Creative Effort of the Week


The shower on Sunday was, by all accounts, a big success. The shower ended at 5pm and everyone was gone by 5:10, however, including the guest of honor, so I am not so sure.

The delight to the left is my creative effort of the week. I saw an article in the SF Chronicle a few weeks ago and knew it was the perfect thing for the party. Apparently, cupcake cakes are all the rage these days. I read that people are even using them instead of wedding cakes. The theory is that they inject a dose of fun into the event, are easy to eat and bring people’s senses back to when they were children. Very interesting!

The quilt squares were also a big success. More on those when I can post the photos. I am pleased to say that nobody complained about not be able to draw and some lovely squares were produced.


Otherwise, I have been buying, receiving and washing fabric. St. JCN is coming for a visit. Saint, I say, because she offered (I did ask!) to iron about 3 million yards of fabric that I have bought and never washed. Talk about a true friend!!! In preparation for this miracle, I have started to wash it. This was the first load. As you can see, there is plethora of dots and icky green.


The dots are for the Thoughts on Dots piece that I have been fiddling with. As you can see I have cut more squares. Some of the fabrics I added are from the washing pile. I did press some of them on my own.

This picture is a great example of what I was talking about when I mentioned heavy and light. I have a theory that no fabric is set in stone until the quilt is quilted and the entire quilt has the binding on. I have been known to take apart a back in order to get a piece of fabric out of it. At the moment I am trying out these pieces. I want this piece to look like sherbet… light and fluffy, perhaps a bit foofy; happy. NOT rainy. NOT depressing. The Terri Mangat fabric in the middle is dots, but it might be too heavy. As well, the green dots on the left next to the light aqua Kaffe Fassett design. The fabrics with the white backgrounds are also an issue. I don’t want the viewer’s eye drawn to the white. I do love the fabrics, though, so I will play with placement quite a bit before I decide. I have a feeling that whether they stay or go depends on the amount of yellow I put into the piece. We’ll have to see as I cut more fabrics.


Since, after washing that first load of fabric, I seem to have nearly every dot known to quilters-kind, I have no business buying more. Too bad TDOTNB drove me to shop online. I received the first shipment a few days ago and as you can see: more dots. These are not washed yet, but hopefully will be this weekend.

I also got a squares pack of April Cornell’s Poetry Collection. I felt that my other attempt at sewing a whole collection of squares together was very successful. I loved the fabrics in the Poetry Collection, but didn’t feel that I wanted yardage. This was a good solution. I haven’t sewn them together yet, but will do it soon. Who knows? Perhaps another table runner is in my future!

It occurred to me that I am getting so many dot fabrics with white backgrounds that I may just have to make one of these 6.5″ squares quilts with all dot fabrics with white backgrounds. It is a thought. I don’t want to bore myself, though. Such a limited project may drive, even me, batty.

Go to your studio and make stuff!

Napkins in process

I spent some of Friday and Saturday trimming and sewing napkins. I have seven sewn and ready to press and topstitch. I don’t know why I don’t have eight, but I don’t.

The fronts are made of various food and food related fabrics. The backs are made from Michael Miller’s fabric with the 1950s family and their funny comments like “Thanks honey, mother will never taste the arsenic”. DS thinks the fabric is hilarious.

I did the first round of sewing (FQ right sides together, sew around the edge with a straight stitch leaving an opening slightly larger than your hand, turn inside out press). I am now at the pressing stage.

This pressing stage is always a pain, because no matter what I do the are where the stitching is wants to collapse in towards where the raw edges of sam seam are. Sigh.

I have tried pressing the seams open before I turn the napkin inside out. Didn’t make a difference. This time I will try to press with my mini iron by sticking my hand and the iron on the inside of the napkin. I am not hopeful, but we will see.

This is the only photo that really came out at all. It was hard to press with the mini iron and take photos at the same time.

Napkins 1
Napkins 1

You can see how I stuffed the mini iron into the inside of the napkin after I had turned it inside out and was pressing from the inside.

I have finally sewed these together and they came out moderately well. I still need to work harder at preventing the sleeves from collapsing.

San Mateo County Fair Yesterday

I love county fairs and wish that more people would enter their work. It is not a “highbrow” art organization, but everyone’s art and every entry is welcome. I also wish people would attend more county fairs.

It is great to see the wonderful and unusual items that people make and enter. It is great to see what people are doing in their homes: what they are collecting, the types of Lego and K’Nex constructions they build, the photos they take, the cakes they bake, the jams they cook and table settings they concoct, etc. I think county fairs are such a community event. You can really see stuff by your neighbors…. if more people would enter and attend.

That said, I have to admit that I didn’t enter something this year. I have done every year for the past several years and I just didn’t have (make??) the time this year. I will for sure next year. It is expensive to attend the fair ($32 for admission and parking), so getting the free tickets and parking passes from entering an exhibit is really worth it.

The boys were really interested in the Junior exhibits. They all reviewed all the Lego and K’Nex constructs very carefully and swore to build something for next year’s fair. We’ll see.

I, of course, went to the see the quilts. There were quite a number of them. I was, however, shocked at the California Living Building and the displays. There were no banners hanging outside. The building has been redone. It is not as light inside as it used to be. In previous years, quilts had been hung high up on the walls -near the ceiling, which made them hard to photograph, but made the building seem very cheerful. This year most of the quilts, even the prize winning quilts, were hung low and draped over something else or hung on racks very close together. At first I thought there weren’t very many quilts, but in the back of the hall I found quite a few, once I looked at the racks. There were some very nice quilts, especially a couple of star quilts that were amazingly intricate.

Another project off the ‘to do’ list!

I finished some napkins today that have been hanging around for several months. I bought the fabric in August 2004 at APNQ with JCN. I washed, cut up the fabric and did the first round of stitching. I even did the miserable part, which is turning the napkins inside out and carefully pressing them. I like two sided napkins as I can use more fabric and they don’t have to be washed as soon. Then they just hung around waiting for me to do the topstitching. I topstitched around one a few weeks ago, but didn’t get to the last three until today. Now they are finished and I can move on. These are the fabrics I used.