Frivols Finish #11, the Penultimate!

Posted on November 12, 2018 by Elizabeth E.

Are we done yet? (not yet)

The Cactus Garden photo

And here we are–almost completed with the Year of Making Frivols, with quilt #11, titled, Stars of Night, Lend their Light (quilt #213). It’s the largest Frivols yet, finishing at about 55″ square. And yes–it used up all the fabric. I supplemented it with white Grunge Dots from Moda.

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Look at those Xs! And we’re done early this month!!

The Quilting-in-Process photo

After pinning up the quilt, I knew I wanted to do star points in the stars, but what about the background? I decided to experiement, making a circle, then stitching around it three times, then echoing it and rolling off into another center circle. Headphones are for listening to a Bruno, Chief of Police book; this time it was The Resistance Man.

The How-Much-More-Do-I-Have-To-Quilt photo

The Biological Sciences Building photo

Realizing that all my quilt pictures are around my house, and in my garden, I took it over to the Universide of California-Riverside, where my husband-quilt holder works as a professor, jumped out the car and we quickly took several photos while I was in the Passenger Pick-up Zone. The motto for UCR (how we abbreviate it) is Fiat Lux, or Let There Be Light, so I springboarded off that idea to arrive at the title for this quilt.

The sort-of Sea-Urchin-in-the-Tide-Pools photo, even though it’s a quilt with stars

I really really like the back, with those pointy stars floating among all those bubbly circles.

The Bubbles photo

The one-more-back-shot-on-the-other-side-of-the-sidewalk photo

The Artsy Laying-on-the-Ground photo

The Back of the Chevy photo

Because I wanted the setting sun to provide the light, it also meant that our streets were clogged with traffic, spilling off the freeways (welcome to Southern California). So in meandering home, I spotted this perfectly turquoise Chevrolet pick up: perfect place for a quilt photo. It’s fun to step out of the garden and get some different photos of quilts.

The just-one-little-garden-snapshot photo

The Check Out my Quilting on the Border photo

Hope you’ve enjoyed the quilt show of the penulitmate Frivols quilt!

Fun with Other Quilters at Valley Modern Quilt Guild

Posted on November 7, 2018 by Elizabeth E.

Guild Visit VMQG_1 Guild Visit VMQG_2 Guild Visit VMQG_3

Last week I had the chance to head over to Los Angeles, and speak at the Valley Modern Quilt Guild, held at HighTech LA, a very cool building (with great gates).

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They had these signs all over the school, which I think is a good motto for retreats and workshops, right?

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The place we met was one of those classrooms that can be changed around to suit the needs of those using it, and it was a good space for giving a talk: well lit, comfortable with a good microphone. I stayed until the end of their Guild, as I was curious to see what they were working on. I especially liked their Challenge for that month: Curves.

Guild Visit VMQG_6

Saturday, I headed back to teach a workshop for them at a local high school; the workshop was held in the costume department of the high school, and the teacher worked on costumes for an upcoming production while we used her room.

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First up, a little show and tell. The woman holding the quilt is the principal of the school, and I’m happy to be in her company, along with the other fine members of this guild.

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It’s always fun to see what gadgets people bring, and I loved this one: a veritable traveling trunk of supplies, that you just unzip and Voila! it is available. No more packing up and forgetting something. (I don’t have anymore information on it, but I know she purchased it online.)

Guild Visit VMQG_8a

As soon as we finished the center block, it was photo time. I love how some centers come forward and some recede. Such a creative group! I didn’t do a very good job on taking a picture of the group, but there might be more on their Guild Website. They decided on the Two-For-One class: a quilt in the morning, and free-motion quilting in the afternoon.

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Thank you, Valley Modern Quilt Guild–I had a great time!

And in other news… It is the ONLY reason I did an update on my iPhone this early. Usually I wait a while until they get the bugs out, but I couldn’t resist. They also have a ball of yarn, if you are interested in that.

Gridsters 2018_November blocks

And I finished my November Gridsters Bee blocks early this month and am sending them off to Allison of Quilt Studio 62, who is our Queen Bee this month.

In addition, I’ve had a question or two about what paper I use in the foundation paper piecing I did for the recent Crazy Cushion Class. I recently purchased a ream of paper from them (after 10 years of using the first one), so I took some photos in the store.

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It’s a vellum from Neenah. I updated this post, where you can find more information.

Don’t know what to do with all those real “decorator” pumpkins you buy for fall? A recipe for Stuffed Pumpkin is a good way to enjoy them one more time.

Fall Leaves

The year we lived in Alexandria, Virginia I brought home handfuls of leaves from my walks and scanned them for the future. I love looking at them at this time of year, as we here in Southern California don’t have fall color like this.

Happy November!

Frivols 11

Posted on November 1, 2018 by Elizabeth E.

only two more!

Frivols 11_1

It’s Frivols time, since it is the first of the month, so here we go with Frivols Tin #11: a line from Chloe’s Closet, filled with tape measures and cute floral fabrics. You can find out more about this on the Moda blog, where they introduce this.

To explain for new readers, about two years ago, Moda put out a line of small tins, filled with 7″ squares of one fabric line, directions for a quilt, and a small giveaway treat. I purchased all the tins, but they sat in my closet for a year. This January, I vowed to make all the quilts, one-by-one, and here we are on the eleventh of twelve quilts. You can find them by searching one of the tags on this post, or by entering “Frivols” into the search box on this blog.

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On the back of the tins, more info–and no, I didn’t buy more of that fabric and the Way Back Machine isn’t working today, so I added Grunge Dots in white to fill out the requirements.

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That little tin is the Frivols treat from this group.

Why yes, I do spend a lot of time working at night so that’s why all the photos are slightly pink. I thought I’d bought better bulbs for the lamp, but it’s an old one, so there you go.

Inside the box, I was instructed to divide some squares into piles of four, then save the rest of the squares for an inner border. In the above lower left, everything including the Grunge dots are cut up: triangles, strips and borders. And in the above lower right, you can see how this one won’t fit back into the tin. No matter. I got right on it, and started sewing it up.

After sewing up the first one (L), I vowed to do a better job balancing things, but haha, joke’s on me. When you are working with a defined set of fabrics, in a defined range of colors, and you have to only use a certain amount, that limits how fine you can tune the block/quilt. I just did the best I could, yielding this:

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I seamed the cut strips together and put on the inner border, then finished it up.

Can I just say I really don’t like gray in quilts? Unless it’s meant to be the design choice? But all these designers including gray as one of their “colors” (for we all know that gray is the “no-color”) always strikes me as odd. Bleh on gray, she rants. (That shows you her age. All the 40-somethings love gray in their flowered quilts.)

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