Various & Sundry #10 – Mid September

Tools, Supplies and Fabric

Do you have a Silhouette Cameo cutter? If so, you might want to read a post by Sarah Vedeler about cutting shapes successfully. Of course, YMMV.

Did you know Elizabeth Hartman has a Kona Designer Palette? No? Me either.

Projects

Timeless Treasures had a Sew-a-thon to make pillowcases for the Conn-Kerr Cancer Center and the Million Pillowcase challenge. Not only did they make pillowcases, but there are a lot of resources on the post for patterns and other resources.

There is (or was, maybe) an Aurifil Designer challenge. I happened to pop by Quilt Jane and see Pat Wys’s block. It is another great use of baby Friendship Stars. Remember the Friendship Star block, designed by Camille Roskelley, that I used for Kelly’s Round Robin? I really like that block and the work I did on Kelly’s Round Robin. I might have to make another one. 😉 BTW, if you make one Pat’s blocks (pattern on Auribuzz post) and post it to their Flickr group, you could win a prize.

Remember Scrapitude? Well, Charlotte is at it again with a new mystery quilt. Sandy announced it on her blog this week. The cutting directions are out now and there is no sewing until January. I have been thinking about making another Scrapitude quilt, mostly to tweak the colors that I used in Scrapitude Carnavale. I like that quilt a lot, but there are few things I would do differently. Perhaps this version would be a good design with which to to play with color and fabrics. Still ….mystery quilts. Hhmm. The BAMQG mystery quilt did not work out so well for me, so I am sort of off mystery quilts.Will you play this time?

Kati had some top finishes recently and showed them off. Great work. The Lucky Stars quilt is especially awesome.

Books

STC Craft has a new book, Unconventional & Unexpected: American Quilts Below the Radar 1950-2000, out by ROCK STAR quilt history person, Rod Kiracofe. He used to be involved with the Quilt Digest and has written other books. The awesome part of this book is the dates. It covers some of my own quilt life and that of my friends. Perhaps I’ll see one of my quilts in it. (HA!!) The book is mentioned on a recent blog post on the STC Craft blog. The book also has its own page on the Abrams site. Let’s all buy it and make it a success!

Media

This quilt caught my attention when it was posted to the guild’s group.

I bought a subscription to Quilt Now! I think I like Love of Patchwork and Quilting better, but they sent me a ruler and you know how I love rulers! You can subscribe to Quilt Now! through Pink Castle fabrics, if you live in the US. If you live in the UK, you can subscribe directly.

Melody Johnson has a new blog. You can read about why on her old blog, which will stay as is for the time being, but not be updated.

Color

I  was going through the magazines stacked up next to my bed the other day and found a quote I wanted to share with you. In the January/February 2014 issue of Fons & Porter: Love of Quilting (pg.13), there is an article about two color quilts. In it the author writes “There is a tendency for white to dominate since it has a great degree of reflectivity than most other colors in the spectrum. The quilt designs that are the most successful are those that utilize the two colors in equal quantities.” Part of me wants to believe this, because it is Fons and Porter, after all, and they do their research, right? I haven’t done a test, but I do think that ratios are really important and that using a little less white, even a VERY little and a little more color might be a better way to go.

Thinking

I am a little hard pressed to figure out where to put this article about thinking like an entrepreneur. Now you are thinking “WTH, Jaye, why should I think like an entrepreneur?”.  The article quickly morphs into a way to develop a vision for yourself as an artist and a vision for your work. It is interesting. Who wants to start?

Here is an article from Lifehacker that talks about 6 obstacles that hinder your creative projects. How many are relevant to you?