Fabric – Page 18 – Artquiltmaker Blog

Various & Sundry 2011 #8

Patterns and Projects

Julie, over at the Intrepid Thread, has created a tutorial for an iPad bag in conjunction with Cutting Corners. Aside from the bag being cheerful, I like the directions. There are a ton of photos and the words are pretty clear. This is a long tutorial, so put a new ink cartridge in if you plan on printing it.

I bought a gift of fabric from Julie and she was kind enough to offer to include a card. She sent the fabric out in a timely manner as well. Great service.

Quilts & Shows

The 2011 AQS Show winners are posted.

I love this quilt. It was part of the Red and White show in NYC. Don’t you love the different borders? I might make one.

Media

I was listening to Creative Talk Radio with Pat Sloan recently. She had an interview with Joanna Figueroa, which was about a half an hour long. I really enjoyed hearing about her and about her new project with Quilts & More magazine. It starts with the April issue. I will have to seek out that magazine and see what it is about. Pat also had an interview with Eleanor Burns on that same episode as well as the news that she is moving her podcast to the AllPeopleQuilt.com website.

As a result of the podcast, I decided to try out the Fig Tree Quilts Fresh Vintage subscription for awhile. They called me to get some payment information and Joanna Figueroa picked up the phone. What a thrill! Who cares about Brangelina!

I have purchased this publication before. TFQ and I were together when I bought issue 10 that has the fabulous Tea Basket quilt in it. I haven’t made that quilt, but still admire it. I am looking for something a little different and hope that this magazine will provide it.

Sandy of Quilting for the Rest of Us podcast has started to write some book reviews. I flatter myself that I inspired her, but I know that she wrote book reviews on some other subjects for previous jobs. Go check out one of her first books reviews.

Penguin has come out with some new editions of classics such as Black Beauty, The Secret Garden and Emma. The creative part of this everyday publishing phenomenon is that they are being released under a new imprint called Penguin Threads and the covers are hand sewn. I saw a brief article in the Atlantic that featured wonderful pictures. In the images the stitching can be seen. The colors are cheerful without being glary. There is a lot the article doesn’t say, such as how many are being made? Are they all hand stitched or only the first one? Cool, in any case.

The Quilt Index had a great Double Wedding Ring quilt up last week. The background was Nile Green – kind of a combination aqua and green – which provided a real WOW factor to this quilt. The maker really had some guts.

Linda Kemshall has a new blog. She is a UK artist who works on DMTV and Thr3fold Journal. I wrote about her, and her daughter Laura, in a blog post some time ago.

Stars for San Bruno

As you know, I finished the first quilt top and am gearing up for the second. Someone offered me some fabric and replied to my query about her being sure she wouldn’t mind sending it along to be used with a very entertaining quip: “It’s been on my shelves for a couple of years now. I figure if I haven’t even pulled it off to audition it in that time it’s better off going to a home which will make it feel much more needed and useful. I’m all about helping my fabric self-actualize.”

Trying to Do Good

I like to do charity projects that fit with my life and my interests and help people locally. You have seen me make pillowcases. I have made about a dozen so far. I finally got my act together and called the hospital to arrange a time to donate them. I left a message. A few days later, a chipper, cheerful and young woman called me back and left a message telling me they have a ready supply of pillowcases and don’t need any. She told me to take them to a town about 20 miles away. She was very nice, but I am still annoyed. I guess some hospitals are getting too much of a good thing.

Fabric

I have to admit that I didn’t remember buying this fabric. Also, I didn’t have a receipt for it, except what came with the fabric when it was shipped. I don’t usually purchase fabric from Fabric.com, so I was really confused.

It is very strange and has really put me off buying fabric lately. If you bought this for me, will you, please, confess so I can write you a thank you note? I also want to get over this feeling of losing my mind. Thank you!

UPDATE: I have a secret fabric fairy. Thanks, Mrs. K.!

Selecting Fabric

Selecting fabric is a very personal choice. I have a group of fabrics for my sampler class with Frances and I needed to choose some background-esque fabric to go with the Four Patches for my Double Four patch block. These are large blocks and I don’t normally work in this size, so I found it challenging.

I fell back on Lorraine Torrence‘s old adage: Make Visual Decisions Visually. That is the best advice I have EVER gotten in quiltmaking. Go take a class from Lorraine and buy her books. She is awesome.

I liked the bold graphic-ness of this print, but thought it might be too large.

I thought for sure this would work, but the cherries felt too scattered. They need to be hemmed in a little.

Something in the color was off with this print. The aqua in the Bliss print is more green while the small flowered print is more on the turquoise side.

This is the same print as the first one, but the flowers are smaller. I like the way you can see more of the flowers. Success!

I chose the last print and above is how the finished block looks.

Various & Sundry 2011 #5

Media
I listened to an episode of Pat Sloan’s Creative Talk Radio with Amanda Herring of the Quilted Fish. She described her new fabric line from Riley Blake. It is called Sugar & Spice. THEN the Fabricworm sent out a teaser a week or so ago and I can’t get the fabric in the teaser out of my head. ERGH!!! Those fabrics would go perfectly with my red & aqua quilt even though I am not buying them.

I heard about Matt and Shari on Mark Lipinski’s Creative Mojo and was so impressed with all the information on their website. They have all sorts of different projects, info about color, lighting, etc. They have a section on framing a quilt block, which includes the book I learned to quilt with, Diana Leone’s The Sampler Quilt. I have the original edition, which I still use for the binding lesson and the newer edition, which has great blocks.

Creative Mojo is growing on me. Mark is interviewing a lot of interesting people and telling me about a lot of interesting books. I hope I can meet him someday and have some of his fortune rub off. 😉

I was looking at my Google Reader for once since it was pouring rain and I didn’t want to go out for my usual lunch time walk. I saw a post from Fresh Lemons showing the Sugar Pop line of fabric. It looks so much better in her photo than it does in my workroom and I am starting to think that if this rain lasts much longer, I am going to have to breakdown and paint over the life sucking beige that still exists in my space.

Bari J, who is getting lots of press right now for her relatively new book, was the guest hostess on Wednesday Night Live with Lisa Fulmer of C&T publishing. She was demonstrating embroidery stitches and tools. There is more information on Creating the Hive.

On My Mind-Revisted
A few weeks ago I made a list of projects. I did that because those projects were cluttering up my mind. They are, with their status:

Sugar Pop Chubby Charmer – squares sewn; need to make straps, lining and line with batting
2 Martha Negley totes – already cut out; ready to sew
Grand Revival Flea Market bag in light violet with green dots – need to pick and cut out lining
Grab Bag- push out corners, press and top stitch
Finish testing hexagons
Corner Store – thinking about making the blocks 4″ instead of 5″, which means unsewing a lot of blocks, trimming and resewing.
Grand Revival Flea Market bag in violet Innocent Crush – unsew, fix straps and resew
Back for FOTY 2010
Bubble pillowcase
Zig Zaggy back – make it a bit longer
Stars for San Bruno – still need blocks, will put together starting in April
Block for Modern Quilt Guild

Other things I finished recently:

binding for FOTY 2010
binding for Frosted Stars
binding for Frosted Stars leftovers
Grab Bag for Grama – finished, mailed and sent

I am not bragging, really. I seem to need to feel like I am accomplishing something!

Shows
I am so sad that I am not rich enough to run off to NYC for the weekend, because I will be missing the Red & White quilt show at the Armory. The Lizzie B Girls have a great post with lots of fab photos on their blog about it. If you go, tell me how you like it.

Doing Good
Last call for Stars for San Bruno! I know the Sendai and Christchurch earthquakes have overshadowed the fire in San Bruno, but any contributions you make will be greatly welcome. See more information on my 3/24 post.

You can also help the modern quilt community with relief for Japan. Check their new site. Tamiko is also doing her part. You only have until the end of the week, so click this link now!

Making
Here is a tutorial for making wonky cross blocks. You never know when you might want to make wonky cross blocks!

Need some kimono?

Project Selvedge
I saw an ad for a Michael Miller contest for fabric design. I have the perfect design, but I uploaded it too late. The directions said it could be done through 3/24, but on the West Coast, we often get shortchanged on the timezones. Oh well. Perhaps next time. I did put it up on Spoonflower, but can’t sell it, because I haven’t ordered a swatch.

BAMQG Exchange Blocks

A few weeks ago I talked about the blocks I was planning on making for the BAMQG challenge. Here are the first two. I had an idea for these blocks, but I also had a couple of obstacles to the finished pieces.

First, I had to find the rotary cutting directions. I tried to draw the blocks on EQ7 and wasn’t, initially successful. Through a series of weird coincidences, I found a block in the big Jinny Beyer block book and had a pad of graph paper near handy, which allowed me to visualize the grid. Once I had that, I was able to draw the block in EQ7 (I was surprised not to find it there already there) and EQ7 generated the rotary cutting directions for this Courthouse Square block. Update 10/9/2011: I found that this block is Brackman Number: 2815A. You can see an antique example of this block in a quilt at the Quilt Index.

I used the fabrics I showed in the last post and am pleased with how they came out. I was a little nervous about using the Michael Miller fabric, because I have it slated for another project. I slapped myself and used the fabric since I hadn’t used it in that other project yet and it isn’t as though I have a shortage of fabric. I think the block looks great.

Two blocks wasn’t enough and I still had some fabric, so I looked at the gallery (I apologize if you can’t open the link) that Adrianne made.I found this one in Jinny Beyer’s book also. It is called Multiple Square Quilt and is from a 1953 issue of the Kansas City Star. That book is a useful resource if you love blocks at all.

I am thinking I will make one or two more, but I made a list of all I have to sew this weekend, so we will see how much I get done.

It is kind of fun thinking about blocks in a different way and trying to make them modern. I still have more fabric, so I may make a few more blocks.

Zen Quiltmaking

I had an appointment with Colleen yesterday to talk about the quilting for the Frosted Stars, the Frosted Stars Leftovers and the Purple Quilt. I wanted to bring the Fabric of the Year 2010 top over as well, but I wasn’t able to even start the back. My life felt like it was spiraling into complete craziness this past week as things just continued to get heaped on to me. To add to the general life craziness, my work computer is acting up. It has been for awhile, but it reached new heights of not working on Wednesday afternoon and I lost patience. Nothing would load (web pages, local programs, nothing) and I could hear the hard drive churning away, which I knew was a very bad sign. Finally, on Wednesday afternoon, completely and totally fed up, I went to my boss, told him him the problem and asked him if I could just read my email from home on Thursday if my computer was working the same way. He said if my iPad was faster, I should just go home and use that on Thurs. WOOHOO!

Sadly, his IT staff came in early and did a stopgap fix on my computer. It was much better on Thursday, so I had to stay at work instead of hang out at home with my iPad next to my sewing machine. 😉 Oh well.

The computer problems just added to my stress and in light of the craziness, I decided I had to be okay with not getting the back of the FOTY 2010 finished. I talked to Colleen and will bring it in two weeks when she is back in town and ready to quilt again. That means I have two weeks to finish the back.

This past week wasn’t a complete quiltmaking desert. I did get a break on Monday when I didn’t have to take the Young Man to his regular Monday appointment and I took the opportunity to finish the FOTY 2010 top! Yay! I feel so good about that.

All the diamonds were sewn together and the border strips were cut, so I just had to sew them on to the top. It took me a long time – about 3.5 hours. I never think that borders and backs are going to take long, but they always seem to take longer than I expect. Oh well.

I learned a couple of things making this top. First, my deadline was to piece the whole top at the CQFA Retreat. It turned out that I wasn’t ready to piece this whole top. Diamonds require finding my sweet spot of piecing. I had to develop a rhythm and a method and I hadn’t done it by the time I reached the retreat. Second, this was a top that needed me to take my time. I ripped out much of the piecing I sewed at the retreat. A lot of people don’t care about points being cut off and I am not going to beat myself up about every single point, but I absolutely don’t want my bad technique to distract viewers from the overall look of the quilt. Finally, this quilt needed to be pieced slowly and carefully.

I have been lamenting my pictures (my whole blog, really) lately and these two show great detail, but they are not great photography. I am pretty pleased with the color layout on the pink and white section.

The diamonds are not in perfect positions colorwise, but I have improved since FOTY 2009.

In the photo of the pinks and whites, I am really pleased that I clustered the whites in the corner. In FOTY 2009 I put them along the left side one on top of the other and I decided that wasn’t as effective in terms of the colorwash idea. It is very difficult to get a really smooth colorwash effect when using prints. As I said, I think I improved over last year.

My mom kept telling me to move diamonds AFTER I had already sewn them and finally I had to tell her to make her own colorwash quilt!

As I mentioned in a post earlier this week, I will be making a block or two from Joel Dewberry fabric. I have the fat quarter laid out on my ironing board (see previous comments about horizontal space in my workroom!), because my design wall is full, and there is no horizontal space.

As I was finishing the FOTY, I kept pressing bits and pieces. When I was pressing the corner of the inner border on top of the JD fabric, I noticed how interesting this particularly corner looked with the JD fabric as the border. I didn’t want that active a print on the outside of this quilt, but I thought it was interesting.

Stealing Mom’s Thunder

I bought a lot of food fabric fat quarters (say that 3x really fast) for my mom last spring while she was taking care of Super G and trying not to lose her mind. This is one of the blocks she made with those food fabrics. She made a lot of blocks like the Corner Store pattern I talked about in the review of Pretty Little Mini Quilts, then she didn’t like them for the food quilt, so she redid them and this is block one of the result. Check her blog for progress.

FOTY 2010: Week of 2/14 Progress

This is what I was working with last weekend. Remember when the blues were a problem? Well, at the point I took this photo, the yellows and greens were giving me fits and I could tell the pinks were next.

It is very difficult to figure out where the pieces are going to end up when the piece is done. At some point last week, I dug out my Ruby Beholder (which required quite a bit of searching and some tidying) and tried it to see if it works. My values are all the same – or similar, so it didn’t help much. I am glad I know where it is, though.

At this point, I realized that I had too many diamonds and might need to add another row. This was weird, because of all the math we did to get the layout correct. I think EQ should add a function where you tell it how many patches you have and it tells you options for different layouts.

After a really busy week last week and a day of quilting on the Tarts (Friday), I got back to FOTY 2010. I’d like to get this to the quilter and move on.

The reds and oranges are getting in order in the photo above, but the pinks and reds on the bottom are starting to really be a problem.

The above is me working on the pinks and whites. Lots of rearranging was happening as I was trying to figure out what patch went where. I think, after this project, I will have diamonds out of my system. Perhaps not, but I am thinking yes.

FOTY 2010 - 2/20/2011 - det. pinks, reds

See that big space towards the top middle? I didn’t know, at the point I took this picture, whether that was a space from seam allowances shrinking or was a space because I had arranged fabrics wrong.

When I left the piece yesterday to go do laundry, make dinner and all that other stuff, the above photo shows the state of the piece. That space I described above shifted to the middle of the left side. Sigh. That one means I really don’t know if I am missing pieces. If I need to cut more, I am resolved to do so. The other space resolved itself, so I have hope.

Almost all the pieces are sewn to some other piece, which is good. I did add an additional row, so there could very well be some extra space I need to fill in.

Stay tuned.

New Fabric

Sonja gave me these pieces of fabric for my birthday. She brought a big bag of them over to my house and let me choose. I think I took all of her best ones. I tried to take a few, but she insisted that I take 6 pieces. She makes them with a soy wax resist (don’t ask me anymore questions about the process, because that is all I know!) and they turn out to be gorgeous. I feel so lucky to have such wonderful and talented friends.

FOTY 2010: Week of 2/7 Progress

I hung up FOTY 2009 in my hallway yesterday. It can be seen when people walk in the front door. I received a ton of compliments on it, which was very kind of people. I was planning to take it to work, but needed to solve a quick decorating dilema and decided to keep it at home for awhile. I have to think of something new to hang in my office as I am getting tired of seeing Seeing Red when I walk in.

In the meantime, I am still working on FOTY 2010 steadily, though I wasn’t able to do much more than unpick a few yellows this past week.

Pretty much, this is where I started this week. There were still lots of gaps in the blues, but I had started to piece the smaller pieces into larger. One can ‘chunk‘ this type of quilt in the piecing process, but not as easily, or for as long, as when piecing square or rectangular patches. At some point I had to piece long rows together.

Part of this has to do with the arrangement of this particular quilt. The colorwash type arrangement doesn’t lend itself well to piecing the patches into chunks of four patches, as I was able to do with the Eye Spy quilt.

Aren’t the blues behaving nicely? The placement is not ideal and I would do it differently if I had unlimited tints, hues, values and shades, but my FOTY rule is that I have to use what I have, and so far I am happy.

You can see, above, the whole blue section pieced.

I am heading towards the pink on the bottom. Now that the blues are behaving nicely, the pinks are becoming little brats. It reminds me of the Mandrakes in the book, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets. That big gap has reappeared in the pink area. Grrrr!

I have been contemplating the yellow and pink sections and doing a bit of playing with their arrangement. I am not terribly fond of a big line of greens or yellows or pinks slashing through the quilt. I prefer more of a blob arrangement (like the pinks are in the above photo – more of an organic shape). I am not sure at this moment how I will have them blend into each other – the blue to pink – if I do the blob arrangement. I don’t have enough yellows, greens and oranges to wash very completely. I think the green to yellow to orange is much easier, but there is a space consideration up towards the top. I’ll have to play around and see what works.

Daisies & Dots

The fabric I ordered with my Fabricworm gift certificate arrived about 2 days after I ordered it. This is a different look than I usually buy, but I like it. Not sure what I will make out of it. I am thinking I will use it together, but we will see. I have to finish FOTY 2010 first! You can see it all at the Piece O’Cake website fabric page. There is a wonky 54-40 or Fight quilt on their home page today. I don’t know how long the links will work, though.

FOTY 2010 Progress

As soon as I arrived home from the retreat, I put up the portable design wall and organized the diamonds. They were pinned on the design wall, so I didn’t have to do much for the part that was already sewn. All the unsewn diamonds were just in the bag of pieces.

My next task was to put all of the reds and pinks back on the design wall. Above, I have put all the diamonds I could fit back up on the design wall.

I was really trying to fix that bottom right hand corner, which meant working on the blues.

The blues are getting better. I am making progress.

But not all of the blues are cooperating.

I felt like I needed to take a lot of pictures, so when I have succeeded in a section I have a record. I am nervous that I will need to recreate it if the diamonds get rearranged. I live with creative people and sometimes they think they are helping by rearranging things.

More with the blues.

Minor changes, but the piece is looking better.

Trying to make the leap from blue to green to yellow is proving to be a challenge. I don’t think there is such a thing as a dark yellow and that one green (smack in the middle of the photo above) is really sticking out and doesn’t seem to fit anywhere.

Back to it!

Sugar Pop! Chubby Charmer

I figured out why the other layout didn’t look right. In very tiny writing at the end of the first instruction, the pattern said “repeat for side 2.” I generally skim directions, so I didn’t see it the first time around and had to carefully read every word to find that crucial piece of the process. I am glad I did!

I picked out a dot to go with these fabrics. The charm pack didn’t have quite enough squares for the pattern, but that shouldn’t be a problem. However, I didn’t finish FOTY 2010 at the retreat, so I will have to put this on the back burner until I do finish it.

Piece O’Cake Fabrics

Piece O'Cake Bundle — Piece O’Cake Bundle

TFQ and I think exactly the same on most fabric related subjects. As a result, we got each other the same exact gift card for Christmas: Birch Fabrics/Fabricworm. I couldn’t decide what I wanted so finally bought the bundle on the left. The funny thing is that it immediately caught my eye when I went to the site and then I saw TFQ bought it, so I hesitated. I finally gave in. I really like it and can’t wait to fondle some fabric.

New Books & Fabric

Here are the books I got for Christmas, etc. DH came through with the two books on the left, American Quilts and Sew Serendipity. The American Quilts book is another book Robert Shaw and some of the quilts are the same as those in his other books, but I love to read books where quilts are woven into history. I have glanced through it and read some things that have attracted my attention, but I haven’t delved deeply into it and I look forward to doing so.

Sew Serendipity is a book that has a great pattern for a coat. It is on page 154 and called Classic Tailored Jacket. I plan to try making it from polar fleece, hopefully the two-sided kind that I found once before. My mom said she would help me, but that is all the farther we have gotten.

I heard about Kiss Ass Creativity on Creative Mojo with Mark Lipinski and thought it sounded interesting. He has a lot interesting authors on that show. AJA gave it to me and I can’t wait to read it.

Lil Sissy gave me The Apron Book. I think I will have to make her an apron.

Friend Julie also came through with two books, Sew Serendipity and Collage Lab. I am hoping that Collage Lab will help get over my wet, messy at home avoidance problem. Andrea at a Work of Heart has a Collage Lab book club, but it is too far to go on a weeknight when I work.

Finally, I checked the Artist in the Office out of the Library and then I had to buy my own copy, because I needed to make a note on almost every page and the book was a little over $5 (go buy one, you won’t be sorry). I read it and it really made me feel a lot better about my day job. It isn’t inspirational in a sappy way, but gives practical tips about dealing with a day job, thinking about “obligations” in a new way, making choices and getting the work done.

People are so generous! I am so fortunate. Yes, my thank you notes are written. 😉

I am going to write a review of these books so stay tuned.

I decided to break down and buy the Martha Negley Grapes in Plum. I tried several places and none of them could confirm the color. One of them said she had no idea what color the fabric was. Huh? That I do not understand.

In the course of my explorations, I emailed Batiks, etc & Sew What Fabrics. They actually emailed me back and weren’t lame! They were able to confirm the color and they answered a question I had about a ruler. I was so impressed with their service. I would definitely shop there again! Customer Service is everything, folks!

As you can see I also bought some Peppermint from Hoffman. It is a batik and I do like those swirls.

Left are the two grape fabrics that I now have. You can see the difference in the colors. They are destined to become bags. Which bag, I don’t know. Perhaps the Jane Market tote? I am in the mood for another AMH Multi-tasker tote, so perhaps one of those. We’ll see.

Possibility?

This fabric was included free when I ordered the Mexican food pillowcase fabric from Whichway Quilting. It is beige/taupe/tan (no info on the selvedge on my piece) so I wasn’t very excited about it. However, when I washed and pressed it, I noticed the incredible dimensionality. It made me think that this fabric would make a really cool journal cover or pencil roll. I only have a FQ, so the project would have to be small. Also, it isn’t as if I don’t already have a thousand projects on my to do list. We’ll see.

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WOW, You made my day. What a knock out showing of this new flower. Thanks for sharing. You and your…
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I am sure you'll get through the project quickly once you get started.

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