Jaye – Page 83 – Artquiltmaker Blog

Bill Kerr Workshop: Fabric Smackdown

Remember I wrote a really long post about the Bill Kerr Workshop? Well, that was only the talking part of the workshop. The Fabric Smackdown was the working part of the workshop. I moaned when I heard what he wanted us to do, but once I was into it, I loved it!

This is the best, most exciting way to make fabric selections for a quilt!!! At least until tomorrow when I find a new way to choose fabric. 😉

He asked us to each to pick a fabric that gave us trouble from the fabrics we brought.

Hhmmm. Difficult. I didn’t want to pick anything too hideous as I suspected we would have to do something with the fabric. I thought about brown, which is really a challenge for me, but decided to stick with some color.

I chose this green and pink. Despite pink and green being compliments on the color wheel, this fabric is so strong that it is a challenge to work with. I still wonder why I bought it. Perhaps someone gave it to me or it was part of a pack. I haven’t been able to find anymore of it so I used it for something. How quickly we forget.

Yes, we did have to use the fabric for something.

Bill picked two fabrics, mostly, gave the two fabrics to their owners and then the owners had to make a fabric palette that got the fabrics from one to other.

There were two groups with three people. I was in one of them with Jennifer (of the photographing the meetings fame) and Lynette (of the A-B-C Challenge fame).

We used our fabric and our group shared, so Jennifer pawed through my scraps bags while I looked through Lynette’s neatly folded FQs. The criteria we were supposed to use in addition to hue were:

scale
figure/ground
illustration style
pattern
value
saturation
Large scale prints-isolate or integrate
Think about fabrics as a conversation.
etc

The thing to remember is that this type of exercise takes practice. And more practice and even more practice. He told us that we would not be able to speak very well about what we were putting up, but that we had to try. The more we tried, the better we would get at it.

We had an interesting group of fabric and our interim attempt at selecting fabrics was pretty interesting.

You can see my little green and pink piece in the middle right. I don’t remember what the other two starter fabrics were, but I think the blue, white and brown floral and the yellow, brown and green floral at the top. I am not 100% positive.

Now, the rule is to “Love it for 10 Minutes.” Remember the homework we did around the topic of ‘Encourage’? At first you might think “YECH!” What were they thinking.

We thought that, too, trust me. This selection was way out of our comfort zone, but we kept looking and fiddling with choices and, in the end, I think we all really liked it.

I would love to have all these pieces and make a quilt.

Definitely, there are two palettes into which this grouping could be divided. If you look and think about it, the fabrics can be used successfully together. I wouldn’t put equal amounts of all of the fabrics in. I might put a touch of the yellow and more of the salmon and blues. I don’t know.

I just know that I thought this would be impossible (though what teacher,in their right mind, would give an exercise that couldn’t be done? It would be all over the Internet in 2 seconds signaling they should hang up their rotary cutter) and now I am trying to figure out how to do it at home by myself. I am looking at the starter fabrics for the Jelly Roll I want to make and wondering… I think the exercise was very successful.

The groups of fabric are unusual, but not crazy. When you look at where people started (their fabrics) and how they got from fabric A to fabric B, the grouping make sense and are excitingly different. Enlarge the picture and see what you can.

What makes these groupings work, aside from hue, is the variety. The variety of pattern, scale, motifs and the inclusion of some drabs. And so much more.

And, by the end, we were all tired, but we look happy. I was happy I know that.

Round Robin

I didn’t know what category to put this post in, so I hope it works for those of you who are category-crazed.

The last time I really thought about this piece was back in June and I really wasn’t thinking about this particular piece, but the Round Robin in general and my piece specifically.

Where did you say July went?

I haven’t been to a BAM meeting in forever, sadly, but Kelly has been a great sherpa for me. Yesterday, I sent off my round robin work along with some cat beds and she will, once again, kindly, sherpa them to the meeting this Saturday. Someday I will see the BAMQGers again.

I wasn’t able to finish the orange and grey donation quilt yet. I didn’t really work on it last weekend. I’ll get back to that as soon as I pick out a blue for the sashing. Apparently, that is the hold up in my brain.

I did make some time last weekend, in the midst of the quantity to do some quality.

This is Chris’ piece and when I first saw it, my impression was that it needed some space. I used the white to give it some space, but didn’t want to just put white strips on, thus the corners.

I also varied the width of strips a little bit so it would have a bit of movement, or viewer’s eyes would move around.

Now that I look at it, it kind of looks like a tulip.

I tried to make the white the same white as in the flowery black/white/yellow print so neither would look dirty. The black on white I added is pretty bright. I think it works. I hope it works, at least. Chris makes art quilts, so she can paint over the white, if she doesn’t like it.

This project definitely involves muscles that are atrophied in me. I am committed to working through all of the pieces, but I am not sure about the project. I am anxious about doing a good. My technique will be good. I hope the design will be, too. I am not sure if my design work fits the piece. It certainly isn’t terrible.

Book Review: Aimee Ray’s Sweet & Simple Jewelry

Aimee Ray’s Sweet & Simple Jewelry: 17 Designers, 10 Techniques & 32 Projects to Make by Aimee Ray

When I received this book from Ken at Lark Crafts, I saw the cover and was really excited. The cover looks like the designer got his/her colors from a candy shop. ‘Sweet’, but not sickly sweet, is definitely how I would describe it. I have to say that I was a little disappointed that this wasn’t a quilt book, but was glad to see that fabric is used in a number of the projects.

I have noticed a trend (can I call it that?) of including a visual table of contents in some recent books I have read and/or reviewed. Purses Bags Totes had one which really helped my navigation of the book as well as writing the review. I notice that this book has one as well.

Not only does this visual ToC, as we, in the Library biz call it, help with navigation, but it gives a potential buyer a little more information. I hope that Amazon and other online booksellers will include such information in their ‘inside look’ pages.

From the ToC, I can see that this book has more colorful projects than some of the other jewelry books I have read recently. This one uses felt, embroidery thread and fabric scraps in many of the projects, which adds to the color choices.

Like many other Lark Jewelry & Beading books, this has a comprehensive Basics, pg.10, section. I love the ‘cover photo’ that begins the section depicting a variety of supplies and embellishments. Many of the supplies can already be found in your quiltmaking cupboard. Each subsection includes a couple of sentences about why you would use each material. Tools are listed separately, starting on pg.17, again, with definitions of what they are and why you would use them.

Following Tools is a section on Techniques, pg.20-, which discusses embroidery, transferring templates and patterns, hooping, to knot or not to knot (HA!), stitches, working with polymer clay type materials and a whole host of other techniques that may add to your creative jewelry designs.

After a very comprehensive 28 pages of Tools, Tips and Techniques, Aimee Ray launches into the projects. The first page of the section includes larger photos of a selection of the projects.

One of my favorite projects is the Felted Terrarium Necklace, pg.45. I wouldn’t make it, but I like the look. It would also be great as a gift for a charm bracelet.

The projects consist of a large photo of the finished piece9s) and 1-2 pages of directions, which includes tips, a materials and tool list. Not being a jewelry maker, I cannot judge whether this is enough information to finish the project.

I also like the Cabochon Hairpins, pg.57. This is a really unique idea, perhaps because I have hatpins on the mind after reading Jacqueline Winspear‘s book, Maisie Dobbs again. I have not seen anything like this before and give kudos to the designer, Kathy Sheldon for thinking outside the box.

This is also a very well designed book. I like the colors of the layout as well as the graphic embellishments and photography on the inner pages. Take a look at this book and be inspired.

View all my reviews

Creative Prompt #220: Luck

pure luck

hard luck

“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.”
– Bill Watterson

Post the direct URL (link) where your drawing, doodle, artwork is posted (e.g. your blog, Flickr) in the comments area of this post. I would really like to keep all the artwork together and provide a way for others to see your work and/or your blog.

We are also talking about this on Twitter. Use the hashtag #CPP

The Creative Prompt Project, also, has a Flickr group, which you can join to post your responses. I created this spot so those of you without blogs and websites would have a place to post your responses.

Luck of the Irish

Lady Luck

What’s luck got to do with it?

Andrew Luck

“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it”

? Thomas Jefferson

Lucky Chances

good luck

Lucky (grocery store)

Luck, Wisconsin (I wonder if you are automatically lucky if you live there?)

Jason Mraz – Lucky

Lucky Strikes

stroke of luck!

“Do ya’ feel lucky, punk?”? Clint Eastwood

good luck charms

Lucky magazine – shopping and style

Definition: “Luck or chance is an event which occurs beyond one’s control, without regard to one’s will, intention, or desired result. There are at least two senses people usually mean when they use the term, the prescriptive sense and the descriptive sense. In the prescriptive sense, luck is a supernatural and deterministic concept that there are forces (e.g. gods or spirits) which prescribe that certain events occur very much the way laws of physics will prescribe that certain events occur. It is the prescriptive sense that people mean when they say they “do not believe in luck“. In the descriptive sense, luck is a word people give after the occurrence of events which they find to be fortuitous or unfortuitous, and maybe improbable.

Good Luck Charlie

“Here’s the thing about luck…you don’t know if it’s good or bad until you have some perspective.”
? Alice Hoffman, Local Girls

The Joy Luck Club (book) by Amy Tan

Cultural views of luck vary from perceiving luck as a matter of random chance to attributing to such explanations of faith or superstition. For example, the Romans believed in the embodiment of luck as the goddess Fortuna,^[1] while the philosopher Daniel Dennett believes that “luck is mere luck” rather than a property of a person or thing.^[2] Carl Jung viewed luck as synchronicity, which he described as “a meaningful coincidence”.

Lucky symbols are popular worldwide and take many forms.”

bad luck

Gin & Luck, Los Angeles

You’re in luck!

On 21 February 2008, [UN] Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon announced the appointment of Edward Luck as Special Adviser at the Assistant Secretary-General level

“People always call it luck when you’ve acted more sensibly than they have. ”
? Anne Tyler

Plethora of Cat Beds

You know, sometimes you just have to sew like a demon and make a lot of cat beds.

I have to say that when I sew these cat beds, I think about the two cats we had growing up, Spooky and Sunkist. they have long since gone to that giant cat bed int he sky, but I still remember them fondly. Spooky used to crawl under my covers and sleep there, hogging the entire bed, of course. Sunkist was what we would call “A Big Guy”. He weighted about 18 lbs and liked to park himself in a convenient lap. Once he parked, the lap was not going anywhere. You would be lucky if you could move at all!

I made a lot of cat beds over the weekend. Amanda was kind enough, via Kelly, to send along the parts for about 5 cat beds. Now that I am pro-cat bed maker, I can make one, start to finish in about 20 minutes. The first one, which I mentioned, I made at Sew Day. Everyone stuffed their schnibbles in, but Amanda will still have to stuff it some more.

I heard Very Lazy Daisy’s podcast #1 where she was talking about the tiny slivers of fabric she keeps for collaged art quilts. I kept yelling at her, in the middle of the gym no less, to make cat beds and stuff them full of those tiny scraps. The kitties will love them.

The other thing I like about the cat beds is the fun fabrics. I would never buy many of these fabrics, but they are fun. How often do you get to work with smiling pieces of cake? I like thinking up funny names for them.

I also think that I should try more patriotic fabrics once in a while and this project gives me an opportunity to do so. I like the idea of helping animals, especially since they provide so much comfort to people without children or other family members nearby.

You can make cat beds, too. I previously posted the pattern and it is still valid. I will get them to Amanda if you make some and get them to me. You can also talk to your local shelter and see if they accept cat beds and what the parameters for making some are.

Various & Sundry #11 2013

Quilt Bear August Aurifil Club Selection

I received my Aurifil club selection from The Quilt Bear on Monday and it is cute. I was piecing with turquoise thread other the weekend, because it was in the machine after I did some decorative stitches on the napkins and I figured I didn’t need to change it. I think I have plenty of piecing thread and can use whatever color is to hand. I do like the light grey for piecing, though. You, too, can join in the Aurifil club fun by checking out theAurifil Club page on The Quilt Bear site.

Blogging
Sister Diane (not my sister, but what she calls herself for some reason I don’t know) over at CraftyPod blog had a great post about marketing and blogging. I have to admit that I haven’t been asked to feature any products on my blog, though I do write book reviews for Lark. I write for Lark, because they offer me something. I am pretty sure that you all don’t wait for me to say “go and buy X product” then run out and buy it. S. D. says that we bloggers don’t need stuff to write about. I think we want exchanges with our readers and that can extend to marketers who want our attention as well.

I especially loved these lines “When you ask a blogger “Please mention this to your readers,” you’re essentially saying “Please come up with a great marketing idea for me. I won’t be paying you for this service. Thanks!” ” Sister Diane has good ideas for anyone wanting something from the blogger. If you had done what she suggested I would be more inclined to listen to your proposal than someone who just says they love my blog and does not show that they love it. Loving my blog means reading it periodically.

This is a well written and coherent post. I would urge you to read it and let me know what you think.

On the Web

Piecemeal Quilts has 4 posts on the International Quilt Festival in Chicago. The last one is here.

Katie talked about Fear of Failure on her blog recently. I am less nice and say “get over it and move on. There is always more fabric and you can worry when you are dead!” I know, not very nice, but I bet I made you laugh. I am also really sick of people putting themselves down. Just because you make a mistake doesn’t mean you are a loser. Mistakes were invented so we could learn. Katie shows her progress in machine quilting as an example. I think I will try and do a post about progress on something. NOT machine quilting since you know how I feel about that, but perhaps there is something I felt frustrated about and can show progress. I would do it all for you, Chiclets. I put up mistakes so you can see that it is not all peaches and roses here at AQ. Let’s accept our mistakes and move forward.

Katie asked this question “So ask yourself, what is your fear of failure holding you back from achieving?” Tell me your answer.

Perhaps I’ll go do some machine quilting.

Gretchen has a great book review on one of Carol Doak’s paper piecing books. I am not much of a paoer piecer, but the technique does have its uses. The brief description given makes my mind soin with the possibility of adding corners and borders to blocks to make them more interesting or just different.

Tools

Camille Roskelley has a great photo of another clever use for WonderClips. (scroll about halfway down) Do you have any? No? Go buy some RIGHT now!

History Quilter Susan and I will be working on the Russian Rubix project together — well, alongside each other is a better description. I meant to buy the pattern when I was at Always Quilting for Sew Day, but forgot so I was surfing the web looking for a good price on shipping when I found a picture of a ruler to go with the project. (I know Flickr does sell stuff, but I got distracted!). That led me to the blog post with the link to Richard, who made the ruler/template. The templates are $15 and I think there are two, but you need to contact (info@red-designs.com) him yourself if you want more information on purchasing the rulers.

Housekeeping

Do you know about the Glossary?

34 people are now subscribing to the blog via email. Yay! And, thanks. 😉

Have you see the Quilts in Print page? I started a list of references to quilts in fiction, mostly, that I came across. Obviously it is not exhaustive, but I will note down what I find as I come across references. it is something I have been wanting to do and am glad I started finally. I plan to also surf around and see if someone else has done something similar.

Big doesn’t even begin to express the size of the mess I made over the weekend in my workroom. I think it wasn’t helped by bring a lot of stuff to sew day. It took me forever to unearth the floor. I did get a lot done and that was nice.

Saturday and Sunday

In a way, Saturday and Sunday, which fed off Thursday, were all about getting as much done in the sewing room as humanly possible. I didn’t kill myself, but I was clearly going for quantity. Remember the post I wrote about creating a relationship with your quilts? Not Saturday and Sunday. I had some projects I wanted to finish and I just put the pedal to the metal.

I had rummaged through my Christmas fabric drawer on Wednesday night, in preparation for Sew Day. I decided that instead of just making a bunch of gift bags, I would make a couple sets of napkins also. We use cloth napkins and I have always wanted 30 or so to use during the month of December. I picked two fun fabrics and cut them up ready for sewing. For 4 napkins I need 2 yards of fabric. I like big, fat, generous napkins, so I make them fat quarter sized. I also don’t like just folding the hem over and having the back show, so I make them 2 sided.

I forgot what a pain making napkins can be. I like them when they are done, ; not difficult, but they are a pain to make. Decorative stitches take forever.

This is the journal cover that I worked on as leaders and enders. I mentioned it the other day when it was in progress. As you can see, it is a combination of the Philip Jacobs fabrics, the Circa 1934 fabrics and some random fabrics as filers. I think it looks more interesting than some of the other journal covers I made on Thursday. I’ll have to do a post just showing off the journal covers.

I think the problem in my mind is that the pieced journal covers are pretty time consuming when I really need a journal cover and am feeling a bit rushed. I think what I’ll have to do is use leaders and enders to work on piecing journal covers that I want to be interesting and when I am in a rush, I’ll use some lush fabric dying to remain, essentially, uncut.

The inside of the journal cover is what I was talking about when I mentioned the problem of the long strips. I had a long strip with the green bubble dot and the brownish dot sewn together. I didn’t want to just add a long strip, so I cut the strip in half, turned one of the pieces and sewed it back together. Then I sewed it to the end of the cover. I think the little bit of effort adds some interest. Even though it is on the inside, I will see it each time I open the journal.

I put together all four cat beds. This was the first one and I stuffed it part way with the leftovers from the T-shirt quilt.

Total count for the weekend is:

3 napkins
4 cat beds
2 journal covers
binding for t-shirt quilt
Modern Round Robin work

This doesn’t feel like a lot, but I know I worked all weekend when I wasn’t doing housework or chauffeuring. The work is good, too, so I guess I have to be happy with that.

WIPs
There are also some projects I didn’t quite finish, but will, hopefully, later this week.

3 napkins that still need decorative stitching
2 journal covers that still need finishing

Bill Kerr Workshop

The Bill Kerr Workshop was awesome. It came hard on the heels of the Sew Day held on Thursday and there were 35 people there! We didn’t get to see Weeks Ringle or the famous Sophie, who has recently published her first book, A Kid’s Guide to Sewing, but I’ll suffer through.

I said somewhere that I want to crawl inside Bill Kerr’s head and suck out all the information he has in there. It sounds gross, but that is how I feel. This is the second lecture/workshop I have taken from him and this was all new information. Or I wasn’t really paying attention last time and he just got a gimme in me.

He is a very good lecturer, regardless, because even if he said the same things over again, they resonated with me and I want to incorporate them into my work.

The last time I heard him speak was at the Peninsula Quilter’s Guild in 2008. At that time I wrote “I am hopeful that I will get to work with them, because he mentioned that they teach a week long, intensive design course. It is now on my list of things to do when the work situation simmers down.” I remember that a month after i wrote this statement, my work troubles were put firmly on the back burner, because my husband was laid off and it was a year and half before we could even consider something like this workshop. I still want to take the design course, and will still have to inquire, though he said they are still busy, but Weeks has created a Craftsy class with a lot of information and that class has 6,000 students in it. I can’t even imagine having that many students. I know they are not all in a classroom at once, but still that is a lot of potential questions.

My ideal would be to have a once per week class with them where the students, including me, went away, did some work and came back the following week to work with them some more. Since they live in Chicago and I live a few thousand miles from them, I will have to put that on my list of things to do when I win $100,000,000,000 in the lottery.

If you don’t know Bill Kerr and Weeks Ringle, they are the owners of the Modern Quilt Studio (formerly FunQuilts). Weeks is the author of the popular Craft Nectar blog. They are the authors of several books:

Workshop

The workshop was scheduled to last from 6:30-9:30, but we really went until about 10:00pm. At 6:30, Bill bounded, literally, into the room and just started talking to us about color and design and I was, immediately, riveted. I think he really did chat with Rhonda for a minute before he started, but being in the way back of the room, that was my impression. He is energetic and full of life and I know I would gain so much by truly studying with him and Weeks.

He said something that I truly believe. When I looked back at the208 blog post from the last lecture I attended. He said a version of “He suggested that people think you are born Picasso or doomed to mediocrity. He believes this to be wrong and that visual arts take work, like anything else, and that you can be successful if you work at it.” He really emphasized that everyone has an artistic spark and that the owner of the spark has to practice and practice. For us that means making many, many quilts and failing at some of them.

A lot of what I write below is from my notes, so some of the sentences may be just fragments.

Definitions:
Hue – what we call color. When I say my favorite color is turquoise, I really should be saying my favorite hue is turquoise.

Value – relative lightness or darkness of a hue

Saturation – in-tenseness of the hue – hue in purest form – middle of Itten color wheel. e.g. Pure saturated yellow can never be dark.

Black is the most desaturated “hue”.

The other thing he said that I need to remember for my own work is that it is never, ever solely about the color; it is about the role that the color plays in the quilt. THE ROLE. Fabric is fabric; you can use all types and styles together. There is no quilt police who will look at your quilt and tell you to take some fabrics out. Who cares if it is modern or civil war, etc? If hte fabric has the right role int he quilt and it is a modern fabric next to a Civil War reproduction next to a feedsack, and the piece works, you have succeeded.

Isolate one concept, express one idea:

showcase 1 fabric
showcase 1 pattern
etc.

Above is one of the quilts Bill Kerr brought as an example. It is a perfect example of the above statement. It is a combination of David Butler’s first collection and Jo Morton fabrics. David Butler is Amy Butler’s husband and his quilt fabrics are more ‘modern’. Jo Morton designs Civil War reproduction fabrics. The fabrics work together despite their different styles and, thus, the quilt works. Don’t limit yourself because you think “I don’t do Civil War.”

Drabs work really well with brights. “Drabs” are taupe, putty, some greys, olive green, some browns, etc. Drabs are forgettable. Drabs allow other fabrics to shine. He didn’t have a chance to go into this very much, but he said that a lot of times a drab version of the complementary hue can really spark up another color. Drabs can add some relief, <Jaye editorializing> I think that what Kerr discussed was what is sometimes referred to as “buying ugly colors” or “using ugly colors”. I don’t like to think that there is a hue that does not have a role to play in some quilt (see above in David Butler/Jo Morton quilt). I also like the idea of calling these types of hues “drab” rather than “ugly.”

He also said, and I really like this metaphor, that putting fabrics together for a quilt is like creating the perfect guest list for a party. Think about hue, scale, pattern (like polka dots). Think about eliminating the ‘loud obnoxious guest.’ Think about how the scale, pattern and hues work together as a harmonious whole. I keep thinking back on his comments comparing quilts to a party.

Figure Ground and Illustration Style
Choosing fabrics for a quilt is not just about looking at the circles on the selvedge and picking colors. Figure Ground and Illustration Style are two things to consider.

In simplest terms the figure is what you notice and the ground is everything else…The figure always defines the ground and the ground defines the figure. They are inseparable — you can not have one without the other. If you draw the figure in a composition, you are drawing the ground at the same time… (Daphne)

Illustration Style is the style in which motifs are drawn. Are there light objects on dark field? Are there dark objects on light field? Are the motifs are outlined in black? Are the motifs not outlined? The type/style of drawing, such as the way I draw my CPP responses or a watercolor color style are all examples of illustration style and they are another tool that you can use to choose fabrics.

Bill likes RJR Linen White as a great background. He likes it better than Kona Snow and there was a suggestion that Kona, while dominating the market, ravels too much. The RJR Linen White is very warm.

Other

Every quilt is an opportunity to learn.

Weeks Ringle wrote an article in the June 2013 American Patchwork and Quilting called Stash RX

I’ll write another post about the Fabric Smackdown exercise we did.

BAMQG Sew Day

I took the day off of work Thursday and went to a BAMQG Sew Day and Workshop. After some personal drama (locked myself out of the house), I got there at 12:30 only to be faced with more personal drama (I forgot the bag that includes my rulers, rotary cutters, mat, pins, etc). Fortunately, I sat down across from Peggy and next to Amanda. Between them and Claire, I was set up to rock and roll the sewing machine.

I WAY overestimated what I could get done. I brought a Chubby Charmer filled with fabric and batting for journal covers, fabric for napkins, flannel for receiving blankets. I brought enough to survive some kind of siege that included sewing.

I really only got to the journal covers and I made the parts of two and finished 3-4.

My problem with Sew Days is that I want to just walk around and talk to people and not sew. If i bring my sewing stuff (and why wouldn’t I since there I have a gene that makes me physically unable to bring sewing stuff with me to a Sew Day). I really should be quite ok with socializing. Socializing is good!

A number of people had just arrived when I got there, so, despite the lock problem, I wasn’t terribly late, but I am sure I could have gotten all of my projects done had I arrived at 10am. 😉

Still, it was great to be there. I hadn’t been to a Sew Day before and I really enjoyed it. I didn’t enjoy hauling all of my stuff, but once set up, I just plowed through [spoiler alert] journal covers. I am glad I got them done and I am well set up for journal covers now.

In the work photo, you can see my stuff bottom right, Peggy top right and several other sewing machines and people towards the back of the photo. It was a great little group in our area. Big bonus? We were right near the iron!

The first thing I did was make a cat bed. I figured that anything I made after would contain schnibbles and I could use the cat bed to contain them.

Also, I have four I need to make for Amanda and the homeless cats. I thought about bringing them all as they are quick to make, but decided on other projects.

Jennifer's Round Robin — Jennifer’s Round Robin

Jennifer, who usually photographs the projects at the BAMQG meetings, showed us this hexagon piece. It is a round robin for one of the BAMQG groups. I love the shape! Who would have thought of creating a hexagon?!? Obviously someone did, but it is fabulous. The whole piece looks like a mosaic floor to me.

I am lukewarm on round robins and this makes me rethink that.

Also, I have to give a tiny bit of credit to ‘modern sensibilities’ as I don’t think this would have shown up in other kinds of round robins. I think that if you don’t know you can’t or shouldn’t do something you just try it and there is a lot of that going on in BAMQG.

Yes, Journal Covers

What I really wanted to do with journal covers was use up the pieces trimmed from quilts that I made and had quilted. My quilter diligently saves the batting and the sides for me and one day (I talked about it in the last week or so) it occurred to me that I could use those pieces to make journal covers. This is a great use, actually, because the trimmings are often long enough so I don’t have to cut part of a 1/2 yard and then cut some more, so that I only have a large scrap left.

When I went to Sew Day, I had in mind that I would whip up several of them. What the exercise turned into, even though I did make 3 or 4 was an exercise in design. I learned a couple of things:

I don’t like just having strips of fabric for the journal covers. In the Yellow and Pink journal cover, that strip of pink that reads as a solid really bugs me. Not enough to rip apart the journal cover, but enough to put it on a journal I have already used and not carry it around for 2 months. The remedy is to cut those strips into a few pieces and pieces and piece them back together in a sort of checkerboard.
Batting doesn’t work for me. I took all the small pieces apart and they will go to Amanda’s cat bed project. I need to find something else that gives the cover a bit of body.
Green & Letters Journal

Either I need to do a moderate amount of piecing or just cut a piece of fabric, like my recent Philip Jacobs journal cover and make a cover out of one piece of fabric. I do think patterned fabric, like the green and letters journal cover works. I think it works because there are blocks of color. The blocks of color combined with a bit of piece make the piece interesting. I am not a big fan of that chocolate (though it is chocolate) brown and green and yellow, but I like the letters and thinking about writing letters, or just writing, in general.
Leaders and enders are great. This is old news, I know. I am a big fan of leaders and enders, as my faithful readers know and using leaders and enders in the middle of the journal covers project meant that I had most of a journal cover top done by the time I got home.

The last journal cover I made wasn’t finished at the retreat. I began using the leaders & enders technique to sew bits together as I made the other journal covers, but I only ended up with the piece you see in the photo by the time I left. I don’t need to make sure that the family is warm when I make pieced items, nor is there a shortage of fabric at my house, but I still can’t seem to throw fabric away.

We ended the day with pizza. Usually, not a good choice for me, but there are 5 people in the guild who eat GF diets, so we had the option of 3 gluten free pizzas! The Awesome Amanda went to Red Brick over in San Mateo and picked up pizza for us.

The crowning glory, though the Sew Day was pretty awesome, was participating in the Bill Kerr workshop. Stayed tuned for the notes on that.

All in all it was a good day.

Monkey Dot Cat Bed

I might be back in the blogging saddle. I spared you my Special Whine that I intended to post on Thursday when my frustration level was over the top in terms of computers. I rethought and reworked what I had available to post and now I have my new computer and, so far, so good. It stays connected to my network (yes, first world problem), which is awesome.

I spent the afternoon and evening with BAMQG yesterday at a special event. The day was a Sew Day, then starting at 6:30 Bill Kerr of the Modern Quilt Workshop gave a class. More on that later, but I’ll tantalize you with this: I want everything that man has to sell and then I want to crawl inside his head and suck all the design theory out.

The very first project I worked on was a cat bed for Amanda. I sewed that baby up and then we all used it to stuff our schnibbles in. It wasn’t nearly full enough when Amanda took it home, but she has a lot of schnibbles with which to work, so I am not worried. Stay tuned for more Sew Day fun!

Book Review: Showcase 500 Art Necklaces

Showcase 500 Art Necklaces by Kathy Sheldon

This is another gorgeous ‘500’ title from Lark Books. More eye candy and inspiration for all kinds of creative people.

This book starts off with an introduction by the juror Chunghi Choo, a professor at the University of Iowa. The introduction is interesting, because Chunghi mentions that “…making art objects…are now wide open to the free use of varied materials, found objects, and flexible meidums.” He is clearly in awe of the freshness of designs as artwork and fashion.

The photos in this edition in the “500 series” depict necklaces. And in this department extreme design is not an overstatement. The artists really press the boundaries of what can be worn as a necklace as well as the principles of design.

Again, neutrals such as bronze, grey, black, gold, pearl and silver dominate the colors in this book, but color is well represented. Vanessa Walilko’s Red Queen necklace is a striking piece is vivid scarlet. The elements of the design look like the tails of a fabulous bird. Marian Acosta Contreras’, pg.344, is a wonderful study in turquoise, using a variety of values in that color family.

The delicate wire structures by Louise Makowski, Dominique Thomas (pg.131), Kristen Baird and Susan J. Cross (pg.130) are examples of equally wonderful yet completely different designs in necklaces.

One piece, Karolina Bik’s Chaos necklace, pg.267, I noticed looked like a melting ice structure. The sterling silver, 18 karat gold and 24 karat gold flakes are mixed with acrylic fiberglass to achieve a completely different look from many of the other examples in this book

Look at the shapes, materials and colors and be inspired.

Thanks to Lark Books for sending this book to me to review!

View all my reviews

Creative Prompt #219: Bow

Bow and arrow

Rob Bowman (director of Castle episodes)

Take a bow

Clara Bow (have you listened to the History chicks podcast on her? If not, you should. It is very interesting)

Bow Street (Have you read Anne Perry’s Victorian mystery series about Thomas and Charlotte Pitt? He works at Bow Street)

tie a bow

compound bow

bow wow

recurve bow

Bow Bow Cocktail Lounge, Chinatown, San Francisco

bow tie

bow down

Minnie’s Bow-Toons

Bow Thayer & Perfect Trainwreck

We are also talking about this on Twitter. Use the hashtag #CPP

Bow and arrow /?b o?/, a weapon system that uses elasticity to propel arrows, its use is archery
Bowing /?b a?/, to lower the head or upper body as a social gesture
Bow (ship) /?b a?/, the foremost point of the hull of a ship or boat
Bow (rowing), a term which has multiple meanings within the sport of rowing
Bow knot, a shoelace knot or a rosette
Hair bow, a hair accessory of hair or a ribbon tied in a bow knot
Bow tie, a type of necktie and ribbon fashion accessory tied in a bow knot
An ornamental knot made of ribbon
Bow (music), a device used to play a stringed instrument
Musical bow, a musical instrument resembling an archer’s bow
EBow, a hand-held electronic device for playing the electric guitar
Bows (band), a band from the UK

United Kingdom

Bow, Devon, England
Bow, London, England (historically called Stratford atte Bowe)

United States

Canada

The Bow (skyscraper), a building in Calgary, Alberta
Bow River, a river in the province of Alberta

Elbow, considered as an (often) approximately right-angled (“L”-shaped?) bow
Bend, The action or effect of bowing to the force of something or someone
Bow, of bow and warp of semiconductor wafers and substrates
Bow porcelain factory, a London-based porcelain factory, active 1747-1776
Bag of words model, a model used in natural language processing and information retrieval
Bow (She-Ra), a character from the cartoon She-Ra: Princess of Power
B.O.W (Bio-Organic Weapons), a type of weapon in the Resident Evil video game and movie series
Bow, a character from the video game Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door
Bow (ship), the forward part of the hull of a ship.

T-shirt Quilt-More Progress

After he returned from Scout Camp, the Young Man was happy to hear that I finished his T-shirt Quilt top. After writing several book reviews that were overdue, I spent quite a bit of time working on the back.

It is finally done and I just have to make the binding before I move on. I don’t have anymore of the grey left, so it will have to be green or black or some other color the Young Man chooses.

The pictures are terrible, because the boys didn’t have time hold the top and back up for me. I don’t have a picture of the back, though I hope to get one once the quilt is quilted.

Enjoy.

Circa 1934 Journal Cover

Last week I mentioned using the trimmings from the edges of journal covers. I even showed one that I had in process. Here it is finished. After getting the right size, I sewed it together in about 10 minutes.

Yes, the numbers are upside down. I wanted to see them as I carried the journal around so that is how they came out. I have to admit that I think I like the numbers the best out of all of these fabrics (the gold hand-dye is not part of the line). Perhaps that print is what attracted me to the line in the first place?

If you want to make a journal cover, check out my directions.