Post Sew Day

I brought a few things home with me from Sew Day yesterday. As we were cleaning up at the end, there were several items left on the Free Table. I chose to bring home this lovely half yard of tree peony fabric as well as an interesting piece of perforated "Stitchable Felt". Not sure what it's meant for, but I am definitely going to sew on it, and will likely use it in my ICAD pieces this week ahead. Two new Fudenosuke brush pens that I got in the mail. And in the back there, a Community Giving quilt that needs to be bound.

That was the first thing I did today, I unrolled it to measure the size to see how much binding I need to make. And also which color/type of fabric I should chose.I'm thinking green blue or orange, maybe prints? There's one of the great embroidered BayAreaModernQuilting.com quilt labels that one of our members machine embroiders for us to use on these Community Giving quilts.

First I stay-stitched around the outside of the already quilted quilt. And then I trimmed off the excess batting and backing. There was enough of the green print backing fabric left over to use for the binding, I just need to find another print to add in to the mix and cut it all down to size. This is a really happy bright quilt and I love the all-over quilting design that was used.
 
 

Free Wheeling Fabric

 

At the recent BAMQ meeting, there were some super interesting printed canvas pieces of fabric available on the Free Table. I resisted at first, but then they were kind of left behind, sitting there all alone. So I felt sorry for them. Not really, but kinda, and it helped make my mind up to take them home.The bird one just cracks me up and I love purple and red together. It's only a FQ plus a bit, so it might work as a good feature pocket on a bag? The other print was so beautiful, by one of my fave designers, with a grellow/yellow background so it will go with some of my other canvas pieces that I have. Hey, it's Anna Maria Horner, I didn't know she was doing canvas designs. 

Updating my 2026 fabric tracker with these additions and also subtracting for recent finishes:

 Net Total Fabric for 2026 so far this year is: -12.85 yards 

City Sampler Back Started

I worked on the beginnings of the backing for my City Sampler quilt at bamq Sew Day yesterday. There will be a solid grey border put between the central snake piece and the rest of the fabrics.

Seen here is the studio assistant checking out my work.

This is my "plan", so far so good. There's going to be a lot of long seams to sew.

There was a lot of great fabric on the free table, mostly from the stash of one of our members who recently passed away. She's greatly missed and I think we all felt lucky to get to take home some of her fabrics to work with and remember her by.

 

Free Silk

 

On the freebie table at Sew Day there was quite the selection of fabrics available. I spotted this piece of maybe obi (kimono sash) fabric, it's the right width, so it might be. It is a quite beautiful print, a lightweight silk.

There was this interesting section with a printed black and plain white stitched on one edge.Not sure what it was meant to be.

It's really pretty and I just liked it, the print is super interesting and sort of collage-y. 

And yes, I've added it into my 2025 fabric tracker.

Free And Giving

 

There were a lot of choices on the free table at Sew Day. Friend Cindy had bought an estate sale lot of fabrics, and she brought in a literal table full for us to choose from. I was happy to snag a bunch of neutrals to use for the Old Town mystery quilt. The reds and oranges are also for that quilt. That black and white print was just cool.

There was also a bag of big cones of purple rayon embroidery threads. I snagged these two beauties. Not sure who contributed those, but I'll be happy to get my purple on with these. It's so nice to be in a quilt guild with such giving people.

And then over at the Community Giving table, I turned in the quilt that I had just finished the binding on and picked up another quilt to do the binding for. There were also some quilt block packets that will be good to use as leaders and enders

Finished Edges

 

As seen on a previous post, this embroidered fabric used as a background. was something I picked up off of the freebie fabric table at the BAM Sew Day.

I turned under and stitched the selvedge edges twice.

Then I did the same on the cut edges. It was a bit harder as the embroidery is kind of thick and dimensional in spots.

And voila´, all four sides are done and nice and flat. I really love the swoopy design along the bottom edges. I thought about fringing the plain fabric, but decided that it looked better with a simple finish like this. I have a table that this is going on and it didn't need a fussy edge.

It's a really lovely overall design, and I really love the 3-d effect of that black and white thread.

I'm going to get some of this black and white Wonderfil D-Twist and try it out myself.

Joining Up

I attended my first meeting the South Bay Modern Quilt Guild this week (thanks to my friend Jaye and her mom visiting for the excuse to actually go.)  It was a great meeting, really fun people and wonderful quilts being made by the group. So I joined up!  

I was lucky and scored a door prize, the M. Joan Lintault book (I've always loved her work and this book is great!) Then there was free fabric, a fat quarter of Kona Cotton in I think the color Creamsicle. The fabric is for a guild challenge that's coming up in January for an exhibit at the PVQA show next year.

Wow, I color adjusted this photo a bit too much, the orange is actually the same as in the above photo, anyway...the turquoise is another of the colors we're supposed to use. I thought it'd be fun to use the complementary colors in my quilt design. It's all based off of a great photo of the teapot ride at Disneyland and is supposed to be tea-related to go with the theme of the quilt show. Thinking cap is now on.

More Input

I got the chance to work at the Santa Cruz FabMo distribution day last week and came away with a smallish sized bag full of goodies.

 This time there was a nice selection of modern looking, simple graphics in linen or linen/cotton. This is all going into a couch quilt to go with our lime green couches. The nice cuddly flannel one I have in there done in primary/brights doesn't go at all and it visually upsets me to see it. I love the idea of all this stuff getting used instead of being thrown away, go FabMo!

I scored a nice selection of Cotton & Steel prints purchased from the Quilt Show table at the Alden Lane Nursery Show. They were leftovers cuts from this year's block-of-the-month kit, being sold at cost, saved some $$ on these, yay!  I think I love the matches print the best.

Some new backing fabrics (i.e. fabrics I find at a comparatively cheap price that I like using for the backs of quilts because I don't have to worry about how much they cost) and a few more to add to the grey-yellow quilt project box, and disco witches just because.

Fabric Surprise

I received a mysterious package from Michael Miller Fabrics recently. No paper with information inside the package, just two pieces of fabric tied up in a bow. I was completely mystified until I went to post about it on Instagram and saw something about the Michael Miller Challenge for the Modern Quilt Guild. I'd signed up for it and completely forgotten!

So now I have this really nice fabric, (seriously the hand of it is lovely) to design a quilt around. It has to all be made with Michael Miller fabrics, even the back and binding, so I'll probably have to find some more to make a big enough quilt. I really do like the colors that I was gifted with, so that's a good starting point. The print is a very nice and I can already imagine a lot of possibilities to utilize the lines and shading in the design.

A New Modern Group

 Last week I visited a new quilt group that meets in my area, well, they were new to me at least.  They were celebrating their 1st year anniversary.  South Bay Area Modern Quilt Guild which meets at SueDee's Quilting Knitting and More in Scottt's Valley.  A very nice group of people, with lots of enthusiasm for the "modern quilting" style that's going on these days.  They were so nice that I went home with a piece of the above fabric out of a freebie bag of someone's scraps that was getting passed around.  What a good introduction to the group, here have some free fabric.  I think it will be nice to have a non-art-quilt focused group to be a part of, since I like to make functional quilts also, so I plan to attend the meeting next month.

And Sue Dee's had just moved locations a few doors down and had a $1 a yard table.  Woohoo, Backing Fabric!  I love getting fabric like this, so it's easy to use it up and not get precious about it.  Especially for wall quilts, the busier and weirder the print gets, it's all fine by me.  If it's a backing for a bed or couch quilt, then I pay more attention to the backing fabric of course, because it's going to get seen and touched all the time.

Finding Fabulous Freebies

 Here's some of the fun stuff from the freebie pile Bron brought to our last CQFA meeting from FabMo.  She always finds the most interesting stuff to bring to us and we all politely divide it up, there's never been any pinching or hitting or yelling, this is not Black Friday at Walmart after all.  I liked these four fabrics and thought it would be interesting to make two pieces one, green based and one red based, building around these as focuses with a lot of the other fabrics I've been collecting from Fabmo lately which are easily divisible into red vs. green.  I wonder sometimes what my brain is doing sometimes, I really do.  Why red and green? Who knows.  I couldn't tell you.  Maybe it will all become clear after I actually make the quilts!

 I liked this gold mum print a lot, the scale of it and the background fabric color.  I think it will make a great applique on something.

I'm going to hem up the floral embroidered fabric as napkins.  The stuff on the right is wallpaper samples,which is all bug paintings, the title of which cracked me up, Timorous Beasties.  Sounds so Gorey-esque huh?

Fabulous And Free

The accumulation  of interesting fabric items continues thanks to my friends in CQFA!   How about these mini zippers? (Note the heart charms on a couple of them).

 These jersey bundles are so cool.  I am planning to dye a couple of long-sleeved t-shirts in these colors and apply them *somehow*.. These are just layers of jersey, cotton/lycra stacked, stitched and then cut to make the interesting shag look.

 Textures, textures, textures.  All of these are from FabMo, and I find myself wondering for what real-world decorating applications one would use these weird, yet cool fabrics.  Zebra-striped padded vinyl, hmmm, I guess you could cover a padded bench or bar stools.   Guess I should check out some home decorating magazines if I really want to know!

Hey, looks like some heat-set fabrics down on the bottom there.  These just have the fiber content labeled, but no process info, I have to guess on that.

What will all these end up being?  Besides part of my stash?  Who knows....stay tuned.

Why So Irresistible?

How about these weird, yet cool fabrics that I scooped up from the FabMo bounty that Bron brought to share with us all at the last CQFA meeting? I keep missing the monthly distributions of free fabric that they hold so it is really nice that she brings some freebie goodies to share with us!

I have no idea how I will end up using these first pieces, or even how they would be used if I were an interior designer? Curtains maybe? It kind of looks like a zebra/animal print. It is flexible yet stiff, soft and very rough, matte and shiny, the black section is like a tightly woven raffia out of some polyester derivative, with a bonus fringe on the edge of the black. Weird stuff huh? Wonder how much it goes for per yard??

This really plush fake fur piece was too irresistible to put back once I'd touched it. There is probably enough here for my son to make one of his stuffed creatures, or maybe I'll snag it for something. It reminds me of a friend's late dog.

This one was hard for me to resist because of the nicely drawn figures, the Jack of All Trades being my favorite. They will probably show up in my fabric collage quilts somewhere.

Adding To The Chaos

Adding to the chaos that rules my sewing room, are several new goodies, some quilt related, some upholstery related too. I have 4 chairs to recover, and only have the fabric for one of them.
First is a selection of upholstery trim scraps that I purchased in a little plastic bag for $1.99 from Harts Fabrics. I swear this is just like crack for me, I find that I really can't resist the siren call because:

• the small amount
• the cheap price
• the color coordination
• the array of textures
• can very easily see using this on a wall quilt (I do have a history with fringe after all...)

I have a feeling I'm not the only one that will buy one of these little goodie bags. Upholstery fabric and trim, also from Hart's, that I'm using to recover an old ottoman. It is almost done, it is taking a while to hammer all the upholstery nails in. I can only hold the hammer for a little amount of time. I'm also going to recover the seat cushion and arms from the leather chair that this ottoman goes with. It is really worn out and ripped in a couple of places. I love how the worn-in leather feels, but I don't like how it looks now.

This is a shiny (I'm guessing acetate) about 8"x10", and it is a really cool cut-out fabric. Another FabMo find. It made me think of one of those fancy neckroll pillows, couldn't you see it on top of a red or yellow silk. It is too small to wrap all the way around one of those pillow since it is a sample. But I like the pattern a lot and am thinking I'll use it somehow in surface design. And lastly, four new fabrics from the CQFA retreat weekend, the two on the right were in the freebie pile. I'm finding I'm really into checks and checkerboards these days.
But hey, when this picture loaded I noticed the colors don't look right, especially the fabric on the lower left is this intensely weird chartreuse color, which was why I bought it! You just don't find that color very often, certainly not with such a lovely pattern. The same fabrics with a flash, there that's a little better but still kind of brown. Oh well, I'm giving up on getting the right flash or lighting. At least for now.

Six Word Memoir #2

I used some free fabrics from FabMo to make my second Six Word Memoir of the year. These are woven linen, rayon and polyesters, two are upholstery weight. I didn't end up using the fabric on the left.

The words were torn out of the newspaper, it says: "CREATE a world of its own" and tassels were also from Fabmo. I forgot to make it the same size at the first week's, so I think I'm going to be a little flexible in what size I make every time. There are 50 more to go after all... Note also, that I am not confined by the square!

Polka Dots On The Go

Something had to be done about my car seat cover. It was ripped and shredded, uncomfortably lumpy and just depressing looking instead of cheery and fun like it used to be. But the stretchy part that holds it on the seat was just fine, I had to come up with a plan...

Hooray for free FabMo fabrics. I sewed together 4 colors of this polka-dotted upholstery fabric and cut it to the right shape, turned under the edge and stitched it down with some new cushy quilt batting underneath. Easy peasy, eco-friendly, reusing, remaking, refashioning all that good stuff in one project. Plus it makes me smile every time I get in the car.

Free Fabric Pillow Tutorial

Here's how I just made a non-atomic pillow sewed up with recent free fabric from Fabmo and my priestess-sister Rue. She made herself a really nice purse and sent me the leftovers since she knows I love scraps! Her fabric is the multi-colored one there, it is really soft, kind of a chenille. The other fabric is much stiffer but has a lot of texture too. I like contrasts in textures on pillows, it makes them so much more fun to touch and encounter.

Here they are stitched together into a big enough piece to make a background for the sheer applique that I want to use.
I also have a pillow back fabric that I am using, so that is a limit to the size too. I just know I want to make a BIG pillow. Bigger than the usual anyways.

Here is how it looks on top of the pieced background. Too much, covers up all that rich color, so I'm going to stitch around the motif and cut away the extra.

After satin stitching around the embroidered motif in gold/brass thread I use my applique scissors to cut off the excess sheer fabric.

Then it is just an easy stitching up of the completed front to the pillow back. You can see the wrong side of the satin stitching there. Make sure to leave enough room to turn the pillow rightsides out and to be able to stuff it easily.

Stuffing with batting bits, edge trimming, shredded old socks and other miscellaneous stuffity-stuffs (technical term). Tip: Use your rotary cutter to shred up old socks into non-lumpy pieces, much easier on the hands than scissors! Make sure to stuff the corners of the pillow really well if you like them pointy, then hand-stitch the opening closed.

And there you have it, basically a free pillow (except for the thread). Please Note: This pillow has been deemed too heavy for pillow fights by the management.

I should print that up and sew it on like one of those tags you see on store-bought pillows and mattresses...

And here is the reverse side.

Here it is in the "grandpa chair", my leather chair that I inherited from my Grandfather. It is completely sprung in the seat and you need all kinds of pillowage under you to make it comfy. I think it is the most comfortable chair in the house and I use it as my hand-sewing station, complete with Ott-Light and all. So now I have a BIG pillow which feels great and supportive for my back.