Category: Creating

Creating

Wheels of Dots

Elizabeth E.Leave a comment

Okay, compared to Red Pepper, I’m awfully slow.  She gets a quilt done in a day, it seems, but here’s what I’ve been able to do in a few days.  Two almost-done wheels!  Yay–only 10 more to go.  I originally thought there were sixteen wheels, but no, only twelve.  That suits me fine.

You know that old adage about how what we quilters do is take perfectly good fabric, cut it into small pieces just so we can sew it up again?  That idea has played through my mind more than once, as I’ve worked on this quilt.

Here’s the board of pieces that I keep next to the sewing machine, painstakingly trying to be random when choosing.  The little machine–the Featherweight–has been pressed into service for this one.  I like my bigger electronic machine, but there’s a different connection to the fabric and the process when I use this tiny sewing machine.  It’s just me, the belts and gears and all those little pieces of fabric.

Okay, the one downer will be when I have to peel all the paper off the backs of these arcs at the end, but Becky Goldsmith and Linda Jenkins of Piece O’ Cake Designs (who designed this quilt) said to use parchment paper.  So I went down to my local Kelly Paper store and bought a ream, choking on the price.  But I really dislike peeling paper off of paper-pieced quilts, so I was ready to try their recommendation.

This quilt is from the book Quilts with a Spin, and is on sale now at their website.  Yes, I see all that applique on the outside of the quilt. This must be my applique year.  The other night at quilt night we were discussing how chaotic our lives seemed to be, and I mentioned that this coming year was the Year of the Rabbit on the Chinese calendar.  To a woman, they all said they were ready for a year of calm and quilt, a rabbit-like year.  Maybe that’s why I’ve inadvertently chosen applique quilts this year–calm, quiet–sewing on my applique while I stream down something from Netflix on our AppleTV.

Creating · Good Heart Quilters

Quilt Night–Jan 2010

Elizabeth E.Leave a comment

Our little quilting group (which at one point had the name of Good Heart Quilters) got together for our first time in the new year.  It was at my house, so I got to snap the photos.

The newest quilter first!  Sara is new to our group and new to quilting and for her first project has decided to cut up her sons’ shirts and make a one-patch.  I love memory quilts, and think this will be a great project for her.

Dots were everywhere tonight, perhaps because of the stash builder we did in November.

Laurel took the ones we passed out then, added to what she’d been collecting, and made this terrific square.

There will be four in the quilt when she’s done; she worked on the yellow one tonight.  She and I both found out that it doesn’t take much to collect a lot of dots.

I was working on a dotty quilt, too, but am paper piecing arcs to make large circles.  Laurel and Lisa coached me through my first steps.  I mean, we all know how to paper piece, but when you pick it up again, there’s always this bit of confusion–not helped by the fact that I had a birthday recently.

Tracy’s raw-edge applique circles-onto-squares will be completed soon as she’s speedy.  What kind of fabrics? Dots!

We were all in awe of Karen’s bargello heart–a project she’s been steadily working on for a while.  That’s the beauty of Quilt Night–we all catch up with each other and we all get a chance to pull out our quilting and stitch for a while.

Because of my birthday, Leisa brought me a cake.  So, I made them all pose for a shot.  We’ve been doing quilt night in one form or another for about 10 years, and the composition of our group has changed over that time, with some quilters pausing to do other things, and new quilters joining in.

Leisa and Lisa.  Lisa just got her machine back out of the shop, so she worked on quilting a panel for some pillows.  Lisa brought Dr. Seuss fabric that many of us wanted to steal–she’s got two more grandsons to be born this year so that fabric will be perfect.

Jean missed November’s Quilt Night because she was on a polar bear expedition (photographing them)–it sounded fascinating–but she got right back into the swing of things and cut all evening.  I have a fold-up table similar to hers and it really saves the back when doing lots of cutting.

Jody worked steadily on pillows to match the quilt she had made for her daughter. One thing we were all talking about is our local quilt show, Road to California, which is coming up in a couple of weeks and we were seeing who was going which day.  None of us are taking classes this year. We’ll just be shopping, I guess.

Leisa, Tauni and Laurel visit while working.  That’s Martinelli’s there on the tray, along with delicious birthday cake (we thrive on caffeine, not the liquid bubbly).  Some of the quilters were missing, but hopefully we’ll see them next time.  Tracy, Tauni and I worked for a while, talking late into the night.  I think we solved just about all the world’s problems, so we wrapped it up until next time.

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Late addition: I worked all day off and on, and completed the paper piecing for one circle.  Now’s there’s eight more to go!

(I’m trying to make the quilt below.)

(Wish me luck.)

Creating

Time Flies

Elizabeth E.1 Comment

I made a quilt like this and gave it away, but thought I’d like one too.  I started re-collecting a few months ago, and now have enough for two quilts!  Doesn’t it always go like that?  At the rate I’m going this month, I’ll have it done by summer, but it is fun to look at such an explosion of color when I get bored with my grading.

On a related note, a friend bought two of these bundles to make a quilt for her granddaughters.  I couldn’t get them out of my mind.  So when Fabricworm had a little Black Friday sale, I bought a stack, too.  Do I know what I’m going to do with them?  No–but who could resist this luscious stack of turquoise and red/oranges?  I just noticed that they are sold out of them, so I’m hoping that I got one of the last ones.

And at FabricShoppe on Etsy, I found this coordinating fabric; I figured I could work the argyle in somewhere, and the zigzag might make an interesting binding.  Although we hardly ventured out, you could say I contributed to the American economy in my own way.

On a related note, I’ve been thinking about time–most notably the belief that I will have more time in some imaginary future than I do now.  Which is why I can’t seem to finish the quilt on the pin wall, but I’m happily adding to my stash via Black Friday sales on the web.  In an article in the New York Times, it notes that our perception of time is never accurate:

In fact, scientists are not sure how the brain tracks time. One theory holds that it has a cluster of cells specialized to count off intervals of time; another that a wide array of neural processes act as an internal clock.

Either way, studies find, this biological pacemaker has a poor grasp of longer intervals. Time does seem to slow to a trickle during an empty afternoon and race when the brain is engrossed in challenging work. Stimulants, including caffeine, tend to make people feel as if time is passing faster; complex jobs, like doing taxes, can seem to drag on longer than they actually do.

This would explain why when grading a pile of student essays, time slows to a deadly crawl.  But when shopping for shiny bright new fabric on the web or piecing a lovely hot pink and orange quilt, the time seems to gallop by–leaving me only an unfinished quilt on the wall.

I will have more time come the new semester as I’m only teaching one class–and it’s one I’ve taught multiple times so things are pretty well in place (unlike this past semester of two new preps).  The trick will be to discipline myself to use this extra time in a most rewarding way, which will definitely include, among other things, cutting into and piecing fabric.

Creating · Sewing

“Front Basting”

Elizabeth E.Leave a comment

I had to post this snippet of video from Pink Chalk Studios showing Lisa Prior Lucy demonstrating her technique of “front basting,”while she sat at Market this year.  Of course, this is of interest to me because I have lost my mind and bought this pattern and plan (with my quilty friend Rhonda) to make this quilt.  Sometime in my lifetime, although Rhonda assures me we will finish this.  Okey dokey.

First, the video.  Then look below for the quilt.

What was interesting to me was that Liza Prior Lucy’s quilt, both in her hand and in the background, had a DARK background instead of these lights.  Oooh.  Now that’s interesting.