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

Project Quilting 17.1 - Clean Cloud

 Just like Project Runway, Project Quilting gives you a challenge and you get a set time (One Week) to produce something that fits the rules. I skipped last year, but I'm back to participating this year. I loved this first challenge: Clean Slate, inspired by Cloud Dancer, the Color of the Year according to Pantone. Not a super exciting color, but it's Not Just White as a lot of people instantly responded. 

I was one of those naysayers, but then I looked a little closer at Cloud Dancer, all because of this challenge. I'd copy/pasted in the directions into the word processing program on my Mac and I looked at the screen. Well how about that, it's really not just plain white. And look at all three greys on the screen versus the white "page". 

Something all super light grey or white would be kind of boring, so I wanted structure and texture. I started with a simple 4-square of two light grey fabrics, each one flipped to have the back as the front. It's subtle but I thought it worked to reflect what I'd noticed on my computer screen.

I dug around in my "FabMo fabrics to be dyed" box and found some interesting pieces of fabric to use to surround the four patch.

Here's my piece, named: "Clean Cloud" it's 13"w x 14"h.

Here's a closeup of it. I'm pretty happy with how it looks.

Color of the Year and More

 

Here's a catch-up post on new stuff I've bought this year so far. I was shopping at Hartland Quilt shop on Etsy buying supplies for the Jane Sassaman class I'm taking this month, Golden Threads quilting paper and I also bought a half yard of 

this really interesting butterfly fabric by Faye Guaniper from Dear Stella. For the class I also had to get a pretty big quantity of Pellon interfacing, so I bought it from Amazon along with another fusible Hobbs 80/20 batting. Not worth a picture on those two items. I'll let you know about using this quilting paper stuff after the class, it looks pretty interesting.

My pre-order of the Kona color of the year, Nocturne arrived from Keepsake Quilting. I got three yards of it and I love love love this purple. It's a really beautiful, rich color.

Mx. Domestic has an online shop and they announced a great sale so I snapped up this assortment of fat quarters from the fairly new fabric line, Scrawl by Giucy Juice. 

I love all the print and fonts as well as the colors which will play well with the Alison Glass fabrics I have left over from the Trinket quilt.

To support this great and very inclusive store in Washington, Wyldwood Creative, I did a little browsing on their website. This looks like such a fun local quilt (and more) shop. I'd seen this Art Gallery Fabrics binding fabric in a couple of other fabric shops but hadn't bought any, but this color way was interesting to me. I think it might be usable as is, I really like the dashed cutting line and scissors. They also had this really pretty checkered ribbon, it has a lovely hand, very soft. And their sticker selection was pretty awesome, yes that's a banana slug sticker. The two shiny holographic stickers do not photograph well, but they look cool in person.

I saw this embroidery project when friend Jaye and I visited Cheryl in Oregon, she'd finished all these ladies and it was so wonderful. I want to try it, so I bought the little kit and book that Brooklyn Haberdashery sells. Just a note, I want to make the ladies that I embroider of more diverse body types. This cellulose PFD fabric looked very interesting and it is very very smooth, I can't wait to try and dye it to see how it works out.

And lastly, I bought myself the Victoria Findley Wolfe book, The Quilting Experience. It's really beautiful, I haven't read it all yet, but the pictures are great.

Yikes, that was a whole lot of shopping, hopefully that's out of my system for now. Inspired by friend Jaye, my newly created Fabric Usage Tracker worksheet is getting a real workout. With my two quilt finishes, I'm currently in "the red" by 5.25 yards. As in, I've bought more fabric than I've used. Not a surprise given all this shopping! Okay, back to working on using some more of said fabric up.

Color(s) of the Year

I always enjoy when the Color of the Year is announced for the upcoming year. There's a whole lot that goes into choosing the Pantone one, and it's used in all sorts of industries, from fashion to furnishings and beyond.  They're supposedly "capturing the zeitgeist" with this color choice. Not sure how true or useful that is, but it's still a fun exercise. The choice this year is a really lovely one to my eye (especially compared to last year's).

Pantone: Mocha Mousse is a warm mid to light brown. Spoonflower has a great selection of fabric and wallflower prints using this color. I'm not sure which solid color fabric that's out there is closest, I'm going to go through my solid stash and see. And also look through the Pantone Project postcards to see if there's a close one, there were a lot of browns represented. Some would say too many!

I think that Mocha Mousse will go quite well with the Kona cotton solid color of the year choice of:

Kona: Nocturne  which is a fairly dark purple. I think it would be fun to use this color as a neutral in some modern quilts. It reminds me of darker purple I used for the Trinket quilt.

Peach Fuzz

 

This month's Electric Quilt design challenge is using the paper pieced flying geese block, Simple Design. I don't always do these, but it's fun to give them a try just to keep my EQ8 skills alive and in my mind. It's fun to try and use a block that you normally wouldn't choose. Paper-pieced flying geese? Bleah!

I wanted to try a design using the Pantone color of the year, Peach Fuzz. This is a rather unlikely color for me to choose to use in such a big way, but I kind of like it here. It's warm and sort of soft looking--comfortable. If I were to actually make this quilt, I would be very unlikely to piece the solid color blocks but would instead just use squares of the solid fabric and quilt in the outline of the block design lines.

December To-Do

 

Here's how my design wall was looking on December 1st. There's my half-way assembled Temperature Quilt, and then the three pieces of dyed yardage waiting for their second dye baths.

Here's my To-Do list for December:

Sew-a-Long Thingies

Trinket - layer and quilt.

Color Collective - Quilt and bind the Slopes Quilt, 

and make another side for the Clover Pillow with Swerves, start cutting for Colorwash

Temperature Quilt- cut remainder of needed pieces from newly dyed fabric, keep piecing monthly columns.

Pantone Project - keep making blocks and pass them on to friend Jaye.

Secret Lives of Color- it's still oh so very secret, keep reading the book and making the blocks, post some too.

Indigo Way - Begin work on this year's Bonnie Hunter Mystery quilt. Assemble fabrics, make the first blocks.

New Work

Wedge Quilt - finish assembling quilt top, make a backing, quilt, bind, label.

A Hot One - planned quilt celebrating the color of the year, Viva Magenta.

Garment Sewing Academy - finish Cielo top.

Make It Work - assemble a quilt top out of the materials for BAMQG, make backing, layer, quilt, bind.

Make binding and finish the other BAMQG quilt for donation.

Dye Mastery Class - finish final unit on over-dyeing and patterning.

Finish It Already

Make a back for Metro Twist, layer, quilt, bind, label.

Finish quilting Japanese Houses, bind, label.

Y.E.S. Coat - lay out what I've made, make more elements, start assembling.

And finally and most importantly: finish making the gifts before Christmas.

That should keep me busy enough for December!

Several Saturday Updates

There are several things I wanted to update on but weren't "worth" their own post. First off, a quilt finish, Checkerboard-ish is done and on my table. I was able to get it done in time to show it off at the SBAMQG meeting, as it was a mini-quilt challenge for that group.

I'm very pleased with how the quilting turned out.

I did indeed do a facing and it worked out very well, not distorting too much and very flat which is good as it is being used ar a table runner.

Just as predicted (and hoped!), zig-zagging the edges of the two woven 1/2 yards from this month's Color Collective helped quite a lot with fraying. Definitely worth the extra bit of time to do this step before pre-washing wovens.

Leeloo has now discovered the joys of lurking on top of the fridge. Thankfully she jumped down onto the counter after I was done chopping (this time at least!).

We did Passover at my SIL's on the actual first night for once, and it was fun. I got to be the Locusts this year.

The old bird feeder is now under attack by squirrel, and is also beginning to break, so it needed replacing. The red glass hummingbird feeder just needs refilling.

I got a supposed to be squirrel-proof gigantic feeder. We need to hang it out further from the pole, that's happening today, DH has been scheming on various squirrel-defying solutions.

I went to do my daily jigsaw puzzle in the app I've been using for many years and check out this ad! Yes, even puzzle games are in on the Pantone Color of the Year Viva Magenta bandwagon. I took the opportunity to post it to Instagram along with my fabric pull for my own Viva Magenta quilt idea for the 2023 Color of the Year Quilt Challenge.
 

That's enough updates for now!