Creating

Time to Go Home

March 19, 2012 Elizabeth E.4 Comments

When I start finding lots of images that could be turned into quilts (like the ones below), and. . .

. . . when I start buying souvenirs like the ones below. . .

. . . I know it’s time to go home and get back to quilting. So we did, driving 8 hours south through the rain. . . to more rain.

But we made a little detour first, to this place.

Where we saw a bunch of blue-shirted happy Apple employees. And yes, Krista, we bit, which about covers our birthdays, our anniversaries, Bastille Day, St. Patrick’s Day, whatever. Check back Wednesday when I attempt to make an iPad cover in less than an hour before the grandchildren arrive for their Spring Break visit.

EPP: A Shared Gift

February 21, 2012 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

Because I am a complete quilt dork, loving nearly all things quilting, I love looking at my very first completed English Paper Piecing (EPP) block. I love how I can use the fabric to make a secondary design. I love how I can sit and watch Downton Abbey or a movie or talk to my husband, and at the end I have another something to show for the time. I love how I learned it from Krista, and how she shared with me how to put it together, and how I went to other blogs and quilters and friends, enjoying the fruits of sharing from this community of quilters.

I suppose my enjoyment is kind of all stitched together with the trip to the surgeon’s office today, and when he said, “Have a nice life. You’re all done,” I thanked him, hopped off the table, got dressed and zipped out the door, with only a bandaid (instead of a bulky gauzy dressing) on the healing wound site. I called my husband to tell him the news as I sat in the parking lot. I know I’m an easy-to-cry person so I wasn’t too surprised by the tears that followed, streaming down my face as I sat there in the warm sunshine, thinking about my little journey of the last two-plus months, and getting that advice from the doctor.

So, I pass it on to you. Have a nice life. Finger some cloth. Sit in the warm sunshine for a few minutes. Enjoy those skills that you are developing, or have developed, in making something of yourself to leave behind if the have-a-nice-life line doesn’t materialize at the surgeon’s office, and you realize, like Sir Launfal, that all we ever have in this life is what we share. So, just today, I share my first EPP block with you on this very normal, this very poignant day.

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Lines from James Russell Lowell’s poem: “The Vision of Sir Launfal:”

Not that which we give, but what we share,–
For the gift without the giver is bare;
Who bestows himself with his alms feeds three,–
Himself, his hungering neighbor, and me.

Creating

New Year, New Look

January 14, 2012December 28, 2024 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

I played around with some changes to the blog this morning, including a new header. I like it. Jump out of your readers to take a look. I looked at a lot of my quilts trying to decide which to use in the header, and trended toward the ones I’d had a major hand in designing. There are still some from other people’s visions that I love, like Come A-Round with its dots and circles. I try to jump out of my reader a lot to look at your blogs as it’s like visiting someone’s home–seeing how they decorate and how they arrange the furniture. And of course, seeing what kind of chocolate they stock in the private stash! My current favorites:

and

Suite 88’s dark chocolate with ginger. Alas, I’m on my last squares and you can only buy it in Montreal!

I had wanted to create a new look for the blog–left it for the Christmas break–and am finally glad I feel like doing something creative. It’s hard not feeling like yourself. When I was reading blogs last night from Lee’s WIP, one quilter wrote that it was “her turn to get sick” and she’d posted a photo of herself in her bathrobe, stitching on some applique. It’s been a bad year for sick–bring on the chocolate–bar, or all frothed up in a steamy mug of liquid deliciousness. It’s also a strange year for weather–no snow yet in most places in the US. And down here in OPQland, that is –Southern California, we’ve been having spring since Christmas (guess that means we’ll have a scorcher of a summer).

I added a counter on the side showing the days until Road to California. That counter may appear and disappear, depending on my mood.

(It’s gone now.)

Creating · Quilts

Quilt Ideas

January 12, 2012 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

Over at Stitched in Color, Rachel has declared a scrap manifesto: Use Them!

I think that’s a brilliant idea; she’s culled a lot of ideas using scraps to make quilts and has a challenge going to use up our scraps (see her website for more details). I think the idea, really, is to stash-bust, using up all those bits of fabrics leftover from our projects (or a too-ambitious buying spree). I’ve been looking for a few of my own ideas on how to use up the stash. Here’s one, a free pattern from Lila Ashberry, titled Summer House, and you can find the download *here.*

I’m looking for patterns that have a complexity to them, and will use lots of fabric and be quickly put together.

Or how about Mayra Dubrawky’s Sticks and Bricks pattern? There would be a LOT less angles/triangles in this one, although it doesn’t have that complexity of the other.

Here’s one idea I’ve had in my files for a long time: a scrappy log cabin.