Quilts

Totes (Like I Need Another One)

September 10, 2013October 3, 2013 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

My mother used to have a stack of boxes back beside the freezer in the garage. They were mailing boxes, gift boxes, boxes to put your pet turtle in, and boxes that were there because, well, they were boxes.

So this idea, that I just need a place to put more stuff, maybe runs along the lines of the imagined box mountain of my childhood. (I can hear Mom saying, “There weren’t that many boxes.”)

And not only do I have to another another tote or two (what else will I do with that beautiful Keiko Goke fabric?), I have to have pockets inside my totes, to. . . hold more stuff. Enough pockets of the right shape and size, one with a zipper, put me in Tote Bag Heaven.

This pattern was Pleated Tote, from Ellen Lucket Baker, found *here.* I made it exactly as she recommended. Still not keen about the fusible batting on the inside. It makes the tote too bulky, too stiff, not tote-y enough (I like mine loose and foldable). So maybe this is more of a purse-like bag?

This next tote is floppy, roomy, perfect for a grocery store tote.

The genesis came when I visited Cool Cottons in Portland earlier this year, and saw their bag in the front window. I tried to purchase the fabric, but they were all out of it. So I saw some at a quilt show I went to–it’s a sturdy lightweight cotton canvas, titled “Farmer’s Market,” made by Alexander Henry.

I was able to make two totes out of one yard of fabric. Simple things–just a rectangle with longish straps, no pockets, boxed corners to made them easier to put groceries in.

While the Keiko Goke can now join the growing stash of totes in my closet, these two are relegated to the car, to use while grocery shopping. I had intended to include the Goke tote as part of my WIP list, but I persevered and finished it up today.

It’s one of the items on my Finish-A-Long list, so I’m happy to be actually getting stuff done. School started and it always takes a while to recover from all that distraction and get back to the quilting.

But I am in progress on this Facets quilt, designed by Anne Deister, getting it pinned to the backing today.

And the next installment of my Amish With A Twist Two arrived this week, so I’ve plenty to keep me busy. And now we begin the dodging through the school semester, pushing out tasks on weeks of low-to-no grading, dancing around those weeks where papers come in and there are stacks of things to grade and to prep for.

Linking up to Lee’s Freshly Pieced Works in Progress Wednesday.

Quilts

Saturday Check-in

August 31, 2013August 31, 2013 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

We put the Four-In-Art Quilts up above my window in my sewing room. I like seeing them all lined up. I don’t really live in a jungle. It just looks like it from this window, with the mature trees in the background, the silk oak tree on the side, and my wild wisteria vines in the foreground.

I keep putting this off, but I’m desperate for a new skirt for school. Anna Maria Horner’s feathers in linen-cotton need to be sewn up.

Fabricworm is tempting me with their Bundles Sale. I have this in the basket as well as as:

Contempo, Dwellings in the Guest House colorations, and. . .

Tule by Leah Duncan for Art Gallery.

Whether or not I’ll press “purchase” remains to be seen, but it’s fun to look at what’s new and do some dreaming! What are you doing?

Quilts

WIP–An Oldie, But Goodie

August 27, 2013August 28, 2013 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

I made this for my youngest son’s college freshman dorm bed when he went off to school, lo these many years ago (now he’s married, has a job and is getting his masters). I got this far, and he kinda said he wasn’t really happy with it, and could he have something else? So I made him something else, and this has sat for years in the back of the closet. Today was the day to do something, after so many of you wrote so many encouraging things back to me.

It was helped when I folded back the panel on the right to make it more symmetrical. It’s still such a 1990s quilt, though, isn’t it? but I do love the Hunter’s Star pattern.

And wrapped up in the wad of fabrics that I’d stuffed in the cupboard, lo those many years ago, were the outer borders, already cut. I wasn’t going to second-guess my 1990s mind, but I did add the inner yellow border, made up of different yellows in the quilt (and yes, I still have some of those in the stash, too).

So, now it’s off to the quilter’s–my first quilt to go there in probably four months? It was good to see her again, and to hand it over.

I also was delighted to receive my “hang it dang it” quilt rods. It’s basically an aluminum tube which you pull out to the width of your quilt (they have three different sizes), twist the rods to anchor them to that size, then snap the clasp on the center. They have a magnetic clasp and a plastic clasp. I bought one of each, but really, the plastic clasp works fine (and is cheaper). They even have a video to show you how. One nail and your quilt is hanging up, invisibly. No rods show, nothing.

Dot, one of the commenters the other day, in response to my “doldrums” post, referenced me to a carton by Grant Snider, done for Red Lemon Club, a site that caters to the creative type. I spent some time there, reading articles, re-learning about what it means to be a creative person.

Other wise insights that were mentioned:

I think we all find ourselves feeling that way from time to time. It’s called overwhelmed. Something has to go, and it’s usually our hobby time. I find if I don’t sew for a few days I get cranky.
Creative ebbs and flows and sometimes over flows, you’ll get back into the zone soon. In the meantime, follow your bliss, not your list.
It really is hard to find the time to do it all.

So it was nice today to do a little. Cut a few strips. Resurrect an oldie-mouldie and move it to a different place, feel some cloth.

Linking up to WIP Wednesday at Freshly Pieced, and WOW at Esther’s Blog.

Creating · Giveaway · Quilt Bee · Quilts · Something to Think About

Bee Blocks & Winner of Project Folio

August 25, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

First, while my husband and I were watching Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway in Three Days of the Condor, I leaned over to him and said, “Give me a number between one and sixteen.”

“Five.”

Five it is. Cindy, you are the winner. I’ll mail off the portfolio tomorrow. Thank you to all my very fine readers and followers. You are such lovely people!

I must admit that I did want to give it to my newest follower: my daughter, Barbara (Hi Barb!), but I’ll make her a new something or other for her work-out clothes (what she said she’d use it for) and send this white one to Cindy. Congrats!

Secondly, even though it feels as if I haven’t touched a machine much this month, I did get my Bee Blocks finished. Above is the one for Always Bee Learning. We were sent some some fabrics, a link, and we were off to making arrows. It was a real brain-stretcher, but I finished mine and sent them off to Megan.

And for the Mid-Century Modern Bee, Mary asked for some Cross-X, or X & + blocks as I’ve seen them called, in pinks. So I followed her linked tutorial at Badskirt’s blog and sent them off.

And now, the to pull the biggest rabbit out of the hat: figure out how to start sewing my projects again. With this disjoint summer, a bad beginning to my school year (it will get better), and some time away from the sewing machine, it’s like being on a boat being carried down stream from the dock, slowly, and you can see your picnic lunch there in the middle and you are getting kind of hungry but you can’t figure out how to get to it. Okay, bad analogy, but I think you all know the feeling.

I look at my list of things I want to sew and nothing interests me. I love reading blogs and seeing everyone’s fun projects, and think, I could do that. But if I do everyone else’s project, how will I find time to do mine? It’s a double-edged sword, this living in a world of blogs and Instagram and it’s hard to turn off the input in order to find the creative project that is uniquely mine.

My father, aged 87, goes most mornings down to his painting studio on the second floor of a building in his downtown. There, he thinks, starts his routine, puts on his music, paints, pauses. Of course, I can only imagine this because it is done in solitude, but every October he opens his studio for a painting sale in his studio, proving that he accomplishes, produces, Gets Stuff Done, sending out more paintings into the world.

I find my challenge to still myself — to enjoy the social media-fied quilt world, yet also to let that project that is interesting to me find its way forward. I’ve been tempted by another Polaroid Swap, a recent Signature Swap, this winter’s Scrappy Trip-A-Long, and the Medallion Quilt among other recent popular quilts. But I also know through historical evidence that our quilting grandmothers searched the newspapers for what others were doing, and through imitation, linked themselves together through common projects.

LIke them, I do quilt what is in my universe. I often think of Nancy Crow, a quilt artist I admire from afar who has seemed to produce what is important to her, to follow her own stream of thinking and creating without regard for what is the most popular. Perhaps she, and my father, are at one end of the spectrum while the social media/Instagram/blogging crowd, of which I am a part, is at the other end. No answers here.

Just searching for those oars that will get my boat back to the dock, back to my sewing machine, back to my quilty world.