Something short and sweet for you today: how to make block 21. I’m posting these last few blocks of Red, White and Blue SHINE in quick succession, so others can these posts for references.
The going is quicker, so I swiftly moved from the above, to the layout below.
This is an easy block to start with, if you are just a beginning EPP-er. This block can be found in Pattern 121, the final nine new circles, and is available in my PayHip shop. The quick trick is explained in the General Instructions, as well as in other Shine Block instructions (on this website).
Follow the steps on the pattern. You can see I made the inner circle first, then added on the red/white star points. Then next is making the outer wedge-point-wedge units. Sew them in between the star points. Applique a small circle on the center. Appliqué the circle to the background square, deciding if you want the red/white star points UP, or the blue smaller points UP. You can tell from the first photo which one I chose.
We’ve just had Christmas, come through the bulk of 2020, and I thought a short and sweet post would be best. It’s touch and go as to whether I get the top finished by the Inauguration in January, but a girl can dream, can’t she?
In other news, I finished the feather for Jen in our Gridster Bee for December. She wanted organic-looking batiks for the feather part, and solid black for the feather’s shaft. You can see a whole bunch of the feathers here. The pattern was a free download from ZenChic designer Brigitte Heitland.
I have turned off comments for this and the next two posts, as I am finishing up the SHINE block construction information; hope you won’t mind. If you want to get ahold of me, my email can be found on the About Me tab, above.
I am a firm believer in making lists. There are Best Seller Lists, To-Do Lists, Grocery Lists, Honey-Do Lists, in short, lists for everything. A grand event in my world is making a list of tasks, then whipping out my yellow marker to cross them off when completed. I even have lists of lists, and many of them are in my calendar.
This is my list of what I accomplished in 2020, quilt-wise. We won’t talk about the other stuff (like shoulder surgery–yikes!).
You haven’t seen number 18 Azulejos yet. And in a little more housekeeping, Field Flowers, number 7 in the listing above, is listed as 188 in my Quilt Index, since I posted about the top back then, and like to keep them together.
Can’t believe I made five Merrion Square quilts. But here they are.
I also made a couple more Tiny Quilts which aren’t listed; they are free patterns available in the tab “Tiny Quilts” at the top of the blog.
This was a highlight of 2019, as I am quite a fangirl of this magazine.
Here’s one you haven’t seen on this blog yet. It’s Home Is Where the Heart is, a re-do of my Home, Sweet Home pattern. Lots of people would rather piece in the doors and windows (the smaller version has you fuse them on), so I am in the process of refreshing the pattern; it will be available Febrary 1st in PayHip.
The backing shows scenes of New York City, and reminds me of my daughter, who is in totally besotted with that place. She was born there, but we moved when she was still tiny. The city is in her DNA, I’m convinced.
But I still have some work to do. Tannenbaum was on my Christmas Day post, and it needs a few more tons more squares for the borders so it can live on my bed in December. Small World is pin-baseted, ready for quilting, as is the City Streets variation. And that Temperature Quilt will soon be finished (like tonight).
So, even though I started the year with that surgery which sidelined me for a few months, I think my output has been decent. I also visited seven different guilds, taught seven workshops, and wrote/refreshed many of my patterns. I’m not listing the number of doctor visits, trips to the grocery store, visits to the car dealership, nor the trips to see my children/grandchildren/parents/family. In this blog, all revolves around the quilt, and my Quilt Index (or Indices, if you want to get technical).
And why is a quilt index important for you? I was sitting next to Judy R. in December’s Guild meeting, and the question came up “Who has made the most quilts?” Several women raised their hands, but Judy popped her hand up and said “Elizabeth has! And has a Quilt List to prove it!” (She’s very sweet.) It made me, yet again, happy that I’d made a quilt index and kept it up to date. In this new upcoming year, I’d like to encourage you to start one, if you haven’t already.
That daughter and I, long long ago.
If you are new to this blog, last year I wrote an introduction of who I am. In this space, I generally talk about my quilts, places I go that are textile/quilty related, as well as discuss quilt/work/create topics once in a while. I keep this quote of Thomas Merton’s handy, perhaps to help me keep perspective:
“We live in a society whose whole policy is to excite every nerve in the human body and keep it at the highest pitch of artificial tension, to strain every human desire to the limit and to create as many new desires and synthetic passions as possible, in order to cater to them with the products of our factories and printing presses and movie studios and all the rest.”
For now, for today, it’s time to unwind from that tension, take a break and close out this year, looking forward to the next. In all ways, quilting can help.
That saying in the title is Welsh for Happy New Year, and one custom is that the children in old Welsh villages would “rush around the village visiting as many houses as possible to collect sweets and money. The visits had to be made before midday, so it was often a race against the clock!” The gifts were called calennig, and often referred to a skewered apple that the children would carry around.
I have no gifts for you, other than myself. But then you aren’t rushing around knocking on my door, either.
I have some new readers, and thought I’d re-introduce myself at this time of Happy Old Year Ending • Happy New Year. (I first learned to say Happy Old Year ending from a well-traveled friend, who said it was from somewhere on the African continent, and although I’ve never been able to corroborate that, I still like the idea of being happy with an ending.)
I’m Elizabeth Eastmond and I am the sole writer of this blog.
l to r: Julie, Melissa, me, Laurel, Simone, Lisa. (PS Simone doesn’t really look like this. She likes to pull faces. Her texts always make me laugh.)
Jeehye and I, in front of Porcella’s quilt.
That daughter and I, long long ago.
I first began writing in 2007, sliding quilty posts in amongst my then regular blog, OccasionalPiece, which at this point, is resting (it’s been resting for several years). The blog name, OccasionalPiece, morphed into OccasionalPiece~Quilt, then I dropped the tilde (~). When I started trying to find a web address, I shortened it even further to OPQuilt, because who wants to try and spell Occasional or Piece?
Piece originated not in the term “piecing” but from the fact that at the time I started writing online, I was in Graduate School, getting my degree in Creative Writing. We called our writings “pieces” as in a “short story piece” or “a piece of my novel.” In my mind it expanded to include my cloth piecings, and any slice of my life–so that’s why you’ll see some travel, some family, current events, cooking, and yes, an occasional piece of writing. Oh, and art. We’ve got to have art!
Sculpture on the High Line; the birds perched there, but they are not a part of this piece of art
I keep a listing of my quilts–or as we say in Creative Writing, a catalogue of the body of my work–up above on 100 Quilts, 200 Quilts, and am starting on the 300 Quilts list. Everything is linked, but not illustrated, and I’m sorry about that. I would like to have a listing of photos, but that’s in my Someday category.
While it’s traditional on this week to do a year-end round-up of Quilts I’ve Made or lists of Hope I Finish These This Year, and while I love other people’s inventory, this year I found my own lists and write-ups pretty boring (really, can we stand one more look at Frivols?) except, perhaps, for the lovely one below, gifted at a new baby shower:
Personal stats: I have four lovely and clever children, eleven brilliant and handsome grandchildren, a perfectly amazing and wonderful husband. Our last family photo, since we are scatterered over four states was two years ago, and one was missing even then. I like the word lovely and use it a lot. I’ve been divorced, remarried, had two major surgeries, a scattering of small ones, but consider myself healthy, and try always to follow my grandmother’s advice to keep my whines to myself, with the caveat that if something interrupts the output of quilting, I might put it up on this blog. I make mistakes. I cherish my faith and crave harmony. I love going to quilt shows. I like to sing, mostly to the stuff coming in off my playlist. I am not totally in love with Smart Technology (still having fights with our new Christmas gift: “Siri, why are you singing in the middle of the night?”), but adore my mobile phone and its capabilities. I like to laugh, have a fairly honed capacity for snark, and cry in tender and emotional scenes in movies. In short, I am like you. I am not like you. But I hope to count myself as someone who writes something that you’d like to read.
But generally, this blog is about quilts. Quilting. Our quilting world. Things that pertain to it. It might be about a quilting personality, or quilting commerce. It is not a newsletter. It’s my calennig, my gift to you.
This year’s main quilting events: Shoulder surgery in January, which pretty much sidelined me for a long time. That’s at the top of the list, because whatever I did after that was like icing on the cake. My achievements — or lack of, depending on your view — can be found under the tab “200 Quilts,” a handy way to navigate the morass of blogland.
But here’s some eye-candy, quilt-style.
and a few more…
So, in spite of a lame start, I did manage to get a few things made. That’s why I do these posts–they are more for me, to say…hey, you didn’t do so bad. So often we only notice what we don’t do, what we can’t make or achieve, as you’ll notice by my language in the intro, where I denigrate my accomplishments.
I did some some traveling, which expanded my horizons a bit, to the European Patchwork Meeting…
…as well as Seoul and Tokyo (accompanying my husband to his meetings). Next travel is to Ontario, California for Road to California, and to Pasadena for QuiltCon 2018. Luckily both are within an hour of my home.
I’m joining up with Cheryl’s Linky Party, because I’ve found it so fun to browse what everyone else has been doing this year. My top five posts for 2017 are:
Mini Sew-Together Bag. I recently moved the pattern up to Craftsy and am happy that it has helped find a wider audience of bag enthusiasts. The rest of my patterns are on PayHip (link to the right).
2. Christmas Tree Skirt. Although there is no pattern, there is enough information on this post so you can make your own. I’m still surprised by how much traffic this post gets.
3. Shine–the Circle Quilt Post is a busy place, as I make available many EPP patterns for free, so you can make a circle block either for a quilt, or pillows or wall-hangings. And this year, the quilt will hang in Road to California.
OccasionalPiece--Quilt! 