August 1 marks the beginning of the long slow slide to Christmas for me. I know you are running away and screaming ACK! when you hear that (except for those of you who don’t celebrate and are just sitting back and laughing right now), but it is true. I am working away on gifts for Christmas after learning that it is much better to get them done early rather than staying up until the crack of dawn on the 23rd. I am not as organized as Quiltin’ Jenny, but I am getting better!
I finished two more of the Jane Market Totes over the long weekend. I made some progress while my main machine was in the shop since it doesn’t matter much about consistent seam allowances (between machines) on these bags.
JMT #6JMT #7
I know they look the same. I used all the same fabrics for the outsides, but they really are two different bags. I have 4 more to make. I inadvertently counted Grama’s Birthday gift as one of the Christmas gifts. Oops!
I also remembered to box the corners on these, which I am really happy about. Not sure why I had the mental block on that, but, perhaps it is over?
I like having the meetings at the beginning of the month. It always feels like the month starts out on a positive note when I go to the Bay Area Modern Meetings. I stopped in at Starbuck’s to get a drink before going to a meeting and met a college friend. We only see each other on FB, so it was fun to have a minute to catch up. Both of our sons have started high school so we were comparing notes. I enjoyed the interlude, but the BAMQG meeting had started by the time I got there.
Adrianne Quilt for Japan
Show and Tell is my favorite part. I love seeing what other people are doing. I love the variety of levels of work and the variety of fabrics. Most of the work is very bright and cheerful, which is great.
Adrianne has been working on this quilt for awhile and is done with the top. It is gorgeous! I really like the way it came out. I have those fabrics and was having some buyers remorse, but this gives me some ideas. I love the way the dots turned out. There is a lot of movement in the various blocks.
We also displayed blocks from the A-B-C Challenge and various other works. There were a lot of new people at the meeting, so there was a wide variety of blocks to show — not just the challenge blocks.
BAMQG Blocks
As you know, my block is the Cake Stand block. Angela is also working on the A-B-C Challenge and she did a Courthouse Step block (middle top). Adrianne is working on a different project and she did a Ribbon Star (might also be called Odd Fellow’s Cross, Jinny Beyer, The Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns, pg.64 #4). A new member (or, perhaps, visitor did the X block and the raw edge applique French Roses).
Joy-Lily work
Joy-Lily has a lot of irons in the fire. She is now teaching at a new place on Bayshore called the Sewing and Quilting Collaborative. Apparently, they have longarms they will let people use and the owner buys up stock from quilt stores going out of business and has the stock for discount prices in one part of the place.
Joy-Lily’s blocks are really interesting. The top one, as you can see, is knitting needles and yarn. The yarn looked like it was made from bias tubes. I didn’t get to look at it closely, but the fabric had a slight shimmery look to it. The bottom block/mini quilt was made from fabric printed on fabric sheets, cut up and then sewed together again.
A number of members who usually participate in the block challenge were absent (long weekend and all) so they weren’t as many this time as last. I was helping Adrianne with notetaking, so I didn’t have to hold the quilts, but I also didn’t get photos of any.
Intrepid Thread Fabrics
Julie brought my order of a couple of dots, some aqua and the Terrain charm squares. I really like the Terrain. Something about it is very appealing. The colors together aren’t as bright as I normally like, but they aren’t really muted either except for a bit of the green, I think. This pack makes me think of Chinese Coins. I may cut the charms in half and make a Chinese Coins quilt. I need to look through some ideas for quilts using charms. Again, I ask you how many Chubby Charmers does a girl need? 😉
Christmas BagsChristmas Bags #2
I had no quilts to show this time, so I showed the bags I have been working on. They are all bags for Christmas, except one. Nobody thought I was a lunatic for making the same bag over and over. I passed them all around and was pleased that people commented on the decorative stitches I used around the top of the bag. One of the new women asked about the pattern. It felt good to have people ask for my advice.
I was also thrilled to find out that Angela is saving selvedges for a selvedge quilt. YAY! I have that bag of selvedges I have been saving for something. I am really pleased I can give them to her.
During sewing time, I cut out two more bags – the outside pieces only and cut apart some more t-shirts for The Young Man’s t-shirt quilt. That chore is done except for one sweatshirt and I am not sure how I am going to work that.
I had been wanting to do this response for awhile and just never seemed to get to it. The other day, while waiting for the Young Man to finish an appointment, I decided just to do it. I didn’t have all of my previous response sketchbooks to which to refer, so the interior might look different.
I am still looking for a comprehensive, basic guide to quiltmaking; a book to which I could refer when I had a question. I am beginning to think that such a book does not exist and may not be possible to create. Granted, I haven’t read every single book purporting to be a “comprehensive guide.” Why do I care? Aside from wanting that all-knowing guide, I want my students to have a resource to which they can refer when they get stuck. The resource should be comprehensive, basic, detailed and POSITIVE. Skills are important, but the quilt police are not. I want to get people to their sewing machine to experience the joys of quiltmaking.
The Practical Guide to Patchwork: New Basics for the Modern Quiltmaker by Elizabeth Hartman, of Oh! Fransson fame, is another entry into my unofficial contest on ‘ultimate guides.’ This is a beautiful book. It is a nice size, the paper feels good, colors are cheerful, the photos are wonderful and the fabrics are appealing. I also like the way she arranged the projects: “Projects to get you started,” Projects for the a Confident Beginner,” and “Intermediate-Level Projects.” No advanced projects, but perhaps that is coming.
Hartman talks about supplies in a good amount of detail. Her advice, which I agree with, is to “…buy the best-quality materials you can afford.” I keep my supplies for a long time, so it makes no sense for me to buy poor quality. I have the first ruler I ever bought and still use it. She talks about using different types of fabrics, such as linen and mentions madras plaids, vintage bed linens and shirting cottons. I think this approach is encouraging, because she is giving permission to use what people have on hand to those who need it. Also, quiltmakers were told for a long time that sheets were too tightly woven to use successfully. This ‘rule’ isn’t even mentioned. She warns that different fabrics may take some extra work, but I like the tone of trying things out with which pervades the book. I used a Japanese fabric that was thicker and more loosely woven than quilting cotton and lived to tell the tale, so Hartman’s advice is sound. She has good example photos of fabrics she is discussing.
The author includes organizing tips as well as quiltmaking basics (pg.17). Often, the value of organizing your projects is overlooked. Hartman uses organizer cards and labels. Organizing can often be a critical piece of the quiltmaking process and I don’t remember another book that talks about it. I didn’t quite understand her process, but think it is similar to my Post-it note method.
She has an interesting way of hanging small quilts. Ms. Hartman shows a quilt with corner triangles as a hanging method rather than a sleeve. She says that this method works for smaller pieces (pg.19). She also talks about piecing the back, which is something I also don’t remember seeing in many other books.
The author includes some information on color. In it, she reviews a variety of color wheel concepts. There are a couple of paragraphs on each concept, such as the definition of a monochromatic color scheme. This section is like candy, because it is so well illustrated. The fabrics and colors she selected to illustrate her concepts are fantastic! Another addition is a short discussion of negative space, e.g. background. Again, I don’t remember other books even mentioning negative space. I could look at these pages for a long time.
I thought it was interesting that her idea of dots is completely at odds with Harriet Hargrave in the book Quilter’s Academy Vol. 1–Freshman Year: A SkillBuilding Course in Quiltmaking where she said “Dots can add interest, but as with calicoes, too many can become very busy and detract from the design of the quilt. The fewer fabrics your quilt design has, the more important it becomes to limit the use of this type of print. (pg.69)” Elizabeth Hartman says “…but don’t discount the importance of basics, such as dots, stripes, smaller floras, and other small- and medium scale prints. (pg.24)” This might be the ‘modern quilter’ flash in the pan talking, but I think the dichotomy illustrates how individual fabric selection is to each quiltmaker and the importance of finding your style.
Speaking of fabric, Ms. Hartman uses such appealing fabrics throughout the book, even for the most mundane of tasks, such as how to rotary cut (not mundane, I know, for those who are learning to rotary cut!), that I want to run upstairs and pull out some fabric and practice rotary cutting.
This book has a little of everything to get someone started. A new quiltmaker could really get started using this book, with only a little bit of additional help from Quilty. She talks about quilting the quilt sandwich and points out that it is better to avoid stitching in the ditch, because it looks bad if you miss it. This is so true!
The basics section covers 44 pages of a 127 page book, then she gets on to the projects. Right before the project section starts, Elizabeth Hartman writes one of the most important elements in the whole book, which is “…and get you thinking about how to make your quilting projects more uniquely you. (pg.44)”
Most of the projects cover 4-6 pages of instructions. The projects are not difficult for an experienced quiltmaker, but they are also not boring and show good use of a variety of fabrics. Ms. Hartman shows the back as well as alternate color ideas in fabric, not computer generated, for each project. She also does not rehash concepts she has already written about, but refers readers back to previous pages for the information. The projects section also has tips, tricks and new concepts. In The Small Plates pattern, pg.56-61, she describes fussy cutting. In Batch of Brownies, pg.62-69, she talks about the idea of resting places for the eye, which can be used in other projects as well.
Hartman doesn’t always explain her fabric choices. While you might have gotten too much of that in Jane Brocket‘s The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking, I find it useful to understand why an author selected certain fabrics and what they were trying to convey. It helps me learn and improve my own choices.
At the end, Elizabeth Hartman has a page of resources, but the book contains no index. I think it would benefit from an index as a tool for those who wanted to refer to certain sections.
You might think that the blocks are too simple, but when they are all put together in one quilt without sashing, they will make a very interesting quilt.
If you make this block, please put a link to it in the comments. If you do not have a blog or website, you can post it to the AQ Block-a-Long Flickr Group.
Despite my misgivings, I am plowing ahead with my plan to cut triangles until such time as I have a new plan.
Mom and Lil Sissy were over when I took this picture. Lil Sissy almost had a heart attack when I started to take the pieces off the wall. She didn’t realize that it was part of the process!
The process for making the FOTY quilts really lasts all year long. I don’t get to the sewing until the following year, usually, but I cut and arrange all year long. My process for working on the FOTY quilts is:
This is a book by Marthe Le Van that I received for free to review from Lark Crafts. The first paragraph sums this book up very well. Le Van writes “When I hard that a group of jewelers was creating one new ring per day for an entire calendar year, three thoughts immediately came to mind — This is brilliant! This is completely mad! Where do I sign up?”
Some of the most creative works come out of projects that are brilliant or mad and the Internet helps by making such projects global. The project ended up with 1600 images of rings and the book contains 700 of them.
The book is small in format, easy to carry around; a nice workbook type size. The photos are on the small side, but not tiny. The book is arranged like a daily calendar and some of the rings fit in with the day. For example, for New Year’s Day (January 1) there is a ring made from a champagne cork. I like the fact that there is just enough text in this book. There are not long essays on jewelry making, but salient quotes from the artists. I think these quotes can be used by quiltmakers to gain inspiration. A simple quote that struck home was from Victoria Lynn Takahashi who said “Sometimes a girl just has to play. (pg.15)”
I noticed that entries recounted family projects where people had gathered, someone suggested they all make rings and the entire family sat around making them (pg.69).
I think the great part of this book is the message of inspiration: you can make a work every day; you can make a work from things on hand, you don’t need to shop; making a lot of small work enhances your chances for creating a masterwork; practice makes perfect.
I love this quote from Shannon Conrad ‘The hardest part of making a ring a day was just that — you have to make a ring EVERY day. There was no break. It was relentless. (pg.11)”
Even if you are not a jewelry maker, take a look at this book. Take a look at the shapes and materials and be inspired by them.
Thanks to Leah Eagel from Sterling Publishing for sending me this book
I loved the video Danny Gregory shared and really tried hard to think about something fabulous to post for my response. I don’t know if what I have is fabulous (I mean, taking pictures of my breakfast for several mornings in a row. Really!), but I am satisfied. I do think I have a part 2 response in me, so stay tuned for that.
CPP Responses Danny Gregory doesn’t truly respond to the Creative Prompt, but his drawings can provide inspiration. He took his son, Jack, Paris and has posted wonderful drawings of their time there. Do not be intimidated. Be inspired. Strive to draw every day so you can achieve something like his drawings in the future. Everyone is creative and it just takes practice. Danny has been drawing for a long time and you can get there, too, if you put in the time to practice (like, say, responding to the Creative Prompt every week!).
Quilting (in the sense of stitching layers)
I got some bad news this week. My quilter has a pretty major family emergency and won’t be returning for the foreseeable future. She lives part time near me and part time in Alaska. She had planned to quilt Stars for San Bruno #2 and Pavers when she returned from this quick trip. She sent me and email and apologized and I feel so terrible for her. The new grandson is great and she is great. Other things, which are not mine to disclose. For the moment, I am leaving the quilts at her shop until I decide what to do. What that means for me is that I have to find someone who can quilt Pavers and the SfSB quilts. I am pretty particular about who quilts my quilts and what they quilt on it. My quilter doesn’t charge extra for ‘custom’ quilting. That is what she does, so I think I am a bit spoiled. I don’t want Pantographs and I want someone with experience who can work with me to complete my vision. It is possible that I will go back and longarm the SfSB quilt myself, though not ideal. What a mess. She makes my quilt life so easy and now it is so much harder. Sigh.
Other Artists
Lil Sissy has a lot of new work up on her site, A Paper Addict. Most of it is not paper, but she is doing some nice work. She has a variety up there.
Pretty By Hand has a gorgeous messenger bag posted on her blog. It looks very similar to Candy Glendenning’s messenger bag pattern, but I don’t think Pretty By Hand used Candy’s pattern. The zipper looks particularly good.
Speaking of Candy’s messenger bag pattern, I have been working on reading through the directions and it is really a great pattern. I love the way she has outlined the cutting and distinguished the pieces. Why am I not sewing this pattern? It calls for home dec fabric. I have to see what I have in the closet and then decide whether I am going to buy more or make another trip to FabMo.
Fabric
I loving the Pure Elements solids by Pat Bravo! As mentioned, I am using them for the A-B-C Challenge with BAMQG. I cut up the Cozumel colorway and it goes sooooo well with the Festival Fuschia colorway (I think; it is hard to tell with solids). You can take a look at the colorways on Pat’s site.
I just finished The Gentle Art of Quiltmaking by Jane Brocket (look for a review soon). I was already in love with Philip Jacobs work, but now I am in a Philip Jacobs frenzy. I have been looking at all of his designs and fabrics. I’d like to go to his house in Dorset and meet him, see his fabric barn and get to know him. He would probably call the police, but fantasies are free and not scary. I especially like the Delphiniums, which QuiltHome.com has in 3 colorways.
I am trying hard not to buy more fabric. I don’t want to say I am on a fabric diet, because that will send me on a binge, but I want to sew through some fabric before replacing it (cut and sewed a half yard yesterday, which is a good thing). I think this weekend will be the weekend I finally make the sewing machine cover and I just may use some Philip Jacobs fabric! Still, I love those Delphiniums and wish I had a large space where I could hang lengths of them. Perhaps I could Modge Podge lengths of fabric to one of my walls? My workroom needs a serious makeover and this idea might kill two birds with one stone.
SeamedUp Logo
Media
Are you on SeamedUp? SeamedUp is a site that allows you to track your fabric, patterns, and books. Once you have your sewing room populated, you can share your works in progress, UFOs and finished projects with other members. The site is very much in beta, but Allison and Brye are working all the time on improving it. One of the things I like is that they are working with the quilt industry companies to get fabrics, books, patterns, etc into their database. Sanctioned information – not right-click-and-save-image-as information. They are constantly recruiting for volunteers to help populate the fabric database. Currently, they would like people to add information about patterns (not a scan of the pattern!) from current magazines to their pattern database. That is a great idea! How many times have you thought to yourself: “now where did I see that pattern recently” as the current stack of magazines next to your bed falls over? I received a notice that they had just added books to their offerings. The other thing I like is that they respond to member suggestions. There is a companion podcast (available for subscription on iTunes) where they interview a member and talk about tech updates, their own projects, member projects etc. It is a nice addition to the whole SeamedUp world.
I have added many of my projects, though not all. I started adding them randomly and now have to be careful not to add something twice! DUH! I should have been more organized, but I wasn’t. It is fun to get a wider audience to my projects and I add links to my blog in order to drive traffic here. Not sure if it works, but one can hope. I have to figure out how to add fabrics to an existing project. That is confounding me at the moment. The SeamedUp girls have a fundraising campaign going on right now at IndieGoGo. This is an opportunity for you to be a venture capitalist. Forget the guys in suits in Silicon Valley; you, in your sewing room in your pajamas, can be a venture capitalist. They have prizes, too. If everyone of the over 2K members gave $5, the system would be faster, SeamedUp would have much, much more money than they need right now to upgrade the servers and the free site for quiltmakers would get a huge shot in the arm. Go over and give your $5.
Where SeamedUp is one of the good guys (girls!), I was disappointed to see the evil side of the Internet come out last week on a review of the FabricWorm/Birch Fabrics (Go to maps.google.com and search for Birch Fabrics in Paso Robles). Last year I visited Birch TWICE on my way to and from Long Beach and they couldn’t have been nicer to TFQ and me. I wrote a glowing review, because I really thought they did a great job even when we showed up in the middle of their work day and they were cutting like madwomen. I am not going to rehash my review here, but you can go and read it. Someone, whose web name is Sunnydays, wrote a decidedly un-sunny review of FabricWorm/Birch fabrics. I have never had a problem with Birch, but I am there are customer service glitches occasionally. I am also sure that Cynthia will rectify anything that is a problem. The review as vile and I suspect someone jealous of Cynthia’s success wrote it. If you have good customer service experience with FabricWorm/Birch fabrics, do go and write a review (Go to maps.google.com and search for Birch Fabrics in Paso Robles) telling people about it. If you have had a bad experience, please call Cynthia and give her a chance to rectify before you trash her woman-owned, small business.
I saw a notice posted on Big tent that Katie of Katie’s Quilting Corner podcast had made a video of her sewing room. I am always interested in where other people sew, so I took a look. It is a long video (12+ min), but I still thought it was interesting to see her set up.
Take a look at the Hasty Quilter. Very nice photography and great description of her projects.
Someone sent me an article from the Alameda Patch about a woman who sold her fabric stash recently to raise $10,000 for the Alameda Food Bank. I am pretty sure I recognize her name from EBHQ. I just found out that one of my relatives can only afford one meal a day on her income (she just gets Social Security) and I know that she hasn’t always made the best decisions (who does?), but she doesn’t deserve to not have food. I am going to send her a care package. The article made me think of all the people who will be “fed from fabric!”
I have been thinking of asking other publishers to put me on their review list. I was talking to a person who works at one such company and she said that they send out the ebook version to reviewers. I am not sure I want to sit at my computer and read a book. I do a lot of reading online for work and really cherish the time I get to lay on the couch and read a real book. I suppose I could read such a book on one of my mobile devices, but it doesn’t seem as appealing. I am going back to the drawing board and thinking before I send out any letters.
You can get a nice view of some of the artwork in Masters Art Quilts v.2 over on the Lark Crafts site. I really enjoy working with Amanda on the reviews and giveaways. She is really nice and makes me wish there was such an organization in San Francisco that would hire me to work for them. A girl can dream.
I started the purple wallet before Christmas last year to give as a gift, but never finished it. I finally got another package of snaps and finished it. I am a little short on handwork right now, so it made sense. It will be a gift, but for whom, I don’t know.
The Skull wallet goes with the Jane Market Tote bag I gave to Lil Sissy. Poor girl. I gave her her gifts over a month rather than all at once, nicely wrapped on the day. All I can say is that I hope the dribs and drabs method made the day last longer.
Skull Wallet Open
That is not one of my new, cool Photoshop Elements backgrounds. That is trying to get rid of the background and running out of time to figure out what I was doing wrong. It looks pretty cool, I think. I tried to center some interesting motifs on the inside, so when she opened it, she would see some skeletons. Hope she likes it.
By the way, this pattern is good for bus passes! I saw one made with a loop and clip on it, which I thought was a good modification.
This Pièce de résistance for the Photoshop Elements class I took yesterday. It is not that useful for quiltmaking, but I am pleased that it came out well and is pleasing to the eye. I also learned a lot in that class and this piece shows a lot of what I learned.
I am so glad that people came out and took the class. I was nervous up until earlier this week when Lynn sent me a note saying 12 people had signed up. I wasn’t sure the class would go forward, but it did. I think everyone learned a lot. I think that Lynn put in the right amount of information.
Lynn Koolish teaches a variety of different classes, but they all seem to relate to printing on fabric, fabric dying and other fabric manipulation techniques. Lynn works at C&T Publishing as an editor. She contributes to the C&T Blog and teaches as well.
One of the things I wanted to learn was how to put multiple images into one space. I don’t always want to load 37 images that you, my dear reader, would also have to load, especially if I really want you to get the flavor of what I am discussing. I learned how to do that and the example above has that technique. In that case, I used the same image and put it into one file multiple times.
I also learned how to deal with layers, which was very confusing to me until yesterday. In the photo above, I was able to flip each image, because they were in different layers.
Breakfast of Champions
The reason the above is called Breakfaast of Champions is because the image started out as a picture of my breakfast. First we talked about various things you could do with color such as replacing color. I changed the colors using saturation and hue, etc so that my breakfast turned lovely shades of purple and blue. We also talked about different filters and effects, which is how I ended up with the spiky kind of image above. It is tempting to think of making it into a quilt, but I don’t know if I have it in me to do the colorwork required. Nice thought, though.
I also learned about adding text to an image. I don’t know why it seemed so scary before, but it isn’t scary.
Denver Flower Mashup 2
By the end of the class, I felt pretty confident. I am not expert, of course, but I have some confidence, so I changed the frame (from above photo) to see what the difference in look would be.
I don’t like to clutter up the blog with boring web stuff, but I also don’t want you wondering what is happening. I don’t think the blog move went smoothly, because each evening for the past few nights, I have been unable to update the blog or write any posts. I am doing my best to keep the information flowing going, but it is frustrating. My webmaster was in the path of Irene and my blog is not her first priority, though she is being fairly heroic about helping me even though she has not power.
Stick with me. We’ll get it sorted out and I apologize for the inconvenience.
This very simple block reminded me of a flag motif, probably an American, Australian or Union Jack flag, since there is such a wide variety of flag designs. Also, the symmetry of various flag designs varies greatly. Another easy, small block. Backwards Flag are available.
All blocks are 6″ finished.
This block is probably best suited for 3 fabrics.
If you make this block, please put a link to it in the comments. If you do not have a blog or website, you can post it to the AQ Block-a-Long Flickr Group.
I had so many photos (60 or 70??) that I couldn’t process them all for posting. I may use them for other posts in the future. If you want to go on a tour and see this beauty for yourself, check out the public tour information and sign up. Go and visit. Totally worth your time.
I know you are thinking “WTF? Has she lost her mind posting all these photos of things that aren’t quilts?”
No, I am not, at least for this reason.
You need inspiration to make quilts and the floors at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals Building in San Francisco provide enough inspiration to last a lifetime. The thing I like about mosaic and tilework is that both translate well into quilts. The place was a museum of tile and mosaics, and a hidden gem. The intricacy of the designs rival Christine Porter and Judy Mathieson’s designs. I didn’t think there would be anything to photograph. (I don’t know why I ever think that, except that, perhaps, tiredness and laziness drive me to it.) Fortunately, I had my new phone with me, which actually took some ok photos. I ran the battery down to the bone (lousy battery), but I got enough photos to keep most people happy.
Bad news. I don’t think I like this triangle shape. What I really want to do is kind of row quilt like the Fons & Porter Kalamkari Strippy. I like the space between the rows, though you can’t see it very well in the size information they provide. Still, I want to be true to the idea of the Fabric of the Year quilts and continue with that series. The bottom line is that I have too many triangles to make that quilt unless I want to make one to cover half of San San Francisco – the City not the people in it!
I considered, briefly, cutting squares out of the all the fabric already cut into triangles. I like the idea of simple shapes and may have just gone too far this year in the shape department. That would cause a problem for the smaller triangles. I know myself and would not pull the fabrics out again to cut squares.
The other idea I had was to intersperse light colored or neutral triangles in between the colored ones so that I can give the fabrics some space.
I think I have decided to lay all the triangles out and see what I am really dealing with and go from there. I may lay them all out on the Pat Bravo Pure Elements white linen solid color fabric and see if I get the space effect I want.
I can’t leave you all fretting and worrying. There is good news. I am almost at the end of the giant pile of fabric needing to be pressed. My machine is back, though, so that effort will be slowed a bit. I do have a pile of fabric to be washed that will also need to be pressed, but for the zillion loads of fabric I did at the beginning of the month, I am almost through it. More good news is that the fabrics on the bottom of the pile had sort of pressed themselves!
