September 2012 Quilt Night

September 23, 2012September 23, 2012 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

The Good Heart Quilters got together the second week of September to teach & learn, catch up and eat, and to hang out.

Lisa showed us the completed Arabic Lattice quilt, everything finished up since our summer get-together.

This is one her daughter Leilani completed–with a horse theme. Leilani has a horse that occupies a lot of her free time, so she made a quilt to go along with that love of hers.

Caitlin came tonight, showing off her Christmas stockings. Perfection in a nutshell. She’s one of our newbies.

Deneese is another quilter new to our group. Both of these women have small toddlers and babies at home so they can’t always break away, but we’re glad to have them when they come.

Simone’s first night, too. She likes to ham it up for the camera. I don’t think I ever got one picture of her with her lovely smile.

Bridget shows off her first quilt. I believe she participated in the Red and White Sample Swap, but then she made the double-nine-patch blocks to go in between her sampler blocks.

It was held at Carol’s house (in the yellow blouse). She’s a newbie, too! Here she is with Karen, and of course, our snack/munchie bar.

Laurel worked on this set of blocks. Every photo I have of her, her eyes are closed, but she obviously has them open in order to pick such beautiful fabrics.

Karen’s bargello heart. She is on the quilting now, doing it by hand.

Lisa (Bridget’s Mom) and Caitlyn look through quilt books. Actually, I think Lisa is working on her half-square triangles, sorting them into colors.

Laying out Simone’s apple core quilt on the guest bedroom bed. She sent me a snapshot this week, showing that she’d sewn the first row together!

Kelly is another one of our newest quilters. Although an accomplished sewist, she’d never quilted before. So she learned to cut with the rulers, stitch a quarter-inch seam, and got working on cranking out a set of blocks. It’s the end of the night and we’re all tired and walking into walls, but we had a great time.

Because my photos that night were kind of bogus, I asked Lisa to bring her latest quilt top over so I could take a picture of it. Here’s the close-up.

And here it is in all its glory. This had genesis in the early days of our group, when four of us began to make “I Spy” quilts: Lisa, Laurel, Leisa and me. Laurel’s had squares, instead of hexagons. I don’t know if Leisa finished hers, but I gave all my pieces to Lisa. She gave me a few back so I could cut them up for my Polaroid blocks, but then she borrowed my templates, cut some more and got it done. Woo-hoo!

Portuguese Tile Quilt

September 7, 2012September 28, 2012 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I started with this picture of some tiles from Portugal.

Then I mocked up a quilt in my Quilt-Pro 5 program. I mapped it out with 8″ squares, set 6 across in 6 rows, with a 4″ border, yielding a 56″ square quilt.

I’m using the Madrona Road fabric, as I’m always wading into my outdated stash to try a new quilt, and wanted to take this new line for a test drive. Because of the barn and the truck, I thought back to my days of Amish quilting and went with black for that windmill blade, just like the tile in Portugal, shown above. Besides every quilt needs some contrast and this line reads to me, for the most part, as in the middle-intensity value range, a favorite of mine and nearly every other quilter. (I have to work to get the darks and the lights into my stash.)

To cut out the large pieces, I laid out my fabric RIGHT SIDES UP, and cut a rectangle that was 7″ by 4 1/2″, then lay the template on the rectangle (see picture below), and sliced it into two. Here’s the template: PortugueseTileWindmilltemplateSM.

Print it out so you’ll have the pieces to use as a guide for cutting. (Okay, full disclosure. I at first didn’t lay the fabric RIGHT SIDE UP, and have quite a few pieces that are backwards, ensuring that I’ll be making this again. So try not to screw up like I did.)

I could have either cut all the black pieces according to a template, or figured out a way to make it easier. I went with the second. Cut a rectangle 5 3/8″ by 2 3/4″ and then slice it from corner-to-corner, diagonally. You will have dog ears you’ll have to cut off, if that’s a consideration for you.

Cut 72 pieces of the blue line, 72 pieces of the pink/orange fabrics and 144 black triangles (that’s 72 rectangles, cut in two).

Lay a triangle across the larger piece. To get it lined up, put the black on top, with the left point sticking 1/4″ out over the edge. Don’t worry about that right-hand side longer point. Stitch. Press towards the black.

Now lop off those points, by truing this block up to 4 1/2″ square (see below).

I’ve laid them out on my pin wall. I don’t have enough of them to do the REAL work of laying them out, because I’m headed downstairs to make some corn-shrimp-coconut soup for dinner, but I’m thinking I do want to mix up the different types of fabric within the pink/orange group and the blue group.

Thanks for you nice atta’ boy comments yesterday. I took to catch up on the speeches from the Democratic Convention (remember, I’d assigned the watching of these to my students, so feel like I need to keep up), and cut and sewed my cloth. It’s amazing the difference a day makes. I liked what Betty said, that this exhaustion must be in the zeitgeist or something. But after a break of a day, I may even feel like grading, knowing I have this little project to come back to throughout the day.

Creating · Something to Think About

Garden of Your Mind

September 3, 2012September 3, 2012 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

I don’t generally post videos and other things on here, but I read about this on Becky Goldsmith’s blog (Piece O’ Cake), and fell in love with it. I have felt lately like my brain is shattered glass, little pieces of hard crystal, each piece labeled with teaching tasks: grade quizzes, make logical fallacy handout, create MLA test, create MLA handouts, conclusions, lesson plans and this week, prepare for evaluations. Even in sleep these glass fragments are embedded in my dreams and I wake up making To Do Lists for the day. It’s wearying to say the least. It reminds me of having a new baby, while trying to care for the older children as well. Every part of you is taken, spoken for.

I only want quilting to be this way, to be deliciously immersed in creativity and process and product.

So Happy Labor Day to you all, and take some time to think up new quilts in the garden of your mind. And to those who never grew up with Mr. Rogers playing in the background–well, it may not make much sense to you. But as Becky Goldsmith noted, this video is the best use of auto-tune ever.

100 Quilts · Books · Creating

My Head’s in a Book. . . or Two

August 25, 2012 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

I should be annotating the readings I assigned to my students with my brand new colored pencils, but instead my brain’s rebelled. It is Saturday after all, and I need a break.

Remember the exhibit I was all gaga over at Long Beach? Well, the twelve-by-twelve group has put out a book, Twelve By Twelve: The International Art Quilt Challenge, and it arrived in my mailbox this week.

There’s so much in here, and I’ve just barely started reading. They have an overview of each theme, and have featured one quilt from that collection and the artist that created it. We get to learn about her methods, ways of working, how she approached the idea and how it percolated in her mind.

Some of my favorites from the exhibit are featured, as well as an overview of how they all got together. The Leader of the Pack found a website where six quilters had embarked on a similar project. So she then asked twelve quilt artists that she knew to try this themed approach to working. I’ve been chatting with Rachel and we think we’d like to try, and although we know we are certifiably nuts to add one more thing to our lives, the idea of trying new techniques and ideas in a small space (a quiltlet, if you will) is appealing.

We all have Too Much To Do, for sure, but I keep thinking of that old refrain I have heard more than once–something about the worst thing to live with is regret. I’ve settled some of my ghosts–doubtful I’ll ever write a novel, or climb Mt. Everest (really doubtful on that one), or go bungee-jumping. But to pass up on a chance to push the creative edge may be a regret I don’t want hanging around. I think Rachel and I are still wondering if we want to jump off that Quiltlet Cliff, but if you want to walk to the edge and jump with us, leave me a comment and we’ll start to put together our own group. You have to agree to a deadline, but it will be well-labeled.

The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking is the second book that came this week (banner week for books, I know!) by Jane Brocket. Betty, a reader, and I were talking (“emailing”) about a quilt titled the Swimming Pool quilt, shown here on the cover, a lush compilation of Kaffe Fassett fabrics. The whole book is filled with quilts like this, in moody atmospheric settings. I mentioned to Betty that sometimes these illustrations drove me nuts as I wanted Full! Color! Pictures! of the quilts so I could really study them.

But the quilts are so beautiful I put up with this inconvenience. She’s quite descriptive in her ideas, methods and even fabric lines used.

At the end of the book, she includes this visual index of the quilts, but. . . I still wanted them larger, esp. since it’s a hardback book. It’s published by C&T, which publishes most of my favorite quilt books.

And lastly, I have my 100th quilt back from the quilter, and am sewing the binding, sleeve and label on.

More photos when I can get my husband to finish his Donna Leon book–we’re feasting on them currently, our heads always with Detective Guido Brunetti, solving crime in Venice. My husband is on #12 in the series; I just finished #8 (I’m trying to catch up). This fall we’re headed to Northern Italy, with a stop in Venice, but in reading these books, I feel like I’m already there.