iPad for Quilters class

 

On my first day back after another trip to Spokane and back (successful injections so far, yay!) I took an online class through Mancuso Brothers Virtual Schoolhouse. Thankfully it started at 9am instead of lots earlier. The teacher,Cristina Arcenegui Bono, was located in Italy and she was mindful of wanting to include West Coast students. The class was called iPad for Quilters, and it was six hours full of all kinds of  new information for me. There are so many little tips and tricks for using the iPad, and they're hard to remember without using them all the time. Or to have them taught to you in context so you know why they're important to try and remember. So some was a review, and some was absolutely new. All of it useful and now I feel much more fluent with using both Procreate and my iPad.

Now I know how to use layers much better and see why they're so useful. Cristina was a great teacher, really funny and well-prepared to help the people in the class who were at very different stages of adeptness with the iPad.

And I am now planning to try out using my Cricut to cut out appliqué pieces from my sketches.

 

 I had a clementine as a snack during class and we were learning how to make our own color palettes from photos or files. So I snapped a picture with the iPad and made a palette out of all those great shades of orange.

This picture made for a really lovely palette. Palettes are useful for color choosing when you're sketching on the iPad, it narrows down the limitless colors to the ones you want to concentrate on using.

A Place For Hexies

 I had this toppling over stack of hexies ready to go and I was worried they were going to get mixed in with the mess of scraps from working on the Scrap Tape. So they needed a place to hang out together and I had saved a magnetic closure box that was close to the right shape and size. Formerly housed a FitBit. Of course I needed a rainbow, so I used some Inktense blocks on some heavy sketchbook paper.

After brushing on some water and letting the rainbow dry, I trimmed it down to close to the exact size and glued it into the base of the box.

I had to cover up the FitBit logo and UPC codes with some nearly matching washi tape.

It's a really nice box, heavy and a solid closure that sticks with no fiddling around. 

It fits all the hexies I have so far with lots of room for more. I could even have a little sewing kit in here.

A rainbow of Hexies in a rainbow box. Now to sew some together....

63 Out of 100 Days

 

Here are seven more days worth of the 100 Days Project. I'm away at the BAMQ retreat and have scheduled this post and sewn ahead of myself a couple days.  Hopefully I remembered to post all 7 pictures of the new 9" segments.

My plan is to bring this giant roll of sewn Scrap Tape along with me to keep up on the days while I'm there. I'm planning to use the scraps that I generate as I'm working on the projects that I bring to the retreat, so there will be a distinct look to those segments.

That white on white checkerboard fabric is so odd, but so cool. I thought it looked good around some fabrics that had bits of white.

A checkerboard of mis-cut cornerstones for the 4 I's quilt makes an appearance. 

More bits from the making of Bohemian Wife blocks appear.

This combination on the left is a great palette for a quilt, the grey orange, purple, yellow on purple/pink, then a chartreuse, woohoo!

One last segment for the week. Can't believe I'm up to 63! 

Colorful Cornerstones

 

An array of corner stone pieces cut out and ready to sew into the sashing for the quilt I'm making for the BAMQ group exhibit at the San Mateo County Fair. I really love the color palette represented here. I also like seeing the real difference between commercial solids and my hand-dyes.

The final arrangement before stitching.

I got most of the way there and managed to keep the points pointy. That will be more apparent after I press the seams open. Now I'm starting to think about the quilting I want to do on this....circles maybe?

Bohemian Framing

 

All of the 3.5" Economy Blocks for the Bohemian Wife. I laid them out together so that I could select out which ones were going to be getting the additional border treatment.

My collection of the teeny tiny "leftover" HSt's have quadrupled in quantity.

They really are so fun and I'm contemplating how to use them. Maybe all in one big block in this quilt? As a quilted pillow sham to go with the quilt? That's not something I've tried to make before, probably worth considering.

Here are the bordered Square in a Square blocks. I like how they get set off and framed, very much emphasized. I especially like the looks of the one with the double border.

These is the block I was testing the erasable marking pen on, and now it's set into a border and still looking fine with even more ironing.

I really do like these fabric choices on this one. I think these colors would make a great color palette for a whole quilt, maybe for a child, maybe not depending on the pattern. And I don't mind the cream vs. white in the block as the difference is separated enough by the vivid yellow print

It turns out that the last blocks left are made using squares of fabric that are bordered in a couple different combinations and various sizes. So that means some more cutting, but that's only 6 left to go!

August Column

I powered through and got an entire month's column for the 2023 Temperature quilt priced.

I started sewing this piece on and realized it was not going to work, sometimes when I cut several layers at once this happens. 

Really like this color palette in this section.

So here's August! I'm noticing that there's not too much variation in how cold it got, and a whole lot more variation in how hot it was.

And here are July and August together. The end is not quite in sight but it's a whole lot closer.

And 3 More

 

And then three more Pantone Project blocks were done. Tomorrow is a holiday, so these will go in the mail on Tuesday.

These four colors would make for a very nice quilt design.

Percolating

A couple weeks ago I was on Instagram and noticed how nice and colorful my "grid" looked. I took a screen shot (on purpose this time, wow!).

And then off to Percolator I went, just to see if I was right. First of all, I love the black and white abstraction of the top and bottom, isn't that cool? Almost like a steampunk lace design. Also, some of the squares of the photos would make great mini-quilts just like this. 

I played around with some of the settings (it's pretty much impossible not to).

This circle overlay look with more of the original picture is interesting. I was thinking of how to make this in a fabric piece, it would have to be layered. The background piece could be a print out on fabric of the screen shot photo. Then subsequent layers could also be printed on organza or something similar. I think it might work.

I like this greyed-out version a lot. Some of these squares from the original photo suggest great color palettes for a quilt.
 

Max Temp

 

One of the main reasons that I recently pulled all the dyeing stuff out, dusted it off, and actually put dye powder in chemical water and onto white fabric was that I needed some orange and red-orange for the Temperature quilt. Although given the last month's temperatures, I really may not need all that much after all.

The hottest temperature that I've cut out pieces for so far is the 86-90° range. That cheddar yellow-orange in the upper right. So that means that the next step should be 91-95° and it should be just orange, then the next would be red-orange, then red, right?

Well the fabric I had initially chosen for the orange and red-orange spots as you can see in the picture are really not those colors. Because I didn't have anything dyed in straight-up orange, I think I've probably used it up over during my non-dyeing years. Just like I've run out of lime-greens. You tend to use up what you like and all that, right? The color I put in the orange slot was instead a strange washed-out peach? Which does not fit in at all with the rest of the intensity of my rainbow of choices. And the one I put in the red-orange slot is much too pastel and more of a pink tone. The red was fine.

I tried out a few rearrangements of the fabric that I've just dyed and moved some of the choices around.

I think this arrangement will work out much better. And boy oh boy is it ever hard to photograph reds and red oranges well.  The bottom two fabrics look like very close shades of red and they are not at all.

The last category fabric represents 116-120° and if I need anything past that, I'd probably just make something with X's on cartoon eyes because we'd be absolute goners. Here's' hoping and fingers and toes crossed that does not come to pass this year or any other.

Checkerboard-ish This Close to Finished

 As you can see, the borders I added to the color palette challenge piece were made with the same two blues and all the other colors from the palette that hadn't been used yet. I thought the red pieces looked good in the corners.

Once I was happy with the look of the borders, I just straight-pin basted and did the initial quilting lines along the main parallel strip lines.

The quilting on this was a pretty easy decision to come to. I just followed the inset skinny strip diagonal pieces. 

I used a medium purple rayon thread. I thought the color would show up well enough but not be too dominant or contrast-y.

It's taking a while to go all the way across the quilt surface with each set of parallel lines but it's definitely worth it. I have a couple sections to finish and then I'll call it done.

I like how flat this is turning out, it may end up being a table runner? It's just about the right size at 16" x 27" I think I'll put a facing on this to finish it off instead of a binding. Also I will take a better photo that doesn't have the late afternoon shadows happening.