Tag: Bee Happy Sew-A-Long

Road to California 2022 • Part I
Quilt Shows

Road to California 2022 • Part I

Elizabeth E.27 Comments
I Hear America Singing, Quilt #252

My friend Laurel and I headed up to Road to California 2022 Tuesday afternoon, one hour earlier than the “VIP” admissions. We know this show often has slow check-ins and we wanted to get our badges and show bag and figure out where our class was tomorrow. We had time to sit and reflect before it opened on how our own numbers of local quilters has shrunk, through moves or losing interest. One year we gathered almost 20 people for a dinner at a local restaurant; now it was down to just us two, eating our brought-from-home sandwiches, waiting for the abbreviated quilt show to open.

Wealth of Days, Quilt #247

Road to California is a well-established quilt show, running for more than two decades. I have had mostly perfect attendance, ever since moving to Southern California — except for last year, when it was cancelled. Laurel called this year “a year to take a breath” and get your bearings again. When they opened up, we hightailed it to the quilt show area so I could see my quilts. They were still setting up, so the overhead lights were on, a departure from 2020 when I was last here. Everything was so well lighted; we loved it.

Picties and Verities, Quilt #243
I snuck my mask off for this one.

We explored the quilts (more at the bottom of this post), shopped the vendors and headed home to get some sleep before our class the next day.

We live about 35 minutes from the show, so I picked up Laurel and off we went. Our class was being taught in a different hotel, so we loaded the wagon, went in and found our places. I had said to Laurel that I was very “covid-nervous” and might have to leave if people weren’t wearing their masks, or taking precautions. We are still under mask mandates here in California, but I got a seat near the door and we left the doors open for ventilation, and class started.

The class was Posh Penelope, taught by Helen and Jenny from Sew Kind of Wonderful — really lovely teachers. At the beginning of class they passed out little goodie kits for us–so welcome! I’d precut and prepped so after the demos, I started right in.

I hadn’t heard from my daughter that morning, and I checked on her IG Story and saw this. Just when I am thinking we’re going to get out of this in good shape! In texting my other children, I found out my son and his family had it last week, another son offered up that his 16 yo daughter had it. Laurel had been tracking news of her BIL who has been in the hospital for over a week, with covid. I felt surrounded by covid, but took a deep breath and kept quilting. It’s still here, but we were at Road — and I consider that a deep breath and a leap back into life.

We took our lunches outside to this gazebo–in the old days we would have cranked away at the sewing machines inside; now we escape to the beauties of the world a little more often.

And then class was over. No, I don’t know what that fabric is I used for the blue, but I plan to make this quilt a few scrappy blocks at a time. It’s such a great pattern, and using their rulers makes it easy. We went back over to the convention center, to grab the last couple of hours of the day. It’s about half the size in terms of vendors, with no large tent this time. I thanked a lot of the vendors for coming, knowing that it’s a hard time for this sort of thing. The quilt show is also smaller, so I was happy to get my quilts in.

Here are some of the quilts we saw: so much beautiful work. Click on any image to make it larger, then hit the small X in the upper right to return to this page.

If you have $75,000, this could be yours.

That border!

I don’t have the maker info; I will get it and update this later.

This is a miniature, made out of old sari, and each of the those pieces are about an 1/8″ wide. Here’s the larger view:

I love this title…and the quilt.

I will admit to really loving this one.

I think I am through with the animal section.

Having gone to Guatemala in 2019 to see my sister Cynthia, I could relate to this one a lot, as Cynthia took us to a specialty textiles shop that had handwoven textiles, with a woman out front doing a demonstration of weaving with a hip loom.

The back of the quilt

About the colors: from standing there, I would say the color was a slightly blue/red, with red being predominant, but when I got in closer, the camera would convert it to magenta. This was a highly detailed quilt, full of wonderful appliqué.

Okay, I know you were waiting for a Janet Stone Quilt. She works with the alphabet, for those who don’t know her work, and always includes a sheep/lamb/ewe somewhere in the quilt. This has them all in abundance.

Back of the quilt. I learned about her thread color, about when she switches threads, and that I continue to stand in awe of her work.

Zina Clark: Love in the Time of Coronavirus and Murder Hornets. If you’d like to purchase it, the price is $3700.

About Going to to a Quilt Show During Covid

I’m writing this long explanation not only for the record of this time, but also because of the questions on Instagram I’ve been asked about how I felt about being there at a quilt show during a covid surge. You have to know, first, that I spent most of 2020 in my house. We timed grocery store runs to every other week and scurried home. When I got the first vaccine in January of 2021 it was like an answer to a prayer, and I received the second one on Valentine’s Day. More mostly staying at home after our “easy summer” ended, and we still watch covid numbers. So yes, you could say I’m a bit anxious about covid.

But I’d been boosted, I’d upgraded to KN94 masks (no more cute homemade cloth ones anymore) and it was time to put my toe back in the quilt world. I felt keenly like I wanted to support Road to California and those vendors and teachers who were brave enough to come here. During an Omicron surge.

I agonized, and talked to my husband (question: do you want me to sleep in the guest room? answer: no), and decided if I limited my time, going in spurts, it would be manageable. The convention center has tall ceilings, they had a mask mandate (about 99% were heeding that), and I saw the beginning of the dip in the charts. But still, here was the info from the week before in San Bernardino, where Road was being held:

Coming to Road was easier for me, because I drove. (I plan to drive next month to QuiltCon, too.) Because this was a “take a breath” time, there was less of everything: some holes in the convention center floor where a vendor had maybe pulled out, quilt exhibits that felt like they were stretching to fill the space, rather than oodles of individual quilts. But I felt okay, after an initial nervousness. I also wanted to do a trial run before heading to Phoenix and QuiltCon in February; my roommate has decided to cancel, so my husband is now going with me. I’m not upset by this; I thought it might be me canceling. It’s a tough time.

I will be going again on Saturday afternoon, to study the quilts one last time, then wait around for my quilts at the end of the show. I’ll post more photos of the show later (I still have quite few to share).

So, Happy January.
Happy Road to California time!

300 Quilts · Quilt Finish

Picties and Verities • Quilt Finish

Elizabeth E.12 Comments
Picties and Verities, quilt #243
71″ wide by 78″ tall

Finally!

This baby has a new name: Picties and Verities.

What, you ask? Well, that phrase was in a poem I read about a thousand years ago, and I liked it and wrote it down and of course I can’t find it now, because that’s my life, when even what we had for dinner last night is cause for wandering around in the corridors of memory.

Verities, defined: a true princple or belief, especially one of fundamental importance. Seems to me that striving to be happy, knowing that the sun shines on all of us, as well as the idea that it’s always good to go home — with or without your trailer — just have to be some verities.

Picties, defined: For this one, I went to my husband’s college Oxford Dictionary, a two-volume set complete with magnifying glass. Pict (rare, it says, from the 1400s) means to paint or depict or represent. I would say all those bits of appliqué up there qualify as little pictures. Of course the Picts were also the ancient name of people from North Scotland, and are associated with elves, brownies or fairies. And possibly old grey castles with dungeons (an allusion to its working title: Trapped in the Dungeon of Cute). And since my great-grandmother was from Scotland, I own that heritage with pride.

I sewed on buttons last Saturday, while listening to my Guild’s program, and added, as is my usual, “Made in the time of Covid-19” for anyone who receives this quilt after I’ve gone to the afterworld to frolic with Scottish fairies. You’ve seen photos of this, but here’s a last batch of fun.

And since you’ve read this far, I now treat you to one of my husband’s beautiful photographs, taken the last week of January:

Aloe Blossom

We retraced his steps to take a look at it this past week, because in trying to identify what it was depended on what the plant’s leaves looked like: if they were cacti-looking, it was an aloe. If they were leafy, it was a kniphofia (aka Torch Lilly or Red Hot Poker). It’s an aloe, but it is a distant cousin to kniphofia, apparently. My husband Dave takes long walks everyday, bringing home pictures like this, reminding me of when my children used to bring me home bits and pieces of their days, spilling them out into the kitchen, a line or a thought floating backwards over their heads deep in the refridgerator.

It’s so nice to watch Dave gather his interests about him now, after having had his nose to the grindstone for years, bringing home the proverbial bacon to put in the fridge for those now-grown children. His process — of snapping pictures of whatever interests him and only later culling and choosing — reminds me of this quote from the artist Ann Hamilton:

“A life of making isn’t a series of shows, or projects, or productions, or things; it is an everyday practice.  It is a practice of questions more than of answers, of waiting to find what you need more often than knowing what you need to do….Our culture has beheld with suspicion unproductive time, things not utilitarian, and daydreaming in general, but we live in a time when it is especially challenging to articulate the importance of experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, aren’t easily quantifiable, resist measurement, aren’t easily named, are categorically in-between.” (Ann Hamilton, artist)

Having had three finishes within a couple of weeks, and today teaching a workshop with the Surfside Quilters Guild, my next plan is to do some wandering myself, maybe some daydreaming and find those experiences that don’t produce anything obvious, yet are so critical.

And P.S. Blocks 4, 5 and 6 of Shine: The Circles Quilt are now back on the blog, free to all.

Other posts about Picties and Verities:

Software

Making a Curve for the Dungeon of Cute • Affinity Designer Tutorial

Elizabeth E.13 Comments

Yes, I’m going to talk about making curves, but it’s part of a path that began after I finished the Bee Happy Quilt. You know what comes next: either get it quilted by check, or if you are daft enough, quilt it yourself. (Above: measuring and cutting the batting). But the hardest part is coming up with ideas, so then I check Instagram. I found Rebecca Silbaugh of rubybluequilts and generally followed along to what she had quilted for customers’ quilts like mine. It wasn’t exact, but it gave me a roadmap.

I use a Sweet Sixteen mid-arm, or stationary quilting machine to stitch by quilts, so I have to find some workarounds, and one of them is good use of the disappearing marker. But I need a template to trace to get the design I wanted for the border, and didn’t want to take the quilt downstairs to try out a bunch of plates from the cupboard to find the shape I wanted, or go through all my rulers.

In the early days, when quilters wanted a repeated shape for their border, would often cut a piece of paper the length of the border, and then fold it into parts, using that to mark off the segments. But I had two border lengths to work with and neither were easy measurements, but I figure if I could get a 3 1/2″ petal-shaped something-or-other, I could trace that and make it work. I turned to my Affinity Designer software to get that perfect shape. The steps I took are listed at the bottom of this post, as I didn’t want to interrupt the post, but if you are someone who is learning this software, they may help.

I printed out my shape, but kept a connecter — punching a hole so I could mark through it. I traced one side at a time–using the shape at a perpendicular angle in the middle to fill up the space and arranging it around the corner.

Here’s a picture of the border pattern in soft afternoon light, so you can see the quilting. I used So Fine thread from Superior Thread, color #402 — an off-white — in both top and bobbin for the center of the quilt. Then I switched to a matching Magnifico Thread (also by Superior) to quilt the borders, keeping the bobbin the same.

The quilt — and I — are resting before I tackle the trimming, binding and sleeve. I’m also waiting for inspiration to strike for a name. I’ve called it the Dungeon of Cute all this time (I began the quilt in January of 2019), as I loved the first three or four blocks. Then it was like being chained to a wall, having to make cute blocks over and over and over. (But I don’t think I want to name it this.)

Something will come to me.

Affinity Designer Tutorial for making a petal-shape

I had taken a class at QuiltCon that talked about merging shapes and subtracting shapes, so I started with the left mess, trying to get that curve. Fail. Then I found *this video* and it opened my eyes to possibilities. Go and watch it now. I’ll wait. In figure 2, I drew a constrained square by holding down the shift key to make the sides all the same length (without the shift key, I’d get a rectangle). I put a thicker border on the square so I could see it.

Then I did what it says. I clicked on the border to highlight it, then converted it to curves. That lets each side and each corner move independently of the others.

Click on the corner tool (in the pink circle) and the nodes will change to little boxes. Right by them, not really visible in his illustration is a small red “handle” that you’ll grab. Move your cursor around to locate it for one corner, then drag toward the center of the square.

You can see the little red “handle” in this image; it looks like a small circle. The farther the radius of that larger red circle, the flatter the corner.

Figure 5 is getting a work out.

But I really want to make a petal-shape. I dragged the handle until the radius was the same as the square’s side: 3 1/2″ inches. I kept my eye on the measurements, shown in the pink oval.

But I wanted a thinner petal, so I went with a 4″ radius. Then I copied and pasted them together, using Command-G to merge the layers so I could move them as I wanted. I printed them out on cardstock and used that in the marking of my quilt (below).

Good news! All Affinity software is on major sale right now (50%), so if you need any design or photo or pattern-writing software, I can recommend it to you. No subscriptions. And they also have a 90-day free trial, as well. I don’t get any kickback for recommending them to you; click this link for more information.

Happy Quilting!

Quilts

Buzzing

Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Let me start with the easy stuff, the stuff that’s in my hands all the time: cloth, needle, thread, shapes, stitching.

While I’ve called this the #dungeonofcute on Instagram, I am happy that I finished it, and that it is really cute. I set up a place on my blog to corral all the handouts I made while working through this. I made a series of tip sheets that collect all the disparate information that Lori Holt presents on her blog, and hopefully will serve to help those who decide to jump in to Bee Happy. Borders are up next.

I started to wonder why this was so hard for me. There is the matter of all that stitching. By hand. It is also a quilt of medium tones and values, and while I do like those quilts, I tend to be more comfortable using stronger contrasts. And maybe I’m not as patient as I could be? And maybe because I felt like I was always buying her fabric, so everything could neatly “fit in together”? Sunshine and rainbows and unicorns and charming motifs and flowers and buzzing bees?

This week has provided us all with a way of looking at the side we don’t often see, the side that gets hidden behind a tidy facade. I’m a Pollyana from way back, and am always looking for the rainbows and the hearts and flowers. But there were more than a few things in the past few days to knock me around. It was that kind of week.

From this, the (mildest of) images, to the videos and pictures generated by another visitor to Lafayette Park, the news stories chronicling the fights and the hate and the soldiers and the protestors and the (unneeded) clashing.

This week, our Instagram feeds filled with these sorts of images:

House in my neighborhood

Then a couple of days ago, I was surprised to see this statue from Alexandria, Virginia in my southern California newspaper. I’d walked past this statue often when I lived there, and thought it a rather simple memorial.

The art critic calls it a “racist civic sculpture celebrating white supremecy.” Its location in Alexandria is right where the main street through town gives way to a bigger highway, shuffling the traffic over to bridges and it faces south, away from the town. It was, when I was there, a mostly ignored statue. Is it okay to admit to liking this simple memorial in an area full of memorials, a soldier contemplating his fallen comrades? But this week, given our new vantage point, and out of necessity, it came down. And as my historian sister says, a lot of ink has been spilled on this topic recently.

So, this week I sewed.

This week I listened and watched.

I spent time in my garden, catching a glimpse of a late-blooming peony. I read through news stories of the protests, stunned at more instances of thoughtlessness. I would step away from the television and computer every night then lay awake in the dark, wondering what kind of senseless world I was living in, when people were singled out for how they look. I had no answers, just a lot of tired mornings, when I would repeat the cycle again. I wanted to make it all happy, turn the cloth under, hide the fraying and the raw edges, but I was being asked to see it from another view, a richer, more nuanced, and painful view.

A flower for George

I wish I could wrap up this post in a tidy little package, give a neat turn, but this is not that kind of week. This is the kind of week where you wonder. This is the kind of week where you decide what you want your country to be. This is the kind of week that you pay attention to what’s on the other side of things, knowing that they can make all the difference.