Free Wheeling Fabric

 

At the recent BAMQ meeting, there were some super interesting printed canvas pieces of fabric available on the Free Table. I resisted at first, but then they were kind of left behind, sitting there all alone. So I felt sorry for them. Not really, but kinda, and it helped make my mind up to take them home.The bird one just cracks me up and I love purple and red together. It's only a FQ plus a bit, so it might work as a good feature pocket on a bag? The other print was so beautiful, by one of my fave designers, with a grellow/yellow background so it will go with some of my other canvas pieces that I have. Hey, it's Anna Maria Horner, I didn't know she was doing canvas designs. 

Updating my 2026 fabric tracker with these additions and also subtracting for recent finishes:

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -12.85 yards 

Six by Six Top Complete

 

The last parts of the assembly of Six by Six went pretty quickly.

I love the little orange triangle in the seam line.

And there it is! Now to get the backing ready, sandwich it and start the quilting.

6x6 is Mostly 4x4

Got a lot more of the Six by Six piece together, now most of the pairs of blocks are sewn together in four block chunks. It will be very tempting to play around with these four block chunks and move things around like they're the original smaller quilt blocks. Or maybe I should just go with this arrangement and carry on trying to get this done by Sew Day.

I'm starting to consider how I will quilt this. I have a great big spool of orange thread that would work well. I don't think I'll do free-motion quilting and just do a walking foot grid sort of stitching. The question is, do I use something cool and/or boring on the backing?

 Every time I walk in my work room, I have a Woah!sort of reaction.This quilt is A Lot.

Now Six by Six

 

I've now moved onto working on my BAMQ UFO Challenge for the month, my #6 which is the 5x5 class quilt. I started this in a BAMQ online class with Carole Lyles Shaw in 2022. Right on schedule. 

I made three more blocks to fill in the left side column. This quilt was initially titled 5x5, and it is now 6x6. This is how it looks in black and white.

I think this is the final form. I've started sewing together two blocks at a time. Will I be able to get this quilted and finished by Sew Day? We shall see...

Ocean Effect Finish

 

As promised, here is a finally really finished just-in-time picture of my latest quilt finish, Ocean Effect. It is now all turned in and ready to display in the Bay Area Modern Quilting group exhibition: Modern Art to Modern Quilt at the San Mateo County Fair - June 5-14th.

Quilted Books at the Library

Bay Area Modern Quilting is having an exhibition at the main downtown branch of the Redwood City Library of small quilts made representing children's books. It will be shown in the top floor exhibit space starting in June. Here are the majority of them informally laid out during our meeting today when we turned them in to the exhibit organizers. We all got to choose our favorite books to illustrate, as you can see there is quite a range all the way from Chicka Chicka Boom Boom to The Secret Garden. Such a great variety of techniques and range of books represented. I love our group's creativity!

Here's the quilt that I made, it is 12" square and I'm using several of the fabrics that were released based on the original book illustrations of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, along with some other prints and one of my hand-dyes (the green at the top). I used many of my machine embroidery stitches, and I particularly like the one that I chose for the "yellow brick road."

And here is Erin getting the very best photo to use for our group's social media postings.

Ocean Facings

Time for facings on Ocean Efect.

for the top facing I used a strip of my green hand-dye that matches the top green color strip.

This is how it looks with the facings pinned, I'll post a final picture when I get the hand sewing done and iron the edges.
 I'll be turning this in tomorrow at the BAMQ exhibit.

Community Giving Blocks

I'm getting ready for Saturday's Bay Area Modern Quilting (BAMQ) meeting, and that means stitching up the Community Giving quilt blocks that I took the supply kits for. One of the kits was  short by two 2.5" squares, so I cut some from the fabrics I used for my mosaic table runner. They were on the top of the pile so they were easy to grab. 

It's a really easy block to put together, and here are all four. And this time I pressed all the seams open after the experience at the March Sew Day when we were all making these blocks without any seam pressing guidance. It makes a difference when you're putting a quilt together.
 

The Bottom of the Ocean

 

I'm doing the facings a little differently for Ocean Effect, the bottom one is going to be a "self"facing, I'm using the excess of the whole cloth front of the quilt that extends below the green upholstery fabric and blue sheer and pulling it around to the back and hand-stitching it down. But first, I decided to take the time to stitch out a quilt label using the digitized alphabet options on my machine.

I had to test drive it for the tension, and I forgot which way the letters stitch out! It's been a while since I'd used the alphabet feature, so I made a little sample and wrote myself notes. Then I had to pin it on and make sure the words of the label would be right-side up as they're at the bottom of the quilt. This will be a handy thing to have for next time, so I'm storing it with my iron-on embroidery stabilizer.

Closer to Ocean Effect

 

All the hand-dyed fabric strips have been applied, and I've trimmed two out of the four sides.

This picture has the two un-trimmed sides pinned to the wrong side, just so I could look at how it looks at this size and "crop".

I'm pleased with how this top section turned out. It matches up pretty well with my original sketch, and looks "painterly" enough for me.

M.O.M.

 

Well, I'm feeling like the luckiest mom ever as I've just had a very lovely Mother's Day with my family. A visit from daughter Zoe and her friend Viv, who were picked up at the most southerly BART station by DH and DS. They picked up a great lunch for us from our favorite sandwich place near my mom's house. Then we all went on a little post-lunch walkabout, including to the Future Farmers of America farm next door to my mom's community where we got to walk through the stalls and check out all the animals, cows, sheep, goats. After a quick jaunt on the freeway overpass and back again, we all inhaled our very tasty Costco Tiramisu, actually speaking of inhaling, watch out for that powdered cocoa on top, several of us had coughing fits, stir it up before eating. We also did some helpful gardening at my Mom's, got her new umbrella set up and the A/C unit put back in the window for the summer. 

Lots of fun and conversation and laughter. Just what I needed. And this picture above is my very favorite present, thanks to photographer, Viv.

Here's to all mothers every where, some great words from the great Rebecca Solnit:

"Mother is both a noun and a verb. Some people had great mothers but lost them, some had or have mothers who never mothered them or stopped mothering them for some reason, treated them as adversaries or as worthless, and Mother's Day can be a punitive day for all those for whom this is true.

The other half of the question of what there is to celebrate is what mothered and mothers you, how you mother yourself, how you celebrate and recognize what cares for you and takes care of you, and what you care for in return....

May you locate the ten thousand mothers that brought you into being and keep you going, no matter who and where you are. May you be the mother of uncounted possibilities and loves."

Ocean Return

 

Back to work on finishing up Ocean Effect for the Bay Area Modern Quilting group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair. I've already gone ahead and entered it, so now I have to finish it up. Referring to my initial sketch, I started with the lowest horizontal color line, just to see how it's looking.

Adding in a few more colors.

And here are a few more of the colors pinned on and ready to sew. I've just got a few greens left to go up to the very top. Then it'll be time to trim it up and do the facings and hanging sleeve.

Mosaic Runner Top Done

Here's where I ended up with the mosaic table runner. Or so I thought...

One last rearrange before final assembly.

And one more little change before the last seam was sewn. That upper left hand corner block got turned 180°. Now I'm done and all ready for layering and quilting.

 

Mosaic Piecing

 

Time for some teeny-tiny piecing with teeny tiny HSTs™for the mosaic table runner 2.5" blocks I'm filling in the final layout with.

A little bowtie block.

And some of the bright bright bright neon yellow solid for a little bit of an interior frame. Started out with .75" wide strips.

There it is, a 2.5" square. I figured that some of these smaller pieced centers would be interesting to look at up close while this is on our table.

I started piecing together some of the sections of the layout. It's going pretty easily to join up the various sizes which all fit together mosaic-style.

This is likely the final layout I'm going with.

Even More Mosaics

Making more Mosaic Blocks for my table runner project. Using up the scraps from making the other blocks to make the smallest size blocks.

Not a final arrangement but I think I have almost enough to figure out how to assemble this thing now.

 

Shopping Local

 

I haven't been to a quit shop in a while, but I needed some more Best Press and a certain type of elastic. Imagine my surprise when I was handed this lovely gift bag at checkout of Santa Cruz Vac & Sew. They had just celebrated their 7th anniversary, and had gift bags for customers. Which was super nice! Shopping local is so necessary.

The three FQs on the right are called Cotton Shantung, they have that lovely slubby texture and almost have the weight and drape of a silk shantung. I thought the patterns were lovely and they had many color combinations available at Hart's Fabrics. Some smiley face wooden buttons, more needles (always more needles just in case of an apocalypse), very wide elastic and a big bottle of Best Press. 

Adding these onto the fabric tracker, and also updating with my recent finishes, I've found that my

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -11.5 yards 

Yes, you read that right, I'm in the red, I've used up more fabric than I've brought in. Yay, me! We'll see how this holds up through the year.

Mosaic Runner Blocks

 

At the Bay Area Modern Quilting Sew Day yesterday, I worked on making more mosaic blocks so I can put together this project and make a table runner. I was chatting and visiting and concentrating on my blocks so that I only took this picture at the end of the day as I was packing up. 

I haven't worked on this project since our last Sew Day, so I had to take a look at my notes to see what I was supposed to make. I found that I had to re-press the blocks that I made with some Best Press at home.

That's better. Well, flatter.

Here are the blocks I made (I think), I've kind of lost track, but I'm pretty sure these were it. I pushed myself to make those two that are quite a bit lighter.

Overall, I think it's going together pretty well. This is following the square quilt layout we got in our class notes. So I need to work on a layout for a rectangluar table runner size and shape.

At the end of the day, I sewed together a bunch of the smaller scraps and they'll probably end up in the remaining blocks I have yet to sew together.

May To-Do

May feels like a month where a whole lot needs to get done and finished, etc. So, I'm planning to work on  being focused and productive in the studio. Here's what the design wall looks like on May Day. Patchwork Palooza quit top is still up there, waiting for a backing, as well as the almost finished Snake in The Garden and the finished Kawandii. The in-process Ocean Effect is awaiting finishing steps. I'm adding onto my to-do list this month, as I realized that the two UFO challenges I'm participating in, aren't incorporated fully here along with my other to-do's.

Note: the use of 🥏👽  by a project name indicates that it's on the 2026 UFO Finishes challenge list of six projects that I committed to finishing at the beginning of the year (more on that list later). Note, this is not the same list as the UFO Challenge for BAMQ, that UFO will have this next to it on the list:🌀🌐  

QUILTS

Design & Begin

Design and make a quilt for the BAMQ library display for The Wizard of Oz - No picture yet

Pantone Project - work on an overall design, either in EQ8 or up on the design wall.

Lupine & Laughter Mystery Quilt - keep making units following the clue instructions

BAMQ BOM - make monthly blocks of varying sizes through the year.

Continue Assembly

Patchwork Palooza - Decide on borders, make backing & binding

Keep working on Sour Grass Grace from Jane Sassaman class.

Old Town Mystery Quilt - make a backing & binding, decide on whether to have it quilted

AG Stamp Quilt - continue to make more blocks using the final group of fussy-cut stamp block centers from Tula Pink fabrics.

Continue the piecing of Selvedge Candy (maybe the name) quilt originally designed for the 2025 MQG challenge.

🥏👽 Sew the last 6 columns and sashing together of the 2023  Temperature Quilt together to make the quilt top.

Mini QCR Pumpkins table runner- make more blocks and assemble, quilt, finish.

🌀🌐 Five by Five quilt, assemble into quilt top, quilt, finish.

🌀🌐 David Owen Hastings class piece, make more blocks, assemble into quilt top, quilt, finish🥏👽 

                                      

Quilting

🥏👽 Bohemian Wife -  Sandwich this and start quilting it🌀🌐 

Finish assembling and quilting  Ocean Effect for the BAMQ Challenge Modern Art to Modern Quilt display at the SMCF 

Final Steps 

Ocean Effect could go almost go in here too.

🥏👽 Bending the Calendar - Cut up? Re-arrange? Embellish?🌀🌐 

HANDWORK/BAG/CLOTHING PROJECTS 

Make a Cotton Candy pouch for myself.

Make a Charlie's Aunt wool purse for myself, first felt the wool from Pendleton Mill.

Toned-Down Circle Sampler - now that I have the appropriately sized grey background felt, arrange and appliqué the circles, start embroidering.

Y.E.S. Coat - continue making pieces/blocks. assemble on foundation, cut out lining pieces from the fabric that I dyed

Snake In The Garden - Finish hand stitching -  🌀🌐

Body Pillow-knit cotton pillowcase - 🌀🌐 

Quilted Dog Jacket for Meg - 🌀🌐  

Hey! This Is All Finished!

Kawandii - Finished !🌀🌐 

Finished my addition to the Creative Play for BAMQ before Sew Day and passed it on.

Clover Pillowcase - Finished!🌀🌐 

So...how about that? Lots and lots of actual finishing happened, which feels good for the last couple months that felt like I was so close to finishing things. Hope I can keep up the forward progress in May!