March Cornucopia

 

March is done, and here's the cornucopia post roundup of all the things I enjoyed this month online. It's a smorgasbord this time for sure. After the February emoji-explosion went so well, I decided to do one for St. Patrick's Day green decoration purposes, please enjoy all (and I mean all) of the green emojis. None of which are at all St. Patrick's Day related though, ie no shamrocks, tam-o-shanters, leprechauns, green beer, etc.

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I think this free placemat pattern is very cool, and it'd be pretty easy to make a matching table runner as well.

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Quilter's Color Mixer online teaching event on Creative Spark is today at 9am. If you sign up, you can watch all of the presentations later.

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Collage Lab Spring Fling is an April event, a great variety of recorded and live classes in all sorts of collage related topics.

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Visions Museum of Textile Art is having an Art Quilt Auction in April.

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I really like this quilt block, Beautiful Star and this quilt made from found vintage blocks.

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Relax for three minutes and watch this beautiful and elegant video of Kumihimo Braiding.

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A very nicely illustrated and explained 32 HSTs All At Once tutorial.

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A beautiful read by one of my favorite authors/reporters Leah Sottile about Butte, Montana. And then read this oh so achingly perfect essay too.

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I read this fascinating interview with Jane Bennett, The Philosopher Who Believes In Living Things and recognized myself quite clearly.

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I have learned so much interesting history from Talia Lavin's Sword & the Sandwich sub stack series on Notable Sandwiches. Well worth a read along with her other writing of course.

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This stitched button is making me lose it, it's so beautiful!

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On the 2oth anniversary of the Iraq war, the best thing I read was this: The Unlearned Lessons From The War In Iraq by Spencer Ackerman, "you don't have to reflect on a war if that war doesn't end, let alone pay reparations for your crimes"

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A fun and more challenging daily word game similar to wordle, it's called Wordnym. Give it a try and see if you like it.

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This is an interesting take on a tote bag, make a tote bag, but make it ruffle-y.

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On April 15th, there's going to be an online or in-person lecture on the California Art Quilt Revolution by Nancy Savor.

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Tips & Tricks for Sewing With Wovens by Ruby Star Society, I could have used a few of these recently.

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Checkerboard-ish

After getting all the lovely new fabric washed, I've sorted it out and decided to actual get down to using some instead of just petting it...So, off to the races on getting a mini quilt done for the SBAMQG challenge. I was given the above pallete challenge, and have to use at least 3 out of 5 of the colors.

I decided to an improvisational type of thing instead of sketching or EQ8-ing a design. The main thing I was starting with besides the color was size on the smallish side, ie able to be finished by 4/4. 

I started with 1" strips of the two blues and began the process to get to my one of my favorite go-to's: checkerboard. I cut them up into 2.5" sections.

I randomly sewed the 2.5" checkerboard-ish sections to the ends of some 2.5" wide strips, not paying attention to which direction the checkerboards were going. I arranged the strips and cut and sewed ad re-cut them until I liked the look of things.

the colors are all wrong in this photo, but I still wanted to show how this looks a little closer up.

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Time to add the third color into the mix. I cut a .75"wide strip of the fuchsia (magenta? as well as a slightly smaller .63"wide strip

Here's how it looks with the inserted small diagonal strips. I think this is done, except for perhaps some sort of small border that incorporates the other two remaining colors. I'm looking forward to getting this quilted tomorrow.

Shifting Slopes

I counted and figured out how many blocks I made, 200 exactly. Which is funny because I know that I did not at all plan for an even number like that. Just ended up that way? Eleven of them aren't included here as they were mis-cut due to my problem with figuring out the trimming instructions. So, I probably shouldn't use them. A few of them are probably not that far off but I'm not sure if I want to try and fudge it with a design like this that relies on all the diagonals matching up.

I've left the main part of the layout mostly untouched and fiddled around with the edges a bit. I've introduced some diagonal stripes a bit and I'm considering playing with that a bit more across the whole quilt. I will try that as I move the blocks around. I also might change the dimensions of the layout, taking out a column and adding a row.

Leeloo squinching up her eyes in hello to DS as he makes comments on the quilt in progress. He likes it a lot, so maybe I'll give this one to him when it's all done.
 

Slopes On The Wall

 

Finally, all the Slopes blocks were trimmed. I was so relieved, I can't even tell you. I had to really push through to finish trimming all of them. I'm not going to count them until I put them up on the wall, that'll be easier.

And that meant it was finally time to put them up on the wall and see how it looked. This is not all of the blocks, there's probably a little less than half left to put up. This was a very random placement and I messed up the bottom left corner from the regular diamond pattern. I like how my eyes can't decide where the diamonds are. I'm going to have to play around a little more with this before I start sewing. There were some good ideas in the Color Collective group on various arrangements, like arranging them more by color groupings.

Still On The Slopes

 

I'm at the all-too-familiar point in the process that I'm questioning why I made So Many blocks?!?! It's getting kind of old trimming all of these, because I want to get going on the sewing. I'm tempted to count how many, but that's just a delay tactic, it doesn't really matter at the moment how many there are.

The pile of trimmings is getting higher and higher as the stack of to-be-trimmed lefties and righties gets lower.

The two piles on the left are all the trimmed lefties and righties. The two on the right are the untrimmed ones. It looks like I'm finally past the halfway mark.  Wow, that glowing pink Trinket ruler really stands out in the picture doesn't it?

The ruler really glows in the big amount of sunlight that I now get in my workroom due to the absence of the trees that fell over in the storm last week. I may have to rearrange things in there to account for possible sun fading issues. Unfortunately the forecast is for another bomb cyclone situation again on Tuesday. Turbulent Tuesdays they're calling it because the storms keep arriving as if on schedule on Tuesday. 

The Time To Trinket

I received part of my order from Alison Glass which includes the crazy neon pink ruler, and some cute notecards. This is displayed on the still to be washed fabric I’ll be using to make the Trinket quilt.

Here’s a better shot of the Trinket ruler, all the blocks we’ll be making are 4.5”. It was just so cute and colorful, I couldn’t resist.

I made myself a little dedicated note book for the Trinket sew along decorated with the pretty postcard included in my order. And as you can see by the first two blocks pictured, I’m starting to print out the paper pieced block patterns to get ahead of the schedule.

And as directed, I measured them just to be sure that my printer was being precise enough.

 

Trimming the Slopes

It’s taken me a while to get down to trimming my blocks for the Color Collective quilt, Slopes. 

I was having trouble figuring out the instructions at first and had to watch the video several times as it wasn’t making sense to me in the written directions. I guess I really am a visual learner.

Now that I get it, it’s going much more smoothly and much closer to accurate.

I’m leaving notes for myself on the two stacks that I have left to trim.

All of these are so badly mis-trimmed that they’ll likely end up on the back of the quilt. I kind of like the diagonal stripes in this arrangement.

Here’s my two stacks of trimmed blocks, both lefties and righties.

I found that the new Latifah Safir HuRty ruler works very well for this. Having the quarter inch grid really is essential.

Some in use/action shots of the ruler. 

The blue painter's tape is there so that it’s easier to choose the right lines

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I don’t know if I’m using the ruler exactly as directed, but it’s working for me.

This post is courtesy of the blazing fast internet connection at the Felton library. Our internet finally went out yesterday afternoon and the cell service is reminding me of the dial-up 90’s internet connection we had. We had to drive out to get giant tarps to cover the crumbling hillside before the next storm arrives on Tuesday. We’re thrilled to see the mobs of PG&E trucks and workers. 

 

Graphic Letters

 The plumber is here to replace our hot water heater, the power is still out but the sun is out charging up our battery, and the internet has remained up and running, so I'm happy as can be.

I'm working on finishing up the words on the second SJSA block.

Tne block maker asked for graphic letters in black and red. I knew it had to be mostly red as the background fabric has that awesome black diamond shaped pattern. And I just happened to have a small length of red satin ribbon.

I think the first word turned out pretty well. My DH says the first T looks a little like a J because of the background fabric so I may extend that down a teeny bit. It needs to read ProTect not ProJect.

I traced around the block letters with a Sewline marker to give myself the right spacing and to fit the letters in the space. Just a little glue stick to hold the ribbon sections down and then a slow zig zag  and tah-dah. 

The next two words are also done in red ribbon, of a slightly different width and color but with similar zig stitching. 

I think using the red really helps it pop out past that visually strong background fabric.

I'm happy with how the two blocks worked out and I hope the blockmakers, if they ever the finished quilt, will like what I did with their blocks.

While I had my box of ribbon out, I decided to put away the ribbons that I'd cleaned up out of my scrap basket and worktable area. 

I had these out and hanging around (literally) because I liked seeing these, because they're all so interesting and beautiful like little art pieces, so I hadn't put them away in the box. Hopefully I won't forget about them...

Wandering Wednesday - Bumbling Through the Bomb Cyclone

 

The miserable winter continues Wednesday edition. We were hit dead on with what's being called a bomb cyclone yet again. This storm has brought us almost 4.5" of rain in a day and a half. On top of the near continuous rain over the last three months. It's much too much, and our hillsides are literally oversaturated. This is the new view out my studio window, more on that below.

This gif shows the storm really well, there were two big rotating storm systems that were also rotating around a central point, something called the Fujiwhara Effect, and that just sped up the winds incredibly.

I took this when I briefly went outside with Meg, she was too scared to go though. This was nothing compared to the really strong gusts.

We have had really windy days over the many years we've lived here, but there's never been a windstorm like this one. I unfortunately watched as four redwoods toppled below our house. Luckily for our downhill neighbors, they fell in the right place. It reminded me a lot of seeing the cannery collapse during the 1989 earthquake, just utter destruction actually happening before my eyes. Like something out of the movies. The wind gusts continued for most of the day, the highest being 33 mph, which is incredible in the protected area where we are. Downtown Boulder Creek which is more open (less trees), that gust measured at 40mph. 

So, I saw those trees fall, the tops of the remaining redwoods are shredded and sparse now. But at the same time, another group of redwoods toppled.

We didn't used to have a view of the sky in this spot before. That's because there was a clump of about four redwoods blocking the view. As you can see, they're no longer there, as they also fell. We had heard something, but the wind was so loud we weren't sure, and we definitely were not out walking around with all the giant branches falling (they're not called widow makers for nothing)

It paused a bit in the ferocity so we bundled up and went out to see why we could see the sky. I noticed the decimation of the magnolia tree I just posted about on Sunday.

I'm so glad I took those pictures on Saturday. So those little spiky trees behind the magnolia are what's left of the redwoods that were formerly behind it. We could see broken branches on the redwoods to the left and further on down the hill.

Finally I looked down and saw the roots sticking up out of an enormous mud ball. That little hillock looking thing is where the trees used to be standing.

It's incredible, all those trees just gone. We can see our neighbor's house for the first time ever. 

Our power has been out since the winds started yesterday around noon. Thankfully the internet is still on. All of the roads are a mess, and we're not driving anywhere anytime soon. Unfortunately, and unrelated to the storm, last Wednesday our hot water heater went kaput, and the new one was to be installed today. But our plumber can't get here from there, so at least another day of heating up water for sponge baths. 

wheee fun!

Stitching on SJSA Blocks

 

Most of the stitching of the two SJSA blocks is now done. They both had a lot of tiny details, so I chose to use machine stiching this time. This one in particular took a lot of time because of the trees and roots.

This wording was done as directed by the block maker in a comprehensive note that accompany the block. The first time I've ever gotten any direction or input from the block maker. I tried my best to do the lettering just as they asked. I briefly considered making letters out of red fabric on my Circuit but they would have been so skinny that they'd have been covered up by the zigzag/satin stitching I'd be doing anyways. I think the words read really well.

This one is all done except for the lettering, which I may accomplish with some couching of yarn as the block maker has requested black and red letters. I might do some testing on that one first.

The instructions were very clear on this one too, they really wanted the pen/pencil lines stitched which really help with the 3-D-ness of the shoe.

Close-up of the snake face.