Pantone Background

 

I decided to get a bit more of the Pantone Project background fabric to use in-between all the blocks for some "negative space." Friend Jaye found some left at Fat Quarter shop and when it arrived here I compared it to the fabric we've been using on our blocks. And...I think it's a different color.

The new fabric is in the front, and it has a very different hand, even without pre-washing. I thought maybe washing it might fix things up. Sometimes fabrics have chemical brighteners or surface treatments that can alter the appearance or feel of the fabric.

Yeah, that's a really different color, the *official* Pantone Project fabric is on the bottom. One is slightly grey and one is white. The fabric's hand feels a bit closer to the original though. I checked on the fabric manufacturer website and it was never offered in a grey with the white squares. There was a grey but it was much darker and had grey squares. 

I looked more closely at the selvedges and the name and product number do match, but the selvedges themselves are quite different. The new one has the blue line woven in along the edge and the printing of the product information is much lower down on the selvedge. The *original* that we used (and was bought at a local quilt shop) is on the left is still a bit rougher feeling and it sheds a whole lot of long threads on the cut edge. Not a quality fabric I kept thinking as I used it throughout this project. 

The version that I bought from Fat Quarter Shop has a nicer hand and is not shedding threads on the cut edge in the same way at all. Weird, huh? I'm guessing that the manufacturer must have switched which base fabric they were using during production at some point? I remember hearing ages ago that commercial fabric production switches from cheaper to more expensive base fabrics depending on where the end-product fabric was getting sold. So, the same pattern would be produced for different markets, higher-end quilt shop market vs. Walmart or Jo-Anns.  No idea if that's still true or not.

Anyways, I don't know if I can use this new fabric in my Pantone Project quilt or not. My DS said I should dye it slightly grey, but I know that I am not that good of a dyer to match that up or maybe make the situation worse. I think I'll try pinning it up and putting some of the Pantone Project blocks on it to see if I can notice the difference when it's mixed in with colors.

Color Choices

Storm report: Power is still out, Internet was out and is back on, still have cell service. We got another 2.25" of rain yesterday. More to come today and a lot more expected on Monday. 

Instead of sewing, I decided to choose fabrics for the backlog of Pantone Project postcards that I've received from friend Jaye. As you can see it's a nice selection of colors to work with.

This red plum was fairly easy to match up, I had a lot of plums-y colors to choose from.

This one took a while, sorting out the different grays (brownish, purplish, bluish, etc.) and then choosing.

This is not a great picture of the card, it's showing up as rather dark. I didn't have my usual studio overhead light, only my table light.

This is a nice green isn't it? Kind of soft.

This is definitely not the color of a mimosa that you can drink, but it's a nice in-between mustard and cheddar yellow.

I almost chose that top fabric which was Grunge, but it had too much green overcast to it.

I thought I was just about done, but then my DH came home with the mail and there were two more cards. My studio walls are fairly close to these colors.

The orange was fairly easy to match up.

Here's the whole eleven color family ready to get worked with and made into blocks.

Color Bundle

Another monthly delivery of The Color Collective arrived, just as I was finally getting to work with the first month. I dislike feeling behind from the get-go, but my impromptu month off for health reasons caused that instead of general procrastination. Anyway...still behind no matter the causes.

The fabric bundle comes with a pattern every month. This month is comprised of half-rectangle triangles which I've been wanting to really investigate so I think I will attempt it. I really really like the selection of colors this month, so that's two for two so far.

I again took a picture of the bundle all laid out with the color labels showing before I pre-washed. Some of the people doing the Color Collective are taking little snips of each fabric selvedge and pasting them down along with the labels in a notebook. Maybe I'll try that out next month.

Again the two non-Kona fabrics are a crinkled crumpled mess of wrinkles after pre-washing. I truly love the look and feel of these fabrics, but sheesh! That's 55% linen/45% cotton for you I guess. Time to go get steamy with my iron.

Expanded LQS

 

A recent lunch meetup with friend Jaye led to us investigating the newly expanded quilt shop, The Granary. They've done a really great job with the new space, I found it was much easier to browse around and actually see the fabrics. The classroom section is separate now which is nice, as sometimes we would encounter a class in session and would have to squeeze past the students to get to various things. Their notions wall is awesome, sooo many rulers.

As you can see above I made some purchases. First is a QAYG (quilt as you go) printed pattern on quilt batting Christmas tree skirt. It's finally time to make one. Then a new 4.5' square ruler, from Quilter's Select, oh wow does this thing ever stick and stay. It just doesn't move, awesome. A black white dot print that reminded me of Yayoi Kusama. And then 4 yards of a grey print that we're using for our Pantone Project.

There was also a very cool op art print that reminds me of a puzzle I had in the 70's and a panel of Quilty tarot images that I couldn't resist. Metamorphosis as a skeletal hand holding a seam ripper while a butterfly looks on, and Strength as a lion with pins as whiskers, c'mon that's too good.

New Challenge

 

There's a MQG challenge that interested me, it involves using a palette of solids that Chawne Kimber chose from the Windham's Ruby+Bee. I decided that I liked the colors and the idea of designing and making a quilt in all solids which I haven't ever done. I had to hunt around to find the colors and ended up buying them from The French Seam and Hawthorne Supply.

The names of the colors are evocative: Russet, Mandarin, Vanilla Custard, Pool, Cornflower, Stormy. The fabric has a lovely hand, and washed up without any excess dye release.

Of course when one is on fabric supplier websites, other purchases tend to happen although I tried to limit it. Grey swirly fabric from Paula Nadelstern, and two pieces from a recent Halloween themed Alice in Wonderland.

This cool panel by Libs Elliot, The Watcher. Maybe the start for another baby quilt?

And more fusible batting from Hancocks of Paducah, so I don't have to do the spraying thing, even though it works well, the fusible batting is easier.

The Great Sort

The project of putting away the teetering washed fabric stack so that I have room to quilt has turned into a whole thing. Of course it has. Because I was unearthing layer after layer, kind of like combing through the geomorphic strata of the past few years. 

Oh hey, there's all of the fabric that I bought via the subscription box Culcita. (rip) I really liked the fabric four years ago as it arrived in their cute little boxes (and still quite like most of it) but I never used any of it. None. It's now sorted into its very own container now. In theory, the groups of fabrics are an easy starter for a quilt. Now that I've looked at it all again, maybe I'll actually use some of it. Don't laugh, it might happen.

More details on storage decisions made during The Great Sort:

• Another part of the stack was a huge amount of yarn-dyed plaids and shot cottons, mostly Kaffe Fasset I think. Those are in their own box now because they require special handling.
• There was also a lot of solids in there, which I have now put into all the color cubby boxes. 
• I found a big assortment of ruler, number, letters, and words fabrics which are now in their own box.
• I'm not sure why, but I've got all of my Tula Pink fabric in one box. They seem special somehow so they get to be separate.
• And I made a box for Carolyn Friedlander and Marcia Derse fabric to live in. They're very different designers of course, but the amount of fabric for a separate box worked out.

And I'm done! With that clear open space next to my sewing machine, I can quilt some of those bigger quilts.

Goodness me oh my do I ever have a lot of fabric. This is something I knew of course, but handling so much of a chunk of it as I was sorting it out and putting it away was really hitting me differently. I mean...am I really a fabric hoarder? Verging on I'd say, but at least self-aware.

Filing Help

I'm getting a lot of help putting away the Leaning Stack O' Fabrics from my new studio assistant.

She's finding all the spaces left in my fabric cubby boxes. Sorry, Leeloo, I just can't file you under "gray" try the brown box next time, or maybe orange.

She was really mad that I "found" her.

She's still new around here, but waving a big flag like one's tail for instance, it's a real attention getter.

 I'm about halfway through the stack so it's back to work for both of us.

Put It Away

As one of the items on my Get Done In April list, putting away the stack of washed fabric is the first thing that I'm tackling because it's bugging me. This is located directly to the left of my sewing machine table and is feeling like a physical barrier to the rest of the room. It also somewhat blocks the view of my design wall from my chair.

And also because this stack is threatening to tip over at any moment. 

Now that I've got a kitten/young cat zooming around and climbing on absolutely everything, that's a lot more likely.

The first fabrics that I pulled out of the washed fabric stack was all the Quilty Box projects. These are all going into one container, grouped by project and with the pattern that came with them. 

Once I get the stack completely put away, I'll post a picture of the wide open space.

Final? Quilty

 

The final Quilty Box has arrived, at least while they're on hiatus. I hope that they can come back, but I completely understand why they'd take a pause. It would be pretty impossible to coordinate a subscription box like this when you can't depend at all on whether the fabrics are going to show up in time to cut them up and box them to send out. Much less the right ones that go with the printed pattern book that's included!

Unruly Nature, what a great name for a fabric line. This is from designer Jen Hewett for Ruby Star Society. What a nice range of prints in interesting color choices.

Next time I have to use a seam ripper, I'll try this new one out. It's supposedly "ergonomic" so we'll see. The Seams lotion is quite lovely, it smells good and soaks right in. 

I didn't notice right away but the fabric has little bits of copper metallic. It's very nice and subtly eye-catching.

I wonder how the metallic accents will hold up to repeated washing?

Looking Closer

 

I'm looking more closely at the fabrics I just purchased, and this one, that is a print of various shibori techniques is really even more striking in person than it was online. I'm realizing now that the way that it's printed, one could cut out the various squares and set them off with a matching cream or brown. It's really got a lot of depth to it for a commercial print.

So mysterious, when the selvedge quotes get cut into. I'm guessing it's supposed to say: "Goodness will never be wasted in any way."  I quite like that sentiment. This fabric is named Koraju which means collage in Japanese.

Next close-up is the unusual selvedge edge for the Mountain fabric. Now that I'm seeing it in my hands and in a picture, I think I might have to incorporate it into the mini quilt I'm making for the Curated Quilts Utility challenge. You're supposed to use utilitarian fabrics for the challenge and using up the edge of a fabric counts in my mind. Plus it's quite an interesting color compared to the base fabric. More on that later. This fabric is really lovely, it has such a nice sheen to it, and it's very soft. I haven't washed it yet, so we'll see how it does.

Not Enough Yet

 

So, I wanted to try and participate in the next Curated Quilts call for mini-quilts, which is this time requiring the use of one fabric. It was a bit hard to find, but then I spotted it over on Hawthorne Supply Co. It's a very lovely woven, called Mountain, and the color is Ocean. It's going to be a lot of fun to work with.

But of course, I couldn't just order that one fabric. sigh. So much for Enough, I shall try harder to get to Enough Consciousness.

I noticed in the Alexia Abegg section these very pretty striped towelings on offer. And it's time for some new cloth napkins around here. So, that's what the striped toweling is intended for. It's already hemmed up on two sides, so only two more hems required. I think it's a very perfect weight and texture for making napkins.

And then I had to look in the sales section of course which are the other fabrics. And a spool of the Aurifil embroidery floss that I was hearing about last week.

Floor Fabric

Remember this picture I took a while back? It is a shot of the highly polished floor in our local Costco. I took it while I was waiting for my son to get his Covid booster shot. One of the very few times you ever get a chance to sit down in Costco. I fooled around with it in Percolator which turned out some very cool designs, which I also said I thought it'd make a great fabric. Instead of those abstracted images from Percolator, I just went with the original.

 And what do you know? I was right. I tiled the image in the Spoonflower editing program in a mirrored repeat and got 2 yards of fabric printed. I think it'll make a great skirt, to wear to Costco of course...so I can blend in. If I do, I promise to get a pic of myself standing in this spot wearing it. 

I chose to use Spoonflower's Petal Signature Cotton, but it would probably be fine on a lot of other choices that they offer, maybe even wallpaper. If you want to order some of your own, please go right ahead.

Workshop: Inspired By Art

 

The workshop I took last month with David Owen Hastings was really excellent. It was titled "Inspired By Art" which sounded very intriguing to me. SBAMQG had him speak at our retreat last year so we got a little preview of the idea. We were supposed to choose a piece of art that we liked and to be ready for class, to pull some fabrics based on the colors in the art. Here's most of the fabric I pulled to work with.

This is the piece of art that I chose, a Dali print we have had hanging up in our house ever since we saw a Dali exhibit in Venice in 1988. My goodness, that was so long ago! The Berlin Wall fell the year afterwards! Anyway...time marches on, and I continue to take classes.

After a great presentation by David on what to look for when being inspired by art for this process, we got  down to work. 

First, we folded up pieces of paper to make a nice infinitely adjustable view finder and then sketched out basic lines for potential block designs in a small quick study.

Then we enlarged the designs to the size of blocks we wanted to make and it was time for fabric. The sizes were all very loosey-goosey and improv-y which worked for me. No exactitude required, as this is all "inspired by" not  "making an exact copy of" kind of process.

One of my intended to be a square blocks turned into quite a rectangle, but I got the curves in that I wanted to make and it worked out.

I surprised myself how well I did on the curve sewing, but David had great advice on the sewing of improv cut curves which worked for me. Sometimes a teacher says something in a certain way that finally gets through to me and I have that wonderful lightbulb moment.

Then it was time to "square up" into blocks. There was quite a lot of fabric wastage with using this technique, but if I'd been sewing more exactly and measuring it would be reduced.

At the end of class I had three blocks done, and I'm very pleased with how they look together.

The colors and lines really capture the painting for me, and they're such interesting blocks especially all together. David showed us all sorts of ways to continue from this point to set the blocks into a quilt top design and I plan to make at least ten blocks and go from there. This workshop was so fun and challenging. It was truly awesome to see what everyone else in class made as we went along. 

I really recommend taking a workshop or lecture from David if you ever get a chance.