Spiral Creations

We had show and tell at the CQFA meeting. Linda always shares with something interesting and this meeting was no exception. She showed Sea Glass III.

This piece is about 8″x10″ and is gorgeous! I adore it. It comes out of a lot of work that Linda does. She is always working and moving forward in her art. I admire her greatly. You can see more about this piece on Linda’s blog.

The people at Always Quilting were quite impressed with our machine quilting skills even though none of us had really ever driven a longarm. I think it was because, like Linda, we all have a little bit of practice machine quilting. I also think a lot of us doodle consistently.

Saturday Project

I brought two projects to the CQFA meeting yesterday and didn’t even finish one. Better safe than sorry, I say!

The first was the Pamela project that I started at EBHQ in a class with Pamela. I want to get this done before she comes out for the next class in April. If I can also finish the flower garden, that would be great.

I had worked on it, as you know, during the summer. I did mostly handwork. I came to a point where I decided I needed to machine quilt it and that sent the project to a screeching halt. This sewing time with CQFA seemed like a good time to get that machine quilting out of the way. I got about 2/3s of the way done yesterday and finished up the quilting today.

I always have a couple of issues when I am contemplating machine quilting something. Getting started is primary and the biggest problem. I never want to do it, don’t think I will be good enough, haven’t practiced in a long time blah blah blah. On this project’s machine quilting, I just went for it. I used a simple design and my regular open toe foot and just pretended I was sewing. The second problem comes up after I get going on the quilting. I start to see the quilting add to the design and some of the motifs not being quilted pop out. This makes me want to do more and more quilting.

I can never envision how the quilting will look while I am piecing and I always think of it as interfering with my great piecing design. It usually turns out just fine.

Here is some of the detail of the quilting part way done.

Longarm Demo


I went to the CQFA Meeting yesterday, which was held at Always Quilting in San Mateo. One of the reasons we went there was to get a demo of their longarm quilting machine and find out about learning to use it. I took the above video at the demo.

I tried out the machine as well and found it very easy to drive. Kit, one of the shop owners, had already loaded the machine with fabric for us to work on. She gave us a lecture on preparing the quilt for the machine and how their program of learning to load and use the machine worked. I thought she was a good lecturer and gave many good hints for preparing a quilt to be longarm quilted.

I have worked with a longarm quilter for awhile and know how she wants things prepared. I was surprised to hear that Always Quilting likes things a little differently done.

After the demo, we went to the back room, had lunch, worked on projects (see later post for pics of my work) and had our regular meeting.

I ended up signing up to take their their longarm quilting training in January. Their policy is to take the training and then you are allowed to rent the machine. I don’t expect that I will quilt all of my quilts myself, but I think it will be good to quilt some of them myself, and perhaps, less expensive. In any case, education is always a good thing.

All in all it was a fun day.

How I Learned the Librarian Glare

I have always been an admirer of tea towel embroidery. I have a lovel “collection” from my great grandmother and godmother of towels depicting wash days, various other chores, fruits and veg, etc. I like the idea of having things that you use every day be beautiful.

When I was a tot, my godmother determined that I needed to learn to do embroidery. She bought me the little squares of blue stamped cotton and floss. Every day we were together she would show me how to backstitch and outline stitch, etc. The one place we butt heads was splitting the floss into strands. On one piece, I used the entire width (??) of the floss to stitch some hair on a little blond cutie. My godmother was mad and that was the end of those stitching lessons. I had learned enough and put those skills to good use even today.

Flickr’s RitaPizza named me as a contact so I went to look at her pictures. This embroidery piece really caught my eye. I love the stylized face and hair and think changing the pinup inot a mermaid was clever. RitaPizza has a lot of fabulous pictures on her Flickr site that I haven’t even begun to delve into. Go take a look and enjoy her work.

Old Maid’s Puzzle by Terri Thayer

Spoiler Alert!!!!

Old Maid's Puzzle: A Quilting Mystery Old Maid’s Puzzle: A Quilting Mystery by Terri Thayer

My review


rating: 4 of 5 stars
I think this books ends nicely, but VERY surprisingly. I was pleased with the ending, which I didn’t see coming at all. I am glad that Terri doesn’t torment her readers with bad situations and that Dewey was able to learn some lessons in order to move forward. I think that haranguing readers with problems of the characters who can never learn their lessons drives readers away. Terri does some things in this book, like fire Kym, which was totally necessary to move the story along. Getting Dewey and her brother back together was great as well. I was confused during the first couple of chapters. Concerned that I blew through them too fast, I am reading them again. I can see that this series will go on. Such series always make me want a compendium with bios of the characters, more background information.

View all my reviews.

Crazy Quilt Test

I talked about Barsha’s silk crazy in a Sept. 16 post. I kept not posting about this project for some reason. I think I just never got around to it. Here is the finished top. I still need to make the back, but it shouldn’t take too long. This will be a project I will give away, but to whom, I don’t know.

I made it with one of the packs of Moda squares I bought in Maryland. The fabrics were Friends and Flowers by Mary Engelbreit. I found that I didn’t have to cut and resew as many times, which was nice. I thought it was a good thing to do with those fabric packs. I found that I didn’t like the fabrics that much and was glad I hadn’t bought a Jelly Roll.

Be*mused Lovelies

I am wasting time again and went over to see if Jan at Be*mused had posted anything lately. I was rewarded to find some bits and pieces of lovely, cheerful sewing. She also mentions Liberated Piecing a la Gwen Marston, of which I am huge fan. Jan’s fabric combinations are gorgeous and, did I mention, CHEERFUL?! I love the blocks and pieces that she has made and can’t wait to see the outcome.

  blog it

PIQF Baskets

One of the good things about going to quilts shows, aside from buying fabrics, is the opportunity to get inspired. Due to the large number of cheerful quilts, I am really inspired and anxious to sew.

TFQ and I started a basket quilt based on a block in a quilt we saw at PIQF 2007. We saw another quilt with the same block at APNQ 2008. When we got to my house after the show, we worked on it again.

Above are the original blocks and the colors/fabrics (left) that we are auditioning for the next groups of blocks. We decided to make 9 more blocks and, thus, needed more of everything. TFQ had a plan, so we had searched out and bought all of the butter yellow fabric at the show. The right butter yellow is not the *it* yellow fabric this year and we had a hard time finding it.

One aside about fabric is that it seems like fabric is only available for a short time. I understand that fabric manufacturers need to sell new fabric all the time. However, I buy fabric on spec and it is usually a few years down the road before I get around to using it (remember the whole drama with that Denyse Schmidt fabric???) and knowing whether I like it. I understand that, like book publishers, they can’t keep all fabrics in print all the time. Still, I think it would be a service to either keep track of fabrics people are missing OR every few years reprint some of the popular fabrics from a line. In fairness, the FOTY project is an effort to use a bit of the fabrics I buy right away, so I can see whether I really like them and buy more in a timely manner. I have to remember to keep that in mind while I am cutting and sewing the FOTY pieces.

This is the whole piece minus some of the setting triangles on my design wall now. I have a whole dissertation on those d*mn setting triangles that I hope to spare you. I am really pleased with how it looks. I stared at it for about 45 minutes this morning and could only find a few minor pieces to move around. I am anxious to get busy and sew it together. Of course, I still need to cut most of the setting triangles.

Above is a detail. The block in the upper left hand corner is one of the new ones that we pieced this year. One of the things TFQ did is pay more attention to which triangles were going together in each block. She gave me little sets of all the pieces already sorted so all I had to do was sew them together. I really enjoy sewing with her as we divide up the tasks and can accomplish a lot more. I am really pleased with how cheerful the whole quilt is looking.

Now to the setting triangles problem. Figuring out the size is the problem. If I were truly organized, the whole quilt would have been laid out and measured and figured out before I started sewing. That is just not how I work. Where is the fun in knowing exactly how things come out? That is not to say that I don’t have any idea in my mind, but I do leave the sashing (yes or no) and layout (on point or straight) decisions until after I have made blocks. I want to see what they need.

OK, you are not going to be spared the dissertation. Sorry! Skip the next paragraph if you can’t deal with my setting triangles drama.

I bought a cool new ruler to easily cut setting triangles. BAH! It is impossible to figure out how it works so we couldn’t use it. TFQ, who is GREAT at figuring out directions, gave it a go. No joy there either. What a waste of money. We resorted to looking through a number of books to try and find the directions. I know now why I don’t do on point sets that often, because the directions in a variety of books are atrocious. The best chart we found was in the Joy of Quilting and it gave no direction for blocks with sashing. I guess people don’t make quilts that are designed for an on point setting and have sashing. We ended up guessing. I haven’t cut all of the setting triangles yet, because I want to sew a couple of blocks together with the sashing to see what size they end up and they fit with the guesstimate of the setting triangles size.

Stay Tuned!

Joy of Quilting Joy of Quilting by Joan Hanson

 

My review

 
rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is a book that I mostly use as reference. One good thing about it is that it has chart of the sizes to cut setting triangles for an on point quilt. This chart only works for blocks with no sashing.

View all my reviews.

PIQF Follow-up


Like everyone else, the economy is affecting our family so I was extremely restrained in fabric purchases at PIQF this year. I tried to only buy fabrics that were really calling my name. As you can see, I still have the turquoise/aqua as well as dot themes going.


I am excited about the fabrics that I bought and I also got the best ruler in the universe. I know rulers and this one totally rocks. It is a 4.5″x8.5″ Creative Grid Ruler. The ruler is great because it is big enough to cut without fear that I will cut off my hand, but small enough so it doesn’t hang over the edge of my small cutting table. It is also the right size for the variety of pieces that I cut. For example, I can cut the FOTY pieces without having to move the ruler at all. One end is exactly the right size. TFQ and I both wanted to use it at the same time, so I may need to buy a second one for when we are sewing together. If you don’t have this ruler, go out and buy one now.


I also bought two new bag patterns. I know I know! I really plan to make them. I have some canvas-type Moda fabrics covered with cupcakes that I bought in Virginia this summer. I think it will be perfect. One is a vertical bag by Liesl + Co called the Backpack Tote. It converts from a tote to a backpack. It requires some hardware that I have never used before, but I can get through it. If not, I will bring the pattern to Seattle in the spring and TFQ can hold my hand while I work on it.

The other is very similar to the Eco Market tote that I have been using. It is by Gail Abeloe, owner of Backporch Quilts in Pacific Grove.
I bought it because of the slightly different shape of the top and the construction of the bottom, which you can’t see in this picture. It has a square bottom and not side panels. We’ll see which one I like better.

I spent a lot of the show really looking at the quilts. We didn’t succumb to trying to take photos at times when there were too many people in the hall. This resolved made me less annoyed and allowed us to really look at the quilts. We took photos on Wednesday evening at the preview and then late in the day when people had left. It worked out well. It was also a joy to see that people are using cheerful fabrics again. There were many, many quilts that were simply wonderful and I know you will see many of them show up in my end of the year roundup of favorite quilts.

Despite the fact that I had to turn around and, virtually, go straight to speak at a conference, it was great to get away, sleep in, not worry about taking care of anyone. I feel like I take a lot of time off, but I seem to need it. I have had several busy weekends in a row, though, so perhaps that is the reason.

PIQF 2008 Day 3


PICT2941
Originally uploaded by jlapac

As I mentioned, the quilts were much more cheerful. I don’t think there were enough of them to think of ‘cheerful’ as a theme. However, I did notice two themes: leaves and hexagons.

I would say there were at least 30 quilts that incorporated leaves – full leafy leaves, colored Autumn leaves and thin, spiky leaves. I found most of the leaf (and by association, tree) quilts to be quite calming.

After breakfast and before we headed back to the show, we went to visit the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. They had three exhibits on. he major exhibit was a group of Radka Donnell quilts. Many of them were from the 1970s and had been used. They were all bed sized and I think it was hard for me to appreciate what she had accomplished, because there was nothing to compare them with. Many of them look like the backs of quilts I make now. They were all best viewed from far away and that is the good thing about the new-ish space. The galleries were large and enabled us to stand back. My favorite was So Bubbly and Clear. TFQ liked some elements of The Pool of Nazzissos. The other gallery had quilts from a variety of artists including Faith Ringgold (prints) and Laura Wasilowski. A log cabin quilt by Terrie Hancock Mangat kept our attention for a long time as there were lots and lots of interesting fabrics. Finally, the last gallery had 8 Double Wedding Ring or wedding quilts. Most were the normal DWRs, but one looked like a cross between the Winding Ways and the Flowering Snowball. I wasn’t able to find a reference for it yet, but will post it when I do.

Back at PIQF, another theme I noticed was that many quilts used a hexagon shape. I don’t remember any of the traditional Grandmother’s Flower Garden type layouts. I saw one that used the hexagon shape for the base of a Crazy quilt and one that used hexagons to make flowers.

It was really interesting to see themes pop out.

We visited the vendors. I did buy a few fabrics, but passed many of them up. Best vendor award goes to: Erica at In Between Stitches from Livermore. She was friendly, funny and willing to have someone bring us Moda swatch packs of the Fresh Squeeze fabrics from their store. I love vendors who don’t complain and have a great attitude about customer service.