Happy Thanksgiving

Happy Thanksgiving!
I am thankful that we have other ways to get to our Turkey-Day festivities these days.

If you appreciate Salvador Dali, go check out the Surrealist Thanksgiving, with recipes from his cookbook (which is now on my list of cookbooks I might just need at some point.)

Wandering Wednesday: Lake Merritt

A recent sunset stroll along the shore of Lake Merritt in Oakland gave me a lot of bird pictures to share. 

It's a nice surprise to have a body of water in the middle of downtown Oakland. It's different than just a big park. 

 This was near the bird sanctuary which seemed to be closed, maybe they were waiting for it to reopen? They were definitely lurking, kind of menacingly, look at those big beaks.  

I had to look them up to find out what kind of bird they were, Black-Crowned Night Heron. Very short and stocky for a Heron.

I always have to take a picture of an interesting door. Luckily my family knows this about me by now.

The reflected sunset off the roundish buildings windows falling on the non-window side of the building next door really caught my eye.

And finally, a lovely flute serenade from the dude on a roof across from Children's Fairyland. 

The Fall Favorite

Here's one of my favorite pictures I've taken this entire fall. A leaf landed on my windshield and the colors were so striking with the background. It took several tries to get it in focus, but finally I got this shot of it before it blew away.

After looking at it in Palette Builder, no wonder I liked it so much. Look at this glorious fabric color combination. Definitely useable.

Fifteenth Study Square

The fifteenth Weekly Study Square Quiltlet.

 The pile of scraps is increasing Not Decreasing, I guess I need to figure out some other way to use up scraps besides making one of these 8.5" square quiltlets a week. Scraps are good though, it means I'm working and making stuff. Just need to come up with some new Scrap Management techniques for myself.

A close-up of the stitching.

The words for the week were:

• garlic


• cottage


• screen


• anchor


• toothbrush


• stew


• fax


• handbag

90/100

Coming down to the last 10 blocks for this 100 block project, and I'm starting to play around with different arrangements. It's fun to have so much color to play with and figure out which colors I need to have a somewhat balanced composition in the end.

 83

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 90

Wordless Wednesday

Fourteenth Study Square

Here's the fourteenth Weekly Study Square Quiltlet that I've made so far this year.

 Before the pinning and stitching it looks ready to fly apart.
 Sometimes selvedges have just the graphic look that I need.

Closeup of all the zig-zagging. No straight stitches were used in the making of this quiltlet.

This week's words:

• blackboard


• ladybird


• promotion


• shout


• summit


• class


• magician


• headline

82/100

Coming into the finish of this project, I'm starting to look at color balance of the overall quilt. As in, is there too much of one color speaking too loudly? For the remainder of the blocks I'm piecing I'm going to try to work on using more of the colors I think I need.

 Love that lotus tiger.

 I want to try and make four of these blocks to set together to see how it looks.

 Almost matching fabrics sometimes work. Definitely helps that I'm using all prints from the same designer.

 This one's my favorite of this grouping. Those lotuses look kind of menacing, almost as much as the tigers.

The center was supposed to be the same print as the corners, but I wanted to fussy-cut something, I thought the pink rabbit reads close enough as the same.

Joining Up

I attended my first meeting the South Bay Modern Quilt Guild this week (thanks to my friend Jaye and her mom visiting for the excuse to actually go.)  It was a great meeting, really fun people and wonderful quilts being made by the group. So I joined up!  

I was lucky and scored a door prize, the M. Joan Lintault book (I've always loved her work and this book is great!) Then there was free fabric, a fat quarter of Kona Cotton in I think the color Creamsicle. The fabric is for a guild challenge that's coming up in January for an exhibit at the PVQA show next year.

Wow, I color adjusted this photo a bit too much, the orange is actually the same as in the above photo, anyway...the turquoise is another of the colors we're supposed to use. I thought it'd be fun to use the complementary colors in my quilt design. It's all based off of a great photo of the teapot ride at Disneyland and is supposed to be tea-related to go with the theme of the quilt show. Thinking cap is now on.

Windmill Angles

I've been working on a project since 2011 with my friend Jaye to cut windmill pieces using the above plastic template (from Come Quilt With Me.)
I wanted to cut a bunch more pieces for us to use so I purchased the Sizzix cutting die for this same block to quickly cut more accurate pieces.  It's the same  4.5" height, but unfortunately it isn't exactly the same angle. So close! This picture shows the template on top of a fabric piece I cut with the Sizzix.

 I made up a sample block to see how it would work out and I think it's too far off to fudge it.

I think this shows a little better how that little difference in the angle works in the block here with them side by side. The one on the left is done with the template, and the one on the right is with Sizzix.
Oh well, luckily the die was on sale and I like this shape as it makes a block with a lot of motion and is easy to piece together accurately.

Garden Cornucopia

 We've been lucky enough to get some great figs from our tree this year. I like cutting them up this way because they're kind of heart-shaped.

An actual pomegranate is growing on my tree. Finally! I think I've had that tree for five years, and it flowers and sets fruit but they've never gotten this big before.

I definitely did not give these enough water this year, but they look interesting with a few petals like this.

 I was happy to get a surprise Iris blooming over the last few weeks.

 Our curious deer is still sticking around.

Rain clouds and the late afternoon sun.

75/100

Hard to believe I'm 3/4's of the way through this project, it really feels like the end is in sight now. The good news is that I'm still enjoying making these little 6.5" blocks from Tula Pink's City Sampler for the #100Days100Blocks project.

 These color combination with a tiger just says circus. But this tiger has escaped...

 Speediest snail around.

 Oh deer! Some of his antlers didn't fit.