Finger Paints Quilt-A-Long • Painter’s Palette Solids

July 29, 2021August 3, 2021 Elizabeth E.18 Comments

I saw this online and immediately jumped. This was one of my favorite quilts at QuiltConTogether, and yes–I’ll take one for myself.

These two quilts, Finger Paints and Cindy’s Delta Breeze, are definitely cousin-quilts, but oh-so different and I’ve had Delta Breeze on the mind for like a 100 years. And the fabric all chosen and set aside in the cupboard, but I can always use another quilt that combines style and color and cool ideas.

Laura Loewen is a relative to another favorite online friend (the Medallion Queen!). Laura has two versions of this quilt: one made straight up, with rulers, etc. and one that is a bit more improv. I decided to jump on the improv class, so am signed up for August 28, Saturday. If you are in that class, come and sit by me! I’m kind of shy as we’ve been in the house like forever, and I don’t quite know how to deal with real people anymore, but I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

I’m a Painters Palette Solids gal, and Laura doesn’t list these fabrics, so I set out to figure out my colors. Long ago I grabbed one of Paintbrush Studios’ charm packs with all the colors, broke it apart and wrote the number of the color on the small square. But I also wrote another number: one referring to the column on the fabric swatch chart, so I could find them easily. I never understood everyone who cut up their color charts (I mean, I understood why they said they did it, but didn’t understand how it would be easier to find colors), but this system works for me.

(And you can win a complete set of Painters Palette charm colors at the end of the post, if you are a Painters Palette user, or want to be.)

So here’s three photos, showing my chosen colors. You can’t see the Black, but it’s written in pencil beside it: 004. And a quick tip: if you go to Pineapple Fabrics and want to order your Painters Palette Solids, just type in 121- and then the color number in the search bar. It finds it a LOT faster than wading through their menus. (So Black would be 121-004 in the search box.)

The neutrals. I laid the squares over Laura’s cutting instructions so as not to give away any info from her pattern. Again, if you can’t see the number written on the swatch, most are in pencil beside the colored square in her pattern.

Purple is 080. I couldn’t decide on Fabric C–it calls for a light purple and I have two that could do that: a light pinky lavender (084) and a periwinkle lavender (012). I’m holding off on cutting until I see where they go and what will work. Since I think this is sort of the warm colors, it may have to be 084 vs. 012.

Sorry–navy is hard to read, too: It’s Fabric W: 008; Dark Green is 074. I went back and forth on the navy, as to me that color is a bluey-black, but in her original quilt, the color appears much brighter. (The quilt on the cover of her pattern is made up in different fabrics than her original, shown below.)

This is a screenshot from the MQG Website, showing all the award winners from QuiltConTogether 2021, if you want to go and look at the rest. I love what Laura wrote on her blog about creating this quilt: “I had been in a sewing rut, as many of us found ourselves mid-pandemic, and I knew I needed a splash of color and playing with fabric to get back into sewing. I decided on a simple bear paw quilt block but wanted to put a modern spin on it with improv piecing.”

While I did notice that she pressed open all of her seams, I don’t know if I can follow her down that rabbit hole. We’ll see. I’m a press-to-the-side sort of person, because I like the dimension.

Here’s an IG quick movie to show you my mess when I was choosing. Above is my version of the Painter’s Palette Solids color card. Because I’ve been collecting solids for a while, I only had to buy two more colors from Pineapple Fabrics. Hooray for sewing from the stash. (Hooray for collecting!)

This is my Criss-Cross Color pattern. Obviously I like this sort of quilt! Now to get busy on cleaning up the sewing room. We cleared out a lot of my stuff out of the guest room because — oh, gosh — we had guests, and I need to finish ~~cramming stuff onto shelves~~ organizing to get the detritus off the floor.

UPDATE: Giveway closed. Thanks for entering! ~~If you want to enter the giveaway for the charm-packs-color swatches, mention it in your comment below. (Domestic USA only.)~~

Happy Quilting!

Triad Harmony Workshop

October 18, 2020November 6, 2020 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

A song from my childhood always pops into my head when I start my Zoom classes, bright and early, on Saturday morning. It’s something about “bright, smiling faces” that are “all in their places,” and when you see that class portrait where I cue them all to look at the camera and smile, it certainly resonates. (I like to do a class portrait, giving the students time to compose themselves, so as to avoid that strange deer-in-the-headlights-slightly-tipsy portrait that can happen when we try to freeze a video feed with a snapshot.)

The portrait above is the Coastal Quilters from Santa Barbara, one of those Guild engagements that morphed from in-person to Zoom. Again, I have to say I’m really loving teaching this way, with everyone in their own spaces with their own equipment and fabrics. (Do we have to go back to the other way?) I did teach one Zoom class once where they all gathered in the back room of a quilt shop, masks in place, but there wasn’t the interaction; I really missed the individual conversations that the traditional Zoom set-up allows.

And this is what a busy workshop looks like in reality. Everyone is on task (since I took this unannounced, I have blurred out any faces), working hard at creating their own versions of Triad Harmony. This is later in the afternoon and they had all made incredible progress.

Something I do — which I think is unusual — is a Follow-up Workshop Session, one week later. It’s one of the best parts of the class, in my opinion.

In this Follow-Up class, the students send me photos of their quilts the day before, and I put them up into a slide show. This is my view from my computer, and we all engage in discussing the quilts, the fabric choices, successes, and challenges. It’s a lovely time to hear from the quilt makers, the quilters involved at a granular level in creating these masterpieces. It’s not often that we get to talk like this, and it’s a treasured time.

I wish I could have had you all there. More than once, someone said, I was scared to work with this precision, but it went together really well. Or they’d say, they had a stack of triangles cut and changed out. At that point, several people picked up their stacks and flashed them at the camera. A couple of people had theirs already quilted, some were still finishing up borders, and one quilter had printed off onto paper an image of the fabric she was missing in order to show us how it should look. All in all, the follow-up class motivated them to work hard, and finish up as much as they could.

Enjoy the show!

Sue K.
(*The black is for display only.*)

I try to give something a little extra to each class, and for this class I included four different videos they could watch, with different tips and instructions for making the quilt, as well as a line drawing for use in coloring in preferences.

I also included pattern pieces that would make a larger size, shown here for comparison. I’ve updated the pattern in my PayHip shop, and the pattern now includes the larger size. The fabric line I chose for the larger size is Geo Stones, by Riley Blake.

Thank you all, Coastal Quilters, for a lovely experience!

Giveaway · Live-Online Classes · Patterns by Elizabeth of OPQuilt · Quilt Patterns

Criss-Cross Autumn Quilt Top

August 7, 2020August 14, 2020 Elizabeth E.34 Comments

I’m getting ready to do a live-online presentation and teaching at Glendale Quilt Guild next week, and a deadline always sends my I-should-try-this into overdrive. So while I have the Criss-Cross pattern up online, and I thought I was pretty settled, a little voice in the back of my head said I should try some autumn colors in the largest size block in the pattern.

Okey-dokey. So I pulled a group of red-orange, purple, gold, orange, yellow fabrics and I was cooking along, pretty happy with the choices I’d made, but when I was looking for another darkish to put into what was up on the design wall…

…this fell out of a bin. It was Jennifer Sampou’s Chalk and Charcoal fat quarter stack, purchased some years ago. I used to have it out on a surface, just because I liked the colors so much, but had never opened it. (I’m sure you have never done this.)

So, in a flash, all the previous choices were down from the wall, and I had cut and was arranging all the new choices up there. The last image is adding in the strips.

So here is Criss-Cross Autumn, a 35″ square wall hanging. And since we don’t live in a climate that has a lot of rusts, golds, purples, reds in the tree canopies, but we do live in a climate that at the end of summer has a lot of golds, browns and yellows, my husband and I took a drive out in the countryside to shoot some photographs.

We were out in Hemet, by the golden San Jacinto mountains (shown above). One writer once compared the California hills to a tawny mountain lion. I grew up in the Bay Area, where in autumn, the golden grassy hills are interspersed by giant spreading oaks. What we have mostly now is not native, as I discovered when reading this essay, but like the author, I do love the colors.

Now, what to do with that other almost-quilt? How about I give it away? I’ll send you the almost-quilt (already cut!) and its strips (also, already cut, although I have to tell you that once you get adding and subtracting, you may find yourself adding more). There are also a few extra pieces in there, in case you have a different vision. I will also include a hard copy of this new pattern, with multiples sizes and variations.

Leave me a comment at the end, tell me about what colors are in your landscape around you right now, and how you feel about those colors. I’ll pick a winner using the husband-draw-a-paper-out-of-hat method, and let the winner know by email. Here are some image/photos of Criss-Cross Quilt, done in Christmas fabrics:

I’m looking forward to live-online teaching this quilt at the Glendale Quilt Guild next Saturday!

*Criss-Cross Autumn*, Quilt Index No. 232

UPDATE: Just thought I’d add this to the post. I finished the quilt a few days later, using a simple straight-line quilting pattern, varying the directions. It will be perfect for hanging up during September, when autumn arrives.

UPDATE: Comments are now closed. Winner will be contacted via email on Monday, August 10, 2020.

P.S. There’s a coupon code for the pattern, good for 25% off Criss-Cross Quilt through the end of August. The code is listed on the PayHip page.

Guild Visits · Live-Online Classes

Zoom, Part 3: Follow-up Workshop

August 4, 2020August 4, 2020 Elizabeth E.3 Comments

This morning, we had part three of our Zoom experience: a Workshop Follow-Up, the final meeting together. I designed my Zoom structure from the point of view of a student, and something I would always like to see would be all my fellow students holding up what they’d made from our class. The date needs to be far enough in the distance to give me some time to get my quilt/blocks/project finished (or at least have a good start), but not so far that I can put off the making.

So, this morning, one week after our Zoom Workshop, we all got together again. Several of the students sent me photos to put into a slide show, but sadly, some were too small to see the detail, so we had the quilter hold up what they’d finished so we could see it in person. As the pictures were shown, each quilter narrated her process, and talked about her quilt. It was wonderful.

One quilter sent me a picture of her quilt after this, so here are three to share:

From the top: Betty Ann’s quilt, then Martha’s and the bottom quilt is Judy’s. I’m quite impressed with this group of quilters, happy that they were able to use the videos and the other materials I’d provided for them this week. I was glad they found them helpful.

The pattern for the workshop was Merrion Square, found here on my PayHip Shop. I have quite a few more ideas about what I want to try with this pattern, given the wealth of choices shown to me this morning.

My next Zoom Guild presentation will be in less than two weeks, for the Glendale Quilt Guild, where I’ll do another evening presentation, then a Workshop. The quilt for that workshop is Criss-Cross Quilt:

I’ve designed a couple more variations, which I’m madly sewing on now, trying to get the tops done in time for the workshop. Today I finished up my videos, and uploaded them to the Workshop Password-Protected Page, so I’m making progress in getting ready to meet the Glendale Guild!

Now I think we’d have to say almost five months ago. Yes, it’s been 144 days (a truly Biblical number) since we started living Covid quarantine. I think we all deserve a pat on the back!

Happy Quilting!

Behind the Curtain · Housekeeping · Live-Online Classes

Live-Online Class • Technical Side of Things

July 30, 2020July 30, 2020 Elizabeth E.

First, I apologize for sending out two posts right after one another. This is the nuts and bolts side of setting up a Live-Online Class, one where you will be hosting the class, but also include some online extras for the students to watch during the week while they work. If you don’t plan to do this, or could care less about knowing what goes on behind the curtain, feel free to ignore.

Zoom Codes, Zoom Tips, and Zoomzoomzoom…

Guild Evening Meeting: I suggest you let the Guild set up their own Zoom codes for their evening meeting, as they can set up security any way they like, as they know their members if they choose the Waiting Room option. This way, the presenter just has to worry about their presentation. I recommend getting the Zoom codes from your Guild about a week ahead, just to alleviate worry.

Workshop: We bit the bullet and got our own Zoom Pro access this year. I like that I can set up the access codes for this myself. Our workshop schedule went like this:
Class (live): 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.
Break: 11 -1 p.m.
Class (live): 1-2:30 p.m.

I set up the Zoom to start at 8:30, but then got on early to put on some music and post this sign:

If you don’t know how to do this, I recommend taking the Zoom Training Course, level 2, found on their website.

I used the Advanced Share when I had to share screen (showing them how to get onto the Password Protected section of my website…read on for more details), but mostly, I kept the Zoom Gallery View up and going, except when I shared my iPad as a document camera on the cutting table.

Yes, I wear a headset. When I presented my program the night before, I didn’t use it, but by the end of the evening, my voice was hoarse. (Funny how we think we have to talk louder to reach them All The Way Over There.) One of the tips in the Zoom training I took was to wear a headset. I prefer a lightweight mono-headset, with the ear pad on only one side. I use an adapter to plug it into the side of my laptop in the audio port, as these are the headphones I use when on long calls on my telephone handset.

For some reason, the Apple Earpods don’t work for me. Whenever I use them, people can’t hear me, so it’s old school for me. I do know you can get a Bluetooth headset if you don’t like wires, or one that plugs into your USB port: do your research to find one that works for you.

Setting up the Video Station

I used my cutting table for the place where I recorded my videos. Equipment I would not want to be without:

Daylight Light. It covers the entire area with well-balanced light, and has dimmer settings. It can swing it out over the cutting mat if I need more light in some position. It was a birthday gift and I use it every day.

Device Holder (Document Camera workaround) Initially we used two smaller tripods and yardsticks stretched across them. Clearly we needed to upgrade. We went with this gooseneck device holder, also called “Lazy Supporter.” It’s made for people to lie in bed and have their video devices held for them, but hey! it worked great for me. One end of the long arm clamped to the side of my table. The flexible arm is really strong, so it stays put when I move it into position. I learned not to bump it, though, as it would jiggle.

Document Camera. I read that some people buy dedicated document cameras, but since I have a smart phone, why not use this? This holder, made for an iPad, was a little tricky to use on the smaller iPhone, but no worries. I just slid it out of the bracket a little more. I turned the iPhone sideways (landscape) to do my videos. When I hooked up the iPad sideways (landscape) to do an Advanced Screen Share on Zoom…no go. Apparently the software is not yet available to do that, so I just lifted the device up higher and kept it in Portrait mode.

(I just read over this, and boy, what a lot of jargon. Basically I’m writing this post for someone who wants to try this, and maybe for my own reference in the future. Again, if you aren’t interested, just slide on by.)

Recording a Video and Putting it Up on YouTube

I researched what else I should make available for my class and short, technique videos were mentioned over and over. TECHNIQUE VIDEOS?? I think this was the scariest part of getting ready. I have some friends in the movie business and I knew about storyboards and editing and splicing and I didn’t want to do any of that.

What I did have going for me was having taught this class multiple times. I knew what technique students wanted me to demo over and over. I knew where the tricky spots were. And I knew how to teach adults, given that I taught ten years at a community college. I have new classes coming up, and I will apply those same criteria to any new class: What will be the hard part? What is tricky? What might make the difference between a successful quilt construction experience and a total fail?

I made double my samples to work with in the videos as I had decided to do it all in one take. I recorded my demo twice, then picked the better one. On one of the four videos I made for this class, I don’t know what I did, but the video disappeared from off the phone (I was trying to edit it). So I re-did that video, but with already trimmed up samples. I hope they were sympathetic. Important: At the beginning, introduce what segment it is and what project it is (ask me how I know this).

Upload videos to YouTube and set them to Unlisted. You can set them to Private, but then you are about the only one to see them. You can research to find out the difference, if you are curious.

Setting up a Password Protected Section in WordPress

I use WordPress as my blogging platform, and they have a nifty feature: I can password-protect a Post or a Page. I opted for Page so a publication notice wouldn’t go out to my readers.

When properly set up, if an outsider wanders into the Secret Space, they will see this page. Unless they know the password, they can go no further, ensuring that your content for your class will remain protected and only your students can see it.

*part of their password-protected webpage*

I’m leaving this Page available to my class for a week. At the end of the week, we’ll have a follow-up session to show off quilts, talk about our experiences. After that, I will change the password, set the YouTube videos back to Private, cleaning up after myself.

I’d explored the idea of using a commercial site to upload my content for the class. There is a monthly fee, if done properly, and since I was still in exploration mode, I went this direction. Having a commercial site would be helpful if you weren’t doing a Live-Online class, but instead one where the videos existed without a teacher needing to appear.

And if you are a blogger with WordPress above the free version, you probably already know how helpful the “Happiness Engineers” are in the online chat. They’ve saved me, more than once.

Writing a Pattern

I use the Affinity Suite to write my patterns. I purchased them outright; there are no subscription fees (as in the Adobe products). I began writing patterns using a basic word processing program, but always drooled after those patterns that had nifty illustrations and pages that looked WOW. I’m not a graphic artist, but as a quilter, I do know what I want out of a pattern, and I want it easy to read and easy to find. I’m quite happy with these three pieces of software:

Affinity Photo — does what it indicates…it works with images, mostly photos.

Affinity Designer–you can make illustrations with this, moving around shapes, adding text, and about a billion other things. I barely scratch the surface with this, but I can make a decent patchwork illustration.

Affinity Publisher–It sets up a document where you can load in your text, your illustrations. I can also set up a Master Page where everything I place on there will be distributed throughout the pattern (helpful for page numbers, identifying logos, etc.).

Okay, That’s It!

I’m tired, you’re tired, so let’s stop here. I’ve tried to be specific in what I’ve used, and how I did things. If you found this helpful, pay it forward and help someone else Get the Hang of Things.

Overall, I think I may really come to love teaching this way, so I’m kind of glad the Covid-19 Pandemic forced me to learn how to do this. It’s a hybrid, for sure, but there are many positives I can see to this way of conducting a workshop. I may make comments going forward, changing how I do things, but for now, this is a record of what I’ve discovered and how I proceeded.

Happy Teaching!

Digital/Virtual World · Live-Online Classes

Zooming a Live-Online Class

July 30, 2020 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Having run through the vocabalary of descriptors for what happened this week, I think calling this a Live-Online Class is the best term. This wasn’t an Online Class, where you pay your money to a website and download a video. This wasn’t a live class, where you haul your machine and the contents of your stash closet to a class, where you might get something done. This was a hybrid, the best of both worlds!

Truth be told, all these lovely women of the North Cities Quilt Guild (above) could be called pioneers, for when I sent a survey afterwards, the majority response was that this was the first Zoom Quilting Live-Online class they’d taken. They were so fun to spend the day with in this new form of a quilting class. We’d also shared a Zoom Guild Evening Program the night before, and that, too, went very well, as they had two moderators manning the technical side of things.

Note: I’m putting up another post after this one, describing in more clinical/technical details the things I did to make my Live-Online Class run smoothly, having done gobs of research. I will update this post to link to that one, when completed.

Our day together began at 9:00 a.m. In truth, my day began a bit earlier, when waking out of a dead sleep at 6:30 a.m. I realized I hadn’t written down my lesson plan. I bolted from bed and wrote it on a giant sticky note and slapped it up on the calendar next to my cutting table.

I also realized that when we had painted, we’d taken down the curtain hiding all the mess in my sewing room closet. A quick fix with a tensioner closet rod and a quilt quickly fixed that. I spent the next couple of hours doing last minute prep, printing off the Secret Code to admit them into the Secret Room of my blog, getting ready (including mascara, ahem). Then I settled into my chair at 8:45 to welcome them to class.

We started pretty much on time, and I had a Moderator, who helped people get started and ran things smoothly. There was some awkwardness at first, as we worked through some technology hiccups (but nothing serious–Zoom does make it easy to click-and-go).

*More about setting this up on the other post*

After I introduced them to their Secret Site, and we squared away the password entries, they were able to access the videos and other materials I’d put there for their class. Pretty soon, they had all settled into sewing. One quilter had her computer in one room and her sewing in another; we solved that by having her log onto her phone, so she could have it next to her for comradery while she stitched. I saw her walk back and forth between the two rooms when she needed to watch a video.

A few were able to use their computers to “show” me what they were working on, and we chatted about color and value choices and ways to make it all come together.

The class followed the outlined schedule, and when I returned from lunch break, I noticed a distinct shift. They had ceased being a bunch of screens, and now were a happy classroom of busy quilters. The change was welcome, as there is always this place where technology can get in the way of the humans. And these wonderful pioneers figured out how to get the humanity back into this distancing situation.

The afternoon was a series of lovely moments, as they held up their successes to the camera, showing off what they’d accomplished, bit by bit, section by section. I told the class that if they sent me decent photographs of what they’d been working on, I’d put them into a slide show for them to see when we all got back together a week later, in our planned Wrap Up Class.

Before we parted, we talked about the pros and cons of this situation (and they agreed to fill out a survey after the fact). One comment was that they didn’t have to lug their sewing machine down the stairs to their car. Another quilter mentioned that she had been able to pivot quickly when it was apparent that the choice of fabrics she’d laid out weren’t working: all her fabric was right there around her. I also love what this anonymous quilter from our class wrote in her survey: “Learn Zoom–it’s a wonderful tool.”

I was about to sign off, but a couple of women asked if the class could go longer, so I set extended it so they could keep sewing, which made me feel like this had been a great experience for them.

Can’t wait to see them all again!