Do You Tweet?

September 29, 2019September 27, 2019 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Tweet Ladybird

Tweet Shine Tweet Crossroads

Perhaps the UCR Science News was looking for something other than Nobel-prize generating stories or research about saving the world from cancer, but I’m happy that the editor liked my quilts, sent to him by my favorite guy (my husband). The quilts were displayed around University of California’s campus near some of the science buildings (and in the Botannic Garden). Thank you!

DAR Library.jpg

In other news, we visited the (tiny) exhibit at the DAR museum this past week (their library, above) in Washington, DC.

DAR exhibit sign.jpg

More on the exhibit in another post, but I met three quilters while I was there:

From the top left: Beth, a long-time friend (we always meet together at this particular science meeting of our husbands), Rhonda (who I met when I lived in D.C at the local quilt guild), and Bette (who I met online and since have become good friend with via correspondence and phone calls and occasional meetings). But that’s not all the news.

National Press Club

I spoke at the National Press Club, after I was proclaimed Queen of England.
Full story, below.

Headline Queen Elizabeth

Kidding, of course. I merely posed, and the other photo is a leather-embossed rendition of a famous headline, one in a row of famous headlines.

Climate Change Protest

We’d done most of the museums in December when we last visited, and I was wondering what to do one day when the Climate Change Activists staged one of their protests right outside my hotel. I threw on my clothes and went down to watch. I remember how the police used to break up other protests long ago, with tear gas and heavy-handedness. This experience was more like a garden party, as slowly, they encircled the boat parked in the middle of 16th and K. While the activists moved on to march around D.C. the police cut the handcuffs and tethers of those who remained, then towed away the boat. I was quite impressed with the whole experience, both of those who felt strongly about making a statement, and the police officers taking good care of those who they serve. Another reason why I love D.C.

Okay, I promise more serious quilty stuff soon. I’m coming home tonight from my niece’s wedding in the Bay Area, hoping to dive into what I’ve left undone while traveling. Before I left, I did get one quilt to the quilter’s, after auditioning, digitally, many different designs for quilting.

North Country Sept 2019 I also cut more pieces to keep going on my North Country Patchwork Quilt, eeking this one out, bit by bit (photo of what I have so far, above).

Temperature Quilt Sept19.jpg

I did get caught up with my temperature quilt, which is turning out to be very different colors than what I expected. I find it’s easier to do a whole month at a time, than piece-mealing it, day by day.

IE Modern Quilt Guild.jpg

Lastly, this coming Saturday, October 5th, I’ll be presenting a (mostly) modern quilt program at the Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild in Riverside, California. They are a small modern guild, with a whole group of interested, dedicated quilters. Maybe you’ll be there?

EPP · Free Quilt Pattern · Quilts

EPPing again with French General

April 8, 2019April 8, 2019 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Sometime ago, I glimpsed this quilt in an Instagram feed:

The description says it’s from the North Country of England, so I’ve taken to calling it the North Country Patchwork Quilt. The more I looked at it, the more I liked how those red squares just kind of blended into the background on the outer rings, but floated over the foreground in the middle.

I tried to convince my husband to buy it. That was funny, as he made some comment about didn’t we have enough quilts? Seriously, he’s nearly perfect, but in the end, I decided to go ahead and make it.

too much to do.jpeg

Because I sure need another project.

But the project I need is a hand project, really–one that can be toted around in the car. I finished my hexies project, and I finished (thankfully) my millefiore quilt, so now what am I going to do on long car rides? Just sit there?

Car from the past.jpg

So I drew up the block, working between two different pieces of software: QuiltPro and Affinity Designer, and have created this pattern (click on the following link for free PDF file): North Country Patchwork Quilt

This quilt has 624 pieces in it, and if you divide that by four, you’d have to print out gazillions of the pattern page. So here are my tips for making that go more quickly:

Print off several of the free North Country Patchwork Quilt page. Like 10.

Stack each printed page with about 4-5 plain pieces of paper. Staple them together inside the pieces, as shown on the left.

Cut them apart in chunks, like the image on the right, using an old rotary cutter that you’ve dedicated to paper; or, a guillotine paper cutter; or, your paper scissors.

Then further cut them into the individual shapes: a honeycomb and a square. Remove the staples.

That ought to get you started. No, I didn’t use cardstock, but I had some 24 lb printing paper that I used. And yes, I’m gluing the fabric to these pieces of paper. I used this paper when I did my Shine EPP quilt (most blocks are free on this blog) and it worked out just fine. Repeat this process as you need to.

I’m going to vary from the fabrics in the original quilt, as I fell in love with this Vive La France line of fabrics from French General. I’m over the moon for those dusky blues and strong reds.

I worked out some variations of this quilt in QuiltPro software, and they vary by how much of a border is around the central rectangle. Here they are:

I also had some fun with putting the blocks in more contemporary colors (lower left), but decided I didn’t like that version. The top three are sort of in the colors of the original quilt and it looks like to me, it was someone who was making do with cast-offs from her household clothing, as well as men’s shirtings. But I’m anxious to get going and trying this out in the Vive La France fabrics.

I have no idea how I’m going to sew this together, but I will be concentrating on those arms that come into an X, and somehow I’ll do the red square.

Lastly, a reminder to pre-wash your fabrics: working with reds can be tricky.

See you in a couple years!

Creating · EPP · eQuilt Universe · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt

A Bit Frosty this January

January 4, 2019January 4, 2019 Elizabeth E.21 Comments

1shinecirclesquilt

Remember this?

Shine_Quilt Top Final800

And this?

This is Shine: The Circles Quilt, and I started it as a English Paper Piecing project, putting the free patterns up on this blog, beginning in 2014. I also have a page dedicated to these blocks, giving out the patterns and tutorials for each, until the last four (which used to live on Craftsy, but that’s another blog post. Coming soon.)

And then this new year, I opened up mail from one of my heros, Becky Goldsmith to see this:

Goldsmith Circles1.jpg

and this:

Goldsmith Circles2.jpg

all advertising her newest endeavor.

As near as I can tell, she has no idea I exist. She is not copying me. She has fancy borders, and has done the quilt twice. I think this is a classic example of what the German’s call “der Zeitgeist” or “the trend of thought and feeling in a period.”

But I am a bit frosty about this, for one reason only: she has a megaphone, and I have only this blog. I used to have a blog and a Craftsy site (!), but I guess I also have Instagram, which might have a zillion followers if I unblocked all those creepy men or Quilt-Content-Thieves. But is it really “frosty” or is it more that I’m jealous? I think the latter.

I still have my Shine patterns here, but really, I have to yield the selling floor to the firepower of Piece O’Cake Designs, in making a quilt with a grid of paper-pieced circles based on the traditional style of a compass rose. I don’t have her readership, her TV show appearances, her mailing list. She’s a tsunami. I’m a wobbly sprinkler on the back lawn. To be truthful, Goldsmith earned her tsunami status through hard work over many years; again, she did NOT copy me at all. I have all of her books, and have made a couple of her designs, so you do have to put me in the category of Total Admirer. But that’s not the issue here.

My takeaway: when quilters come up with designs similar to one another, it’s not always a copyright issue, which is the usual scream that emmanates from the collective online voice. Sometimes it just is the Zeitgeist.

Sometimes the Sew Together Bag is merely a copy of her grandfather’s toiletries kit (this fact mentioned to me while we were standing in line together at Market in Salt Lake City), and my Mini-Sew Together Bag was a version I was working on when I didn’t like the bulk of the original, and my Smile Bag came before byAnnie’s Clam Up bag and perhaps we were both inspired by the bag for the First Class United Airlines customers, and perhaps they were inspired by some ancient Japanese zakka. That’s how these things go.

Okay, I feel better now.

Updates to original post are in black text.

EPP

Millefiore Quilt Update

November 28, 2018November 24, 2018 Elizabeth E.22 Comments

Millefiore mood board

It all began here, with my Millefiore mood board, drawing on colors from the National Park in Croatia, Plitvice Lakes. I had decided to jump in and go with all of Quilting America that year and join the The New Hexagon Millefiore Quiltalong. I was pretty much nuts to do this. This was photographed on January 19, 2015.

Millefiore first sewing

First glued-up paper pieces: January 19, 2015.

First Rosette.png

First public appearance for Rosette #1: March 14, 2015.

All Rosettes_OPQuilt

Last public appearance for quilt, mocked up in Photoshop: July 15, 2018. That’s over three years, if you are doing the math.

As you know, I hated the crenellated edges on this particular quilt. So the quilt sat in the corner until this week. Then suddenly it was do or die time, and I picked up making little sections to fit into the cut-outs.

Millefiore Center_2

And here it is today, all edges filled in.

Millefiore Working Mess

I pretty much used all the papers I’d taken out of the rosettes — once they were sewn together — and categorized these pieces into bags, using paper clips and rubber bands to keep them organized.

Millefiore numbering cutouts

To keep track, I took a photo, and numbered the half–hexies I was making. I ended up not needing to do this for every corner, as I used long triangles that fit into the zig-zaggy sides (#5-12) in a variety of darker fabrics (taking cues from the adjacent blocks).

Millefiore place tryout

I kept one half-hexie out on my cutting mat and tried different “puzzles” of what could go in that shape. I had pretty much determined that I was not going to use a full half-hexie; I’d seen others and to me they looked bland, like they didn’t add anything to the quilt. I did end up using one, but the fabric had a print that just worked.

Millefiore pinning

I used triangles and a variety of other shapes to fill in, always letting the adjacent fabrics dictate what I’d use for the fill-in fabrics.

Because I like to keep records, and because I’m hoping this will help others when they try this technique, here are all the filled-in shapes and the marked spaces (scroll past fast, if it doesn’t interest you):

Millefiore Fillins_1 Millefiore Fillins_1A

I did my own thing on this rosette.

Millefiore Fillins_3 Millefiore Fillins_3A

I liked how I was able to complete the “bird points.”

Millefiore Fillins_5 Millefiore Fillins_5A Millefiore Fillins_6 Millefiore Fillins_6A

The half-hexie on the lower left is the only one cut from one piece of fabric, but I think it reads as more complex.

Millefiore Fillins_7 Millefiore Fillins_7A Millefiore Fillins_8 Millefiore Fillins_8A

I used a floral Kaffe fabric from deep in the interior (just barely out of sight on the middle left).

Millefiore Fillins_9 Millefiore Fillins_9A

Millefiore Center_3 — *Stained Glass View*

Millefiore Center_4

This is the rosette that started it all, and I still like it.

Quilt Stand

More info on my new quilt stand, coming in a couple of weeks. But now I have my final Frivols to attend to!

200 Quilts · EPP · Free Quilt Pattern · Quilt Patterns · Quilts · Shine: The Circles Quilt

Shine: The Circles Quilt, finished

November 13, 2016June 26, 2019 Elizabeth E.33 Comments

Shine: The Circles Quilt
Quilt #170

This quilt finally finished, I took it out for a photography session with the help of my husband.

I started sewing the first block in June of 2014, and finished the top a year later. The quilting was finished at the end of September, but it wasn’t until now that I could get time to take it up to our university’s Botanic Gardens to get some photographs.

My husband’s favorite block. As some of you know, many of these blocks were inspired by art in a church in Slovenia, as well as designs from our travels. Most of the patterns and accompanying tutorials are free on this blog, found *here* as well in a tab labeled Shine: The Circles Quilt.

This shows the quilting. I was trying out double batting (polyester with wool), and found it was a challenge to move the heavy quilt around on the machine. It took me nearly 4 months to quilt this thing, as I was hobbled with a shoulder injury. But I was able to finish it!

As I quilted, I thought a lot about my brother-in-law Tom, who passed away a little over a month ago. He maintained a beautiful small garden in his backyard, and so in one of the corners I quilted in a flower in his memory (shown below). Many offered advice and help while I was quilting: thank you, everyone.

detail of quilting from the back

This closes a chapter in my life. Lovely to see you here, Shine!

EPP · Quilts

Rosette #6 for the New Hexagon Millifiore Quilt-A-Long

September 20, 2016September 30, 2016 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

Here’s my rosette #6 for The New Hexagon Millifiore Quilt-Along.

And here is the original.

Why did I change it? I started looking at all the composite views of the rosette and just thought the star was too prominent, that it started a new conversation in the middle of the living room when the party around it was already having a nice chat, thank you very much. While I thought the original design was very clever, I needed it to change.

Here are the changes I made:

In the black Circle #1, I created a new piece — that of two tall 30-60-90 triangles merged into one equilateral triangle. I studied my friend Laurel’s rosette (she is all finished with her quilt top) and noticed that in hers, as well as in many others, the right triangles of 30-60-90, when placed back to back with another, create a third pattern. It does the same thing in the original block, above. But I wanted to use this bargello/flame fabric and I only had a little bit, so that made my decision for me.

In the dark pink Circle #2, I looked at other blocks that I’d sewn in my previous rosettes, because I wanted to nab their papers and re-use them. I found this shape in an earlier rosette, figured out that it would work, and am happy with the “ribbon” the multi-colored light-green fabric made.

I had to sew on my equilateral triangles on the center section first, then the next inner row of partial hexies, in order to make it fit (the ones with the bold radiating circle design). Then it was add the last round, alternating the birds and the citrus fruit hexies.

Here it is, laid out in Photoshop, which isn’t really the greatest approximation of how it looks in real life, but I’m not yet to the sewing-it-together phase. I’m still not 100% sure about the colors of Number Six, but I will try to bring in one more yellow spot somewhere — maybe in 10a — so I can balance those brights.

Stay tuned.

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