Category: 2007

Use for post written in 2007

Pools of Color

Yarnstorm has a gorgeous quilt on her blog, which renews my belief in simplicity and that I did the right thing with Thoughts on Dots. Her post talks about her pool quilt. Stop reading now! Right click (so you don’t leave my blog completely, thanks) and go read the post on her new quilt top.

Now that you are back and ooohing and aahing, I hope you enjoyed the quilt. First of all, the photograph that she has shared with us is wonderful. It has made me realize that, perhaps, you would be happy with ripples of color instead of the whole quilt perfectly centered with no extraneous info peeking in? Also, the way she talks about the colors and the quilt is like a poem. It reminds me of some writer who I have read recently, or whom I have read in the past and made an impression on me.

The quilt looks like it is made from all of those tightly, yet very soft cottons. I know that is not 100% the case as I have some of the fabrics. I don’t think any of them are loosely woven, though.

I also like the way she has used large scale prints. It seems like some of the flowers are fussy cut (notice the centers?).

I have been thinking about another quilt of squares only and I am inspired once again. We’ll see how it progresses.

I am out of town again. Back soon with photos.

Fun pincushion

I have been thinking that I would like a small project that I could churn out quickly and would have some use. The gift bags, you ask?? I know, I know. I should get to those. The fabrics in this one are bit boring for me, but can you imagine it in DOTS?!? What else? I am glad she posted the link to the directions. Easier to make….

May Britt from Norway has a tutorial of an awesome pincushion on her weblog! I love it so much that I had to give it a try 🙂 With this result !

Lucy

  blog it

Flickring All Weekend

I spent a lot of Sunday uploading quilt photos to Flickr. I also spent Monday night, Tuesday night and a little while this evening on the project. I believe that I now have all of my digital quilt photos up on Flickr. In any case, there are about 3500 pictures of quilts.

Some observations:
1. I used to take a lot fewer photos than I do now.
2. Adding the digital photos to Flickr is wonderful, because you can organize them in sets. Each photo can be in multiple sets. This means that the Pineapple photo on the right (as usual, if this is your quilt, I will be THRILLED to put your name here!) is in the PIQF 2003 set as well as the Pineapple set (kind of like iTunes allows you to have one song in multiple playlists). I love this! It allows me to think about quilts in a number of different ways.
3. 2003 and three was a good year for quilts. The quilts are more vibrant (less brown, I guess) than now. The designs are good and the techniques are top notch.
4. I scrolled through many, many of the photos as I tried to organize them and it is quite wonderful just to look at a bunch of different quilts.
5. My photography has gotten better.
6. I was also able to discover interesting quilts about which I had forgotten, including a few more Pineapples hidden in the dark corners of my hard drive. .
7. I wish I could blog sets of photos, but it doesn’t seem like I can. Perhaps I can add a link to an entire set of quilts, so you can see them as I blog about them? Here is a link to a set of tree quilts. You can tell me if it works.

I am considering sending my prints off to someplace like Shoebox reprints and getting rid of the boxes and boxes of quilt photos that I have under my desk and in my bottom drawer. I really don’t know what I will do in the long run with all of these quilts on Flickr, but for the moment it is interesting to me. We’ll see what develops.

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

A Little More Progress

I spent a lot of the day playing with Flickr, adding a lot of quilt photos so I could organize them in different ways. As a result, it meant that I didn’t sew much. I did finish another Flowering Snowball while watching some TV and worked a little on the Pineapples.

I am working on four at a time and I really should cut back to two, but I’d like to get them finished.

Entering the Internet Age

Well, I have finally done it. I have allowed Google, Technorati, and all of the other blog search engines to index Artquiltmaker blog. Up until now all you were here because of word of mouth or somehow stumbling on to my blog. You are the elite, the special and the charter members. Thank you for reading and commenting.

I am putting myself out there now, so, faithful readers, please excuse, in advance any spam comments or weird things that happen to the blog. You can reach me through the comments section or from the mail to page at Artquiltmaker.com.

Fabrics, Blog Fun and Product


I hope the above describes some of my work lately!

I spent the better part of 4 days in Monterey at a conference (for my other life). I have gone to this particular event for a number of years, particularly when it is in Monterey (some years they have had it in Palm Spring, San Diego, etc.). One of the nice things is that I stay with friends rather than staying in a hotel (no late night Law & Order sessions for me!). This year their house was under construction and my friends were sleeping in *my* bedroom! The nerve. They shuffled me off to his sister’s house a bit down the road where I was treated fabulously and helped out as well. Sis’ hubby went in for hip surgery after my first overnight, so I kept her company. I had my own ensuite bedroom and bath. The bath had a heated floor!

Back Porch Fabrics

Back Porch Fabrics is a wonderful quilt store in Pacific Grove, which I have visited and written about before. It is light and airy and the people are friendly. The absolute first thing I did when I got to the Monterey Peninsula was head to Pacific Grove. I didn’t think there could possibly be any dot fabrics I didn’t own, but I was mistaken.
Not only was I able to find more dots (and a few other fabrics), but the lovely Quilts Japan mag as well. There was another issue that I liked, but I really only liked the cover, so I didn’t buy it. The quilt store staff didn’t leave me alone long enough to take a picture of the cover, so I will have to try and find it online.

The quilts they had hanging up were not in my colors, but they went together really well, were graphic and well made and that made me like them. Unfortunately, the staff would not let me take ANY photos in the store. I knew they wouldn’t let me take photos of their class sample quilts, but I wanted to show you some overall pictures of the store so you could get a sense of it. No dice. Sorry, maybe next time.

Sherri e-mailed me and was kind enough to offer the two lovely dots above, which arrived while I was away I’ll need to cut some strips and add them to the piles. I probably won’t be able to use the grey in the Pineapple quilt, but, as I have a few more dot quilts in me, I will find a place for it. Thanks, Sherri!

Finally, I have been neglecting the Flowering Snowballs (Cross Blocks), but sat down in front of bad TV last night and finished this one. I only had the two middle seams to finish, so I can add this to the stack.

I also attended the CQFA meeting today. We spent, probably, 1.5-2 hours on show and tell. It was a lot of tell and that was great. I showed the Nosegay and the sleeve on Sharon’s quilt, which is now finished. Hooray!

I was looking for the Quilts Japan issue when I came across Little Shika blog. It has a Yarnstorm kind of feel with my dogged resolve to show all the steps in a project. (Suppose I should rethink that, e.g. how much information is too much information???) Great photos, too.

Stay tuned for a report on my new iron!

Back!

I am back from the wilds of Monterey where I was well taken care of, refreshed and rejuvenated.
This is a little scene that I saw at my friend’s house. I loved the machine in front of the thread. She has a wonderful eye and everything in her house is subtlely colorful, beautifully arranged and restful.

Her garden is wonderfully wild. Also restful.

Using Liquid Paper to Satisfy a Child’s Halloween Dreams

How to Make a Halloween Costume

Supplies and Tools

  • Picture of child’s dream costume
  • Felt (of appropriate color(s)
  • Sewing machine
  • Scissors
  • Shoelaces
  • Timtex
  • Liquid Paper (correction fluid)
  • Aleen’s Craft Glue

The Halloween costume, except for some decoration, which are drying, is finished. The Darling Child is happy and I didn’t have to buy anything except 2 yards of black felt. I like using felt for Halloween costumes, because the raw edges don’t ravel. You can also just cut it off, glue things to it and cut strange shapes out of it with no problem. The costumes are a bit fragile and don’t usually last long. You can see the cloak that I made by looking at this picture from Wikipedia.

I didn’t have any white paint, so I used Liquid Paper to create the whorls on the red emblem the Darling Child needed.


I only had enough red to make five of the emblems, so we had to place them carefully for maximum effect.

It is kind of fun to make the Halloween costumes – to make a child’s Halloween dream come true. It is also fun to kind of figure out how to make something work with what you have on hand. I always buy enough felt to get through the main part of the project, but inevitably, I don’t think farther than that. One costume I made needed a fat tail that stood up. I used a paint stirrer to keep it stiff enough. That was before I knew about Timtex.

More Hiatus Progress

Here is an update on the progress I made while the 9K was in the shop.

  • DONE: 6 baby blankets: two colleagues and one person I want to impress are having babies: 2 each

: I made all the blankets I set out to make and then I found out that another friend was having a baby, so I made an additional two as well. I didn’t have the 9K as mentioned, so I just used a zigzag to hem the blankets. Not the way I normally like to work, but I wanted to get them done.

 

– I made the binding and sewed it on and am almost finished with hand stitching it to the back of the quilt. The sleeve is also made, but does need to be applied.

  • Binding for Serendipity Puzzle -I made the binding, but am waiting to finish Sharon’s quilt before I apply it. The sleeve is also made.
  • Gift bags: I have lots of fabric for bags, and Christmas is coming. Not done.
  • Cut out fabric for test blocks. I am going to start looking at new machines soon and I want to have some piecing in my own fabrics, which I can use to test the machines. Not done.
  • DONE: Wash and press new fabric.

 

– The Fabric Queen did this for me.

  • DONE: Replenish Pineapple strips

 

– This is partially done. I cut some last week as I worked on the most recent Pineapples.

The Baskets of PIQF

One of the themes I noticed at PIQF was baskets.

There are a number of things I like about this quilt, which I think is unusual. First all of the baskets are unusual. I didn’t examine each one separately to see if they were all different, but I think they might be. In looking at the photo I saw a couple that were slight variations of each other, but different enough to be considered unique. This is the kind of detail that makes quilts great and shows that quick quilts aren’t everything.

Second is the setting. The maker (and if YOU are the maker, I will gladly put your name here). This is a very clever way to setting the blocks. It also gives the quilt a lot of movement without buying into the whole primitive wave that is moving through the quilt world.

Third, is the fabric. Although there is a lot of black in this quilt, it does not look depressing. I also like the fabric that she used, especially the different yellows to sash the blocks. Much more interesting than using all the same yellow. The light colored background in the blocks really makes the baskets show up.

Fourth, the size of the blocks put them almost into the GAL* quilt department, but the details are so finely done and perfect for each block, including not adding them when they weren’t needed, that I think the blocks were done out of love and not because the maker didn’t have anything better to do.

Finally, the quilting is great. I think there is a lot of in-the-ditch quilting to keep this quilt together, but the gentle curves of the quilting that set off the blocks in a subtle way are perfect for the overall design.

This is another basket quilt. As you can see, the baskets are also small, and in this example, very girly. I remember the name being something having to do with girly handbags.

The pinks in this one were definitely the strength of the quilt, but notice the lavender that the maker added as the background for one block. I like it when the maker has the foresight and confidence to add a completely different fabric to the mix in order to add interest to the quilt. I think the brown looks ok, but it makes the quilt, overall, look a lot darker.

*GAL – get a life

Magazine Reviews

I finally found a copy of the latest issue of Quilter’s Home. HOORAY! This one truly has a subscription card in it. I haven’t filled it out yet, but will. I want to encourage Mark who seems to love us, has a great sense of humor and fun, which I think the quilt world needs AND has articles that make me want to move in next door to him and become his new best friend.The fridge article was a bit weird, but it made me think about what was in my fridge (WAY too much leftover rice). I also thought that there was too much diet Coke in those quilt teachers’ fridges. I love that Alex Anderson keeps face cream in her fridge.

The project for big prints was great and I might add it to my list of things to make.

I wasn’t interested in the Splish-Splash needlework pieces, but that’s me. I really enjoyed the bio of Mark. It was great to learn how he became a dad and that he used to work in a quilt store.

QH isn’t perfect, but the overall entertainment value makes up for the articles that don’t interest me.

I also recently read the quilt issue of Piecework. Sigh.

I used to have a subscription and devour the magazine. I love history and remember one article on the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire that riveted me. Even the quilt issue is now a pale shadow of what it used to be. The article on Marie Webster’s quilts was pathetic. It has footnotes, but they were all to secondary sources and it just wasn’t long enough to do justice to the woman or her quilts. There are too many projects for a history type magazine, but I guess that is supposedly what sells. One project was for knitting quilt blocks. Why bother? The knitters can wait for an issue while we quiltmakers revel. I just think Piecework has lost its way and its focus. I hope CPS and Quilting Arts don’t follow in Piecework’s footsteps.

Visual Journals Meet Technology

Deirdre passed this link on to me. Pamdora has written a post about journals. In it she links to YouTube videos of artists sharing their visual journals. I did look at a couple of the videos.

The videos show page after page of the artists’ drawing books. It is cool to see what they are drawing, because it gives me ideas for what I can draw if I ever become regular in working on a visual journal. I was bolstered in my efforts by looking at Paula Scher’s video, because she draws letters in different ways. She decorates the shapes and encloses them in different vessels. What a simple idea for getting starting on a visual journal journey. Start with the basics!

Her fonts get more elaborate as the video goes on and the audience begins to see the border treatment that she does on the pages of her journal. Her work kind of reminds me of writing your name over and over on your notebook in 6th grade.

Celia Squire, a London artist, does very detailed pictures of what looks like the world around her. The figures are elaborate and rich. The details made me want to look closer. I really like the first page of the woman sitting at a cafe table.

Stefano Faravelli’s journal is wonderful. Pamdora writes “A beautiful travel-style journal that folds out out into one long composition.” Her words do not do justice to the fantastic watercolors on each page or the cleverness of the way the pages fold out to one long painting. I really like the way he has incorporated words into his compositions. perhaps I don’t need a visual journal, because Stefano has done what I want to do!

One of the things I hadn’t thought of until I saw Remy Bardin’s journal were foldouts and pockets. I could make little secret hiding places in my visual journal. Perhaps I should call it the mythical visual journal?

The videos are accompanied, except for Paul Dewis, by a strange clapping/rustling of tracing paper sound. I turned off the sound on my computer, so I could concentrate on the art.

It is obvious that these artists:

  • are in the habit of creating visual journals
  • have the perfect supplies
  • are committed

There are many more videos of this project. Go take a look. You will be inspired!

What a great idea.

Pineapples Return

I did not make a Halloween costume this weekend as promised, but did work on the Pineapples.
I tried to get back into the Pineapple groove by taking the baskets down. I had two Pineapples half finished from before the machine went to be serviced. I started by finishing those and make two new ones. Above are two that I completed and two that I started AND completed. YAY! I only have 4 more Pineapples to go!


Border Pineapples 11 & 12.
Border Pineapples 13 & 14.

I cut strips from some of the new fabrics I bought at PIQF and from fabrics that I washed and the Fabric Queen pressed for me. That freshened up the project and livened things up a bit in the fabric department.

Having a break and doing some different piecing was great, but there is no way that I am stopping this project and putting it away. I really had to get back into the groove and remember my little tricks and tips. The first two I was trying to finish felt like a comedy of errors. I kept cutting the strips too short and putting pieces on the wrong side, etc. I got it all worked out, but jeesh! I can’t imagine what would happen if I put the whole project away for a year or two like some of my other projects.

I ran into the Pineapple teacher at PIQF and was glad I did so. I thought I had to trim the blocks to make them fit together, but she said only to trim the corners, which I have not yet applied to any of the blocks. She said to use the bias to get the blocks to fit together. There is a bit of bias on the edge of each block that I can stretch, if I need to.

I would have done more (and started the Halloween costume), but it turned out that we had a family event to attend today. I thought it was next weekend, so it really cut into my sewing time.

So, I am screwed for the Halloween costume and will have to work on it during the week, but it will get done.