The Bottom of the Ocean

 

I'm doing the facings a little differently for Ocean Effect, the bottom one is going to be a "self"facing, I'm using the excess of the whole cloth front of the quilt that extends below the green upholstery fabric and blue sheer and pulling it around to the back and hand-stitching it down. But first, I decided to take the time to stitch out a quilt label using the digitized alphabet options on my machine.

I had to test drive it for the tension, and I forgot which way the letters stitch out! It's been a while since I'd used the alphabet feature, so I made a little sample and wrote myself notes. Then I had to pin it on and make sure the words of the label would be right-side up as they're at the bottom of the quilt. This will be a handy thing to have for next time, so I'm storing it with my iron-on embroidery stabilizer.

Labeled and Bound

 

I was working on getting the binding on to one of the BAMQ Community Giving quilts yesterday and just in time, I remembered the label. This is an embroidered label that one of our members made and was handing out at Sew Day last weekend. It's so nicely done, isn't it?  I sewed it right into the binding so that it would be secure.

And here's how the quilt looks with the binding completed. I believe that this quilt is one of friend Jaye's donation quilt tops, but I wasn't able to find it on her blog, so maybe not? Anyways...it's done now and I have to remember to turn it in.

Yesterday's Mail

 

Yesterday was a Good Mail day™ because my subscription box from Pink Door Fabrics arrived. It is chock o' block as per usual with all kinds of fun stuff. But I have to say, I really really enjoy the boxes and have a hard time throwing them away. I've been using them for storing current projects, they're roomy enough and easy to move around. Better than buying even more P.O.T.S. (Plastic Organizer Thingies).

There's always a pattern included and this one is super intriguing to me, I've always liked this block but have never tried it (due to the curves and needing to make templates. Well, it includes the acrylic templates, and equipment for doing it EPP style. There also directions for piecing it by machine. We shall see. I quite like the examples on the pattern cover of the fussy cutting these great Tula Pink fabrics.

I'm excited about the Renaissance Ribbons that were included, they're so pretty and match the fabric so well. Another Sewline fabric glue pen is always useful, now I can have one in my to-go box and one in my workroom, some very pointy butterfly scissors, John James Milliners needles, a spool of DecoBob for hand sewing. Oh and a package of seeds, alyssum.

There was also a swatch deck with pictures of each of the prints in the Untamed fabric line. Not sure what those are really for, maybe I can use them in a collage?

Untamed is all about flowers,  there are no animals included in any of these. Except for the check and houndstooth fabrics, it's all gorgeous flower or plant related shapes like seeds..

I really enjoy the variation of patterns used in the backgrounds of the florals.

I'm really into the rainbow houndstooth fabrics. And the patterns on the seeds (or water droplets).

The neons are Very Neon.

A lot of these would play very well with other Tula Pink fabric lines, there are similar motifs that are similar and the colors would work together.

The Tula Pink solids are super pretty. The fabric quality is very good for a solid.

The neon checkerboards are super stinky with the heavy neon print. It's very stiff and plasticky as well. I hope that it washes out and softens somewhat.

Always fun to check out the selvedges.

I like the colors on the selvedge being represented in water droplet (or seed) shapes.

I used my laundry marker to write in the names of the solids, just in case I end up needing more of one color.

Buying Spree the 2nd

Continuing on with yesterday's buying spree post. Over on the Oregon coast we first stayed in Newport, there only one quilt shop to visit, Quilter's Cove. I thought I'd found two different rainbow ombre digital prints, but instead they are both the same colors, ie the whole rainbow. I wish I'd unfolded them both in the store to check, but I still really like this fabric, and I have 2 yards instead of 1. I also picked up a new marking pencil, the Ultimate Marking Pencil, which looked interesting. I'll post about it when I try it out.

There were several more quilt shops that were on our list for the Oregon Coast, but they happened to be closed on the days that we were driving through. Next time we'll check the schedules I guess? 

Our last shop in Oregon turned out to be Kruusn Quilt Designs and Retreat Center in Coos Bay.  I found the other ombré metallic confetti colors I needed to do the V & A Ombré Triangles pattern in their Ombré Room. How fun to have a whole room full of ombré options. I was even happier that they were all on sale. And then there was this cool black and white celestial that turned out to be glow in the dark. One of the people working there showed us a fabric rope bowl she'd made with this fabric, sewn together with glow in the dark thread. It was super cool!

South of Eureka, California is the small town of Fortuna, we found Springville Quilt Barn. What a great selection of fabric, old and new Tula Pink, Tilda and Ruby Star Society. Fun fun fun. It was hard to pick. I settled on the two Ruby Star Society fabrics, the coppery goldfish on navy and the butterflies on bright yellow background. Then there was the Tilda, I found some Fat Quarters that I liked.

This particular selection of Tilda Chambray was irresistible. And I think it will go well with the Bloomsville group that I bought earlier this year. Now to find a pattern to use them all on.

And would you look at this wonderfulness?! Here's a solid that has the manufacturer and color name stitched right into the selvedge. Why is this the only one I've ever seen???

And finally we went to Stitch, in Ferndale, which was a really terrific store, I found all these goodies. Trying out a new thing, the Odif 505 Fabric Glue Stick, their basting spray works really well, so let's see if the stick version does. A Simply Moderne magazine that had some really interesting quilt ideas in it. A new-to-me Bloc-Loc, the Half-Rectangle ruler.A Hemingway Pouch pattern and a green zipper for one, I've seen these in person and they look great and useful. Some rainbow LOVE labels, sale pencil shaving orange fabric, a tiny black and white print, two calm celestial prints and a couple of fat quarters that I liked.

Best Besties Box

My surprise Pink Door subscription box arrived with a whole bunch of colorful fun stuff based around Tula Pink's Besties fabric line. Fat quarters of solids and a package of beautiful ribbons too. It's a surprise because I forget that I'm subscribed to receive one, that's on me. Just like I forget the end of movies so I can watch them again, I guess I like being surprised.

These are really pretty together. It's going to be hard to break up the package and wash them.

The solids are really nice too.

Some of the other fun stuff included: a By Annie bag pattern and blue zipper, a sparkly key chain and shiny sticker, some cute best friend labels, a pieced heart quilt pattern and a make your swatches kit.

 

Seriously Silly

I spent a lot of my time on Friday, cutting out the background shapes for the Temperature quilt while watching the cable news coverage of the big indictment news. My ridiculously oversized labels are working even if they are silly sized.

The two things went together pretty well, I didn't have to look at the screen all that much so I could concentrate on cutting. The numbers and so forth for cutting were very well defined so I could use most of my brain power on taking in the information that was being disseminated for several hours. There's so much there of course, but as a person who formerly held a US government security clearance designation at the Secret level it's too much to bear or even contemplate. 

It's hard to describe the way it was drilled into us day in day out, the extreme penalties we would encounter if we ever even whispered about what we were working on or with to those without the same clearance or the same "need to know". Much less actually intentionally taking the documents home and refusing to return them. Or waving them around and boasting about them. And that this was a former president who did all that? Inconceivable.

The fix is of course serious penalties and jail time. Lock him up? Yeah, absolutely. If we have laws, they've got to apply to everyone, most especially to the people at the top who really really know what's at stake. Literally any other person would already be in jail. I would not want to be a US Diplomat or spy right now, having to convince our allies that they can  continue to trust us after seeing a Five Eyes Only document on the floor of a maybe unlocked storage room at a un-hardened public/private beach resort. 

The thing is, the vast majority of the US public hardly knows or ever thinks about all this international relations or spy stuff. It's all in the bucket of things we can't do much about, so why worry about it. The truth is we will likely never really know the effects of what he did, what alliances fell or were weakened, which assassinations of our contacts in other countries were or were not due to this breach. The power inherent in the possession of these documents is not something we normally think about. It's just a piece of paper, a file folder. But it's the possession, it's who has it, who knows, who's willing to sell it or trade it away. 

Ahem, back to our regularly scheduled quilting programming! I had to buy all that lovely black background fabric to cut it up, thanks to Santa Cruz Vac n' Sew, I had either Kona or Painter's Palette to choose from. I chose the latter, and the color name is Ebony not black, I also picked up some more Wonder Clips to keep all these cut out pieces organized, another can of Odif 505 basting spray, some waistband elastic so I can make a skirt. 

Also pictured is a SpeedWeve which I got from Amazon, it was getting talked about at the BAM retreat and it sounded very handy for clothes mending.  DS saw it and thought it was a kalimba.

Nine Ranges

 

I've now cut out enough half-hexies to cover my January temperature range (28°to 70°). All nine ranges pictured here. As this is taking a whole lot of time and will end up being very rainbow-beautiful with my dyed fabrics, I've decided to make this a bed sized quilt instead of a wall or lap quilt. That means I need more of one black fabric to use as the background. I have lots of one and two yard pieces of black fabrics, but of course I need more than that. Sigh. And once I have that purchased and washed, I can cut some out the background shapes required for the background of the January column and finally get started sewing on this project.

I still need to cut out the other 11 temperature ranges that cover temperatures above 70°. And I'll be doing some match dyeing to make more fabric to supply the most popular temperature readings over the course of the year. It's all guessing at exactly how many 66-70° days we'll have, even halfway through the year. 

It seems Super Unlikely that we'll have even one 121-125° day, but I'll be ready to cut out a pink half-hexie if we do. A lot would have to change weather-wise very very quickly for us to get there though. But hey, it did get all the way up to 116° in 2020 when we had the fire evacuation.

Actually I probably didn't even need these last two categories on my list and I likely will not cut any shapes out ahead of time.

I am enjoying the colorful confetti vibe of the scraps though.

Temperature Rainbow

I haven't posted much about the Temperature quilt, because honestly, I hadn't gotten going on it quite yet except for the background which isn't too exciting to look at. Finally I've worked out which colors are which temperatures. That was the hardest part for some reason.  Here's the rainbow! These are all of my own hand-dyes.

So here's some action shots of cutting out the very first temperature bracket 25 -30 (Farenheit to be clear). I only needed to cut out 9 of this color so far this year.

Then I moved onto cutting out the next range, 31-35. There are a lot more required than the first range, already need 36 of this color.

As I have to cut all these shapes ahead of time and then try to keep them organized, I decided to make myself some labels. For some reason, I didn't think about how gigantic these ended up. Also, a second note to myself, check the printer's color levels!

As I go along I'm also figuring out which colors I may need to dye some more fabric to hopefully match closely enough if needed. What are the chances that we get below 30F in the winter this year? Pretty good...so I better figure this out.

Calendar Conclusion

 

All 24 doors have been opened on the advent calendar label gizmo.

It's quite a splendid variety of sew-in labels and two patches. It's going to be super fun to use these, and I'm glad that KATM (Kylie & The Machine) has a how-to video on how to sew them in correctly, because I honestly have no earthly idea. The more makes I finish, the more I'll get to try adding them in.

I've got them all contained in a baggie for the moment, but they definitely need to be in some sort of box.

Label This

 An advent calendar is always fun, and they seem to be all the rage this year. Off the top of my head, I've of course seen the normal terrible chocolate shape ones. But now there are advent calendars that have daily treats of yarn, tea, spices, pet toys/treats, wine, cocktail, beer. 

But an advent calendar full of sew-in labels? Hey, why not? Labels are all the rage in quilting/sewing world so it makes a lot of sense.

I gave the holiday version to friend Jaye, and bought myself this one that is not decorated for the winter holidays. Presumably it could be for any occasion, birthday, etc. n

I have to say that, four days into it, I'm loving what I've gotten behind each little sort of hard to open door. It will be interesting to see if the labels are the same in my box vs. Jaye's. I really hope she likes it!

Check these out, but don't look if you don't want the surprise spoiled.

Day 1:

Day 2:

Day 3: Surprise! It's an embroidered patch instead of a label:

Day 4:

I really love this one!