October Cornucopia

Boo! Hey Happy Halloween! And happy end of October, here's a cornucopia post of things I've enjoyed or wanted to share from this month's online adventures.

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This exhibit in Portland, Oregon looks really interesting, Follow the Thread: The Fabric of the Hellenic Spirit.

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Spend an hour visiting a great exhibit of art quilts, SAQA Global Exhibition Color in Context: Blue.

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A great resource for inspiring art quilt discussion panels and weekly presentations is the SAQA Textile Talk YouTube channel. There's more than 250 videos up there to choose from.

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Mancuso Bros special challenge exhibit, Celebrating Women is well worth a look.

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I've known about using masking tape for painting for ages of course, but how about making art entirely out of masking tape? Or this tape artist? Very cool!

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Oh Candy

 

Yet another project getting worked on, this is the start of attempting to make my design for the MQG challenge. I’m not going to be able to finish this by the 10/31 deadline, but I still really like the design I did and the fabrics are purchased, washed and ironed(several times).

I chose to do this with paper piecing.

And I’m doing the fold and stitch method instead of sewing on the line through the paper. But the pieces are quite big and unwieldy.

But it’s worth the effort, especially with the woven material we’re using for the challenge. It sews up quite differently than normal quilting cotton.

A lot of spray starch is involved! Thanks Best Press for always working.

There’s the completed block for one out of four corners of the quilt design. It’s a 14” block finished size. I really like the look of the Artisan Cottons, which are cross weaves.

Wandering Wednesday- Rosenberg Slot Garden

The castle that I talked about had a beautifully laid out garden that was the walking shortcut to a few more places I visited in Copenhagen. There was a lot of Hans Christian Anderson things around the city including a small part of the garden with this statue of him.

There were illustrations from his fairy tales around the base of the statue.

There was a pair of great lion statues guarding the bridge over the castle’s moat.

I really liked the look of the lions.🦁 

One of the queens got a statue and a special knot garden.

I really liked the topiary stars.

Right outside the castle was the kitchen garden, some great teasels in the foreground, with marching soldiers in the background.

Turns out they were marching to relieve the guards that were guarding the treasury in the castle’s basement.

Close up on the teasels.

The layout of this enormous garden was very inviting and easy to figure out. I loved the tall manicured trees that marked the sides of the main pathways.

I liked the curlicues on the top of the castle.

There were even some roses that were still blooming.

TQ March-April

 Switching projects over to adding more monthly columns onto the Temperature Quilt.

A new sewing station view with a view of many many dogs getting walked. 

There’s the first quarter, January, February and March. I also added on April, so I’m now a third of the way done assembling this quilt top. I didn’t have a good way to hang it up as you can see from this picture so no group shot of the fourth month. So far so good🤞🤞🤞

Y.E.S. Coat blocks

 

I got to have a very lovely sew day at friend Mary’s house, she let me use her BabyLock machine. It sewed very smoothly and was easy to figure out.

I got a 7” paper pieced block of Y and an S done. 

Still debating whether to make these 3” Y.E.S. Blocks or not.

Palooza Fifteen

This is the last block I'm catching up on making and posting for Patchwork Palooza. And it's a very different and interesting design. I have to say that I'm glad that I used that dramatic fabric 

I really love that Tula Pink tiger, so I'm happy to get to feature him again. And of course on the side: teeny tiny HSTs™

There's all fifteen of them together. I think its a good mixture so far.

Palooza Fourteen

 

Continuing on with catching up with the Patchwork Palooza block, onto number 14. This was one looked tricky to me, as in I had to keep track of which fabric was which number.

I laid all the parts out for the block before going past the first sewing step to make sure everything was in the right place.

After the next step, I did the same.

All together correctly and the points are going to stay pointy.

It's really starting to fill in.

Happy Blogiversary

 Another year has passed on by, as I’ve been here in my little corner of the “blogosphere “, just blogging along, making and learning. I can’t believe it’s been so long, my first post was back in 2004!

I’m very glad to have been pretty regular about posting through the last year through all the changes my family has gone through. So thanks for sticking around and being a reader or commentator. 

As the friendly ghost at my dentist’s office says: “Boo-lieve in yourself!”

Palooza Thirteen

 

Patchwork Palooza block went together very easily. 

I'm re-using some of the same fabrics, as they were the bigger pieces in my scrap box.

But I think it lends a bit more cohesion to the whole thing. Instead of having all of the fabrics only used in one block which was where I was intending to go with this back when I first started.

Wandering Wednesday - Rosenborg Castle

 One of my favorite things to see in Copenhagen was one of the several castles in the city, Rosenborg Castle. It was close enough for me to walk to through the cobblestone city streets. It's a Dutch Renaissance (early 1600's) meant to be a royal summerhouse, built by Christian IV.

As per usual, (thanks pareidolia) I found a whole lot of faces to focus on.

And fonts of course too, look at that lovely 4 on the mantel.

I took many pictures of doors and doorknobs. And I just couldn't believe how all the walls were covered floor to ceiling (and ceilings too) of framed oil paintings.

There was this beauty hiding behind the door. It made me laugh out loud, and I pointed it out to the next English speaking tourist behind me and was pleased to hear them laughing too. It has such a human expression on its face, and the proportions are just really funny. Also, the wallpaper, no, wall covering, tapestry maybe? It's falling apart, but it's also a very lovely pattern.

The fireplace demon was very exciting.

Rosy-cheeked because of being over the fireplace?

Same fireplace, different face.

There's just something about an old door, especially where you can see the wear from human touch over all the years.

Is that a five I thought it was. This was in one of the rooms that was mostly covered in trompe l'oeil painting and painted faux-marble designs.

This was honestly a hard room to be in, that ceiling was massive and the over-the-top designs and ornaments everywhere in a not terribly big room was both impressive and oppressive.

But the bathroom tiles were really nice.

That's enough about that castle for now, I took zillions of pictures in here. This was just the first few rooms worth...

Palooza Twelve

 

As I mentioned on Saturday, I got all the ingredients cut out and labeled and together for the Patchwork Palooza blocks I missed out on making while I was traveling. The first block is entirely made up of HSTs, so I got out my Seams Easy ruler to mark the sewing lines. It works so well for me when I use it with a mechanical pencil.

And then when I was trimming up the HSTs I got out the 2.5" HST Bloc-Loc ruler, so handy and accurate!

And voilá, block 12 is completed.

Here's all twelve of the blocks in a very random placement.