I mentioned a week or so ago that I had spent some time doing rote sewing. Part of that day of roteness (is that a word?) was making backs.

Tarts Back

Above is the back for the Tarts. As I said previously, it went together really quickly. I am showing it again so you can see the contrast. Making the Tarts back  made me think that I could get the back for FOTY 2009 done really quickly.

HAHAHAHA!

FOTY 2009 back

I gave myself the rule of using only fabrics I bought or received in 2009 for the back. That meant a lot of rummaging through fabric. That meant a lot of FQs and piecing fabrics together to make them fit. When I finally finished at 9pm on Sunday, I felt like I had accomplished something.

It is a strange looking back and I hope all the seams won’t be a problem on the longarm.

FOTY 2009 detail

One thing I found when I came back from the CQFA Retreat was a bunch of other FOTY 2009 blocks! Nooooo! I can’t believe they weren’t with all the others. I could have added another row of blocks if I had found them BEFORE the retreat. I decided to get over it and put them on the back.

Moon & Stars (full)

Moon & Stars is an old, old project. I started it after my mom gave me a FQ pack of the moon and stars fabrics in the middle. I wanted to show them off, so I made this kind of window scene with very little piecing.

It was in the same bag as Kissy Fish, except wadded up at the bottom. Who knows what I was thinking? Some of my bags tend to turn into dumping grounds. I pulled it out last week when I, once again, needed a hand project for a serious amount of TV watching. I don’t remember when I last worked on it or when I started it, but it had to be around the time I was working on the Sampler, because, I am apparently, hand quilting it.I don’t do much hand quilting anymore with regular quilting thread.

Moon & Stars (detail)

The thread for the middle is really thin – or seems thin – and I couldn’t find it in the depths of the bag. It appeared that I was pretty much done with the hand quilting of the middle, so I took some of the Laura Wasilowski hand dyed thread and worked on quilting the border.

I may add some machine quilting to it as I like my quilts quilted close together and there is only a very small chance that I will hand quilt it as close together as I like it.

A friend and former colleague, Sheila, emailed me in her capacity as secretary for the South Asian Bar Association of Northern California Foundation and asked me if I might have a piece to donate for the silent auction at their annual gala, which was held yesterday at the Green Room in San Francisco. A large number of attorneys and other professionals will attend and bid on various items and services at the silent auction. Sheila told me that the items and services were donated by prominent individuals and businesses. All proceeds raised fund public interest fellowships for Bay Area law students.

While I don’t really think that the world needs more lawyers, I do think that scholarships are important and it isn’t up to me to decide how people spend their lives. It also made me feel good to be considered a “prominent individual.” It will be interesting to see where House and Garden goes on its journey.

I finally buckled down this past weekend and got some of my ‘rote’ sewing out of the way. Rote sewing is stuff like making backs, putting on bindings, etc. I usually consider it to be stuff that I have to do at the machine, but isn’t very creative. I often have a hard time getting started on it. The good thing about rote sewing is that it usually goes fast once I buckle down and I can often cross a lot of tasks off my list after a rote sewing weekend.

Fluttering Hearts Test

This time I worked on backs and tossed the Fluttering Hearts into the mix. Above you can me trying out the Fluttering Hearts. I have had 3 on the piece on my design wall since November or December. I really wanted some at the top and decided that Saturday would be  good day to try it out.

Fluttering Hearts Appliqued

I spent a lot of time sewing carefully around the hearts with the satin stitch. I am out of the thin Maderia embroidery thread so I used a spool of Robison-Anton that seemed relatively new. I love the sheen of that thread. It is also thick like quilting thread, so the satin stitch looks pretty full on the hearts.

Tarts with Fluttering Hearts

Above is the Tarts with the Fluttering Hearts appliqued. I thought I would be done, but I am thinking that I need to applique’ something to the tea kettle (lower left), some steam or stars to the Chocolate Pot, like I showed in this post.

I think I might be getting too mired in the layering thing that is going on in my head. I have to remember that I put the label on the back and it says I finished this quilt in 2010, so I have to finish it!

Tarts Back

Here is the Tarts back, another bit of rote sewing from the past weekend. It went together really fast! I was shocked. I guess I really do need to finish this quilt!

Give me your opinions about more bits of applique’ of it you think I should just wait to embellish with buttons and beads and embroidery.

Beach Town Front

Yes, boys and girls, I finally finished Beach Town. You can read about starting it in the post about the Pamela Allen class from last year. I liked looking at the piece in that post (one of the things I LOVE about blogging!), because I could see the differences including all of the handwork I have added.

Beach Town Back

I made a smaller version of the Robbi Joy Eklow sleeve (from her book Free Expression) for this piece. I don’t know if it will ever be hung using a rod, but it is ready if someone wants to hang it that way.

One of the things I need to think through when I use this technique in the future is the back and the label. I like to include the label as a part of the back. As you may have noticed, I often piece the back and include the label in that piecing. This allows me (or my quilter) to quilt over the label so that it cannot be removed if the quilt is stolen. Jill, one of the creative prompt participants, talks about this in her recent blog post.

Another reason I piece the back is that I have the fabric, so I might as well use it.

Smaller quilts, and particularly this Pamelala technique are free form and quick. The maker usually lays down the back and batting first with no opportunity to piece the back or make a label. When I take a Pamela Allen class again, perhaps I should just put down the batting and work on the back later?

OK, girls and boys, I am here to announce the winner of the one World One Heart blog go round/ blog project/ whatever it is called.

First, my goal was to get new blog readers, so I hope some of you will stick around and join our little community here.

Second, I appreciate everyone who actually took a look at my blog and followed the requests that I had about entering .  I really wanted to know where everyone was coming from.

Finally, I also really liked it when people said something about my posts or a post. I was tempted to toss those who didn’t follow the directions out of the drawing. However, I was persuaded otherwise and everyone stayed in.

TA DA!!! The Winner is:

Bonnie

from

Southern Style blog

http://nanbon44.blogspot.com/

You can also make your own Over the top bag. The pattern is from All People Quilt. You can read about my bag in my August 26th post. Lisa put up a list of all the OWOH participants in alphabetical order. Great list if you are looking for some blogs to read!

Mom and I had museum day last Friday. We first went to the DeYoung and saw the Amish Abstractions  exhibit. This is an exhibit of Amish quilts from the Stephen and Faith Brown collection.

I could look at Amish quilts for years and never get bored. I went to the Esprit exhibit at the DeYoung back in the Dark Ages and I even demonstrated handquilting during one of their free evenings through a quilt class I was taking at the time. That was in the old museum building and before they charged extra for the special exhibits. Times definitely change!

I really tried to look at each quilt for more than 30 seconds (which my mother tells me is the average time that someone looks at a piece of art in an exhibit.

Shutter Block

I liked all of the quilts. The ones that particularly stuck in my mind were a small crib quilt with two vertical rows of 3 Jack’s Chains* and a small 6 block crib quilt using a block I had never seen before. I am calling it the “Shutter quilt.” Do you know the name of the block?

The hidden complexity (quilting) in the simplicity (piecing) fascinates me. The piecing designs are often (not always) relatively simple. As the viewer gets closer, s/he can see the complexity of the quilting designs. Many of the quilts had feathers quilted into the border. A quilt using the Bars design had a feather wreath in the middle surrounded by an octagon of straight line quilting design with little quilted clamshell stitching accenting the octagon line. This detail was invisible unless I got up very close to it.

One thing I particularly noticed this time was the deft use of their limited color palette. They use certain colors, which I knew. The glow that I have noticed in some of the quilts comes from the colors and how they were put together. This must seem obvious to you, but somehow it struck me as I was comparing some of the quilts that had this glow to the more subtly shaded pieces.  I noticed that the more subtle quilts did not use the salmon, turquoise and lavender colors. I think, based on this quick trip, that this is the case.

I was drawing the shutter piece block from the crib quilt when my mom sat down on a bench nearby and began talking to the lady next to her. My mom talks to everyone. They were talking about a 9 patch quilt made partially from 4patches when I heard the lady said “oh this is the man that owns the quilts.” A nice looking, white haired man in his mid fifties to early sixties wearing a blue Oxford shirt was standing there. Of course, my mom started talking to him!

She started in asking him how long he had been collecting (since the mid-1970s) and how he stored the quilts at home (acid free boxes) and did he display them at home (no). I decided to mention the Jack’s Chain, which was listed as “pattern unknown”. I have had that pattern on my to do list for years and originally saw it at a shop in the East Bay as a class. Even then it was called Jack’s Chain. He said that he would look it up and made a note. This made me think that he provided all the information about the quilts and the museum didn’t do research. I don’t know for sure, however. Then my mom asked me to give him my quilt business card. No, I do not have a quilt business!, but I do have a card that lists my blog address. He actually looked at it and commented on me having a blog!

Marie over at Z Quilts had a long review of the quilts and the exhibit catalog in which she posted some photos. My favorite, though I liked all of the quilts, is the one mentioned above I call the Shutter quilt. The pattern had no name according to the card next to the quilt. I want to look it up in Barbara Brackman’s book, or int he new Jinny Beyer block book, but haven’t yet. Stay tuned for that info.

I overheard some guys commenting that it looked like the shutter of a camera closing or opening. It is the 5th image on Marie’s page.

The museum had a boatload of stuff in their regular gift shops and they had a full shop right outside of the exhibit. One of the items that really drew me were wooden boxes with quilt designs inlaid on the top. They were form Quiltboxes.com (about $125) and were absolutely gorgeous. I liked the one with the Dutchman’s Puzzle design.

After the DeYoung, we went over to the Legion of Honor and saw the Cartier and America exhibit. This was a jewelry exhibit. I enjoy seeing different types of art and craft exhibits because I enjoy seeing the commonalities with quiltmaking. I also enjoy getting inspiration from other media. Of course, the jewels were fantastic. There was one stone that over 143 carats. Can you imagine? This type of jewelry is so out of my realm of possibility that I just looked at the designs and admired the artistry. There was one tiara of which I wish I could have taken a photo. The swirls would have made excellent applique’ designs. That tiara was in the exhibit catalog, which I didn’t buy. I may buy it later and if so, I will show it then.

Stomacher Broach detail

I was also very interested in the historical aspect of the exhibit. The exhibit cards said who bought the piece, who owned it and, in some cases, whether it was purchased for a gift. Some information mentioned changes to designs with the times. The meager information made me think that such an exhibit would be a good way of getting people into the history of the era. There were obvious changes in  the jewelry designs as times changed. Flappers, for example, didn’t need stomacher broaches.

It may be that pieces for the exhibit were selected for their relevance to SF, because there were a lot of pieces owned or purchased by prominent people in local history.

I did, finally, learn what a pave’ diamond setting was. Apparently Ms. Wallis Simpson loved pave’ settings for her panther broaches.

Some of Princess Grace’s jewels were there as were Elizabeth Taylor’s. Sadly, I was very tired after all this visual stimulation, so I didn’t look and read as carefully at these as I would have liked.

I was very annoyed and disappointed with the selection of postcards. None of my favorites were available as postcards. It was probably a good thing as the postcards were poor reproductions anyway. Not the high quality to which I am accustomed. The exhibit catalog was wonderful, but times are tough so I didn’t buy that either. It is on my list. I think you would enjoy it as well!

*No affiliation with this site; I just think the picture of her Jack’s Chain is a good example of the pattern.

Last Saturday and Sunday, I had a lot of time for the first time in several weekends to work on quilt projects and I completely tanked in that department. Most of the time I sat around and couldn’t figure out what to do. I thought about making another giveaway for OWOH, but was talked out of it. I also just wasn’t motivated to do anything. I have a lot of quilt work to do and I really couldn’t focus.

Finally, on Sunday, I pulled out Beach Town and decided to get the facing on and the sleeve ready so that I could take advantage of some hand sewing time I will have next weekend.

Beach Town Trimmed

Yeah! Progress on Beach Town! Trimming is easy.

Beach Town Problem

However, after trimming, I found a little section that needed a repair. One of the hazards of working using this free form method  is getting too close to the edge. In an effort to avoid that problem, I didn’t get close enough. Yes, I could have trimmed it more, but I didn’t want to cut off any part of the sign.

Beach Town Repairs

I had to go rummaging for fabric to find a match. I found some in the scrap bin. Then, I had to carefully lay the fabric and a small piece of batting out so that it didn’t look like a repair (don’t tell, please!). Finally, after it was all laid out and pinned together, I machine quilted the three little sections in matching thread and trimmed it again.

Repaired Beach Town - detail

One of the good things about this project was that I had to focus my mind on a  specific task. One thing I learned was to give the edges a little extra space from important design elements.

Facing on and Turned

I dug out the facing instructions I had made awhile ago and applied a facing to the Beach Town. I still need to practice making more facings. I’ll make another one for FOTY 2010.

Facing detail

Here is the corner of the facing. As I mentioned, I have not sewn it down yet.

Facing and Sleeve

I use the Robbi Joy Eklow method of sleeve making. This most excellent sleeve making method method is in her book, Free Expressions. This time I made the sleeve smaller than her directions specify. I hope it works in terms of a hanging rod to fit.

I spent Sunday, and a few minutes on Saturday night, finishing up the FOTY blocks so I can take them to the CQFA Retreat. When I return from sewing bliss, I hope to have the quilt top ready to show you.

FOTY January pt.2 #1

I really like the warm colors in this group. Some of the darker colors, especially the greens were given to me by my sis for my 2009 birthday.

FOTY January pt.2 #2

Getting down to the bottom of the pile made matching up fabrics difficult. I tend to pull out the ones I really like and press and use those first. Some (not all!) of these were my lesser favorites.

In a way the FOTY exercise helps me train my eye and mind to choose fabrics I really love and want to use right away. At the same time, it trains my eye to avoid fabrics that are not my colors. Yes, I did find fabrics that I bought that made me wonder why I bought them. Before I buy, I think I will have to not just look at the fabric next to lovely coordinating bolts. I think I need to take the potential bolt off the shelf and unroll it a little to see more of the fabric. That will make me shop slower, which can’t be a bad thing.

I pressed, cut and sewed the last fabrics on Saturday. Sunday I counted all of the blocks and consulted with DH about the layout. Not the layout in terms of color, but the layout in terms of numbers of blocks across and down. He told me I had to have an even square root number (or something). I ended up needing 14.83 blocks across the top and down the side. I don’t know what a .83 block looks like, but I knew it wasn’t going to fit evenly into my quilt.

I immediately grabbed the fabrics I received for Christmas and shoved them in the washer. Then I went to work on a pencil roll, which you can read about later in the week. When the fabrics were done, I had figured out that I needed to make 7 more blocks to come out with an even 225 (15 across by 15 down). I pick out some pairs of fabrics and sewed them together. Now I am ready to arrange the quilt and sew it together.

FOTY January pt.2 #3

I do have one extra, which I will stick on the back.

Some of the fabrics I bought at the very end of 2009 will end up in the 2010 quilt. As the Quilt Mavs say “my quilt, my rules.”

Unrelated notes:

* I have no Internet at home at this time, so if I am a little slow responding to comments, I apologize! It makes it a challenge to get blog posts up as well!

* Remember to leave a comment in the One World One Heart post for a chance to win!

FOTY 2009 January #1

I moved the Fabric of the Year project forward all weekend last weekend by sewing like crazy. I made over 100 Zanzibar blocks, as well as cut and organized other little pieces that I need for other projects despite the rain, power outages and family obligations.

Keep in mind that these are SMALL blocks. Each rectangle is 1.5″x3.5″, so they sew together very quickly. I do about 8 at a time using chain piecing methods. I talked about the selection and resizing of these blocks on February 16, 2009.

FOTY 2009 January #2

I actually felt rather smug getting so much done. Sadly, that feeling was short lived. I haven’t done anything this week except a little pressing of fabric. Pressing of fabric is the first step in the process so that is a good thing. I, however, had grand illusions of finishing the blocks this week and making another pencil roll this weekend. I have about 18 more blocks to make from uncut/unpressed fabric. Half of those fabrics are pressed and half are not, so I still have some work to do.

I also have about 10 groups of cut pieces waiting for mates that I need to sew. I have a lot of dots, which should not surprise you, and I am trying not to put dots together every time if I can help it. In some cases I can’t help it. In the grander design of the quilt, I don’t think it will matter.

FOTY 2009 January #3

I have been trying to post this blog post all week as well and there were several days where I did not get near the computer at home. I am glad podcasts are around, because they kept me in the creative loop.

FOTY 2009 January #4

One of the things I tried to do with this batch is put contrasting colors together. I did some of that before, but didn’t feel successful. I was bored putting two yellows or two blues together, so I decided to mix it up a little.

FOTY 2009 - January #6

I am in love with the blues. What do you think?

FOTY 2009 - January #7

FOTY 2009 - January #8

FOTY 2009 - January #9

In case you were wondering, I have about a foot of design wall space because the Tarts are still waiting for me to machine applique some hearts onto the curvy teapot. Below is what I have to work with:

Design Wall - January 2010

FOTY December 2009

I am slowly getting a bit of the FOTY blocks done in between the Christmas gifts. I am branching out a bit as well and not putting same color with same color all he time. For some of the color combinations it just didn’t look right. Not sure how I will handle that choice when I start putting together the whole quilt, but I am sure that it will work out one way or another.

Cutting FOTY strips and putting blocks together is my main project for next week

It has been very cold here in the West. Not cold like Minnesota or upstate New York, but a little on the dry and bitter side for us. This inspired me to get started on Winer even though we are still officially in Autumn. Enjoy!

There is more information on the Creative Prompt Page.

Winter Wonderland.

Snow

Ice skating

Winter Solstice

Skiing (Schifahren)

Cross Country Skiing

Winter Olympics

S.A.D.

Winter definition: Meteorological winter is the season having the shortest days and the lowest average temperatures, which have the coldest weather. (from Wikipedia)

Snow boots, mittens, hats, parkas, snow shoes, long underwear, Smartwool socks

Ice scrapers

Isicles

ice storm

Weather safety and awareness

Winter poems

Winter in the Country by Claude McKay
Sweet life! how lovely to be here
And feel the soft sea-laden breeze
Strike my flushed face, the spruce’s fair
Free limbs to see, the lesser trees’

Bare hands to touch, the sparrow’s cheep
To heed, and watch his nimble flight
Above the short brown grass asleep.
Love glorious in his friendly might,

Music that every heart could bless,
And thoughts of life serene, divine,
Beyond my power to express,
Crowd round this lifted heart of mine!

But oh! to leave this paradise
For the city’s dirty basement room,
Where, beauty hidden from the eyes,
A table, bed, bureau, and broom

In corner set, two crippled chairs
All covered up with dust and grim
With hideousness and scars of years,
And gaslight burning weird and dim,

Will welcome me . . . And yet, and yet
This very wind, the winter birds
The glory of the soft sunset,
Come there to me in words.

A Winter Eden by Robert Frost
A winter garden in an alder swamp,
Where conies now come out to sun and romp,
As near a paradise as it can be
And not melt snow or start a dormant tree.

It lifts existence on a plane of snow
One level higher than the earth below,
One level nearer heaven overhead,
And last year’s berries shining scarlet red.

It lifts a gaunt luxuriating beast
Where he can stretch and hold his highest feat
On some wild apple tree’s young tender bark,
What well may prove the year’s high girdle mark.

So near to paradise all pairing ends:
Here loveless birds now flock as winter friends,
Content with bud-inspecting. They presume
To say which buds are leaf and which are bloom.

A feather-hammer gives a double knock.
This Eden day is done at two o’clock.
An hour of winter day might seem too short
To make it worth life’s while to wake and sport.

See the Creative Prompt page if you have questions about this project.

Post the direct URL where your drawing, doodle, artwork is posted (e.g. your blog, Flickr) in the comments area of this post. It will keep all the artwork together.

The Creative Prompt Project, also, now, has a Flickr group, which you can join and where you can post your responses.

Pencil Roll #1, closed

Pencil Roll #1, open

Julie made me a pencil roll last year, which I discussed in a post in January 2008.

I recently bought a pencil roll pattern from Pink Chalk Studio and, after a bad pattern experience (from a different company), have a great deal of respect for Kathy’s clear instructions and helpful notes.

I wasn’t able to show this until now even though I made it during my week away, because it is a gift. I made it for Julie’s birthday and wanted it to be a surprise.

The fabrics I used for the strips all came from TFQ’s strip box. They are, what she calls, Fresh Modern fabrics. They are not exclusively Amy Butler and Valori Wells, but are in that vein. The green is an old Marimekko fabric I bought at the Crate and Barrel outlet a long time ago. It spent some time with TFQ and was on its way back to me when I decided to do this project.

This is the small version of the pencil roll. Kathy gives directions for a 12 slot and a 24 slot. You can, with the directions, make one any size. I didn’t quite realize how big they were when I was making this one.

The pattern is really easy to follow. This is a fast project to make. The only part that takes time is the quilting/making the pockets. You have to be aware of what you are doing.

I hope Julie likes it and finds it useful.

Kissy Fish Full, Nov. 2009

Back in the Quilting Arts Dark Ages, they showed some embroidery stitches over a series of pages. Somehow those embroidery stitches combined with a viewing of  quilt artist Susan Carlson’s work on Simply Quilts inspired me to get started on Kissy Fish.

As an aside: I am not getting back to the bleary photos, this piece is really, no REALLY, hard to photograph with the equipment I have.

This piece is covered with shiny things that reflect the light: beads, french ribbon, thread with metallic bits. It is on the list to be professionally photographed. Anyway.

Kissy Fish, detail 1

The stitches I used most frequently on this piece are called Feather Stitch. It was highlighted in Quilting Arts #1. It was really fun to see how the stitches added to the piece and helped it develop. It was fun to see how I could make each bit of kelp different with beads, varying widths of thread, etc.

Kissy Fish, detail 2

One of the things I knew about this piece was that it wasn’t intended to be a masterpiece. It was intended to be a test. It has turned out much better than a test.

I also never intended it to be hung as a quilt is hung. I always intended that it would be framed and hung like a piece of traditional art. That is still my plan.

I think the hand embroidery is mostly done. As I do on many of my Pamela pieces, I went about the process backwards. I did the embroidery first and now am thinking I need to do more quilting.  Machine quilting. I’ll have to seriously think about it, because I don’t want to break the beads or my careful stitching.

Oliver Twist

I have a number of tote bags with different projects in them. The idea is to be able to “grab and go.” The Big Game (we won, in case you needed to know) was this weekend. It is, generally, the family kickoff to the holiday season. I needed a project. Since I finished the handwork on Beach Town, I had nothing on the front burner. I grabbed an old project bag and found Christmas!

Really, I found a project called Kissy Fish. I haven’t worked on it seriously for awhile. I was pretty close to being done, so I brought it with me to the game. I’ll talk about Kissy Fish in another post some day.

The bag was a pit. It was obvious that the last few times I worked on it, I threw stuff into it willy nilly. Unearthing it was fun! I found great stuff that I had forgotten I had, like 8 packs of Oliver Twist threads! Who knows how long they have been in the bottom of the bag, but they are out now.  I also found a bunch of beads and other stuff I haven’t seen in ages. There were a bunch of spools of Aurifil, Madeira and Perl cotton.

It is really like an early Christmas gift. I can’t wait to get my hands on those Oliver Twist thread.