A Freestyle Block Swap

Foot²Freestyle is a new scrap-busting block swap party for 12 people. It has been developed by Kate Chiconi of Tall Tales From Chiconia and Sue Brown (me!) of From the Magpie's Nest. We hope you'll want to join the party – everyone who does will end up with 36 foot-square blocks, the makings of a decent sized quilt.

Here's how it's going to work. First come, first served, but we will retain the next few names as well in case anyone has to drop out and a replacement would like to step in. To make it work, we need enough people to make enough blocks for a decent-size quilt, and 12 is the practical minimum. If we get a lot of response, we can run two parallel block swap parties, which would be very exciting. If the participants enjoy it enough, we may do the whole thing again but have more people and make the blocks smaller – Four²Freestyle, for example – or simply make fewer blocks each.

Each month, one of the 12 names is picked out of a hat at random. That person is notified by both by email and on the F²F page we will set up on our blogs, and chooses a color theme for their blocks. This color choice will be advised to all participants on the F²F page. Each of the F²F swappers makes three, foot-square (12 inches square) blocks each month, and we all send our 3 blocks to the same selected person, who gets to choose color, but that's all. You get to choose the design, layout, fabric, etc. That’s why it’s called Freestyle…

Your foot-square block must feature the selected color, but can be any design, any style, any layout, so long as it’s a foot (12 inches) square plus a quarter inch seam allowance all round. Please make sure you measure and trim your blocks before you send them out.

At the end of the year, we all end up with 36 blocks, which is enough make a 72” square quilt top. At that point, we celebrate and have an online exhibition! We are each responsible for assembling, quilting and binding our own quilts. You can, if you prefer, make something else out of your blocks – for example, if you’d like to make baby quilts, a twin size, or multiple pillows, etc. Your blocks, your choice. Freestyle, remember?

Foot²Freestyle will be administered by Kate Chiconi of Tall Tales from Chiconia and Sue Brown of From the Magpie's Nest. Once we know how many (or if any!) people are interested and if it will go ahead, we will make the image above available as a button for you to grab for your blogs. Insufficient interest will result in failure to launch... Contact us in the Comments section of this post if you’d like to participate. Please also send emails to us at the addresses shown on our blogs, so we have your email for future notifications (it doesn't matter which of us you send to). Entry is strictly on a first come, first served basis. The selected participant each month is chosen by random draw from the remaining names and cannot be changed, to keep things simple and administration to a minimum.

The swap party begins in June, which should give you time to work out if you have time to join us.  We'll send an update closer to the time. Hope to see you there!

Kate & Sue

Swap Quilt Reveal

Julie has received (and posted) the little quilt I made for her. I'll share it here for those of you who aren't regular visitors of Julie's (you're missing out on a good thing, let me tell you!).

We had been discussing, via email, one of her favorite books. She offered to buy and send a copy to me in exchange for a little art quilt. It didn't take me two seconds to make up my mind. ;- ) This was back in the fall. I pieced up a couple of three inch heart blocks right away, in colors I thought would please her. Then I got stuck. And then the holidays came and I was busy making a Halloween quilt... and I was starting to feel guilty that I hadn't lived up to my end of the bargain. Julie was very understanding of course.

After New Year's and some journaling an idea came to me to turn the heart blocks into flower blossoms. I had a blast creating a name for this new species of flower. Introducing Cardiaflorum sympaticae:

They are a rare species, found in secluded, sheltered corners of the world. They have their roots in the soil of blessings and secrets and gifts of the spirit.

I used seed beads to create flower "petals" and then did some outline stitching with embroidery thread to create veins in the leaves. The stems are braid secured with more seed beads.

The root system for the flowers was made with vintage rectangular sequins. I had to add a fairy to tend the flowers of course.

This was really fun to create, once I got started. It was one of those pieces that was hard to put down at the end of the day. Love that!

Endings & Beginnings

I sure seem to be slacking off in my blog posting and reading. Partly because I've had my nose to the needle, so to speak, but I think the time of year has something to do with it as well. We had that week of snow and cold. Since then it's been gray and rainy. Just the sort of weather that makes me want to stay snug and warm under my quilts. Friends of mine are participating in retreats and workshops. Just the sort of thing I would love to be doing also but because I can't I tend to become even more of a recluse than ever. Go figure.

I finished up the doll quilts on the day of my last post. The next day I sewed up four quick little pillows to go with the quilts.

I found out that the two older granddaughters are using the doll quilts I made for their mother when she was a little girl. Guess I need to make a couple more new ones!

I've been working on the surprise quilt...

It's just about ready to go in the mail. :- )

Yesterday I found out about a local artist/painter/teacher who has been diagnosed with stage 4 colon cancer. She has inadequate insurance, as do most artists, so the art community is putting together a fundraising auction on her behalf. I've decided to make a version of Bonnie Hunter's "Simply Strippy" using black and red and white prints to contribute to the auction.

I've been cutting strips off of yardage in my stash randomly. I wish I could figure out how much more I need to cut without keeping a running total. I can't tell whether I've got enough to get started sewing or not! Probably I have a long way to go still. I'll start sewing these together today and cut more as needed I guess. If you don't hear from me again in a few days you'll know that I'm stuck at the sewing machine. ;- )

Colorful Additions

If you've stopped by my blog in the last few weeks you know I made this 12" x 12" quilt for a swap over on the 15 Minutes of Play blog.


This was not a direct swap but more like a round robin swap. So instead of receiving a quilt from the person to whom I sent my quilt I received a quilt from someone else in the group. In this case, I was given this absolutely delightful quilt from Nancy over at ColorFiberTexture:

When she showed it on the 15 Minutes blog I admired the happy colors with the black and white prints. Now that I have it in my hot little hands I see that not only is the center of the star made up of scraps ("made fabric") but so is the narrow border between the picot ribbon trim and the binding. And I love that she hand quilted it with embroidery floss. What a cheerful piece to have hanging in my home!

On another front, DD gave me a bouquet of flowers for Mother's Day. One of the little carnations was too short to fit in the vase with all the longer stemmed flowers. My begonias were in need of trimming so I combined a bit of the cuttings with the carnation in a bud vase. There's also one leaf from another house plant whose name I don't remember at the moment.



The arrangement made Miss May Belle's walk with the hounds this morning a bit more colorful.

Here's wishing you a colorful walk through your day!

Finished Swap Quilt

When I finished embellishing the lower half of my swap quilt I had to figure out how to balance that out on the upper half. I decided to go with star sequins. I think it worked. ;- )

I found two leftover pieces of binding in my stash that couldn't have been more suited to this quilt. I only eyeballed the placement of the joining of the pink and the green. Look how perfectly it turned out! Talk about serendipity! (Hmm, that might be a good name for this little quilt!)

Here's a close up of the heart:


And here on the back you can see the quliting a bit better. I used Fast Finish Triangles to make it easier for the recipient to hang the quilt. I love that technique for little quilts. I first learned of it in the AAQI Priority Quilt pages.


I purposefully used two different fabrics for the triangles. I wanted the upper ones to stand out from the background and I wanted the lower ones to be pale enough for me use as labels.

That's all that's left to do and then I can pack this gem up and send it off. :- )

Playing in the Sunshine

We had a couple of days of gray skies - nothing unusual there - and heavy rain, which is unusual. Saturday was an improvment, with cloudy skies but no rain. Yesterday was spectacular!


The sunshine on the leaves of the rose bush outside my studio window inspired me to do the quilting on my swap quilt.


Mostly I just stitched loosely flowing lines in a sparkly yellow thread. But in a "grassy" area I went so far as to attempt lines that could indicate grass or bushes.


Of course I couldn't stop at just quilting. I had to add a few embellishments. I think this is where real playtime happens for me: embellishment!


I had to gussy up the house too:


Having done that, the upper half of the quilt looked pretty barren. I'll show you how I dealt with that in the next post. ;- )

Doin' It My Way

Things have improved here in the Magpie's Nest. But Mr. Reilly had to go to the groomer today and he's likely to bring home some fumes on his newly shorn body that will have an adverse affect on me. I thought this might be a good time to pop in and show you what I've been doing as I recovered from the last toxic exposure.

Mostly that would be playing in my scraps. Victoria has arranged for a mini quilt swap over on the 15 Minutes of Play blog. I signed myself up just in time to be included. She's calling it the "Something From Nothing" swap since the challenge is to make a 12" square quilt out of nothing but scraps.

I had some parts and pieces laying around and started sewing them together to see what I could come up with. Victoria is a big fan of "making fabric" from scraps so that was the mindset I was in while I was sewing the parts and pieces together.

I managed to create three 12" blocks.

The problem was that none of them looked like cohesive compositions to me. In my eyes they just looked like a conglomeration of scraps. Victoria probably would have cut shapes out of this 'made fabric' and worked further with them. There were too many seams already for me to be comfortable with that procedure. Also, I'm not a quilter in the technical sense of the word so I couldn't rely on quilting to give the blocks the polished, finished, look that I would want my mini quilt to have. It was discouraging. Eventually I decided to try one more time, using a slightly different approach.

Some time ago when I was piecing scraps a house and a tree magically showed up. I'd set them aside at the time but I got them out to see what I could do with them. I also had a three inch heart block that I had pieced intentionally but completely out of scraps. All I needed to do was figure out how to combine these elements...

Ta daa! The bird is printed on a larger scrap that I received in a swap. This little top was more fun to make and makes me happier than any of the previous efforts. My first instinct is to hand quilt and embellish it but I'm afraid I don't have time to accomplish that before the shipping deadline. So under Phoebe's needle it will go (Phoebe is my Pfaff sewing machine). I suspect I will quilt it the same way I pieced it: by the seat of my pants. That seems to be how I roll! ;- )

And the Winner Is...

I hope my readers had as happy a Valentine's Day as I did. I got to sew all day! And then my DH made dinner for us. He treats me so well. :- )

I've added a little bit to Janet's Intuition block. The sawtooth strip down the right side, some horizontal flying geese units across the bottom, and a strip of pieced greens across the top.

Not much, but it's a start. I made quite a few blocks yesterday; I'll show them in another post. It remains to be seen whether any of them end up in Janet's quilt.

And now, for the news about two dozen of you have been waiting for, the winner of my white Love Token...

Everyone's name went onto a ticket for each comment you'd left.

And the lucky winner is Joyce!

It will be a while before Joyce actually sees her prize in person since she's about to fly over to Australia but the beauty of fiber art is that it doesn't spoil or go rotten!

Happy

I'm so glad to be feeling better again. Too bad I've got to go out this afternoon to get food and things. There's always the chance I'll come back poisoned.

We had visitors over the weekend:

It's hard to believe they're going to be one year old pretty soon. (Yes, the Christmas quilt is still out. At least the tree and all the other decorations have been put away!)

My friend C~ stopped by briefly the other day too. Look what she knitted for me!

I love it. I just have to figure out what to do with it! Even DH says we can't use it as an actual dish or wash cloth. It's got to be mounted somehow or incorporated into something where it won't get abused. It's just about the right size to be a cover for my studio journal but I haven't quite figured out how to pull that off.

What I have done is get out some old intuitive piecing. The Intuition Quilt project and the other intuitive piecing I was doing most recently seem to be stalled at the moment. In an effort to get going again I dug around in my stuff and found two "blocks" I'd created months ago. One in particular spoke to me. The first thing I did was to add white strips all the way around both blocks to give them some breathing room.

Then I found bits of piano key piecing. I added to that and started more strips until I had enough to do this:

The second block is still just a sawtooth bit surrounded by white. I'll probably straighten it up today and maybe add just enough to it to make it closer to 12" square in case Janet chooses it for our Intuitive Swap. I've given her the choice between this one or the smaller one. I knew they were smaller than 12" with only the white strips but I didn't realize how much the piano keys would add until I went to straighten up the edges. I was not measuring anything and only using scissors to trim off excess seam allowances and such. It's about 17 x 15" now. Not sure what I'll do with the block she doesn't choose. Anyone else want to swap intuitive blocks? ;- )

First Project of the New Year

Over on the 15 Minutes of Play blog Victoria has been showing us her intuitive piecing and encouraging us to play along. I've actually been intuitively piecing since I read Gwen Marston's book Liberated Quiltmaking (first edition) in the late '90's. Most recently my projects have involved a lot of precision piecing. Watching Victoria play had me itching to get back to the intuitive work. Victoria even played matchmaker and paired me up with Janet so we could have the opportunity of working with each other. We're going to each make a 12.5" block and exchange them. Then I'll add to her block and she'll add to mine, in whatever way feels best. At this point we're not thinking beyond just this first exchange. There's no telling how big these blocks will end up!

So, as I've been thinking about this project the question was which scraps to play with? I have plenty to choose from. There's this pile, which includes scraps I received from V in a recent scrap swap.



There's my wicker basket of decades-old scraps. In the photo below there's a plastic bin of strips sitting on top of the scraps.

Then there's the pile of scraps that's been accumulating on the corner of my sewing table while I've been working on recent projects.

The trouble is that I'm pretty tired of most of those prints and colors. I wanted to work with something new and different. It has taken me several days to come to that realization. Today I remembered the darling skunk print LeeAnn was so generous to share with me. And then I thought of other vintage prints I've acquired. Pretty soon I had this little pile on my table:

Not a bad start. For Christmas I bought myself - ahem, I mean Mrs. Claus gave me - a bundle of off-cuts from eQuilter.com. Every cut was a surprise. A lot of them were novelty prints. I've only prewashed about half of them so far but there were a couple of those strips I thought would also work with these vintage prints.

So this is the palette I'm going to start with. Now it's just a matter of sitting down at the sewing machine and digging in. :- )

Look What I Got!

I belive I mentioned an ATC swap that was being organized by A Creative Dreamer. (Yes, here it is.) The names were mixed up and paired up and the ATC's sent out. As it turned out, Creative Dreamer and I ended up being swap partners. Here's the card she made and sent to me:

She's been reading my blog and was inspired to add a few beads to her doodle. I think it's absolutely charming. :- )

Meanwhile, our local bead shop will be closing in about two weeks. I went back again yesterday to show my support and see what I could find to supplement my stash. I found lots! I could easily have brought more home if I'd had the budget for it.

FYI, the square container holds clear bugle beads. They don't show up very well in this photo.

I have also been pondering what to do for my March ornament for the Bead Journal Project. I want to recognize or honor spring somehow. Or perhaps it's the effect of spring on the earth that I want to document. In any event, I have selected this hand dyed fabric in spring greens and yellow...

and have chosen this raku button to be my focal element:

I'm excited at the prospect of turning this into a representation of spring. At the same time I'm a little apprehensive because I'm planning to try out new techniques and of course I want the final product to turn out well. Wish me luck!

Oh, and thanks for your thoughts on the crazy quilt in the previous post. I feel better about its' potential now.

I Double Dog Dare Ya!

I have been reading and corresponding with A Creative Dreamer for a while now. We have developed something of a mutual admiration society. We have also cooked up a little ATC (artist trading card) swap.

If you read the comments I get you may know that Creative Dreamer dared me to make a fabric ATC when I was wondering what I would tackle next. I laughed when I read that but you know what? I turned right around and made this:

It's 2.5" x 3.5," fabric, thread, beads, and sequins. Oh, and a charm. I used a scrap of batting (Warm & Natural) as interfacing and put a piece of watercolor paper on the back. Took me at most a couple of hours to make. And it was fun! I was surprised that it turned out to be so much like the one of the squares I made for the Pink Artists Doll (a detail of which I use for my profile picture).

Anyway, Creative Dreamer and I have decided that we would like to invite others to try their hands at making fabric ATC's for a one-on-one swap. CD will be the swap hostess so you need to go to her blog to formally sign up. You don't need to have a blog of your own, although it would be best if you can send her a digital image of your finished ATC so she can post it with all the others after the swap. You have until Feb. 15 to sign up for the swap and then the finsihed ATC needs to be mailed to your swap partner by March 15. (We figured a short deadline would keep anyone from forgetting about their commitment!)

Paper artists are trading ATC's all the time. I actually begged this one off of Creative Dreamer:

I know fiber artsits have also been making ATC's; I just never jumped into the pool until CD dared me. I intvite you to jump in also, if you haven't already. The water's fine!

Awarding Credit

I wanted to give credit where credit is due with the birds I recieved in the Birds of Change Exchange. Because of one thing and another I'm only just getting to it now.

First up is this darling little wooden number from Cathie Sweetwolf. It's actually reversible, with stripes of color on the other side and a green wing. (That photo didn't turn out well at all. Too much glare off the finish on the bird.)

Next we have a little brown bird from Whosies. I think of Thanksgiving when I look at it. Whosie has some really adorable handcrafted items in her shop over at Etsy.

This pink creation is, not surprisingly, from Sweetina. She is actually reversible too, with a little darker flower on her tail on the other side. I love the sequins and handstitching on this one.

Sistermama made this red bird out of a recycled sweater. She did not felt the sweater first; you can see the cable knitting in the body of the bird if you look very closely. The little wire feet grabbed my heart first but I love everything about this bird!

And, last but not least, "Beauregard." Technically this would be Beauregard the II or III or something because the original Beauregard had a pair of spectacles and went to the winner of his maker's give away. I was thrilled to find one of his brothers in my box. :- )

Back at the end of January Finn nominated me for this award:

I was very flattered as I have seen this on the blogs of some pretty creative people. I would now like to take this opportunity to pass the award on to each of the women who made the birds I received in this swap. I think Regina at Creative Kismet has received this award once already too, but since she's the one who came up with this exchange idea and did all the work involved in the actual swapping of birds I think she should get it again. According to the rules of the game I have to nominate 7 other bloggers as part of my acceptance of the award so I'm also going to nominate Calamity Kim. I'm pretty sure she has received this award in the past too, but if she hasn't then it's long overdue.

For those I've nominated, here are the "rules" if you want to play along:

1. The receiver is to copy the award button to his/her blog.

2. Link to who gave you this award.

3. Nominate at least 7 other bloggers.

4. Link to each nominee.

5. Leave message at the nominees blog.

This Exchange was a complete success in my book (I know they don't always turn out that way). The only downside is that I now have even more blogs to try to keep up with!