WIP

Early Summer WIP Check-in

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Many thanks to Lee for hosting us on WIP Wednesday.  Click here to return to her blog and see other projects begun this early summer day (even though Summer Solstice hasn’t arrive officially).

Summer’s starting and the air is hot, the birds chirp-chirping early in the morning, the days longer.  I just need my energy to last longer because I’m working on the Lollypop Trees again.  My goal is to get all the fabrics cut out and pinned down, as I hope to sew on them all Fall and have the quilt blocks finished by early next year.  This is a long-term quilt, not quick.  Duh. I’ve traced off the patterns onto freezer paper and cut them all out and am now starting in on Block Five.

Working also on Bee blocks–two a month throughout summer.  I just sent off my first two!

Binding for the Gingham Quilt, to be revealed on July 4th, along with a few others.  Check the tab above, Project Gingham, for whose block or four or mini-quilt or quilt we’ll see that day.

Took a class from Becky Goldsmith yesterday, and now I have the class sample from her class to finish up.  I had a great time with the ladies of the Orange Grove Quilters Guild.  Add one more WIP to the list.

Rolls?  Yes, one of my BIG Works in Progress is a luncheon for 70 on the last Monday in June.  I made up a batch of these Buttermilk rolls to try them out for the sandwiches in the box lunch: delicious.  Now to make four more batches.  A sandwich on a homemade roll instead of a croissant–I think that’s a fair trade.  It’s for the first day of  camp for the young women in our area, so they asked me to put together the box lunches and get them ready to go by 7:00 a.m. to go up the mountain to camp.

But all forward progress will probably stop on most sewing when my daughter Barbara and her children arrive for a couple of weeks.  It will be fun to see them!

Classes · Tutorial

June Flowers/Tulip Tutorial

Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Every June the jacaranda trees put on their bluey-purple-periwinkle display of flowers, and we all wander around wondering how we got to be lucky.

And like clockwork, every June they dominate my photos — exquisitely colored blossoms on hills, around bends while the rest of the year these trees blend into the landscape.

And I’m heading to a class with Becky Goldsmith (the designer of the quilt I did last year: Come A-Round) and we’re doing a flower in class, so I chose a night-blooming plant for color inspiration for fabrics to pull.  This comes from the Sherwin-Williams paint website “Chip It,” where you load up a URL of a photo and they provide their colors.  I just like how it looks, and it helped me pull from my stash.

So when it came time to decide on a block for the Far-Flung Bee, that was easy: a flower.  I also wanted something of simple construction (9-patch) because of my fabric requrements–I wanted some fabrics with text to be incorporated into the blossom.

Here are two versions of that tulip/flower block, and the text fabric is used two different ways; one is in the background fabrics and the other is included in parts of the flower.  That green fabric saying Blah Blah Blah is a treasure for me as my friends Bert and Rhonda sent it to cheer me after my surgery in December.  I’ll always think of them when I use those fabrics (thanks, guys!).  So here’s how to do it.

For one 9-inch flower block:
Cut four 3 1/2″ squares–3 from the background fabric, 1 from the flower fabric
Cut four 3 7/8″ squares–2 from the background fabric, 1 from the flower fabric, 1 from the leaf fabric
Cut one 2″ by 3 1/2″ rectangle from the background fabric
Cut two 2″ squares–1 from the background fabric and 1 from the stamen fabric

Working with the 3 7/8″ squares ONLY, place one background square on each of the flower and leaf blocks.  Draw a diagonal line from corner to corner, or if you have the Quick Quarter tool (shown above), draw a line on either side.  You’ll stitch just inside this line (towards the center), or if you have drawn a single diagonal line, you’ll stitch a SCANT quarter-inch seam on either side of your drawn line.

Cut from corner to corner, inbetween your stitching.

Press the seam allowance away from the background triangle, as shown.  Notice those dog ears on the corners? We’ll cut them off later.

Working with the 2″ square blocks and the one rectangle now.  Seam the stamen fabric block to other 2″ background fabric block.  If you’re like me and getting up and down to the ironing board gets tiresome, just finger press that seam towards the stamen fabric.  Then seam the rectangle onto this unit.  Okay, now go to the ironing board and press that flat.

Lay everything out. Smile, because it looks cute. AND it’s fast!  Seam them together in rows, working across the block.  Keep track of which direction that bottom leaf goes.  I did it wrong twice.

Now it’s time to trim off those dog ears.  (I actually trim them as I seam the pieces together, not waiting until a final moment, but this is just a reminder to get them off now).  I use that old fashioned tool that works so well: scissors. Snip snip snip while holding it over the trash can.

  I’ve flipped it over to show the directions for pressing.  Basically you want to have the seams going in opposite directions so they’ll “nestle” together when you go to sew the rows.  Lay it out again, the sew the final seams, joining the rows.  Double check that bottom row twice, so you don’t sew it in wrong (like I did).

You’re finished with one block.  Eat Your Vegetables, by laying a ruler over it and truing up the block to 9 1/2″.  It will sew down to a finished 9″ block in your quilt.

Here’s a mock-up of one layout, using 1″ sashing and corner squares.  I’ve also thought that since it’s based on an easy nine-patch block, that a grouping could be made of half-sized (4 1/2″ finished) blocks that could be interspersed for a more random look.  That’s for another day.

Enjoy your spring flowers!

Quilts

Project Gingham Underway

Elizabeth E.2 Comments

I had a whole list of winners.  You all shared such lovely memories with me, and I enjoyed going back in time to your childhood summers, popping popcorn to sell, learning to sew at the hand of your grandmother, going to Disneyland.

Congratulations to Rachel of The Life of Riley for joining me on Project Gingham.  The next day to watch for gingham in our quilts will be July 4th, Independence Day for those of us in the States.  That’s kind of the peak of summer for us in the Northern Hemisphere, celebrated with pie, homemade ice cream, lots of overeating (in a good way), and hanging out waiting for the sun to go down to cool us all off and so we can see the fireworks.  And a perfect day to see all these gingham projects!

I’ll post a list of all six of our blogs on here, and if you’ve taken the steps to dig some of the gingham out of your stash and have made  (or plan to make) a gingham quilt project (or ordered some online or even found some in local shops), send me your blog name and address and I’ll list you as well.  Deadline for me to write the blog post and get it listed is June 27th (after all, I’ve got some serious summer fun to attend to!).  What qualifies: a block, or four, or a mini-quilt, or a big quilt.  Check back (pun) and see the gallery of gingham!

While you may think all I do is gingham, I’ve had a couple of other projects going as well.  The above is all the squares, cut out, for my Summer Treat Quilt.

Here’s four sewn together and arranged up on the pinwall.  I like how the borders make a crown-type block.  I always like putting new blocks together to see the new patterns they make when they share borders.  While this does look productive, it’s really an avoidance of my other Grand Summer Project. . .

. . . getting the Lollypop Trees back on the radar.  I’ve pulled all the Kaffe Fasset/related fabrics out from the closet, and traced off the remaining blocks onto freezer paper (the scrolls).

I number all the pieces so I can tell which block they belong to.  Some have over 50 pieces.  And I have nine to go.  Now I’m thinking I’m a bit nuts and maybe I’ll just do nine blocks TOTAL, instead of 12.  Or the sixteen the original quilt called for.

Krista, of KristaStitched, invited me to join her and her friends in their Far-Flung Bee, so named because the members live all over the world.  I’ve never been in a bee.  That’s sort of admitting you’ve never eaten raspberries or gone skinny-dipping, or something.  But they’ve drawn up a schedule and some guidelines and I’m giving it a go.  I’ve gotten two blocks done, and am ready to start another person’s blocks.

Several months ago I put my name on the waiting list to take a class from Becky Goldsmith.  Today my lucky number came up!  The class is quickly approaching–next Tuesday–so tomorrow I’ve got to go out and try to find class supplies, then sew my background for her class on Applique Outside the Lines.  I’m soooo jazzed!

Quilts

Gingham Giveaway!!

Elizabeth E.25 Comments

Today’s the day for our Gingham Giveaway.  Krista, of KristaStitched, and Cindy, of Live A Colorful Life, will also be doing a giveaway on their blogs, too.

We’ve put together three packs of gingham fun: three different fat quarters of gingham, plus a full half-yard of Kona white.  Here’s the deal: if you win, we want you to play gingham with us, so make a block or four or a mini-quilt, or add some more gingham and make a big quilt.  Then on July 4th, post your completed project on your blog, with links back to us.

You can enter on all three blogs with one winner per blog (and Cindy and Krista and I will put our heads together to make sure that no one wins twice).  We’ll mail anywhere but planet Venus (but then she’s gone around the sun now–all done transiting for another hundred+ years).

To enter, leave me a comment with your favorite summer memory from your childhood. I’ll close out the giveaway sometime in the early morning of June 6th/7th and post the winner on my blog, after conferring with my buds.

I was the youngest of four girls and was always put to bed earlier than them, which of course, made me nuts because I knew they were doing amazing things while I lay awake, listening to the crickets and their laughter.  But in summer our bedtimes often merged somehow. And one lovely summer’s eve in Boston, Massachusetts, a bunch of children (friends? for we lived in Sudbury–considered the “country” then) gathered together on the big wide lawn, the fireflies blinking and we played Red Rover for what seemed like hours.  Those kind of memories are always snatches and impressions, but I’ll never forget all the adults in the house, lit by golden lights, while we children played on past sundown.

Now leave me your favorite childhood memory of summer in a comment.  And good luck!

 

~~~Comments are now closed. I’ll announce the winner tomorrow on the blog, but will be in email contact before then.~~