July Cornucopia

 

Another month of the year done, and here's the monthly cornucopia scheduled post for July.

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New Quilts of Northern California exhibit applications are due very soon, August 9th. I don't know if I'm up for actually attending PIQF this year or not. It seems iffy as far as COVID goes over the next few months, but maybe if I remember to enter and actually get into the exhibit, my quilt will just have to go as a stand-in for me. 

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This is a cool idea for learning more about clothes-making. I'm considering joining up to expand my knowledge base which is not much at this point. And they have a pretty good companion podcast too.

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Here's a useful short video on photographing your quilts for exhibition entries.

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Did you miss World Emoji Day? Here's some of the proposed new emojis pending approval from the Unicode Consortium 

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One of the most interesting art installations I've seen in a long time, a hot-air balloon in Tokyo of all things.

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If you're interested in block printing, there's a couple of short videos on the Stitchin' Post youtube. 

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A helpful round-up of tips for pre-washing and starching pre-cuts such as jelly-rolls.

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I enjoyed this presentation about colour by weaver Margo Selby.

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Almost Done ICAD

Hard to believe ICAD is almost over. Here's a group of last week's + work.

 

I quite like the landscape-ness of this one.

Those little green diamonds are the very sticky stickers from my recent mammogram.

Kitchen Sink Process

This was my first selection of "orphan blocks" for the Kitchen Sink Quilting class. Pretty varied, probably too varied.

I narrowed it down a little, and this is the picture I sent in to our teacher, Maria Shell.

During the class, I worked on some possible combinations with the background solids I'd cut.

I tried a lot of combinations, but got too wedded to some of the solids placements. Especially the part on the lower right. I did like how the 3-d cube was floating on these blue/greens, but I decided that I love that block TOO much to throw in with a bunch of other stuff, I want to make something just for it.
I took out the background solids 

And then I added back in some of the bright crazy pieced blocks.

This is how it looks at the moment, I've added in some other orphans I hadn't tried yet on the left side. And I took out the crazy pieced blocks, they are just "too much" for the rest of the blocks. Too busy, too colorful, too much.

 

Kitchen Sink Preparation

 

Getting ready for the first day of a two day class on Kitchen Sink Quilting with Maria Shell. This was the first selection of solids that I chose and I laid them out pretty randomly on my work table just  to get an idea of the color range. 

And....I really really like this "design". Like I want to make a quilt that looks exactly like this. I'm tempted, really tempted to cut up pieces to assemble this exact thing before I take the class tomorrow. 

We shall see. I have to take the diabetic cat to the vet which is always exhausting because he yells the whole time there and back.

More Yes Please

Tools of the paper piecing game. The add-a-quarter ruler is essential. That seam roller is really working out well instead of having to keep an iron going the whole time I'm sewing. The seam ripper because yes...mistakes are made.

It's all so very very fussy for a 6x6" block, but I'm liking how it turns out in the end.

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Here are the two font versions together. I like how it looks, almost visible, but not really.

One more font left to do and then that's it for paper piecing for awhile. The rest of the work on the coat will be other types of piecing.

Black and White and ICAD

Time for some black and white (and gray) ICAD.

Okay, with a dash of red too.

This is my favorite, maybe of this year's ICAD. And the circle with the pre-printed dot/dash design? You'll never guess where that came from...our new toilet install instructions.

I really dislike this one. Is it the brown? Yes, yes it is. It was worse before it was brown though, I tried several layers of color and then gave up. Not all of these are "successful" which is okay because they're just an index card. No Big Deal. Which is a big part of the point of doing ICAD.

This is card stock waste from practice cutting out tabs for a Sew Sweetness tabs .svg file on my Cricut. 

 

New Fabrics

 

Yesterday I talked about the big excursion to Bay Quilts, a not so local LQS, but I neglected to highlight my purchases which I was pretty excited about. As you can see in the above picture, they are not intended for the same project. (although that'd be a pretty good challenge actually. 

The top fabric is a map of the US with the locations of all of the national parks. We've been talking about retirement bucket lists, and visiting all of the parks is near the top. I thought it'd be fun to have this made up as a lap quilt to have along on our journey and stitch our pathways as embroidery or something like that.

Next is an odd stripe that is such a great combination of colors and peacock eyes.

I finally broke down and bought some of the Jen Kingwell Lollies, which is stripes of different patterns.

The triangle arrows fabric is so striking and I thought it'd make a great binding or border.

The shredded paper collage is an older Carrie Bloomston print that I really enjoy.

I was really taken with this digital fabric collage fabric line, there was a much lighter color way, this was the "night" version. All I could see was a skirt, as the entire design is the width of the fabric.

And even better that it's called "Happy Place".

Wandering Wednesday - Bay Quilts

It had been a longlonglong time since friend Jaye and I got to go hang out and visit a quilt shop. We decided to journey over to the East Bay and check out Bay Quilts. As we entered the shop, they asked if we were vaccinated and took our names and phone numbers down too, just in case they had to do contact tracing (great idea!!) and then offered us hand sanitizer. We wore masks and were just happy to be in a quilt shop that had survived the last year and a half of retail weirdness and challenge. 

And as a bonus, I was so happy to see a display of some of the SJSA quilts on their walls.

And what a nice surprise, one of the quilts happened to have one of the blocks I did the embroidery work on. First time I've seen one out in the wild.

I really love the look and energy of this raw edge embroidery/quilting.

These quilts always make me think and feel, they're so expressive and thoughtful.

Bay Quilts was great to visit, it was only the second time I'd been in person although I've ordered online. They had their fabrics arranged so differently than what I'm used to, gathered together and displayed by individual fabric line/designer instead of just by colors. It made a lot of sense but if I'd just been looking for a certain color range, it wouldn't have worked too well. They have a really awesome selection of fabrics.

We had a little snack in Berkeley and then headed back over the Bay Bridge. What a great treat to get to hang out with Jaye in person and get out and about too. Almost like we were back to the "before times".
 

Simple-Elegant Tee

Just bought a new clothing pattern, the Simple Elegant Tee. Just about all the patterns I have are much more complicated and I just wanted to try to make something simple. Also found a slightly patterned black on black fabric and another random package of needles to add to my stash. Thanks Scruffy Quilts.

 Now to search my stash of clothing fabrics and try this out before I go buy even more fabric. I think I'll make a long tee that's got the dolman sleeve. 

Non-series ICAD

 Another group of ICAD pieces, which are a pretty random grouping of techniques.

  I'm most of the way done now as "the event" finishes at the end of this month.

I used some strips of Color Catcher in this one, but it's hard to see, I made it disappear into the card.

A collage covering the fire worry that's ramping up.

I  like the combination of the fine point black markings versus the watercolor crayons color.

A shorter "series" of green. Sushi grass once again.

I wrote "We Ate Sushi Today!" over and over again in watercolor pencil. The three fish come from our three chopstick packages.

More grassy, words from the chopstick packages.

I like the depth of the layers I managed to create on this one.