Take Me Back to Italy!

April 26, 2013April 25, 2013 Elizabeth E.14 Comments

I have this thing for Italy. So when I saw Va Bene!, a line of fabrics depicting scenes and buildings and landmarks from Italy, it had to come home with me. Many of our trips are detailed on my travel blog, Traveled Mind, which I’ve maintained for several trips, and it serves as a journal of sorts. It’s always fun to go and read it to remember the perfect bruschetta pomodora in the courtyard just beyond the steps of Santo Spirito in Florence (and is why I put the snippet of fabric showing this on the quilt label).

The facade of the church Santo Spirito, Florence

Brushetta Pomodora (pronounced with a hard sound: brus-ketta)

Recipe is found *here.*

So with this memory floating in my mind, I fell in love with the tomato fabric and the sights fabric and the background fabric with the Venetian gondolas and knew that I wanted to make this for Another Year of Schnibbles that Sherri and Sinta are hosting.

This was my first attempt. I ending up snipping off the piano key borders — even though they are in the original pattern — because everything seemed “mushed” together. I think a quilt should have strong focal point, or perhaps several places where the eye can travel to, and with the borders and this fabric, it just wasn’t working.

I also quilted the nine-patches in the ditch, and then did a heavy stippling on the triangles to smash them flat into the background, hoping the nine-patch design would pop up a bit. I think it also helped with that no place for the eye to rest thing I was talking about.

Windows of Santa Croce

I’d purchased this tea towel on a very hot day when we were touring Lake Como, and tucked it away in the suitcase. You can’t always find fabric in distant places, but there’s always a tea towel or two, showing the sights.

Florence Duomo exterior

Tuscan countryside

My husband is a great traveler, very adventurous, and loves to rent a car and just drive around, trying new places to eat, finding the out of the way place, avoiding the tourist traps, although he will put up with a few if the sights are top notch. So Italy fits us well. Enough people speak English, the food is amazing, and the scenery is picturesque.

So what else could I name this quilt but Take Me Back to Italy?

This is Quilt #112 on my 200 Quilts list.

It’s also my second finish for the second quarter of Leanne’s Finish-A-Long,

. . . and my first Schnibbles in Another Year of Schnibbles.

That’s a pretty big pedigree for such a small quilt, but this one can handle it.

It’s Italian.

200 Quilts · FAL · Finish-A-Long · Quilts · Something to Think About

Christmas Treat Wallhanging

April 22, 2013October 15, 2019 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

So, out here on the old sewing ranch-a-roo, I finished up Christmas Treat (name is courtesy of my husband) and took it outside to pose for pictures. The front.

The back is an old Alexander Henry fabric with quirky angels flying everywhere. I’ve hoarded this and now only have about a yard of the black colorway.

The label. I like to print mine out and border them before I stitch them on. If you do a search for “labels” in the search box on the blog, you’ll find posts about how I do my labels.

The final full shot. It’s #111 on my 200 Quilts list. It’s a big day because of the following four reasons:

1–this is my first Finish a Long completed. I probably won’t finish the blue flowers at this time as the shop owner likes that it shows the back;
2–I actually did some free motion quilting on this that I’m not mostly ashamed of. Don’t look too closely, as I don’t do enough of it to show it off, but I’m pretty happy with how it turned out;
3–I took this sample (above, of Christmas Treat and below, of Lollypop Tree block) to Bluebird Quilts & Gallery, my local quilt shop, and she booked me in to teach two classes.

4) my husband took a new picture of me that I think is a pretty good rendition of who I am at this point in my life. As the Mid-Century Moderns know, we scrupulously monitor our images, preferring instead to be behind the lens instead of in front of it.

About photographs: we swim in a sea of digital images, and most are out of our control, as was demonstrated by the plethora of images that came forward about the Boston Marathon tragedy. Our grandparents had a handful. Our great-grandparents had, like, maybe three. So does having so many pictures make it any easier to find one you like of yourself? If you’re like me, my husband took about ten shots before I got one that I liked–one that represented on the outside how I generally felt on the inside. So, here it is. Banish all other images to the dustbin. This is the me as I am this week, all sunny yellow in sunny Southern California.

~~Okay, class info:~~
~~Class will be taught at Bluebird Quilts & Gallery, at 22320 Barton Road, Suite A, in Grand Terrace, California (just north of Riverside).~~

~~I’ll teach Wednesday, May 22nd from 10 to 3:30 p.m. and July 29th, from 10 to 3:30 p.m.~~

I need at least four, preferably, five people to carry the class. I’m including the pattern (my own, drawn from the original Lollypop Tree quilt from the 1880s), and freezer paper (have you priced this stuff lately? Whew!). Cost is $50/full day class, including pattern. Call the shop (909) 514-0333 to sign up, if you think you’d like to take the class. They’ll have class supply lists for you when you sign up. Their hours are Sunday through Thursday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. and Fridays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Closed Saturdays.

200 Quilts · Quilts

Snapshot: Polaroid Quilt finished

March 29, 2013October 3, 2022 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Debbie of A Quilter’s Table hosted a Polaroids swap last summer, and although I put together the top fairly quickly, I didn’t send it to the quilter’s because I wanted to do the quilting. Finally I wised up and took it over to Kathy. Smart move, because now it’s finished and not still hanging on its hanger in the closet.

But it’s all done now! Dave and I snuck out yesterday morning in our jammies to grab the few rays of sun that morning, he holding up the quilt for me. Thanks, hon. (We always have cloudy mornings until mid-summer.)

When I put this up on Instagram, some folks said they wanted to see some details shots of the little blocks. I think of this quilt as kind of a travel, a memory book quilt, with all its little snapshots of different things.

So when I found this circle design, my quilter agreed to quilt it for me; it reminds me of wheels on a car, going round and round for a summer trip.

It was fun to use some old novelties in my stash, like the block that has “2000” on it–from all those turn of the century quilts we were doing thirteen years ago — when we thought all the computers in the whole world were going to crash.

This one’s kind of like an album block. Krista and I hatched up Project Gingham last year after I found a bunch of ginghams at a garage sale. She made this block for me and signed her name. It’s a treasure. How do you make these little blocks? Diagram *on this post.*

I found this stripe-y fabric at a little quilt shop not too far from my house, and it turned out to be perfect. The Polaroids are bordered in Quilter’s Linen in bright green and blue. Tutorial on how to make this quilt *here.*

The backing is a Marimekko print that looks like a grassy field.

And here’s the label. I love the quote from Eudora Welty, a great Southern writer: “A good snapshot stops a moment from running away.” Amen, Eudora. Well said.

This is #110 of 200 lifetime quilts.

200 Quilts · Family Quilts · Quick Quilt · Quilts

Chris’ Welcome-to-the-Family Quilt

March 24, 2013April 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

This is where I was Wednesday morning, after listening to hours and hours of a new audio book: Beautiful Ruins. My mother’s still ~~reading~~ listening to it, so I’ll withhold my review until later. But the really good thing about audio books is that when they are playing on your desktop computer in the same room as the sewing machine, a lot gets sewn, like a quilt top for our new-to-our-family adopted grandson Chris. This is my Sashless Quilt, with the tutorial found *here.*

Full length shot on our front porch, with hands belonging to my tall husband Dave.

This isn’t a complicated quilt, it sews up quickly, and I love using favorites from my stash like the bicycle fabric. I’d been saving that for a long time and this was the perfect use because my son (Chris’ Dad) loves bike riding, owns a bunch of them and takes all his sons out on bike rides.

I started cutting this on Monday, sewed Tuesday and Wednesday morning, quilted Thursday, did the binding on Friday. Hey! I felt like Rita from Red Pepper Quilts, only I’m not listing it in my ETSY shop. (I don’t even have an ETSY shop.)

The “label.” Sometimes with quilts I know will be washed and washed, I don’t mess with a formal label, but simply write directly on the quilt with a Micron Pen.

Glamour shot, reclining on the sofa. I did the basic quilting: stitch in the ditch. I’d played with the idea of doing echo-quilting alongside the seams, but in the end changed my mind.

I gave it to Chris as they arrived on Saturday evening to celebrate my husband’s birthday. Chris’ younger brother Andrew used it first.

Later on, after dinner and all the adults talked, Chris nabbed it and settled into a movie. Or was it a game? I can see that at the dimensions of 46″ x 57″ he will soon outgrow the quilt, but I didn’t want it too big–it’s a “welcome to the family” quilt, like what his brothers received when they were newborns.