GAQF Visit Part#2

It was hard to get to the Great American Quilt Factory. It is in Denver, but pretty far away from downtown. Unlike my last trip, I didn’t have a car or a navigator. Thus, I didn’t think I would make it out there on this trip.

On a whim, I asked a librarian who used to live in Denver about transportation. He and his wife had driven to Denver. We mapped out a plan for getting there on public transportation and I was set to go, but not convinced that I could make it out and back in time for my flight. Later that day I received an email from my librarian friend’s wife and she wanted to go to GAQF! Score! Wednesday, before I left, we drove out there and had a blast.

Above are the dots I bought! I can’t really say fabrics, because they are almost all dots! The food fabrics are for my mom‘s quilt. The black and white large dots are for a bag and everything else is on spec. The dots in the upper left hand corner are really nice Ellen Medlock dots. I didn’t think I had ever heard of her before, but when I looked at her site I think that Kathy from Finishing Lines mentioned Medlock’s bag patterns to me.

I saw two books that spurred my imagination and my recent scary Christmas mania. One was Christmas with Possibilities. I liked some of the motifs. One was especially appealing: a star with a spiral inside. The other book was called More Joy to the World, which had a really nice Noel pillow pattern. I didn’t buy either as they were mostly pattern books and I would rather get them out of the library or used. Sadly, they are not available at the library and used the books are about $13. We’ll see.

Flesh colored Aurifil had been on my mind since TFQ mentioned it to me after she used it for one of her projects. I also found that I needed some white thread. I saw them at the shop, so I picked them up.

The Lazy Girl pattern was an impulse buy. It might make a good gift for my Grama. Being really poor at reading patterns, I didn’t look at the materials list. I always assume that, since I mostly make quilts, I have everything on hand. That isn’t the case with this pattern. I need a bottom and some fusible batting. When I saw that it scared me because of the Amy Butler experience from last November. I put the additional supplies on the list to buy.

One of the best parts was that Beth (yes, another Beth in my life!), who does embroidery and is interested in quilting, but hasn’t taken a class or ever made a quilt, left with three patterns! One was for a flannel quilt using a panel. The two others were for Christmas decorations. One was for wool ornaments and one was for an arty wool Christmas tree.

New Beth and I plan to get together so I can look at 60 year old quilt that has some damage.

Zig Zaggy Start

This past weekend I mostly worked on the Blue Janus Quilt, which I called the Blue Quilt in a previous post. Those squares required a lot of chain piecing and I needed something to piece in between so that I wouldn’t have to cut threads each time I wanted to press as I moved farther along in the process.

I decided to start the Zig Zaggy quilt and use the pieces to help with my chain piecing.

First, I looked at the Happy Zombie site again and confirmed the sizes. then I cut some samples. Happy Zombie used a special ruler and cut 5″ long wedges. Elizabeth Hartman from Oh Fransson! blog originally used templates and cut the wedges longer. I decided to use Happy Zombie’s method and trim later.

I cut and sewed a few together, think I would do another colorwash look.

Blech!

I am not doing the colorwash. With just the purples it is too boring. the purples are all the same value and just don’t look like the colors are gradating. I am going to mix up the colors. I just didn’t get very far.

Tempting Fabrics

Aren’t these colors wonderful? This group from the FabricWorm is very tempting…

clipped from ep.yimg.com

http://ep.yimg.com/ca/I/yhst-10775676472182_2114_93921163

clipped from www.fabricworm.com

Fabricworm Custom Quilt Bundle, Rainbow, Half Yard Set, 10 Total

Each Half Yard Measures 18″ x 44″

You Will receive a Half Yard of Each:

Anna Maria Horner Filigree Plum
Amy Butler Momento Burgandy
Denyse Schmidt Four Square New Day
Michael Miller Ta Dot Teal
Heather Bailey Pop Daisy Green
Anna Maria Horner Filigree Meadow
Robert Kaufman Pure Organic Solid Maize
Cosmo Cricket Early Bird Crosshatch Yellow
Monaluna Mingle Dot Tangerine
Momo Freebird Eggs Melon
Monaluna Circa 50 Woodland Chain Strawberry (Organic)

Alice Kennedy Apple Swirl Red

100% Cotton

Fabric is sold by the ½ Yard. For example, if you would like to purchase 1 Yard, you would enter 2 in the Qty. box at Checkout. Yardage is cut in one continuous piece.

I would love to see them in real life. I am glad they gave the names of the fabrics so I can look them up. I can’t think of what I would use them for. They would be gorgeous together.

Frosted Stars Possibility?

I didn’t buy the Frosted Stars kit that I talked about recently. I already have a lot of projects going, I have several projects to start, there were some things I didn’t like about it, it was lots of money, etc. You know all the reasoning.

Still I couldn’t get the thing out of my mind, so I went to look at it again today. In addition to p.s. i quilt shop‘s offerings, the Fat Quarter Shop has the pattern as well. I decided to do my due diligence.

Above is an image of all the Fruitcake prints from the Fat quarter shop. I looked there. I also went to the Moda site to look at the all of the fabrics from the Basic Grey Fruitcake collection. Fruitcake is the fabric collection Charlie Scott uses for the Frosted Stars quilt. It turns out, sadly, that I don’t really like most of the fabrics included in the Fruitcake collection. I still liked the pattern, however, and thought perhaps that I would make it anyway.

I looked around to see if the pattern was available. Charlie Scott, the designer, has a website and has a link to the pattern on the Moda Bake Shop site. YAY! This revelation expanded my options. I could make the quilt with other fabrics. I was thinking aqua/turquoise and red with a little green thrown in.

In the midst of all this I emailed my mom with the various links and she said not to buy the kit, but just to get the pattern and use my own fabrics or other fabrics. Sometimes it is nice to have someone agree with me.

Somehow, I ran across the Kate Spain Christmas fabrics. They are bright and cheerful and a definite possibility. I printed out the PDF so I could look at the individual fabrics. I am not fond of the motifs on a couple of them and I couldn’t use the panels, which are part of the collection. I don’t know if they come with the Jelly Rolls and Layer cakes.

I saw this Lumiere de Noel group as I was perusing the Fat Quarter Shop site. I thought that perhaps it might be a nice choice for the Frosted Stars pattern. It has a little bit of a grey tinge in this picture, but looks much brighter in the example quilt on the site. Take a look at the individual fabrics and let me know what you think.

More thinking required, I think.

Blue Quilt

This is the first part of a quilt I am making as a gift. I will tell you for whom it is intended once it is delivered.

I have been cutting blue 6.5″ squares, in a delusatory way, for the past year. I was sure I would get it done. Suddenly, it was April and I didn’t have nearly enough squares. I really wanted the quilt done by the beginning of June and was, thus, in a pickle. My deadline isn’t going to happen.

TFQ helped with my dilemna by cutting about 100 squares for me. That really, REALLY helped. I cut the rest and began sewing. I hope to have this top and back done in time to quilt it at my longarm appointment on July 30.

Patches I Cut

You all know that I cut a patch from each piece of fabric I buy in a given year. You also know that I do this in order to decide if I like the fabric so I can buy more before it goes out of style. These are my Fabric of the Year (FOTY) patches and this year I am cutting diamonds. In addition to my FOTY patches, there are other patches I cut from other pieces of fabric. Lately I have been cutting from both new and old, but it depends on the project.

First, in the upper left hand corner are the 6.5″ blue squares. Some blue green snuck in as well. These are for a quilt I am making for someone who reads this blog, so I can’t tell you any more until I get it done.

Next, upper right, are the 4×4″ squares. These are for TFQ, because she cheerfully cuts many, many patches of almost any size and shape I ask. I am cutting these from any fabric that I get out of my fabric closet and all new ones.

Third, lower left corner, are the Tumblers for Julie. Her quilt is king-sized, so until I see her put the thing together and get it quilted, I keep cutting. Mostly these are from new fabrics, but I hauled out a bunch of blues lately, so this stack happens to be blue.

Fourth, in the lower middle, are Eye Spy hexagons for my SIL’s Eye Spy project. I buy very few conversationals, so I don’t cut many of them yet. I don’t know if she has started cutting from her own stash yet. These are fun to fussy cut. The exercise makes me look at my fabrics differently.

Last are the blue rectangles (2.5″x4.5″). I am in deep love with that rectangle shape I used for FOTY 2008. I look at the quilt every day at work and adore it, so I decided I wanted to make another out of blues. It takes a lot of cutting, so it will be here for awhile. After starting to sew the Blue Quilt together I am thinking that a blue rectangle quilt might not have been such a great idea.

Not pictured are the food fabric squares, 6.5″, I am cutting for my mom. She is making a replacement quilt for her step grandson, whose quilt was burned up in a fire. I will probably help her with it. We are seriously considering the Corner Store pattern from Pretty Little Mini Quilts, which is like M Dugan’s version on Flickr. I may try this quilt out myself, too. Back to my mom, though. I hope we do get to work on it together. I think it would be fun.

I also cut 2×2″ squares and make four patches as warm-ups.

I often press and cut fabric while I am on the phone. I am not much of a phone person, so there are only a few people to whom I speak on the phone for extended periods of time. On a recent conversation with TFQ, I was amazed to see how much I cut. I am not a fast presser or cutter, so I was pleased.

I hope this preparation doesn’t seem terribly schizophrenic. Sometimes it does feel that way, but I am so glad when I have enough of one patch and can just start sewing. I don’t like to do all my cutting at once and this is a good way for me to do it incrementally.

Sandy talked about scraps and what she cuts for scrap quilts on a recent podcast, so I don’t feel quite as crazy. It was interesting to hear what she said about the pieces she cut.

Food Fabrics

The food fabrics above are for the quilt my mom is making for her step grandson. I talked about it last week. Maureen saw my post and offered me some squares of food fabric. She even cut them. The first 3 rows above are the fabrics she gave me. The last row are fabrics I bought and have cut for mom. I don’t know how many blocks she has, but it must be nearing 100. That should be a good sized quilt.

Late June Diamonds

I have been cutting and pressing fabrics like a demon lately and here is another group. I have found that this number of diamonds is the right number to photograph, so I have a few more on the wall that will be in the next photo.

One of the things about this group is that there are a lot of the Fizz by P&B fabrics and I am really loving those fabrics. I would love it if they would come out with another dozen colors in between the colors they already have. There are a lot of colors in the group already so that would mean that their colorists would really have to work over time. I would love it if these became a staple background fabric. Fabrics go so quickly out of fashion that I doubt that will happen. I plan to use these fabrics in another Interlocking Triangle quilt.

An idea that occurred to me with these Fizz fabrics is that I could arrange them in a color wheel and then radiate the other diamonds out from them. I think that would make the piecing a challenge, but all ideas are worth considering. It might be a problem with the colors which I don’t buy very often.

I haven’t decided if I am cutting diamonds from the food fabrics for my mom. I am intermittently, so some show up as diamonds and some don’t.

The other thing I am doing is cutting pieces from a few fabrics I have pulled out of the stash. An example is the red at the tip of the diamond. These fabrics have never had a piece cut from them. My project, my rules.

New Fabric

I have been stockpiling new fabric lately for various projects.

The Child and I are going to make pillowcases for the Million Pillow Case challenge that AllPeopleQuilt.com is putting on. I wanted him to do a non-screen related project this summer and he didn’t think of one, so I imposed one on him. He is not excited about sewing, but said if I found some taco fabric, he would make one. I had already bought some cute robot fabric (see below), so he will be making at least two.

I was trying to find some boyish fabric and think the taco fabric is actually better for older boys than the robot fabric. The robot fabric is really cute, though. As of this writing, they have 99,416. Come on, people, make some pillow cases!

All of the food fabric is for the project my mom is working on. She is collecting 6.5″ squares of food fabric for Lil Sissy’s stepson. I probably mentioned this already. Since I told The Child that I would buy him taco fabric I picked up a couple of pieces for my mom’s project as well. We are discussing doing the food project together, but she has to come back from SoCal first.

I am going to use the Day of the Dead fabric to make some blocks for a Christmas gift. What would you think about receiving blocks for a Christmas gift for a project you had been showing on your blog?

I really enjoyed making things for my friends for Christmas last year and would like to do some of that again. Good thing I bought the One Yard Wonders (a sale – YAY!) book. I think I will have to find some projects in there. The projects have to be cute and not stupid. I want them to be useful and nice as well.

You, of course, see tons of dots in this group of new fabrics. Hart’s had a lot of the Dumb Dots (dumb name) by Michael Miller. I love those dots. For me, they are the perfect dots. I wish they would team up with Robert Kaufman and make dots the same colors as the Kona Solids and keep them in the line as staples. Everyone needs a good selection of dots, IMO!

Despite Jane Sassaman’s detailed explanations of how to use her fabric, I only bought the black and whites at her lecture. I really like the one with the spiral and sun motifs, but it came in a bundle. I, of course, already have some of the black and white dots, but one can always use more dots, right?

Good Mail Day

Online shopping is a godsend, because I really dislike going to stores and shopping. The looking around and trying to find the right thing kind of shopping. If I know what I want and where it is, I will go to a store, get the item and leave. Online shopping allows me to browse, not talk to anyone. The only problem is the packages.

When I was a solo librarian TFQ would come to visit me and there would be boxes of stuff that had arrived – not a lot, but enough to be noticeable – that I had not opened. I knew what was in the packages and I knew I could open them when I needed to wash the fabric or use the tool. She just couldn’t understand it and would, thankfully and gleefully, rip open all of the packages for me and ooh and aah over my purchases.

One of the dreary tasks forced upon a solo law librarian is that you have to open tons of boxes. Every day scores of boxes and packages come with updates for the legal materials. The packages are taped within an inch of their sad lives and require special equipment and fortitude, as well as serious caffeine to get through opening. I am not kidding when I say that this takes all the joy out of receiving mail and opening gifts. It is probably part of the reason why I use gift bags.

I am now fortunate to work in a larger library where we have a person whose job it is to open the mail, route magazines and newsletters and journals, and process the books so they can be shelved.

it has taken me a long time to heal. This release from the tyranny of mail, however, has allowed me to start to take some joy in receiving packages. Today was a good mail day!

In no particular order, here is the mail report.

TFQ sent these with a little note saying that she found them in the remnant bin at The Quilting Loft! I believe that Angie has an online store. She is a really nice person, has a great shop (which you should visit when you go to Seattle! I am sure the cab drivers know where it is 😉 or you can look it up by clicking on the link). Go buy something!

How nice to receive a surprise!

I love using stripes in bindings. It makes the quilts look more cheerful and adds movement to them. Have you tried using stripes in a quilt binding?

I believe that the upper left hand stripe is a Jane Sassaman print. I went to her lecture last night and I think she was wearing an apron with that stripe as the ties. There is no selvedge, so I can’t tell you for sure, but I am sure TFQ knows and will chime in.

Yes, I went to a Jane Sassaman lecture last night. The opportunity presented itself and quiltmaking is my passion, so how could I not attend? I am writing the blog post as we speak (well, sort of since I am typing this blog post bit now) and will post it soon. Be patient. I have pictures, too.

Remember the post where I talked about the EQ7 upgrade? I have to confess that that was a cheap trick to try and get two free copies of EQ7 – one for me and one for one of you. They didn’t pick me. 🙁 . I was sad. I thought it was a good post, but they pick by random generator and it wasn’t my turn.

The bonus is that they offered me a good deal on the upgrade so I bought that and had to wait forever for it to arrive. It came today, though. YAY!!!

I was inspired by the arrival to consider doing a block of the month.

Consider.doing.a.block.of.the.month.

Artquiltmaker.com BOM

Do I need more work? No.

Am I somewhat willing? Yes.

The key is whether you will participate? Will you at least try it if I do it and commit to posting one or two blocks per month until the end of the year? I thought about not posting instructions, but I would produce rotary cutter instructions for the blocks and somehow enable you to download them. I would have to figure that out.

Let me know by commenting below and I will think about it, too. I am not doing it alone.

Beth is a reader who is in the process of moving to South Africa. I think she lives in Illinois now. Moving is terrible if you move across town, but moving across the world makes me more in awe of Beth. How was she able to send me a small package with a note inside (that is flower postcard) in the midst of such a momentous move?

I don’t know. Beth is a better person than me. My child, nieces and nephews will have to haul my body out of the house from under a fabric avalanche.I hope never to move unless it is to move my fabric to a studio where I can go every day for 8 hours a day and play.

Anyway, this lovely blue fabric will have the perfect home in a couple of different projects that I have going now and for which I am cutting patches. Stay tuned for more on that another day.

So, dear readers, thank you for reading and living vicariously. And thank you to the US Postal Service and the handsome UPS driver who all showed up to work today and made it safely to my house so we could enjoy some quilty goodness.

More On Demand Printing?

I keep hearing about Spoonflower and now EZ Textiles has launched a site with CAD ready designs for a variety of fabrics. You can search the site without registering. The designs that I reviewed looked very 1960s/1970s to me.

This concept makes me wonder if we will be moving to more on demand printing of fabric? Jane Sassaman mentioned putting her more spooky designs up on Spoonflower to make them available and not scare people!

clipped from www.prweb.com

EzTextiles Launches World’s Largest Online Resource of Production-Ready Textile Designs

ew York, NY (PRWEB) June 15, 2010 — EzTextiles, LLC has launched EzTextiles.com (http://www.eztextiles.com), the world’s largest online digital library of royalty-free, production-ready textile designs for the apparel, textile, home fashion, accessories and other textile-related industries. The new online service offers immediate access to more than 25 million fully editable woven plaids and stripes, prints, and knit designs. Other patterns and designs such as vintage, graphics, photography, and textures are also planned for the site. New designs will be continuously added to each of these categories as fashions evolve.

PamDora, Clutter and Using Precious Resources

I was reading about people being loathe to let go of things because they might need it “sometime.” I saw the quote from Julie Morgenstern and it confirmed my recent attempts to just use the fabric. Yes, some of it might be precious, but c’est la vie! There will be more precious fabric.

By the way Pam has some FABULOUS pictures in her blog post, so take the time to take a look.

clipped from pamdora.com

Shoes and Clutter

Update: I was joking about clutter when I wrote this post late last night, but just now read a good blog post about myths of clutter by organization expert Julie Morgenstern. One line really jumped out at me: “Releasing the obsolete will get you unstuck—by opening up space for something new. It creates the energy, space to think, and time to figure out what’s next.”

Rebirth of Solids??

The other day I was looking around the web to see if some company made solid charm packs. My mom is making a food quilt and wants to use the Corner Store design from Pretty Little Mini Quilts. I think that design must have another name, because I wasn’t able to find any photos of it by that name. I knew that one of my contacts had a photo so I have used that to show you the design. I have a lot of pattern names to look up!

Anyway, I feel like I have a long history with solids. In my first quilt class, the teacher sent us out to buy fabric. She told us to purchase a light, medium and dark from the same color (I chose blue) and a few other colors to go with it (see the pink, green, purple and muslin above?).

I was pretty overwhelmed when I arrived at the quilt store. Even back in the dark ages, there was a lot of fabric to choose from. The shop I visited had a room, yes an entire ROOM, full of solids. I chose solids for my first project to kind of keep the noise level low. You might notice one print. I went back later and got that print when I felt more confident and decided I kind of liked this quilting thing.

I have used solids on and off since I made the above sampler, but have never done a whole project with solids again. TFQ and I did an exchange where we would send each other a block. I made blocks in solids and she made blocks in tone on tones. This exchange was a good learning experience for me, because I learned how to use tone-on-tones and could compare the interest level in a block made with tone-on-tones versus one made with solids.

The fresh modern quilts seem to rely on, at least, some solids.

Cherri House (don’t you love that name?) has also come out with a book on using solids and their blog is filled with glowing quilts using solids. The Stash blog reviews it here. I need to reserve that book at the library and take a look. Pat Sloan interviewed Cherri House on one of her Toginet Radio shows

In my search, I found that Kona, which came out with a zillion solids a few years ago does have charm packs of their solids. They actually say on their website that they have 221 solid colors. I recently heard about Bella Solids from Moda (love the aqua, green and jade, BTW). P.S. I quilt mentions the Bella Solids, so they are definitely out there.

I think visiting the Amish Exhibit really put solids back on my mind. They had been rattling around in the back because of the Fresh Modern quilts, but now they are firmly ensconced. As I mentioned, those quilts glow. I haven’t decided whether I want to make a whole quilt with solids, but I think I would like to get them back into my repertoire. I did use one solid in one of the teacher pillows as a border. That is a start. I need to practice so I can make solid quilts that glow. I have a large piece of Kona Snow and, perhaps, that is a good place to start.

I am thrilled that solids are out there again; that people are paying attention to solids again. I like having a wide variety of colors, and the subtle variations, to choose from. I’d love to have 5 yard cuts of each of the Bella and Kona solids. Wouldn’t it be great to have that many colors to choose from? Of course, I would need a fabric HOUSE to deal with all of those cuts.

What is going on? What is it with solids all of sudden? Everything old is new again? I am interested to see where this is all going and what people will do with the solids.

Welcome Back, Solids!

Moda Frosted Stars

I found this quilt in a round about way. I was listening to the Stash Resolution podcast (look for a short review later), a new podcast for me. She mentioned the blog p.s. i quilt. I went to take a look and saw this quilt was recently posted to the Moda Bakeshop.

I really like the colors of the stars and the way the quarter square triangles come together to make that odd shape in the middle of the star.

I suppose I am attracted to Christmas quilts right at the moment. Not sure why as I never thought I would make a Christmas quilt. Too much work for a month a year. I do think that the expansion of “Christmas colors” to include some blues and tints of red and green have some thing to do with it. I love the red and green color combo, but sometimes it just looks too Christmasy.

clipped from www.modabakeshop.com

Frosted Stars

Rachel Griffith, the power house behind p.s. i quilt has shop with the whole kit available. I have never bought a kit before aqnd am sorely tempted.

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