Various & Sundry 2014 #2

What I am reading:

Tools, Supplies, Books & Notions

Fabric Printing leaps to other work environments when law librarians trying not get their Poster Session posters wrinkled on their way to their annual conference begin printing their posters on paper. They used Spoonflower! The article was in a recent issue of a national law librarian publication. Perhaps quiltmaking is next?

Remember when I was talking about the Girl in profile Serendipity Quilt? Caroline, our teacher said to use a glue stick. Recently I saw a Sewline Glue Pen somewhere. It looks completely awesome and perfect for this project. Of course, I haven’t done more than create the pattern, but still….

Nancy Zieman of Sewing with Nancy and the Nancy’s Notions empire has written a book. Go buy it; she is amazing!

The Gentle Art of Domesticity by Jane Brocket is being republished in eBook form. I dropped by her blog and saw the notice there. She is the publisher this time and discusses working with the people who did the technical work required to get it into eBook form.

Aren’t these pretty notions? I love the wood. He has a whole section of quiltmaking items that would look fabulous and, probably, be lovely with which to work. I haven’t bought anything from him, but I am eying the bobbin holder and the seam rippers. I wonder if they are sharp?

Missouri Star Quilt Company is publishing a new magazine. I haven’t decided whether or not to buy it.

Quilt Colour Workshop (with a ‘u’!) is a new book from the people at Fat Quarterly magazine. It publishes in mid-March. I saw a review and it sounds interesting, though I thought there was a lot of emphasis on the patterns on projects. I went and looked on Amazon and there is a “without the u version” 😉 for sale there. I’d like to look through the book before I commit to buying.

Fabric

I thought about including this category in with notions, but decided Fabric is a thing unto itself.

Anna Maria Horner has decided to create a fabric stack reflecting her mood of the month. Her January Gathering post talks about her inspiration, her own rules for creating the stack and gives some words that reflect the month for her. The precise details for subscribing are posted in a lovely PDF on her site. I am terribly tempted to subscribe. As if I need more fabric.

I love this idea, especially to stay inspired with color and fabric. I am thinking that, although two months are almost gone from 2014, that I could do this as well. I could use my own fabric and not sell stacks, but be inspired by the month, reinvigorate my quiltmaking, reacquaint myself with my fabric and generally be inspired. Who wants to play?

Services & Sites

AQS, as part of their membership fee, now has My Quilt Place. There you can create your own webpage, upload photos, post events & link to your favorite blogs. I haven’t tried it, but if you are wanting a webpage, this might be the place to start. There didn’t seem to be any place to search (wanted to see if anyone was working on Scrapitude), but I think they want Nosy Parkers to login before searching.

Not sure what category this goes in, but I found a great story about why you should label your quilts on Bonnie Hunter’s blog.

I finally opened up Feedly and looked through some blogs I had marked. I came across Malka Dubrowsky’s blog and her “What I am Working on Wednesday” post. This has the same or a similar meaning to Pam (and others) WIP Wednesday posts. Somehow the name sounds different. I really had a blast of blog inspiration that I would do this as well. Then I realized that almost all of my posts are about what I am working on. Back to the drawing board!

Susan Brubaker Knapp is the new Quilting Arts TV host. No word on what Pokey Bolton is doing now, but it seems that she is making a lot of changes in her life. Everyone needs a change at some point even if they are immersed in the quilt world. Good luck to both!

Projects, Patterns & Tutorials

Wondering about tension? Eileen has a tutorial on her blog for testing tension, working with your bobbin and general information about tension. You might not need it, but it is a good refresher.

In a recent Quilts & More, I saw a cute backpack and decided to make it for a young lady I know. The Fat Quarter Shop still had kits of the fabrics. While I have plenty of fabric, I decided to use the kit, because I would probably put too much pink in it for her tastes. Want to make it with me?

Remember when I talked about the fabric handbags? I haven’t forgotten about them; I just haven’t put them on the front burner. I need to. I just haven’t. I was surfing the web and came across a post by the Happy Zombie where she makes what she calls the Small Treats Totes. These might work. I don’t mind the other pattern at all. I did think it was a little cumbersome to make, but not terrible and I am sure I can change the pattern a bit if I work with it. Also, all the bags done have to be the same., do they?

Mosaic Quilting
Mosaic Quilting

Ami Simms recently talked about crumb blocks. Katie of Katie’s Quilting Corner and Bonnie Hunter of Quiltville both talk about crumb blocks and I always thought it sounded faintly odd. Basically I didn’t understand it and never took the time to look it up. Seeing Ami Simms blog suddenly put it all together for me. I call the process that creates crumb blocks Mosaic Piecing. I suppose it could also be called crazy piecing. I am not exactly sure if there is a difference. I know that when I make my crumb/mosaic blocks I use all the same color in one piece. I noticed that Bonnie Hunter used all different colors in her blocks.

Daisy Fraser Wreath told me about a Skillbuilder Sampler, which I thought I would share with you. I am all about building skills as it prevents frustration! There are a number of blocks there that I have not made, which means, perhaps, I should go and build some skills. The quilt-a-long is over, but all the information is still there and my Quilt class tutorials would dovetail nicely.

I stopped by the Be*Mused blog and saw she had made one of Jenni Baker’s drawstring bags. This is another good way to wrap gifts, similar to my gift bags

Carol recently pointed me to the Quilt Rat’s blog where she had posted a post on design and repetition. It isn’t exactly on repetition like we discussed in the podcast with Sandy, but another way to enhance your art with repetition. She shows how much can be done with a simple outline and give examples of modifying it for different techniques. This is a great exercise to add to your arsenal, if you are stuck, as well.

I became aware of the Modern Bias Blog when I saw that someone with that name on Flickr favorited my Russian Rubix blocks. I looked through some of the posts. She has some information about paper piecing in a post where she extolls the virtues of another blogger’s Economy block. A lot of the information can be found in a multitude of other sources, but the fabric combinations are fantastic and might just be the inspiration you need.

Jackie recently posted a link to 15 pincushion patterns. If you need a gift, there are all sorts of different pincushions at this site from which to choose.

Other Artists & Inspiration

Have you seen the Mrs. Billings quilt? It is really amazing. Thanks to Moda for tweeting it out.

Remember my Corner Store quilt? I saw another one on the web recently. It is very nice and I like the cheerfulness as well as the grey background.

How about the Olympic Patchwork Quilt? It is really pretty and kind of reminds me of FOTY 2010. Are Olympic quilts a thing? I remember a book about the Atlanta Summer Games quilts, but do people make quilts for each Olympics? I haven’t searched (no excuse, I know), but let me know if something quilt related is going on for the Olympics in your local guild or quilt group.

Here is a follow-up to the exhibition of Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle’s work at the Wisconsin Museum of Quilts & Textiles. Weeks wrote a blog post about it, some background and the artists’ reception.

Danny Gregory wrote a post recently about his commute to work. It struck home, because of my Ferry Building 365 Project. My commute is the same everyday. I don’t really have the option to walk or bike, but the FB365project helps me look at at least one part of my commute with fresh eyes every day. This quote spoke to me “But with novelty comes a renewed awareness, another bucket of ice water over the head, the shock of the new.”

I heard about the Adventures in Arting podcast (also available on iTunes) recently, perhaps from Tanesha. I downloaded a few episodes, but only listened to the first two over the weekend. Oh My Goodness! This is a great podcast – at least the first two episodes were great. In the first two episodes they talk about a couple of my mantras: intention and failure. In the design episodes with Sandy, I often mention the artists intention. This is YOUR intention when you are making something. Julie Fei-Fan Balzer and her guests discuss intention in the first episode and I love what they say. In the second episode, there is a guest, Ronda Palazzari, and the three of them (Julie’s mom is co-host) discuss failure. Eileen, Julie’s mom, talks about what a negative and unhelpful word failure is and gives four different and more helpful ways of thinking about failure. No, this is not a quilting podcast, though, there was a brief mention of stitch, but you can glean a lot about creativity from listening. Give it a try. I’ll let you know if I decide I don’t like it later.

From ResearchBuzz: “Now available: the digitized scrapbooks of Harry Houdini. “The collection contains ten scrapbooks filled with advertisements, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, reports, how-to articles, and almost everything else regarding magic from roughly the 1830s through the 1920s. Houdini owned all the books at the time of his death, but he did not compile all of the clippings.” These are mostly an interesting collection of advertisements, but if you are interested in magic and the history of magic, there will be another element for you. I thought they were interesting as a specimen of scrapbooking.

Housekeeping

Housekeeping: Subscribe/ Unsubscribe
Housekeeping: Subscribe/ Unsubscribe

I have been receiving a lot of cranky-sounding emails from readers about the email subscription. Most recently I got a frantic comment from a reader asking to be unsubscribed from the email. This comment was followed a few minutes later by an email.

I am always sorry to see people leave the emailed version of my posts. I am happy to unsubscribe you, but you can also unsubscribe yourself. The picture to the side illustrates how to unsubscribe. The spot can be found in the upper right hand corner of my blog.

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Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

4 thoughts on “Various & Sundry 2014 #2”

  1. I made some of the Jeni Baker drawstring bags recently and recommend them highly. They are really straightforward to make and you end up with a lined bag — no edges to finish and you can enjoy more of your fabrics in one bag!

  2. Definitely a good option for the political ladies. They are VERY easy to put together. It took me longer to choose the fabric combinations than to actually make the bags.

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