Back to School

School started today.  I can’t believe summer is over already.  I could swear that last week we were doing all of the last day of school activities.  How can summer be over if it is 113 degrees?  I should knock on wood, quickly, since we haven't had a lot of 11* days so far but they are coming this week.  Brady's school added a third class for his group so class size will go from 28 to 21.  We're looking forward to that.

On the very first day of summer, we started an 11 day vacation driving all over AZ, UT, and NV.  It was meant to be my birthday trip but it ended up as a family list of destinations.  That’s ok by me. 

We returned from vacation to  sports camps, two ongoing basketball leagues and prep for fall baseball tryouts.  A couple more weeks went by and we scrambled to make another trip a success.  There were so many hurdles and changes of plans but we were able to take Brady to an 8 day “camp” with his aunt, uncle and cousins.  He had the time of his life.  Camp was mostly Brady and his 8 year old cousin from CA, Keira.  To watch these two play acting and making up voices and stories was hilarious.  We even managed to talk them into a brief goodbye hug. 

Mike and I got to enjoy those days, just the two of us.  We managed to survive after Mike optimistically took us to a rough area of town late one night, in search of Portland’s signature donut shop.  See Mike's voodoo doll donut with pretzel stick below.  Luckily, my info was correct, and not Mike’s (that the trains weren’t running again until 4 a.m.).  I ended up shopping at three quilt shops.  Two were unexpected and the planned shopping trip was a disaster.  New rule:  don’t shop at unfamiliar places when they’re having a sale (40% off most fabric and the place was bigger than the Door Mouse).  They had two cutting lines and one must have been 40 people long.  The traffic and terrain getting there were no fun either.  I left with nothing and was happy just to get out of there without derailing our trip any further.  We are usually lucky with minimal travel delays but, on this trip, we got delayed in PHX with the first monsoon of the season and delayed in Seattle with a plane issue.  We didn’t get home until 4 a.m. and … I was supposed to get up for work at 5:30.  That didn’t work.  What’s one more vacation day?

 

I was certainly awake a few hours later when I noticed a live scorpion in our bedroom.  Why am I always the one to discover these things?  We had done a sweep of the yard and house when we got home from vacation but saw nothing.  We have decided (rationalized?) that it came in with our luggage or with Sherman’s stuff from the pet sitter.  We continue to sweep for them after dark but …. Grrrrr.  Two live scorpions in the house in two years is two too many.

With all of these activities, sewing has been sidelined again.  I’ve been busy trying to keep my sewing room organized and the guild’s charity sewing fueled with the right supplies when needed.  We ended up being out of town for the meeting when my Jinny Beyer was “due” so that made it easy to miss that deadline.  Sigh.  It’s together but needs the pieced border.  I’ve been a bit stymied on the best way to do it without distracting seams.

I need to find the energy for some retreat planning and prepping.  I’ve made a list so that’s a reasonable start.  It will probably include putting together a couple of sets of blocks into tops, a couple of pillowcases, a simple modern top to comprise the back of a quilt that already has a front, and maybe even something NEW for a change.  I tend to get a lot done in these pre-retreat weeks but I will have to be creative with my time.  Fingers crossed!

 

End of Year 2017 and Early 2018 Finishes

I've worked on a few odds and ends in the last few months. 




For our guild's small quilt auction in October, I made a McKenna Ryan wallhanging and I cut the pieces for two.  In December, I managed to get the second one finished for a friend who needs a distraction.

Another friend asked me in December if I'd make this hand-stitched, hand-embroidered ornament for her.  The pattern designer makes some very cute and detailed patterns!  I can't remember how long it's been since I made something like this. It took a few hours but I managed to get it done in time for the holidays.

To keep the holidays low-stress, I decided to make only one gift and it was a stuffed bunny for Brady.  He and I have a thing for bunnies and a blogger that I follow sucked me in with her post about a bunny she'd made for her daughter.  Her blog and patterns are highly recommended.  I've never made a stuffed animal before.  It went pretty well except I couldn't find the eyes in stores and embroidering them evenly was pretty challenging.  Also, I had marked the white fleece with a blue washout marker (on the wrong sides) but the blue showed through.  I ended up giving the whole bunny a deep-water bath the night before Xmas eve (after taking a deep breath).  Luckily, it dried in time and the marks were all gone.

I worked on a few projects at the January retreat although, it is not a long list.  I made a jelly roll quilt in the race, of course.  I made an Indians pillowcase for Brady.  I made three blocks from the Holly Jolly QAL, too.

I finished two stars for the Moonglow quilt (5 year project, lol).  That leaves only one star to make and I am waiting to finish the sashing and choose from leftover yardage in the kit before I make that star.  Two stars seems like pitiful progress, especially since both had components already started before the retreat. One of the stars has twice as many points as the other most-pointy star so you can imagine it was time consuming.  I also worked on the sashing for stars and it looks like they will align well with the setting blocks.  I have 5 blocks with centers to applique.

Read here for the saga of the Indians quilt.  I'm not sure why Blogger has published that post out of order.

All People Quilt UFO Challenge

In the fall of last year, I was reading a blog and came across a post that referenced the All People Quilt UFO Challenge .  I liked the idea of the randomness of it so I decided to join in for 2018.  Sometimes I wonder whether I spend too much time working through the old UFOs and never starting anything new.  Since many of the ESF groups shut down and now I’m not there for the monthly Diva challenge progress, I don’t have much reason to start anything new (besides doing something with the new fabric I buy).  I don’t buy a lot and it is mainly targeted towards finishing something.  I’ve been using the generous gift cards from the Divas to fulfill those fixes. I’m down to one card and I’m looking forward to visiting that shop since it may be becoming the closest one to me after this week.  Sadly, two of my favorites have closed or announced they are closing in the last couple of months--first, Three Dudes and now Quilter’s Ranch.  Apparently, Quilter’s Ranch has been in business for 40 years. I was worried when they announced they were giving up their Bernina dealership.  Sigh.  I will skip the closing sale this weekend.  There’s nothing I really need and the stories about the crowds and the Fire Department queueing at Three Dudes didn’t sound appealing.

But I digress …  Since I’m doing the APQ UFO Challenge, I should do some blog posts to monitor my progress.  I thought it may be “a sign” in January when they pulled the number that corresponded to a quilt that was ready to sew on the binding.  Wahoo!  It was January 1 and I was already almost done!  The photo is underwhelming but it is a mostly a vintage kit from ESF with all of the wonderful, thick flannel that Mary used to buy (maybe Maywood).  The more peachy pink was never a pink that I bought but the bundle was too pretty to pass up.  I finally pieced it at a March retreat (maybe 2 years ago) after buying some coordinates to finish it off.  I had a lot of the border print so I made it fairly wide to make this a bit bigger and put the same print on the back.  You may be surprised to know that our favorite quilts here in Arizona (and those that get the most use) have flannel on the back so this is intended to be MY couch lap quilt.  For a few months of the year, throughout the course of the day, it goes from downright cold to hot and then back to cooler in the evening.  The desert temps combined with leather furniture keep us coming back to the flannel.

In February, they pulled the number corresponding to the Have a Jolly Little Christmas QAL.  I’m in no rush for this quilt so I had hoped to get a few more blocks done but didn’t necessarily have a goal to finish it. I had kitted up all of the blocks last year so I could easily take them to retreats.  As luck would have it, I had gotten 3 blocks done at the January retreat. I finished 3 more when I got home and, still, I’ve been inspired to work on these since they are easy but each one feels like a mini quilt.  I have two blocks nearly finished (I needed to recut a piece for the cardinal and partridge) and then 3 more before they are all completed (wreath, reindeer and moose).

In March, they pulled the number for a new table runner for my office.  Since I wanted a couch and coffee table in my office instead of a desk, the coffee table from our Ohio living room is in there. We used the big ottoman table from the basement in our living room here.  Knowing my boys, when I bought the table from friends, I made a quilt to cover it.  It’s basically a giant placemat and, as such, it’s seen some hard wear.  It needs to be rebound since it is fraying a bit from all of the washings.  Ironically, two of my Ohio friends asked me to make them one like it for their tables.  I’m not sure why they liked it so much since it is so simple.  I’ve always liked pinwheels so I decided to just remake it with the new office colors.  I also chose to use Bonnie Hunter’s HST techniques to see if I can embrace them or if I’ll just go back to using triangle paper.  In that vein, I’ve been working on these HSTs for a while, carrying them to meetings to finger press and trim dog ears, etc.  If my math was right, I have all of the HSTs I need but I need to make blocks and finish the quilt. We’ll see how that goes.


Here is the original one.

This is the color scheme for the new office.

In the midst of these projects, I’ve been spending a lot of time on my community quilts commitment to my guild.  We committed to making 30 twin sized quilts for a project that helps a group of homeless people get jobs and homes.  The quilts stay with the program so we’re trying to get them done ASAP so that people can start benefitting as quickly as possible.  Since I keep the charity stash, that’s meant lots and lots of cutting.  I’ve also been making quilts from the bigger panels in our stash.  I had cut nearly everything in our stash to be used for these twin quilts when, by complete coincidence, we got just the fabric donations we needed to start making backs for the twin quilts. 

We also got a huge donation of precut flannel squares with about half of them already prepped for rag quilts.  Since it is isn’t practical to kit those for the guild, I’ve been making rag quilts of all things.  Kind of odd, I’d say but I’ve been having fun with them.  The prints are really adorable and they are only 5x6 blocks so they go quickly.  It’s a challenge to make a reasonably combination without looking like a hodge podge.  I have four more to make then the rag quilt blocks will be gone and that will be one less box in my quilt room.

Inspiration

I was pretty distracted last month at our guild meeting when our program chair, Linda, announced that Freddy would be coming to town so I missed some of the planning details.  Maybe I blocked it out because even the mention of Freddy's name made me miss those Divas so much. 

Linda spoke very highly of her experience on a quilting cruise in Europe with Freddy a few years ago.  The class project they worked on was similar to this.  Don't miss the topiaries!

I’m not sure if Freddy is still teaching regularly. I got the impression that Linda’s relationship with her is what facilitated our lucky weekend.  Freddy lives east of San Francisco (“over the hill from Berkeley”) and said there are lots of inspiring artists in her area.  Freddy taught a similar class to the project above on Saturday.  Linda had a reception at her house on Sunday then Tuesday night we had a lecture at the guild.  Unfortunately, blocking out the weekend for potential plans with out of town friends prohibited me from opting into the class and reception but I was so glad to be able to hear her speak at the guild meeting.

Freddy’s 88 now and says she works in her studio from about 7-4 each day, usually 4-6 times per week.  She doesn’t do much piecing at all anymore and focuses on collages instead.  She cuts three different shapes and sorts them into boxes for sky, landscape, and objects.  She said her color sense has always been by intuition so there is a lot of auditioning and trial and error.  She uses Elmer’s glue sticks to glue the pieces down and reposition them if necessary.  Once she’s done with her collage, she sends it to her quilter (I don’t recall her name).  She’s been using this quilter for about 15 years now and they have a close relationship.  She said she tells her quilter … if anything falls off when you unfold it, put the piece where you think it looks good.  The quilter machine appliques all of the pieces’ edges then quilts the pieces, often using facing instead of binding.  Here’s another quilter’s post about the class/process that mirrors what Freddy described. 

She loves day of the dead and Lady of Guadalupe images.

Her one and only experiment with pastel fabrics.

Freddy is currently working on a series of collage faces.  Here, the guild members are holding some of them for display.

Freddy said that she’s probably made about 500 quilts and talked about a time when she sold 96 in a short period of time to make room for more quilts.  She said that the heavily pieced ones such as the ones we admire in her collaboration books are most precious to her because she knows she never would/could make those again.  She wouldn’t have the “eyesight” or the same type of attention to detail these days.  She said the back is important as the front and asked the holders to make sure to show the backs (many of which were vintage Marimekko). 

She mentioned her inspiration for her collage quilts (Edrica Huws) and said that the two books written about her are super expensive because they have been OOP for a long time.   A guild member googled one and it was $400 on Amazon (if you can get a copy).  She never met Edrica but said she lived to 92 before being hit by a car on a Paris street.

None of the people at my table during the lecture had heard of her before the weekend’s activities. They kept commenting how sharp she is for her age.  I need to look and see if her Simply Quilts episode is out there on video somewhere.

I’ll apologize in advance for the photos.  I was in the back of the room and so I was zooming with my phone. 

She said she must have bought 15 yards of the Kaufman print of the circles used for the first border (and she's used it all).

She said it took a lot of trial and error to make the liberated trees but the secret was to make a typical tree but add a crooked trunk.  She said she talked to Gwen a couple of weeks ago and she is enjoying retired life on her island.

She uses black and white to give the eyes a place to rest from all of the color.

An homage to her five boys and she mentioned the topiaries again.

Made by her quilter and friends when Freddy's husband passed away.

Recent work using skinny strata.

Finally finished!

I have lots to catch up on (including a few draft posts) but, for now, I will celebrate finally finishing the wedding quilt for our friends (#1 Indians fans in the world).  If I started this quilt from scratch today, it wouldn't take much time and effort but I seemed to bring lots of challenges to the process (one way or another).  Our friends who requested the quilt planned to visit in March for spring training so I managed to finish the quilt just in time. 


Just so I can remind myself of some of the lessons learned from this one, I'll memorialize it here.


When our friends first asked for a quilt ("an Indians quilt", specifically), I looked for fabric and immediately found these great (haha!) panels on Etsy.  They were probably 10 years old so I got to pay "vintage" prices for the panel which had 3 each of 2 images and a border print on each edge.  They wanted a useable quilt rather than a quilt for their bed so I thought starting with panels would be great--less chance of overcomplicating it.  The first challenge was the number and size of the panels.  They were about 15.5" finished which is pretty big when pairing it with piecing.  I hate clunky piecing.


While I was mulling over what to pair the panels with, Kathy suggested they might coordinate well with fireworks-themed fabrics.  This was a great idea and she must have planted that seed around the time that Quilts and Sew Forth had a patriotic holiday fabric sale.  I stocked up on several 1 yard cuts and finished a couple of skinny bolts.  I had no plan but, at that point, had a stash to work with.  I don't think I had any patriotic fabric at that point. At some point, I bought a couple of baseball prints too and some Indians logo fabric online.


Two years went by as I hemmed and hawed over ideas and ... moved out of state where maybe Miss Manners wouldn't find me and chastise me for the wedding gift faux pas.  I started scouring Pinterest for inspiration and kept seeing t-shirt quilts and panel quilts that had potential.  I finally settled on a t-shirt quilt with an asymetrical design, large panels and a narrow variety of prints.  There was no credit on the pin and I couldn't find a source or pattern to go with it.  I was ok with that because it was unlikely it would line up with my panel sizes anyway  Later, I learned that the t-shirt quilt was based on a purchased pattern called The Big EZ Sewing Pattern.


I made a test block to check my math.  Everything looked good and I was making great progress as I started cutting large squares of all of my RWB stash.  I made four patches to coordinate with the solid blocks.  I was really making fast progress!  That was about the time that I realized that my math and tests were based on an unsashed panel and should have been aligned to a sashed panel.  That meant that all of the cutting and piecing was 3/4 inch too small. I couldn't cut the panels so I had to start over again.


I tossed aside all of the undersized cuts and started over again with a little less wind in my sails.  Just like it always takes longer than you think to make a top from blocks, the sashing was more tedious and time consuming than I'd expected. The sashing used white one white and I bought yardage from Joann's since I didn't have a big piece of one print and wanted to get started on a Sunday when the shops were closed.  Of course, I ran out of sashing about 2/3 of the way through and couldn't find the print at any of the local Joann's.  I bought a second print and rationalized that it was just white on white and it wouldn't matter.


When I pieced it based on my interpretation of the photo I'd seen, I didn't like the way the panels were against the border so I added another half row.  At that point, it was starting to get to be more of a twin size but I rationalized that it was ok and they wouldn't feel trapped under this larger than expected quilt.  I was making good progress by the time I got to the border and realized that I didn't have enough of the Indians logo fabric left for a border.  I had to wait to mail order it.  More time passed.  More struggles to stay motivated to get it done.  While I waited for the fabric to come, I designed a top for Brady that would use all of the offcuts from the first measurements.  Sigh.


When I got the fabric, I realized that the directional repeats would work perfectly for the border measurements I wanted.  Success, for once!  The borders went on well even though they made it even bigger (duh).  I decided to work on it at our next guilt sewing session (once a month at the community center) where I could layer it up.  I packed up the quilt top plus the Halloween Friendship quilt top, two batts, pins, etc. and headed off to the sewing meeting.


I started laying out the Halloween quilt first, using my last Quilter's Select batt.  This monthly sewing gathering includes any quilters, from any area or guild.  As I was smoothing out the quilt top, multiple members of the peanut gallery would stop by to critique and criticize the idea of even doing such a top.  They thought I'd made the trip around the world blocks using individually cut squares and all sorts of other silly techniques.  I wasted my breath trying to explain that it was a bargello technique and that my friends had made most of the blocks for me.  Most importantly, I explained how much I love how it turned out.  They didn't get it.  Oh well, I kept pinning. By the time I was ready to pin the Indians quilt, I was getting bored with pinning and I was annoyed with about a third of the people in the room.


Since the Indians quilt top was so big (too big), I had to put together six tables so that I could get most of it on the table and "make it easier for myself". Well, that was an unpopular move with the rest of the room even though there were still several tables left.  If these people didn't "get" the Halloween quilt, they certainly didn't get the reason to make an Indians quilt.  By this time, I was pretty good at ignoring them but it was annoying.  It also made me pick up my pace so I could get the heck out of there ASAP. 


I laid out the backing then pulled out the queen sized Hobbs cotton batt that I'd brought. It had the price written on it so I must have bought it at a quilt shop at some point.  I've always liked Hobbs and it used to be all that I used.  As I smoothed out the batt, I couldn't help but notice that it had a big, darkened curved line on it where the batt was fused together like a curved dart.  A 4 year old child could have slept under the hump that formed.  I smoothed and smoothed.  I tried turning the batt so that some of that area would be cut off when I trimmed the edges.  I started pinning faster and faster. I was "done" at that point and just wanted to go home. After I pinned the entire quilt (still too big), I went to untape the backing and saw that I had about a 2 inch pleat/bubble in the backing pretty close to the middle and running the length of the quilt.  Well, that's never happened before.  Crap, crap, crap.  I bundled all of my things up to leave, knowing I'd have to take out at least half of those pins and somehow re-baste it.  It was not a good day.


I went home and started unpinning.  Since I was out of batting, I'd need to order more.  For the last couple of years, I've been buying it by the case so I'd always have it on hand.  I'd been reading a lot about wool batting and decided to order wool--thinking it would be a good choice for quilts that will live in Arizona, too.  Now I had to wait for the mail order batting to arrive, despite the fact that my years of patience were now gone.  I, also, needed to figure out how I was going to baste it since the monthly group crowd and the tiny tables weren't working.  I started researching 8 foot tables that I could store and maybe use for dyeing in the future, etc. I hit tons of dead ends with that.  I won't even bore you with the details.  Meanwhile, there is always lots of donating, bartering, and selling going on in our neighborhood since so many people are moving into the neighborhood.  I looked on the neighborhood selling page but there were no tables. I decided to put out an ISO ad for one of the brown tables I used to have because that was exactly what I wanted.  I could use my existing clips, etc.  Before I could post the ad, I got side-tracked but, when I came back to my computer, one of my friends who lives just a few houses away had posted one of the exact tables I was looking for. I think she wanted $10.  SOLD.  Things were starting to go my way.  It must have been time to let my guard down, not.


I got the table. The batting arrived.  I re-pressed the backing from the failed attempt and started layering up in the driveway.  It was a beautiful day.  No strange ladies were heckling me.  I had a whole system down so it wouldn't drag on the ground and get dusty.  Things were looking up! 


The pinning went well but, since the wool had more loft than I was used to, I pinned more closely than I usually do.  I was nose-to-nose with every square inch of that top, since I'd seen it all through the basting process (twice!).  I used literally every pin I have--right down to the very last one.  I folded the quilt with the unfastened pins and put it over the back of one of the dining room chairs.  That evening, I moved it to my sewing room.  The next day, I decided to get it out so I could start brainstorming quilting ideas. 


That's when I saw them.  Stains. Not just stains, but stains and pink blotches as if fabric had bled.  The stains were brown like coffee or mud.  The pink was in areas that had no red near them.  The backing wasn't red.  It wasn't coming through from the back.  All of the fabric had been prewashed.  The stains were in a weird pattern in the center quarter of the quilt.  Crap, crap, crap.


I had no interest in washing an unquilted top, let alone RE-BASTING THAT TOP FOR THE THIRD TIME.  I had to press on and hope I could get the stains and bleeding out.  I've had good luck with other quilts, using Synthrapol and HOT water, but there was no way I was washing the wool batt in hot water.  I had no idea whether I'd be able to get the stains out.  I had to press on rather than fall back.. 


I decided on a quilting design with swirls and stars.  I didn't want stars like you would draw as a child.  I wanted open stars.  I started drawing stars, realizing quickly how difficult that is.  It is silly but it isn't as easy as it looks.  Brady was laughing at my tortured looking slanted stars so I challenged him to try.  He was soon laughing even harder at his attempts.  I finally got to a point where I could do the stars pretty well although I was worried about all of the loft in that never-before-attempted wool batt that I'd just bought a CASE of.  Sigh.


By this point, my desire to be done with this quilt took over and I plowed through the quilting in three days. My goal was to keep the scale larger so it would be drape-able.  Things were going well.  The day that I finished the quilting, I saw that Leah Day had posted a YouTube video with her tips and tricks for binding.  I decided I'd try it her way.  Most of it was the way I've always done it but she had some great new tips that I applied.  I think they worked especially well to tame the loft at the edges (she often uses higher loft batting).
From the original vintage panels, all that remained was two border strips.  I decided to make a tote bag for the quilt using the strips as an accent.
I would say that the reaction to the quilt was subdued.  Maybe they'd just given up on ever getting it.  I'm glad to have it finished.  In the end, I learned a new quilting motif, became familiar with wool batting, improved my basting set up, and quilted the largest quilt I have finished in Arizona.  Lessons learned.
The quilt photo isn't so great but I didn't have the mental energy for much more once this was ready to be gifted.