Quilts

Downtime Sewing • Odds ‘n’ Ends

April 28, 2016 Elizabeth E.18 Comments

Or as my friend used to say, “Time flies whether you are having fun or not.” So what have I been doing?

Blocks for our Spelling Bee for Carla, who has just opening a knitting shop. I made two and then one more for Simone, whose daughter is getting married and she’s making the wedding dress. She gets a pass, I’d say.

I made bee blocks for Mid-Century Modern Bee, for Stephanie, who doesn’t really run a blog, but is here on Instagram. Actually she’s in Russia, but try not to hate her. It looks like a fabulous trip.

Did (what I call) Duty Sewing to make an item for the Scout Auction at our church. I was thinking Scouts=Food, so I picked up four boxes of treats at Trader Joe’s, a Dairy Queen gift card and two shopping bags, and wrapped them all up fancy. It’s to help raise money to send boys to camp. I used to be in the boat of forking over moolah for Scout camp (I had three boys), and am really really happy to be at this end: donating, rather than doing.

Planted my summer garden. This time we didn’t buy the fancy-schmancy tomatoes at the Swanky Garden Center, but instead went to the local nursery and Lowe’s. They look much healthier. Things that grow in my garden are an endless fascination to me, and I sometimes check the seedlings daily. I’m #goofyaboutmygarden, thank you very much.

Did some market sewing for a friend. I also made plans to go to market, courtesy of Painter’s Palette Fabrics, who I sewed a quilt top for. . . and now I get to see it! Can’t wait–so excited.

Perused Instagram. I had no idea that people still crocheted granny square bedspreads. My horizons are widened every time I follow a hashtag that’s new to me, in this case #makersmovement, which is for (duh) people that make things. We used to be called crafters. I like the term Makers much better.

Finished up last month’s blocks for the Halloween QAL and got the blocks ready for this month’s post on May 13th. You know, when you break down a quilt into chunks, it’s much easier. And I know I would have never have gotten this far, if it hadn’t been for the fact that I had to make the bits of the quilts to post. Thank you very much for putting up with me.

~~Cleaned out~~ Started cleaning out the photo cupboard, where I found my First-Ever Selfie, painted when I was six years old and in Brownie Scouts. Interestingly, we didn’t have a dog at that time, even though I painted one in the picture (wishful thinking?).

Found out that the street where we stayed in Dubrovnik, Croatia in 2014, was one of the sites used in Game of Thrones, a show I have never seen. In the top photo (taken from the web somewhere) is the scene from the movie. The middle photo is their comparison of how it looks when it’s not been movie-fied, and the bottom photo is taken by me, leaning out our window, looking back up the street. I found this out one day when I was reading the NEWSPAPER (yes, I’m that old) and saw the top photo. I ran upstairs to compare mine with theirs, then found the middle photo on the Internets.

Another eureka moment was when I discovered that Costco sells macarons. Yes, I have two boxes in my freezer right now, but I gave away the coffee-flavored cookies to a neighbor (I hate the taste and smell of mocha/coffee). I’ve also gotten three bids on a new HVAC system, and one guy is wandering around my house right now, taking mea$urement$.

In the cooking department, I made biscotti to take to my son, who lives in Normal Heights, in San Diego, California. My recipe is *here.*

Found out there is a fabric store in Normal Heights, in a former movie theater, which had some silk shantung, perfect for working on my Four-in-Art project for the May reveal. I’ve also been to the doctor’s twice, but the patient — like Mayor Shinn’s wife in the movie The Music Man — will recover.

Coming soon to a blog near you, on May 1st.

And my design wall last week, as I was figuring out a scene for under the Christmas Tree (next step is coming May 2nd), working on my Four-in-Art art quilt, and enjoyed a completed mini–a sample to check on how my pattern worked for some more market sewing, which I’ll show you very soon. (You know the game.) Now back to the sewing.

Roaring into March

March 5, 2016 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

First off the bat, the winners of the giveaway, using the Husband Random Name Generator were:

Janice, who wrote: “WOW! I just began following your blog and missed the start up of this QAL. After seeing your beautiful work, I am inspired to dive in and QAL too. I love the embroidery details. . . [and the] layering [of] the stitches. I’d choose the magazine. Thanks for the great give away. I can’t wait to see your finished tree.” I’ll send you the magazine.

Camille, who said: “Thank you again for your excellent post. I’m almost done with the tree appliqué. Still have the freezer papers to cut out. This project is so out of my typical arena so I’m thrilled to be pushing myself. Thanks. I’d love to add the fabric medallions to my stash since I have the magazine.”

Good luck on the Oh Christmas Tree project to these two and to all of you (and me). I tried out making birds last night and they went so fast, as there’s far less stitching work on them. Can’t wait until next month to tell you about this.

In my regular, non-digital life, I attended our monthly gathering of the Good Heart Quilters, a group of friends who have been quilting together off-and-on (with new members coming in, and old members leaving) for the better part of twenty years. Charlotte, a newer member showed off what I think is only her third quilt top EVER, a Monopoly board. All the fabrics are Monopoly fabrics. Terrific!

Laurel brought two new rosettes for the New Millefiore Hexagon and re-arranged them to make more sense. She has an exquisite sense of color. Caitlin, whose house it was at, had a nice spread of snacks, including freshly baked brownies, and she worked on Christmas stockings. Lisa and I did hand work–Lisa sewed together hexies and I worked on Step 3 of the Oh Christmas Tree QAL, which I already mentioned. We had a lively and interesting conversation, running from mid-century modern furniture to QuiltCon to Donald Trump.

I wanted to show everyone my newest flowers. There they are above, all prepped up, with fabric appliqued on three of them. And below, you can see my progress.

I sewed the backstitch around the orange fabric not only so you’ll think I’m so clever, but also to cover up some wonky appliqué. Okay, that’s the real reason. Then I just got going on it, and kept adding stitching.

On this one, I borrowed one of Wendy’s ideas for the center, then did “closed blanket stitch” for the green-on-red ring and then just a zig-zag backstitch with small French knots (3 wraps of the needle using size #12 pearl cotton) at each juncture. It’s really a layering sort of task. I add this stitch, and ask. . . now what? It also helped that the program I was watching, “Sagrada,” a documentary on La Sagrada Familia cathedral in Barcelona, Spain was still going on. We’re headed there this year and I can hardly wait to see all of Gaudi’s surface decoration and bring home more ideas of what to put on these circles.

Lastly, I finished up two sets of bee blocks, the first for Linda of the Mid-Century Moderns. She asked for tiny churn dashes; these are measure 4″ finished. We were also supposed to make some unusual section but still keep the church dash recognizable. I wasn’t too inventive, switching around colors and turning corner blocks.

Mary of the Spelling Bee (#spellingbeequilt), an IG bee, asked for sewing words, then asked for us to add one more word. I wonder if that “i” is too long; I included extra fabric in case she wants to shorten it up.

Lastly, I thought you’d be happy to have some solid research behind our quilter’s habit of eating chocolate, from an article published March 4, 2016, in the Washington Post. Definitely need to keep up our visual-spatial memory and organization in order to keep sewing our quilts together!

Quilts · Something to Think About

February’s Procrastination

February 5, 2016February 5, 2016 Elizabeth E.13 Comments

I did the Husband Random Name Generator today and Diane Nelson is the winner of the pearl cotton bubbles. Congratulations, Diane! I mailed them off this afternoon to you. Glad you are making good progress on your Oh Christmas Tree.

I received my latest Frivols tin, with the cutest little scissor holder–it will just fit nicely over my embroidery scissors. I signed up for a year of these as a retirement present to myself. So far it’s going along nicely: I have a stack of seven tins on my sewing room shelf (they have numbers on the side to keep track of them), with none of them made. I think I need to stop putting this off.

Laurel let me stipple on her quilt for her yesterday. Isn’t this just the dream of a mini quilt? It’s for an auction for Autism Research.

Bee blocks are in my life right now. I was Queen Bee for January in two bees, and they are rolling in–one batch of words for Spelling Bee was held up by a snowstorm in the midwest, and the rest of the words are being held back by my procrastination (see notes at the end of this post).

I finished this book block for Cindy’s granddaughter’s quilt last night, and there’s my signature block. I love that in our bee we do signature blocks for each other; we also do them in The Spelling Bee too.

Time to gear up for February’s Chuck Nohara blocks. Looks like we have more piecing than appliqué this time around–should go quickly together. Susan has already started hers: here and here. She’s quick!

Maybe not getting to them until now means I’m just taking to heart the advice from Adam Grant in his recent New York Times article “Why I Taught Myself to Procrastinate.” He wrote that “while procrastination is a vice for productivity, I’ve learned — against my natural inclinations — that it’s a virtue for creativity.” There’s a term for that process of always working to finish things early. It’s pre-crastination. Grant notes that “Pre-crastination is the urge to start a task immediately and finish it as soon as possible. If you’re a serious pre-crastinator, progress is like oxygen and postponement is agony. When a flurry of emails land in your inbox and you don’t answer them instantly, you feel as if your life is spinning out of control.” Some of this is to reduce “working memory loads,” because, as Grant reports, “psychologist Bluma Zeigarnik found that people had a better memory for incomplete tasks than for complete ones. When we finish a project, we file it away. But when it’s in limbo, it stays active in our minds.”

Yes, apparently putting things off can make you more creative.

How can procrastination help? Grant writes that “[o]ur first ideas, after all, are usually our most conventional. . . . When you procrastinate, you’re more likely to let your mind wander. That gives you a better chance of stumbling onto the unusual and spotting unexpected patterns.” Of course, as anyone knows, especially my daughter who was helping her son with his last-minute science project (how do these things slip our children’s minds until the due date??), excessive procrastination can also work against creativity, forcing you to choose the easiest route in order to get things done.

And today, this day in the first week of February, when I’m tired from chasing January’s deadlines and putting away the Christmas tree lights and mailing back all the things that were left in the house over Christmas vacation and summer is too far away to be of any help and QuiltCon is looming so how can I possibly concentrate, it might be helpful to realize that sometimes it’s really okay to put things off, as well as knowing that procrastinators have lots of good company.

Quilts

Sewing, Tasking, Listening, Remembering

September 11, 2015July 2, 2024 Elizabeth E.12 Comments

Sewing This: Sometimes you just need a new direction when you are sick of your own sewing. ~~The free tutorial for this block, from Sew Kylie, is found *here.* My bee-mate chose it for her month, and it was a lovely change. UPDATE 10/18: The pattern in three sizes is now found on Craftsy.~~

UPDATE June 2019: The pattern is no longer found on BluPrint/Craftsy, however it is now found on PayHip. This is her newest version, which includes three different sizes.

Here are four blocks together. The photo is from her previous blog.

Tasking This: Mostly I just sit around and stare at my Get To Work Book calendar (realizing that most pages have one entry on each: “nap”), but occasionally I can produce. Above are a few recent successes (a label from my Mini House Swap that my partner received–made in June–and yes, she loved it!), two Dumpling Pouches (which take all of 45 minutes each) and a re-working of a quilt square (made in 2006–I simply backed it, quilted it simply and bound it) into a flat pillow to cushion the pulling of the seat belt when I drive. Doesn’t that all look so productive?

Listening to This: Louise Penny’s tenth Inspector Gamache book. Number 11 (The Nature of the Beast) was released this fall, so I still have another to savor. Here’s the order of the books (better to read them in order):