Wandering Wednesday - West Cliff Drive

 

Last weekend was DS's 29th birthday so we took him out to an awesome sushi dinner in Santa Cruz. He suggested a walk along West Cliff Drive. Even though it was close to sunset, we snagged a parking spot near one of the lovely curbside plantings. This is a Hooker's Evening Primrose, which I keep meaning to plant in our garden.

The late sunset was so soft and lovely, I really love the pastels in this picture.

A seagull had her nest way out on the point with the best view.

There were still a bunch of surfers out there catching the last waves of the day.

A little more sunset with one of the shoreline coves.

We made it as far as the lighthouse, which doubles as a surfing museum.

The birthday boy! 

8 Pantone Blocks

 

Some more really lovely Pantone Project blocks came in the mail today from friend Jaye. What a nice surprise!

I really love these fabric choices, especially the fussy cutting for the square in a square.

Now to go play around with these new blocks as well.

Rain & Hide

 

All of a sudden it rained today! It got so dark I had to turn the lights on. Then it was over 5 minutes later. We're keeping our fingers crossed for no dry lightning started fires 🤞🤞🤞

Korben has found a new place to hide out in the studio. Part of his duties as Studio Assistant is keeping me on my toes like Cato does for Inspector Clouseau in The Pink Panther movies:

He was napping in one of my of the fabric cubby boxes that isn't completely full. He's been "helping" me today as I'm rearranging stuff in my workroom. That's all I worked on today, phew.

Strips Used And Not

 

The only progress I've made on the teeny tiny HSTs is to sort them into matching sets of four. Takes up a whole lot less room. I may or may not include this in the back of the Bohemian Wife quilt, giving myself permission to move along if necessary.

I was thinking of making a block of strips something like this to echo all the strips on the front of the quilt.

But I used a lot of them to border the last couple of blocks that I had made. There are still some strips left to help fit all of this together.

Boho Back

 
Well, I got sucked back into Bohemian Wife because I was tidying up. And there are a lot of strips and bits and pieces left over. Which of course are going to need to be assembled into a backing. Instead of packing them away, I started working with them.

There were some left over blocks, which I put some sort of borders around, either strips or HSTs or both.

There were a couple blocks in the Bohemian Wife box that weren't made with the same fabrics, but made with somewhat similar ones. I left myself a note saying just that. So instead of stashing them somewhere, I decided to include them. What the heck, my quilt, my rules and all, right?

I'm liking what I've got done so far. And there are a whole lot less strips left to use.

There was, however, an envelope in the Bohemian Wife box that was labeled "Tiny HSTs". And there they all are...yikes! These are obviously leftovers from making the blocks. I had sewed them and pressed them open as I went. Do I sew them all into one (or several) giant blocks? Should I sew them together with solids and spread them out in other blocks to make up more of the quilt back that's needed? Decisions must be made, because now my work table is occupied.

Playing With Pantone Project

 

Now that I finally have a design wall to work with, I can finally play around with the blocks from the Pantone Project. I've been wanting to do it ever since I'd made the last block back in May, but hadn't had the space. I got out the two stacks of blocks and 4.5" fabric squares, mine are on the left, sorted by fabric color. I wanted to try my best and not duplicate any fabrics as I was making blocks. Friend Jaye's are on the right, unsorted. It's a whole lot of blocks.

Even though I have all the information in a spreadsheet (of course), I wanted to get my hands on the quantities of each type of block that I have to work with. First I laid out all of the ones I've received from Jaye. Of course I did this in the afternoon thus all the dramatic shadows.

Then I laid out my own blocks on top to make 28 little stacks.

The first blocks my eye landed on were the Ribbon blocks, there are 11 of them.

I doubt I'll keep this central slash of the Ribbon blocks, but it's definitely an interesting arrangement.

I think I really like making stars or larger shapes out of the matching blocks. 

All the rest of the blocks that are not up there quite yet. I think I need to get the Doreen Speckmann book out again and look at some of her block arrangements. This is starting to get fun!

Another Week of ICAD

 

flexi

True Instinct

Ultimate Commuter

COURAGEOUS

WOMEN

AllStrength

FASCINATION

Wandering Wednesday: San Mateo County Fair

A couple weekends ago, we made the trek over the hill to the San Mateo County Fair where we met up with some of my Phi Mu sorority sisters, including friend Jaye. I mainly went for the socializing with people I don't get to see often, and to also get to see the BAMQ quilt challenge exhibit. Here it is as seen from far away.

What a terrific showing from our group, eight quilts.

As you can see, I was very surprised to see a blue ribbon pinned on my quilt. This just happens to be my first ever! 

And here's friend Jaye too, with her quilt and ribbon!

I didn't take a lot of pictures of the larger quilt exhibit, but I took this close up of this wonderful quilt made up of the Tilda fabrics I recently bought. I just loved the quilting on the lanterns so much. Sorry for not getting the name of the quilter here.

Friend Jaye and I were looking at this quilt block and trying to remember the name. Isn't it fun? I just love that checkerboard center. And the effective use of "Snowballed" corners on the squares. I need to look this one up in EQ8 and/or Block Base.

We walked around a bit, watched a great local high school's robotics clubs demo robots scooping up foam rings and tossing them in a basket. What fun that would have been in high school to learn robotics. We had some great lunch, there were a ton of choices. We went into the barn with all  the 4-H animal exhibits. There were some great Polish chickens, the ones with the crazy "hair-do's". I really liked this one pig, she was having herself a great dream, kicking out with one of her hooves and ignoring all of us gawkers.

Apparently her name was Trix and she weighed in at 273 pounds.

There were a lot of great exhibits set up, one of which had historical presentations of games, like this Monopoly one. Including the Anti-Monopoly version, Landlords Game and the "Don't Go To Jail!" dice game, ha ha!

Rich Uncle! That's a great play on Monopoly. They had enormous versions of classic games, like Connect Four, including a huge Etch-a-Sketch. My DH tried to turn the knobs, but they just fell off. We unfortunately missed out on the sushi eating contest. (Can you imagine?!)

It was a really fun day out, and I did pretty well with my knee right up until the very end of the day when it suddenly got Very Tired. Thankfully this isn't a super spread-out fairgrounds like ours in Santa Cruz County so our car wasn't too far away.

Bohemian Wife Quilt Top

 

Starting out with seven completed sections to join together. Will they fit? Will things line up? Let's see...

So far, so good. Except for the upper right corner, not sure what happened there. I'll add a bit more to that corner strip to reach to the top edge.

This is a pretty chunky quilt, and the sections (once assembled) are really fairly easy. And even better they are matching up!

This turned out to be the only kind of challenging assembly for this, but it worked out just fine.

Anticipation of having a usable design wall once again is rising as I near the end of assembly.

Only one more very long seam left to do. Hard to believe after all this work.

And there she is, my Bohemian Wife quilt top is finished. I'm so very glad that I finally finished this one. There are a lot of things I'd do differently, but I'm super pleased with how it turned out.

Secondary goal is also achieved, a mostly blank design wall. Ahhh, it's so nice to anticipate working on something else up there.