Wandering Wednesday - San Diego

Hey, here's a contemporaneous Wandering Wednesday post, live from San Diego! I really really love California, but it's so very very long. And it took us a longer than usual time to drive down to San Diego in the rain. The stopped traffic in LA allowed me to take this picture out the windshield of some very dramatic graffiti, gotta love that font.

What a way to spend our 34th anniversary, all day in the car, but we make it fun. And we got to have a great dinner out with a Very Enthusiastic waiter who insisted on taking our picture. The conference that my DH has been going to the whole time I've known him is in San Diego or LA, but next year it's in San Franciso, woohoo!

I like the symbols on the Seaport banner. Looks like a modern quilt design to me. 

I washed my very dirty SF Giants hat and it dried quickly in the sun. I may be able to score some tickets to the SF Giants vs. San Diego Padres opening day home game which is just a few blocks away. We shall see...not sure I want to go to a baseball game alone and root for the opposing team.

The foggy rainy harbor, that's the Coronado Bridge in the distance.

We have a pretty nice view out of our window for all the sunsets.

I liked the reflection of the sunset in the other tower of our hotel.

Another modern quilt looking banner. That one building looks like it's fallen over compared to the other one! Intentional? Just to be interesting?

I know I've seen something like this before probably online somewhere, but I loved this in the coffee shop where I got my latté.

The Horton Hotel is in the Gaslamp District, it's not in its original location, the city saved it and moved it here. I'm glad, because you really don't see a lot of working hotels like this any more.

The Horton is supposedly haunted and that white shrouded figure in the window is a little spooky until you realize it's just a nice marble statue of Mary.

Hello Sunshine! That's the name of the paper maché horse in the window.

The Coaster and the San Diego trolley comes through on the train tracks near our hotel. I really like this shadow picture of all the devices I took while waiting for the intersection to open.

I took this because of the super rusty mission bell, but the rest of it is cool too. Train tracks, fence, fountain that looks like a lap pool, walkway, rest of the fountain that looks like a big pool complete with floating seagulls and that beautiful blue sky.

Thanks Letters

Here are some closeups of the letters from the Thankful Banner from yesterday.

A Banner Of Thanks

 After a year of looking at a stack of large triangles I cut out last year (right before I had hand surgery) for this banner, it was time to actually make the Thankful Banner. 
The size of the triangles I cut out was 10.25" at the base and 13.75" tall.
Since this is to be a double-sided banner, I cut out the number of triangles I needed to spell out GIVE THANKS twice, including one for the space inbetween the two words, which worked out to 22.
Each triangle was cut from a different fall fabric, leaves, greens, browns, corn, trees, pumpkins, etc. 
I had to choose some fabrics to use for the letters.  I decided to go with oranges and yellows so they would show up against the fall colors

 I chose a font that I really liked  the look of (Lucida Handwriting) and printed the letters out in a huge size (350pt).  About two letter per page printed out.  I wanted lots of room around the letter on each triangle.  For this type of project you want a fairly simple letter shape that isn't going to kill you cutting it out and sewing it down. 

 Whoops, I should have printed them out reversed since I was doing the fusible tracing thing. 

 So instead of wasting paper,  I quickly traced around the back of each letter in sharpie pen, so that I could then do the next step.  Learn from my mistake if you do this *print in reverse*.

Traced the (now backwards) letters onto fusible web (Steam a Seam 2). 

 Rough cut out the fusible letters, then fused them to the back of the letter fabrics. 

 Cut alllll those letters out of the now-fused fabric.

Next step was to fuse the letters down onto each triangle.  I decided I wanted them to be in roughly the same spot on each triangle so some measuring was required. Take into account seam allowances and the top inch which will be folding over the ribbon or cord.  Also be sure that the letter fabric shows up well enough from your background fabric. I had a few that I had to switch around to make it work well.

I used a tearaway iron-on stabilizer (Tearaway Magic) which I ironed to the back of each triangle covering the area where the letter was to be sewn down.

Stitched in a zig-zag around each letter.  I was going to do a satin stitch but decided I liked how this looked, and the banner won't be something that I'm washing all the time, so the edges should hold up pretty well.

Here's how the back of the triangle looks after I've sewn down the letter S.

After all the letters were sewn down I matched each triangle up with their mates.  This part can be tricky if you want your banner to be spelled correctly on both sides. So check your work several times. 

Sew the two triangles together right sides together starting about an inch down from the top edge. 

Cut the tips seam allowances down like the picture above.  

Turn the piece right-side out, use a chopstick to poke out the pointy tip and smooth out the seams, press. 

Press in the seam allowance on the remaining 1" up the top edge. 

Fold in about 1/2" and press the two top edges,  to make a casing.

Sew across the top edge and also about 1" down from the top edge.

Do a final press, string onto cord or ribbon. And There it is! Done and hanging in our house!

Too many banners? Yep, adding one to the usual two that are hung in our house did muddy the waters a bit.  Maybe next year I'll just have one up there at a time.

Another Banner Begun

Happy Thanksgiving eve! Here's another project I started before I'd realized the whole hand surgery thing was going to happen and be so danged limiting.
It was supposed to be an easy peasy appliqued banner and to be done for our Thanksgiving family celebration. Well, not this year. On the bright side, I suppose I have a big head start for next year! It is going to say Give Thanks like the paper one that I did manage to complete. Well now I guess I have time to fool around and find just the right font to use for the letters, maybe this one.
Or maybe I'll just make a giant sawtooth border using these huge triangles for the fallen leaves quilt.