My husband asked me to accompany him on a business trip and the first thing I did was scout around for quilt shops, naturally, and I was advised to come to this shop in a turn of the century old house in Portland, named Cool Cottons.
The address is: 2417 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland OR 97214. Phone: 503-232-0417 and their email is coolcottons@hotmail.com. Their opening hours vary, but generally they are always open from 12 noon to 6 p.m., although some days are earlier and some days are later.
This is the sight as you step up onto the front porch, peeking into the green/pink/purple room. I could hardly wait to open the door and come in.
Reds! greeted us as we walked into this beautiful old house, filled with glorious cottons. The trend is toward the modern side of things, with few calicoes or traditional prints, but that suited me just fine. I had a good time browsing and even my husband got into the act, finding an Alexander Henry that reminded him of the fabric he picked up for me in Zimbabwe many years ago.
The fabrics are arranged by color families, as well as by type in some cases (example, the Japanese linens are gathered together in one area).
Interfacing, batting, threads and notions have their own place.
Another look at that front room. I have to say that I took a second look at greens after seeing their display. And I wish I’d bought some of that fabric in the first bag, with carrots, potatoes and other vegetables on it. But I was trying to be considerate of my patient husband and aware of the space constraints of my carry-on suitcase. There’s always some fabric that gets away.
Black and white fabrics, next to solids. There was lots of ample light, even on a gray rainy day, so that all the fabrics were well lit.
The cutting table area. I could have spent hours and buckets of money in this shop, as everything was so well arranged and beautifully laid out. If you are ever in the area, put this one on your list for sure.
Next post: another shop in Portland. And if you are hungry for lunch while at Cool Cottons, we enjoyed our sandwiches at the Grand Central Baking Company which is just down the street, but we really enjoyed our cookies.
I can’t believe I’m still working on this. No, it’s not the Christmas quilt, although that is still very much in play. It’s the Autumn Quilt.
Since I started collecting fabrics for this oh, 8 or 9 years ago, and started cutting and sewing this quilt 2 years ago, it’s no wonder that I let it sit for a while after getting it back from the quilter as I couldn’t figure out what to bind it in. You know we all hunger and thirst over the cute bindings that Red Pepper puts on her quilts, but sometimes it’s best not to over think this quilting thing and just move forward. This is a plaid that was in the quilt, spliced up with a couple of other prints, as I didn’t have enough of the plaid.
I don’t know why, but I love the autumn colors. Living in LA, I get autumn about NOW, in January, when the liquid ambers turn maple-like colors. I went looking for quotes about autumn to find this quilt’s title, and all of them were about the fall that they have on the Eastern seaboard, or New England or mid-western areas of the country–so romantic about leaves and color and the “twilight of the year” and death and harvest and so on. I found a quote I like, but I’m still letting it mull over in my mind.
I mean, I can’t just call this “Autumn Quilt,” now can I?
And this is where I am on the pillow shams for my wonky star Christmas quilt. I decided to make a normal star, as they are 16″ finished, slap on some fabric on the top and bottom to get it to equal the size of a pillow sham: 20″ by 26.”
I want a flange around the outside edge, so I cut about another 100 2-1/2″ squares, and sewed them together in strips.
So now they look like this. I stopped because I’d taken the quilt over to the quilter, and gave her the red/green thread I’d purchased at Superior Threads when I’d gone through there at Christmastime.
I stopped because I had to get the syllabus and the course calendar and the expanded course calendar done and sent to the school copy center, and while I was at it, I sent over vats and barrels of more things to the copy center, trying to prep up for the first few weeks of school, which starts next week. But it was oh-so-nice to not have to create those things from scratch–to be able to find them on the computer and send them over with minor alterations.
I may actually get more quilting done this semester than last, given the fact that I’m teaching a course I’ve taught before. And that is a very good thing.
And lastly, I had a lovely surprise from a fellow quilter: she heart-attacked my door on my birthday, which was this past week. I’ve never been heart-attacked before, so I laughed and took a picture to remind me forever. Thank you Lisa! I had other lovely gifts to celebrate that day from other friends and family, phone calls from my children and some friends. A good birthday, for sure.
And then, just to remind me that I’m no spring chicken anymore, my back went into spasms the next day and I’ve been wincing, whining and moaning a good girl and not complained once about it. Like all things, this too will pass.
Hope you are all getting your new year off to a good start!
Finally! I can show a these little wristlets — mini-zip purses with straps — that I made for Christmas, because I gave the last one away yesterday. Just a simple zip, to which I added a loop out of the side seam, and attached a strap. They all have clocks on them, with a crazy mix of patterns around the central clock. For who ever has enough time? So I gave some away.
The top photo is another clock in the series, and the bottom shows the stap flipped back over, or as I like to call it “Bashful Portrait of Zip Bags.”
I also made up some giant canvas bags for my grandsons (hope the last grandson isn’t reading this post–we haven’t given that family their gifts yet!), and attached a tag that read: “Some toys you put together, and some toys you take apart.” Along with the item in the bag (see following photos), we also gave them a tool box with some basic tools.
Yep. I went to a TV repair shop and picked up some old electronics (VCR, CD players) and slipped them into their bags. They went right to work, taking them apart. They told me later that they’d finished them the next day. All of this was inspired by my mother, who when visiting our family when my boys were little, got one of them a television to take apart.
Finishing up this quilt. I was arranging the scraps of the remaining fabrics, trying to come up with a pieced back that didn’t look all garbage-y like my usual pieced backs do. My husband walked in and after inquiring what I was doing, I confessed I really didn’t do pieced backs very well. Sometimes I like to show the backs of my quilts and I’ve just never gotten the hang of that artsy look that some quilters can do so well. We went to the guest bedroom closet (AKA, fabric storage warehouse) to see if any of the Marimekko fabrics would work, when lo! and behond! there was a hunk of the red “joy” fabric, a coordinate to the Countdown to Christmas line. I’d forgotten all about it, but this morning I pieced it together and now that quilt can be quilted. (What you see on top are the pillow shams. Still working on those.)
I gave away this book for Christmas, and bought one for myself, too.
Not only does it have a lot of prompts for good deeds to to daily, there’s also room to record a deed that you did–an interesting way to keep a journal for a year, I think.
How about instead of a handmade card, we all make a handmade quilt? I like that.
So Happy New Year, everyone. Let that old year go, just like it says above, and enjoy this first day of the year! Now head back over to Lee’s blog, Freshly Pieced, to see others with WIP Wednesday projects. Maybe it will inspire you to pull out some of your own to get those Works-In-Progress quilts move to Work-Completed quilts?
Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky, The flying cloud, the frosty light: The year is dying in the night; Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.
Ring out the old, ring in the new, Ring, happy bells, across the snow: The year is going, let him go; Ring out the false, ring in the true.
Every New Year’s this poem, In Memoriam, by Lord Alfred Tennyson, has been recited in Sweden to welcome in the new year. It’s one of my favorite hymns, not only because of the arrangement (the Marsdon tune, arramged by Crawford Gates in an especially riveting D-minor key, which gives it a haunting quality) but mainly because the last stanza urges us to “Ring in the . . . larger heart, the kindlier hand,” among other things. And while I could say that the wording might be reversed, giving us “kindlier heart and larger hand” and that would give us more chances to do quilting, I think I’ll leave it well enough alone and hope for what Tennyson wrote.
Yesterday I just finished the quilt I started one year ago. This is a terrible, horrible blurry picture, but you get the drift. That’s what happens when you finish up late at night, and the pin wall has all sorts of other things pinned around the edges. Better pictures are coming. The fabric is Countdown to Christmas by Sweetwater, and the pattern is by Angela and found on Moda Bake Shop. Since the stars and I went several rounds before I finally was declared the victor, and because I think they look beyond wonky in some blocks, I’ve been thinking about the book Star Mother’s Youngest Child, a delightful story of how a wonderfully ugly little child comes down to earth to see what Christmas is all about, and ends up sharing the hearth with a grumpy old woman (which I certainly was at one point in this quilt’s construction). It’s okay that nobody but me will know what it means, but I like that title: Star Mother’s Youngest Child.
I’m at the point of deciding whether to just piece up the extras for the back, or to take the last steps and make the shams that could go with this so as to decorate the guest room for the holidays. I’ll just make up two star blocks, for they measure 16″ and then border them and call it a day. It IS New Year’s Eve tomorrow, and I don’t have much on the schedule, so why not?
This is the stack from IKEA that I finally got washed up and ironed (yes, I’m one of those), excepting the bottom red/white snowflake fabric, which I bought on my way home from Utah in a bookstore that also carried fabric. How great is that? Forget coffee. Give me books and fabric and I’m happy. But that red snowflake fabric is destined to back the wonky snowman quilt I started LAST November, which is the next to go up on the pin wall, while I can still listen to Christmas carols and before the urge to clean out closets creeps in with the New Year.
(Self portrait)
I’m too old for resolutions, but I try to put down some things that have me looking forward, for that is where the future is. One is our newest theme for Four-in-Art: trees. I took lots of photos of snowy trees while in Utah, and here’s a photo that my husband snapped of me in a lull in my photo-snapping.
But the one tree I remember was by the side of the highway while I was driving up north, covered in glittery frost and standing completely out in a field, all by itself. I did see snowy trees on the way home, but most were obliterated by a huge snowstorm which had me sitting up straight in the driver’s seat, clenching the steering wheel, praying that the semi-trucks would stay in their tracks and I could stay in mine. I don’t know how the folks do it who live in snowy climes–you have my admiration.
Another bright spot is the Mid-Century Modern Bee. All of us Mid-Century Modern quilters are gathered together by Cindy, of Live a Colorful Life. She and I had fun creating the logo together when she visited in November, and I look forward to participating with such a distinguished group of quilters.
I don’t know what this New Year will hold. Certainly the Mayan calendar is going to go for another round of days, so I guess we should too. I hope to add to my 200 Quilts list, with another quilt just back from the quilter and awaiting the binding, then the documentation onto the list. I hope to write more, both on this blog and others that I maintain, to teach well in the classroom, to read some books, and attend some quilting conferences (next up is Road to California, with its emphasis on glitter and crystals (not a fan), but hopefully I’ll find one or two that I love).
I hope that you are gathering some bright spots together in your future, and that we are all able, like Tennyson, to “Ring in the . . . larger heart, the kindlier hand.” Happy New Year of Quilting!
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 