woman, poised, confident and kind. She is smart, funny, and loyal. The three of us have always been a close family, with no teenage trauma - I have heard some parents say that the internal squabbling gets so bad that you are relieved when they finally leave the nest. That's not the case with us. In three weeks we will be taking her to McGill to begin university - my husband and I have been like deer in the headlights for the last month. However will we redefine ourselves without her? I, for one, will be making lots of quilts! In fact, I remember 18 years ago, getting larger and larger, trying to finish up some quilting projects before my due date - that was the last of my quilting for 15 years. It is somehow very satisfying that I have taken it up again as she begins to leave the nest - it reminds me that the world is round, just like my quilt. Happy birthday, dearest Daughter - you will always be my sweet Munkus, my baby girl.

Packing for a Trip Around the World

2011-08-05T10:53:00.000-04:00

Normally I am not an impulsive quilter. Although, like most of you, probably, I have a constant, endless stream of "one day I will make x" going through my head, I generally invest a lot of mulling into the decision of what project to start next. But last night, I took a wild hair to make a Trip Around the World quilt I felt the need to make something with only straight seams and a riot of colour - to recover from the recent ogee quilt in solids I just completed the top for. So I went and searched among my 1/2 yard cuts and pulled these:

The TATW is a very common quilt (see here for some great images). I knew that Bonnie Hunter's tutorial uses the strip piecing method that is also used in making bargello quilts. Back in the days before motherhood, I made a couple of pieces using that method and I remember it goes pretty fast. So I decided to use Bonnie's tutorial - it's very well laid out and I recommend it if you want to make a TATW yourself. I took some photos of some of the steps. You start by cutting strips from your chosen fabrics and sewing them into strata. You have to make four strata exactly alike.

Then you sew the long sides of each strata together to make a tube of sorts. It's actually kind of hard to take a good photo of the tube; here is my husband doing his best, bless his heart.

Then you slice the strata into sections so that you have eight loops.

Next, you unpick one line of stitches from the first loop to make a strip again. From the second loop, you unpick the line of stitches that will allow you to make a step-down of the squares. For example, in the photo below, the first loop I used appears on the left hand side, with the orange square on top of the resulting strip. When I unpicked the second loop, I made sure to unpick the stitches that would allow the orange square to become the second square from the top (and I unpicked the third strip to allow the orange square to be the third square from the top, etc.). Does that make sense? When all eight loops are unpicked and the strips are lined up nicely, sew them together to make a panel like the one below. That's one panel out of four. The one in the photo below will be the top right quadrant of the quilt.

This was seriously fast. I did all the cutting, strata sewing, as well as the cutting, unpicking and piecing for the one panel above last night after dinner. The only drawback is that I am not 100% sold on the fabric I pulled - while I was going for a relatively low-contrast look, I am afraid it is too low and the colours look too jumbled. I am keeping my fingers crossed that it comes together once all the panels are pieced and assembled. With luck that will be this weekend!
P.S. As it happens, I also read this post on TATW this morning! TATW love is in the air!

Who you calling Fuddy Duddy?

2011-08-04T11:46:00.000-04:00

Over the past month I have been participating in Talkin' Tuesdays with a bunch of other quilty folk over on Twitter. It is hard to describe, but it feels like being in a large gymnasium with about 30 other people, trying to carry on multiple conversations, with everybody talking at once. It happens very fast, with topics changing quickly, and often with no good idea of who you are talking to. It's a bit of a madhouse, quite frankly, but oodles of fun. Cara moderates it, and she always has several questions for folks to respond to. One question, a few weeks ago, had to do with quilting trends and how they influence what we do and what we like. Most of us like to think we are immune to trends, but probably we aren't. Our current fascination with bright, saturated colours is a trend, isn't it? Through the madness of the conversation, we debated whether anything could be done to rehabilitate the colours burgundy, brown and dark green; these appear to be the most shunned colours among modern quilters today - I regularly see Flickr posts where people are listing their likes and don't likes, and these colours are often mentioned in the latter.
Because I experience senior moments on a regular schedule, I don't recall everyone who was part of that particular conversation. But in her inimitable fashion, Cheryl offered it up as the Fuddy is Not Duddy Challenge, and Barb, Thomas, Susanne and I took up the gauntlet. The specs of the challenge are to create a doll quilt using green, burgundy and brown and only one neutral of our choice, by Canadian Thanksgiving, which is October 10. The goal is to create a piece that uses these colours, but still looks modern and exciting.

The doll quilt size means I don't have to invest much money in new fabric for this challenge. I pulled the fabrics in these photos out of my stash, just as a first look at what I already have. The burgundy is a piece I bought back in the late 80s or early 90s - I love it, but have never known what to do with it. The three fabrics at the bottom of the photo just above also date from the same period. The shadow makes the one on the left look blue, but it is mainly green. A couple of more yellow-toned options appear in the photo below. And in both photos you can see a great fat 1/8 bundle of Japanese dobby fabrics that would fit right in.

I'm looking forward to coming up with something interesting, although, to be fair, I think I am a bit of a fuddy duddy by nature. Or perhaps it is more accurate to simply say that I have a wide appreciation of aesthetic styles when it comes to quilts. It's going to be great to make a place at the table for green, burgundy and brown! Want to play? Cheryl is going to create a Flickr group for our creations soon - I will keep you posted!

I'm late, so late

2011-08-02T09:25:00.000-04:00

I am very very behind my time, given that I had initially set my deadline to be the end of June. My MIL's sudden passing put an end to that. I am sorry that my first ever quiltalong should suffer from a grievous loss of leadership! But at last, I have finished my ogee quilt top, done up in solids. I used the Hot Spice bundle of Kona solid FQs.

I think this colourway is interesting - it doesn't quite do the same gradation of colour as some of the other Kona solid bundles that I've seen. But I know this is going to work up really nicely once it's quilted. I'm looking forward to picking some variegated thread for the FMQ.

You might remember that this quilt was commissioned by a friend for her daughter, who is going off to university next month. I am waiting for her to give me a little poem that I will work into the label on the back. I'm looking forward to being able to wrap this up so I can embark on a project that will be mine, all mine (insert wicked cackle here)! P. S. I couldn't pass up the opportunity to show you Susie at the bottom of this photo above!

Sun, sea and science!

2011-07-18T20:29:00.000-04:00

I have been laying low for the past week because I was out of the country at a conference. And because I took my husband and daughter with me, there was no one keeping watch over the old homestead. So as much as I wanted to share photos and updates as things unfolded, I thought it was best not to advertise that our house was empty. We were here:

I attend the Society for the Scientific Study of REading every year, and this year we met at the Don CeSar Hotel in St. Pete Beach, Florida. When I first learned the location, I thought it was mad to have a meeting in Florida in July. But I'm telling you, it was bliss.

We went down a few days before the meeting so that we could have some time together - a little family time before our daughter goes off to university. My husband deeply needed some resting time to restore his soul after the loss of his mother in April. We closed out her apartment just two days before we left for the beach. As we are early risers normally, he and I enjoyed a 6:30 am walk on the beach every morning. We saw dolphins and crabs and picked up some pretty shells. The water was as warm as a bathtub!

Our daughter was glad to have the opportunity to work on her tan, and she managed herself very well, with ample sunscreen, and avoided getting burned.

We had great plans to do lots of things in the vicinity, but once we got there, we couldn't seem to drag ourselves away from the hotel, aside from a lunch or two off-premises.

But mostly it was all we could do to manage the 20 metre trek from the pool to the beach and back again several times a day.

The conference is one that I have attended since 1994 and it always features the best and most current reading science. I look forward to seeing my good friends from other universities, and catching up. The sessions were all very good, and my session was well-attended, but it was hard to concentrate, as the view from every window was so compelling!

It was a week filled with luxury, far beyond our normal level of indulgence, you can be sure! As nice as it was, though, we were glad to come home to see our two dogs, who spent the week at summer camp (aka boarding kennel). Alas, while in Florida, we came to rely on air conditioning to mitigate the heat and humidity, and we have no AC here at home. Our house was a sauna upon our return yesterday!

Sprucing up and catching up

2011-07-07T19:39:00.002-04:00

Unless you are reading from Reader or some other blog feed, you will notice a new blog header here. And a new profile photo (the old one was my daughter's hand holding a rock). I should just let you think that I decided it was time for a change and a blog spruce-up, but the truth is that I am a clumsy so-and-so and managed to delete these photos, along with about 30 others from the early days of my blog. I finagled my way into Google +, and in the process I deleted a raft of photos from Picasa. Picasa is an application I never use, except that somehow it is linked to Blogger. In the days before I figured out how to use Flickr to mount photos, I would upload them from my computer directly to the blog. I haven't yet done an audit to see what photos are missing, but I did see one early post where they are all gone - argh! REplacing them is definitely a job for another day! I have been procrastinating by looking around Google + a bit - I do like the fact that privacy is better protected than on FAcebook, and the social "circles" seem to be more intuitively like the way we relate in real life than having everyone in one big pile of friends. Anybody else on Google+?

This week I have been to Montreal twice. Yesterday I went with my daughter to McGill to sort out some course registration stuff (I stayed in the library while she saw to all the business herself - starting as I mean to go on, although it is hard!). Monday, my husband and I met the movers at my late MIL's apartment to load up the furniture that we are bringing back to Kingston. It was very sad to hand the keys to the apartment over to the doorman and say goodbye to the place she had lived for nearly forty years.

On our way out of town, we stopped at Dunn's for a smoked meat sandwich. Smoked meat is a famous Montreal delicacy made from brisket, similar to pastrami, but so much better.

You pretty much have to head straight to the hospital for angioplasty afterwards, but never mind - once a year one can indulge in the ultimate comfort food.

(Why is it that fortune cookies so rarely tell your fortune these days? Have you noticed? They seem to be mainly advice cookies, like this one. Are fortune cookie makers worried that I will sue them if my fortune doesn't come true?)
On the sewing front, I am happy to report that I finished all my curved seams for the in-progress ogee quilt. It's going to look pretty slick done up all in solids!

Momentous week

2011-07-01T08:51:00.000-04:00

Newsflash: I'm featured today over at Amy's Creative Side! Go have a look!

This was a very busy week - my daughter graduated from high school and had her grad formal. As parents of a single child, we are very careful to take full measure of each significant event of our daughter's life. The ending of her high school years marks a bittersweet milestone.

She really only had one date (the boy to her left) despite what this photo implies:

We are very proud of our daughter, an Ontario scholar, off to McGill in August to study Arts.

Virtually visiting Atlanta

2011-06-30T12:46:00.001-04:00

I'm guest posting over at Whipstitch today! Deborah asked for stories from people who have antique quilts, and I'm sharing a quilt by my great-aunt Tildy. Go have a look!

And since the photos in Deborah's blog are not live, you can click on the photo above to go to my Flickr photostream to see other blocks from this quilt.

Back in the saddle again

2011-06-27T09:31:00.000-04:00

Huzzah! I sent my report off for the first round of feedback, which meant I got to do some sewing on the weekend! I am happy report that I have completed half the curved pieces for my ogee quilt. I like to sew all the curved pieces first, and then do all the straight seams. I keep the pieces for each row segregated in sandwich bags so that I can keep everything straight. This must be a relic from my childhood when I would eat all my peas first, then all my potatoes, before I would eat the chicken.

But I also made this little zipper pouch out of one of the practice blocks I made when I was warming up for the orgy of curved seams required for this quilt. Ain't it cute? The clothespin shows the scale. I like to use the linen for these pouches, especially the larger ones, because it provides a bit more support.

Must run and charge my camera. Tonight is my daughter's high school formal - lots of photos to be taken! Here's one I managed to get this morning, while checking the settings:

Laissez les bon temps rouler

2011-06-24T13:14:00.001-04:00

a dog's life, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

Some of us around here are kicking back and taking it easy. But not me! The roles are definitely reversed in this joint - as I mentioned in my last post, I am working like a dog while she is lounging around in the lap of luxury. But I did want to post to say that I am still alive, although still on a strict no-sew diet until I get my report written. With the blessing, however,I will send this [expletive deleted] report out for feedback to my committee tonight - and if I do, it means a whole weekend in front of my machine - I don't care how beautiful the weather is. Please send me good vibes and wish me luck!

My 15 minutes of fame

2011-06-14T22:07:00.000-04:00

What a great piece of quilty news I got last night! Remember the Naked Bed Challenge run by Sarah Fielke? Her judges picked my quilt top as the overall winner! I'm flabbergasted, and so so so honoured! The quilts that were entered were all stunning - and some were original designs, as well. I win a copy of Sarah's book Quilting: From Little Things. You can go here to see the other prizewinners and go here to see all the entries in the Flickr group.

Here's another look at my entry. I'll sleep GREAT under this quilt!

Bow wow - That's me, working like a dog

2011-06-12T12:51:00.002-04:00

Thanks to my husband for being such a good yard man. These are some lupins and poppies in our front yard. When I took this picture it reminded me so much of a fabric stack I had seen somewhere. I finally hit on it - these are 1001 Peeps by Lizzy House. Good match, eh?

This photo from Lizzy House's photostream on Flickr

Isn't this stuff just gorgeous? I am treating myself to a load of this fabric after I finish this report I am working on. Hence the title of this post - I am slaving away on that report, and as a result I am on a no-sew diet until I get it finished. My late mother-in-law's passing and all the activity associated with that really put all my regular life out of whack. That includes both my university-related work and my quiltalong. I'm feeling like everybody is enjoying a bit of a slower pace, so perhaps that part is okay. This report, on the other hand, is definitely not okay.

Also, I wanted to share with you all something I read recently in The Globe and Mail. A woman wrote an essay about how she made a quilt out of old t-shirts, so that she could preserve the memories they carried, in the same way memories were captured by the fabrics in quilts made by her mother. And the end of the essay, she speaks sadly about her impression that quilting is a craft that is dying out. "Unless I am mistaken," she writes, "there are no young quilters." I can hear you laughing from here. Go read her essay - although she is definitely mistaken about the presence of young women in our vibrant quilting world, her piece about the emotional resonance of quilts is very touching and right on the button.

The Naked Bed Challenge

2011-05-28T18:34:00.003-04:00

I have something new to show, friends - my entry in the Naked Bed Challenge hosted by Sarah Fielke. The idea is that you have to make a new quilt for your own bed by June 2 (thank goodness the top is sufficient - there's no way I could get this quilted by then!) I decided to make this one here.

This quilt is from the book by Sharon Sebrow, Kaleidoscope: The Smart Way. I used the SmartPlate ruler, which I have blogged about previously (here is a tutorial on how to use it, and here is the post where I showed the first quilt I made with it). The quilt is a combination of a churn dash block and a kaleidoscope block - very simple, but way more than the sum of its parts! The fabric is Greenfield Hill by Denyse Schmidt, in the red and blue colourways. This was not a popular line, but I really like it. I knew I wanted to make something out of it, and I only love this line more now that I have.

The only thing that is kind of wonky about this quilt is the way that the blades of the kaleidoscope blocks are kind of off-kilter where they meet their match in the blocks with the churn dash. This is due to the way the ruler is used to make the kaleido blocks from pinwheels. It doesn't make me crazy, although they do look a bit drunk, the way some of the prints look tilted. Look at the first one one the left, top row - see how the checkers are oriented one way in the churn dash block but just rotated a bit in the blades of the kaleido block? Also, you can see in the photo below where I screwed up by switching pieces on two of the blocks - they are both dark blue so it isn't too obvious (the two blocks on the far right, 2nd and 3rd rows). I didn't see it until it was too late to fix it without a major overhaul.

And here's how it will ultimately end up - naked no more!

Edited to add: Winner! Ding ding ding!

Quilters are Animal Lovers

2011-05-27T09:28:00.000-04:00

Oh my word - this is the best giveaway I ever did. The stories that you all left for me about your pets were the funniest, sweetest, and saddest stories I've ever read. It is clear that quilters are big animal lovers! Do yourself a favour and go back to my last post and read the comments, and you'll see what I mean. The winner of the fat-eighth bundle is Molly at BaileyGirl5, and here is her story:

And because it was so very engrossing to read these stories, I'm going to send a bit of swag to two more commenters: Kelsey and Dara. It will be pot luck, ladies - I'm going to dig into my stash and find some bits and pieces to send you.

Thanks for entering, everybody! Now go and hug your dog or cat (or bird or hamster....)!

Helping at Home

2011-05-24T08:10:00.002-04:00

DSCN0704, originally uploaded by Jennifer Can Quilt.

Folks, Mother Nature is pretty riled up these days. On the news we have seen the results of earthquakes and tusnamis half the world away, and our compassion has stirred many of us to give, to help alleviate the suffering. But let's not forget that our friends here and our neighbours to the south are also getting hit hard. Here in Canada, we have the Manitoba and Quebec floods and the fires in Alberta. In the US, tornados have devastated communities across the South, with loss of life and destruction of property. (I heard on the CBC report a couple of weeks ago, after the tornados in Georgia, that quilts were found miles away from where they had come from - another reason to label your quilts). My friend, Jennifer, has written a heartfelt plea for people to donate money, time or blood to the American Red Cross to help with this latest tornado disaster in Joplin. If you donate, you can enter the giveaway for the gorgeous quilt she is holding in this photo. Read her blog post here and give what you can. (Note to Canadian friends: the American Red Cross website appears to accept only online donations from American credit cards. But if you are feeling you have it in you to give, the Canadian Red Cross has current appeals for the Manitoba and Quebec floods, as well as the Slave Lake fires.)

Short and sweet Victoria Day post

2011-05-23T01:00:00.001-04:00

I missed the sign-up for Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day this spring. I intended to do it, but with all the things going on right now, it just slipped past me. But that's okay. I do have something to give away, to mark Victoria Day, and also the amazing fact that I now have 200 followers on my blog! I am very grateful to all those of you who read my blog and leave me such lovely comments. You are all wonderful, and I never write a post without finding at least one comment that touches me in some way. I've hosted several giveaways in the past. I've always resisted making people become followers to get more chances to win. So I feel very honoured that those 200 people pressed the Follow button because they liked what they read rather than to increase their odds of winning a few FQs.

Today's giveaway is a fat-eighth bundle of Maison de Garance by French General. I realized that, after making one quilt with this line, as gorgeous as it is, I'm not likely to make another one - there are just too many new fabrics to play with. I've been been planning to give it away, and today is the day! It's hard to see the fabrics when they are all bundled up like this, but here is the quilt that I made with a couple of charm packs. You can click through to Flickr to see more.

To have a chance at this bundle, please leave me a comment with a crazy or touching pet story. I'll make the draw soon, on Thursday the 26th.

Organizing the Ogees

2011-05-22T11:12:00.000-04:00

We have had three nice days in a row here in eastern Ontario - our spring has been very slow to catch on here! I haven't broken out the flipflops yet - and since the weather man is talking about rain through the weekend, it won't be this week either.

If you are super-organized, you have managed to complete all your cutting for the quiltalong, and if you are merely human, you are somewhere along the way. I hope you are excited about starting to stitch! But before we begin to sew, we have to spend some time thinking about the layout. This is one of those quilts where the main motif (the ogee) cannot be constructed without involving bits from connecting motifs - to make the top of one ogee you are at the same time making the bottom of another ogee. In other words, you can't sew just one at a time. What this means at this stage of the game is that you need to figure out the layout of the whole quilt top before you sew a single seam.

The easiest way to do the layout is to throw all the pieces up on the design wall that you have permanently attached to the wall right beside your sewing machine, organize them into the layout you like best; after you sew each seam you can put them back onto the design wall and keep everything organized. What's that you say? You don't have a design wall permanently affixed beside your sewing machine? Then this post is for you!

First, take all the little scraps that I told you to save in the last post. (If you haven't yet done your cutting, save small scraps of each fabric about an inch square or so). Tape or glue each scrap to a piece of paper and number each scrap from one to twenty.

Next, take the 32 large squares that you cut and lay them out on a table or other workspace. If you look at the layout diagram on page 3 of the pattern, you can see that the pattern has five rows of four complete ogees and four rows of three complete ogees. These complete ogees are bordered by half-ogees all the way around. So to figure out your fabric layout in a constrained space, we can work with the large squares only, to give us an idea of how the fabrics will work together. Lay them out offset in rows of four and three. Try to lay them out so that the squares (which will be the centres of the ogees) have neighbours that are not too similar in colour or value. I'm sorry that my table is in the same colour family as these fabrics - it's difficult to see some of them.

Place the rectangles around the sides on the rows with three squares - these are the half-ogees, so you will have to leave a little space on the sides (but not on the top and bottom), as I have done in the photo below. Keep looking at the layout diagram on page 3 and you will see what I mean.

Now, take the diagram on page three of the pattern and, cross-referencing the key you made with your fabric scraps, transfer the layout from your table onto the diagram via the numbers of each fabric.

This is now your guide to assembling the quilt top, so you don't need to keep the individual pieces out on the table or on a design wall. Here's the one I made for my first ogee quilt. It will be your guide to piecing the fabric you need for the curved seams. Keep it in a safe place for the next week or so while we practice sewing curved seams!

Coming soon:

This weekend just past I made an instructional video about sewing curved seams without pins! I'll be posting that next week.

Also - the Blogger's Quilt Festival starts on Friday! I hope you will all join in the fun! This will be my third one, and I will enter Miss March, since it is my latest finished quilt and the one I a still most in love with.

Time to start sewing those curves!

2011-05-22T09:44:00.006-04:00

I know that not everyone has finished their cutting, but I'm going to keep more or less to schedule and post today about sewing the curved seams. That is the first step in assembling the quilt top. However, since the curved seams are what brings trepidation to the souls of many, my suggestion is that we take some time to practice sewing these curves before we commit to putting our special fabric under the needle. After all, it took so long to mark those templates and cut out all those pieces - am I right? - that we want to feel confident before we start sewing them up. Here are some Drunkard's Path blocks I made to sharpen up my curved seam sewing before embarking on my second ogee quilt.

Last week I made a video about how I sew curved seams without pins. It was my first video ever, and I did it several times before I felt like it was good enough to post. Without too much rabbiting on by yours truly, and with a decent view of what was actually happening under the needle. I uploaded it to Vimeo and when I watched it afterwards it was completely sideways! I was mortified! And despite all my research to this end, I couldn't figure out how to rotate it so that it would play with the proper orientation. I was resigned to making another video, but in accordance with Murphy's Law, my camera took that moment to lose the spring on the slot that holds the memory card. This meant that the card wouldn't click into place, making the camera unusable. So I took my still-under-warranty camera in for service - which means I can't make another video to demonstrate pinless curved seams.

So! I am uploading the sideways vid. If you have a laptop you can hold it sideways or prop it on its side with a can of peas. If you are watching on a desktop, I suggest you lie on the couch, or perhaps channel your elementary school self and sprawl on your table with your head on your arm, the way we used to do in school when the teacher was reading aloud. That will give you a good angle on this video.

Untitled from L Woolley on Vimeo.

What I didn't say in this video is that there are times when things will go off the rails and you make a dog's breakfast of a particular seam. No fear - just employ your reverse sewing skills with your seam ripper and start over. As my mother used to say - as long as you don't cut anything, you can always fix your mistakes.
There are a number of videos on the internet that show you how to sew curves using pins. I don't use pins on curves because I think they give you a false sense of security, and they cause more problems than they solve. I find they are awkward on small pieces of fabric (perhaps the small applique pins would work here, but I don't have any of those), and I don't want to have to stop a million times to remove pins as I sew. Also, if you pin the pieces together, you are necessarily going to have the pinned seam curl up on itself as you are sewing, and I find that makes it awkward to see what is going on under the needle. Finally, I prick myself with the pins and pins fall out onto the carpet, never to be seen again (until they are stepped on) and that just makes me cranky. However, if you do choose to go with pins, then carefully place pins at both end of the seam. Match the centre points that you marked when you cut from the template and place a pin there. Then place pins along the remaining edge, distributing the fabric evenly. Place the pins perpendicular to the seam line with the pin heads to the right - this will make it easier to remove them as you sew.

I suggest that you cut some pieces from scrap and trace Template A and B on them, and then practice sewing these curves. I used a small Drunkard's Path template for my practicing, which is similar, but does not mark the curve from corner to corner, as is the case with the ogee blocks. Be courageous! Since you're practicing on scraps, you have nothing to lose. I encourage you to try the no-pins approach, but pins or pin-free, you will soon find that you feel like sewing curves is a breeze!

And if you want to join the Ogee/Curlicue Quiltalong, you can jump in at any time. All the posts will be here.

Also! What? Yikes! I have 200 followers! You are all awesome! And to celebrate I will have a spontaneous giveaway of fat-eighth bundle of Maison de Garance! But not today. Tomorrow! Come back tomorrow and leave your comment on tomorrow's post! (Huh. I guess that's not so spontaneous.)

EPP Diamonds update

2011-05-19T18:21:00.002-04:00

EPP Diamonds update, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

I don't know why I feel compelled to have he first words out of my (virtual) mouth be "Please overlook my bad housekeeping" - nevertheless, please do!

Because it has gotten so big, I couldn't find a better place to lay out my English paper-pieced diamonds in order to snap an update photo. I started working on this in the middle of August of last year. They are made using 1.5" plastic templates (I use Quilt Patis brand). I have enough diamonds cut to extend it probably one side's worth of diamonds and then I'm going to stop and turn my hand to finishing the quilt. Jessica said she appliques the pointy edges of the diamonds to a piece of fabric with a straight edge that you can then put a binding on. Sounds good to me, but it's going to be a lot of hand sewing! I'd better get to it - I'd love to have it done before August rolls around, but I think that's unlikely!

To see more EPP diamonds, check out our Flickr group here!

She finally decided

2011-05-16T09:23:00.002-04:00

She finally decided, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

It is a very happy day here, since, after weeks of agonizing, my daughter has finally decided in favour of McGill University in Montreal, the most beautiful city in North America (and thankfully, only a three-hour train ride away). My husband and I are both alums of McGill, so we are thrilled that she has chosen to wear "the red and white sweater, the dirtier the better"!

Let's fade out with a rousing chorus of the song by E. Wallace Willard Jr. (Arts, 1923).

When James McGill set out to found a university
He often used to wonder what sort of place 'twould be
But when he reasoned to himself within his heart of hearts
He knew the proudest place would be the Faculty of Arts
Arts, Arts, a wonderful place is Arts.
So banish cares and troubles 'til the dawning.
We shall pass the bowl along and we'll sing a joyous song,
'Cause we don't get up for classes in the morning!

Bloggers' Quilt Festival Entry - Spring 2011

2011-05-13T13:06:00.002-04:00

My regular readers may say ho-hum when they see this post, since I wrote about this quilt when I finished it just a week or so ago. But I am so in love with it that I knew it had to be my entry into the Blogger’s Quilt Festival this spring.

The name of this quilt is Miss March. March 2010 was my month for sending out fabric to the ladies in the Modern Tradition Quilt Bee. I sent everyone a bunch of fabric in two different colourways and asked for two monochromatic blocks.

The pattern is based on a traditional one – I found it here – which is made with 2.5” strips of different lengths surrounding a centre square. I wanted to update it a bit and also to allow my bee buddies to have scope for their imagination. So I asked them to use the teal square in the centre, but to have a party in the coloured bits.

I was so excited by what they did! One of the blocks has some tiny four-patch mini-blocks that measure 2.5”. One is made entirely of half-square triangles.

One has large panels made of improv/crazy piecing.

Some are made entirely from strips, some are made entirely from squares, and some are an energetic mixture of both!

The talents of all these bee quilters were really in evidence – I was thrilled. And fortunately I also had help with the assembly of all the blocks.

I used Essex linen-cotton blend in Putty for the background. It was okay for piecing, but when it came to quilting it stretched like a fiend. I like the contrast in colour and texture with the background and the flowers.

I chose this pretty Tina Givens print for the back. I think it’s perfect!

And to add to the excitement that I feel over this quilt, it is also the first time I have ever tried to do an actual motif-doodah in my FMQ. Normally, I do variations of an allover, more or less swirly quilting meander. But this time I knew that those large spaces left by the linen called out for something special.

I used, more or less successfully, a kind of flower motif that looks like some kind of chrysanthemum on steroids. Thankfully, once the quilt was washed, it became harder to see that some of those flowers looked like hamsters after a binge weekend. Overall, though, I was pleased with the quilting and am encouraged to continue to challenge myself in that domain.

This one is going on my bed. I’m glad to have a new quilt to replace the one I’ve been using for so many years – I made it when I was pregnant with my daughter in 1993! After all those years of wear, including two sets of two dogs who loved to lounge on it, it was ready to retire. Miss March is a worthy replacement!

I’m glad to have the chance to feature this in Amy’s Blogger’s Quilt Festival. I’m excited to see what everyone else is showing this time!

Ogee Quiltalong: Cutting

2011-05-05T20:40:00.003-04:00

I love the fabric choices that folks have posted in the Flickr group so far! If you are quilting along, I encourage you to post photos of your fabric. If you don't do Flickr but have photos on a blog, let me know in a comment so I can link up and share with the other QAL-ers. Now it's time to get cutting!

EDITED TO ADD: This is very important, folks! When you are printing your .pdf pattern, make sure it does not scale the pattern to fit the page (there is usually a check box asking if you want this in the printing process - on some printers it is the default to be selected. Deselect it, if this is the case for your printer.) Template A and Template B on the pattern must fit the small squares that you cut in step 3 below. If you do not follow these instructions, your A and B pieces will be too small!

It's a bit tricky; since this is a proprietary pattern, it would be very poor form for me to post photos that would make it possible for people to easily make he quilt without buying the pattern. So the photos I am showing here are necessarily a bit abbreviated, but I think they will help with the points I want to make.

First, I want to say that the instructions in Rebecca's pattern are very good, so if you follow them to the letter, you won't go wrong. However, you should know that this is definitely the time to apply the rule "measure twice, cut once". If you make a mistake in your cutting, and if you are cutting from fat quarters with no backup yardage, you are SOL. Not to scare you, or anything, ha ha. So in this post, I want to point out some things to look for so you don't go wrong.

1. As I said in a previous post, begin by measuring your FQs. Different shops are more or less generous in their cutting. A stingy FQ will be 18" on the short side. I am using a Kona solid bundle and these FQs are very stingy: not a hair over 18". This means I have very little scope for straightening up the cut, since the calculated waste on the 18" side is only 1/2". If you have more generous FQs, you can breathe a bit more freely.
2. You want to begin by cutting 1 wide strip and 3 narrow strips from each FQ (the width dimensions of the strips are in the pattern). The FQ will be 18" x 20-22". Make sure you cut the strips so that they are 20-22" long. If you cut them 18" long you will not have enough fabric. In this picture I have the ruler along the 20" side.

3. Subcut the strips into the pieces that are marked on the pattern. You will end up with 17 small squares and 2 large squares. Here you can see the waste from the 18" side when cutting the strips: that 1/2" strip on the right side of the cutting mat.

4. After I cut each FQ, I am keeping the pieces together in a plastic sandwich bag. (The reason I am doing this is that some of the Kona solids are very similar in colour, and I don't want to get them mixed up. If your fabrics aren't too similar, keeping them in separate bags isn't really necessary.) NOTE: From a piece of the waste fabric, cut a small swatch and keep it safe. You will use this when you are planning the layout of the quilt. This is not in the pattern, but it is something that I found extremely helpful when I made my first Ogee quilt, since I don't have a design wall that I can leave up for extended periods. Here you can see the the size of swatch I have preserved. I keep it in the plastic bag with the other pieces from the FQ.

5. The pattern provides two templates for you to use to cut the curved pieces. I used some Dritz template plastic to trace the pattern pieces onto with a smudge-proof pen.
This plastic is fairly thick and I like it, but any reasonably stiff plastic or even cardboard can be used. When you cut the templates out, be sure and transfer the marks at the centre of the curve onto the template with a pen. Cut them carefully out with scissors.

6. Fit one of the curved templates onto one of small squares that you cut from the FQ, and trace around with a sharp pencil. I used a regular mechanical pencil when I made my first Ogee quilt, but I am using this Sewline fabric pencil with white lead for this one, since so many of my fabrics are dark.

The pattern will tell you how many of Template A and Template B to cut from each FQ (see Step 3 on the pattern). Be sure and mark the centre point of the curve.

7. Cut along the marked line carefully. Here's what you will have after you have cut out one Template A and one Template B. I pitch the leftover from Template A (marked "Waste"). I save the segment that remains after cutting Template B - marked "Save?" - the question mark means that it's up to you to save or not. It is not required for the Ogee/Curlicue pattern, but I think you could probably do something interesting with them. You will have a lot of them when everything is cut out.

8. After your initial cutting of the strips into squares, you will have 2 large squares from each FQ. Since the pattern calls for 20 FQs, you will have 40 large squares in total. Pick 32 of these for the main ogees in the pattern. Step 4 of the pattern says to trim each of these 32 large squares down to slightly smaller squares (see the Step 4 of the pattern for the precise dimension). Of the remaining 8 large squares, pick one for your corners and set it aside. NOTE: This next bit is where I started off wrong when I made the pattern the first time. With the remaining 7 squares, trim ONE SIDE ONLY - the pattern will tell you how much (I went hog wild and continued to trim on both sides, because I didn't read the pattern carefully). At that point, cut that piece in half to form two equal rectangles (again, the precise dimensions are in Step 4 of the pattern). In the photo below, you can see what happens to the two large squares of a FQ: the one on top will be one of the 32 main ogees and has been trimmed to a slightly smaller square. The one on the bottom has been trimmed on one side only, and then bisected into two rectangles. The photo looks elongated because I was at an angle - sorry!

9. The last large square that you set aside in that FQ will be cut into four equal squares - the pattern will tell you the exact dimensions (see Step 6). These will be the corners of your quilt top. No photo for this step.
Done! Phew! Have fun cutting! And don't forget to post photos if you haven't already!

And if you aren't quilting along but you read through this entire post, here is your reward:

I'm too sexy for my quilt

2011-04-27T14:31:00.004-04:00

To be fair, I think my quilt is too sexy for me - introducing Miss March!

I made this quilt as part of the Modern Tradition Quilt Bee last year.

Blocks for this quilt were made by women all over North America and the UK.

I used as a model the traditional block Granny's Flower Garden from Quilter's Cache, but I encouraged everyone to use the dimensions as engraved in stone, but to go wild in how they used fabric to create the 14" block.

Sometimes people used individual 2.5" squares, sometimes they used strips. One person made mini-four-patches that measured 2.5". I made one block entirely from HSTs, and another that was pieced in crazy-quilt style..

I used Essex linen-cotton blend for the setting blocks. It was fine to piece, but it stretched like crazy in the quilting. There are definitely some bumpy bits.

I am proud of this quilt because this is the first time I was courageous enough to break out of my stippling rut in my FMQ work. It was a real chore to quilt this because it was so heavy! But I'm very happy with it.

The back is a nice Tina Givens print that I think goes perfectly. The batting is a bamboo/cotton blend.

Here she is in all her glory! I call her Miss March because that was my month in the bee. I think she's sexier than any centrefold! Many, many thanks to Melissa, Lydia, Greta, Sherri, Sandra, Heather, Norma, Rachel, and Leanne! You are all so creative and it was such a pleasure to work with you!

Because I'm Too Sexy by Right Said Fred has been running through my head ever since I wrote the title of this post, I'm determined to share the pain with you. Remember this one-hit wonder from the early 90s? He is definitely not sexy enough for Miss March!

Edited to link this up to Amy's Friday Sew-n-tell and Lynne's Fresh Sewing Day!

Getting started!

2011-04-27T08:58:00.002-04:00

Time to begin our quiltalong! At the end of the post I'll set out the schedule that I hope to maintain. I hope you've had a chance to think about the fabrics you'd like to use for your ogees. I wanted to make a few observations about fabric and how it works with this pattern. When I made my first ogee quilt, I pulled a whole bunch of fabrics for consideration. I started with a fat quarter bundle of Sugar Pop in the pink/orange/purple colourway, which comprised eight different prints, and I pulled from my stash to supplement those. Here are the eight Sugar Pop prints.

You can see that on balance, they are all pretty light, so I went looking for some darker ones. Here is a photo of my selection process.

I tried to get a range of values from light to dark. A black and white photo helped me ignore the actual colours and see the values more clearly. Overall, I think I did an okay job picking fabrics. I'm not trained in art of any kind, so I really learn as I go and, unfortunately, too many of the lessons are learned after the fact! Here's what I learned in making this quilt.
First, directional fabrics. Unless you are possessed of amazing spatial sense and intense determination, you will likely get directional fabrics oriented every which way. I knew this would happen to me, so I limited my directional fabrics to small prints, like this one. See how the lines in this print are perpendicular to each other, rather than all going the same direction? I am okay with that since the print is small - I would be annoyed if it were bigger.

I was also surprised when I realized that some prints were actually directional, when I didn't realize they were. For example, this Hope Valley. See how the diamonds point east-west in part of the ogee but north-south in another?

Even this one is directional, although it doesn't show so well in this photo. But the name of the print is Oval Elements, so that is enough to tell you that it is directional.

Second, large-scale prints. Strictly speaking, these are also directional, but I think the important design element here is how sparse the main figures are; this has a bearing on how coherent the ogees look. For example, here are two ogees where the print is quite dense - I think this obscures the joins where the parts of the ogee come together and makes them look quite tight and coherent.

On the other hand, here are a couple of examples where the main figures on the prints are quite sparse. I think that, with these prints, the way the pattern is broken up makes the joins in the different parts of the ogees more obvious, and it looks less tight and coherent.

Third, solids. In my initial fabric pull, I had included a Kona solid purple, but a number of readers commented that it didn't look right to have a single solid in with all the prints. I agreed that something didn't look quite right. I replaced it with two fabrics that were looked like hand-dyed solids. They weren't, but they had a bit of visual texture while retaining the essence of a solid. This gave them enough action that they went well with the prints, while the Kona solid was too flat all by itself. I think they looked fantastic. I didn't take individual photos of these, but you can see the orange solid at the left of the first photo below, and the purple solid that was the poverty piece in the second photo. (As to that poverty piece, this is what happens when you don't ensure your fat quarter is big enough, as I mentioned in my previous post.)

I am picking on individual prints here, and showing you individual ogees to make my points. So here is the whole quilt again, so you can see what I mean when I talk about "more" and "less" coherent, tight or successful ogees. Go and look at other quilts made using this pattern to see if these principles also apply here, here and here - I think they do. I lack the technical vocabulary, so I hope this all makes sense. When I look at the quilt as a whole, and I consider my fabric choices, I feel that I was still a bit heavy on the lights, and I could have used another dark or two. This is descending to the level of the ultimate picayune, as my mother would say, because on balance I think the quilt works very well and I love it dearly.

So! The schedule! Here's what I have planned.
Finish cutting by Friday, May 6 (I will have a very short cutting post for you later today, so I suggest you wait for that - I made a cutting error that led me to another poverty patch when I made this pattern the first time.)
Decide on layout and prepare work sheet (for those of you who do not have permanent design walls, like me) by the following week, ending May 13
Practice sewing curves on scraps, week ending May 20 (I may have a plan for a mini-project based on your successful scrap curves - stay tuned.)
Piecing frenzy for two weeks, ending June 3 with a completed quilt top!!!

I'm excited! Don't forget to join the Flickr group and post your fabric for us to ooh and ahh over and to provide advice if desired. And, of course, you can join the QAL at any time.

Recent events

2011-04-26T16:33:00.007-04:00

I am a terrible hostess, I'm afraid, to start up a quiltalong and then vanish from the scene. I managed to draw the winners for the pattern giveaway and then notify the winners and post their names, but behind the scenes I was frantically involved in sad family affairs. Let me back up, though. On April 11, my husband and I celebrated our silver anniversary. Here is a photo of us on our wedding day. We are neither as slim nor as young today as we were then, alas!

But it was not the only silver anniversary that I celebrated that day. I also marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of my relationship with this woman, shown here on her wedding day in 1948. My mother-in-law, Freda. A widow for 23 years, Freda was greatly loved by all her knew her. She was a tiny woman, probably 90 lbs soaking wet, but full of life and always youthful in her outlook and understanding, a model of generosity and compassion.

Freda passed away a few days ago, at the age of 84. I mention this on my blog because I want to tell two stories. The first story is more on the order of a public service announcement. Freda ended up in hospital because we observed in her an extremely rapid cognitive decline. Ten weeks ago, she was a woman who was living alone, driving, managing capably in an independent capacity, maintaining active friendships, and with sharp awareness of world events, current movies, etc. Over that time, she showed increasingly accelerated confusion, with memory loss and anxiety. She forgot how to work her radio and television. She could not remember what her medications were. She repeated herself over and over. Of course, we thought it was Alzheimers or another kind of dementia. Now, although age-related dementia is not uncommon in the elderly, it does not typically progress with such speed. I won't tell you all the ins and outs of our medical odyssey, but to say this: a week ago yesterday we took her to emergency, and the result of their assessments showed that her sodium and potassium levels were very low. Apparently her blood pressure medication, hydrochlorothiazide, had leached these chemicals from her blood. And one consequence of low sodium can be cognitive impairment. As they adjusted the sodium and potassium levels, we saw our dear mother, mother-in-law and grandmother begin to return to us, and we saw her personality and spirit return. Alas, other medical issues coalesced to cause her to falter and fail, and we lost her. I am not a medical doctor, so any advice I give on this topic is worth as much as any other rambling on the internet, but I will say this anyway: what I learned from this is that old age may cause mental decline, but mental decline is not necessarily due to simple old age, and I would urge those of you with elderly parents to keep this in mind and keep an eye on their blood pressure meds.

When I re-started my quilting career after my 15 year hiatus, the first thing I did was to finish a project my mother had left in progress when she passed in 2008. The second thing I did was make this lap quilt for Freda. Here she is when I gave it to her. She loved bright colours.

The second story I want to tell is about something that happened at her funeral on Sunday. Shortly before the actual service, my daughter and I made a quick trip to the washroom - we thought we should do that before people began to arrive. We left my husband alone and promised we would be right back. As we were leaving the washroom, an elderly woman entered, holding the door open to admit an even older woman, moving very slowly with the aid of a walker - neither of these women were known to me. The first woman asked me if I was there for Freda's funeral, and I said I was. She said she was concerned about her children who were driving to Montreal from Toronto, had I seen them yet? She was flustered, and she asked me to take care of her friend while she went to see if they had arrived. Without waiting for an answer, she left. I checked that the disabled stall was free, and I helped the second lady off with her coat. She moved slowly into the stall. I checked my watch. I realized that, unless Lady #1 returned, I would need to wait until Lady #2 was finished to help her with her coat, etc. I was concerned about leaving my husband, who has no brothers or sisters, to receive the mourners on his own, but I felt obliged to remain. And it soon became clear that she needed even more assistance from me. As I helped this stranger with her undergarments, I found myself becoming furious at Lady #1. How dare she burden me with this woman, when my place was by my husband helping him? All the while Lady #2 was telling me I was a nice lady, a good lady, to help her. I made meaningless replies. "It's my pleasure," I said, checking my watch surreptitiously. She needed a new pair of Depends. I got one out of her bag and looked for a place to dispose of the old ones. "Again I'll say you're a nice lady." Anyone would help, I said, deflecting her thanks. "Don't say that," she replied, "they wouldn't. I'll tell you one thing: Freda would have helped." It stopped me in my tracks; I felt humbled and grateful for the comparison, and guilty for my grudging heart. At that moment, nothing was more important to me than giving chesed, or lovingkindness, to this stranger. "How did you know Freda?" she asked. "I'm her daughter-in-law," I said, already in tears. "I should have known," she smiled at me. As I was helping her out of the stall, Lady #1 returned to claim her friend and I rushed to return to my husband. While I smile now at the odd situation I found myself in, I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to perform that small mitzvah, and the fact that a stranger deemed me worthy of being classed with my dear Freda, may she rest in peace, will always be a great comfort to me.

My next post - soon - will be about the quiltalong. And if it is ever good weather again, I will show you photos of the completed Miss March, which is as beautiful as any centrefold!

Ogee/Curlicue Pattern Winners!

2011-04-23T11:19:00.000-04:00

We have three winners for the Ogee/Curlicue pattern for the QAL kickoff! Congratulations to Deb, Janet and two hippos! I have sent your emails to Rebecca, the pattern designer, and she will let you know the process of downloading the pattern.

Even if you didn't win a copy of the pattern from me, I hope you'll still consider investing $10 (no shipping charges since it is a download from Rebecca's shop) and quilting along. I thought I would close this post by showing you a photo of the photos I am going to be using. I am making this quilt for a friend, who wants to give it to her daughter when she goes away to university in the fall. She chose a bundle of Kona cotton solids in the Hot Spice colourway. I took this photo inside so the colours look a bit wonky. I'll try for a better shot soon.

If you are thinking about using a bundle of precut fabric, here is an important tip: Measure your fat quarters so you know how careful you have to be. The layout in the pattern will give you a mere 1/2" of waste on the short side. In other words, if the short side of your FQ is 18"precisely, as is the case with the Kona solids bundle, then I suggest you do not prewash your fabric, as it could conceivably shrink too much, if you also need to trim slightly to square up the fabric. When I made my first one, I did not measure, I prewashed, and I cut too generously to true up the fabric before cutting the pieces. I ended up having to be creative and patch with a different fabric. I was used to ordering from a shop that cut FQs generously, and I just blithely sailed in thinking I would have loads. Just a word to the wise!

Ogee/Curlicue Quiltalong and Pattern Giveaway!

2011-04-14T07:58:00.005-04:00

I’m excited that people want to quilt along with me to make an Ogee (aka Curlicue) quilt! The first step in quilting along is to acquire the pattern; you won't be able to follow along without it. As I mentioned last time, I know that lots of folks may already have it (although I haven't seen many quilts made up from it yet - I have been given permission to show the two I have seen - besides Rebecca's original and mine - here in this post).

Rebecca Johnson's original

If not, you can buy it for a very reasonable price at Rebecca’s online shop. For me, the best thing about buying from her shop is that the pattern is available via download – it comes in a .pdf file that you can print out, or just read on your iPad immediately, with no need to watch the mailbox.

Made by Penny at sewtakeahike.

Because she is the sweetest lady in the southern hemisphere, Rebecca is donating three copies of the pattern for a giveaway to inaugurate the quiltalong! She is excited to see all the new versions of her quilt that we will be creating! I'll leave the giveaway open until April 22, when the Passover seders are over, then I'll draw the names of the winners. In the meantime, think about what fabrics you want to use!

I am walking on air because I managed to create my very own button for the QAL - you can find it over on the right panel of my blog, and I am attempting to embed it in this post, as well. Html and I are only nodding acquaintances at the very best, so I'm counting this as a real victory. You can grab the code if you would like to add the button to your blog. I also started a Flickr group, where we can post photos of fabric selection and ongoing progress. etc. So if you are going to quilt along, go over and join the Flickr group.

Made by quiltjane

I am going to use about six weeks to conduct the quiltalong. Of course you can join at any time and progress at your own pace, but I am trying to get mine completed before high school graduation. I am going to lead you along the path that worked for me when I made the pattern the first time, and I will point out some errors that I made, to save you from falling in those particular pits. Of course, I can't promise we won't discover new ones! Here is a rough outline:

Week 1 Materials needed, thoughts of fabric selection, things to consider in fabric layout (e.g., what counts as directional fabric - you will be surprised)
Week 2 Cutting - fun adventures with templates
Week 3 How to keep track of what pieces go with what if you don't have a design wall (I don't)
Week 4 Practice week for curves - sewing scraps both with pins and without pins (my favourite)
Week 5 Piecing frenzy!
Week 6 Piecing frenzy concludes with finished quilt top
Throughout: Plenty of encouragement and camaraderie!

Mine!

So without further ado, let's proceed to the giveaway! To qualify for a chance at one of the patterns, leave me a comment telling me what fabric line or colours you would choose for this quilt. I will choose three winners at random on April 22. I can't emphasize strongly enough that if you are a no-reply blogger, I probably cannot contact you if you are a winner. (I really blame Blogger for not making this clear to people - I am sure most no-reply bloggers think they are not, since they have to enter their email address whenever they leave a comment.) Also, if you are a blogger intending to quilt along, please leave your blog title in the comment and I will assemble a blog roll for the sidebar.

Care to Quilt Along?

2011-04-10T13:25:00.002-04:00

Remember this quilt?

I had a great time making it, so much fun that I agreed to make it again. This time it's going to be for a friend's daughter who will be starting university in the fall; she wants her daughter to have a cuddly quilt to keep her warm in her new home in Toronto. I'm going to be making it in solids, this time. I'm using the Kauffman Kona Solids bundle in Hot Spice.

Want to quilt along with me? The quilt is made from the pattern Curlicue by Rebecca Johnson of Chasing Cottons. I know that many recent giveaways have featured this quilt, and I think it was a signing bonus with Fat Quarterly a few months ago. I figure there may be a few folks out there who have bought or won the pattern, but haven't worked up the courage to venture into Curved Seams Land. If that's you, maybe you want to come along with me as I make this quilt for the second time. It's really much, much easier than it looks.

Here are some things you might want to know before you make up your mind to quilt along:
You would have to buy the pattern from Rebecca at her website - it is a downloadable .pdf so no waiting for the mailman!
The pattern requires 20 fat quarters (plus fabric for the backing and binding).
The quilt finishes at 48" x 55", but you could add a border, if you wanted it to be larger, I suppose.
Although I have a special presser foot for curves, you really don't need one.
I plan to start this quiltalong, if there is any interest, in two or three weeks, once Passover is behind us.

What do you think? Any takers?

One step closer and a plug

2011-04-10T09:24:00.002-04:00

I've taken one step closer to completing these giant Dresden plates that are part of Lynne's QAL. The large circles are pieced into the yellow background, and the purple circles are pieced into the centre of the wheels.

I was a bit apprehensive about how that was going to work out, but it seemed to go pretty well. More or less - I've got to be truthful and say that these large squares - 30" - are just as floppy as all get-out. The technique that we're using for this QAL is quilt-as-you-go, so I'm hoping that the wonkiness can be beaten into submission in the quilting process.

I don't know if I would do Dresdens again with this method, but I am enjoying it pretty well this go-round.

Someone on Flickr said this photo looked like big, googly owl eyes - I completely agree!

My other project this weekend is quilting Miss March. Do you remember this quilt? It was pieced about a year ago, as my month in the Modern Tradition Quilt Bee, and I'm finally getting around to quilting it. As it appears that spring may actually be here, it will soon be time to take the down duvet off the bed. The quilts that we have been using on our own bed are showing their age, and I have always planned this one as a replacement.

I'm branching out from the all-over loopy quilting that I usually do, and challenging myself to try something a bit different. I'm doing a kind of flower motif on each of the blocks.

It's not perfect by any means, but I figured I need to break out of the rut and start to develop some better FMQ skills. This quilt may not have been the very best to practice on, since it is so big and bulky, but those blank spots formed by the linen strips really called out for some kind of fancy-pants quilting. And is it ever HEAVY! That linen really weighs a ton. And it is a bit stretchy, so that has been another quilting challenge. Oh well. As always, I place my faith in the magic of washing and drying to hide the multitude of sins.

And now time for the plug: Rebecca over at Chasing Cottons is running a 12-week series called Quilt Class 101. Rebecca is the designer of some great patterns, including the one I used to make I Dream of Ogeenie. She is a very enthusiastic and supportive, and if any of my readers are new to quilting, I think this would be a good series of blog posts to keep track of and follow along. She's also having lots of giveaways because she has some great sponsors. Rebecca is very enthusiastic and supportive, and I think her program is going to be a lot of fun. I'm going to be following along, since there are always new tips to learn! I'm a bit late in posting this, so get over there right now and sneak in under the wire for the Week 1 giveaway.
The structure of the series is as follows:

Week 1 - Fabric - Choosing fabric, fabric designers, fabric bundles, Fat Quarters, jelly Rolls etc, Where to buy fabric locally or online overseas, shipping costs.. My favourite online shops etc.

Week 2 - Design - 'Sew as you go' OR the Designer - Using a graph book and planning, no rules.. Books/ blogs/ flickr... all the online sources or inspiration..

Week 3 - Cutting - Tools I use, how to cut your material properly, to wash or not to wash, incorporating seam allowances etc.

Week 4 - Sewing - Your machine, threads, needles, 1/4" foot, seam allowances, joinging seams accurately, pins,

Week 5 - Constructing your Quilt Top - sections etc

Week 6 - Borders - adding borders the correct way,

Week 7 - Batting - The different types and what each one is used for..

Week 8 - Basteing - how to Baste your quilt, spray? Pins? Types of pins? Tape etc..

Week 9 - Quilting by machine - Straight line Quilting, using a guide, free motion quilting, stitching in the ditch etc..

Week 10 - Quilting by hand - Cottons to use, technique, needles, hoops...

Week 11 - Binding - By machine or by hand.. or both.

Week 12 - Quilt block techniques.... This last tutorial will prob run over another 6 week period where i will teach the basics to make various traditional and modern quilt blocks. Sewing curves, 9 Patch, Star/ diamonds, Stack and Slash, Raw edge applique, Needle turn applique, paper piecing, log cabin, spiderblock, 1/2 square triangle etc...

What I did on the weekend.

2011-03-28T17:45:00.000-04:00

Here's what I did this weekend. Finished this HST quilt made from two charm packs of Maison de Garance and Bella Moda Snow.

I really like this block. It looks great both close up and from a distance.

This is not a great photo, but you can see that the back is more French General, either from Rouenneries or Rural Jardin.

Thanks to all who left a comment about their favourite old movie on my giveaway post. Popular favourites included Gone With the Wind, Wizard of Oz, Arsenic and Old Lace. I knew most of the ones that people listed, but there were a few that were unfamiliar to me that I want to check out. Especially one with Myrna Loy and Cary Grant, two excellent comic actors. The first winner chosen by the RNG was Cathy, who owns a fabric store. (Not just any fabric store, but Wondrous Wovens, which provides excellent service, good prices and wide selection. That's where I got my hoard of hard to find Marcia Derse fabrics. Also, Cathy sells all her yardage cut to order, including fat quarters, which is pretty uncommon, as far as I can tell.) In light of her day job she generously declined the fabric pack, so I picked a second winner: Number 43 is Judith! Judith and I obviously share a passion for Paul Newman in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof. Yay, Judith! I'll pop those charms in the mail to you as soon as you send me your details!

Fox!

2011-03-25T09:22:00.003-04:00

Fox!, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

Isn't this the cutest? I am a fiend for foxes. I tested this pattern for Joanna who blogs over at Shape Moth. The pattern is available in her online store for download. Here's a slightly closer view.

Looking at it now, I wish I had used a deeper contrast for the eyes, and I feel that there is even inadequate contrast with the white. But never mind, overall, I love this little fox.
(Edited to add to Amy's Friday Sew and Tell.)

Plates pieced

2011-03-21T17:07:00.004-04:00

Dresden Plates all pieced, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

So the Dresden Plates for the Lily's Quilts QAL are all pieced. I thought this might give a better idea of the scale of these plates. They say that if you are trying to lose weight you should use a dessert plate instead of a dinner plate. Wonder how much you would weigh if you used plates this size? So I'm ready for the next step, which is meant to involve piecing these plates into the frame. Mine are a bit smaller than the standard, and apparently there are quite a few folks whose blocks are not the size to fit neatly into template for the corners. Lynne says she will post directions for drafting our own corners. I will watch and wait - perhaps applique will be the way to go. Stay tuned!

If you like the fabrics I used for these blocks, you may be interested in this pack of 5" charms that I cut as I went along. There are about 25-30 squares here. I cut a pack for myself and a pack to share. Happy to send them out to someone who tells me the name of their favourite old movie - older than 1960 - by Friday the 25th. Mine has got to be Singing in the Rain! I can't the embedding code for this, but go here to see my favourite scene: the dance number with Gene Kelly and Cyd Charisse in that green flapper dress!

Big enough for you?

2011-03-19T17:38:00.002-04:00

Giant Dresden Plate, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

No kidding - this Dresden plate measures about 25" in diameter. Wow! I'm a fan of giant blocks - they come together so fast! Six of these will make a quilt 60 x 90".

A Quiltalong for giants

2011-03-17T09:39:00.004-04:00

Fancy a Quilt-A-Long?, originally uploaded by Lynne @ Lilys Quilts.

I'm not really anti-social, although it seems like I have been, since I have joined in no bees or quiltalongs in 2011. I do enjoy quiltalongs, and I've been keeping my eyes open, but haven't seen anything that really appeals to me. While I really enjoy the camaraderie of working on a project at the same time as many others, I only want to invest the time in something that I think I will really like. (Although I know it can't be the case, I feel like the only person on the planet who doesn't like that Single Girl pattern that is all the rage.) But just recently I read that Lynne at Lily's Quilts is starting a Dresden Plate quiltalong. Normally, I don't like Dresden Plate blocks. But this one won me over because the ends of the blades are flat, rather than round or pointy. I am surprised that this makes such a difference but it does. But what really charges me about this QAL is that the blocks are a honking 30" square. I adore the look of oversized blocks, and I've been longing to make something really GIANT - seems like this will fit the bill. Interestingly, this block has the plate set in to the background rather than appliqued on top. I will wait and see how it goes before I commit to that - I may just fall back on the old-fashioned "stitch it on top" approach if it looks like people are having trouble with the curved seam. Although with I Dream of Ogeenie under my belt, I should be a curved-seam pro.

After working with the subdued tones of Maison de Garance, I am ready for some vibrant colours. Here are the fabrics I've chosen for the QAL. The yellow (Art Gallery Lace Elements) is to be the background. I will either go for a four- (60" square) or six-block (90" square) construction.

If you're interested in Lynne's QAL, visit the Flickr group where folks are posting their fabric choices and find the links to the templates. Some keeners have jumped ahead, but in the main, things haven't really hotted up yet.

Irksome

2011-03-14T16:54:00.000-04:00

A few months ago I was talking to my buddy, Jennifer, and I said that I had discovered the most awesome gadget that had made my hand-sewing life a dream. Of course I was talking about the Clover desktop needle-threader, which I bought in the summer. It sits on the table and you plunk the needle in the little hole on top, eye first, and then press the lever shown here on the right. Some magic occurs inside that little plastic, purple device, because when you take the needle out, there is a little loop of thread stuck through the eye, and you can just pull it through. Not only that, but it has a thread cutter built into the side, which means you don't have to worry if the TSA folks will take your scissors away during airport security checks.

After she finished scoffing at me for being the last person in creation to find out about this, Jennifer agreed that it was a pretty fantastic notion. But, she said, hers only worked about half the time. I was sorry for her, because after months of use, mine worked perfectly all the time. Until, one day, it didn't. I can't explain what happened. It just up and stopped being reliable. I insert the needle, line up the thread, and press the level for all I'm worth, like a dang lab rat trying to release a piece of kibble! I can press the lever 20 times, and on the 21st time, it will thread. Or it might thread perfectly on the first try (although this is increasingly rare). I bought another one when I was in Toronto. It was an utter dud from the start. Then, most recently, when I was cashing in the gift certificate I won from my LQS, I picked up a third one. This time, I got a yellow one to change my luck - the first two were purple. I was blissfully happy with it for about a week. Then it started to fail. Now I have two purple and one yellow Clover desktop threaders sitting on the table by my couch, and I can't rely on a single one of them. What the heck is going on with these things?
I went online to see if I could find anyone else singing the blues, or perhaps someone had posted a tutorial about how to fix their *$&@^%$ Clover threader. But no such luck. I know there is a simple, low-tech answer to this problem: go back to the old-fashioned manual needle-threader where you stick the wiry bit through the eye of the needle to pull the thread through. But I have been so seduced by the ease of the Clover when it works, that I'd love to find a fix. Anyone?

And now for something completely different

2011-03-08T09:46:00.000-05:00

Indeed, this is completely different from the quilt I posted about yesterday! This is a simple quilt made from charm packs - I used two charm packs of Maison de Garance and two of Bella Moda snow, with a border from a Rouenneries print.

It went together very easily - the hardest part was trying to settle on a layout, since HSTs can combine to form a near-infinite number of blocks. Even more than I had ever considered, before I had a look at my second-hand bookstore score described here. The one I finally picked wasn't even in the running when I asked for your help back in December.

I'm making this for a friend who's had a really horrible year. She doesn't read this blog, and I hope it will be a pleasant and comforting surprise for her. She truly deserves something much more substantially nice than a quilt, but we do what we can, right?

On another note, this is International Women's Day, so I thought I would leave you with this short vidoe. The message is sobering and not to lose sight of, but you get to see Daniel Craig in a dress. Does he have nicer legs than you? They're certainly nicer than mine!

I Dream of Ogeenie

2011-03-07T11:35:00.002-05:00

This weekend I finished my version of Curlicue Crush. As I mentioned in the last post about this quilt, I kind of geeked out on the fact that the shape is an ogee, a word beloved by crossword puzzlers everywhere. My husband said it reminded him of the Arabian Nights, of Aladdin's lamp. And so, the name of this quilt is the mercilessly punny "I Dream of Ogeenie". (Cue groans here.)

Since we have had a longstanding tradition of doing the Toronto Star crossword puzzle in the lab, Lindsay suggested (bullied) that this should be the lab quilt. I have been promising to make a quilt for the lab for months, but it always gets pushed to the back burner. The one time I actually made a lab quilt, it was given to someone else.

So now Lindsay can have her nap in the lab. Power naps are important for the thinking of great thoughts! And maybe it will help us do the crossword puzzle in under five minutes - our so-far unattainable goal.

The quilt is 48" x 55". I used a bamboo batt and King tut variegated thread in purple and pink. I did my standard loopy loop quilting on it. Geez, I'm getting tired of it, but I haven't gotten my courage up to branch out into free motion leaves, flowers or feathers. That is definitely on my 2011 to-do list.

I agonized for a long time about what thread to use, since the back was mainly this cream/orange Amy Butler print. I didn't really want the quilting to stand out on the back.

I played around with an orange/pink/yellow variegated thread, but in the end I chose the darker colour. I'm not too bummed out about how it looks on the back, especially from a distance!

I ran out of the Amy Butler print and had to piece in this Prints Charming section. I love the two of them together, though.

I am seeing this pattern all over the place recently. Fat Quarterly was giving it away with new subscriptions for awhile, and Lynne is hosting a giveaway with this pattern right now. You can always get it from the designer, Rebecca. as well.

Edited to add: Thanks to KT's comment below, I had to add this video showing the I Dream of Jeannie intro! Ha ha ha!

Red and White

2011-03-06T17:24:00.000-05:00

Appears to be a stunning quilt show upcoming in at the American Folk Art Museum in New York that features red and white quilts. I love this colour combination! I wish I could get down there to see the show, but it is not to be. Instead, I am entering my red and white snowball quilt from last year in Taryn's online Red and White Quilt Exhibit for all us travel-challenged bloggers.

I made this quilt, which I called Red Hots, in the fall of 2009 as part of the scrappy snowball challenge organized by Allyson and Nicole. It is batted with wool and backed with flannel, and as a result is the toastiest, coziest quilt going. It is my favourite cold weather quilt!

The actual quilt show in New York features 650 American red and white quilts from the collection of Joanna S. Rose. Can you imagine collecting so many quilts in the same colours? Not I, although there is something very special about a red and white quilt.

Those of you who are long time readers of this blog will find this post old news, since you've seen this quilt before. However, I have been busy this weekend, and I do have a couple of exciting finishes to share. I'm just waiting for a day without rain to get out and take some photos, so stay tuned! And in the meantime, go see the red and white quilts that have been posted in Taryn's exhibit! And post your own!

Where Are My Pants?

2011-03-01T15:25:00.000-05:00

I took this photo off our 2011 kitchen calendar, which shows vintage illustrations of magicians and psychics. I loved this little devil holding up his question to the clairvoyant, and I admit that's how I've been feeling lately.

I spent the last week at Vanderbilt University, preparing for a grant application with a colleague, and my head has just been a-spin with that and other non-sewing related things. I managed to leave my very expensive Bose noise-canceling headphones in my hotel room when I left for my 6am flight. Fortunately, the hotel found them and is returning them to me, at my expense, of course. I figure it's just a matter of time before I am asking "Where are my pants?"
While I was in Nashville I did have a bit of time to myself. I made a trip to Textile Fabric, which is a very nice but supremely expensive fabric store. For example, Echino linen/cotton was going for $29 per yard - yikes! Cotton yardage ran for around $12-13 per yard. I did get a bit of fabric that I haven't seen in Canada, but I didn't use the budget I had allotted. At that price, I didn't feel the need to stock up. I found an amazing used bookstore in Hillsboro Village, where I picked up a couple of quiltish books. The first one was this HST book from 1987.

Interestingly, it is based partly on The Sense of Order, the 1704 book by the French monk Dominique Douat, who figured out all the possible combinations of light and dark half-square triangles. This book has an interesting adaptation of this infinite permutation. Here is a page where four HSTs are assembled to show many different combinations. I thought it was interesting how the author talked about making personalized blocks based on a numerological adaptation. For example, if your birthday is October 3, 1985, you might make a complex block using blocks 10, 3, 19 and 85. Imagine making a HST quilt that was all a top secret coded message!

I also bought this book on needlecraft inspired by the work of Rennie Mackintosh. Gorgeous photos and some great inspiration for applique made along the lines of that Tile Quilt book that came out last year sometime.

When I returned home, I found a great lot of loot from Sherri, to whom I had sent some giveaway swag a few months ago. Look at this pile of vintage buttons, Dresden plate segments, yoyos,etc. What you can't see, because I piled other stuff on top, are a couple of issues of The Workbasket, one from 1958 and one from 1970. Great stuff!

Before I left, I dropped my machine off for cleaning and routine service. I can't wait to pick it up and get to work!

This is an ogee

2011-02-13T11:22:00.002-05:00

Edited to link to Cheryl's Workshop in Progress, to show how my initial request for help with fabric selection evolved to a semi-final product.

As I was making this quilt top I kept thinking I knew what this shape was called. The pattern is called Curlicue Crush, but I know this shape has a specific name, and curlicue is not it. I kept thinking the name of the shape is associated with crossword puzzles, and so it is: ogee, an architectural term, is one of those words that they like because it has so many vowels in it. So this shape is an ogee, which can be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable OH-gee, or on the second syllable, oh-GEE.

I finished piecing this quilt top this morning. All things considered, this was a very speedy top to put together. The most tedious part was marking and cutting with the templates. Yesterday was a beautiful sunny day, and I was so disappointed that today did not follow suit. It's hard to capture the cheery colours of this quilt on such a gray day.

But as you can see, the sunlight wasn't the only challenge to getting photos of this flimsy.

Putting this quilt together gave me a good long time to think about directional prints, and really enlightened me as to the tiny things that I would normally overlook when I make a decision whether I think something is directional or not. More on that later, but you can see what I mean, I'm sure.

And remember in my last post I was talking about how the fabric was short. There are several places where I had to patch small pieces together to cut the larger required piece, but I won't show you those because they are boring, and mostly not noticeable at all. However, here are the two places where I had to supplement with non-matching fabric. In the first one, only 1/4" will show after the binding is on. I might embroider my name or the date on that strip, so I am actually kind of excited at how that become a design feature instead of a flaw.

In this second one, the entire segment which is now primarily made from the AMH red print was supposed to feature that lollipop-looking fabric down at the bottom tip, and all the pieces were cut from that FQ. But the matching tip on the top of the segment, when I came to assemble it, was so frayed along the edge that I couldn't sew a secure seam (recall that I could not true up the fabric for initial cutting). I had already sewn the bottom tip, so scratching that one and replace the whole thing with the AMH red would have compromised the orange segment at the bottom, since it was already sewn up. I'm sure this is too hard to follow. The bottom line is that I replaced everything that I could with the AMH fabric, and left this one tip intact.

However, over all, I don't think anyone will notice, and I don't think I'm likely to fret over these small imperfections. The quilt is 48" x 60" so quite small. I think it will easy to quilt up - and now I have to stop piecing and start quilting. I have quite a queue!

Getting curvy

2011-02-08T16:58:00.001-05:00

Edited to add: I'm linking this to Cheryl's Workshop in Progress linky since I posted there asking for thoughts on my fabric selection process - I thought it might be nice to show how things are coming along.

Last week I worked like a dog to finish some oppressive work projects so that I could have the weekend to devote to my sewing machine. Friday night I made a few spiderweb blocks, like the one here, to add to those made by my friends in the 2010 Maple Leaf Bee.

But I was really saving my energy for Saturday and Sunday, when I embarked on Curlicue Crush. Thanks to all the feedback in my fabric selection process, I ended up with 20 FQs that worked well together. I was very excited to break out my Curvemaster sewing foot and try my hand at the curved seam, but this pattern is another one, like the kaleidoscope quilt, where you can't sew a single block without knowing which blocks will fall on all sides of it. So I had to do all the cutting before I could start sewing. And it was pretty time consuming since it involved a lot of template tracing and cutting. Boo! Down with templates! I did have one unhappy realization in the cutting process. I ordered this FQ bundle of Sugar Pop from Pink Chalk for the core fabric selection, and built up additional fabrics around these.

Since I chose fabrics from a number of different lines, fabrics that differed in how thin they were, how closely woven, etc., I figured I should prewash them. But when it came time to cut for this pattern, I found that I didn't really have enough of the Sugar Pop FQs. Either the cuts were short initially, or they shrank dramatically, but in nearly all cases, they measured a scant 17" at the best, at sometimes even less, instead of 18", which meant that I couldn't square them up to get a clean initial cut, but sometimes couldn't even get a full 3.5" width out of the last strip from the FQ. Unhappily, this resulted in several poverty blocks, where smaller pieces were sewn together to make a larger piece, and it two cases I had to supplement entirely different fabric for part of a block. I've not had this problem with Pink Chalk before, so I wonder if it is an issue with the Sugar Pop fabric line itself. This is kind of disappointing when you are making a quilt from specially selected fabrics rather than scraps, but what can one do? Never mind - I am hoping that the overall effect will be so stunning no one will notice these unfortunate make-do moments.

Here you can see how I number-coded the pattern and matched each number to a fabric swatch. I needed to do this to make sure I was sewing the right concaves to the right convexes. It took me all day to do the cutting, and I managed to do all the curved seams on Sunday.

I used my new Curvemaster foot. Turns out it matters which curve goes on the bottom. This photo shows the right way: concave on the bottom and convex on the top. I was particularly interested in learning how to sew curves without pins. If I had to put a million pins in each curve, the way the pattern says to do it, I knew I just flat out wouldn't make it. I hate fiddling with pins!

The idea is that you can sew without pins if you lift the top piece up and away from the bottom piece as you are sewing (I used both hands normally, except when I needed one for the camera), and keep both pieces aligned against the sewing guide on the right. This gives you the proper 1/4" seam allowance. If you bring the pieces together and allow them to touch before they are right under the needle, it all goes spectacularly wrong and ends in tears. But if you do it right, you get nice little curved seams!

Which you can then clip and press. I am not a pro yet by any means, but some of these are pretty good. Some (not shown) are really a dog's breakfast. All in all, I feel quite proud of myself. I'm desperate to finish piecing this - only straight seams remaining now.

I did manage to get out for a couple of hours on the weekend to take in our winter festivities downtown.
Open air hockey.

Beavertails

Ancient Greek ruins in snowy miniature.

Steam train covered in snow

Snow maze

Ice slides

And don't forget the souvenirs!

Must run for now - stay tuned for further adventures wherein I introduce my Whipstitch Sewing Buddy and perhaps show some photos of a bit of fabric bought today!

No more of these for awhile

2011-01-29T15:24:00.001-05:00

As you know, I've been on a bit of a zipper pouch-making kick. I've tried several different styles, and have been please with all of them. They have each, however, bedeviled me on one assembly point or another, and I can see the imperfections glaring in each one. So I have been working on trying conquering the bits that have made me dissatisfied. I'm pretty happy with this last one I made.

This is the biggest one I've made yet. It started out 10.5" square. I used Moda cross-weave cotton on the exterior, with some various scraps for the patchwork around the bottom. Long-time readers may recognize this fabric as leftovers from Dunes. It has cotton batting on the inside and Dill Blossom cotton print for the lining, which you can just see in the photo below.

It stands up nicely - I gave it a relatively wide bottom to support it since it's so large for a zipper pouch. I think this is as big as you can make it unless you line it with something stiffer than batting. Any bigger and it would just flop over itself.

Lindsay said I should show something to give an idea of scale. So I stood this DVD case up behind the pouch.

And I'm especially pleased by the sharp corners. I found it very effective to use these tabs that cover the ends of the zipper and keep the raw edges of the zipper out of the seam allowance. That, and cutting the batting one inch smaller than the exterior fabric (I used a 1/2" seam allowance) are the two factors that I feel were most effective in getting the final product the way I wanted it. I also used a piece of ribbon for a zipper pull. Ugh, I can see a few loose threads I forgot to trim in this picture. It's always something!

I'm happy. And now I think I'm going to rest on my pouch-making laurels for awhile. I have some other quilting that must get done!

No quilts in this post

2011-01-28T08:53:00.000-05:00

We are smack dab in the depth of winter now. It has been beyond cold recently, but the temperature has risen a bit just over the past few days. That means that when it snows you get those big fat flakes drifting down. My dogs love the snow.

And a little video of Susie, singing along as an ambulance passes through the neighbourhood.

Making progress on catching up

2011-01-24T06:30:00.000-05:00

I have still not completed all my blocks from the three bees I entered in 2010, and it is seriously oppressing my creative activities. I feel too guilty to throw myself into the new things I want to try in 2011 because I feel - and rightly so - that I need to honour my obligations to others before I indulge myself. So this past weekend I worked on clearing the decks.
I made this block for Solidia, and with it, I finished my blocks for the Incredible Shrinking Quilters. Speaking of shrinking, I am down 17 lb, although with still quite a ways to go. This block is made with HSTs - and I like the layout so much that I've decided this is what I'll use for that Maison de Garance HST quilt that I was puzzling over a few weeks ago.

These blocks are for Rachel, in the Modern Tradition bee. I love the saturated colours in these fabrics. They were so much fun to make. Now I have only one block outstanding in this bee - it is for Sandra and it requires the dreaded applique. I admit I've been putting Sandra's off because I'm scared I'll make a dog's breakfast out of it.

This pretty thing is for Nicole in the Maple Leaf Bee. There's a poverty block in here - can you see it? Despite careful cutting, I didn't have enough of the gray solid. I must be the only quilter who doesn't have my own stash of gray, so I had to piece together scraps to make one leg of the inner border. This block was easy to make but so effective. I love her colour palette.

Finally, I made Katrina's block, also for the Maple Leaf Bee. Katrina asked for wonky quarter log cabins. This block is big, finishing at 15". I think this quilt is going to be stunning when it is all assembled! The only block in arrears from this bee is for Brenda. I have been avoiding this one because it requires foundation piecing, and I seem to always run out of fabric. Fortunately, she pre-cut the majority of pieces, leaving only the background for me to mangle on my own. If I screw up, surely I can muster up some black solid fabric to cover my tracks,

And then, because I felt that all that sewing or others deserved a small reward, I made a couple of zipper pouches. I am trying to perfect my technique on these cute little things, and they are like Lay's potato chips - no one can make just one. I really like them when they are quilted with batting instead of lined with interfacing, and I've been working on figuring out how the cut the batting so that it doesn't give too much bulk in the seam allowances. I'm pretty happy with that aspect of these pouches.

This one is about 6" x 7", with a centre zip, made from Echino linen. I made this one to hold the precut diamonds for my hand-piecing project. It's the perfect size - I put the coloured pieces on one side of the zipper and the background pieces on the other side. Sure beats the sandwich bags I was using before. However, in my zeal to get this one finished, I sewed one of the linings on backwards. Since it is a pale aqua print, the right and wrong sides don't make a dramatic contrast. So I just left it, because I hate picking out around a zipper. But dang! I hate it when something so foolish happens.

And this one is about 6" square, withe the zipper on the top. This linen has storybook scenes on it - Thumbelina, the musicians of Bremen, Red Riding Hood, etc. You can't see the lining, but it is a grey Lecien print. This one might be my favourite. I can't stop petting it.

In other news, after 12 years living in Kingston, I finally got a Costco membership. Thinking ahead to outfitting my daughter at university in the fall... Oh, and I also went on Twitter. So if that's your bag, you can add me using button in the sidebar.

Workshop in Progress - a new year

2011-01-13T20:39:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Cheryl, the Naptime Quilter, for restarting Workshop in Progress. I very much enjoyed last year's Workshop posts, both in the receiving of feedback from other quilters and the giving suggestions and expressing opinions on others' works. In the absence of working together IRL, it's a great way to be able to help out, and to get opinions when you are nervous about committing yourself to a direction that you aren't entirely sure about.

You may have seen the quilt in the photo above in the Fall Blogger's Quilt Festival lineup. It was one of my favourite quilts, made by Rebecca at Chasing Cottons. I bought the pattern as soon as I saw it, because curved piecing was on my quilting bucket list, and I figured I would damn well be an expert by the time I completed all the curves in this pattern. Well, friends, the time has come.
The pattern calls for 20 FQs. I bought a set of eight FQs from Liz Scott's Sugar Pop line. Jennifer and I had been talking about how nice orange and purple could look together, and when I saw this set I knew the time was right to jump in. This set has purple, orange and pink.

I went to my stash to find more fabric to add to make up the required amount of fabric, and here's where I need your help. I pulled more pinks, magentas, purples and oranges, but I want to make sure that I have a good range of values. I think having a range of lights through darks is really important when the colours are as close together as these are. So, what do you think? The Sugar Pops themselves don't have a huge range of values, so I was particularly looking for darker fabrics.
Here's what I came up with.

Here's the whole range. There are 21 different fabrics here, so one would be eliminated.

So what do you think - do these fabrics play nicely together? Do you think I have enough different values to avoid having this quilt look too same-y? If not, what direction should I go in? Do you feel like there is too much purple, orange or pink? Sing out!

One One Eleven

2011-01-01T15:43:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year! Old Man 2010 has been carried off feet first and Happy Baby 2011 is filled with the optimism and ebullience of youth. We can none of us see the future, which is for the best, but we can hope for a year filled with joy, love and friendship, good health, and mental stimulation. And, while we're at it, let's hope for a little prosperity as a garnish! This year, please G-d, will be a year I mark two momentous milestones: my silver wedding anniversary and my daughter leaving the nest. AND, if I have my way, I will also make many quilts and sewn goods! Welcome, 2011!

I've had some time off, since the university closes down for the winter break. I brought a stack of work home with me, but have done very, very little of it, I'm ashamed to say. All that indolence ends in a matter of hours, alas. Monday is our statutory holiday for New Year's Day, so I have two more days before I have to report to the salt mine, but I simply must make some headway on the pile of work I brought home and dumped in the closet.
Yesterday I made two little pouches that have been on my list for awhile. I wanted to practice putting zippers in, since I haven't used a zipper foot since I was sixteen and made my prom dress.

The pouch in this photo comes from this tutorial. It is about 5" x 9", and is lined with cotton batting. The exterior fabric is Heather Ross FFA2 linen/cotton blend. Because the exterior fabric was thicker than regular quilting cotton and the cotton batting adds another degree of thickness, the corners on the top of the pouch aren't sharp. I'm using this pouch to store my Quilt Patis diamond templates, and in this photo you can see the green cotton lining. There are no raw edges inside, which keeps it all very neat.

If I were to make this again, I would cut the cotton batting smaller and make sure it is not included in the seam allowance to avoid the bulk. Since it is quilted onto the linen, it doesn't need to be caught in the seam allowance to keep it from shifting.

I followed this tutorial to make the purple pouch. I used scrap Echino linen from the Love Birds quilt I made back in August. This one is lined with non-fusible interfacing to give shape to the box pouch, and lined with a Kaffe Fasset print. This pouch was very, very quick to make, but, although it is lined, the seams are exposed on the inside of the pouch. I used pinking shears to eliminate raveling, but it is not as neat and tidy as the orange pouch. It makes for a handy place to store the thread I am using to sew up my EPP diamonds.

Surprisingly (to me), these were a big hit with my husband and daughter. They both said, independently, "Wow, it looks like these came from a store!" Which, of course, is the most back-handed compliment one can give to a crafter, no? However, the right spirit was behind the words; my daughter then asked if I would teach her how to make them, so that she could give them to her friends, in the "university care packages" they are all making to give each other for next year, when they have all gone their separate ways. But of course I will!

2010: The year in quilts

2010-12-29T18:49:00.002-05:00

2010: The year in quilts, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

It's been great to see everyone's summary of their work in 2010. Collectively, we have been a busy lot! I'm hoping to be just as productive in 2011, but we will have to see how it goes. Some things I am planning for the coming year include:

A quiltalong with Jennifer - we are going to make a Triple Irish Chain, if we can ever get ourselves organized to pick colours
Further adventures in Kaleidoscope Land - I am looking forward to trying out the Marti Michell Kaleido Ruler and comparing it to the Smart Plate.
Shannon's BOM
Seriously cutting back on my fabric purchases

This last may be made easier by the rise of cotton prices. Deborah of Whipstitch wrote a very clear and thoughtful post about the cause of the rise in prices and the effects of this on the LQS owner and on us as consumers and quilters. She talks about prices going up $.60 a yard in her shop, and I have read others report increases as much as a dollar a yard. I'm sure that seems like a lot, but as a Canadian, it puts yardage still well under the average price that we pay here, in the neighbourhood of $15 per meter. (It is true that a meter is bigger than a yard - but not that much bigger!) And so, as long as the exchange rates hold, it will still be more economical for us to buy online from American stores. Of course, it's important to remember that economy is, or -- from my perspective -- should be, only one element that factors into our decision of where to buy fabric. I am curious to know whether or how this will affect your buying and quilting habits this year. What do you think?
P.S. Thanks so much for the love about the kaleido finish I posted about; it truly made me feel so much better. I have decided to definitely send it out to a LA-er, and I am feeling very hopeful that this will redeem the quilt and make it into the beauty I know is inside it!

Your advice, please!

2010-12-27T12:40:00.000-05:00

Before I get to the business at hand, just a quick pause to show off my lovely daughter and one of my two gorgeous dogs! Eve is certainly going to miss her fur sisters when she goes off to university next fall!
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming. As promised in my last post, this morning I set out my vinyl tablecloth on the living room floor and tried out four layouts of the HSTs made with Maison de Garance. None of them use all of the 160 HSTs that I have - I just wanted to get an idea of the look. Here they are:
(1) Zigzag

(2) Don't know what this layout is called officially, but I have been thinking of it as Lattice Diamonds (ignore those random blocks along the left side).

(3) Single diamonds

(4) Single triangles

So what do you think is the nicest? I'm sure there are other layouts that I didn't try; for example, the barn raising layout with concentric diamonds radiating out from the centre. I'm not terribly fond of that one, so I didn't bother with it. But if there are others that I should know about please do say!
P.S. Thanks, all of you, for that bunch of wonderfully encouraging comments on yesterday's post when I was feeling so blue about that quilt top. I've got a line on some long-armers, and I'm filled with renewed hope!

Kaleido finish!

2010-12-26T14:35:00.001-05:00

I have never been so happy to finish a quilt top as I am with this one. And it's a puzzler. I can't decide how I feel about it. I put it on my bed and it looks fine, nothing wrong with it. But for the amount of blood and tears that went into this quilt, I expected more than fine.

It is mostly Rouenneries and Lumiere de Noel by French General, but there are some other random fabric lines making an appearance, as well. The top finishes at 72" x 78".

It's funny, but it seems to be a quilt that looks better in photos than it does in real life. I may consider sending this one to the long-armer (if I can find one that I trust, having never used long arm services before), in the hope that expert quilting can turn this ugly duckling into a swan.

Finishing this kaleido flimsy was at the top of my list of holiday sewing goals, so I am pleased to have it completed. Second on my list is quilting the Paprika quilt that has been sitting around for far too long. I have the wool batting, King Tut thread and the fabric for the backing all at hand. Third on the list is a late entry: a quilt for a friend in need. A few days ago I caught up with a friend on the west coast who has had a very difficult year, a crushing, soul-crippling year. Being far away, what can one do but make a quilt? Wanting to make something quickly, I found some charm packs in my stash: two Maison de Garance packs and two Moda Bella packs in Snow, and I turned them into HSTs.

I have yet to decide how to lay them out. HSTs are so versatile, aren't they? I'll lay out some options and show them in another post.

Half a quilt top and a winner (or two)

2010-12-20T10:10:00.004-05:00

Oh lordy, this kaleido quilt will be the death of me. I spent the weekend finishing off the blocks for this quilt and starting to assemble the quilt top. My design wall is a vinyl tablecloth that I pin to the living room curtains, and it was only big enough for half the blocks. Since the pattern is so fiddly, and I have drafted it carefully on a piece of paper with all the colours marked, it didn't really matter that I could only see half the blocks at a time before I started to sew them all together. Last night I was feeling pretty blue about how it was coming along. I felt like the primary pattern of these star points weren't emerging the way I hoped they would. I was starting to feel like it was just going to look like some random scrap quilt. But in the photos, I see the rings a lot more clearly. Why is that? I'm kind of liking it again.

See how the primary pattern of the rings of star points are composed of four different blocks? This means that things have to be sewn together very carefully. I like to chain piece the heck out of things when I am assembling a quilt top, but I just couldn't do it on this one. When I tried to, I made so many mistakes, sewing the wrong sides of blocks together, etc., that I finally just limited it to joining up three pairs of blocks at a time. Who said quilting was a sedentary activity? I must have walked my 10,000 steps just going from the design wall (living room) to the sewing machine (dining room).

Here it is, being held up by my old man in the kitchen this morning. Darla seems to be interested in it, doesn't she, but in truth she is interested in the garbage can. This is not a very classy prop, but I hope for forbearance from you all - my husband's arms were getting tired after me putzing around with the white balance on the camera and reminding him not to let the quilt drag on the floor, so I didn't have time to move the bin out of the way. (Relatedly, I am excited to report that when I was last at the Workroom transferring my hard-earned money into Karyn's cash box, I found the large size Smart Plate, the ruler that I used for these kaleidos. The small size makes blocks up to six inches, the size of these blocks in the current project; the large ruler makes blocks up to 12". I posted about using the Smart Plate here, in case you want to know more.)

I've also been beetling away on my EPP diamonds, and I'm happy to report that I've gotten that sucker squared up, at last. Well, perhaps rectangled-up is more accurate.

It's great to have a hand-piecing project - this one is about 1/3 done, probably. As it gets bigger, it's harder to handle, and I worry a bit about the weight of it pulling on the stitches.

Also, in other news, I am thrilled to have my clock back from the repair shop.

This clock is a fixture of my childhood. My grandfather worked for the Bureau of Mines in the US government and moved around a fair bit. I remember where this clock was in all of their homes. It came from his family home. He was born in 1906, in Marion, Kentucky. Every room in the house had a clock, and this clock was in on the mantel in the room where the boys would dress in front of the fire in the winter. Well, it was with my mother after her parents passed, and now it is with me. The clockmaker has had it for awhile, cleaning it and getting it up and running again. When we wound it up and it started ticking, I became all weepy for days gone by - it has a lovely deep chime on the hour and a sweet feminine ding on the half hour.

Because I was so obsessed with the kaleido quilt, I was dilatory in announcing the winner of my Sew Mama Sew giveaway. I was flabbergasted to receive 416 comments on the giveaway post, where I asked people to name their dream job. I had a grand old time reading the comments, and there are some humdingers! I thought you'd like to see what your fellow bloggers consider to be their dream jobs:

Full-time quilter/crafter

Philanthropist

Quilt student/appraiser

Quilt/craft store owner

Zookeeper

Chocolate taster

Writer

SAHM

Lactation consultant

Baby cuddler

Food taster/food critic

Domestic oceanic observatory consultant (beach bum)

Paint swatch/lipstick/fabric/hair dye colour namer

Reader

Researcher

Museum curator

Toy maker

Traveler

Translator

Personal shopper

Lighthouse watcher

Nurse

Bunny rescue

Corgi petter

Librarian

Flight attendant

Singer

Baker

Teacher

World traveler

Brewer

Latin-speaking cephalopod worker (hmmm)

Dog snuggler/puppy cuddler

Caramel eater

Fashion designer

Dilettante

Long arm quilter

Blog surfer

Doodler

Librarian

Vacationer

Commercial Pattern Archive worker

Gift-giver

Doctor

Cookie taster

Adoption facilitator

Restaurateur

Greeting card designer

Dancer

Nanny

Graphic designer

Photographer

Grandmother

Diet Coke drinker

Textile anthropologist

Furniture maker

Entrepreneur

Recreational therapist

Sims3/ Bejeweled Blitz player

Bird watcher

Sewing machine repair person

Quilt/sewing teacher

Retiree

Environmental planner

Muse

Whirlpool/spa tester

Ultrasound tech

Student

Artist

On-line chatter

Advocacy worker

Hand model

Studio musician

Quality inspector at Four Seasons hotels

Worker against human trafficking

Giveaway follower

Horse trainer

Wine maker (in Italy, natch)

Farmer

Dog resort owner

Cardmaker

Newborn baby rocker

Shark/dolphin biologist

TV watcher

Kitten belly quality control manager

Muppeteer

Taste-tester at Jolly Rancher factory

Beekeeper

Tour guide at the Pyramids

Procrastinator

Luxury beach resort tester

Engineer

Ice sculptor

Caterer/party planner

Kayaker

Physicist

Willy Wonka factory worker (not Oompa Loompa)

Proofreader

Cat petter

Boxer rescue (dog, not athlete)

Tea drinker

Alpaca raiser

Bum

Archivist

Dog kisser

Decorator

Day dreamer

Millionaire

The random number generator was pressed into service, and it returned K@ren's name, whose dream job is to have a fabric store. This was a very common dream job, and I wish it would come true for all of you! I was also captured by Sherri's dream job, which is to be a professional dog kisser. The hours for that job match nicely with those required to be a professional napper, so I think I will take that up, as well. So I'll drop a bonus couple of FQs into the mail for Sherri. Thanks for playing, everyone, and a warm welcome to you new followers. I didn't win anything from the giveaways I entered, but never mind - I am slowly making my way through the comments left on my giveaway post; finding new blogs to read and meeting new people is the biggest prize of all!

Sew Mama Sew Giveaway Day!!!

2010-12-13T01:05:00.002-05:00

Sew Mama Sew giveaway loot, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

Today is Sew Mama Sew's Giveaway Day! Here is the swag I'm offering up. These four fat quarters of assorted quilting fabric! Here are a couple of closer views of the fabric:

I would also like to remind you that I have just started a Flickr group for swapping quilty goodness like patterns, rulers, tools, fabric, etc. If you have things that are duplicates or that you aren't using anymore that you'd like to swap, come over to the Quilters' Exchange group and add your goods to the pool!

Now, for this giveaway, please leave a comment below, telling me what your dream job would be. Mine is professional napper - I am an excellent napper, and if I could get paid for taking naps, I would be a millionaire: that's how good a napper I am. So let's hear from you. Comments are open until December 17, and it will be the standard random draw.

Swapping charms

2010-12-08T22:04:00.002-05:00

Pork Chop Swap packs!, originally uploaded by Shadrach Meshach & Abednego.

I am a very peripheral member of a Flickr group called Old Red Barn Co. It's a very lively, chatty group that does quiltalongs at a rapid pace and periodically has swaps of different kinds. Earlier this year, I participated in one where I swapped packs of 25 different 5" squares with seven other women. I'm still hoarding them, and I have added to them over the year. I jumped in when they announced another swap last week.

I am thinking ahead to next year, when my daughter takes Wine Gums away to university; I'd like to have a similar one to take its place. So I'm collecting these 5" charms in preparation. When my swap partners send me theirs, I will have 175 new ones to add to my hoard!

I had to share these photos of the charms in the dollar store satin bags I picked up. They make the charms look like treasure! I hope my swap partners will be happy!

Extra stuff - let's swap!

2010-12-06T13:28:00.003-05:00

Today I want to talk about extra stuff. I'm not normally someone who goes for the less is more approach to most things, and this includes quilting. But from time to time, one does tend to end up with extra stuff. In my case, I inherited quite a few specialty rulers and loads of fabric from my mom when she passed (not to mention cross-stitch patterns and enough embroidery thread to go to the moon and back a couple of times).

After I made the Christmas wreath that my mom had started as a mystery project from a Quiltmaker's magazine, I was contacted by a reader who was wondering if I could be persuaded to part with the issues so she could make a similar wreath. No problem! I was very happy to think that someone else could benefit from my mom's magazines.

When I was in Texas, I went to The Old Craft Store in Carrollton. It was a cute little store with a post office inside! I wasn't turned on by the fabric, but I found some great rulers, including the Rapid Fire Hunter's Star ruler by Deb Tucker. I really like Jackie's quilt using this ruler, so I was thrilled to find it. I also got the Easy Angle and the Companion Angle rulers for making HSTs.

But when I got home, I went to get the magazines out to send to Karen and I started looking at through the box of my mom's quilting things, and didn't I find the Easy Angle and the Companion Angle! I could have kicked myself! I also found a duplicate HST square-up ruler. Argh - how frustrating! Who needs duplicate rulers?

It occurred to me that it would be great if I could swap these rulers for others that I would use. Or maybe for patterns, or other notions. Why should I hang on to patterns like the Christmas wreath pattern or other patterns I have already made up when others might be interested in them?

So here's what I suggest: an online swap meet. Go to this Flickr group, Quilters' Exchange, to see what I have to swap and if you have some things you're ready to give away, take some photos and add them (you have to join the group first). I've got some more things to add, like the Fons and Porter magazine issue with the Paprika pattern in it (I promise I will quilt this baby over the holiday - I already have the wool batting). All the photos in this post, plus some other great swag, is listed on the Quilters' Exchange page at Flickr. Go look and see what you think!

Recent Bee-haviour

2010-12-06T06:58:00.000-05:00

This is a shameful photograph. It displays my bee blocks in arrears. But this weekend was a sewing weekend for me, and I managed to catch up almost entirely on those blocks.
For the Incredible Shrinking Bee, I finished Claudia's Ohio Star,

and Madeline's Dove in the Window.

For the Maple Leaf Bee, Austen gave us quilter's choice and some Hope Valley fabric. Her fabric was strips about 4 3/4" x 20" wide, so it made it surprisingly difficult to find a 12" block that could be accommodated; you couldn't use a 6" patch or even make a 4.5" HST. But I found this Jacob's Ladder block that fit the bill, even though I had to supplement with extra white fabric.

I also made Ariane's Dresden Plate.

It was the first time I'd made one of these. I used the zigzag stitch on my machine to sew down the centre circle, but I wasn't 100% happy with the way it looked. So I took a chance and used the blanket stitch setting on my machine to sew down the petals, with much better success.

And for the Modern Tradition Bee, I made these two churn dash blocks, from a dark grey and Hope Valley. I like this colour combination a lot - and from the blocks the others have made, I think this is going to be a knockout quilt.

I'm very nearly up to date, although not entirely. But I did feel like I had earned the right to sew for myself a bit the next day. On Sunday, I finished all the pinwheel blocks that are the foundations for the kaleidoscope blocks on my current project. I'll show a photo taken previously, since it's been so long since I've posted about this project - you may have forgotten all about it!

Happy Chanukah!

2010-12-02T11:16:00.001-05:00

It's early this year, isn't it? Wow! Chag sameach to all the quilting MOTs out there - all five of us - lol!

Texas report

2010-11-30T23:58:00.002-05:00

We had a wonderful time in the Dallas area, visiting family for American Thanksgiving. Our hotel was near a little town called Grapevine.

We were also just down the road from the Gaylord Texan resort, so we went in there to see it all dressed up for Christmas. Oh my word!

I loved these shotgun shell Christmas lights!

It was great to be with family. My Aunt June loved the Christmas wreath that I made for her. I almost didn't do it, because I was so busy with work in the days leading up to our trip, plus I felt so guilty for working on something besides all the bee blocks I have in arrears. But I'm so glad I did it - it made her so happy to have something made by her late sister. Within the last four years, my aunt has lost her husband and the younger of her two sons - both of pancreatic cancer - and her sister (my mother). She up and left everything in Tennessee - too many memories - and moved to be near her son in Texas. I was thrilled to hear that she has been keeping company with a gentleman, a rancher who wears cowboy boots, of course! My cousin's eldest son had just been married, so we got to welcome his lovely bride into the family. We did puzzles, played Scrabble, watched Dallas lose to New Orleans, and ate loads of delicious food.

We got lost just about everywhere we went. My husband says it's because the roads weren't signposted particularly well, but I wonder if we are just getting older and more decrepit. Next time we are definitely getting a GPS unit with our rental car. However, one place we did not get lost was the Grapevine Mills Mall, which was right across the parking lot from our hotel. Eve and I decided we would participate in the great American tradition known as Black Friday by hitting the stores at midnight on Friday morning. It was deadly, trying to stay awake when we were stuffed full of turkey, but once we got there, we perked right up. We shopped until about 3am. It was pretty busy! But the mood was fun and festive - I couldn't see any of the desperation that you hear about with pushing and shoving to get bargains. I wasn't really shopping for anything - paying duty and overweight luggage surcharges act as a counterbalance to all but the most astounding Black Friday deals. However, my daughter certainly did quite well. Nevertheless, we both agreed that we were glad we had done it, but that it doesn't bear repeating!

We also went to the Stockyards in Ft. Worth and dined at Cattlemen's Steakhouse before taking in the rodeo! We peeked into the bar at the Stockyards Hotel, but we were in too big a hurry to take advantage of the bucket of Buffalo Butt Beer.

This handsome fellow is Elvis, and he was the mount of the current Miss Fort Worth Championship Rodeo. He had an important job to do at the beginning of the rodeo as the crowd sang the national anthem.

The events at the rodeo included bull riding, calf roping, barrel riding, and a crazed event where hundreds of children chased a sheep around the ring, trying to remove a tag from its tail in order to claim a prize.

These guys are so much bigger in real life than they seem on television!

I never figured myself for a girl who goes for cowboys, but some of these guys......!

And they start young! My pal Jennifer clued me in that the letters on his sleeve probably stand for Professional Bull Riding instead of Pabst Blue Ribbon, which is what I thought!

These fellows had to stay on the bull for 8 seconds in order to get on the scoreboard. It doesn't seem like much time, but most of them didn't qualify. Those bulls were pretty angry!

Barrel riding was the women's event. These women had to race their horses around each of three barrels and back to end of the ring. The best times of the evening were less than 15 seconds.

It was an exciting evening! A glimpse into another world - far from the university where I spend most of my time, for sure!

I did make it to a small quilt shop in Carrollton, TX, but I will tell you about that in another post. For now, I will leave you with this video of bull riding!

My Mother's Christmas Wreath

2010-11-22T14:08:00.001-05:00

I am off to Texas tonight, to spend American Thanksgiving with my Aunt June, and my cousin Kenny and his family. And I am taking this with me.

Although I do not celebrate Christmas, everyone on my mother's side does. If you have been reading my blog, you may know that my mother was a quilter, and she left a number of projects incomplete when she passed suddenly in 2008. Her husband, David, has sent me boxes and boxes of her crafting and sewing supplies. It makes me feel close to her to use her rulers and cutters, and especially to finish her projects. I have finished a few of them for her. This time last year, I finished off this Christmas quilt and sent it to David, so he could wrap up in another quilt she had made. This year, I finished this little wall quilt/table topper to give to my aunt, my mother's elder sister.

This wreath comes from a mystery project in the fall issues of Quiltmaker in 2000. In one of the boxes that David sent, I found the three issues of the magazine with the clues and a whole whack of Christmas fabric. My mother had pieced the spiky border and the quarter-square triangles that make up the body of the wreath. All I had to do was make the blocks with the bow and assemble it all together. Thanks to all the heavy lifting my mother did, I was able do everything in one day. The bow has a kind of 3-D vibe going on - it had some fancy assembly that makes it kind of poof out (in a good way).

There were a couple of snags along the way. First, I think my mother and I differ on what constitutes 1/4" - our blocks didn't line up perfectly all the time. And I couldn't find, in any of the boxes that David sent, any more of the red-and-green-sprigged-on-white background that Mom used for the spiky border. There was some other red-sprigged white, although it wasn't the same stark white. So I used that, and I'm hoping that it doesn't look too odd. You can see the different fabrics in the photo below:

I quilted the heck out of it to try to draw the eye away from the different fabrics. I am having second thoughts about the decision to use this red, green and white variegated thread, but it's too late now.

I sewed a sleeve on the back so it can be hung, and I made this label using a technique that I have seen on someone's blog. I can't recall whose, and I apologize if it is yours - let me know if it is and I'll link to you. But basically, all you do is type it out in Word using a font you like, and print it out on regular paper. Then iron a piece of fabric cut to size to freezer paper to stabilize the fabric during the tracing process, and, using a light box (or window in the sunshine), trace using a Pigma pen. Since I expect this will be hung and not washed, I just pinked the edges and sewed it to the backing using embroidery cotton and a running stitch.

I think my aunt will appreciate this little quilt in memory of her sister. It makes me so happy to turn one of her WIPs into a finished product, and to sew a label on it that commemorates our collaborative work together.
P.S. We will be in the Dallas area - if you have a line on any good LQS north of the city, please let me know!

My backside

2010-11-12T13:08:00.001-05:00

I should properly say "my quilt's backside", shouldn't I? I hope you didn't think I would inflict photos of any other backside on you!

I have been so very busy with work that I've had very little time to do any sewing. I am working on a draft framework for a set of curriculum guidelines for preservice teacher education in literacy. My deadline is rapidly approaching - I can actually count it in hours. So I've not had my machine up and going in ages, but I have managed to get a bit of work done on my hand-sewing project, just to keep my sanity intact.

And I have been sick - I blame my brother, who brought exotic Kiwi germs all the way from New Zealand to infect me with. I'm feeling loads better today, thank goodness. And have a look at these:

Remember when I came back from the Creativ Festival in Toronto with that set of Marcia Derse fat quarters? The first thing I did was scour the internet to see if I could find some more. I did find some here. So I ordered a bunch. Look how gorgeous.

And she has another line coming out soon - evidently she was at Market, and a couple of people have blogged about her fabric. I think this one will be the best yet - there are lots of rich reds in it - and you can see it best here. Yum yum!
Also - in case you are also an AMH junkie like me, Fabricworm now has both the velveteens and voiles for Innocent Crush. Just saying.....
Beth asked a good question below, so I edited this post to add a link to show what the front of the hand-pieced project looks like - it's more or less the same, only a bit bigger now!

Lest We Forget

2010-11-11T01:00:00.003-05:00

Today we remember those who gave their lives in the service of our countries.

Photo credit: By Lx 121 [CC-BY-SA-3.0 (www.creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0) or GFDL (www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html)], from Wikimedia Commons

Kiwi visitors and winners announced

2010-11-07T20:42:00.000-05:00

I know these are apples and pears, not kiwis, but I refer to my brother, Reed, and his wife, Jan, who came for an all too short visit this week. They immigrated from Tennessee to New Zealand four years ago. I saw my brother last at my mother's funeral in 2008, so I was very happy to be able to spend a few days in his company laughing and feeling happy. The weather was cold and damp, so we didn't do much running around, beyond an obligatory trip to the Lake to look across at the wind turbines on Wolfe Island.

We ate at the new burger place, which was very good. So good I forgot to take a picture until it was all eaten up.

My brother ordered a beer float - pumpkin ale with vanilla ice cream. He wasn't thrilled, but was glad he tried it. The rest of us noshed on a s'mores cheesecake with homemade marshmallows. My husband is giving the thumbs up in this picture, and quite right! It was delicious!

We stopped at my favourite jewelry store so I could show my sister in law the loot. I didn't buy anything, but I drooled awhile.

They have a little dog in that store with the unlikely name of Poulet. He likes to sit in the window and here he is, people-watching.

We had a lovely time, although not long enough. New Zealand is so far away. I don't enjoy flying one little bit, but I will have to go to a conference in Hong Kong in 2013, so I expect I will take a detour to NZ on that trip. That gives me plenty of time to lay in a store of tranquilizers for the flight!

Anyway, because I was hanging out with Reed and Jan, I was dilatory in posting the winners of my giveaway, which closed on Friday. There were 112 comments - wow! And so many lovely, lovely comments about my quilts. I found it interesting that each of my quilts was picked by at least one person as their favourite, even the very oldest ones, but the most popular seemed to be Wine Gums. I wish I could send everyone who left a comment a prize! Alas, it isn't possible, so without further ado, the winners are:
For the Oh Cherry Oh charm packs, Gigiquilts.
For the Kona solids, Jo Chu
For the pincushion, Brenda,g34
For the Quilt Patis templates, Laura
Congratulations, ladies! I will be sending you an email asking for your mailing address in the next 24 hours.

My day job

2010-11-01T09:45:00.002-04:00

Thought you might like to see what I do in my day job. Not that it's always so ceremonial. Our convocation, or graduation, ceremonies happen twice a year. This year I took surreptitious photos with my iPhone.

We dress up in our gowns in one of the buildings on campus and then traipse around to the building where the ceremony is held. The students go in ahead of us - they are piped in by a bagpiper, who happens to by my next-door neighbour. (Luckily, she practices with her windows closed). When the students are organized, we make our entry accompanied by an organ. I always feel I am marrying the university as I go down the aisle!
After we sing God Save the Queen, and have the benediction spoken and the honorary graduand makes his speech, the students come across the stage one at a time, and the Dean puts their hood on. The hoods are those strange things hanging down our backs. Traditionally, they were worn by scholars to keep warm in the middle ages, before universities had central heating, but now they are just ceremonial. This year I had a good view.

Sometimes I get stuck behind someone wearing one of those fancy hats and can't seen a thing. Our gowns are determined by the university which granted our doctoral degree. You can't see mine, but it is black with wide red sleeves and red facing down the front. I also wear a red hood lined with white silk. It is not our tradition to wear a hat. At the university where I am now, the doctoral candidates wear gorgeous red gowns with blue and gold trim. You can see them seated in the front row in the photo below. Undergraduates and MA/MSc candidates wear black gowns with hoods that are coloured according to their discipline. In the photo below, everyone has been hooded and the class of 2010 is being applauded. Then it's O Canada, and we're outa there!

Sometimes convocation goes on for a very long time. I amuse myself by looking at the women's shoes - as a result I am always up on the current footwear fashion!
P.S. If you are looking for the giveaway post, go here. Comments will remain open until November 5.