July Cornucopia

 

Hopefully we've all had a lovely July filled with outdoor activities, the right amount of sun, and lots of nice flowers. I've also been inside, on the various screens that I use, and here's a cornucopia of links to things that I've enjoyed, learned from, been inspired by, or that have made me think. Hope you find some of them to be useful too.  (note this was written on 7/1 before I fell ill for almost the entire month!)

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I guess I'm officially an "old lady" as I've finally given in and downloaded the Merlin app so that I can identify alllll those birds that wake me up every morning. I've been a long-time fan of the webpage for Cornell University Bird Lab with all the sound clips, photos and bird info.

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Now that the World Cup is over and I'm pretty soccer satisfied at this point, how about making a fabric soccer ball out of hexies and pentagons? I might get mine done in time for World Cup 2030

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Another reason to go visit Portland again, to see the absolutely beautiful new mural in the children's library section of the St. John's branch of the Multnomah County Library.

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One of the very first large online quilt fabric stores, eQuilter has changed ownership. It will be interesting to see what and how it changes. Wishing lots of ood luck to Luana Rubin in her art endeavors.

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The super interesting and very beautiful Wimbledon walk-on dress that Naomi Osaka wore has quite a significant backstory. So gorgeous!

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A free quilt design, utilizing Dresden Hexagon blocks called Freaky Familiars from Ruby Star Society.

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Nancy Drew (first four novels) are in the public domain, along with the first Miss Marple novel, here's an interesting article about how the Nancy Drew books were written and why they changed so much. I had no idea, I just stopped reading them once Nancy changed into someone else and wasn't interesting to me.

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Another free quilt design from Ruby Star Society, for a Merry Happy Christmas quilt.

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This article about making a mixed-media Story Scroll inspired me to buy a vintage spool because I'm going to try making my own version.

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This essay about Quicksand by Sarah Kendzior is amazing, especially if you're a Gen-X person.

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Really enjoying the Platypus Economics substack of Justin Wolfers, 

I am back to regularly listening to This American Life podcast, still very worth the time

  ProPublica's Narrated podcast (their long form investigations are read to you)

 and the shorter ProPublica podcast, Paper Trail, deep reporting you don't get from other sources.

We thoroughly enjoyed The Sheep Detectives movie on Amazon Prime. 

I also dug the documentary, Earth, Wind & Fire (To Be Celestial vs. That's the Weight of the World).

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Well-Lit Tiger HRTs

 

Cutting the pairs of rectangles for the rest of the HRTs for the Lupine mystery quilt.

I noticed the cool reflection of the underside of the new portable rechargeable light that I got for myself when it was on sale. That's reflecting on a print I just got from Ravi Zupa.

That's a lot of pairing and pinning, I think 15 sets. And I still have 5 more sets left to cut and pin. But at least I'm prepped for some more sewing tomorrow.

Lupine HRTs

 

Here are the HRTs that I've just finished today for the Lupine Mystery quilt. Only seven sets, with so many more to go. Back to cutting I go.

Back to HRTs

 

Back to actual sewing happening today! Finally! Woohoo! But of course I had to re-teach, re-view, and re-learn how to do the rest of the HRTs with the Bloc Loc Rulers that I cut out for the Lupine Mystery Quilt.

I referred back to the kinda tutorial I'd made for myself way back in June. This is a sort of update to that, with a big deal note to begin with: Both fabrics are right side up when you cut the pairs. Very Important for prints especially.

Flip one of the triangles, right sides together, offset the triangle tips, sew together.

Press seams to the purple.

Make sure you're using the B ruler with the B units, pay attention to which side the seam allowance is on. Trim on two sides.

Keeping the ruler locked onto the seam, spin ruler 180°, slide down to the final measurement of 2"w x 3.5"h.

Repeat with the A ruler and A units.

Okay, one set all done!

There it is, an actual thing that I sewed, and ironed and trimmed.

And then I cut and sewed a whole bunch more, but they haven't been pressed or trimmed yet.

Partial ICAD Catch-up

 I've been working on doing my ICAD pieces for this sort of lost month of July. 

They are being done one by one, but more than one per day so that I can catch up by the end of July when the ICAD event ends. 

So, here's half of my July ICAD pieces.

A lot of these are using text from the brochure that I got at the Los Angeles Public Library

Grommets is one of my all-time favorite words so I was happy to find it in print to use!

We have a brand-new Pride Flag hanging up on our house.

I really like how this one turned out. This is from the label for the index cards that I'm using this year for ICAD.

That's one big batch. Still catching up on the rest for July, but getting pretty close.

Judy's Stars

 Since I'm still not up to a lot of work in the studio, I was captivated today by Electric Quilt declaring it Judy Martin day with a sale on her add-ons to EQ8. All to celebrate her upcoming inclusion in the Quilter's Hall of Fame. Woohoo, Judy, congratulations!! 

And guess what, when you're still just lying around recovering, it's quite fun to fool around on EQ8 and design quilts using Judy's excellent and interesting stars. I splurged and got Distinctive, Exquisite and Spiky stars. Using some of my favorite blocks from each group, I designed this quilt which I'm titling Judy's Stars. I took the coloring inspiration from one of the initial block colorings and I think I really like it a whole lot. Not a final design of course. These are super fun blocks!  Very versatile with endless combinations.

Here's Hoping

 

Well, it's been a long, endless, dumb month for me so far. I've been very ill with what is very likely the parasite Cyclospora that's the subject of a lot of news these days. More testing will determine that, but thankfully my doctor listened to my begging and treated me "as if" I had it and the new antibiotics worked almost right away. Here's hoping!

I've been so ill that I literally haven't even sat in my chair in my workroom since 7/4 until today. That's a whole lot of ICAD days that I've missed. I found out quickly that I still can't sit up for very long at a time. I got surprisingly weak surprisingly fast and am trying my best to take it easy to regain my energy as soon as I can.

I finally felt like doing something creative today, but I wasn't up to sitting at the machine and sewing. Instead, I dragged my ICAD box of tools onto the bed and tried to use my lap desk to get some of the cards done. It felt good to use another muscle that has been weak. Here's hoping I can sew tomorrow maybe.

Think it might be time to go back to growing my own lettuce from here on out.

Blue Green Napkins

 

I really am attracted to these beautiful toweling fabrics from Ruby Star Society that have been out in the stores lately the texture is just so lovely. I bought a yard of a different color way than the rainbow one I worked with last year or the blue/brown stripes in 2022. Those napkins from four years ago are really holding up well to a lot of use and washing.

I stitched along the raw edge with the triple zig-zag stitch.

I also cut the one yard fabric length in half with pinking sheers to limit the fraying as I sewed.

I also stitched around the pre-stitched edges as some of the existing stitching wasn't regular, quite long in some spots.

And then I went around again a second time just for fun.

Now to pull threads and make a little fringe

And there they are, two completed napkins. Turns out I should have bought 2 yards to make the usual four. Maybe next time I make it to Hart's Fabrics again.

Vintage HRTs

 

The other project I worked on at Sew Day was cutting out the pairs of purple and white rectangles that I need to do clue #4 of the Lupine Mystery.

There are so many "vintage" purples in here, a lot of which were the very first quilt fabrics I ever bought as I've always been a purple person. It was quite fun to use them all and remember "way back when" and to finally be using them again. The one in the lower left corner comes from at least two yard piece of fabric that I had probably bought to make myself shorts or some other piece of clothing. That never happened and I can probably use the rest of it for the backing for this quilt - memo to me.

The rectangles that you start out with are quite large compared to the finished block unit size. It's funny to see them together. I didn't remember to bring my rulers to Sew Day, so I came home with the two large stacks of the 23 more sets of rectangles to work with.

12 Days of ICAD

 

I wish I could see a structure like this in real life.

These two go together.

Easy Peasy Lemon Squeeze

The most bulbous stoplight ever

This one might be my favorite of the bunch. Hopefully I didn't need these tickets.

Maybe this is the completely unconscious "before" of the clear hues rainbow-y Pride card I did at the beginning of June. I say completely unconscious because I didn't sit down and make this as an intentional "before", it just happened and I noticed the similarity afterward when I was sorting the cards into date order. Interesting how that works.

Sound waves?

Celebrating the end of June by tearing up the calendar page.

Not really raspberries.

Sometimes there are inspiring candy wrappers around to use: FEEL the JOY

History standout

This is the end of the ICAD download for now.