June Cornucopia

 

Here's the June Cornucopia, a gathering together of all the links and resources I found useful or interesting  during the month.

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Now that I'm spending more time outside, I need some personal shade so I might just have to make this hat for myself, and I think I'll draft a pattern that'll actually fit my enormous head using the tips from the suggested bucket hat pattern drafting video.

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I enjoyed this great article on Quilting Arts about black gold/compost and how it applies to quilting/making.

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Oh how I wish there had been an article like this for me to read when my trans kid came out to me. Chances are someone you know could really use this information.

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Astonishing pieces of fiber art by Malin Lager, They're described as oil paintings with silk threads, they have the sort of richness and depth of oil paintings or some types of photo realistic art. I hope to see one of these in person some day. 

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I found this article about the influence of the lights and colors of California on design very interesting, especially as a NorCal person. 

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Not a great surprise, but my CPAP machine is unfortunately on the Phillips recall list. Just in case you or someone you love uses one, be sure and check it out. Now I get to figure out how to get another one that isn't possibly toxic and soon.

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I really love this tutorial for "Stroked" Flying Geese, and the pillow made with them is adorable.

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Memo to me: Use this super clear bench cushion tutorial to make the cushion for mom's bench.

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Sister's Quilting Done

Always the question, go for contrast or not with quilting thread. I chose not as much contrast as there is already a lot going on with this quilt.

I think I hit a good balance.

I was going to add some hand stitching on the center part, but I think I like how it looks with this much quilting.

I was worried that the super heavily pieced borders would be tough to quilt through, but my machine  didn't have any trouble.

The quilting on this border fabric is really invisible, but I like how the color blends in so well.

Used some machine embroidery stitches.

 Now for the binding, sleeve and label.I'll post a final picture once I've gotten that all done.

It Was Final

It turns out it was the final border after all. I chopped up the assembled improv piece into four pieces after finishing all the diagonal inserts of the green. Then it was the matter of figuring out which spacing and arrangement choices to make.

Here's how two of the four corners look.

 And the final piece! Now on to the quilting and finishing.

Start On The Coat

After sewing together my muslin pattern pieces to make sure it fit me (yes!) and then un-sewing it, I wasn't sure where to start with designing my coat. I flipped through the idea booklet I'd bought from RDKC and settled on making a pieced braid of some sort or other.

I chose from my big stack of fabrics and cut out some strips, .75" and 1.5"

I think that these pieced sections might go on the sleeves of my coat. This is how it looks on the muslin sleeve piece. It's about the right size and shape for that area. There's a sleeve dart at the top, so I'd start it right below that spot.

That's all tbd of course at the moment as I begin working on filling out my design. 

I had fun making them a bit random, and the one variegated grey to black fabric really helped with that.

I guess this is how it'll look once it's sewn in with coping strips.

Final Border?

This might just be the final border for the quilt top that needs to be a finished quilted by the end of the month. 

I wanted to add a lot more yellow/orange but also have the grey browns in there too. 

But after looking at it, I realized the new border needed some green as well. So I went diagonal. I think it's turning out well so far. 

Adding in the green diagonals hasn't been too hard and I think it's good for tying in this border visually to the rest of the quilt. I felt it needed the green to pick up on the green in the previous borders. I think  repeating the one fabric, and getting close to several of the other colors.

Okay, off to finish adding the greens and then chopping this piece up to go around the quilt top edge in some manner to...be...determined...

Selvedge Sayings

 

Selvedges used to be quite boring except for the little circles or squares of colors from the fabric. But now, they're much more involved and well thought-out or even designed. I'm finding that I love the little sayings that are printed on selvedges these days, I think it's another thing I'm going to start collecting. Kind of like keeping fortune cookie fortunes. I think an assemblage of these would make a cool pillow or part of a jacket. Or a lampshade, I need to do something about the lampshade in my workroom. 

But I swear I'm not going to go as far as to make a giant circle skirted dress out of them or anything. Oh my goodness people are selling packs of random selvedges on etsy?!? I know I know, I shouldn't be surprised, but yet...I genuinely am surprised.

Sewing is good for the heart

Not all who wander are lost

There's so many more of them already in my fabric stash, but I'm not going to go through all my fabrics and cut them. As I use fabrics I will though. Maybe I'll put them in one of the glass block containers I usually put thread bits in because it would look pretty.

Ready for Coat Class

Today's the first day of the 2 day coat class I'm taking with Rachel D. Clark on zoom with one of the quilt guilds I belong to, South Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild. Here's my stack of fabrics that I'll be working with. I've long wanted to get the chance to take a class with her, and I'm super excited.

Yes, making a long coat right at the beginning of summer is kind of bad timing for me. I'm already onto the tank tops and shorts routine at home every day. But getting the coat started in class and learning how to actually finish it. I suppose it will give me plenty of time to get into the details and finish it over the summer so that the coat is ready for me to wear when it cools off in the late fall. 

My thoughts today while I was pulling the fabrics listed on our class handout is that I want to do a coat mostly of one color, I'm calling it "Shades of Grey" in my mind. I love color color color in my quilts, but I don't necessarily want to wear that much color. Turns out all the shades of grey are pretty colorful ranging from true gray to blue gray, mauve-ish and green-ish too. 

I have this bag made out of recycled newspaper and I've always loved the look of it, the verticality, the thin strips, the variation in the greys. I'm going to keep this idea in mind as I work on the design.

Rachel suggests having a theme when working on a garment like this, so this one just came to me and I'm going with it.

My theme for the coat will be YES. As in: The Woman Who Said Yes Because She Wanted To Not Because She Thought She Had to. 

AKA:  The Woman Who Said YES For Her Own Reasons

I might piece the word yes into several main "blocks" that will be in prominent places in the coat, center back, one side of chest, etc. Or embroider or print or...

I might hand print the word Yes all over the lining fabric in black fabric ink in all the different font stamps that I have.

I also might go even further and use my leather die tools to stamp out YES on grey leather for closure at neckline and cuff accents.

Friday Recipe

 

As I shared back in March, we're in a club, a delivery club--for beans, yes beans. And for the second time these gorgeous Christmas Lima Beans showed up in our box. Aren't they beautiful? Who would have ever thought that beans could be exciting/beautiful/gorgeous hasn't tried these.

I remembering hating Lima Beans as a kid, and I'd never really eaten them in adulthood. 

The name of these lovelies in Italy are Fagioli del Papa or "Pope's Beans" and in the US as "Chestnut Lima"  or "Calico" beans. They're different than usual lima beans because they have a  very nutty, chestnut flavor to them.

The arresting packaging really got me when I saw these in the store for the first time. Imagine a whole shelf-full of this graphic excellence.

Here's how they look after about 7 hours soaking in water. They soaked up almost all of it, look at how enormous they've gotten.

And here's how they look all cooked up and in my bowl.

The color changes quite a bit as with so many colorful foods. Delicious.

Definitely nutty or Chestnutty to be specific.

Here's the recipe I came up with just in case you're interested in trying these:

EZ Beans

Soak the beans if you have time, greatly shortens the cooking time later. 

When you're ready to cook, drain them, but make sure to save the water.

Add to a soup pot over medium heat:

 2 tablespoons of olive oil, 

8 cloves of minced garlic, 

chopped white or yellow onion, 

Give it a good stir and cook until the onions and garlic are turning translucent.

Then add into the pot:

3-4 stalks of celery, chopped, 

3-4 carrots, peeled and chopped.

and the drained beans. 

Stir and cook a minute or two.

Then add in the reserved bean soaking water, also add more water so that the water is 2" above the beans/vegies.

Bring to a boil and cook for 15 minutes.

Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until "done". Done is however soft you like your beans. Remember they'll continue to cook internally even after you turn off the heat.

Serve over rice, make sure to scoop up some of the broth, top with feta cheese.

ICAD Beginnings

 It's that time again, ICAD or Index Card A Day began on 6/1, and this is a catch up post for the first 9 cards I've made. I'm not following prompts or a plan at all (unsurprising I know). I'm just sitting down and making. Most of these are continuations of one of the others because I like to go right off the edge with my pencils or markers.

The first two cards feature cutouts from a package of masks that was just getting thrown out. The chaos of the backgrounds illustrates how I'm feeling about the whole mask thing. Of course masks were necessary, of course. But now that I'm vaccinated and my state is reopening, what's the real story? Do I still need to wear one, should I, could I? I hate that it's so politicized, and so unclear.

This one uses a carved Prosecco cork stamp I made from our New Year's celebration. 

This time instead of an ink pad I inked it up with a Tsukineko Versa brush pen.

This one utilizes two things that have hung around in the box I use for ICAD that holds my markers and pencils, etc. The very worn-out strike pad from a box of matches (love the texture and pattern) and the remainder of an image from good old National Geographic that I've used previously. Those are on top of a Color Catcher sheet.

This one is a comment on the awful coffee we bought at Costco, so I'm suffering through it for 5 pounds worth. The bear was cut out from the coffee bean package by my DH. "Here, I thought you'd like this."

 And the JFC ribbon is from the soba noddles we eat. But we all know what it stands for right? 

I like how it got a bit distorted when I was ironing the card because it's made of some sort of plasticized material.

 Yes, I iron my cards, then tend to curl up a little after they get worked especially with the watercolors. 

Index cards are indeed not watercolor paper.

 I tried to hide my 'oh no this is awful' face from my DH, but he caught it unfortunately. 

It's a very different coffee than we usually get, a lot more bitter. 

This morning I added a little sugar and then it was passable.

I think I've made a version of this one in previous years.

I think this one might be my favorite of this bunch.

Sometimes the cards don't need all the white background to be covered up completely.

An in-process picture of how I finished the following card. Rows of clear packaging tape to seal in the pencil shavings.

I really really like how this one turned out.

Actual Rows

 

Well would you look at that, as promised, I actually sewed the building blocks (haha) into rows.

I quite like how it looks, so completely random, even the groupings of building and the sizes of the background pieces although it's planned but it still keeps the randomness going. This quilt top as designed has eleven rows of twelve buildings, so I'm 36% of the way done. 

As I move onto making more rows, I'll get to see how my original idea of using different background colors works out (or not). There are five buildings with the blue background that didn't make it into the rows which I'll use somehow to transition into another color. I also have a lot of the between building strips cut in the blue which may impact my decision on using new background colors. 

More Buildings

 

More and more buildings.

More hedge hogs and snarky cats.

Shoot the buns are on the wrong side.

And I forgot to un-sew and switch it around before sewing the roof onto the building.

I'm going to leave it that way, subtle roof bunnies work for me.

The Paris cats fabric is pretty funny, I tried to include some of the words.

I like this one the best out of the lot. That crossword fabric is pretty great as house sides.

Still haven't sewn them into rows yet, today, today, I swear.