Project Portfolio Tutorial–Part I

August 19, 2013October 2, 2014 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

A long time ago, in a foreign market, I bought zip portfolios to hold stuff. But they weren’t always quite right–too small, too rigid–for my projects, too wrong-sized. So I decided this summer to make my own.

But that’s just a way to lead you into thinking about your fall, now that schools are beginning to start and you can finally finish a sentence — or a seam — without being interrupted by your offspring or husbands or pets or whatever. And now you are going to be sewing up a storm, and need a way to keep all your projects organized as you head out to sewing circles, sew days, quilt nights, or just stay home and quilt in your jammies. Because it’s almost fall, after all, and you can. (My apologies to my Southern Hemispheric readers–just substitute in the appropriate season.)

Materials:
Two coordinating fabrics. One will show on the outside, and the other will be the lining, but will show through the vinyl window
Clear medium-weight vinyl from the upholstery department. Save the tissue they have with the vinyl–it’s easier to store that way
Fusible medium-weight interfacing
Zipper, approximately 20″ (you’ll be trimming it to size)
Matching thread

(Note: I am using three different fabrics in the following illustrations, so you may see some switching out.)

STEP ONE: Fusing

Lay the fusible interfacing shiny side (resin-coated side) down onto the Wrong Side (WS) of your outer backing piece. If you like to live dangerously, don’t use a press cloth while fusing the interfacing to the back in an ordered fashion: overlapping the iron shape, giving it a shot of steam, counting one-two-three-four in each position of the iron.

Lay the interfacing fusible-side down and fuse to TWO of the four narrower pieces that will border your clear vinyl window on the side.

Then fuse interfacing to only TWO of the wider strips, as these will be used on the upper and lower edges of the “vinyl window.”

The results are above: one large rectangle of interfacing fused to main back fabric, and four pieces of interfacing fused to the four strips of main fabric.

Trim up so the backing is even with the interfacing. Try not to fixate on the fact that now your portfolio will be a hair smaller. It’s really not important what the final dimension is, as you can still pack a ton of stuff in there. Trust me.

Lay the fused backing piece on top on the lining piece, making sure that both right sides of the fabrics are facing outward. Pin. Trim.

So this is what you’ll have: a two-sided rectangle. Unpin the two layers, and set aside for now.

Tomorrow’s post will show STEP TWO: Making the vinyl window front.

All of these folios measure roughly 11 x 17. You are more than welcome to make these for your own use, or sell them in a craft faire, but please please, don’t take any of my tutorial and copy it onto your blog. Link back here, if you would. And please please don’t steal my content to make your own pattern, and call it your own. Practice Friendly Attribution, if you please.

Four-in-Art: Maps

August 12, 2013August 12, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

The Four-in-Art group has chosen Urban as our overarching theme for this next year of quilts. We will reveal quilts on the first of November in 2013, and February, May and August of 2014.

Our challenge for November 2013 is Maps, so it was with great interest that I viewed the exhibit sponsored by Quilts on the Wall, hanging at the Long Beach Quilt Show. Their theme was also “maps.”

Uncharted, by Catherine Baltgalvis
Based on an antique chart with traditional compass symbols

El Camino Real, by Eileen Wintemute
Views of the early California Missions, found by traveling “The Royal Road”

A La Carte, by Shirley Wright
A garden plan for Vaux-Le-Viconte, a great chateau in France, built in the late 1650s

Some map quilts might be literal, as in the renditions above, from a garden to a quilt paying homage to traditional compass symbols.

Gone, by Laura Bisagna
An aerial map of her street, showing the houses claimed by wildfires

Other map quilts might show traditional maps, like the one above, but reveal pieces of the heart, like when Bisagna was evacuated from her home during a run of California wildfires. She searched aerial photos, trying to discover any news about her house. And through one of these photos, she realized that her “house was indeed gone,” as she wrote in her artist’s statement.

Tour de Apple Valley, by Carolyn Villars depicts a 50-mile race completed by her daughter-in-law, the map in the background showing the route taken.

Linda Anderson created this exquisite map of the “Mother Road,” or Route 66 in her quilt One Man’s Dream. While I couldn’t discover from her statement whether or not her husband had actually traveled the road, I think the bas relief of the white quilting is effective not only as a map, but also as a background for the motorcycling figure.

“This quilt (Ice Core) was inspired by ice cores that are used to map climate change” wrote Annette Guerrero, the maker.

I loved the secondary layer of quilting over the color bands.

Body Map in Honor of DaVinci’s Vetruvian Man, by Linda Friedman, pays homage to the classic map of the human form by Leonardo Da Vinci.

I loved this rendition by Patricia Charity of the romantic era of travel, of steamships and steam trains and great adventures. She titled it It’s the Journey, for in those days, getting from point A to point B was a huge part of travel.

Karen Markley wanted to make a map of subterranean tunnels, such as those that contain subways, water and electrical lines, in her quilt titled Tunnels. This quilt is less representative and more evocative of what a person might find under their feet.

Beth Shibley’s Finding North is a rendition of a “modern compass,” and includes bits of maps that her husband used while hiking the Pacific Crest Trail.

taking the back roads, by Joanell Connolly was so interesting to look at. While you might decide that the crosses imitate a vast cemetery or that the white circular shapes might represent trees as if drawn by an architect, Connolly gives no indication of what her map might represent, only saying “when life gives you a choice. . .”

How many times have I peered out of an airplane window, snapping pictures of irrigation circles with my phone? This aerial photograph by Tom Lamb, inspired Carol Nilsen to create Layered Marks From the Sky, a map of a runway and taxiway at nearby John Wayne Airport in Southern California. But it’s not just the landscape she’s mapped in her quilt, but “the routes of a millions of people aboard thousands of aircraft.”

Last three map quilts.

Somewhere Between Science and Fantasy, a quilt by Jo Griffith had a chifffon overlayer on a drawn, or printed, background. Two closeups are below.

Bit Map, by David Charity. All the puns you need. Close up below.

Gaits of Lake Hodges, by Mary Tabar

Not only is this a map of a lake, but also the “gaits” of the critters who frequent there.

I’ll leave you with Tabar’s thoughts:
“Every trail starts with a map. A map helps us navigate our desires.”

I look forward to our group’s challenge quilt, coming this November.

Quilts

Summer Giveaway Winners

August 11, 2013 Elizabeth E.5 Comments

You are all winners in my book–just take a look at all that was accomplished this summer!

I’m generally terrible at picking winners; I personally LOATHE the random number generator, but don’t mind their List Generator. So I typed up all your accomplishments into a list and let the random generator help me choose. Of course, I personally would have gone for the running-while-not-re-injuring foot, given the fact that my summer consisted of foot surgery, but in the end, Amy C. and Ashley, of Wasn’t Quilt in a Day, were the winners for this giveaway.

I still have a couple of more little things I picked up at Long Beach, so I’ll probably have to find another reason to host a giveaway. Thanks to all who entered and congratulations on having so many stupendous achievements over the summer!

Something to Think About

On the Occasion of an Anniversary

August 11, 2013August 8, 2013 Elizabeth E.19 Comments

The Passionate Shepherd To His Love
With apologies to Christopher Marlowe, 1592

Come live with me and be my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
That hills and vallies, dales and fields,
Woods or steepy mountain yields.

And late at night, we will read together ,
You, your spy thrillers and me, Quiltmaker,
Then join in snoring: a guy and his gal,
Two melodious birds singing madrigals.

And I will make thee beds of roses
And quilts to cover freezing toes-es,
While nightly you return, a tired fellow
And we join together, eating dinner on the patio.

Still other nights, you slip in ear-buds,
Watching murder mysteries, while the quilting continues;
An if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

The shepherd-swains shall dance and sing
For thy delight each August-morning:
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me, and be my love.

************************

In honor of our anniversary this month, when Dave married me. . . and my four children. The reception was held two weeks after our marriage and after our honeymoon to Austria. My mother and father watched my four children while we honeymooned, then drove the car from Utah to California to meet up with us. I owe them big time.

Jet-lagged, I went to the florist’s on the afternoon of the reception to pick up my bouquet, but they’d made the wrong one. I refused to purchase it, and they promised me the right one this time. I went home and curled my hair, over-curling my bangs so I looked like I was in fourth grade, then went back to the florist’s. I hated my hair, but I liked the new bouquet.

My husband’s brother took the photos at our reception; we gave him five rolls of film, but only one turned out as he’d loaded them incorrectly in the camera (one of the photos is above). We had a lovely party with good friends and family, loaded all the gifts in our car, drove home, unloaded them, then stayed up opening gifts, drinking Martinelli’s after getting the three younger children in bed. At 11:00 p.m. Dave got back in the car to pick up the oldest child from a church dance, remarking as he came home that he bet he was about the only groom that had to pick up a teenager from a dance on the night of his wedding reception.

We laughed, fit ourselves to each other, and twenty-four years later, we are still here. Like the wooing swain in Marlowe’s poem, I did go with him and become his love, his wife, his partner and his resident quilter and to borrow another poet’s line: that has made all the difference.