July Cornucopia

 

July has come and gone once again, and we've survived the heat (likely), and all the hubbub of summer so far. Here's a cornucopia post to wind up the month, links to all the media, websites, etc. that I've enjoyed and want to pass on to you dear readers. That's what the pomegranate blossoms on my tree looked like at the beginning of the month, they've probably lost all their petals by now and are forming up fruit.

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The blocks for the free Patchwork Palooza are pretty great so far, you're not too far behind to catch up. You get a new one each week through the first week of December.

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Quilt n' Learn is hosting the Tour de Fabric this summer which is a free event with live talks and classes as well as sew a longs. It's been pretty interesting and I've learned some new stuff.

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The new Superman movie was...Super! Very fun, and prompting some interesting conversations and essays like this one.

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Six Started

I was happy to get six more Old Town blocks started with the first pass of assembly stitching as I finished up listening to a another spy novel audiobook, Nobody Walks from Mick Herron set in the Slough House series (the great tv show Slow Horses is based on these). I love listening to audiobooks that feature English or other accents, very fun. These go together very well once you get the hang of the layout.

And two more blocks all laid out and ready to stitch. 

Nine Done

 

I had a busy weekend, but I managed to get the units of all six blocks sewn into the three rows per block. And the seventh one that was laid out to the second stage. All that was left was to do the pressing.

Unfortunately, my studio assistant was using the ironing board and I didn't have the heart to wake him up. 

Once nap time was over, I pressed all of those seams (mostly) in the correct directions and sewed all of the blocks together.

After even more pressing, here's how nine blocks look with the sashing and cornerstones. This is not arranged in any particular way, just thrown up there for now so I can look at it.

And on to the tenth block I go now. Eventually I'll be finishing the 25th block.

Travel Stitching

I haven't worked on Snake in the Garden since our trip to San Francisco in April. We were in The City (as it's known around here) over the weekend for my DH's annual trip to do the SF Marathon with former co-workers. (To be clear, he didn't run the marathon, he walked/jogged the 5k.) As I wasn't participating, I brought along my to-go bag and stitched while he was walking. It was fun to walk around in the downtown and Embarcadero area afterwards and go to lunch with everyone.

I picked up right where I left off in April, using the celadon green sashiko thread I'd bought at Britex on that trip. It's not too great for embroidery through all the layers of a quilt though, it starts to shred a bit. It's meant for going through one layer of fabric, so I'll likely switch greens for the next thread choice. 
 

Six In Process

 

Yesterday I laid out six more Old Town blocks and did the first bit of stitching the units together. I used my new chain-stitching thread cutter from Feral Notions to separate the stitched together units so I could stack them up like this. It worked so well, very easy to use and quite stable which is a big improvement over my previous thread cutter. Also it looks pretty and cute which is always welcomed around the studio.

They're now all waiting on the ironing board for those first seams to be pressed in the correct directions for easy block assembly. That's one of the things I'm most appreciating about Bonnie K. Hunter's excellent instructions for Old Town, the emphasis on seam pressing direction.

And just for fun, I laid out just one more, but it hasn't been stitched together at all yet. I'm finding that the mixture of white and neutrals in the blocks is okay to my eye after all, that was one of the main things I was worried about as I made the units for this quilt.

First Old Town Blocks

 

I felt my interest in getting back to work on the Old Town Mystery greatly revived after seeing friend Jaye's absolutely gorgeous finished quilt top in person. 

Jaye was so nice and gave me a little pep talk and reminded me of some useful block assembly tips so I got down to it and got my first block constructed.

Hey, wow! Just like that, the first block is done.

I laid out the next one to work on, and was happy to see how different it looks from the first one.

Here are the two finished blocks up on the design wall along with the pieced sashing and of course, one last surprise for me in the instructions to cut out 16 red cornerstones. I really like the look of it so far. 

Memo to me: I'm going to have to work hard on keeping the dark blues in the sashing away from the dark reds though. Rearrange this layout before sewing together.

ICAD Week 7

 

Catching up with posting my ICAD.

ICAD Week 6

 

Another week of ICAD work. Several of these include wrappers from some excellent mochi that DH brought home from Japan.

Information in the cloud

The updating morphing of the Starbucks logo has been interesting over the years.

Rainbow, Rare and Knotty

After a visit the other day with friend Jaye to the long arm artist, Colleen Granger to drop off quilts (City Sampler is now approaching the finish line), we made a stop at Bay Quilts just before they closed.

I managed to find some good stuff in a short amount of time, a few fabrics to add to the Medallion Quilt box, as well as this FQ rainbow pack of collage images. Now I need to find a good fat quarter chunky sort of pattern as I don't want to cut these up into too small of pieces.

In the fat quarter bins, this Tula Pink neon lion caught my eye, the store clerk was very excited for me as she said it was a rare one now. I also got two more colors of Spagetti embroidery thread. I also couldn't resist the small retablo, especially once I read the back of it.

Here's the back of the Our Lady Undoer of Knots retablo from Lynn Garlick Retablos, cool huh? I might have to do an Undoer of Knots quilt.

Now to go update my fabric tracker for the year.

City Sampler Back Done

 

I finally had a chance to sit down and get the City Sampler quilt back in process. First I trimmed down the central snake image and added a grey border with cornerstones of the same fabric I used on the front for the cornerstone. Yet a different gray from the two on the front.

It got bigger and bigger, too big to pin up properly and get a final picture. The section added to the left of the snake to finish it off was mostly grey with some strips of color added in. I think this is the biggest backing I've made, measuring in at 114" square (roughly). This is off to the long armer today, I'm so excited!

ICAD Update

 

Here's another group of ICAD pieces from the last couple of weeks.

Trinket Done

 

Time to finish the binding on the Trinket quilt. I wanted to use my fairly new left bi-level presser foot. 

Because I didn't re-read the directions, this meant that the entire quilt had to go through to the right of the presser foot. 

It worked fairly well, but was a little awkward to manage. Next time I'll apply the binding to the "wrong" side of the quilt, flip it over to the front and I'll be able to use the foot in the easier manner.

Anyways....the Trinket quilt is DONE! I really love it and I'm so happy with how it turned out.

That's four out of six of the 2025 UFO Challenge quilts done. Woohoo! Amazing how motivating it is to me to make a list like this. Of course that was the four easiest, but I have a lot of the year left to work on getting the last two done.