Quilt Shops · Something to Think About

Spring Break/Mind Break

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

I took off for Spring Break early.  My colleague and friend Judy is covering my class and after class on Monday, we high-tailed it out of town.  When you see the above photo, you should probably know exactly where we are.  Yep.  San Francisco.  And yep, it’s raining.

So, like any self-respecting quilter, I tracked down a fabric store.  Actually, I grew up in this area and have come to Britex fabrics many many times.  I needed some replacement buttons for my raincoat (check), picked up another color way of the typewriter fabric, and also bought a 1/2 yard of fabric from Guatemala, which I was assured that when washed, would shrink and bleed.  But while I can get just about any quilting fabric online, I wouldn’t be able to get Guatemalan fabric, or so I reasoned.

I spent the rest of the day with my brother, going to lunch at Cafe Claude, then to Japantown, an mini-indoor mall where I hunted down small Japanese plastic figurines (weird, I know) and that cool decorative sticker tape that I read about on one of my favorite blogs: How About Orange.  You pull it along like those hand-held adhesive tapes, but instead of glue, it lays down a line of flowers.  Or hearts.  Or whatever, and the cartridges are refillable.

For those of you who want some, the shop keeper said he did mail order.  It’s from MaiDo, in Japantown, and the phone number is either 415-567-8901 or 415-567-7073.  Try using the name “Deco Rush Pens.”  How much?  $5.95 each, which is high if you think you could probably buy them in Japan for three bucks, but then there’s the airfare and the hotel and meals cost to factor in.  So maybe under six bucks is fine to have a whole lot of fun decorating your paper.

Here’s a few shots of San Francisco’s Union Square.  In the rain.

A change is as good as a rest, my mother always says, and this change is a nice one.  While I don’t have anything necessarily quilty on this post, I must admit that sometimes you just need a change to make you think about your work, your craft, again.  Like those berries above.  Plummy blue, pinky-purple, yellow-green.  Those colors, found here in nature, might be the beginnings for an interesting quilt scheme, veering away from any ombo I might usually try.  And when it’s raining, I’m forced to rest, or to try indoors things, or what else?  To try something new.

Blog Strolling

Comments, Blogger, Frustration

Elizabeth E.9 Comments

For some reason, Blogger has been playing with me.  Not my blogger–YOUR Blogger.

Which means that I’ve not been able to leave comments unless someone had enabled the new blogger (a confusing mess if there ever was one) so that the new format for comments showed up.  I am an avid commenter when I’m not grading (which is what I should be doing now, but hey–it’s lunchtime and I’m taking a break).  But for about the past two weeks, I can’t leave comments.  So I tried to switch to a different gmail, thinking maybe Google had it out for my old one.

Surprise!  They’d deleted my alternate gmail address.  Just because they can.  And no, you can’t have it back.  Not even if you click through at least 25 very unhelpful screens trying to figure out why, but getting the same message over and over and over:

Give It Up.  We Rule the World. You Can’t Have Back Your Other Email. Now Go Away.

Sigh.  So I set up another email to match the web name on this blog, and tried to comment.

Nope.

I have to set up a BLOG in order to comment.  It’s not enough to have a gmail address–YOU HAVE TO HAVE A BLOG.  I already have a blog.  Like I have about nine blogs.  Like I love the digital world except for when I hate it.  Which is about now.

But remembering that Google rules the world (which is why when I have to search for a sensitive topic, like why mothers-in-law are the most hated people on the planet, or should I hand piece or machine piece, I go to a new favorite: duckduckgo.com which has a no-tracking policy. You’re welcome.), I knuckle under to their incessant demands that I set up another blog, which if I do all my stuff right should mirror over to this site. And so far, it does.

So if you see a new name on your comments, say like opquilt.com, with the above Gravatar picture, it’s me.  Elizabeth E.  The one and the same.

And now maybe I can stop banging my head against the wall, and finish up grading those student essays.

WIP

Roses Bloom on a Wednesday

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

Last week we were all hosting the Leap Day Thread Giveaway, but today I’m back in the saddle with those Works–in–Progress (WIPs) and linking up to Freshly Pieced.  Thanks, Lee, for hosting us all!

Today’s WIP is both a finish and an acknowledgement that I’ve got miles to go before anyone sleeps under this quilt!  It might soon be morphing into a wall-hanging, and let’s hope I finish it before I run out of good televison and movies to watch.  Now that Downton Abbey‘s off-season, I’ve resorted to The Big Bang Theory.  Which is pretty funny, considering I’m married to a scientist and we both work in academia.

Here’s block two, all finished up.  I left the papers in the outside pieces as I don’t know what I’m going to do with it yet.  I did put block one as the wallpaper on my laptop, and I smile every time it pops up.  It’s both digital and tangible–digital on the screen, yet the satisfied feeling I get when I see it, is tangible.  (I have another quilt on my phone as wallpaper for that device.  I’m populating my universe with my quilts.

And here they are–the twins.

I looked in Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Quilt Patterns to track down the real name.  In 1935, The Old Chelsea Station Needlecraft Service, a mail-order company, published a variant of the block as the “Rose Star One Patch.”  Later on, other names were “Canadian Conventional Star,” the “Colonial Flower Garden,” and simply “Hexagons.”  I trend towards calling it the Rose Window Block, only because it reminds of. . . what else?  Rose windows.

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

Here are some from our travels in Europe and Canada. (With a couple of others you’ll recognize.)

I wanted to focus in on one shown in the slideshow above.
While not technically rose windows, the sweet little rounds on this wall of windows in Santa Croce (in Florence) are quintessential Italy.

Quilt Shops

Spring Shop Hop

Elizabeth E.6 Comments

What do you call a quilter who visits eight quilt shops and one Mexican restaurant on one day?  Tired, but happy.

Our local shops (I live inland from Los Angeles) got together for a Spring Fling Shop Hop.  This one was unique as it was small consortium of shops, all within one day’s driving distance–a perfect shop hop.  The draw for my friend Leisa and I was that each visited shop would give away a fat quarter of Moda’s latest Rouennerie’s Deux line.  Last week we hopped in the car at 8:15 a.m. and headed out to Palm Desert.

Shop #1: The Quilter’s Faire.

It was locked.  We knocked.  The owner came to the door, peeked out, smiled and said, “Yes?”
“We’re here!” we said.  “The Spring Fling begins at 9 a.m.!”

She said, “Bonjour!” and ushered us in.  She had thought it began at 10, and was a good sport for letting us in early. Every shop had made a quilt, and here are shots of The Quilter’s Faire, plus a look at her beautiful store.

They had the most amazing array of bags and totes.

Check out their chandelier.

We completed our purchases, filled out our Viewer’s Choice ballot for their teacup and saucer quilt challenge, and headed off.

Shop #2: Monica’s Quilt & Bead Creations

Monica, herself, greeted us at the door, and gave us a little tour of her store–unique as in that she carries tons of beads and supplies, as well as a being a quilting store.  Her quilt was on the table, as well as above the fabric shelves.  In fact, this shop, as well as The Quilter’s Faire, had lots of great samples.

I’m a fan of well-done little displays that catch a quilter’s eye and give them ideas.

The bead side of the large store.  I could easily spend a day here, just shopping and then taking a bead class.

A bead/jewelry class going on in the back room.

Shop #3: Georgia’s Quilting Obsession

Given that I am a born Pollyana, I try to find the rainbows in the drops of rain.  Here is a typical display in this shop: spool dolls, crocheted and knitted items.  In other words, this is a grandma shop.  In a grandma town.  And I mean MY grandmother, not yours (she would be about 116 this year, if she were still alive).  Her name was Georgina, so you can see I’m really hunting those rainbows.

We tried to be polite, trading off buying things in the shops.  It was my turn and I bought a fat quarter from a dated Mary Englebreit line, and three skeins of embroidery floss.  Next.

Shop #4: The Quiet Mouse

The room where we checked in was their classroom, where brightly colored quilts hung on all the walls.

And a Farmer’s Wife quilt!  I thought of Cindy, of Live a Colorful Life, who is making one of these.

Besides seeing totes and bags in all the shops, I saw a lot of aprons.  This three-tiered number in black and white was perky and fun, and made me think about ric-rac.

Of which they had a full supply.

And these very cool garden flowers, made from thrift-store plates.  I wanted one of those, but held off.

Cute displays and lots of fabric to choose from.

Shop #6: Busy Bee Quilt Shop

She declined to have the inside of her shop photographed (citing copyright issues, which is really fine), but it also had a nice selection of fabrics, and good samples.  This is the front of it–by that fabulous steeple.

By this time, we were famished–La Mexicana in Yucaipa filled the bill.  We also sorted out all our problems with our respective in-laws and children (no problems with the grandchildren–they’re all perfect), and enjoyed delicious food.  This isn’t a chain–it’s a real live family-run restaurant with those giant plastic glasses of soda and cheese-adorned entrees.

But no cheese for me–I had a seafood entree.  Yum!  Okay, back to work.

Shop #6: The Calico Horse

The full line of fabrics, plus a few from the past.

Their fat quarters, and their sample quilt.

I head to this shop quite often after I finish teaching (I teach in Yucaipa) and have always enjoyed their displays of fabric.

Two cute little yo-yo quilts right by the door.  Keep this in mind for July.

Shop #7: Stars and Scraps

I frequent this shop a lot, so didn’t take a lot of photos, as I thought I had written it up on this site.  Oops.  I’ll have to do another visit!  This is their quilt, and they used the cheater fabric in the line to create a patchwork-looking border.  We are dragging by now, but have only one more shop to go.

Shop #8: Quilter’s Cocoon

They sewed up a mini-banner of fans.  This is another shop that’s close by to where I live, but they are moving next month, so I’ll wait and do a post on them when they get settled.  We turned in our “passports” with all the squares stamped, made our purchases and headed home.

The line-up of fat quarters.

The total haul amount of purchases for the day. I collapsed into a chair and worked on my rose window quilt blocks for the rest of the night.  No, that’s not right.  I threw the fabrics into the wash, then lightly dried and pressed them, stacking them all up beautifully in my closet.

THEN I collapsed into a chair and stitched the rose window while I watched Pelican Brief, a favorite movie with a younger Julia Roberts and two of the best cinematic scenes in the movies (#1–where the bad guy in the red baseball hat gets shot by the bandstand, and #2–where Julia can’t breathe after visiting the law offices where more bad guys work).  Oh, and maybe the chase in the garage.  Oh well–don’t we all have our favorite Mexican restaurants?  And fabric lines?  And quilt shops, too?