Artquiltmaker Blog – Page 368 – Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity

Indulgence / Retail Therapy

I spent last week in SoCal doing a little bit of Grama wrangling/triage with my mom. If it isn’t abundantly clear, I was away from my sewing machine. The only fiber work I did was work on a bit of the hand stitching of Beach Town. After thinking about it, I may pull out what I did and redo it. We’ll see.

I was able to visit two quilt shops and a Borders. I don’t usually buy the Where Women Create magazine, but I am a Mary Engelbreit sucker and love her stuff, so I couldn’t resist. The editor’s note in this issue is WONDERFUL! I am going to send a copy to some of my good friends. I think they will appreciate it. I also really liked the quotes included with each artists’ piece.

Usually I prefer to buy magazines at local shops, but Borders really does have the BEST selection I have seen lately. I was able to look through 5-7 quilt magazines there as well as a plethora of other art and craft related magazines. I wasn’t enamored with the current Quilts and More mag, sadly. Very dull colors and uninspiring projects.

I also found that the two quilt shops I visited no longer carried magazines. Both owners said magazines just weren’t selling there. Sad. I would like it if Amazon sold just issues of mags rather than subscriptions. I would buy an issue or two of various mags once in a while if it weren’t such a pain to do so. I am thinking I need a subscription to a house magazine. I really mis House and Garden. House Beautiful seems to have improved somewhat.

One of my favorite shops is called Treasure Hunt in Carpinteria. It is located at 919 Maple Ave in a little house. The decorations are fun, cheerful and adorable. They have fun and cheerful fabric, a nice staff and other craft related items, like Collage Pauge from Traci Bautista. They have a room full of yarn for you knitting types, kid craft items (more Crayola brand stuff than I have ever seen in my life!) and a room of supplies needed to finish your works like frames, etc.

The red dot fabric and the cherry fabric with the yellow background will be an Anna Maria Horner Multi-tasker tote. I plan to do a trial run with some Denyse Schmidt Flea Market Fancy fabric first, though. I want to see how the pattern works before I use my precious combo. If the pattern doesn’t work for me, I will make another one of the Eco Market totes. Stay tuned for that project.

Sorbet Blocks

The above blocks are the blocks I made over the weekend. Except for the one in the lower left hand corner, which I made last week. I put it in to make the photo square and so you wouldn’t see my ugly carpet.

Last week I made two blocks for the Sorbet quilt (left). They sat on my design wall all week and as I looked at them a new idea formed in my head: a baby.

When I made these, I just wanted to make some of the quickest blocks to cut and sew. I wanted to get some endorphins going and some quick satisfaction.

What I didn’t realize was that these two could be merged to make yet another block. I didn’t need to make a pattern, which is part of the fun and joy of this quilt.

I can’t shake the idea that these two blocks got together and had a baby!

Silly, I know, but it is what it is.

The others I made were from the patterns I already designed in EQ6. I think this quilt will be one that I can longarm myself.

Not really sure why the above block is called Four Patch Corner. I didn’t make up the name, it was in EQ6.

Regular old 9 Patch fits the size and shape requirements. Easy to make and I think it looks great.

Sorbet Color

In a recent post, I posted a partially colored view of the patterns I had created in EQ6 for the Quilt Sorbet Quilt (not sure whether I will call it Sorbet or Quilt Sorbet or something else). Here is a fully colored rendering.

Some of the blocks are pretty obvious, but others kind of blend together.

My other thought was to create an EQ6 rendering where I color the blocks as I sew them. That might make my life too complicated, but we will see. It might, on the other hand, make it easy for me to keep track of blocks I have made.

Inspiration Tuesday

There were two estate sales in our neighborhood over the weekend so we went and took a look. I think estate sales are incredibly sad. These were especially so. We saw piles of photographs of the people living their lives. There was a pile of scrapbook pages. One of the pages held a portrait of a handsome young man with the handwritten caption “almost married him.” What a story that must be! Yet there they were in boxes being sold for whatever the family could get. Very sad.

I really like the shapes and the stylized indentations.

I was pleased to see, and buy, these ornaments, though. My grandmother had a tree full of them when I was a kid and I loved them. She also had strings of metallic beads she used as garland. She got rid of them all in a frenzy of cleaning because they were too old. It made me sad. I have been collecting old fashioned looking ornaments, like the Christopher Radko type ornaments. These are the first I have of this type.

Return of Flea Market Fancy?

Not sure how I found this blog.

It is interesting to see how one person can generate interest in an effort to get a fabric or fabric group reprinted. Perhaps I should do that with the turquoise (Botanical Pop from Baum Textile Mills/Windham Fabrics) fabric I need. There are a lot of steps to join this project, so I haven’t done it yet. It would be nice to get some more that blue!I have enough now, thanks to Julie, but you never know!

clipped from sewtakeahike.typepad.com

Calling all Flea Market Fancy lovers

I love it, you love it, we ALL love it! Flea Market Fancy by Denyse Schmidt seems to be one of the most sought after fabrics out there. And it’s oh so hard to find!

These dire circumstances have inspired me to start this blog as a sort of petition to see if we can raise an eyebrow (or two!) at Free Spirit Fabric to do another run of Flea Market Fancy (FMF).

K. S. Perino Pencil Roll

K. S. Perino is one of the participants in the CPP, so I peruse her blog periodically to check out her prompt responses. As I was doing that this morning, I saw hat she had made a pencil roll. I have seen the pattern for pencil rolls on the Pink Chalk Studio website and Julie over at High Fiber Content even made me one for my birthday last year. I really like the pencil rolls and have been contemplating expanding/adjusting the pattern a little to accommodate knitting needles.

This pencil roll is one of the best that I have seen. First, it is gorgeous. Next it is even more useful because of the little zippered pouch that the artist added (note to self: learn to put in zippers!). Finally, the little details such as the fabulous machine quilting and the little charms on the ends of the ties really make the piece.

I am thinking that one of these would be great to replace the ziploc bag in which I carry my PITT pens around.

clipped from finishinglinesbyksperino.blogspot.com

Quilt Sorbet Colors

I haven’t had a chance to make anymore blocks since I first introduced this project last week. Some block making is on my agenda this weekend, but in the meantime, I have been looking at fabrics and adding them to the mix. The biggest addition is the purple batik (upper right hand corner). I also added a couple of medium-large scale flower prints to see how they work in the mix.

I noticed that there is a lot of pink in the fabric mix. I hope it won’t be too pink, but I am enjoying the pink.

New Infinity Blocks

I received another batch of Infinity blocks from my SIL in the mail last week. Here is the large group (about 31) that I received.

It is so interesting to see her fabric selections and the fabrics she has and compare those two points to the blocks I have made and the fabric I have used. I was also thrilled and amazed to see some of the fabrics that she owns/chose for this project. We get along pretty well, but, sadly, we don’t get to spend very much time together since we live on different coasts. See the bottom right, second block in? That is not a fabric I would have suspected SIL of having, yet I am thrilled that she included it! It shows me another side of her quiltmaking.

After laying these out I decided to lay out all of the blocks I had, so I gathered up the various stashes of Infinity blocks and laid them out on the floor of my workroom.

All Infinity Blocks, Auust 2009 — All Infinity Blocks, August 2009

The above group has about 80 blocks in it. WOW! I can’t believe that we have made that many. I realized that there are a few elsewhere that aren’t included. So, there will be at least one more photo of these quilt blocks for your perusal.

I am glad we are working on this project together. I feel like it brings us closer together.

Another Take on the Tarts

There is a book called Brain Rules. One of the rules is that the more senses you stimulate, the more people will remember about what you were telling them. Another rule is that vision takes up about 50% of a person’s sense-related brain power.

I had a lot of help on the Tarts as it progressed and one thing that SherriD did was use her Photoshop powers to stimulate my vision sense.

In the first picture, she showed how the quilt would look with some more flying geese in the bottom middle would look. I ended up adding some silverware, but the idea was sound.

Once I definitely replaced the Flying Geese with the stack of cups, SherriD thought it would look better if I had two godl cups there. I wasn’t about to redo another part, but I liked the show and tell.

By the way, there are twenty-three elements (blocks) in this piece. Of the 23, twelve have been redone at least once. rust me, it seemed like I redid a lot more than that!

Handbag Finished

As you know, I have been thinking of branching out from the Eco Market Tote bag pattern that I have a been using for the past 1.5 years. I saw the Over the Top bag in a recent issue of Quilts & More magazine. That mag is on Facebook, so I get more notifications about what they have going. I saw their promotion for Quarterly Challenges, which reminded me of this bag. A couple of things came together, including watching their little tips video, so I downloaded the pattern last Friday and made the bag, mostly, on Saturday.

I am pleased with the way it came out. It is the perfect size for a small handwork project tote. As with all things I sew from a pattern, I found that the first piece is really a test piece. I rely heavily on TFQ and her garment sewing experience when it comes to 3D projects, so deciphering this one alone was a challenge.

There were a few things I didn’t really understand in the pattern and, thus, skipped. I don’t see that it made much difference in the long run. There were some things that the pattern said to do that I would do differently a second time. I would add more stiffness to the bottom, perhaps something like Timtex. The pattern says to sew only to the dots, which are about 1/4″ away from the edge. This makes sense for the bottom seams. It is necessary in order to put the Y seams together. It isn’t necessary on the top of the bag and actually turned out to be a pain. since the top seams weren’t crossed by another machine stitched seam, they started to come apart after I had the bag mostly together. I ended up hand stitching the tops of the seams.

I think that this pattern has a lot of opportunities for embellishment, which could be fun. I keep thinking of a picture I saw in either thr3fold journal or Quilting Arts, where Laura Kemshall did a beaded edging on one of her bags.

In anticipation of loving this pattern, I bought enough magnetic clasps to make 4 bags total. After making it, however, I am not sure whether or not I will make any more. In some ways I want to make the bag again, so I can perfectmy construction techniques. On the other hand, I don’t think they style and size would be that useful for me, so I am not sure I want to have a bunch of them hanging around the house. They may, however, make nice gifts.

Quilt Sorbet

Last year I found a quote in Judy Martin’s newsletter by a reader who talked about projects classified as mind sorbet, which I recounted in a post. After the Tarts Come to Tea, I really feel like I need some mind sorbet, something that I don’t have to think about much. The Tarts was a real design challenge: worth it, but a challenge. Now I need a break.

These are the fabrics I have been collecting for the past little while with the idea of making this quilt. There are an abundance of dots, but hopefully enough other designs and scale to make it interesting.

I scanned back over some of the posts showing fabrics that I bought with this project in mind. I don’t see them in the picture above, so I will need to look at them and see if they fit in with the idea I have in my mind.

This quilt was inspired by a pattern by Terri Atkinson called Yellow Brick Road, which I wrote about in a post called Avoidance Issues. The idea was further encouraged by a trip to Texas in April. For once I sat in a window seat and was able to look at the regular patterns created by lots and fences, etc. After that trip, I had a lot of ideas and went crazy putting my own designs “on paper”. EQ6 makes such an exercise really easy. The project is really all about the fabric, though.

This image looks a little weird because it is exported from EQ6. I haven’t colored all of the blocks, but this should give you a bit of an idea of the next project.

I made two blocks today. They took me about 5 minutes each, which is exactly what I wanted.

In order to get the variation, I need to print the rotary cutting directions for the rest of the blocks. We’ll see what we get.

Picking Prompts

In a recent comment, Quilt Rat asked how I pick the prompts for the Creative Prompt Project. In part it all started with Amy at the Creative Mom Podcast, because I heard one word, thought about her thematic prompt and started on this project. The project has evolved very differently than the project in my mind.

Around the same time, I had been thinking about Illustrated Journals and that influenced my decisions about the CPP as well. You can read a little about my thoughts at the time in my February 20, 2009 post.

Another piece of the puzzle was a little book that DeWayne gave me as a Christmas gift. DeWayne is a former co-worker who is an unbelievably creative person. Every year at Christmas DeWayne gave everyone on the management team a little gift and one year it was a little blank book called Jeu de Cahier.

I am very particular, and a bit of a connoisseur/snob, about my notebooks and journals. This one didn’t fit, so I threw it into a drawer. When I started the CPP, I came across this notebook again and decided that it would work for keeping track of my ideas for prompts. I have a big list in the front with all of the prompts and then I organized them by first letter of the alphabet, so I can keep better track of the ones I use.

As I wander through my life, I note down words that might make good prompts in the future.

Finally, I am getting to Quilt Rat’s question. Choosing a prompt depends on my mood. I leaf through the book and see what words jump out at me or strike my fancy. I, sometimes, try and choose prompts that fit in with a theme or something that is happening in the world. I don’t worry about that too much, however, because I don’t really think it matters for the CPP purposes.

I try to prepare the prompts so that they post on the Friday and are consistent in terms of numbering and order. If I can think of a theme that fits, then I add that as well. Sometimes I change a prompt just before it is going o post and that can get me into trouble. Remember the double prompt Friday – June 5?

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
	1	2	3	4	5	6
7	8	9	10	11	12	13
14	15	16	17	18	19	20
21	22	23	24	25	26	27
28	29	30