Quilts

Giveaway Winners

April 9, 2014April 9, 2014 Elizabeth E.1 Comment

While you were all thinking hard about how you’d like to serve up your citrus (and okay, now you have to send me those recipes you promised!!), I was hard at work in Washington DC being a tourist, while accompanying my husband on a conference and visiting our son and his wife. And Allie, the Wonder Dog, their sweet little pal.

I loved reading all your comments, and did so a bit at a time, reading them out loud to my husband in between seeing art, visiting the monuments and hoping the cherry blossoms would bloom; a few tried to bloom, but we think the full display will be this weekend. I’m back home now, and used a random number generator to choose the winners.

Let me rephrase that. I tried to use a Random Number Generator, and if you are a long-time reader of this blog, you know Mr. Random Number Generator and I don’t get along very well, so I went to a grade school math site, but they couldn’t and wouldn’t build in the variables for two different giveaways, and having to add a couple of numbers for those who were followers, so I ended up with the old strips-of-paper-in-a-bowl random chooser thingie and I have two winners:

Zedda wrote: “I’d choose the book. And I love everything citrus… but my hands down favorite is cilantro lime chicken in the crock pot.” (Don’t we ALL need this recipe?)

and

Animated Librarian wrote: “I would love the fabric and thread. For cooking I love a kumquat, my mom has a kumquat chicken recipe that is to die for! Thanks for the give-a-way :-)” (And it looks like another recipe needs to come my way, as I have two large kumquat bushes out front).

Emails are going out tonight to these two quilters, but if I don’t hear from them by the end of the weekend, I’ll reach back into the bowl and pull out another winner (yes, I’ve saved your strips). And I’m serious: if you send me your promised recipe, I’ll do a tab up above of all your delicious citrus recipes. So many sounded terrific!

Thanks to all who wrote in, and welcome to our new followers! I had so much fun with this one, I’m already trying to figure out what my next giveaway will be.

(quilt from *here*–this is the back)

Here are some of the amazing citrus uses that people listed on their entries:

I like making fresh lemonade. I like oranges, just peel and eat.

My favourite citrus fruit is a lemon, as I love making lemon curd tea cake.

As for citrus fruit: lemons. Mile High Lemon Meringue Pie. Or Lemon Loaf with Lemon Glaze. Or…Lemon Tarts with homemade lemon curd. Yummy!

My favorite citrus creation is salmon with a lime marinade. Thanks for sharing your goodies!

I like limeades so the lime fabric would fit right in with my tastes.

Lemons! I love lemon bars.

I love lemon in desserts- lemon meringue pie is my favorite, followed by lemon bars!

You are too too lucky to have citrus fruit growing in your garden. We lived in Seville for a year and I remember the orange trees along the street, the flowers smelled wonderful! I found some Seville oranges many years later and made marmalade, it was so easy!

I just made some lemon poppy seed bread. YUM.

I love lemon poppy seed muffins. But lemon iced cake sounds delicious too.

Now, I’m Greek, so lemons are the biz in all cooking: lemon biscuits, lemon egg and chicken soup, lemon on freshly steamed zucchini, lemon marinated olives, and that’s just the beginning.

I pretty much like all citrus, so today I’ll pick this one: orange peel dipped in dark chocolate. Did you know it has no calories when a piece is handed to you as a road trip pick-me-up? Amazing. Yesterday I finished my first ever quilt! A baby quilt, all laundered & folded & ready to give to our next door neighbors who are first-time grandparents. You inspired & helped me throughout the sewing & unsewing process. Many thanks.

Mango salsa. Yummy!

My neighbour makes me fabulous lemon butter so lemons for me.

Quilts

Giveaway!!

April 7, 2014April 9, 2014 Elizabeth E.110 Comments

Yippe Skippee!! It’s a giveaway over here at OPQuilt.com and I’ve got two prizes for you to choose from. Of course you could say either, and that’s just fine too.

Our citrus trees are bursting with limes, lemons and oranges all over Southern California, so I thought it only natural to put together a little something to celebrate Spring’s bounty, from our part of the world: a stack of six fat quarters in citrusy patterns and colors (and even one with homemade lemonade all over it). Add in three different spools of Rainbows thread from Superior Thread, and . . .

. . . a shapely little orange peeler that will help you zip off those skins to get to the eating (not recommended for kumquats — see below). They are waaaay too small.

The thread behaves like a rayon, with a nice sheen and good color variegation, but it’s a trilobal polyester, and Superior’s great quality. So that’s Giveaway #1.

Giveaway #2 is Sherri McConnell’s latest book, Fresh Family Traditions. Somehow I ordered two, so that means I can give away one to you! In your comment, choose between the book or the fabric/thread, and leave me a comment telling me your favorite citrus fruit and how you like to prepare it (lemon shortbread? orange chicken? lime coolers? homemade lemonade?). This opens now, on Monday, April 7th, and will close on Wednesday, April 9th. Followers are entered in twice, so if you’re not a follower, come and join us.

I hope you win a little sunshiney pack of fabrics, or a sweet new book from Sherri McConnell!

˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚˚

Thanks to all who entered. Giveaway now closed.

Quilts

Quilting Makes/Breaks the Quilt

April 3, 2014April 3, 2014 Elizabeth E.18 Comments

As you know, I recently finished quilting the Lollypop Quilt that I’d been working on for about two hundred years or so, and so appreciated all your comments about taking time to sit back and live with the quilting before I made any rash decisions to become a Quilt Surgeon and slice and dice up the quilting I didn’t like.

Showing you pictures of my quilting close up is like agreeing to pose, at my age, in a bathing suit. Probably not a good idea, but I wanted to show you how even rank amateurs like myself can be pretty happy with how things out. I am even learning to like the quilting spots that I thought were a total fail.

Radiant mushrooms with echo quilting.

A feathery sort of stitch. Every day when I’d start quilting, I type in “background FMQ filler” and read on the internet for a while, gleaning from the Master Quilters.

A sort of swirl-this-way-then-that sort of stitch. Of course those long-armers make it look easy with their stitch regulators and space and ability to clamp down the quilt so it doesn’t move. And I love learning from them and admire so much of what they do. Which brings me to the title of this post.

One longarmer I dote on, learn from, admire immensely, and generally adore is Judi Madsen of Green Fairy Quilts. She is a master–all her stitches are perfect and even, and she has fabulous designs, and a terrific book. So I was more than excited when I noticed on her IG feed that she was quilting a Kim McClean pattern quilt, Kim being the woman who designed my Lollypop Tree quilt pattern. Zounds! I’ll learn from the best, I thought, because she is the best.

This picture is a snapshot from her blog post about the quilt, and I only insert it here to give you an idea of her style of quilting. Really, I can’t say enough nice things about what she does.

You’re waiting for that other shoe to drop, aren’t you? Okay, here goes. These quilts are tough to quilt (why do you think I waited a century or so?) and so I was hoping that Judi, with her infinite skills and talent, would figure out a different way to enhance the quilt, to work with the quilt, to augment the quilt. But I started to feel, as I looked through her post, that the quilting overpowered the quilt. She even alluded to this same idea in her blogpost, a comment left somewhere by some random person, who was promptly tarred and feathered by all the blog commenters (one of the nicer names she was called was “blind critic”). {Note: I found it curious that everyone leapt into action to defend Judi against this random contrary comment, but had no problem dumping vitriol and shame on that poor quilter who dared to say what she thought. But that’s another post.}

My reaction came more slowly. A sort of creeping feeling that maybe I’m just not in the Great Big Quilter’s Loop or something, but I didn’t (can I say this?) like the quilting on this quilt. It was stunning. It was stellar. It was perfection. But I remember when making my quilt, spending hours on each block, choosing all the florals, working with the sinewy forms and floral blooms that I was thinking about nature and form and randomness. And I guess I was hoping that Judi would find a way to make those shapes and forms burst right off the top into a new space.

Couple that feeling with a comment left on Instagram (above): “Your quilting is prettier than the quilt.” Hmmm.

Has the maker been eclipsed by the quilter? Certainly quilting has become its own art form, in a way, but if the quilting is what matters, why not just send a pre-printed panel over to these long-armers and let them go to town? Does it matter what we, as piecers and top-makers, do? Is it necessary for our art and design to be subsumed into theirs?

I’m shaking my head, still trying to figure it out.

Quilts

Dones and Do-Overs

April 1, 2014 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

So, is the Lollypop Tree Quilt all done? Was it completed by the goal date? Yes. . . and no. Last night about 9 p.m. when I couldn’t quilt one more stitch, I laid it out on the guest bedroom bed: my go-to flat space in my house. I was content. It was complete. I had quilted all nine blocks, all twenty of the border blocks, the sashing, and the only thing that remained were a few details. Until I woke up too early this morning thinking about it.

I had done a curvy pattern in the sashing blocks, but am just not happy with it. I am not crazy about the thread color, and let’s face it, my curvies could use some help. So now I’m really thinking about unpicking all the sashing and trying a different approach. My husband suggested one that might work. So even though it’s finished — it needs a do-over.

Lisa dropped in yesterday to show me a couple of her quilts — amazing — and while we were talking we were looking at the Colorwheel Bloom (how about that for a title? I keep working on it). She agreed that the bright yellow petal wasn’t quite right. I’d saved all the earlier incarnations and pinned this one on top. Yep, yep. Another do-over.

But first I have to go and read one hundred or so pages of this book in order to write the quiz for the students today, plus grade a stack of précis, plus prep for class. So the do-overs will have to wait.

In honor of hitting 250 followers, I’m planning a little giveaway mid-April. Anyone can throw their name in the hat, but followers get an extra chance to win, in order to say a big thanks. I’ll post more details in a couple of days. I’ve got a quilt book, some fabric, and thread that need to go to a new home. I’m still photographing the goodies, but will post soon!