Blog Strolling

April 18, 2011April 19, 2011 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I had a few minutes this morning to do some blog strolling–looking around, clicking on links, letting my browsing take me where it will. (Oh, yeah, and I changed the look of the blog again.)

This selvage heart is made by Riel Nason, a quilter in Canada. I think it’s an inventive way to use all those fab selvages we all acquire–well, at least the ones we’re not sending on to Cindy for her pincushions (and if you don’t have a pincushion yet, you should really get one!).

Carla, of Lollyquiltz, took two simple motifs–that of the sunburst and a birdhouse–and created something cheerful, springy and a way to use up a related novelty fabric. Maybe I have sunburst-style blocks on the mind after making my Come A-Round quilt, but there is something so appealing about the combination of these two ideas.

Not all the blog-strolling results in quilt ideas, however. Jen of StitchHack has a nifty tutorial on prairie points, made from one piece of fabric. Makes me want to leave all my plain bindings behind and try a few novelty edgings!

This is a close-up of a quilt made by Wanda of Exuberant Color. While I love the swirly black and white setting squares and sashing, it gave me courage to use up some of those batiks I used to stockpile. I had stopped using batiks after the lack of colorfastness ruined a quilt I gave as a gift (the owner washed it and the fabrics ran–I still feel really badly about giving away a quilt that would self-destruct in the wash cycle!). But this quilt entices me to use the batiks in a new way–always pre-washing, of course.

This is one of my all-time favorite modern quilts, made by Ashley of Film in the Fridge. She unfurled it on a fall day, then it disappeared while it was being photographed for a magazine. I love the patterns of the nine-patch blocks interspersed with the large blocks of fabric. It’s a way to have our cake and eat it too: cut up those fabulous fabrics we buy into small squares, while retaining large squares to show off the fabrics. The pattern will be in 101 Patchwork Projects, due out on the newsstands about now!

I’ve been idle long enough today, as I am still recovering from doing a luncheon for 300 women at our church’s women’s conference. I had a lot of help, but after six weeks of planning, baking and fussing, I’m glad to be moving on to something else. Here’s the cake we served: Almond-Orange Cake with Chocolate Ganache Icing.

My next project? Yep. It’s Lollypop Trees Time!

Creating

Naming Quilts

April 13, 2011April 9, 2011 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I like the idea of naming my quilts–call it the Eve in me–but I don’t name everything. I read a blog post about someone who named their electronics and I like the idea, but I don’t do it. I do admit that some of my quilts have dorky names. And you’ve read on this blog before that I think people might want to give a little more thought to the names of the quilts that I see hanging up in the shows. My secret weapon in all of this business if finally revealed.

Yes. Hoyt’s New Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations. This edition was compiled by Kate Louise Roberts, and if the cracked spine and archaic title didn’t give away its age, certainly the editor’s full name did. Originally published in 1922, the edition I have is the 1940 edition, purchased at an estate sale when I first moved here. I’m a sucker for pithy little lines of verse, beautifully written epigraphs, quotable quotes, and terrific sayings from people, both famous and not. I think I inherited this from my father, who, even in his 85th year, still can find a quotable line for almost every situation–and he recites them from memory. However, I look them up.

So in naming this current quilt, I was intrigued with the idea of “Spring Life” that popped out when writing the last post about this quilt. I looked up “Spring” in the Cyclopedia, and found several verses that were intriguing:

Spring hangs her infant blossoms on the trees,
Rock’d in the cradle of the western breeze. (Cowper)

Infant blossoms–wow. What an image.

Now Nature hangs her mantle green
On every blooming tree,
And spreads her sheets o’ daisies white
Out o’er the grassy lea. (Burns)

Lots of old language in this volume. Liked the idea that Spring puts our her daisy bedding (maybe a quilt?) over the meadow. But the one I liked:

There is no time like Spring,
When life’s alive in everything,
Before new nestlings sing
Before cleft swallows speed their journey back
Along the trackless track. (Rossetti).

Are you bored yet? Thinking up a title takes a little wandering through this book. But I think I’ll go with a hybrid:

Spring/Life’s Alive

Textiles & Fabric

Spoonflower Fabrics

April 11, 2011April 11, 2011 Elizabeth E.Leave a comment

I just voted over at Spoonflower for my favorite fabrics in this week’s contest: rain. I also had fun looking at their Project Selvage contestants. For those of you who haven’t known about Spoonflower, it’s a print-on-demand studio, with weekly contests usually arranged around a theme. Sometimes I have time to vote, sometimes I don’t, but it’s always fun to look and see what new designers are coming up with. Next week’s contest is Alphabet. Given my craze for all things text on textiles, I’ll be looking, and voting, on that one too.