The Bottom of the Ocean

 

I'm doing the facings a little differently for Ocean Effect, the bottom one is going to be a "self"facing, I'm using the excess of the whole cloth front of the quilt that extends below the green upholstery fabric and blue sheer and pulling it around to the back and hand-stitching it down. But first, I decided to take the time to stitch out a quilt label using the digitized alphabet options on my machine.

I had to test drive it for the tension, and I forgot which way the letters stitch out! It's been a while since I'd used the alphabet feature, so I made a little sample and wrote myself notes. Then I had to pin it on and make sure the words of the label would be right-side up as they're at the bottom of the quilt. This will be a handy thing to have for next time, so I'm storing it with my iron-on embroidery stabilizer.

Closer to Ocean Effect

 

All the hand-dyed fabric strips have been applied, and I've trimmed two out of the four sides.

This picture has the two un-trimmed sides pinned to the wrong side, just so I could look at how it looks at this size and "crop".

I'm pleased with how this top section turned out. It matches up pretty well with my original sketch, and looks "painterly" enough for me.

M.O.M.

 

Well, I'm feeling like the luckiest mom ever as I've just had a very lovely Mother's Day with my family. A visit from daughter Zoe and her friend Viv, who were picked up at the most southerly BART station by DH and DS. They picked up a great lunch for us from our favorite sandwich place near my mom's house. Then we all went on a little post-lunch walkabout, including to the Future Farmers of America farm next door to my mom's community where we got to walk through the stalls and check out all the animals, cows, sheep, goats. After a quick jaunt on the freeway overpass and back again, we all inhaled our very tasty Costco Tiramisu, actually speaking of inhaling, watch out for that powdered cocoa on top, several of us had coughing fits, stir it up before eating. We also did some helpful gardening at my Mom's, got her new umbrella set up and the A/C unit put back in the window for the summer. 

Lots of fun and conversation and laughter. Just what I needed. And this picture above is my very favorite present, thanks to photographer, Viv.

Here's to all mothers every where, some great words from the great Rebecca Solnit:

"Mother is both a noun and a verb. Some people had great mothers but lost them, some had or have mothers who never mothered them or stopped mothering them for some reason, treated them as adversaries or as worthless, and Mother's Day can be a punitive day for all those for whom this is true.

The other half of the question of what there is to celebrate is what mothered and mothers you, how you mother yourself, how you celebrate and recognize what cares for you and takes care of you, and what you care for in return....

May you locate the ten thousand mothers that brought you into being and keep you going, no matter who and where you are. May you be the mother of uncounted possibilities and loves."

Ocean Return

 

Back to work on finishing up Ocean Effect for the Bay Area Modern Quilting group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair. I've already gone ahead and entered it, so now I have to finish it up. Referring to my initial sketch, I started with the lowest horizontal color line, just to see how it's looking.

Adding in a few more colors.

And here are a few more of the colors pinned on and ready to sew. I've just got a few greens left to go up to the very top. Then it'll be time to trim it up and do the facings and hanging sleeve.

Mosaic Runner Top Done

Here's where I ended up with the mosaic table runner. Or so I thought...

One last rearrange before final assembly.

And one more little change before the last seam was sewn. That upper left hand corner block got turned 180°. Now I'm done and all ready for layering and quilting.

 

Mosaic Piecing

 

Time for some teeny-tiny piecing with teeny tiny HSTs™for the mosaic table runner 2.5" blocks I'm filling in the final layout with.

A little bowtie block.

And some of the bright bright bright neon yellow solid for a little bit of an interior frame. Started out with .75" wide strips.

There it is, a 2.5" square. I figured that some of these smaller pieced centers would be interesting to look at up close while this is on our table.

I started piecing together some of the sections of the layout. It's going pretty easily to join up the various sizes which all fit together mosaic-style.

This is likely the final layout I'm going with.

Even More Mosaics

Making more Mosaic Blocks for my table runner project. Using up the scraps from making the other blocks to make the smallest size blocks.

Not a final arrangement but I think I have almost enough to figure out how to assemble this thing now.