Spring Break/Mind Break

March 13, 2012March 14, 2012 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

I took off for Spring Break early. My colleague and friend Judy is covering my class and after class on Monday, we high-tailed it out of town. When you see the above photo, you should probably know exactly where we are. Yep. San Francisco. And yep, it’s raining.

So, like any self-respecting quilter, I tracked down a fabric store. Actually, I grew up in this area and have come to Britex fabrics many many times. I needed some replacement buttons for my raincoat (check), picked up another color way of the typewriter fabric, and also bought a 1/2 yard of fabric from Guatemala, which I was assured that when washed, would shrink and bleed. But while I can get just about any quilting fabric online, I wouldn’t be able to get Guatemalan fabric, or so I reasoned.

I spent the rest of the day with my brother, going to lunch at Cafe Claude, then to Japantown, an mini-indoor mall where I hunted down small Japanese plastic figurines (weird, I know) and that cool decorative sticker tape that I read about on one of my favorite blogs: How About Orange. You pull it along like those hand-held adhesive tapes, but instead of glue, it lays down a line of flowers. Or hearts. Or whatever, and the cartridges are refillable.

For those of you who want some, the shop keeper said he did mail order. It’s from MaiDo, in Japantown, and the phone number is either 415-567-8901 or 415-567-7073. Try using the name “Deco Rush Pens.” How much? $5.95 each, which is high if you think you could probably buy them in Japan for three bucks, but then there’s the airfare and the hotel and meals cost to factor in. So maybe under six bucks is fine to have a whole lot of fun decorating your paper.

Here’s a few shots of San Francisco’s Union Square. In the rain.

A change is as good as a rest, my mother always says, and this change is a nice one. While I don’t have anything necessarily quilty on this post, I must admit that sometimes you just need a change to make you think about your work, your craft, again. Like those berries above. Plummy blue, pinky-purple, yellow-green. Those colors, found here in nature, might be the beginnings for an interesting quilt scheme, veering away from any ombo I might usually try. And when it’s raining, I’m forced to rest, or to try indoors things, or what else? To try something new.

Quilt Shops

Spring Shop Hop

March 5, 2012July 16, 2012 Elizabeth E.6 Comments

What do you call a quilter who visits eight quilt shops and one Mexican restaurant on one day? Tired, but happy.

Our local shops (I live inland from Los Angeles) got together for a Spring Fling Shop Hop. This one was unique as it was small consortium of shops, all within one day’s driving distance–a perfect shop hop. The draw for my friend Leisa and I was that each visited shop would give away a fat quarter of Moda’s latest Rouennerie’s Deux line. Last week we hopped in the car at 8:15 a.m. and headed out to Palm Desert.

Shop #1: The Quilter’s Faire.

It was locked. We knocked. The owner came to the door, peeked out, smiled and said, “Yes?”
“We’re here!” we said. “The Spring Fling begins at 9 a.m.!”

She said, “Bonjour!” and ushered us in. She had thought it began at 10, and was a good sport for letting us in early. Every shop had made a quilt, and here are shots of The Quilter’s Faire, plus a look at her beautiful store.

They had the most amazing array of bags and totes.

Check out their chandelier.

We completed our purchases, filled out our Viewer’s Choice ballot for their teacup and saucer quilt challenge, and headed off.

Shop #2: Monica’s Quilt & Bead Creations

Monica, herself, greeted us at the door, and gave us a little tour of her store–unique as in that she carries tons of beads and supplies, as well as a being a quilting store. Her quilt was on the table, as well as above the fabric shelves. In fact, this shop, as well as The Quilter’s Faire, had lots of great samples.

I’m a fan of well-done little displays that catch a quilter’s eye and give them ideas.

The bead side of the large store. I could easily spend a day here, just shopping and then taking a bead class.

A bead/jewelry class going on in the back room.

Shop #3: Georgia’s Quilting Obsession

Given that I am a born Pollyana, I try to find the rainbows in the drops of rain. Here is a typical display in this shop: spool dolls, crocheted and knitted items. In other words, this is a grandma shop. In a grandma town. And I mean MY grandmother, not yours (she would be about 116 this year, if she were still alive). Her name was Georgina, so you can see I’m really hunting those rainbows.

We tried to be polite, trading off buying things in the shops. It was my turn and I bought a fat quarter from a dated Mary Englebreit line, and three skeins of embroidery floss. Next.

Shop #4: The Quiet Mouse

The room where we checked in was their classroom, where brightly colored quilts hung on all the walls.

And a Farmer’s Wife quilt! I thought of Cindy, of Live a Colorful Life, who is making one of these.

Besides seeing totes and bags in all the shops, I saw a lot of aprons. This three-tiered number in black and white was perky and fun, and made me think about ric-rac.

Of which they had a full supply.

And these very cool garden flowers, made from thrift-store plates. I wanted one of those, but held off.

Cute displays and lots of fabric to choose from.

Shop #6: Busy Bee Quilt Shop

She declined to have the inside of her shop photographed (citing copyright issues, which is really fine), but it also had a nice selection of fabrics, and good samples. This is the front of it–by that fabulous steeple.

By this time, we were famished–La Mexicana in Yucaipa filled the bill. We also sorted out all our problems with our respective in-laws and children (no problems with the grandchildren–they’re all perfect), and enjoyed delicious food. This isn’t a chain–it’s a real live family-run restaurant with those giant plastic glasses of soda and cheese-adorned entrees.

But no cheese for me–I had a seafood entree. Yum! Okay, back to work.

Shop #6: The Calico Horse

The full line of fabrics, plus a few from the past.

Their fat quarters, and their sample quilt.

I head to this shop quite often after I finish teaching (I teach in Yucaipa) and have always enjoyed their displays of fabric.

Two cute little yo-yo quilts right by the door. Keep this in mind for July.

Shop #7: Stars and Scraps

I frequent this shop a lot, so didn’t take a lot of photos, as I thought I had written it up on this site. Oops. I’ll have to do another visit! This is their quilt, and they used the cheater fabric in the line to create a patchwork-looking border. We are dragging by now, but have only one more shop to go.

Shop #8: Quilter’s Cocoon

They sewed up a mini-banner of fans. This is another shop that’s close by to where I live, but they are moving next month, so I’ll wait and do a post on them when they get settled. We turned in our “passports” with all the squares stamped, made our purchases and headed home.

The line-up of fat quarters.

The total ~~haul~~ amount of purchases for the day. I collapsed into a chair and worked on my rose window quilt blocks for the rest of the night. No, that’s not right. I threw the fabrics into the wash, then lightly dried and pressed them, stacking them all up beautifully in my closet.

THEN I collapsed into a chair and stitched the rose window while I watched Pelican Brief, a favorite movie with a younger Julia Roberts and two of the best cinematic scenes in the movies (#1–where the bad guy in the red baseball hat gets shot by the bandstand, and #2–where Julia can’t breathe after visiting the law offices where more bad guys work). Oh, and maybe the chase in the garage. Oh well–don’t we all have our favorite Mexican restaurants? And fabric lines? And quilt shops, too?

Quilt Shops · Quilt Shows

City Quilter–New York City

December 14, 2011February 24, 2012 Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I feel like I’ve been gone a long time, in a galaxy far, far away–and I have: I’ve been in the grading galaxy. Two sets of papers, with one super-duper plagiarizing student which caused me to obsess about this to a lot of people in my life. My apologies to those who listened to the never-ending conversations that gave me the courage to fail her for the paper. Papers graded. Grades done and will be posted after my final meeting with them today. Then my Christmas Break will really start!

So let me go in WayBack Machine to a lovely morning in New York City when I visited City Quilter.

(Yes, I asked permission to take these photos.) Entering the store, it extends out long and thin, but up there on near the hanging quilt, it doglegs off to the right with more. And running parallel to this is the ArtQuilt Gallery.

Along the right hand wall are lots of patterns, samples and a whole section of fabric with a New York City theme, from which I culled my purchases.

They also had some New York-themed quilts on the walls; this is the Empire State Building quilt.

More beautiful fabrics in that right hand section. Really the store was shaped in an H-sort of layout.

I knew about City Quilter when my sister moved to Manhattan for a year. I wanted to make her a tote bag that would remind her of the city, so purchased via mail order some New York fabrics, including some of this subway fabric, and made her shopping totes. She loves them.

Adjoining the City Quilt fabric shop is the ArtQuilt Gallery, where they were having a display by the Manhattan Quilt Guild. The quilts were very interesting, with everyone interpreting a facet of New York City living, gathered under the title of Material Witnesses.

The quilt of the lower right, The Triangle, is made by Teresa Barkley and pays homage to the Triangle Shirtwaist Fire in Little Italy. I had been walking around in that section of town the day before. My daughter’s great-grandmother immigrated from Italy, and found work in a hat factory in Little Italy, so the idea of young women working in these tall buildings had some resonance.

Closer view.

This is pieced. Lots of little tiny pieces, made by Erin Wilson and titled Shape Study: Dark and Light. I thought they may have represented some buildings in New York, but her artist’s statement notes that this “continues my work of building an intricate language of pattern, abstract shapes and symbols.”

Detail.

This is a quilt sandwich: fabrics sandwiches in between two layers of sheer fabric. Ruth Marchese’s No Escape is in homage to the earthquake in Japan in March of 2011. In this quilt are references to the tsunami waves, the nuclear power plants, and the changes to the landscape.

Looking from the gallery into a section of the shop.

There were many beautiful and intriguing quilts, but this one really caught my eye. Central Booking uses a QR code to “spell out the first sentence of The Trial, Kafka’s nightmarish tale of bureaucratic and legal injustice” (from her artist’s statement). I asked the woman at the desk in this gallery if this was a functional QR code. She didn’t know, so I held up my phone so it could read the square; it is.

When I came home, I looked up QR codes on the web, and found you could type in a short phrase and have it converted into QR-ese.

I remember Elizabeth Fransson making Japanese Subway Map quilts, interpreting the grid into fabric. I think this idea could also be interesting: we could write secret messages (shades of Fourth Grade!) into our quilts and display them for only those who know how to interpret them. What does the above say? (Remember I was grading, so my creative faculties were in a low ebb.)

It’s the name of this blog: OccasionalPiece-Quilt!

Quilt Shops

Purl Soho

November 24, 2011February 24, 2012 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

In New York City, everything is at they say it is. If they say it’s grand and wonderful and amazing, it is. (It is.) If they say to pronounce Houston, as in Houston Street, as “How-ston,” then you do. And anything south of Houston is known as SoHo, using the first two letters of south and Houston. I learned that one right away, as someone was giving me directions to see Purl Soho.

I’d come to New York City with my daughter Barbara, in order to create some memories and have some fun. We’d been doing lots of stuff together the past couple of days, but decided to split up this morning so she could accomplish one of her goals of buying a purse, and I could get to a fabric shop or two.

This section of town is right above Little Italy, which is above Chinatown, which is where I had started that morning with my daughter, who was determined to “buy a purse.” (She bought four.) The picture above is the corner of Broome and Mercer, and just down on the left is. . .

. . . PurlSoho. Whoopee!

The sun is finally shining after two days of rain, as you can see in this shot just inside the front door.

A wall of fabric in hoops. Sometimes we forget that fabric shops like their stash, too.

While this shop is not a “supermarket” type of store in terms of size, its ideas and creative fabrics are supersized. I wanted to buy a quarter-yard or more of everything in there, but how would I get it home in my suitcase? They have mail order, so I was comforted that I could get what I wanted once I arrived home — and their warehouse is in the neighboring county from me. Close, actually, when compared to NYC.

Blurry shot of the back of the shop.

And blurry shot of their yarn wall. Such color!

About this time, my daughter found me (love having cell phones!), exhausted from two and half days of non-stop go go go, so we went to some place close and delish for lunch: Le Pain Quotidien, where I had this artsy cobb-type salad.