Quilts

Some Friday Finishes

November 15, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

Working on some Christmas Trees to go around this guy:

I finished up the center, bordered it with red, and arranged and sewed the blocks from my bee-mates in the Mid-Century Modern Bee. I think they look swell.

Krista invited me to the Friendship Cross-X block swap. Or + and x. or X and +. So many names for the same block.

After hours of listening, I have one more hour to go on Catherine the Great. I’m glad I learned about her and her times, but it is a loooong book to listen to.

Finished Rene’s block for our Mid-Century Modern Bee for November. I just realized I forgot to make the signature block (we do one of those for all our blocks, and send it to our bee-mate), so I’ll be slicing open the envelope and sliding it in before I head to the post office today. She used *this* tutorial; these are fun and easy. Another for the I Need to Make That list.

I noticed it’s getting harder and harder to carve out some uninterrupted time in the sewing room, so yesterday’s long day was very welcome. So many things I want to do, people I want to be with, traveling I want to do, and grandchildren I want to see. I was able to help my daughter’s oldest children sew a small project (a sleeping bag for a stuffed animal). I’ll leave you with Riley doing his first stitches:

Okay, back to the sewing. Today is partly errands, mostly sewing, which should continue through the weekend. Monday? The re-grading of the (shockingly bad) second essay. Yep. I made them all re-do it, so now I get to regrade it. Now I know I’m nuts.

Quilts

Queen Bee for Mid-Century Modern

October 3, 2013October 4, 2013 Elizabeth E.7 Comments

As Susan, one of our the members of our Mid-century Modern Bee says, I’m the Queen Bee this month.

And I’ve chosen to have my bee-mates help me on my Christmas Quilt. But so that the copyright gods won’t be mad at me, I’m not showing the picture of the pattern and I’ve also chosen different green and cream blocks for my bee-mates to make, plus I made downloadable templates from my quilt program to serve as a guide for these 12″ blocks (finished measurement–raw edge measurement should be 12 1/2″). Below are the blocks, plus their templates for downloading.

Caution: These template prints out the correct size on my printer, but I don’t know what they’ll do on yours. A general guide for making a half-square triangle block is to cut the finished measurement, plus 7/8 inch, before stitching on the diagonal and cutting apart. So, I’d use that as a general gauge for how things ought to look when you print out your templates. (In other words, for the corner squares for this first block, cut one white square and one green square to measure 4 and 7/8 inches.)

Fifty-four Forty or Fight • Template: 54-4o or fight

Fifty-four Forty or Fight, version 2 • Template: 54-40 or Fight_version2

Clay’s Choice Variation • Template: Clay’s Choice Variation

Ohio Star • Template: Ohio Star

Swamp Angel • Template: Swamp Angel

Peace and Plenty • Template: Peace and Plenty

Mock Eight-Point Star • Template: Mock Eight Point Star

Memory • Template: Memory

Martha Washington Star • Template: Martha Washington Star

Flying Geese • Template: Flying Geese Block

Double Star • Template: Double Star

Crosses and Losses • Templates: Crosses and Losses

Birds in the Air • Template: Birds in the Air

Autumn Star • Template: Autumn Star

For my bee-mates, I’ve listed the blocks you’ve chosen on our Flickr group site, for reference.

And congratulations to Carla for winning Anne’s very cool pattern. If the rest of my lovely entrants would like a pattern for their own, please visit SpringLeaf Studios, and you can download one instantly. I have purchased both of hers, as I like buying quilt patterns that make me reach for new fabrics and new ideas. (I hope to put her Cascade pattern on my To-Do for next spring.)

Many thanks to Anne for donating her pattern to this giveaway!!!

Bee Blocks & Winner of Project Folio

August 25, 2013 Elizabeth E.8 Comments

First, while my husband and I were watching Robert Redford and Faye Dunaway in Three Days of the Condor, I leaned over to him and said, “Give me a number between one and sixteen.”

“Five.”

Five it is. Cindy, you are the winner. I’ll mail off the portfolio tomorrow. Thank you to all my very fine readers and followers. You are such lovely people!

I must admit that I did want to give it to my newest follower: my daughter, Barbara (Hi Barb!), but I’ll make her a new something or other for her work-out clothes (what she said she’d use it for) and send this white one to Cindy. Congrats!

Secondly, even though it feels as if I haven’t touched a machine much this month, I did get my Bee Blocks finished. Above is the one for Always Bee Learning. We were sent some some fabrics, a link, and we were off to making arrows. It was a real brain-stretcher, but I finished mine and sent them off to Megan.

And for the Mid-Century Modern Bee, Mary asked for some Cross-X, or X & + blocks as I’ve seen them called, in pinks. So I followed her linked tutorial at Badskirt’s blog and sent them off.

And now, the to pull the biggest rabbit out of the hat: figure out how to start sewing my projects again. With this disjoint summer, a bad beginning to my school year (it will get better), and some time away from the sewing machine, it’s like being on a boat being carried down stream from the dock, slowly, and you can see your picnic lunch there in the middle and you are getting kind of hungry but you can’t figure out how to get to it. Okay, bad analogy, but I think you all know the feeling.

I look at my list of things I want to sew and nothing interests me. I love reading blogs and seeing everyone’s fun projects, and think, I could do that. But if I do everyone else’s project, how will I find time to do mine? It’s a double-edged sword, this living in a world of blogs and Instagram and it’s hard to turn off the input in order to find the creative project that is uniquely mine.

My father, aged 87, goes most mornings down to his painting studio on the second floor of a building in his downtown. There, he thinks, starts his routine, puts on his music, paints, pauses. Of course, I can only imagine this because it is done in solitude, but every October he opens his studio for a painting sale in his studio, proving that he accomplishes, produces, Gets Stuff Done, sending out more paintings into the world.

I find my challenge to still myself — to enjoy the social media-fied quilt world, yet also to let that project that is interesting to me find its way forward. I’ve been tempted by another Polaroid Swap, a recent Signature Swap, this winter’s Scrappy Trip-A-Long, and the Medallion Quilt among other recent popular quilts. But I also know through historical evidence that our quilting grandmothers searched the newspapers for what others were doing, and through imitation, linked themselves together through common projects.

LIke them, I do quilt what is in my universe. I often think of Nancy Crow, a quilt artist I admire from afar who has seemed to produce what is important to her, to follow her own stream of thinking and creating without regard for what is the most popular. Perhaps she, and my father, are at one end of the spectrum while the social media/Instagram/blogging crowd, of which I am a part, is at the other end. No answers here.

Just searching for those oars that will get my boat back to the dock, back to my sewing machine, back to my quilty world.

Quilt Bee · Tutorial · WIP

Design Wall Recover, In Progress Quilts

July 24, 2013February 2, 2018 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

Linking up to Lee’s Freshly Pieced with this post.

First up, re-cover my pin wall.

(1) How I built my pin wall: 2 sheets of 1/2″ foam core art board taped side by side, covered with gridded flannel bordered by plain flannel. I wish I had more gridded flannel, but at the time, that’s all I had. I have seen it at JoAnn’s. Then I wrapped this layer to the back and stapled in place using really short staples, then covered that with tape. I then affixed it to my wall by using door jamb covers–long rounded metallic bars, each about six feet in length; I used four: two for each side, top and bottom. I also put a flat washer on two screws and screwed them into the wall at a stud, at the midseam of the foam core art boards.

(2 & 3) Over that, I layered this Thermolam Plus, using straight pins to anchor it into place. The fabric really sticks to it – like magic, and when it gets all thready, use one of those sticky roller things that is used to clean off clothes. NOTE the number on the upper left side (TP970). That will save your bacon when you go into buy more, because now they’ve renamed it Quilter’s Batt or Fleece or Something or Other, and you just have to go through the bolts to find this magic stuff.

The little pin cushion hangs on my pin wall with giant corsage pins. I am not a pin-cushion person, although I have many beautiful ones given to me as gifts. This little one holds these pins which are helpful for holding large swaths of cloth, like when you are smoothing a quilt backing onto a quilt top already on the wall to check for size. Or for holding necklaces, notices for doctor’s visits, etc. I put all sorts of stuff along the edges of my pin wall.

Next up was a new ironing board cover. I fell in love with this sewing machine fabric when I saw it on the Fat Quarter Shop, and of course they had it to me within two days. It’s by Timeless Treasures and is pattern # SEW-C1485, if you want some.

I just trace out my old cover, leaving GENEROUS seam allowance width all along the outside edge (like 1-1/2″ and that doesn’t even seem like enough). Make a casing, leaving an opening at the bottom. I thread through some old hem tape (notice the lady’s hairdo is right out of the 1980s) but warning: 3 yards is not enough (I had to piece some more on the ends). I think the picture of the ironing board up on its end looks like one of those bugs that goes into that position when tapped (stink bugs?). There are many good tutorials online for making ironing board covers, if you do a search.

What other works in progress have I been working on? I made this “slab” for the Alberta Flood quilt block collection, hosted by Cheryl Arkinson of Dining Room Empire. The deadline is July 30th, and so far she has 276 blocks!

Finished my block for the Mid-Century Modern Bee. Deborah of Simply Miss Luella wanted a house block of any kind. I made my favorite one, and happily, she loves it! You can find a PDF to download here, where I made one for another bee.

And finally, hot mitts for my friend Rhonda for her birthday (which was in June–sorry, Rhonda). Happy Belated 29th birthday, Rhonda!! May you see many more 29th birthdays! Tutorial is here. It’s also one of my Finish–A-Long projects–that makes TWO down, and many more scary ones to go.

And lastly, thanks for you all your sweet comments about going to a retreat. I’m working my way through replying, as it seemed to strike a chord with many of you. I appreciate the time you took to write and leave your thoughts–it enriches us all.