Various & Sundry #24

Well, 24 Various & Sundries (sp??) for the year. WOW! Who knew I had that much miscellaneous nonsense to share? Here is the last one.

Projects

I didn’t do a ‘Hey! Make these Projects for Christmas post’ because my theory is that if you haven’t already started by December, it isn’t going to happen. That is the way it works for me. And I actually was invited to parties this year, so I didn’t have much time to sew on the weekends, which is when I get the majority of my sewing done.

As a result, you can start on your gifts for next year. Sue Astroth has a cool chess board posted on her blog. The spray painting makes it a bit too much work for me, but I like the idea.

Quiltin’ Jenny took up the gift bag banner this year. I was a slacker and didn’t harangue about that pet project. Did you make gift bags? Let’s see them!

Quilt World News

The Pantone Color Institute has come out with their signature color for 2012: Tangerine Tango. Read the story on the Always Quilting (Australia) blog.

FunQuilts is becoming Modern Quilt Studio. They have a post about their upcoming schedule on a recent Craft Nectar post. Their new studio will again be in the basement of their home and Weeks has been keeping a diary of the renovations.

Do you know Pinterest? It is a great way to wile away the hours. There is also a great trick to find out who has pinned what pictures from your site. Adrianne over at Little Bluebell posted the tip last week. Check out who has pinned pictures from Artquiltmaker.com/blog!

My Boxing Day Sew-in post was featured on Creating the Hive. I don’t know why, but it is a thrill when they feature one of my posts. I guess I feel like my writing is validated in some way. Not that I need it to be validated, of course.

Quiltin’ Jenny has joined the SeamedUp team. Check out the announcement.

Fabric and Supplies

The week before Christmas felt like hell at work. All the vendors wanted everything done by the end of the year. Management wanted everything done by the end of the year and I wanted to bury my head in the sand. I tried very hard to buy fabric and somehow just couldn’t achieve it. Camille Roskelley kindly posted a picture of her new fabric line. I asked her to send me some…

Wouldn’t these 1920s designs make great fabric for bags and pillowcases?

Do you stock up on thread per pound when you find it? Do you use mystery fiber thread with your 100% cotton LQS quality fabric? I really liked this thread snob essay. Now, don’t get shirty about the word ‘snob.’ It is a perfectly good word in certain cases. Read the essay, tell me what you think.

There is also a review of Aurifil thread on the KikiSews blog. I liked the way she talked about what needle she used and other such details.

I heard about Quilting by Celia from the Katie’s Quilting Corner podcast. I was tempted to go and take a look because of the promise that she had investigated several methods of making half square triangles. Nice blog. She does lots of blocks, which you know I love. I am also amazed at the people doing the Orca Bay mystery challenge. The steps seem daunting – ‘make 350 HSTs’. Yikes! I would read that and run away screaming.

Design

Weeks Ringle posted about negative space on her blog recently. This post probably relates to their new Transparency book (which nobody has seen fit to send me yet. 🙁  ) While negative space isn’t, as of yet, officially part of the design series I am doing with Sandy, it is an important concept and I will at least mention this post in the Design Resources section.

Not Quilt Related

I liked this list of things to stop doing. They were all reasonable and doable to me.