April Cornucopia

 

End of April, and here's a cornucopia post filled with links to the various things I read, watched, listened to or just generally consumed.

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Amanda Gorman wrote a beautiful poem about the LA Fires, which was published in Sunset magazine's special fire issue, along with a poem written after the SF earthquake and fire they'd published back in 1906. Really interesting to see the two poems presented together, with 100 years between them. I really enjoy the illustrations surrounding the 1906 poem by Maynard Dixon.

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Bobbins! You don't think about them too much, until you start having stitch issues on your machine. This video is a good explainer of bobbin care, and the different types of bobbins and why and how to tell them apart. Turns out there are a whole lot of model specific bobbins on the market now. 

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Diagonal Slopes

 

Trimming all the extra backing off of the Slopes quilt. I love this step.

I did some diagonal quilting in the upper right-hand section. 

It's not too noticeable in the overall view.

And closer up, I think I like it. Time to stay diagonal.

Slopes Rows Quilted

 

Here's how Slopes is looking now that I've done the columns and the rows, in-the-ditch style. This is plenty of quilting for this one, at least I think it is for now.

But maybe, I should do the diagonals as well. I think I'll quilt a few and see how it looks to me.

Rows of Slopes

 

The walking foot machine quilting is going well so far.

Slow and steady and kind of racket-y. I'm blocking the sound out by listening to a very good library audio book on my headphones (Weyward by Emilia Hart)

I pinned it up on the wall to see how the light grey quilting lines look now that I've done all the rows.

It looked well enough to me, so now I'm doing the other directions of each column.

Slopes Quilting

 

I'm finally going in---getting the machine set up for walking foot quilting Slopes. 

Got the quilt sandwich all re-ironed and re-sandwiched. It had been folded up for a while (May 2023!), so it took a little fussing around.

Looking forward to getting this beastie quilted.

Spring to Summer Stitching

 

All finished, here's all the thread colors that I used in quilting the challenge quilt for BAMQ. They look like Easter egg colors, don't they? Makes sense, as the quilt is titled: "Spring Speaking to Summer."

Some close-ups

These are very fun fabrics to quilt.

The bottom or summer part of the quilt.

And that's the whole thing done. Now to figure out what I'm doing for the edges. Binding or not? We shall see. I may try doing an envelope or facings instead.

Quilting the Spring

 

Today I got most of the spring section of my challenge piece quilted.

I used a lot of thread colors, but started out with a light grey/purple for the top flower section.

Then it was pink and purples for a bit.

Eventually some green too.

Then onto to a light blue.

Just about done.

I'll be switching over to orange for tomorrow to finish the Summer section.

Curvy Challenge

 

I switched over from mystery quilt piecing to work on quilting my challenge piece,"Spring Speaking to Summer" that I started at the retreat. The first thing I did was to put some interfacing on the back of the rectangle of yellow fabric with words because it was too see-through. I didn't like how the fabrics behind were showing through, and now that's not a problem. I used the same iron-on interfacing as we were working with in the Jane Sassaman class as it was handy and I knew it would work.

The second step was zig-zag stitching around each raw edge with light grey thread to nail down all the elements. I may go back over the edges with other colors.

I had brought all of these fabrics with me to the retreat where I finished the backing for the Bohemian Wife quilt. 

So it's a mixture of all Kaffe Fasset fabrics and L's Modern Basics from Lecien. 

To my eye, they go together very very well. 

Here's how it looks after all the edges are zig-zagged down including the outside edge. I haven't trimmed the backing away yet as I want it there for stability while I do all the free motion stitching. The whole thing is quite long and skinny, with no square corners. This will end up being a table runner at some point for sure. The BAMQ challenge for our group exhibit "It's Hip Not to be Square" at the San Mateo County Fair is to make something with no square corners. Now to finish it and get it entered.

Wandering Wednesday - Fort Mason

Another WW from my stay in San Francisco, after my DH was done with his conference activities, we took the long way home and stopped off for a little walk about in Fort Mason. We parked right along the water in the San Francisco Maritime National Historic Park.

 It was absolutely gorgeous out, clear and warm, hardly any wind, just perfect for walking right on the San Francisco Bay. This was a little mosaic piece which was on one of the old closed piers. It was so mysterious, I really wonder what (if anything) the symbol and colors mean??

As you near the top of the short hill, there's a great view where you can see the Golden Gate Bridge with the Fort Mason Center for Arts & Culture down below. This was formerly the U.S. Army embarkation docks and has been repurposed for civilian use like so many other military installations.

The trails are lovely and the park is well maintained. I really enjoyed this Madonna statue by Beniamino Bufano.

Really affecting artwork, we are really lucky that the whole city is filled with his works, the SF Chronicle did a video where they have photos of 58 of his public pieces.

We were surprised to find that there's a really lovely little place in the International Hostel at the top of the hill, Cafe Franco. Yes that's a view of the Golden Gate Bridge from their back porch. The coffee and sandwich that we ordered was great and very cheap. Just remember, you have to do your own dishes, it's the hostel-way. How fun would it be to stay in this hostel though?!

We checked out the big wide views from up on the hilltop. DH is there on the right doing his own panoramic photo.

All the blues, ahhhh.

Got a very good view of the old curving walking pier that's unfortunately too earthquake and ship crash damaged to be open for walking, and there's Alcatraz Island in the distance. Someday I'll go there!

and of course DH had to pose with the cannon battery. 

and then we walked back down the hill through the Black Point Historical Gardens. This is a community project where volunteers are removing invasive plants and re-planting the gardens with California natives and other plants. 

The lovely California state flower was well represented.

Even tucked into the stone walls.

It was hard to pick which direction to go, there were so many choices.

Some very fancy irises were blooming.

Here's one of my favorite natives that I keep meaning to plant at home, California Flannelbush or (Fremontodendron californicum).

 Isn't it beautiful? The ants sure seemed to love it.

It's a very steep hillside so the terracing and criss-crossing walkways were really welcoming instead of a long set of stairs straight down.

I have always wondered about this cute little round (and closed) building. I think it must have been a snack shack situation for the aquatic park area at some point.

What a zillion $ view, right from our car! Honestly, it was hard to leave.