Poppy Nametags

 

I'm making the name tags for our upcoming BAMQ retreat in April, so I dug out two prior name tags to get some ideas on construction. This one is 5"wide,  3.75" high. I liked the yellow ruler printed cotton ribbon, it's very soft and looks cute too. It's a fairly simply sewn frame around the printed name section and it feels like it has some lightweight batting inside. Looks like it was likely sewn around 3 and a half sides, leaving an opening to turn it right-side out, with the neck ribbon sewn into the seam.

This name tag was from another of the BAMQ retreats, you can see our logo was used around the name section. It looks like it was fused to a very stiff interfacing along with a piece of fabric on the back.This is the no-sew version. It held up well and looked nice, it was very lightweight.

I think I like the position of two spots for the ribbon to be attached as opposed to the one point with a clippy lanyard. I remember it catches on my shirt and getting tangled with my necklace. So I will plan on doing the two spot attachment.

I think I will do a similar frame sort of look like the first example, and use the poppy fabric on the back of the name tag. Definitely going to keep it simple as I'm making a maximum of 14 of these name tags.

Still unsure on which of the two ribbons to use, I think I'll poll the other folks working on the retreat to see if anyone cares one way or the other.

Poppies, Bunnies & Wander

 

The very first new fabric purchase I made this year is this one yard of California Poppy fabric, which I bought at the lonely remaining Beverly's Fabrics, to make the name tags for the upcoming retreat for BAMQ. (which happens to be named "Quilting Among the Poppies")

And they had Scotch glue sticks, which I haven't seen in absolutely ages and they're my very favorite-ish. Also some waistband elastic to use for some clothing sewing I'm planning.

I also ordered some new MistyFuse and am trying their new product, BunnyPaper. It's supposed to work well for printing and transferring designs to fabric. And they also published the Yvonne Porcella Memoir, so I got one.

A free book from the Free Table at BAMQ Sew Day, a Kaffe Fassett book I was pretty sure I didn't have.

Also, my pre-order of four yards of the Kona Color of the Year arrived, Wander is a beautiful green. Not at all planned but rather serendipitous, as I think it looks rather fabulous with the poppy fabric. And then there are two cloth ribbons (soft! NOT scratchy!) for hanging the nametags around our necks. I have to chose just one to use.

Fabric Tracker for 2026 so far: - 8 yards

Sawtooth ++

 After fiddling around with the teeny tiny center block I started, I finished the rest of it up. 

Not terribly happy with it because a couple of the points got cut off, and for such a complicated block it was very small at 5.75"square. But I did like the way the various fabrics I used worked to get across the SnailTrail/Sawtooth Star idea. So, I decided to use it anyways, make a frame and put the block on point. That looked a little better to me, and now it was a lot bigger at 8.5" square.

And then, hey, why not plop it into the center of another Sawtooth Star to finish it all off and make it big big big? I tried out some ideas (from this tutorial) pinned up on the design wall to make sure I'd like the look of that.

K-bam@*%! Now it's pretty darned big (16.5"square) and most importantly it's all done. I'm calling it a Sawtooth ++ and I'm ignoring the cutoff points thank you very much. Now to post it to the BAMQ BOM.

Sawtooth Star Started

 

For this month's BAMQ BOM which is a Sawtooth Star, I was inspired to try to make a combination Snail's Trail/Sawtooh Star block. I saw a version of this block called a Woven Star, in friend Jaye's Star Sampler quilt, and there's a tutorial here that she had linked to.

Doing the first part first, before cutting out anything else.

Why did I make this so small to start with? Who knows, but it looks cool.

Am I wishing I'd followed the helpful tutorial now, instead of making up my own version? Maybe, we shall see.

I like how complicated and layered this is looking. 

Now on to the rest of the block.

Community Quilt Finish

 

At the most recent Bay Area Modern Quilting Sew Day (just last Saturday) we worked as a group to complete a quilt top. Let's just say...it took the entire day. I brought other things to work on, but I only took a short break to trim some of the pink Lupine Mystery flying geese blocks.

The design of the quilt was great (I believe friend Jaye was the one who suggested and supplied the pattern), and as usual our organizer, Peggy was super prepared with printouts and instructions and block making kits. It made the whole process easier. We were making a quilt made up of two blocks, the above is the more complicated one. The other was all white with two colored squares in opposite corners. I believe I sewed six (maybe eight) blocks total.

It makes for a wonderful quilt, doesn't it? As you sew. the blocks seem very disjointed and maybe a little ugly given the random fabric combinations (it's as scrappy as it gets), but then it all works out together to make such an interesting quilt. We buckled down and sewed together the blocks and joined the rest of the sections together. Some was chunked, some was not. I was sewing the last long seam to put the two halves of the quilt together at our usual departure time of 4pm. Everyone else was all done and packed up, and then my bobbin ran out. Of course! 

But I rallied and sewed on, and was able to hand it off to our wonderful member Laura McHugh, who does the long-arming for us, who was waiting. As I finished the last seam, I held up the final result and don't have a picture. Laura posted this one on her Facebook of the quilt on her long-arm setup, and it's already been beautifully quilted! Amazing what a committed group can do together.

Trimmed Geese

All the pink Flying Geese were waiting to be trimmed to size I did about half of the trimming at Sew Day, and the rest the next day.

And here they all are together! Onto the next clue I go for the Lupine Mystery quilt.

 

Beginnings of Creative Play

 

 

A new project has been started in BAMQ by our new president, (friend Jaye) which she calls Creative Play. It was inspired by a comment in a newsletter earlier this year from Libs Elliot:

 " I have made a promise to myself that I will make time for creative play in 2026. Because, when work gets overwhelming, I find joy in taking even just a bit of time for myself to experiment and try something different without an end goal in mind."

There are two of these started off already, but this is the first one I've gotten my hands on. And I'm the first one to get add something, or do something to what's handed to me. There aren't a lot of rules, it's a very open and free chance to play and be creative. Above are the starting point blocks that Jaye made. 

I thought about just piecing them together, or maybe cutting them up somehow and piecing them back together, but that didn't strike me as the way I wanted to go. After looking at the blocks up on my design wall for several days, I realized that the blocks already had so much color and pattern happening, that the direction I should go was to add EVEN MORE. 

I was inspired by the open scraps box that was near my work table, all filled with leftovers from making my City Sampler quilt blocks. In it were quite a colorful collection of strips, either Tula Pink prints or my hand-dyes. I thought there was enough print happening already with that very strong red/white plaid. and the rainbow/black stripe (which I think is a Tula Pink print). So, I went with the more "reads as solid" hand-dyes, adding them onto to one or two side of each block. The strips of various widths will help break up the look of the bigger rectangles.

I can't wait to what the next person does with it (go Melinda!)

Community Giving HST's

 

I sewed twenty-six HSTs for a Community Giving quilt. We're working on another quilt at Sew Day today, but I'll be turning these in to the organizers, hopefully they'll remember which quilt they were for.

Almost There Flying Geese

 

The Lupine Mystery pink Flying Geese got ironed, along with a note to myself so I'd press the seam in the ideal way.

All the remaining triangles for the other side of the Flying Geese.

And now ironing the other triangle, with another note to myself to iron the seam in the other direction.

Stacks and stacks of Flying Geese to trim to the correct size.

More Green Snake Stitching

 For the last time, I traveled to Spokane and back again for the last appointment in the medical study I've been participating in for the last few months. And once again, I arrived Very Early to the airport for my flight home and got in some stitching time while waiting for my plane to arrive.

 More green stitching in what I call the vernal pool (which is a seasonal, ephemeral pool) in the lower right hand corner of Snake in the Garden. I think this is just about the last bit that needs stitching, I'm so close to finishing this!

Wandering Wednesday: Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve

 

On the way home from a family lunch, we missed being able to go to the gym, so we stopped off at Bear Creek Redwoods Preserve for a little hike. I was at first reluctant to do it as I was full from lunch, but we were happy to find there was an easy trail on the other side of the road from the very steep trails.

Turns out it's the site of a former Jesuit school.

They've done a great job with planting out new native plants.

It was fun walking through this, we drive by this so often, all without ever knowing that it was even there!

This was the site of the old mansion, which burned down and was knocked down by the 1906 earthquake. There was a picture of it, and the boulder in front made a lot more sense.

A former parking garage/living area for the Jesuit students. 

Looks like they built around an enormous oak tree, you can see the trunk remains in the cutout, and on the corner of the wall, there's a piece of one of the trunks surrounded by bricks. It grew into the wall!

I don't know why, but this cracked me up, the different bunches and types of grass growing on the top of each brick column.

A plant possibly related to Jasmine.

The clouds were super pretty looking out over the Lexington Reservoir hills.

The top of the trail we hiked on came out on an overlook over Highway 17.

It got very cloudy and muggy as we hit the halfway point. The sun was going too, and the park gates lock at dusk (which is when exactly?)

Surprise daffodils (narcissus) along one of the "ruins" brick walls. This was far away from the rest of the buildings on the Radio Hill trail.

Might oak roots vs. brick wall.

More oak root action on walls.

A teeny tiny lizard in the crevice.

Story of my life, beautiful poison oak, absolutely everywhere, and even growing out of a brick wall!

There are so many more trails for us to try out, I think we'll be stopping by many more times.