Golden California (Small World) • Quilt Finish

March 3, 2020March 3, 2020 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

Golden California_1

Golden California (Small World)
Quilt #229 • 55″ wide by 36″ high

I mean, you already know what this quilt looks like, having seen various permutations of this on my blog, on the web, on Instagram. It’s kind of like the quilt that keeps on giving, rolling out forward from the talented mind of Jen Kingwell, and until we all finish up all those My Small World UFOs, it’s likely this quilt will become a quilter’s version of eternity.

[Aside: a cook’s version of eternity is defined as a ham and two people. An old joke.]

I had a Before…back when the pattern was in the magazine and it sold out like hotcakes. Then this quilt languished until I had vowed to make Three Hard Quilts in 2019. It was mostly finished then, but I didn’t have binding sewn on until just before Road to California, where I was taking classes with Ms. Kingwell, herself, and wouldn’t you know it? ~~I don’t have ONE photo of myself with her and this quilt. I thought I took one, but, nope. Can’t find it.~~

Breaking News!! My friend Lisa sent me a photo of the quilt with me and Jen Kingwell, so here it is. Thank you, Lisa!

Small World_ESE_Kingwell.jpg mysmallworld2019_final full top Golden California_2c Quilted My Small World Golden California_2d

To keep myself sane when working on a long project like this, I take little snapshots of progress, title and date them, and keep going. It reminds me that quilts — like children — will one day be all grown up.

Golden California_5 Golden California_2

My photo shoot locator (AKA my husband) suggested we head out to the neighboring town where they had some cool tile murals of different parts of that city. We battled the shadows, however, but he was right: they were cool murals.

Golden California_3front Golden California_7 detail Golden California_4back

For the backing, I chose something that had cities in it, and two pieces that represented quilters.

Golden California_8

See that golden sun? One of California’s monikers is The Golden State, so Susan suggested to me that instead of just taking on Jen Kingwell’s name for the quilt (based on the drawings of the Small World ride in Disneyland), I should incorporate something to suggest this quilt’s origin. So I did.

Each of my posts about this quilt have the tag “My Small World” so you can click on them to be taken to other posts about this, if you are still making yours. Carry on! Keep on! and soon yours will be finished, too.

Golden California_9 — Show and Tell at our Guild’s February Meeting. Now this quilt will go for a long rest, while it waits for me to put on the label.

Small WorldMagScreenShot — *Original magazine layout of quilt, from the QuiltMania Special Spring Edition, 2015 (now out of print). Kingwell sells the patterns on her website.*

Orange County Quilt Guild Visit_1

Next week, March 10-11, I’ll be at the Orange County Quilters Guild, giving my Abecedary of Quilts lecture, and teaching a workshop. Here’s a screenshot from their webpage (kudos to the Communications people for this nice display).

March 2020 Advert_v2

This week I’ll be giving a hands-on lecture at the Inland Empire Modern Quilt Guild, teaching them an abbreviated version of my all-day workshop on English Paper Piecing. Excited to teach and meet new quilters!

Quilts

Temperature Quilt Top • January 2020

January 15, 2020November 26, 2023 Elizabeth E.22 Comments

One-thousand-ninety-five triangles along with six rectangles make up the face of this heat map quilt, cataloging the temperatures and rainfall of Riverside, California in 2019. I have no plans to make another, but I was pretty proud of myself for keeping up with this, faltering only in my crazybusy November to December (finishing those two months in the first few days of January — which is why I couldn’t get the holiday decorations down until January 7th).

temp colors and chart — **UPDATED DECEMBER 2023:** The fabric line I use is called Painter’s Palette by Paintbrush Studios. You can purchase the full line by the yard at Keepsake Studios. Of the four numbers written at the top of the fabric square, the color numbers are the three numbers written on the right side. The first number is for cataloging.

Here is the original Temperature Quilt Key, for those on IG who keep asking for it (it lives here, on the blog); it was first published early in the year, outlinging my intents and purposes.

The un-adorned face of the quilt, today in my sewing room.

I’m thinking of a narrow border before I begin to add other blocks around this quilt, to make it a bit larger.

I embroidered the temps on the corresponding triangles in my Temperature Quilt Key.

I have a lot of triangles leftover, so I thought I’d sew them together, fit them into a pattern, somehow, and sew them on the outside. Seoul Korea Triangle Doorway

I guess I have in mind the doorway we saw in Seoul, triangles everywhere.

Thought I’d flash up here a photo of me with four of my amazing granddaughters. I have two more, just as far away. They make me look young.

Danielle agreed to help me lay out the interior of my North Country Patchwork Quilt. I finished all the interior pieces; now on to the rings.

While this shows just the sky quilted, I have now finished the quilting on My Small World. I’m still looking for a good title for this quilt, but My Small World is such a great shorthand. I’m determined to have it finished by Road to California, as I’m in two different classes taught by Jen Kingwell, who created this quilt. Yep, I want her to sign a label. Which means I have to get the binding on, then make the label.

Finished this, too, just about the time I finished up the quilting. I could listen to narrator on this audio book read the phone directory, she’s that good, but the novel is wonderful by itself.

300 Quilts · Quilts

My Small World Top • flimsy finish

November 19, 2019 Elizabeth E.16 Comments

mysmallworld2019_final full top

It’s done! I decided to forge with ahead My Small World because basically, nothing else in my life was getting done with that mess in the sewing room, and I wanted to be finished with this project, the Third Hard Quilt of 2019. Here, in my backyard studio, I’m showing the finished flimsy of My Small World, a pattern by Jen Kingwell. I made some changes here and there, but it’s basically her pattern. Began in 2014, I was nudged to completion by a new Instagram Quilt-a-long #mysmallworldsewcial, where many others are still working. Let’s take each of the last two sections, one at a time:

mysmallworld2019_5_completed

One late night I was thrilled to discover an Eiffel Tower in one of my fabrics. I love the embroidery others had done, but it wasn’t for me.

mysmallworld2019_5_1a

I took the hexie bubble with me to Guatemala last week, and stitched it up while chatting with my sister/BIL (who we went to visit) and on the plane home. I brought home some illness, courtesey of the Chicken Bus airplane we flew home (kidding, it was a regular airplane but there were a lot of people sneezing, coughing, etc).

I made a teeny video of our visit to the bus depot in Antigua, where we saw a lot of Chicken Busses, so nicknamed because they can carry everything, including live chickens. If I could have figured out how to add a chicken bus to this quilt, I would have; I fell in love with them, as well as Guatemala.

mysmallworld2019_5_1c

I also fussy-cut a unicorn (just under the top rainbow, but everyone on IG called it a horse–his little white horn is hard to see).

mysmallworld2019_5_1d

Underneath the arches and hexie-bubble are bigger blocks of fabric, as I figured I was going to cut them out from behind the two structures at the end, and why waste all that piecing? I cut out the fabric from behind the rainbow (shown above) and the spikey arch and hexie-bubble:

mysmallworld2019_5_1

Those arches were a grind, but I did them. I included other tips and tricks in this post.

mysmallworld2019_6_completed

Section six was a relief to get to, after those arches.

mysmallworld2019_5_2a

I liked the two blue silos, but they were a bit stark, so I added signs to them: a sewing chicken and the word Quilt.

mysmallworld2019_5_2b

I changed the order of the bottom row of patches around, and I just couldn’t face another eight teeny flying geese, so I did a square-in-a-square with fussy-cut horses, since this is the farm section.

mysmallworld2019_5_2 mysmallworld2019_5_3

I sewed those two sections together, then stitched it to the other part of the quilt I’d already completed.

mysmallworld2019_5_full top2

Yes, I’m pretty happy to be at this point. My friend Laurel added a border to hers and I’m considering that, too.

My To-Do list of items is lengthy, all being held hostage by this quilt. Now I need to go and clean up my sewing room, vacuum, clean some bathrooms, and try to find the extra furnace filter in the garage, as well as maybe take a nap. But I’m done!!!

Sewing

My Small World • Section 3 & 4

November 6, 2019January 4, 2024 Elizabeth E.15 Comments

I know you are thinking, no — praying — that someday soon I will be through with This Quilt, and believeyoume, you are not the only one hoping and praying that I can add it to my list of Three Hard Quilts of 2019 to be completed. I’ve finished two Hard Quilts and I’m determined not to put any other quilt up on that design wall until I slay this Patchwork Dragon.

So I’m here to report progress: Section Three AND four are finished, hallelujah, but I’m celebrating probably less than you are because I have two more sections to go and I get stuck on the smallest things.

Like the flying geese in Section Three.

The approach I took the first time I ~~made~~ started this quilt was to pull every fabric out of my cupboards, strew them around and clip a square of this or a square of that and piece it into this quilt.

I occasionally try that approach again. Which doesn’t work, again.

The best approach is to see what you’ve already thrown into the first two sections, then replicate that, either via color/value or the actual fabric, if you can find it the mess. The completed flying geese, above — which you can see is sort of an amalgam of all the geese I tried.

I’m finding the paper piecing templates from Sarah of SewWhatSherlock very helpful, if you want to get yourself a set.

I also learned that I am truly stuck, lunch helps. And maybe read the newspaper. And then start in on the big shapes, letting the detritus come later.

I can work in new bits here and there, like this woman with her bird.

Or some fun repeated shapes, the appliquéd half-circle echoed in the fabric. I can’t decide if this yellow is a fancy front window, or two hidden doors, camoflauged, or a re-planted tunnel under this European-style gate to the city.

Then I charged into Section Four — and why not? the whole sewing room is already a disaster — hand-sewing clamshells and fussy cutting blocks, and cutting multiples of the lower section strips but finally deciding, and now these sections are sewn together: 1 & 2 & 3 & 4.

To recap: