State Park Centennial Quilt Block

I just remembered, I was supposed to make a quilt square for the California State Park Centennial quilt and it's due on 10/30. Luckily it's not too big of a size -10"square, and doesn't have to be super complicated 

Whoops! Off to designing I go, here's my reference sketch.

I used some of my pictures from San Juan Bautista when I was visiting the town for the BAMQ retreat, like this close-up of the Prickly Pear along the low brick fence line along the street. Which, not that I think about it, is a sort of brilliant choice to keep out intruders and/or deer. I also referenced some of the elements from the San Juan Bautista State Park website.  

They urged us to not necessarily do representational, but "inspired by" creations of the park we chose. 

So here's what I came up with:

It's been a while (21 years!) since I did something like this, when I recreated the Felton train station from a picture for a local history quilt that now hangs inside the one bank that we have in our tiny "downtown."

Improv Curve Class

 

Saturday was a BAMQ class called Improv Curves with quilt artist Claudia Shearer. This was a super fun class, with a great presentation on Claudia's technique for making blocks with a free cut, no pattern required curve. She had a lot of great tips and tricks for making this free-hand curve work when cutting and sewing the blocks. 

This was my very first block, with lots of pins. I set my machine on the middle speed so that I was automatically sewing a whole lot slower than I normally do. That really makes the difference for me.

We put up the new flannel design wall that Mary made, it has a long velcro strip at the top, and there's a matching strip along the top of the wall where it attaches. I was able to get one of them up by standing on a chair, and then a ladder was found to make it easier. Friend Jaye's blocks are the red prints and white/black text blocks on the left, several more people used the rest of the wall.

By the end of the class a whole lot of blocks were made!

We went around the room as a group and looked at where everyone ended up.

There was such a great variety of approaches to using the technique as well as color and fabric choices. A wonderful display of everyone's creativity.

We kind of ran out of design wall space, so the cutting table worked too.

Here's where I ended up with my blocks by the end of class. I really enjoyed playing with the sizes of the block rectangle and how much background is in each block. I'm pleased with the color choices I made. It was fun to make the slightly more technical one with the double curve. Not sure where I will take this, whether to make more to make a lap quilt size, or keep it at wall size. I was also quite taken with how good the blocks look on the grey grid flannel and consider just sewing them on there. (Not really)

Holy Cats, I'm Twenty-Two!

 

Fabulous Embroidery cake by cakelaurenloves

Happy Blogiversary to me! Yes, that's right, way back on October 25, 2004, I hopped on here and claimed ye olde HighFiberContent as my place to share whatever I felt like sharing. 

Twenty-two whole years of blogging, how about that?!

I honestly am surprised at several things: 

A) that I'm still doing this blogging thing nearly every day

B) that Blogger/Blogspot has survived as a free thing available on the internet for this long

C) that blogging is now becoming popular again (I mean, what is SubStack or Ghost anyways, right?)

Well, will I still be doing this in the very futuristic sounding year of 2048 when I'm eighty-three years old? 

Presuming I'm still alive and able to write, I will probably still be doing some sort of journaling about whatever sort of sewing/making that I'm involved with? Not sure if it will still be public like this or not though. I really doubt Blogger will exist as it has all these years, but I'd bet there will be something else to replace it. And if there is, I'll be using it.

The bigger question I'd say is what will I still be able to or even want to be making or sewing when I'm 83? If my hands and eyes keep cooperating, I suppose I'll still be sewing. Maybe I'll have learned to knit and/or crochet? Maybe there will be some newer fiber-y occupation that is invented in the next twenty-two years?

However it all shakes out, thanks so much for being a reader!

Body Pillow Case Done

I had to draw up a plan for how to convert a piece of flat cotton knit fabric (60" wide by 88" long) into a long stretchy tube (11" wide by 145" long) to cover up this sort of curly body pillow. It is a super stretchy knit, so I was pretty sure it would stretch enough around the curves. I finally figured out, after several incorrect figuring, that all I had to do was cut in half lengthwise, and then sew the short end together, then fold that in half and sew down the 176" long edge.

Here is a more recent picture of why I'm even making this pillowcase, the cover that it came with is made with one of these newfangled "cooling" fabrics. Which has pilled up in such a horrible way that I don't even want to touch it, the texture just feels so awful to me. Not terribly relaxing! But definitely cooling. Hopefully the cooling feeling will come through the new pillowcase.

I made myself do a little test with the fabric before I started in on sewing that long 176" long seam. I first had to change my sewing machine needle to one that is made for sewing with knits, this is my reminder to myself to *change it back* now. I also used my Overcast foot which worked very well.

A note on this fabric, this is a shopping-from-my-stash sort of choice. I have had this organic cotton knit fabric in my stash since I bought it to make my kids **BABY** clothes. It was all the rage back then in the early 90's, organic fabrics, and there weren't a lot of baby clothes being made with them that were at all affordable. I don't even remember where I bought this, I think it was likely from a crunchy-granola-mom sort of catalog. I also have a smaller piece that is striped, which I didn't use for this project. 

The upshot is, I bought the fabric with good intentions of clothing my little babies in something "safer" just because it was organic, but then life got a lot more real once I was raising two under two years old. I always figured I'd make myself a t-shirt or something and maybe dye it, but that never happened either. So, instead of going to Harts Fabrics and buying one of the patterned knits they currently have in the shop. I told myself if this experiment didn't work out, then I'd do just that. 

But it did work out, and maybe I'll dye it at some point, but this is now finished. I can cross off the Body Pillow Case from my UFO list.

I first sewed the long seam along edge, starting from the middle, and then I laid it out on the pillow to make sure it was long enough to make it around the corners.

I

Looks okay on the end, and oh yes, it's very soft.

I made a drawstring turned over casing on one end and cinched it all up with a ribbon.

There it is! It's very stretchy and cozy. It's kind of oversized, but it needs to be washed and dried before I sew it down to a smaller size. I really like how it turned out and look forward to using it tonight.

 

Now On To Placemats

 

A new packet was available on the Community Giving table at Saturday's BAMQ meeting. It was a kit to make a Self-Binding Placemat. Placemats are a new addition to the Community Giving projects, they get donated to a local Meals on Wheels project which is pretty cool imo.

It came in the kit already partially pieced, I just had to sew on the two long rectangles. The batting and backing were included. I did a wavy-line embroidery stitch for the quilting.

After the quilting, the excess batting gets trimmed off and then the extra backing fabric is trimmed to size for the Self-Binding.

Some ironing, folding and stitching, and it's all done! Pretty cute, I think, and very easy to finish.

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.