This and That • August 2020

Posted on August 15, 2020 by Elizabeth E.

I’m teaching another live-online class today, and placed the Criss-Cross Christmas on the design wall, then layered on the Criss-Cross Autumn, and when I started making colorful blocks for another version, up they went too! I like the look of them all together, but they really will be three separate quilts.

Here’s the final version of Criss-Cross Autumn, a bit more vibrant than what’s in the mash-up image. For the binding, I kept it simple: I sewed together the leftover strips, and used a simple single-fold binding approach.

I drew out some design ideas on a picture of my quilt with the photo lightened up, so I could sort of see what might work. There’s a lot going on in this quilt, and I didn’t want the quilt to overpower it.

I loved the idea from Linda of Flourishing Palms, where she mentioned she was including “Made during the Covid-19 Pandemic” onto her labels (or similar wording). So I added it to this one, too.

Speaking of labels, I finally finished the label for this one (my version of My Small World from Jen Kingwell), and got it sewn on. Obviously you can see that it took a hit during covid time–didn’t the earth sort of stop still in March? I finished this by the end of January, went to QuiltCon in February, came home and started buying truckloads of groceries, preparing for the pandemic, and just now got the label sewn on.

I’ve also been listening to this while sewing: I have Bette to blame as she recommended it, and I can hardly wait to keep listening.

I just finished The Authenticity Project, and can recommend it if you need a med-light read with interesting characters. It’s also set in London, which means we Americans get to hear a British accent while listening.

I happened on to this talk, presented by the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles, and really enjoyed seeing Ms. Montgomery’s swing coats. There are other Textile Talks to listen to, if you are interested.

I finished up my Gridster Bee block, a free download, and Linda asked us to use cool colors and low volumes, and leave the four quarters unsewn. This was fun to do!

Moving right along with This and That, we first did the front of this puzzle (the Falling Water house by Frank Lloyd Wright), then tackled doing the reverse. We did okay on the center part, then floundered with all the blues. So I started flipping them over, grouping them by colors, and then flipping them back. We just have to DO the puzzle, right? There are no rules as to how you get it done, right?

New project, using Jennifer Sampou’s SKY fabrics. Luscious. Coming soon.

The above two images go together: the brown smoky skyline, which is not a beautiful sunset, but a layer of smoke drift from California fires, coupled with the line-up of temperatures coming our way. I’m not leaving the house on Tuesday.

The the following three images are linked: a countdown clock for the U.S. Elections, a visually interesting and textural image of Kamala Harris, and a Trump cartoon from 2018, which popped up in my Instagram feed today, strangely prescient for this year’s election.

Brendan Loper, the artist, writes “Strangely enough this toon was featured in Russia Today comparing it to a soviet political cartoon about western voting practices.”

Lastly, this is where I’ll be today. I laughed when I saw this. This might be partly true for my Zoom-trunk shows; I usually put up a quilt behind me, blocking the view. When I Zoom-teach in my sewing room, however, everything has to be spic and span, because so much can be seen.

A big thank you to all who wrote such lovely descriptions of their gardens, their terrain and what they see around them on my last post. My husband and I took turns pointing out our favorites (which turned out to be ALL of them), and it was like a lovely armchair travel through all your backyards. Sigh. If only I could come and visit you all…I would!

Right now, my tomatoes are hanging on for dear life, and with the 111 temps coming this next week, I’ll have pre-cooked tomatoes to harvest (yes, we even tried putting cupcake wrappers to protect them–this last week we moved their pots into partial shade). Everything’s getting browner: the sky, the hills, the garden, and every day I see air quality advisories warning me that it’s probably not good to go outside and try to inhale the muddy-colored atmosphere. Our summer is like an East Coast winter: we stay inside, keep the A/C at a comfortable-but-not-too-cool level, and sew our brains out.

I’ll be working on the project with the SKY fabric, prepping up another live-online class, and waiting for the “bers” in the calendar to arrive: September, October, November and December. I actually thought about Christmas today. This year has been so totally and completely crazy, I wondered if I would jinx the season of Let’s Be Jolly by even thinking about it.

So, let’s just keep going, putting right sides together and stitching memories into our quilts.

This and That • September 2019

Posted on September 12, 2019 by Elizabeth E.

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Free Motion Quilting can be one of the main challenges we quilters face after we’ve gotten down the basics of piecing and other construction methods. Now we want to stitch and shape and sculpt our quilts with thread. This coming Saturday, September 14th, I’ll be teaching a Free-Motion Quilting workshop in Antelope Valley, and if you are nearby, come on down (up?). You can find out more at their Quilt Guild Meeting, held Thursday evening, where I’ll present a show titled “An Undercover Traditional Modern Art Quilter.” I’m bringing two suitcases of quilts, some stories and a sense of humor. Hope to see you there!

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Simone drew up another one of her fabulous blocks for us in the Gridsters Bee, and I got busy and did six of them. I just kept wanting to try out different combinations. More info (and a free download) of this block is available on her website.

Book 15 Gamache

I started a new Inspector Gamache book, #15. Halfway in, and I can’t wait to get back to listening.

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Over Labor Day weekend, we went to Austin, TX (common abbreviation, I found out, is ATX) to see my son and his family. Here we are outside Coopers BBQ, where I’m going when I go to QuiltCon in February (well, both places: the BBQ, which is right downtown, and also to see the grandsons).

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I always learn something new when visiting the youngsters: did you know you could charge up your shoes, and when you are at a dance, they will glow different colors?

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When the boys went back to school and their parents went back to their regularly scheduled lives, we did touristing at the State Capitol Building.

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Then up to the University of Texas at Austin, where I visited someting I’d been wanting to see for a very long time: Austin, by Ellsworth Kelley. Kelley gave the design for this chapel-like space to the Blanton Museum, which had it built. It’s just over 2700 square feet, so not huge.

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But inside…

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We went in the morning, and then back again after lunch and a walk through the next door Blanton Museum. I want to come here again, in February, when they say the light comes in the grid over the front door. Hope it’s not cloudy at QuiltCon!

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Another Ellsworth Kelly. We call this Couple Self-Portrait in Kelly’s B. Occasionally if you spend too much time in museums you can get a bit goofy. We also went to the LBJ Presidential Library after all this.

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But this — a dance of color and light — is what makes my quilty heart sing!

Happy July 2019 • This and That!

Posted on July 3, 2019 by Elizabeth E.

In this episode of This-and-That posts, I wanted to lead off with a little freebie for your Fourth of July: the instructions for a Teeny Tiny Flag quilt. You can whip this up quickly, and it slips over a dimestore 4″ x 6″ acrylic frame. I made one recently for a friend in the hospital: no flowers or balloons were allowed. This brought some cheer to her stay as she loves red, white and blue.

I thought you might like the how-to’s, so download the PDF file (please re-download this new file–earlier this morning, there was a glitch):

Teeny Tiny Flag Quilt

I finished it off with some cute buttons. For more Tiny quilts (and Teeny-Tiny quilts), visit the Tiny Quilts tab, above.

Here’s a new favorite book of mine, Sunday Best Quilts, by Sherri L. McConnell and Corey Yoder. Sherri and I have been friends for a while ever since we shared English assignments for the classes we were teaching, at two different community colleges in two different states. I also appreciate her wonderful quilt designs, and have enjoyed her fabric lines (favorites are Bright Sun, Creekside and Front Porch).

I expect certain things out of books these days. I’ve stopped buying everything that’s new as I was pretty burned out with what I call “vanity” books — a famous quilter gets a book and really, it was nothing new under the sun. So now I am pretty selective about what I’ll add to my quilt library. The book has to have 1) a new way of looking at familiar quilts, 2) a thorough (but not mansplained) direction section, and 3) great photographs, plus 4) the writing has to be pristine and readable, no small feat.

This book fulfills all four of those criteria. If you are looking for a new book to add, I can recommend this one.

Truth.

So our Guild had a rummage sale this month, well, really it was a Clean-Out-The-President’s-Sewing-Room/Garage sale. Evidently people had been bringing her stuff for many years; husbands would call when their wives had moved to Assisted Living, and leftovers from classes all just sort of congregated in her garage. Time for it all to go.

I am always fascinated by what quilters used to do Back in the Day. Like these vests. Did we really a) have haircuts like that, and b) dress like this?

Another binder had templates with lots of code numbers on them, and then these illustrations. I loved “Home Grown” #8, and think it would make a great block in a quilt. No, I didn’t bring that one home.

But I felt like I scored with this box of “vintage” magazines (really, they are just 20-30 years old–how is that vintage?). I’d bought a few things here and there, stuffing my dollars in the Rummage Sale Jar, but at the end of the night, when so much was left, she said, “Take it all away!” So we did.

I wanted to post some construction images from Ladybird, the quilt from the last post. At this point I was thinking: what am I doing? This was the quilting after the first day. I threw it on the spare bed and left it there for two days.