June Cornucopia

 

That was a month indeed, a whole 30 days spent June swooning, right? I hope so, putting that out into the Universe and all. Here's my cornucopia round-up of links to various things I read, watched, listened-to or consumed in June that I thought you might enjoy checking out as well.

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Daisy Yellow's ICAD landing page for information on this year's event.

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A video presentation commemorating Juneteenth from The Broad (museum in LA) that I really enjoyed.

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These are really fun science based quilts, very inventive and visually striking.

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A great interview with artist, Dewey Crumpler, about how politics and art are forever intertwined.

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A particularly moving essay/account about a personal experience with gun violence.

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This interview with Brad Pitt is something else, especially the last photo which gave me chills, it's so visually striking.

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The visual AI generator Dall-E mini has been producing stuff that is intriguing, beautiful and horrifying.

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The great Rebeccas Traister on The Necessity of Hope in Post-Roe America.

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A catalog of peony colors, compared to the Royal Horticultural Society garden color guide, almost like paint swatch catalog, but with peonies! Yet another use of the color wheel.

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Third Week of ICAD

Here is the third week's worth of ICAD works. All 4x6" index cards. Some have barely made it through getting worked over with several layers of watercolor pencils and crayons.

Wrinkles should merely indicate where smiles have been~Mark Twain

Life is either a daring adventure or nothing~Helen Keller

Different widths and types of pens plus watercolor and colored pencils.

Tracings of a large tongue depressor/popsicle stick.

A torn-up sticky note rearranged and outlined with wide pen marks.
 

Working Progress

Three sleeves are ready to hand sew on the backs of the Colorful Triptych. Ready for stitching during the surprise unscheduled January 6th Committee Hearing happening today. Supposedly it's the assistant to Mark Meadows, the former president's top aide. People in DC found it strange that Meadows insisted that she be included in Every Single Meeting, so this woman knows A Lot. Hopefully it will be as well-presented as the other hearings have been.

 And some actual quilting got done, the Courthouse Steps has been anchored down with quilting between all the blocks. But not in-the-ditch as you can see here. I'm still deciding on the remaining quilting design.

Facing Three Facings

Between all the sitting down watching tv time between the January 6th committee hearings and SF Giants games, I've gotten the facings all stitched down on what I'm calling the Color Triptych. They don't look any different than the last time I posted a picture of them of course, but then that's how a good facing is supposed to work, right? But now I'm one big step closer to being able to hang them up in my house. 

The sleeves and labels should be pretty quick to make and stitch on.

And my production assistant was of course a big help as per usual.

Pillow Edges.

 Have you had the experience of home textiles not lasting as long as they used to? These pillowcases are only a few years, maybe at the most three, and the edges are absolutely shredded. This has happened with a lot of our newer towels too. Shredding, just coming apart, whereas the ones we got as wedding presents way back when are still perfectly fine?!? Something has definitely changed in textile production. I hesitate to spend big $$ on the higher priced linens if this is what's going to happen...

The rest of the pillowcase was perfectly fine and still very usable. So...I took the time to enclose the edges in some double fold binding. It's a little stiff in comparison to the rest of the pillowcase, but it's not where you rest your face so I think it'll be fine.

Friday ICAD

I've been puttering along making my daily ICAD pieces, and then forgetting to post them here. So here's the second week's worth.

These four all use the scrap paper that I was brayering the excess paint off while I was Gelli Plate printing earlier in the month.

I was mostly doing black/white/red with these but then a bit of red-orange fell in there too.

I used the FabMo upholstery thing that I'd utilized with the Gelli Plate printing, it's a heavy duty woven open mesh fabric. I think it makes an interesting background here.

That oval on the bottom is the shiny backing of my "I Voted" sticker.

I tore out some pages from my sketch book and the curled up perforated edge is on the left, I used it as a mask to make the squarish marks.

More of the sketchbook edging, and a Good Earth Tea quote too. "Change is the essence of life; Surrender who you are for what you could become." Reinhold Niebuhr. Pretty deep for a cup of tea.

 

Facing the Facings

Thanks to Wonderclips and lots of pins,  I'm getting the facings stitched down on the Colorful Triptych. It's a lot of stitching, because these are quite long but skinny. 

I'm doing the stitching while watching daytime (for me) Giants games as they play on the East Coast, so that means I'm hanging out with the Jawbreaker pillow that I made back in 2020. I didn't have a pillow form that was the right size, so I made my own out of batting and fabric scraps so it's heavy and solid and makes a great lap stitching device.

The Wonderclips really help a lot when you're trying to hold the rolled over edge in place while you stick down the facing an inch and half away.. I still need to make the three hanging sleeves to add on and get the trio hung up on the wall.

Round Two Glamor Stack

Here's the rainbow stack of completed round two Orange Bullseye blocks. This photo is very very satisfying to me visually. It's like a glamor picture or something, remember those? Now to package up to send to friend Jaye so she can work on them.

Possibly my favorite combination out of this round. Oooh the vibrancy! I'd be very happy to make a whole quilt out of these three fabrics.

 

Too Big Table Runner

I finally took a picture of the Dotsy table runner on the table. It's about two inches two long and wide to work out for us unless we have the table extended. But it would still be too wide for placemats.

So, I probably will have to use it as a wall hanging. 

It does look really nice on a flat surface, the 3-D-ness still comes through.

Cute and Color-Sorted

The cute and color-sorted stack of the remaining fabrics for the Orange Bullseye. I decided. I want to do a real rainbow distribution, so I counted the ones I'd already sewn, and made sure to cut fabrics to fill in the color buckets pretty evenly. I'd already gotten the green covered, some of the blues, but needed more pink, yellow, red and purple.

Cut cut cut. Love these Karen Kay Buckley Perfect Scissors, they fit my giant hands very well and they're So Sharp.

To my eye, these pairings work, the circles are distinct.

 I switched a few pairs around as I was pinning. I quite like this one together.

Cutting Second Round

 The orange bullseye squares are waiting for their second circles. The size of the circle we're adding to these blocks is  6". I'd already cut out 20 squares for them and folded them up and pressed them into quarters. After I cut them into circles, I put them up on the wall matching them up with suitable partners.

That meant that it was time to do the whole clip on the template thing again. It went pretty quickly having the squares already folded into quarters. 

There are a whole lot of leftovers after cutting around the template. They're interesting shapes that call to me honestly more than the nearly perfect circles.

Some mistakes were made, whoops! This is what happens when you clip the template to the wrong corner.

I was totally engrossed in watching the Day 3 broadcast of the January 6th hearings, so I just kept going and pinned and sewed them all up. 

I even spent the time to cut out the excess fabric on the back. So now I'm almost halfway there with the 48 bullseye blocks. This is how four of them look when fit together.

Onto the Second Round

I received the Orange Bullseye squares from friend Adrienne last week and finally got to play around with them because the Faux Goose Chase had been cleared out from the design wall. A little elbow room is what it feels like.

What a great rainbow of colors Adrienne added for the first circle! I'm going to strive to achieve a similar color distribution for the second circle.

Of course I had to unfold them all and put them up on the design wall, just to see all the glorious orange. It really really brightens up the room. I think this will be a nice quilt to have out during the darker days of winter. There's a real variety going on already, a whole lot of "zing" because of the vibrant colors. 
 

FGC Top Completed

Good news, the Faux Goose Chase top is completed. All those triangles, oy!

I think this is the first quilt top I've completed with all pieces cut on a die cutting device. And it really really works. Look at those match matchchy pointy points.

A wholly unprecedented achievement for me, seriously this machine accurate cutting really works.

Here's how it looks all sewn together. Now to make a backing!
 

Wandering Wednesday- Ferry to Whidbey Island

 When you're visiting a port, it makes a lot of sense to get yourself on some sort of a boat, right? We chose to try out the car ferry over to nearby Whidbey Island. 

It was a pretty clear day for being out on the water. And the seagulls were not allowed to perch on the life ring holders.

View out the floor windows at the water.

We traded taking pictures with another couple on the ferry. They did pretty well I think I hope the ones I took turned out for them too. This was the one we took after I got my hair under control, it was rather windy.

It was a very quick ride.

Getting on and off the ferry was really easy and quick for the amount of cars.