I Almost Missed It!

Couldn't let this day pass without a shout-out to Tonya Ricucci on the publication of her first book, Word Play Quilts.

I'm proud to say that one of the few word blocks I've made ended up on the cover of the book.

I haven't made many other word blocks. Almost put my newest granddaughters' names on their baby quilts but ran into difficulties and opted out. I'm not saying I'll never make any more words out of fabric but for the time being I'm content to enjoy all the other wonderful quilts being made using Tonya's tips (many of which can be seen on the blogs you'll find here). Once this book gets into the hands of quilters there are going to be a LOT more quilts featuring words and sayings!

Creativity Challenge: "Dream"

The Creativity challenge for the month of July is "Dream." That meant endless possibilities! It's been in the back of my mind all month. For a while I thought I would simply finish a preemie quilt I've had hanging in the closet for way too long. You know, sweet dreams for a newborn and all that. But then I got to thinking about what to do for the Bead Journal Project for July. (I have April's ornament done but have not shown it yet. May's is under construction. I have an idea for June but am not sure how I want to execute it.) I've also been thinking about doing something with a steampunk flavor to it. Then the other day it suddenly occurred to me that I could try to pull it all together into one project.

I used my 15 minutes of piecing to produce the bottom half of my ornament:


This is what my work surface looked like at the end of the process:


I found a shimmery white polyester in my stash to use for the upper half of the ornament. Right after the challenge was announced I had purchased a pair of wing charms, specifically because they are printed with the word 'dream.' Then I had to find something to attach them to... ah! I've had this figure in my charm stash for a long time. This will be a great place to use it!

I also bought a packet of watch parts when I bought the wings. (I told you I wanted to do something steampunk!) Dumped them out, filed off sharp points, found sequins and other things to use with them and was well on my way.

That hard line between the top and bottom halves of the diamond bothered me. I went to the store to look for a ribbon I could couch down and brought home two possibilities (and a huge headache). By themselves neither one really gave me the look I wanted. But I wondered whether a cotton ball might not give me the cloud-like impression I was after. I pulled one apart and used the tiniest shreds of it under the sheer white ribbon. Iridescent seed beads tack the ribbon down in a zigzag over the cotton. Success!

So here's the final product:

I'm very happy with it. (Since the picture was taken I've trimmed off some of those ravelling threads.) To me the clockwork bits at the bottom represent the analytical aspect of my mind and the fairy is there to remind me to take time to dream, whether it be in daylight or while I'm sleeping. And I've fulfilled two challenges in one project! :- )

Playing

The Foodie Quilt is back from the quilter. I still have to make the binding but I trimmed it and spread it out on my bed just to see how it would look.

That's DD's pillow on the bed too. Amazing how well it co-ordinates with the everday pillowcase!

I got up full of energy yesterday so this is what I did:

Last week or so I signed up to make the word 'play' for Tonya's four letter word quilt. I had to draw the letters out on graph paper to make sure they would fit into the 6" x 12" brick format she asked for. Between the P and the A and the Y I was afraid my block would be more like 20" long!

It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself :- )

This morning I had another bright idea. I thought Tonya could use more letters for her quilt so I did this:

Can you see that the letters are made out of letter prints? You should be able to click on the picture to see it in a larger format. I cleaned up the edges of this block for its' picture but left it slightly bigger than 6 x 12". Tonya can trim it down as necessary. It ended up being kind of skewed before I sewed the final edging strips on so I compensated with those final strips of background fabric.

I have to say, the easier letters have left me feeling like I might want to do some words for myself someday. I suspect my words will be a good deal larger though. Those strips of green between the letters in the word 'more' are only half an inch wide. Talk about fiddly work!

Seasonal Stitching

I'm finally feeling better again. At least until the next exposure comes along. I have a few things to catch up on, and to catch you up on, but I'm not going to try to do that all at one time. For now let me just tell you that the quilt I made for Ami Simms' Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative is now up for auction. You can see it and bid on it here.

I haven't been doing much (besides playing solitaire on the computer) lately, but I have made some progress on my little hearts wall hanging. Remember this?


This is what the back looks like at the moment:

And part of the front:

A real close up shot:

This is mindless stitching that sometimes fits the bill in terms of my energy level. I'm using two strands of a silk floss and one of rayon in my needle to get a varigated effect and a bit of sparkle. Before I started stitching I seriously considered using seed beads to quilt the background areas. Now I think beading the background would have involved less stitching and been quicker to do!

Days of Whine and Comfort

If I were a braver woman (or more shameless perhaps) I would show you a picture of my working surfaces at the moment. Let me instead simply tell you that even if I were to take that picture you wouldn't be able to see my work surfaces. They have somehow become buried under studio journals, piles of fabric scraps, piles of paper, including pictures ripped out of magazines, and a whole bunch of embroidery threads.

I filled up the journal I was using during the Studio Journal class. Before that class began I had two other sketchbooks going. Since the class I've been trying to use them up, and I've been referring back to my class journal while doing so. Not being able to pass up a sale, I just picked up a new sketchbook too, to use when I have finally filled the others. Too many books!

The magazine clippings will eventually end up in one or more studio journals. I've run out of scotch tape (I thought I had at least one more refill in my drawer) and can't use glue or glue sticks so they have to wait until someone runs to the store for me. The rest of the papers need to be filed in the appropriate places. What I wouldn't give for a secretary who dusts.

The fabric scraps are the leftovers from my Fungly quilt. How insane is that?! I wanted to use them up, not just put them away, but that hasn't happened. So there they sit. And now I have ideas for new quilts I want to make that don't call for those kinds of prints. Of course.

The embroidery threads are for my current project, the monochromatic postcard I'm stitching as part of the Sumptuous Surfaces class. I want to get my band sampler set up so I can practice stitches I once knew and try out others. That would be much easier to accomplish if I had a little more room in which to work! But I'm just not feeling all that well today. Some days I can work in spite of how I feel, other days it's better to simply give in and be a vegetable. I think I may need to be a vegetable for a day or two.

To tide you over I thought I would share a little quilt I made back when I first read Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking. I don't think I've shown it before. I call it "Comfort" because it's made of what I think of as comfort fibers: soft wools and flannel. They were all scraps given to me by a dollmaker friend. I carried out the comfort theme (in my mind at least) by tying it with a red crochet thread and adding a few buttons I had inherited from my mother's button tin. It's about 14" x 18".

And now I'm going to go comfort myself under a slightly larger quilt... ;- )

Hooray! Hooray!

The political ads end today! (And yes, I voted.)

That little couplet was on a reader board somewhere in our area. I saw it on our local news broadcast and looked all over to try to find the still photo but had no luck. The only downside to the end of the political advertising is that now we'll be inundated with ads for pharmaceuticals again. {sigh}

I've finally done some actual sewing. The scraps on my work surfaces have been reduced by 75% or so. There are still the leftover pieces from the Fungly quilt to deal with but I haven't been able to decide what to do with them yet.

These will probably go into my orphan block tub:


This may become another donation quilt for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative:



I'm glad I got as much done as I did yesterday because today I have been recovering from my trip to the food co-op yesterday afternoon. I was assaulted by perfume on another shopper and the exhaust fumes of an old VW van that was burning oil. We have a lovely little food co-op but I don't really enjoy shopping for the few foods I can still eat. (I don't enjoy cooking at all.) It's even more discouraging to go shopping for boring stuff and be made sick in the process.

Stars and Dishes

Pretty soon I'm going to have to lay these stars blocks out on the bed and make a decision about what to do with them. I really hadn't planned to make a full sized quilt but I'm addicted to making these things! Maybe there will be more than one quilt coming out of this sewing marathon...


In addition to looking for and using my older prints I'm sewing half-square triangles together that I cut from scraps years ago. When I come across a set that are actually the same size and work together (more or less) I'm making Broken Dishes blocks. Now I'm thinking ahead and cutting half-square triangles from the scraps I'm using for the stars whenever I can.



Apparently we're in for some unusually high temperatures here this weekend. That may slow me down on my stars and dishes. It gets pretty toasty in here with the iron on, the windows closed, and it's 90 degrees outside!

More Fungly Stars

Wow. I didn't realize it had been so long since my last post. Time flies when you're making fungly blocks!

I'm sorry this is such a poor picture. It looks like I used a wide angle lens!

It has helped to have the Olympic competitions going on in the background. I can listen while I cut and sew but then stop to watch the actual race or whatever. We've had mixed feelings in this household about supporting the Beijing Olympics, even by watching them, because of China's history in terms of human rights. I can't help myself though; I used to swim and dive and participate in track and field. I still don't condone the Chinese government's attitudes or policies but I do support the athletes who have chosen to dedicate themselves to their sport and have excelled as a result.

Anyway, as I've made more liberated stars for this fungly project my blocks have become less and less 'normal.' I've been going through my shelves, looking for the smallest and oldest pieces of yardage hiding between the newer ones. It's been especially fun to look for something surprising to pair with an old calico for example. :- )

Wonky Hearts

I'm completely pooped today. Had to drive DH to the VW dealership to retrieve his car after having it serviced. That was before I even had breakfast. I'm one of those people who has to eat regularly and on time; I suspect skipping breakfast was a bad move. Oh well. It was unavoidable in this case. I may just have to lower my expectations for the day. {sigh}

I've been making some wonky free pieced hearts a la Tonya at Lazy Gal Quilting.


Yesterday I played around with setting them. Not a lot of options when there are only six!

This is a very controlled palette for me. Normally I'm all over the place with colors. (Except now that I think about it, the last journal quilt was a very tight palette too. Hmmm.) These hearts (and their backgrounds) only use five different batiks. Nothing else seemed to want to be in this project! The downside is that I have very little left of a couple of the prints so I am limited in what I can do. It's hard not to run down to my LQS to see if there's something there I could use but I don't want a toxic reaction on top of this lethargy!

You know it's bad when even making the rounds of the blogs sounds like too much work. Might be a good day to pick up a familiar book...

Some Good, Some Not So Good...

I'm happy to report that I've been doing some sewing. Just not on either of my journal quilts! In this case I've used a charity as an avoidance technique. (Can a person be both bad and good at the same time?!) These red and white blocks are for Quilts 4 Leukaemia. I'd been wanting to make some blocks for that worthwhile cause ever since I first read about it on Clare's blog.


My son kindly pointed out that one block on my design wall was not like the others. How perceptive of him (heavy sarcasm). As you can see, I worked my way all around the skull journal quilt. What remains to be seen is whether I'll make one more block for a nicely balanced 9-patch set (not that the blocks will end up in the same quilt anyway) or whether this lot of 8 will go as is. They were just easier to make in sets of two. What surprised me was how little I had in the way of red scraps! And how hard I found it to work in only two colors: red and white. Especially for the free-pieced blocks. Traditional blocks often were made in only two colors. I just haven't had the desire to make any traditional blocks lately.

Yesterday morning while I was journaling I had an idea for using the recycled silk ties I collect. Since I had the opportunity to act on that inspiration I pulled out the boxes in which I keep the colors separated and had at it.

My original idea did not pan out. This is what I ended up with.

I can't say that I'm thrilled with it either. (The top row in the picture is not actually sewn in place at this point.) I have an idea for a variation on what I was trying to do but I'm not sure I'll be following up on it today. The pain of failure is a little too fresh. Not that I see this as a complete failure; it just didn't work out the way I had envisioned. And every "failure" serves to help me see more clearly what works for me. So it's not a failure, merely a method that didn't work. Who knows, maybe this will send me to my beads and threads and get me started embellishing that journal quilt!

And now, a little bit of Halloween:

The potholders on either side of the ghost oven mitt were made by a friend of mine, not me (although I have almost every fabric in them in my stash!). My DD has a couple of Halloween potholders that I made last year and saw again for the first time last week. They were cute! Who knew?! I have a couple more Halloween decorations I want to show you so I guess I'll have to get busy and get them photographed in the next couple of days :- )

Two More Finishes!

This is not a good picture of my completed journal quilt but it is proof that the quilt is done! I'm calling it "Summer Love" because it represents a place and a time of which I have very fond memories. The beads in particular don't show up well in this photo. There is a circle of beads in the center of my X/sun and a ray of beads extending down each leg of the X. That was the part that had me stumped for awhile, in spite of the fact that I thought that would be the part I would bead first! Ya just never know how things are going to develop.

When I finished the journal quilt I still had some energy left for more creativity. I dug around in my pile of UFO's to see what would fit the bill and came across yet another preemie top! I must have pieced it and not had time to assemble it right then. So yesterday I backed and turned it and quilted it. Ta daa!

That makes 5 preemie quilts to turn in so today I'm working on a sixth one to make an even half-dozen!

Playtime

I've been having trouble with blogger not loading my pictures again. This would have been my second post since the last one (!) if blogger had co-operated. I understand now why some folks have chosen to move to other platforms.

As you may recall, I got out my Halloween blocks and bits earlier in the week. From one of the orphan blocks I created this placemat for DD and DGD:



Then I went on to play in my Halloween scraps...

I started with a couple of oddball four-patch blocks and interesting scraps and added strips to make several units of varying sizes and shapes. Then I played around with them on my pre-cut batting to see what I liked together. A few more strips to fill in the empty spots and voila! On this last one I used a small panel from a piece of cheater cloth and went with a pumpkin theme:


I also unearthed a top I'd begun some time ago. The blocks were made from fabrics I'd received in a fall charm square swap. (Everyone in my guild cut 6" squares from an autumnal print and we swapped them out so that everyone went home with the same assortment of prints.) The center panel is fussy-cut from a large scale print. It only needed wider borders to make it preemie sized so I took off the skinny ones I'd put on for some reason and replaced them with wider ones of the same fabric. Backed it with a cozy flannel, turned it, topstitched and quilted it a bit, and it's ready to go to a neonatal intensive care unit.

There are more Halloween goodies to come. :- ) I haven't yet quilted my lime green and black doll quilt. That has been upstaged by DD's request for a Halloween baby quilt. I just happen to have a top already made but I'll wait until it gets tied and bound before I show it to you...

Heart for Hospice?

Went to the chiropractor this morning for another cranial adjustment. I'm surprised at how much better I feel than the last time. I have a sort of generalized headache (not the kind that an analgesic will remove unfortunately) and other low level symptoms but I'm able to function (can't spell but at least I can sit at the computer and hit the keys). Last time I was a zombie on the couch after my adjustment. This is significant progress.

To keep my mind off my misery I have been creating this free-pieced heart. It's just one block that currently measures 11.5" x 14.5" and is made out of two silk neckties from our local thrift shops. Of course it has evolved differently from what I anticipated when I first began working on it this morning but that's the nature of intuitive piecing! This was sort of an experiment to see what would happen if I used silk ties in this way. I'm hoping to turn it into something I can donate for our local Hospice fundraising auction that's right around the corner. Right now the internal debate is whether to make it into a pillow or a wall hanging. I had originally wanted something I could hand embellish. That would be appropriate for a wall hanging. The silk is so soft that if I make it into a pillow I'd like it to continue to be soft enough to rest a cheek on, which pretty much eliminates the use of beads and other 3-D embellishments and may even require machine quilting. I'm not in the mood for machine quilting at the moment. Although, the silk is so darn slippery that I may be forced to do some machine stitching just to hold things in place while I do whatever else I decide to do. My frugal Scots-Irish heritage is playing into this decision too. Things are "more valuable" if they are useful. No-one needs a wall hanging, but a pillow could be put to good use if need be. {sigh} I need to conjure up the mentoring spirit of Pam Kellogg to get me over this hump. She has the gift of being able to forge ahead with whatever she feels is right for whatever she is currently working on. And the woman is prodigous. She just goes with whatever makes her happy in the moment without a care for what anyone else may think. Oh that I could be a fraction of that free-spirited!