Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
Use this tag for posts that covers a variety of types of projects in one post such as the 26 Projects posts. If the post is about a bag, use Project-Bag. If the post is about a quilt, use Project-Quilt
I am slowly getting a bit of the FOTY blocks done in between the Christmas gifts. I am branching out a bit as well and not putting same color with same color all he time. For some of the color combinations it just didn’t look right. Not sure how I will handle that choice when I start putting together the whole quilt, but I am sure that it will work out one way or another.
Cutting FOTY strips and putting blocks together is my main project for next week
Julie made me a pencil roll last year, which I discussed in a post in January 2008.
I recently bought a pencil roll pattern from Pink Chalk Studio and, after a bad pattern experience (from a different company), have a great deal of respect for Kathy’s clear instructions and helpful notes.
I wasn’t able to show this until now even though I made it during my week away, because it is a gift. I made it for Julie‘s birthday and wanted it to be a surprise.
The fabrics I used for the strips all came from TFQ’s strip box. They are, what she calls, Fresh Modern fabrics. They are not exclusively Amy Butler and Valori Wells, but are in that vein. The green is an old Marimekko fabric I bought at the Crate and Barrel outlet a long time ago. It spent some time with TFQ and was on its way back to me when I decided to do this project.
This is the small version of the pencil roll. Kathy gives directions for a 12 slot and a 24 slot. You can, with the directions, make one any size. I didn’t quite realize how big they were when I was making this one.
The pattern is really easy to follow. This is a fast project to make. The only part that takes time is the quilting/making the pockets. You have to be aware of what you are doing.
I hope Julie likes it and finds it useful.
Back in the Quilting Arts Dark Ages, they showed some embroidery stitches over a series of pages. Somehow those embroidery stitches combined with a viewing of quilt artist Susan Carlson’s work on Simply Quilts inspired me to get started on Kissy Fish.
As an aside: I am not getting back to the bleary photos, this piece is really, no REALLY, hard to photograph with the equipment I have.
This piece is covered with shiny things that reflect the light: beads, french ribbon, thread with metallic bits. It is on the list to be professionally photographed. Anyway.
The stitches I used most frequently on this piece are called Feather Stitch. It was highlighted in Quilting Arts #1. It was really fun to see how the stitches added to the piece and helped it develop. It was fun to see how I could make each bit of kelp different with beads, varying widths of thread, etc.
One of the things I knew about this piece was that it wasn’t intended to be a masterpiece. It was intended to be a test. It has turned out much better than a test.
I also never intended it to be hung as a quilt is hung. I always intended that it would be framed and hung like a piece of traditional art. That is still my plan.
I think the hand embroidery is mostly done. As I do on many of my Pamela pieces, I went about the process backwards. I did the embroidery first and now am thinking I need to do more quilting. Machine quilting. I’ll have to seriously think about it, because I don’t want to break the beads or my careful stitching.
I have a number of tote bags with different projects in them. The idea is to be able to “grab and go.” The Big Game (we won, in case you needed to know) was this weekend. It is, generally, the family kickoff to the holiday season. I needed a project. Since I finished the handwork on Beach Town, I had nothing on the front burner. I grabbed an old project bag and found Christmas!
Really, I found a project called Kissy Fish. I haven’t worked on it seriously for awhile. I was pretty close to being done, so I brought it with me to the game. I’ll talk about Kissy Fish in another post some day.
The bag was a pit. It was obvious that the last few times I worked on it, I threw stuff into it willy nilly. Unearthing it was fun! I found great stuff that I had forgotten I had, like 8 packs of Oliver Twist threads! Who knows how long they have been in the bottom of the bag, but they are out now. I also found a bunch of beads and other stuff I haven’t seen in ages. There were a bunch of spools of Aurifil, Madeira and Perl cotton.
It is really like an early Christmas gift. I can’t wait to get my hands on those Oliver Twist thread.
Since I got the 9K back I have slowly been resewing seams that were not adequate. Here are the blocks for the Sorbet quilt that I have done so far. I have the measurements for the next block, but haven’t make any fabric progress yet.
Enjoy!
This is the piece of pie and whipped cream, which you have seen four dozen times. I am forced to continue to show it to you until you scream for mercy. Only because you asked for it. 😉
Okay! Okay! I am not so mean. This is actually a slightly larger drip than before. I took your advice and decided to make the drip a little larger. I don’t think it is large enough here. When I stand back, it still looks like a speck. I don’t want people to think I made a big boo-boo on the applique’.
Here is the big drip. It looks like something! I used the same shape; just made it a bit bigger. I like it and it will probably be sewed down this weekend.
Sewing it down would be very nice, because then I can get it off of my design wall and put something else up.
Oh. The back. I still have to make the back. Sigh.
I stopped by Melanie’s blog and found some great patterns for holiday crafting. “So soon?” you are thinking. Yes, I say. Get moving so you are not up until 3am crafting on Dec. 22. These look fun and very modifiable, only to make them your own, not because anything is wrong with them.
When I saw the printing books (click through to see all the projects), I thought that some of you with wonderful CPP responses could print them and paste to the cover of a journal or print on fabric and make a framed picture.
Of course, if you are not a holiday type, then you could make these for your living room, or for birthday gifts. I am planning a holiday projects post, so if you make any holiday projects, I will link to them in my post. If you use a CPP response in a project, I will put that link on the CPP inspiration page. 
Enjoy!
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I know you thought I forgot about the Tarts. Or, perhaps, you thought I abandoned the piece for another 3 years?
Oh ye of little faith!
Non quilt parts of my life have been busier than usual. I have still taken the time to diligently test your ideas for the whipped cream on the second piece of pie after I posted some thoughts in a previous blog post. I thought it would be easy and fast. HA! When will I ever learn?
Another issue is that the 9K is back in the shop. It is fixed now, but I won’t be able to pick it up (80+ mile round trip) until Friday since I am going out of town on Tuesday and the shop is closed on Monday. I tested an approximation of a satin stitch on the Jem. The Jem is a great machine, but the satin stitch it makes doesn’t compare to the 9K’s satin stitch. I need to wait until the 9K returns from his/her vacation. I’ll get everything ready, however.
Below are the candidates:
I liked this one, but didn’t think it was enough. I thought it needed more of something. Someone mentioned a drip in a comment, so I started working on that.
The drip above is too small. I want it to stand out a bit more against the plate.
The one above is pretty good in terms of having more than just an element on the top. However, the indentation in the top of the dripped whipped cream on the plate looks strange. It may be realistic, but it doesn’t look fun or interesting.
The one above is the option I have decided to use. I like the more engaged shape of the drip. I don’t think that is how drips really look, but this quilt isn’t reality.
As you can see, I take Lorraine Torrence’s admonishment to “make visual decisions visually” to heart.
One of the things about creation is that you never know how your pieces will come out.
At the beginning of August, I went with a couple of other CQFAers to Create It! Studio in Palo Alto for a glass fusing creation session. I wrote about the whole session at that time. I also showed pictures of all of the pieces pre-firing/fusing.
Diane, one of the CQFAers, was kind enough to pick up my pieces since I live far enough away to make it a pain. I thought I might get down to her house, but, alas, it wasn’t to be. As you know I was chained to my sewing machine for weekends on end. 😉
I finally got my pieces back on Saturday and I am really pleased with how they turned out. I am especially pleased with the divided dish, which will be part of the series I started my first time at a painting place. The red of the dish really came out well (4 coats!). There is only one little spot on which I should have put more paint.
It is fun to do something different; it is as though it doesn’t matter and I can play, because it isn’t my primary work.
Enjoy!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Slowly, but surely the FOTY 2009 blocks are stacking up. I doubt that FOTY 2009 will be as large as FOTY 2008, however I consider it to be more complex so smaller is better. I know I know, sewing in addition to cutting is part of the quiltmaking process and doesn’t necessarily constitute ‘complex.’
😉 I just like to see if you are paying attention sometimes.
As I said before, these blocks make great warm up blocks before a serious bout of sewing, so that is what I did on Saturday after getting the 9K set up again. If you look at the photo in Sunday’s post, you can see one of the green blocks under the feed dogs.
I decided not to combine the two Ginger Blossom prints that I used in the Striped Tote with Flowers and the Flowered Tote with Stripes. They already had enough cavorting and will get some more time to do so when I make the quilt for which I have been collecting fabric. I really like the effect of the dots with the flowers.
I had some hot pink dots that I hadn’t yet made into a block, so I used that with the flower print. Haven’t done anything with the stripes. I need to press some more fabric and then we’ll see what transpires.
I do really like that pink Gigner Blossom flower print for some reason. It makes me feel happy.
