from Julie

In addition to the group of gifts I already received,  Julie and I had our annual parking lot exchange of Christmas gifts after CQFA last weekend. I gave her the partially done Purple Journal, which seems a bit pathetic after I saw what she gave me!) and she gave me this plethora of quilty goodness.

I want to use the Mary Engelbreit panels to make journal covers. A little Mary Engelbreit in the morning is always a good way to start the day, in my opinion. She also bought me a desk needle threader. Yes, it is getting harder for me to thread my needles. I blame it on poor lighting in my living and work rooms.  I am constantly breaking the wire hand held ones, so this will come in handy. The ruler allows the quiltmaker to make wonky 9 patches. Julie and I have started to cut patches for each other. She cut Eye Spy patches for me. I cut Eye Spy patches for her. Now we are cutting Windmill patches for each other.

The final cool thing is a little package of Timtex. Who doesn’t need Timtex? I want to try making a journal using Timtex instead of a manilla folder. We’ll see if it works.

Half Moon Street from TFQ

I am a lucky girl to have a friend who gives me gift certificates for fabric.I think we should all have a friend like that. I bought this bundle using the Intrepid Thread gift certificate from TFQ.  I love receiving gift certificates for fabric. I don’t feel guilty about buying it when I use the gift certificate.

I feel very fortunate to have such nice friends. Still, I can’t help, but look forward to my birthday.

Mid-December Triangles

I am trying different arrangements of triangles for show. The previous arrangements have left so much design wall space in the photos. It took me awhile to cut enough triangles for this photo as I concentrated on the Stepping Stones top.

Many of the fabrics are from Camille Roskelley’s Ruby line. I have stacked them up as I search for suitable project for them. I have almost decided I will do another Stepping Stones quilt, though perhaps I will scale it down a bit as how many 100×80 quilts does a person need?

This may be the last batch of triangles as I have to start organizing them in preparation for sewing them at the CQFA retreat.

Moda Circa 1934

The other day, I stopped at the Granary in Sunnyvale and saw the Circa 1934 fabrics from Moda. I bought a few of them and a layer cake. Once I got the fabric home, I decided to try the Stepping Stones pattern using the fabric during the Thanksgiving weekend.  I can’t even remember the last time I bought fabric, washed it and immediately started using it. I want to get to the point where I do that more often. Sometimes the excitement of the fabric is fresh in my mind when I buy and I would like to capitalize on that excitement in my work.

Fabric selection for quilt

I didn’t buy large pieces of the whole line, so I knew I needed some additional fabrics. Also, I want to take Joanna Figueroa’s advice and work towards using only 80% of a line so that my quilts look different from other quilts that use a whole line.

4 Blocks

I looked at the layer cake to get a few ideas about colors to use. I picked some fabrics out of my fabric closet and set to work. There was a bit of pulling colors out of the pile, but I really wanted to sew and tried not to be too picky.

I am not very experienced at following patterns and I had trouble with this one. I am not used to making a whole bunch of one element at a time, then making a whole bunch of other elements and finally sewing them together. I have to admit that once your elements are made the sewing goes quickly, but it was a lot of time on my feet.

Also, I didn’t like the pattern, because it didn’t clearly tell me how many of each triangle square and four patch I needed, nor did it tell me what size they should be (finished or unfinished). I tried to guess and hope I got it right.

Finally, the pattern is not written in such a way where it is easy to switch out colors. I would have preferred if they used terms like “light,” “dark” or “medium.” Even if they used “large floral” or “fabric with small repeat”, it would have been a bit easier to NOT use the colors and fabric line the authors used.

1 block

The blocks appear large and are coming out fine. I am liking how it looks, though I see now where I could have used more contrast.

PIQF 2011 Purchases

I didn’t buy anything when I went on Wednesday night and Thursday, but Sunday I went back to PIQF and bought a few things. I didn’t take a picture of the inks. Didn’t have the wherewithall to do a lifestyle shot of them. I bought several inks. Trust me.

The Perl Cotton (some of which are Valdani) are for Kissy Fish, as is the embroidery book. I felt like I needed a few more colors and a few more stitches. That piece should be done, but it seems to be perpetually “almost finished.”

Soon.

The two magazines are from New Pieces. I went on Friday to pick up the Zig Zaggy quilt and saw them. The Japanese magazine has some great bags and some wonderful Trip Around the World pieces.

I told myself never to buy a Quilt Scene magazine. I think the idea of magazine reporting on the show and showing photos is fabulous.  I think the idea of a magazine about a show that couldn’t be published without projects was stupid. As you can see, I bought this one. The photos of the quilts (the few that are shown) are FABULOUS. This magazine also has the most beautiful Baltimore Album quilt I have ever seen. It is truly lush.

Glad Creations

Glad Creations was the first shop we visited. It was a small shop neatly crammed with  tons of fabric, books, tools and notions. I bought some Wonder Clips, which I had never seen anywhere before. They also had a large selection of Jo Morton fabric and books, which I had also never seen before. I am not really interested in her fabric or projects, just in her triangle techniques. They had a Sew Day going on upstairs.

Blast from the Past

You are probably wondering why I have a photo of the Glad Creations restroom here? See that wallpaper? That is the exact wallpaper that the kitchen in my childhood home had. The only difference is that this colorway is a little more green. The colorway in our kitchen was more blue.

I posted it to Facebook. My sister screamed 9virtually) and my parents laughed. I didn’t ask, but I wonder if this wallpaper has been here for awhile or if that pattern is still available to hang? Perhaps I should find out and buy some rolls of it and send them to my sister? I wonder if she would scream more? Heh heh.

It could also be used as inspiration for a Kaleidoscope quilt a la Paula Nadelstern.

Glad Creations Classroom

Did I mention that Glad Creations was crammed? It was. They had fabric, notions, tools, books, kits, batting, and samples EVERYWHERE. Everywhere I turned there was another something that was gorgeous. There was lots to see and look at and to give a person inspiration.

I took this photo of the classroom, because you could see at least 3 samples from this little slice of the room. On the right side – just out of the photo was another wall with 4-5 other samples.

Glad Creations Quilt Block 3400 Bloomington Ave. S. Minneapolis, MN 55407. Phone: 612-724-1079. E-Mail: nancy@gladcreationsquilts.com

Bear Patch Quilting

Bear Patch Quilting was in a place called White Bear Lake. I wanted to see the white bear, but it wasn’t possible, apparently. Bear Patch Quilting is a large store with a wide variety of everything quilt related. The stock was different than Glad Creations and the lighting was good. There was also a selection of rug hooking materials and several ladies were in the back of the store hooking away. They had lots and lots of 1930s fabrics. I wished, then, that TFQ had an online swatch inventory so I could have picked out some 30s fabrics for her hexagon quilt. I saw a number of embroidery projects and they were more than willing to cut me some FQs. As I result I added a couple of pieces to the Food Quilt fabric stash.

Hours: Sun 12:00–4:00pm; Mon-Thu 9:00am–9:00pm; Fri-Sat 9:00am–5:00pm

Rosebud's Cottage

Rosebud’s Cottage was down the street and around the corner from Bear Patch, so if you go to White Bear Lake, you can hit two quilt shops!

I am not sure why I expected Rosebud’s Cottage to be larger, but I did. It has a nice selection, but is pretty small. They also had a small selection of cards and scrapbook materials. There were a group of ladies there stitching. We talked to them about their interesting Block of the Month. Some of the ladies were working on Halloween blocks. The shop had great bag samples!

Rosebud’s Cottage
2154 3rd Street
White Bear Lake, MN 55110-3233
(651) 426-1885

Quilt Haven

Quilter’s Haven was a shop on the bottom level of a newish looking condo complex. I didn’t see a sign. Michele knew where it was, but the only reason I knew we had arrived was from the Bernina sign. They must have some ordinance about signage.

The building was new, the space was filled with fabric and there was a large class going on. The woman at the counter showed us a quilt she had made that, despite the Civil War repros, was gorgeous. They had a great selection of books and I was able to look at the Zentangle quilting book (forgot the name).

Quilter’s Haven
2930 146th Street
Rosemount, MN 55068-3163
(651) 322-7071

Fabric Town

When we pulled into the mall (outdoor type mall with a Dollar Store),I thought Fabric Town would be kind of a remnants or cut rate/discount store. WRONG! This was a regular quilt store sandwiched into a strip mall. (As an aside, a lot of the MN quilt stores were in strip malls and all I can think is that they can guarantee someone will plow their parking lot, if they set up shop in a strip mall). Walking into the store was walking into a completely different world. The store is filled with all kind of reproduction fabrics, embroidery and aprons, but it didn’t feel dark and depressing. The store is arranged in such a way that it looks like you are on Main Street of your local small town. It is really a gorgeous store with a lot of interesting samples and patterns. The way they put their reproduction fabrics together was different than repro quilts I have seen in the past.

Fabric Town Quilt

Their quilts, even the Civil War quilts, were not dark or depressing looking. I know not all repro quilts are dark and depressing, but until this shop I had seen very few.

Do you remember those dishcloths that your grandmother or auntie used to make that had “Wednesday” with a picture of a girl doing laundry on it? The shop had a large number of block of the month type embroidery patterns that were similar in style.  I saw one set that had patterns for baskets. I resisted, but I was sorely tempted. The pictures were so graceful and the flowers were so pretty. These were patterns that I knew would completely change my life if I bought them.

One thing I really wanted from this shop was their pattern for a baking dish carrier. Sadly, they only had kits and none of the fabrics in any of the kits were remotely appealing. I have a covered dish/baking dish carrier pattern and haven’t made it yet. I am sure there are other equally useful patterns for the same sort of thing out there. Michele is going to check back and see if they start selling the pattern. That pattern would look great made with one of Martha Negley’s large vegetable prints.

FabricTown
7655 148th Street West
Apple Valley, MN 55124-7800
(952) 432-1827

Quilt Cove

Michele saved the best for last. I liked the other stores, but Quilt Cove had more fabric – MUCH more, more tools, notions and supplies and more patterns. I didn’t even look at the patterns. I didn’t have time. We stayed there for a long time and it was so enormous that I didn’t have the time to look at everything. I also became a little overwhelmed at the amount of stuff in the store. I am not sure I have ever been in a quilt shop as large as this store was. Again, this store was in a mall. It was in a mall with a Target and I think that would be great to have. After fighting the crazy people at Target, I could go and give myself a treat at the quilt shop. Might be dangerous.

The cool thing was that I saw fabric I had not seen before. One of them was Mixmaster Dot to Dot by Patrick Lose. You know what a sucker I am for lines of nice tone-on-tones in a variety of colorways. I promise to do another Interlocking Triangles quilt in the near future with some of the lines I have been collecting. You will be proud that I did not buy all that I saw. I tried to be discerning, even though it was difficult.  I would highly recommend a trip to Quilt Cove.

Quilt Cove
1960 Cliff Lake Rd # 134
Eagan, MN 55122-2439
(651) 452-8891

Patterns & Tools

Here are the various patterns, books & tools I bought. Yes, I bought a Jo Morton book. It was on sale and I wanted to be able to study her flying geese technique. I think she self publishes and her books are on the pricey side.

The This & That pattern is the great pattern I bought at Rosebud’s Cottage. I thought I would use a Jelly Roll, but now that I remember that I sincerely dislike Jelly Rolls again, I’ll cut my own strips.

If I ever get any quilts quilted again, I can’t wait to try the Wonder Clips. I also think they will work well for laminates.

Mixmaster & Friends

These fabrics aren’t specifically designated for anything just yet, but soon. Some of the pinks and yellows may going into a quilt for which i have inadvertently gathered quite a little pile of fabric.

I bought a couple of yards of the two Mixmaster greys thinking I could them as backgrounds for the Interlocking Triangles quilts I am planning.

Like everything, we will see. I counted up my in process projects and that number was enough to scare me off of starting anything new in the near future.

Funky Bundle

These fabrics were a little off from what I usually buy, but they appealed to me when I saw them at the Quilt Cove. they are completely on ‘spec, so I will have to think of something stellar to do with them. A bag, I think, and perhaps the This & That bag. Hhmm.

Bits and Turquoise

I couldn’t leave without some turquoise and aqua.

It was a great day thanks to Michele. We had a great time chatting about our quilt projects and our families. It was a very pleasant day.

Whatever they are I have a love-hate relationship with them. I love to look through charm packs and dream about the finished projects that will magically appear in my house made – from that very charm pack fabric – and change my life.

In reality, I really like the little bits of one whole line!

I have to admit that I sincerely dislike actually working with pre-cuts, but I tend to forget. I get an idea (did you see the Jelly Roll Race post?) and live another day to learn the same lesson.

The really big thing I don’t like is pinked edge. I like the idea of it, but what a &^%%$#ing mess! I open a Jelly Roll and there are bits of fuzz everywhere. EVERYWHERE!!!

The other thing I don’t like about pre-cuts are that they are not cut properly. Recently, I posted a tutorial about making 8 half square triangles at a time. I decided that I would get a neutral charm pack and use my Hoopla charm pack and just make a boatload of HSTs. Why not? I am sure a cool pattern will come to mind once I am rolling in HSTs.

I got a Kona White Charm pack and dutifully sat in front of the TV and marked all the White charms with an X. The pinked edges did not make this easy. I had to kind of guess where the marks went. I don’t like to guess. I like to be as exact as possible.

I went to line them up with the Hoopla charms and what a pain! They did not really line up very well, despite both being 5″ charm packs.

Folded charm

Folding a charm looked ok, except for the bit on the left. I finger pressed and thought I could line up the finger pressed line with the X on the neutral charm.

As an aside, I don’t really want to mark charms inexactly and then have to finger press a bunch as well. If I end up with that as my only alternative, I will just press the charms with the iron. It will be a lot easier on my hands.

Finger pressed fold

As you can see from the photo (sorry about the quality of this one, it is the victim of my camera problems) the finger pressed line does not go corner to corner.

I don’t think there is anything I can do to force Moda to make their accuracy better. That is not a fight I want to fight today. Or tomorrow. I just have to deal with it in my own work.

Perhaps using pre-cuts as decorations is better than using it as fabric? Kind of an expensive decorating idea, though.

Early Sept. FOTY Triangles

Despite my misgivings, I am plowing ahead with my plan to cut triangles until such time as I have a new plan.

Mom and Lil  Sissy were over when I took this picture. Lil Sissy almost had a heart attack when I started to take the pieces off the wall. She didn’t realize that it was part of the process!

The process for making the FOTY quilts really lasts all year long. I don’t get to the sewing until the following year, usually, but I cut and arrange all year long. My process for working on the FOTY quilts is:

• Buy fabric
• Wash fabric
• Press fabric
• Cut pieces, including triangles from fabric
• Put triangles on the wall
• Photograph triangles
• Remove triangles
• Repeat.

FOTY Triangles - Late 8/2011

Bad news. I don’t think I like this triangle shape. What I really want to do is kind of row quilt like the Fons & Porter Kalamkari Strippy. I like the space between the rows, though you can’t see it very well in the size information they provide. Still, I want to be true to the idea of the Fabric of the Year quilts and continue with that series. The bottom line is that I have too many triangles to make that quilt unless I want to make one to cover half of San San Francisco – the City not the people in it!

I considered, briefly, cutting squares out of the all the fabric already cut into triangles. I like the idea of simple shapes and may have just gone too far this year in the shape department. That would cause a problem for the smaller triangles. I know myself and would not pull the fabrics out again to cut squares.

The other idea I had was to intersperse light colored or neutral triangles in between the colored ones so that I can give the fabrics some space.

I think I have decided to lay all the triangles out and see what I am really dealing with and go from there. I may lay them all out on the Pat Bravo Pure Elements white linen solid color fabric and see if I get the space effect I want.

I can’t leave you all fretting and worrying. There is good news. I am almost at the end of the giant pile of fabric needing to be pressed. My machine is back, though, so that effort will be slowed a bit. I do have a pile of fabric to be washed that will also need to be pressed, but for the zillion loads of fabric I did at the beginning of the month, I am almost through it. More good news is that the fabrics on the bottom of the pile had sort of pressed themselves!

FOTY Triangles

Here are so more triangles for FOTY 2011. I am not pressing and cutting them as fast since I am working on other projects, but I am working on them incrementally.

BAMQG Courthouse Square Blocks

A few weeks ago I talked about the blocks I was planning on making for the BAMQG challenge. Here are the first two. I had an idea for these blocks, but I also had a couple of obstacles to the finished pieces.

First, I had to find the rotary cutting directions. I tried to draw the blocks on EQ7 and wasn’t, initially successful. Through a series of weird coincidences, I found a block in the big Jinny Beyer block book and had a pad of graph paper near handy, which allowed me to visualize the grid. Once I had that, I was able to draw the block in EQ7 (I was surprised not to find it there already there) and EQ7 generated the rotary cutting directions for this Courthouse Square block. Update 10/9/2011: I found that this block is Brackman Number: 2815A. You can see an antique example of this block in a quilt at the Quilt Index.

Acorn chain in lake

Dandelion by Michael Miller

I used the fabrics I showed in the last post and am pleased with how they came out. I was a little nervous about using the Michael Miller fabric, because I have it slated for another project. I slapped myself and used the fabric since I hadn’t used it in that other project yet and it isn’t as though I have a shortage of fabric. I think the block looks great.

Multiple Square Quilt

Two blocks wasn’t enough and I still had some fabric, so I looked at the gallery (I apologize if you can’t open the link) that Adrianne made.I found this one in Jinny Beyer’s book also. It is called Multiple Square Quilt and is from a 1953 issue of the Kansas City Star. That book is a useful resource if you love blocks at all.

I am thinking I will make one or two more, but I made a list of all I have to sew this weekend, so we will see how much I get done.

It is kind of fun thinking about blocks in a different way and trying to make them modern. I still have more fabric, so I may make a few more blocks.

Sadly, his IT staff came in early and did a stopgap fix on my computer. It was much better on Thursday, so I had to stay at work instead of hang out at home with my iPad next to my sewing machine. Oh well.

The computer problems just added to my stress and in light of the craziness, I decided I had to be okay with not getting the back of the FOTY 2010 finished. I talked to Colleen and will bring it in two weeks when she is back in town and ready to quilt again. That means I have two weeks to finish the back.

FOTY 2010 Top - Finished

This past week wasn’t a complete quiltmaking desert. I did get a break on Monday when I didn’t have to take the Young Man to his regular Monday appointment and I took the opportunity to finish the FOTY 2010 top! Yay! I feel so good about that.

All the diamonds were sewn together and the border strips were cut, so I just had to sew them on to the top. It took me a long time – about 3.5 hours. I never think that borders and backs are going to take long, but they always seem to take longer than I expect. Oh well.

I learned a couple of things making this top. First, my deadline was to piece the whole top at the CQFA Retreat. It turned out that I wasn’t ready to piece this whole top. Diamonds require finding my sweet spot of piecing. I had to develop a rhythm and a method and I hadn’t done it by the time I reached the retreat. Second, this was a top that needed me to take my time. I ripped out much of the piecing I sewed at the retreat. A lot of people don’t care about points being cut off and I am not going to beat myself up about every single point, but I absolutely don’t want my bad technique to distract viewers from the overall look of the quilt. Finally, this quilt needed to be pieced slowly and carefully.

FOTY 2010: bottom left

FOTY 2010: top middle

I have been lamenting my pictures (my whole blog, really) lately and these two show great detail, but they are not great photography. I am pretty pleased with the color layout on the pink and white section.

The diamonds are not in perfect positions colorwise, but I have improved since FOTY 2009.

In the photo of the pinks and whites, I am really pleased that I clustered the whites in the corner. In FOTY 2009 I put them along the left side one on top of the other and I decided that wasn’t as effective in terms of the colorwash idea. It is very difficult to get a really smooth colorwash effect when using prints. As I said, I think I improved over last year.

My mom kept telling me to move diamonds AFTER I had already sewn them and finally I had to tell her to make her own colorwash quilt!

FOTY 2010: alternative universe

As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I will be making a block or two from Joel Dewberry fabric. I have the fat quarter laid out on my ironing board (see previous comments about horizontal space in my workroom!), because my design wall is full, and there is no horizontal space.

As I was finishing the FOTY, I kept pressing bits and pieces. When I was pressing the corner of the inner border on top of the JD fabric, I noticed how interesting this particularly corner looked with the JD fabric as the border. I didn’t want that active a print on the outside of this quilt, but I thought it was interesting.

Mom's Food Quilt Blocks

I bought a lot of food fabric fat quarters (say that 3x really fast) for my mom last spring while she was taking care of Super G and trying not to lose her mind. This is one of the blocks she made with those food fabrics. She made a lot of blocks like the Corner Store pattern I talked about in the review of Pretty Little Mini Quilts, then she didn’t like them for the food quilt, so she redid them and this is block one of the result. Check her blog for progress.

FOTY 2010 - 2/13/2011

This is what I was working with last weekend. Remember when the blues were a problem? Well, at the point I took this photo, the yellows and greens were giving me fits and I could tell the pinks were next.

FOTY 2010 - 2/13/2011 det.

It is very difficult to figure out where the pieces are going to end up when the piece is done. At some point last week, I dug out my Ruby Beholder (which required quite a bit of searching and some tidying) and tried it to see if it works. My values are all the same – or similar, so it didn’t help much. I am glad I know where it is, though.

FOTY 2010 - 2/13/2011 det. 2

At this point, I realized that I had too many diamonds and might need to add another row. This was weird, because of all the math we did to get the layout correct. I think EQ should add a function where you tell it how many patches you have and it tells you options for different layouts.

FOTY 2010 - 2/20/2011

After a really busy week last week and a day of quilting on the Tarts (Friday), I got back to FOTY 2010. I’d like to get this to the quilter and move on.

The reds and oranges are getting in order in the photo above, but the pinks and reds on the bottom are starting to really be a problem.

FOTY 2010 - 2/20/2011 - det. pinks

The above is me working on the pinks and whites. Lots of rearranging was happening as I was trying to figure out what patch went where. I think, after this project, I will have diamonds out of my system. Perhaps not, but I am thinking yes.

FOTY 2010 - 2/20/2011 - det. pinks, reds

See that big space towards the top middle? I didn’t know, at the point I took this picture, whether that was a space from seam allowances shrinking or was a space because I had arranged fabrics wrong.

FOTY 2010 - 2/21/2011 - Where I am now

When I left the piece yesterday to go do laundry, make dinner and all that other stuff, the above photo shows the state of the piece. That space I described above shifted to the middle of the left side. Sigh. That one means I really don’t know if I am missing pieces. If I need to cut more, I am resolved to do so. The other space resolved itself, so I have hope.

Almost all the pieces are sewn to some other piece, which is good. I did add an additional row, so there could very well be some extra space I need to fill in.

Stay tuned.

Sonja's Soy Wax Fabric

Sonja gave me these pieces of fabric for my birthday. She brought a big bag of them over to my house and let me choose. I think I took all of her best ones. I tried to take a few, but she insisted that I take 6 pieces. She makes them with a soy wax resist (don’t ask me anymore questions about the process, because that is all I know!) and they turn out to be gorgeous. I feel so lucky to have such wonderful and talented friends.