Cereus: New York Beauties Block 9

May 19, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

If you say “Cereus” it sounds like “Sirius” which is a legit star in our heavens. And if you spell it slightly differently — like Cerus (which I think it was started out to be) — that is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But no, it’s Cereus, which is a night-blooming cactus, usually only for one night. Most all the names of these New York Beauties have a name related to light or the sun, but this one is related to the moon — when it shines, the cereus flowers open up and bloom.

I start, as always, by layering up the fabrics. I use Painters Palette Solids, by Paintbrush Studios, and since two of our fabric shops have closed recently, I purchase them from Keepsake Quilting online. I have updated the colors chart online, where you can find this pattern. The colors chart is a free print-out: find the Preview Icon just underneath the buttons for purchasing, and you can download it to get the colors I used for the blocks. Since we are doing the blocks bit by bit, I’ll update them as we sew.

From Left to Right: Section 1 is ironed onto the purple, paper is folded back and like Photo 2, we are ready to sew that seam just to the wide of the fold of the freezer paper. In Photo 3, I trimmed it a little narrower than 1/4″ wide, maybe somewhere between an 1/8″ and a 1/4-inch. I have many seams on this section, so I don’t want a lot of huge seam allowances clogging up the works. But this is the only section that is pieced, making Cereus a quick block to make.

I have become completely besotted with the freezer paper method. Some quilters are using regular paper, dabbing glue on it, and continuing as if it were freezer paper, but I’ll put up with the prep work as I like how the freezer paper adheres well as I’m working. Plus I’m not a fan of glue (but maybe that’s because I worked on the collage fruits quilt in between sewing this block, and…ugh).

I lift the folded edge between section 1 and section 2 and iron the fabric toward the dark, then lay it down and iron section 2 onto the fabric. There are many tips on the other blocks I’ve sewn; a complete listing is here, at the tab at the top of the blog. But you can count on the freezer paper lasting for about 4-5 times of use.

Here I just press the freezer paper section straight over onto the fabric.

And here again, I lift the fold, slip the seam allowances under the paper, and press into place.

One trimmed up.

Both trimmed up.

Fold back the sections at the ends, and pin to join the C1 and the C2 pieces together. Make sure you don’t sew the paper anywhere (fold the bits of it out of the way if needed).

Press and there you are!

I always place the C-curve shape on top with the reverse-C-shape on the bottom. The correct term is the Convex on the bottom, and the Concave (now backwards as it is right sides together…and looks like a “C”) on the top. I mark it into sections with pins, match those up, and sew slowly, nudging the edges into place.

I was sewing these on the weekend that the Northern Lights came really low on the hemisphere, during the recent magnetic sun storms. When I stepped outside to see if we had any, alas, we were too low on the globe. I have really enjoyed all the photos I’ve seen of them. I saw the Northern Lights when I was a child, but it’s too far back in the memory bank for me to have any recollection. So I’ll just have to continue with these!

Six blocks mock-up.

How I pressed the different arcs. I like dimension in my quilts.

We need three blocks, but I made four…just because it looks really fun this way.
Enjoy making Cereus!

Yes, I’m a bonafide freezer paper enthusiast. Remember this one? When I about lost my marbles with that outside edge? (although I like the block a lot). Hurry if you want to sign up and get all their blocks — it ends in June.) I printed out the remaining blocks on my freezer paper, and will tackle those soon.

300 Quilts

A Basket/Quilt of Fruit for Mother’s Day

May 12, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

All the fruits are finished, and applied to the background this week.

I tried three different centers, from white daisies on red (no), a double plaid (no), a beautiful radish print (no).

Dots. That’s what worked, was dots.

This was my first tentative step forward. As I peeled the fruits from their parchment paper backgrounds, I would occasionally find a place where the light crept through, so I reached for my bag of scraps and cut another tiny angular piece to cover up the holes. I have now learned that obsessing over these scraps is a fool’s errand.

I’ve got a good start, but the needle keeps gumming up. I looked for anti-stick needles, but they don’t make them for the big quilting machines (I have a Handiquilter Sweet Sixteen) so I’m resigned to changing out the needle often and in between, swipes with nail polish remover. We run a high-tech shop, here.

When my mother was 90 years old, just the seven children hosted a luncheon for her, celebrating her life, which led me to think about mothers.

Mothers come in tall, medium and large. Mothers come in grumpy and happy. Mothers come in tired. Mothers come in a combination of adoring their children, frustrated with their children, and when will this kid ever go to college. Mothers love flowers, stroking babies’ cheeks, catching them when they dash through the mall as toddlers, pining for them when they go off to college, usually never to return home. Mothers come in all colors. Mothers come in street-smart, book-smart, and not-so-smart, but they all come in surprised at the task that lies before them and hope they will make it. Mothers mostly do, and if and when they don’t, other mothers somehow find their way to us, to teach us, bring us up, and leave us with memories.

Happy Mother’s Day–

Something to Think About

Collage: My Sewing Desk is a Mess!

May 5, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

(And some other stuff)

I’m not by nature a terrifically tidy sewer, preferring to let my (ahem) creativity spill all over when I stitch. But doing one of those collage quilts where you iron on the fusible interfacing then layer it up, is a new level of Mess. I will clean it up when I’m finished, but here’s where I am now. I started this because the Utah Valley Quilt Guild (I’m a proud member, just too far away) hosted Emily Taylor, aka the Collage Quilter, as I mentioned in this post.

cherries! BEFORE

Yep, it was a total fail. Because Steam-A-Seam is like working with plastic, I just peeled all that stuff off and started again…with fewer fabrics. Or, as Mies van der Rohe used to say, “less is more.” Boy, howdy, but maybe not in these fruits.

I got the hang of it on these strawberries. It seems like every time I switch to a new fruit, there is a new learning curve.

All the watermelon sections finished. I read all sorts of cautions about not pressing them TOO much before they are on the fabric, so these are sort of tacked down and lightly pressed.

The fabric selection for the center proceeds apace, with the lower three fabrics picked up in Utah, when I went up there for Dad’s memorial. The cross weave pattern on the fabric on top was the right scale, but too burgundy-ish and cream-ish to be right. I like the second one — a bias-printed plaid — a lot (especially the colors) but was worried the scale might be wrong. It’s a good backing or binding fabric, though. Daisies are in the running, but am leaning to the fourth one down: the double-plaid. My brain is on auto-pilot now and that’s what the pattern designer had. Fine. I’ll do whatever’s on the pattern (haha).

Next up are peaches, pears and grapes, and happily my friend Susan of PatchworknPlay sent me her beautiful watercolor so I could figure out pears. Then we’ll see about putting it all together.

We left very early in the morning to fly up to Utah and arrived well before the time the memorial would start. So we spent some time walking around the plaza near Temple Square in Salt Lake City, admiring the flowers (below). While I loved the tulips (multiple varieties and colors), I also loved these little ones at the end, which look like a cross between a daisy and a baby mum. Anyone know what they are?

Since you’ve already seen a photo of my dear aunts, here’s another one of us with my sister Christine, an artist from New York, just after the memorial. My sister Susan talked, as did two of my brothers, Andy and Scott. We also heard from three grandchildren.

After the memorial and the family luncheon arranged by my lovely sister Cynthia, I went to my son’s, where I found my granddaughter deep in T-shirt-quilt construction. She’d watched a YouTube video, gone to JoAnn’s to get interfacing and figured it out. She’s like that. And…after trying to help her cut the strips for the sashing, we went to JoAnn’s to get a new cutting mat, new rotary cutter and a couple of rulers. (I told her to hide them from her family.)

We went in her Tesla and she showed me some of the modes on her screen, including one where you can embarrass your friends. She also used Auto-Drive, or whatever it is called, to get us to JoAnn’s. I was alternately freaked out as well as thinking: this could come in handy when I’m older!

Later, she sent me a photo of her completed first quilt, her voice on the phone full of excitement.

Homeward bound later that night, I took photos out the airplane window, a time-honored practice. I had really struggled all week with getting the layering of shadow and light in the fruits I was making, and in looking at this nighttime scene, I thought it would be good practice to try to figure out where shadows are delineated, and where light glows through the dark.

I thought about the talks at my father’s memorial, the stories from his grandchildren and his children about how his life was — how our lives are — a combination of light and shadow. But the lessons we learn as we travel through these darker places teach us humility, strength, and the power of saying “I’m sorry,” as well as the incalculable blessing of forgiving one another (and ourselves) for failures.

I once titled a quilt: “Shadow Owes Its Life to Light.” We have no shadows that aren’t connected to light. Light, as heard in my granddaughter’s voice, when she finishes her T-shirt quilt top. Light, when watching my niece Brittany cuddle her new baby. Light, when my sister-in-law Julie, who nearly died last year, is sitting at the table, telling us stories about her students. Or my 92-year-old aunt, all of five feet, lighting up a conversation with younger nephews, the young men towering over her.

Oh, how I will my miss my father, just as I have missed my mother!

May their memories be a blessing for life in the world to come–
(from here)

the view from 35,000 feet.

Quilts · This-and-That

Happy Valley Quilt Finish • This and That April 2024

April 28, 2024August 30, 2025 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

Need some insight into my quilting?

Here it is: the “Insight Table” for the HandiQuilter Sweet Sixteen. This table was purchased in another life, in January of this year. I had avoided trying to quilt with it since so much had crowded my personal spaces. But finally, I pulled this quilt top from the closet:

June 2021 — title: Happy Valley.

It was perfect for trying to learn to quilt a new way to work with this machine. The little “eyeballs” on either side of the needle (see above) are supposed to track my movements. It’s all coordinated with a few dials and buttons on the screen, which I couldn’t figure out at first, leaving me with skips in my stitches:

I’d be moving the quilt, and it would stop, skip a stitch, then start again. The stitches were very even, but…sigh. Because this is so new, there’s not much out there on the internet. I finally figured out to up the percentage of my “Cruise Speed” to 18% (I previously had it at 11%). That seemed to fix it. This doesn’t make me go faster, but it keeps up with me when I do. I could always get even stitches when I was going really slow, but now this sensing system gives me more even stitches, a welcome assistant in my world.

I’d started sketching this out (right side, white arrow), setting the grid into the colors. However, that seemed to make the black come forward, when I wanted it to go backward. So I reversed it (left side, blue arrow).

Break for dinner. I knew I was going to be sore the next day, as I hadn’t quilted on this machine for nearly four months. (I was.)

After dinner, laid out on the floor. All the black was quilted, so I could start deciding on how I want to quilt the colors. You’ll have to take my word for it, as the camera was fighting for a proper exposure with all those reds.

I finished it up a few days later. I always have troubles when trying to figure out how to quilt borders; this one showed me as we went along.

This is quilt #250, from when I finished up the quilt top and listed it in my Index, above. Here is another post about the origins, if you are for some more reading. The original block came from my rendition of a Chinese wooden window screen, as I was fascinated by all the patterns that I saw when I went to China about a thousand years ago.

All these photos are from Shanghai. I strolled the streets while my husband was in scientific meetings. All of this was one month after 9/11; the airports were ghost towns, the streets in Shanghai had plentiful police officers. Half the people in the conference had cancelled their travel, but we were so anxious to see China (and Japan, which was also part of the trip) that we went. With great trepidation. I wrote personal letters to all the children, just in case our airplane was shot out of the sky, but the trip was a wonderful introduction to that part of the world. We’ve been back to Japan one more time, but not to China, and I doubt we ever will return.

NYBeauties Update:
I’ve mapped out a schedule for finishing the blocks, for those who are doing this with me. It will also help keep me honest, and keep me on track, especially when Leila has started a really fun foundation paper piecing freebie called Back to Nature (visit her Instagram to find out more). I’ve got to get those going, too.

Leila is incredibly talented. And the flip side is: I wish I had a better attitude for doing all those itty-bitty wedges around the outside. But it’s done, and only three weeks late. I’m so spoiled by using freezer paper on my Foundation Paper Piecing, that going back to paper (and I even used my vellum paper) is driving me nuts. I’ll have to try the next one with freezer paper.

This was a shock: QuiltMania stopped publishing. There doesn’t seem to be any information about this at all, but I do know that they, along with every other magazine, were struggling after covid. I guess they finally just ran out of the ability to go forward.

I feel fortunate that I was able to have some quilts published in their magazines. (I’ve been holding off on releasing one of my patterns, because a variation could be found in their recent Simply Vintage magazine.)
I will miss Carol’s unerring eye for bringing us new and interesting quilt shows and quilts. She made a difference in what I see and what I make. Thank you, Carol and QuiltMania.

This week I had some friends come over for a Sew Day, and one of them brought the new project she was trying out: Manx quilting, which originated on the Isle of Man.

We were all fascinated when she told us the history, and how the measurements and sizes were based on a quilter’s hand. While my friend used a rotary cutter and a ruler to help her get her fabrics ready, in traditional Manx quilting, strips were torn from worn garments. Amy Smart has a tutorial on how to make one of these blocks, typically done in red, white and blue. There are other links, if you want to do a search on this. I like the little tucks that are formed: all construction is hidden and the sewing is done by hand.

I worked on this: a new-to-me collage technique from Emily Taylor, the Collage Quilter. Unlike the Laura Heine version, this one is based on color and value, rather than shape.

My greatest challenge was not cutting out shapes that looked like jelly beans. I’m working on it, I’m working on it.

I’d purchased a roll of parchment paper from the grocery store H-E-B when were there. Who can’t succeed with a name like this (see below)?