Author: Jaye

Quiltmaker who enjoys writing and frozen chocolate covered bananas.

Is it Possible to Have too Much Icky Green?

These are the blocks that I have made so far as examples for my beginning quilt class. I usually keep most of them at the office for teaching purposes, so this was the first time I had put them all up together on the design wall.

The first thing I noticed was that there was too much of that acid/icky green. Not that you can really have to much of it, but I need to use more of the purse conversational with the black background in the future blocks (still have a fusible applique’, a foundation pieced block and some others to complete) and well as the tone-on-tone blue dot.

This is definitely a good example of why you should look at your quilt blocks before you finish them and put them together. I am not Paula Nadelstern who works on a tiny table and never looks at the whole quilt while it is in process. She is a genius and I strive to be like her.

I made one of the alternate blocks, the Nosegay, and had a lot of trouble which taught me to not slack on the templates. As some background, I was trying to print templates and HP Mobile printing, which never worked properly anyway, had taken over all the print functions on my computer. This prevented me from printing from
EQ5 directly. Always one to revert to pencil and paper, I drew out the block with pencil and paper and made the templates on graph paper. It went together fine until I got to the cone part of the block. The two background pieces were obviously too small.

Here is a detail of my transgressions. ;-0

I checked the template with the fabric and they matched. I couldn’t figure out the problem, then work got busy and we went skiing. Finally, this week I was forced to prepare some more templates for class and took drastic action by deleting the pathetic HP Mobile Printing. Now everything works fine. I can’t print directly, but I can save to PDF, which HP Mobile Printing was preventing from EQ5. I redid the templates for the Nosegay and sure enough all of the original templates were fine, except for those two tricky background pieces.

Now the block looks like this:

And here is the detail.

I also finished the basket. I like the way it turned out and was pleasantly surprised when I used the purse conversational with the black background as a background.

Class notes

My students are back in the groove of quilting, so tomorrow I will give them their next block, a foundation piecing block. I picked the New York Beauty for the block with the Pineapple as the alternate. Not sure which one I will do. Perhaps both.

I still have to finish the damn Nosegay and am thinking that I will have to completely redo the bottom (cone) part. It just doesn’t fit. C’est la vie.

I did have osme success with applique’, however. The Grandmother’s Flower Garden petals are applique’d to their background. This is one of the blocks from the class that has been kind of languishing.

I also worked on applique’ from an Elly Sienkiewicz class that I took years ago at Thimble Creek. It is one of the blocks from one of her Baltimore Album Quilt books. After doing two of the cut snowflake type blocks I decided that there was no way I could do an entire Baltimore Album Quilt. Still the block I worked on is nice and I did want to finish it. My applique’ leaves a lot to be desired, but it shows me making progress. The journey not the destination. I look forward to finishing it so I can say that one UFO is off the pile.

Fabric Painting

After the CQFA Steering Committee meeting at KAM’s house, we did fabric painting. KAM organized the whole thing and it was a nice ending to the meeting.

This is my first attempt:
After my first attempt, we watched a five (or so) minute segment of Simply Quilts. It was good to watch after, because I wasn’t too influenced by the demonstrator.

Here is the piece that I finished after we watched the segment.

One thing I got out of the segment is that simple shapes seem to be better, so I worked on this one:

My final piece is the best one IMO.

It was GREAT not to have to do any organization for the project but to just start painting on fabric. KAM was so generous with her paint, fabric, etc. It was wonderful. As you may know, I am not a big fan of messy work. I did enjoy doing this project as I could just play and not worry about making a masterpiece.

I plan to try the presentor’s idea of doing some curved strip piecing through the middle of my piece. I don’t want to make these the center of a piece. I just don’t think they could stand up to the scrutiny.

DCM and I discussed not having enough time to just play and wreck fabric pieces. We are both having a hard time getting over the feeling that each piece we make must be perfect.

A topic for another day….

Forced Creativity WORKS!!!!

This is the block that I made today. I wanted to get it done to show my students and just hadn’t made the time. I decided that I was in the groove and did it this morning. I thought I would run my errands first, but realized that that was deadly and did the pieced part of the block first. After cutting, it took me about half an hour to do the main part of the piecing. HALF AN HOUR!!! That is nothing. How could I forget that piecing, once you know what you are doing, takes no time??!!?? Later this afternoon I appliqued the handle and sewed the two halves togther.

I am pretty excited now and will, perhaps, make the Nosegay. I gave the Nosegay to the students as an alternate block to the 8-pointed star. I always give an alternate block, but haven’t made many of them for this project. Nobody has done the Nosegay including me. It is the traditional version with inset seams and not Doreen Speckman’s version with no insets.

I think the colors are pretty bright, but I like the brightness and the different way in which the fabrics react with each. The purse fabric is a new colorway, as I ran out of the other colorway. I like this colorway better with the bright green and pink. I am wondering if I should redo the other blocks with this colorway? Seems a little crazy, but I am the woman who took apart a whole back of a quilt, because I needed to use some of the fabric on the front of another quilt. Stranger things have happened. 😉

My sis said she didn’t really like the color combination. Oh well. I have to admit that I was getting tired of it until this most recent block. I like it. We’ll see how it ends up.

This is an interesting photo that I took before I cut and placed the middle pieces. You can see that I was having some trouble cutting the background so that it all lined up. I eventually got it right, which you can confirm in the photo at the top.

My problem with lining up the fabric the way I did is that two sides of the block (top and left) are on the bias. I have to remember that so that I can take care in handling the block later.

I still have to applique the Grandmother’s Flower Garden to a background, so perhaps I should do that instead of starting the Nosegay. It shouldn’t take too much time, especially if I machine applique the petals. Stay tuned.

New books

One of my faithful readers asked me to publish a list of quilt and creativity books that I acquire. It would be nice if I wrote a review of each one, but I will start out with just a list.

Paper Piecing Picnic from the editors and contributors of Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine and Quiltmaker Magazine. Thanks JCN!
Kaffe Fassett’s Museum Quilts with Liza Prior Lucy. Thanks Beth!
Textile Designs: 200 years of patterns for the printed fabrics arranged by motif, colour, period and design by Susan Meller and Joost Elffers. Thanks JZS!
Mary Shaffer: American quilt maker by Gwen Marston. Thanks, Ruth!
Borders, Bindings and Edges: the art of finishing your quilt by Sally Collins. Thanks, Ruth!

Thanks go to people, because I bought the books with birthday money or was given the books for my birthday. I know this isn’t an exhaustive list, so check back. I am a lucky girl.

Forced Creativity: Kissy Fish


Kissy Fish is a small piece that I created so I would have some handwork and be able to try a few things. I haven’t worked on it lately due to time, and didn’t for a long time, because of an injury. In a continuing effort to sew and make progress on my quiltmaking, I pulled out the project and brought it with me to DS’ appointment today.

Every Friday I have about an hour to do something portable and not computer related. I have been bringing blank paper and writing letters. Over Christmas, I brought Christmas cards and wrote those. It occurred to me today that I could bring a portable sewing/quiltmaking project and make some small progress.


In the detail above I have placed slash marks in the area I was able to accomplish in the hour I had to work on it.

One reason I started this project was because of the embroidery articles in Quilting Arts magazine. I thought I would like to try some of the stitches, but am not interested at all in Redwork or an entire project based on embroidery such as a crazy quilt. I also had a lot of beads and thought it would be good to try beading out. Around that time I saw the work of quilt artist, Susan Carlson, on Simply Quilts and was inspired to try both beading and embroidery in a free form sort of way on Kissy Fish.

It is not meant to be a great work of ART. It is meant to be a test piece for me. I hope that it comes out well, but I am giving myself permission to do what I can and screw up if I need to. It is quite liberating to think this way.

Efforts at Creativity Successful???


George is DS’ much beloved “Lovey.” As a Beanie Baby, George wasn’t designed for the difficult life he has been allotted. George gets laid on, rubbed, tossed, swing by his tail, hidden, etc. In the last little while, I have convinced DS that George is getting old and needs to be coddled, so George mostly lives in bed with 37 other stuffed animals, a body pillow, 4 regular pillows, numerous books and magazine and is only subject to extreme love at night.

Periodcally George gets too much love and begins to leak as DS is preparing for sleep. This creates cries of abject horror as they did tonight. There is no putting off the repair of George or there will be no sleep for any of us for hours. The sleep, when it finally comes, will the sleep of exhaustion and tears — not restful sleep. I must immediately go up and repair him.

Creativity comes in mysterious ways and I guess this is preparing me for what is to come or continuing the brief spurts of creativity I am forcing on myself.

An Effort to Be Creative

I spent the weekend in Seattle with JCN. We hung up her drapes, which are silk and called Poppy, but the color really looks like raspberries. I was somewhat inspired by the embroidery of Riita-Liisa Havisto of Finland, which was on display, with her daughter’s work at the Nordic Heritage Museum. You can see an announcement at http://www.nordicmuseum.org/index.php?t=events&c=full&e=156 or find much about their work using this search.

The detail fo the stitching was wonderful. It made me want to do hand stitching.

Janome 11K

I had been thinking of this machine lately and had a chance to go and look at it on Saturday. I am in love. The thing is wonderful! I want it. You can see all of the bells and whistles at the official Janome 11,000 page.

I have a Janome 9000 and have been very happy with it. Lately I have been lusting after a new machine and the 11000 looks wonderful. It has the same precision sewing that my current machine does, the color screen (that uses a stylus and not fingers) as well as the larger bed that some of my pals have been raving about in the
Janome 6500. I believe that is that the correct model.

The 11000 can read from CDs, straight from a computer or, as I mentioned from a flash drive! There is a USB slot so you can stick a flash drive right into the
sewing machine! Talk about cyborgs! This is a computer-sewing machine
cyborg, if there is such a thing.

The cost, with all the bells and whistles is too much. I don’t have it.

I went to a different dealer than I have been visting and they were very nice, very attentive and not slimey. Classes on using the machine and the software are included for as long as I own the machine. They also have an embroidery club that meets every
month. They offer membership that club free for a year after you buy a machine. I don’t do a lot of embroidery, but I enjoy the simple things that I do with the embroidery module. With the 11000, it sounds like Janome has made the embroidery module much easier to use and manipulate the designs, so I might use it more often.

Sigh. I just wish it weren’t so much, though I am sure it is
worth it. I told DH about it and he didn’t say anything. I will just
have to work harder and save my pennies. Or win the lottery.

Sacchi Creativity

I received a Sacchi tri-fold portfolio with paper and colored pencils in it as a Christmas gift. The portfolio is turquoise. I love it. I have started to carry it with me in order to have art supplies available when I feel creative.

Last night, on the way home on the train, I took it out and doodled while I listened to Anita Shreve’s book A Wedding in December. First I doodled the designs that are stamped on the edge of the pencils, then I drew some blocks. I felt so out of practice. It was hard to doodle. I need practice.

I am glad I took the Liz Berg class, because hopefully, it will get me going. Not sure if I will be able to create an idea journal like Liz’s but I can do what I can do.

Soak up the Sun

This post was hanging around and I just got all the photos and everything together to post it.

DC was gorgeous the week of September 1, 2005. Blue Blue sky. Warm, windows open all night kind of weather. We are back to the fog, though as it got too hot to the east of us. The cold front above us must have moved away allowing the warm weather back to those eastern cities.

Sun, however, is a wonderful thing. I noticed the wonderful shadows, which I have posted below, on my wall.

These look like an eye.

I think they were created by the sun shining on a CD that was sitting without a case on my desk.

What can you make from the designs?

Another quilt class attempt

Saturday CQFA had a members only workshop on design with Liz Berg. She was a good teacher. Informative, fun, well prepared. I thought I was insane to try another design class from a quilt teacher after I signed up for this one, but it turned out fine. She wasn’t familar with Pentak & Lauer’s Design Basics book, but I was still impressed with her teaching.

She went over the basics of design – line, value, etc and then had us do exercises. Some of the exercises were similar to the ones we did in the other class I took, but they made more sense this time, because of the preparation.

One thing she said was to keep a sketchbook. Her sketchbook has magazine cut outs in in it as well as her own doodles and drawings. I am going to try to at least condense my doodles and drawings, but I may have to just do them in my journal as I can’t imagine carring a sketchbook as well as a journal. Still, I did get the cool sketchbook with colored pencils for Christmas so perhaps I will have to.

I would recommend her as a teacher. I’ll post some of my exercises later. See Liz Berg’s work at

Carrie Bryan’s Blog

Carrie Bryan has started a quilt and garden blog, http://quiltgarden.blogspot.com/. While mostly about her garden and some quilting, she has a very good, recent post about God on it. Not one for the general, superficial God-chumminess that people seem to have these days, I was surprised to find a thoughtful and thought provoking post.

Her blog is quite new and there is a post about her recent quilt thoughts on it as well. I like Carrie’s descriptions of her garden.

Editing

In my post of October 31, I mentioned the things I was thinking about. One was ‘editing’, a new term used by designers which seems to mean tossing old junk. JCN helped me go through my fabric and junk fabric that I will never use.

Lesson 1: use your precious fabric (or embellishments or paints or supplies) or they may not be so precious to you after awhile.

We took three grocery bags full of fabric to the Children’s Quilt Project drop off place at New Pieces. My fabric closet and studio feel lighter. I don’t feel as oppressed by my stuff.

Lesson 2: choose carefully what you bring into your life.

I have also decided that people like to give me things. Because I have a well developed sense of guilt and cannot give things away? Perhaps? No more. Out went the lacy edging that had been gathering spiderwebs in the corner for 8.5 years.

Lesson 3: save money. Only buy what you love.

Lesson 4: save heartache later. Only take what you love from other people.

As we are getting ready to do some work on our house, I am ‘editing’ more of my space. I meant to clean out my closet over the break, but didn’t seem to get to it. I am off on Wednesday and may try to do it then. I feel that even doing small chunks makes progress. Perhaps I can get the shoes and purses done. We will see. I am ok with doing one drawer or one corner.

Lesson 5: ‘edit’ in small chunks.