Demonstration Flags & Demo Lecture

 

Another couple of hours posted up on the sidewalk with my family in our little mountain town for another fun No Kings demonstration. There were so many people out with signs encouraging people to VOTE! We had a lot of music and dancing again, people and dogs in costumes. My favorite was a brand-new baby strapped to the front of her papa who was holding a sign that said "No Kings, No Naps!"

If you haven't already:  Make A Plan To Vote.

We had mini-flags this time (from Flags for Good) as well as signs.This is because I have now become a person who has a seasonal mini-flag planted in front of her house. It all started out with an SF Giants flag. DH is holding a No Kings flag, I had a VOTE flag. DS is holding one of our signs. They worked together to figure out how to temporarily rig them up with wire and dowels just for the day.

Then it was over the hill for the BAMQ meeting at the San Mateo Library. There was a great turnout, lots to cover, and an excellent speaker coming to us on Zoom, Jane Hauprich. Her instagram is here with lots of great pictures of her quilting. She's an excellent free motion quilting teacher, and gave an engaging and informative talk. At the end, using pictures of un-quilted quilts from our members, She demonstrated her thinking process about how to establish a quilting design for a particular quilt. She uses a tablet to draw right on top of a picture of a quilt (seen there in neon green). I am definitely going to try that out the next time I'm dithering on quilt designs!

Community Giving Binding #2

 

I picked up another Community Giving quilt that needed binding at this month's Sew Day, and since our BAMQ meeting is tomorrow, I wanted to get it done so I can turn it in.

Tah-dah! Isn't this a cute panel quilt? I love the quilt blocks and the print. It's kind of Christmas-y, but not too in your face, so if the recipient is a horse lover, it'll work all year for them. The backing fabric had just enough excess fabric so that I could make the binding out of it. It's always nice when that works out. 

Postcards, Seeds, Spiders, Color Study

 

No quilting happened today, instead I used my energy up writing a whole lot of Postcards to Voters and actually getting them into the mail. I had planned and ahead and last week I bought a new roll of fall leafy postcard stamps and blank postcards with a printed message on one side that says: 

BE A VOTER 

Your Voice Matters  

🌟---Really---🌟

My goal is to write and send out all 100 postcards for the upcoming mid-term election.

I also harvested some Day Lily seeds from my garden that I'm going to attempt to sprout and grow. Usually you buy them as small bare roots with crowns. I was pulling out the dry flower stalks with the dried pods and heard the seeds rattling. I looked it up right then and there on my phone to see if the seeds were worth planting or not before I tossed the stalks into the composter. It sounded to me like it's definitely worth a try. The more Day Lilies the better, right? I'll be sure and report back here in spring to let you know if it worked or not.

We also have finished off our Halloween decorating. I really liked how this picture turned out. One of our couch-side lamps temporarily has a purple LED bulb, and the other one has a red bulb. Both have BIG hairy spiders, and it's rather SpoOoOooky just as intended.

Oh, and I signed myself up for another Alison Glass quilt along, Color Study. I think it's a really interesting looking quilt.

Spinning Wheel or Pinwheel or Flying Kite

 

Time for me to make the very last BAMQ BOM block. This one has a lot of names:  Flying Kite or Spinning Wheel or Pinwheel. It's a lot of triangles and a strip with a 45° angle on one end. 

I will be honest, I had a hard time laying it out, maybe if I'd used all different fabric for the "blades" it would have been easier for me?

I'm liking how it's looking at this point, and I'm also glad that I chose to make the 12" version.

There it is, all done! Now to start figuring out a good layout for all the blocks I've made so far.

Stars+Alternates

Here's the whole stack of to-be-sewn together "twenty alternate blocks" for the Lupine Mystery quilt.And here's the final block assembled right after ironing.

Well, here they all are together, the Lupine Stars and the "alternate blocks". This us not an intentional arrangement, I just slapped them up as they were pressed.

woohoooooo.

Now to play around with the arrangement until I like what I see.

All The Stars

 

The last five Lupine Stars are now done.

Here's one of my favorites.

And another one.

Twenty-five Lupine Stars all together. This would make a nice quilt, I like that secondary pattern a lot.

I pushed myself and made five of the "alternate blocks", to add to the one I'd done before, just to see how it would change....And wow! What a difference that alternate block makes in the took of the quilt. Twenty more of those to assemble. This is going to be fun to play around with the final layout.

Ten More Lupine Stars

 

Ten more Lupine Stars are done and up on the wall.

They're hanging out with the first ten that I made and the one lonely "alternate" block.

Only five more to assemble!