Radiate • New York Beauties Block 3

April 7, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

Radiate: “emit (energy, especially light or heat) in the form of rays or waves” (from the Oxford Dictionary) — OR — “(of a feeling or quality) emanate clearly from, as in “leadership and confidence radiate from her” — OR — “(of an animal or plant group) evolve into a variety of forms adapted to new situations or ways of life” (apparently so rare of a definition, I can’t find any examples). And with the movie Oppenheimer earning an Oscar award for Best Picture, I suppose we can also think about radioactivity radiating out from the fusion bomb, set off in New Mexico years ago. But I really think of the sun on a hot summery day, warming you as the cool ocean breezes surround you on a beach. Pick your beach.

Cut out, ready to go. But first! a tip on getting the alignment on that B1/B2 piece:

Left Photo: Using a gridded cutting mat, tape the tip of the B1 piece, using a line on the mat to keep it horizontally straight. Then sort of lining up the center “seam,” align the B2 piece as well with a line on your mat, keeping that edge vertical. Tape.
Right Photo: Trying not to shift the pieces, tape the center seam, extending the tape. Carefully remove from the cutting board and fold the center-seam tape to the back. Cut off, remove, or fold back the edge pieces of tape (Big Decisions).

I lay out my colors and then get going. For this set of rays, I again wanted a gradation of color, but chose to do two stronger rays in the middle background, fading to the sides. You’ll see.

For pieces like this Inner Arc, I don’t iron it down, but instead treat it like a paper pattern piece. Again, your choice. Do try to align the outer edges on either grain (crosswise or straight-of-grain), letting the curve be on the bias. Having that bias makes for easier seaming when you sew the parts together.

First two sections of rays sewn up.

Trimmed, and papers removed. I find it easier to not pop seams, if I peel back the papers from the top edge (smaller curvature) of the rays. Now you can see the two center background rays in the middle are the same, fading to the sides. That’s also why I wrote 3s and 2s and 1s on the freezer paper — just to keep straight which fabric I was using.

Road Trip Rest Stop: admire your work.

I fold the arc in half, and with the tip of my iron, press in a 1/4″ mark, showing me the centers. You could also just put a pin there, or a small pencil mark.

Sewing the units together in steps.

Happy Dancing Number Bears are still here, but here’s our fifth block, finished! It’s really beginning to add up, isn’t it?

Status Report: five blocks finished. When I made this, I was amused to see that the right-hand side of this digital quilt was sort of empty. Of course, that will change, and I may re-arrange the blocks as I want to, when I get them all finished.

A ~~word~~ ~~paragraph~~ paragraphs about fabrics and colors and quilting: While I use Painters Palette solids by Paintbrush Studio, and that’s what my color numbers are on my Preview Page on the pattern (Preview Page is a free download), you may have a wide range of colors in other solids from other manufacturers. Use what you have and what you like. Change up my colors completely. Make them in prints or whatever. Enjoy making, and seeing your little bits of sunshine grow on your design wall, or design floor, or design bed.

We have to bend quilting to our will, to our situations and circumstances, in order to enjoy what we do.

Yes, I do use Trim-an-Quarter/Eighth rulers, but I also use a regular see-through ruler. Yes, I like freezer paper currently, but if you like the regular way of FPP (foundation paper-piecing), do that. Mary, of Zippy Quilts, sent me a link to another quilter who combines the two in this video. I’m so grateful for all you quilters and your interests and your worlds. You fly through rainbows and bring back jewels for me to think about and to use. If you are sewing along and making New York Beauties, tag me on Instagram (@occasionalpiecequilt or #newyorkbeautiesquilt) or send me a photo to my email (opquilt@gmail.com).

Radiate as you go, in order to freak out any one nearby–

300 Quilts

Happy Easter, 2024

March 31, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.

Sunny Flowers for an Easter morning!

This-and-That

Quilt Your Life, Quilt Your Stuff

March 24, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

For most of her life, Jessie Homer French worked without much expectation or hope of attention or sales or critical acclaim. In a recent article, she said “I paint my life, my stuff. I really, really care about the painting turning out. I’m really upset when it doesn’t. But I don’t feel any need to communicate. I’m sorry. That’s not the point.”

What a refreshing change from the inundation of famous film stars and celebrities and all those fascinating things on social media, which — in the end — draw us away from our quieter lives, or as Homer French says, being “a regular ordinary painter who hangs out in her garage, and desperately tries to make something that she likes.”

While she made this “mapestry” with thread, cloth, and embroidery, her paintings are what she’s known for:

This scene is up in the mountains above Palm Desert, Southern California area. I don’t know why this bio on her drew me in so much. Maybe it was the barren landscapes that she paints, or her focus on her creating, whether in cloth or with paints. And maybe like the stack of paintings that piled up in her garage, sending her out to find a gallery that would sell her paintings, I feel we quilters often toil quietly, with our cloth and thread, imbuing what’s in our hands with our life, our stuff.

Here’s some of my recent work:

Bit by bit, Twilight Garden is taking shape. It’s going to be a hand-work project now.

On the first day of Spring it was warm enough to set out lunch on the patio. Our conversations seem to unfurl at a slower pace out there.

We had our wisteria trimmed; the squirrel’s perch is right outside my sewing room window.

I’ve been photographing my Mother’s few journals. She was too busy to write much, ever, so they are brief and don’t cover much time. But reading them is like having a good conversation with her.

I went on (another!) trip to Utah to see this tall granddaughter come home after an 18-month mission to Argentina.

And to have lunch with my father’s sisters.

My father gave me this book many years ago, and I pulled it out this week. I found little notes tucked in addressed to me, instructing me to place some newspaper clippings he’d sent, into the back of the book. It was poignant to see his handwriting again.

It’s a weighty book, one man’s year of mourning for his father. I’ll have to take it slow, but right at the beginning this caught my heart:

“And when grief is gone? Still one may not speak of one’s parents baldly. After the twelve months of mourning, the rabbis continue, one must accompany the mention of one’s dead father or one’s dead mother with the words, ‘May his memory be a blessing for life in the world to come.’ Modern Jews have abridged this locution of piety. They speak of their dead and say ‘May his memory be a blessing,’ and they mean a blessing here, upon us. But the rabbis meant a blessing there, upon him….I can believe that the memory of our dead is a blessing here, upon us. Can I believe that it is a blessing there, upon them?”

I can only hope so. Really, I want both. As I think about my mother and father, feeling grateful at this Eastertide for their influence in all ways, I hope their memory is a blessing for them, together. And with my needle and scissors in hand, their memories and these blessings help me pass some really long days.

Quilt your stuff, everyone. Quilt your life.

Happy Easter Week!

New York Beauties · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt

Cool Rays • New York Beauties Block 2

March 17, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

After leaping around the line-up, we return to Block #2, but instead of the more traditional sew-it-in-rip-it-out, it’s made with freezer paper. Apparently this method is the hot new tutorial/class/method, and you could do a search to find a class if you want, but I still think that first block I did with freezer paper will help you get started. And more tips are on the second block I tried, too.

The Bizness: Since I’ve had this quilt in mind for a few whiles, the whole gamut is grouped together under the New York Beauties tab, above, and that’s where I’ll put most things. The pattern, however, resides at my pattern shop, as does the free handout that lists all the colors of Painters Palette that I used (it’s called the “Preview” on my pattern).

For Cool Rays, I decided to do a gradation of color (popularly called “ombré” these days) in the background behind the rays, so I picked out a range of greens, trying to keep the color changes smooth and in the same color family (a more yellowy-green than a bluey-green).

I used the method of trimming a sheet of freezer paper (off the roll) to about 8 1/4″ by 10 3/4″ and taping it to a piece of cardstick, or equivalent heavier paper. Then I sent it through my color printer, using the rear feeder for a glide path that doesn’t ask the paper to double-back on itself. Cut the pieces out, and you are ready to go. I can get five uses out of one pattern-printed-on-freezer paper, but for this block you only make four.

Hand-crease on all the lines, working from the printed side, then re-crease them from the back.

Keep trimming those seam allowances to slightly less than 1/4-inch. Again, refer to the blog posts linked above for a more detailed step-by-step version of how to use freezer paper.

Trim around the completed section, around the freezer-paper pattern. You’ll be left with four stacks of rays. Seam them together, matching up the red dashed lines. It helps me to line them up in the way they’ll go (on the right).

After using the tip of my iron to press in the marks of where to line up my pieces, I lay them out.

Pinned and ready to sew.

I pressed away from the light center quarter-circle on this one. On other blocks, I’ve pressed the seam allowances toward the circle, for more definition from the front. Experiment with what you like.

And By The Way Department: I’m so tired of that argument about pressing seams open or pressing seams closed — I just saw it again on another website, and I’m like Leave.It.Alone. There is no right or wrong, but only personal preference. Unless you are making for a group, or in a Bee and the Queen Bee wants it a certain way. Then do it her way.

All four blocks done! Now that I look at them like this, I wish I had swapped two of the greens. Sigh. I can’t even imagine remaking it just for that. The quilt will be fine.

All four blocks with my line of Number Bears, made for when toddlers lived here and I had to keep them quiet in church. The bears all snap together. The guys on the left have “casts” made out of more felt, as one of my kids ripped their hands off with too vigorous effort on the unsnapping of the colorful conga line. (This was in the those old days of mending and repairing.) This hangs around my sewing room, because I can’t bear to get rid of it. My youngest is old now, but I still keep it.

Progress so far. We’ve been making a block about every other week, so far, but the upcoming Eclipse may throw us off.

This website has an interactive link that really zooms in to show granular detail of how many minutes it will show totality in your location. After having done the Annular Eclipse in Utah last year, I know how quickly 4 minutes can pass while you are looking at this marvel. Maybe that’s why I’m doing this quilt? Because it looks like the sun in some ways? I do know that’s why I named the blocks the way I did.