Crazy Cushion Class

October 30, 2018October 27, 2018 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

If you could scroll down for just a second and locate on the right blog sidebar where there is a link to a video titled Create. This was taken from a talk from one of the leaders of my church, and if you are not a religious type, then substitute in your version of God for what Elder Uchtdorf says. I watch it everyone once in a while to remind me that what I do is more than stitching, or cutting up pretty cloth. Being creative is my connection to — and a conduit for — the divine.

I had an inkling of the power of a lot of creative women, when I attended Becky McDaniel’s class for her Crazy Cushion pattern. Yes, there was fatigue and frustration, but there was also a spirit of wanting to create (above, watching a demo).

My workspace. I had a nice visit with the two quilters at my table, Sandie and Marie (absent), and was totally impressed with the women in the Nite Owl Guild.

Becky was energetic, funny and taught some new skills: like working with a light table while paper piecing, and we all promptly handed over our cash to buy her cool flat light table, while stories swirled around about the light tables we had at home.

Yeah, we weren’t in this room, but the ping-pong table was. The class was held in the Senior Center for a nearby town and was a great place to have a workshop. Below, Becky’s table of supplies.

Even though I had all my sections pre-pieced, at this point I felt like I’d run a marathon, just getting that welting stitched in between the flying geese band and the cushion top/back. The band includes a handle for carrying (seen serpentining in the photo above).

More than one use for those binding clips.

Because of all my sewing beforehand, I was able to finish my cushion. Above, the photo with Becky McDaniels.

I posed my cushion with hers (the larger of each). Mine measures 14″ x 2″ and hers is 16″ x 3.” If you decided to take this class, do your homework beforehand, if you have done paper-piecing before, so you can have a finish, too.

And then outside in their gardens, before leaving.

Now I’ll have something to sit on when I go to workshops!

The pattern can be found on her website, along with more information.
Kaffe Fasset fabrics recently purchased at Blue Bird Quilt Shop, near me, including that cool stripe.
I use transluscent vellum paper by Neenan for my paper piecing because I can see through it and it rips off easily. I purchased a ream about 10 years ago from Kelly Paper, and it cost way more than I wanted, but hey–10 years use? Not bad.

Rainbow Gardens and Quilt Mascot?

February 21, 2018February 15, 2018 Elizabeth E.17 Comments

RainbowGardens2017_front

My Rainbow Gardens has made its way out into the world. I was contacted by the Victoria Quilter’s Guild in Victoria, B.C. (Canada) to ask if it was all right if they used my quilt for their poster. The theme of the quilt show and sale is the City of Gardens, which is one of Victoria’s names, according to the website for the city: “Victoria – otherwise known as the “City of Gardens” – is home to a number of spectacular gardens that range from formal to heritage, exotic to west coast, and multi-themed to mostly rhododendron.”

So, a quiet and reserved “YESSSSS!” was my response. I soon will have the poster in my possession, which I plan to tape up on the door to my ~~sewing room~~ studio.

Rainbow Gardens Poster

While the real life poster should arrive here soon, I was sent this image of the poster by a an observant reader of mine, who saw the poster and sent me a photo of it. If you are up in that area, put it on your calendar — I would love to go to a quilt show that has live music.

Since we’ve all just finished watching the Olympics in Korea, I thought I would get you prepped up for the Tokyo 2020 Summer Olympics, by showing you their patchwork-like logos. Can we make quilts like this? They are auditioning their mascots now, because no matter where you are in or what you are doing in Japan, there is a mascot for it.

I think we need a quilt mascot.

Lady Liberty in Quilts

I made this image in my very first Digital Art Class; the other students thought I was pretty much a nut-case, but I still like Lady Liberty draped in a quilt. But now as we are more international, we need a cute little quilty creature (I vote patchwork with some appliqué) to carry forward our message.

Go to it, you creatives!

200 Quilts · Quilts

Rainbow Gardens, redux

June 7, 2017 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

RainbowGardens2017_front

Rainbow Gardens (the original) was made for a swap back in 2015, and I always wished I’d kept it for myself. So this week I did the next, best thing: I made a new one.

RainbowGardens2017_upper corner

I had all but one of the fabrics for this 18″ mini quilt still in my stash, as I pretty much hoard my Kaffe Fasset fabrics. I tried to quilt it the same, too, using my favorite Magnifico Thread from Superior Threads. But the backing is different, as is the label:

RainbowGardens2017_back RainbowGardens2017_label RainbowGardens17_corner

The backing is “pindar paisley” from Alexander Henry, from 2012. The front of the quilt is all Kaffe Fasset fabrics, some new, some older.

RainbowGardens2017_angle

I also updated the pattern, trimming out this and that, and editing it more tightly, and it is up on Craftsy for sale, if you want to replicate this. And even though it feels strange to say this, I’m going backwards and keeping the number from the original make: this is quilt #148 of mine. RainbowGardensLiberty

I so rarely duplicate my quilts, that this feels a little odd. I have plans to remake one more, but that will come later this summer. After sending off these two quilts to their owners, I wised up and began duplicating everything I swapped from then on. I rather like my quilts, I guess. Have you ever swapped a quilt, and then wished you had it back?

I also finished another quilt this week. Stay tuned.

200 Quilts

Mini Madness Wrap-Up (Mostly)

October 16, 2015January 29, 2016 Elizabeth E.11 Comments

This past summer, I joined four swaps, then had my head examined and swore never to do it again. It was sort of a good thing to have some small things to try out my design skills and to keep me quilting, so I guess another title for this post is “How I Spent My Summer Vacation.” I do plan to do individual posts on a couple of them (so you’ll see them again), plus I have one more mini quilt that I made with quite a story (not shown, but soon). But so far, here they are, in the order they rolled out from my house.

Mini House_frontlabeled — *The Heart’s Solace: Home, Sweet, Home* (No. 147)

Although a little bit late (she had fabric and pattern issues), Emily sent me mine and I am so in love with it. I ended up drafting her a pattern on my QuiltPro quilt software, which I’m happy to share with you. It’s in a PDF file: Emily’s House On the first page, the piece for the narrow sashing around the central patchwork square is cut off. I’d recommend using the width of the pattern piece as a guide and cutting a strip to fit your work after you start sewing it together.

This post has links to my Craftsy/PayHip store where you can purchase the pattern.

Here is the creative and beautiful quilt I received from that swap–a lovely Dresden-plate type circle of houses. I love them all and love the variety of sewing machine fancy stitches that my partner used. I hear there is a pattern out there for it called Dresden Neighborhood (by Persimmon Dreams) and you can buy it from Craftsy.

One hallmark of swaps is the little gifts that you send, although I did join a swap titled “Simply Mini.” (More about that one later.) I made two of my swap partners Dumpling Pouches and filled them with interesting PostIt Notes, some washi tape and quilty trinkets. I’ve seen some swap loot that is over the top; I hope my partners aren’t disappointed (all of them have received their packages).

Rolling Rainbow Star–I made one for the Simply Mini Swap and then had to make one for myself. I changed up the binding on it to tell them apart.

I love this backing.

Flying Rainbow. The last one I made was for the Schnitzel & Boo swap–the grandmama of all swaps on Instagram, now in it’s fourth year. I wanted to say I did that one, and now I can. The quilter I was to send to liked bowling, cooking and classic comic books, so I bought her some bowling score fabric to use the quilt, and backed it with fabric showing wee chefs and bakers.

Now my To-Do list looks like this:

Just kidding. Now I have to clean out the garage before our hoped-for El Nino rains arrive. (Fingers are crossed!)

Quilts

Rainbow Gardens

September 8, 2015January 29, 2020 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

(from here)

Sometimes I feel like this lady here, moving at snail’s pace, trying to make my entrance, but know I’ll miss it somewhere. Slow-jo, or Missing the Sew-Jo seems to be a topic of conversation on Instagram and on blogs. It’s the end of summer for the northern hemisphere, and we’re all a little out of sorts with the hot weather and all. Frankly, I’m just happy to be on the snail these days, as for a long time I wasn’t doing anything but Recovery (it gets a capital letter around here). So here’s some of my snail-sewing for the last while.

Rainbow Gardens
Quilt #148
18″ square

This started when I realized that I wouldn’t be able to finish the block I had planned for the Kaffe Fasset Mini Quilt Exchange. My friend Lisa and I had been talking about patterns that were from the 1960s era, and this morphed off of that, as I wanted to subdivide the center to allow for greater color gradation. I have the pattern and templates for sale in my PayHip shop.

I had fun customizing the quilting, using floral motifs in the floating center square, and geometric designs in the outer corner backgrounds. Someone on Facebook said it looked like the glowing camera lens from Hal in Space Odyssey, which is a completely creepy thought, if you’ve ever watched the movie. I prefer to think of it as walking through a large botanic garden, the rows of plants giving way in color as the varieties change, hence the name, Rainbow Gardens.

This was the original block, “Unnamed” from Woman’s Circle in 1963. This is from Barbara Brackman’s Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns, which has been out of print for ages. However, the other day I noticed on her blog that she now has an e-book version of this amazing publication (scroll down on the left of HER blog for the link).

Here’s I how hang the minis: cut a large square and fold diagonally in half (this one is 6 1/2″ for an 18″ quilt) and sew it into the two seams top and side. Cut a dowel to fit across–it works great.

And the back of the quilt. I love this cheery print. Yes, I’ve obscured the name of who gets this, as we don’t send it out for a couple of weeks, and it’s forbidden to tell who our partner is. I hope she likes it, though.

I had intended this one to be made for the swap, but when I got to here, realized I just didn’t want to push forward on this, so went with the Rainbow Gardens design.

Love the back, with all the papers. This is an enlarged version of one of my circle blocks, and as soon as I get the mini quilt finished, I’ll put the PDF up on Craftsy.

Of course, once the pressure is off, the sewing can proceed apace, so then I was able to put the outer arcs on the design.

Then I got this far: center circle on and the background chosen and just didn’t like it. But since I’m not under a deadline, I had time to un-pin, re-think. I had put up this photo on social media with its twin (but with a different center circle), asking which center circle people liked. It was so evenly split, it told me that I hadn’t hit the home run on center circle choices. Back to the drawing board. . . and the quilt shop. (Can you tell I’m still riding a snail?)

I did get this far on Rosette #4 of The New Hexagon Millefiore block, then stalled. Later, ‘Mater.

The one day had a craving for Bibimbap (recipe *here*) and no energy to drive the hour to Orange County to get it, so had to make our own. While it sounds complicated, dicing and slicing and blanching all those vegetables, it took way less time than driving to my favorite restaurant and back, and now I have another recipe conquered.

Earlier I’d written about my mini-quilt for the Houses swap, posted a pattern and a brief tutorial, keying off another popular tutorial online. I’m sending off the quilt today (one day early–I just can’t stand waiting any more!), so here is the label for my quilt, a clone of the mini I’m mailing off to Indiana:

It was finished in that anxious week before surgery, and boy, was I weepy and sentimental, not knowing if I’d survive the surgery, or be diagnosed with cancer, or if they’d carve something up they shouldn’t. I just wanted to hide in my lovely home with my beautiful quilts and out-of-control vegetable garden. Yes, my mind can ruminate and imagine Worst-Case-Scenarios like no one else. So this is how I felt, and six weeks post-op, I still like the message. I’ll tell you what I put on my partner’s label. . . later.

And when really, it all is just too much, there’s always a spin through your Instagram pictures. . . or someone else’s. This is from a new follower of mine. I love all her knitted clothes for Barbie, plus all the cool poses in which she places Barbie. I say, let the fashion doll come up with the moves. I’m headed back to the snail while we get through the last hot month of summer. Yes, here in SoCal our summer always lasts until the middle of October. Can’t wait for fall, y’all!

Quilts

Elizabeth’s Lollypop Trees-Final Photos

June 5, 2014 Elizabeth E.38 Comments

I wanted to take some final photos of my Lollypop Trees quilt, partly because I didn’t feel like I’d done an adequate job posting about it when I had finished it (and did worry about overkill in writing about it). But in writing this post, and taking some final photographs, I also wanted to think about it again, to interact with it.

This quilt had been a part of my life for three years, and I worked on it fairly constantly, with a all-out blitz of quilting at the end.

Quite frankly, it may be one of the best creative works I ever make, and I didn’t want to rush by it in a hurry. So I pulled it out again, and photographed each block (see tab above for close-ups) and spent one pleasant afternoon hour in our local university’s Botanic Gardens, pinning it up, draping it over benches, finding that place that would make me satisfied, and would do the quilt justice.

The gardener at the Botanic Gardens even stopped and sat on a nearby bench, watching me drape the quilt, I’m sure partly to see my reaction if I would drop it into the stream below. I didn’t, keeping a good grip on it while I binder-clipped it into place.

I used to walk over this bridge when I went to school here, first getting my undergraduate degree, and less often, when I was working on my graduate degree. I felt like I was revisiting a crossroads sort of place where I had existed as a younger woman, all full of spit and polish and fire and vigor. Today, with the heat nudging up to 90, I felt more spent, less sure of myself even though I am several years past that point when I used to bring my lunch and sit on one of the benches. Often my husband, himself new to this university, would walk up from his office and join me.

We’d sit on one of these benches, always planning to buy one for the university if ever either of us should pass on, with the inscription: “Elizabeth and Dave loved this garden,” — an idea which seemed light years into the future. Less so, now.

I walked up the hill past the lath house shielding plants from our hot Southern California sun, past the rose garden, up through the arbor. Just past the iris patch I found this gazebo. Like a bride in her glory, I arrayed the quilt, primping and draping and spreading out the bouquet of appliquéd flowers.

Sunlight illuminated the quilt from the back, a bee settled in to buzz around my head, and a slight breeze blew the quilt to and fro. . . time to go.

There is an old saying that goes something like this: “When the house is finished, the man dies.” I don’t think that applies to me, finishing this quilt, but there is something of a finality when a quilt that has extracted lots of creative energy is finished. It’s an ending, with the quilt becoming its own memorial, its own momento mori of that three years of my life, gone and never to be seen again.