Wandering Wednesday - Mammoth Lakes

We went away for a week with my sister-in-law and her family to the east side of the Sierras, Mammoth Lakes. This was the first of many many lakes that we visited, Twin Lakes. 

Next up was Horseshoe Lake, we hiked all the way around and were surprised to find it so low.

I haven't spent much time in this area and it's so very different than the western side, less granite, a lot more dry too. 

It was a nice hike around this lake, complete with views back down the mountain.

Remnants of a building on the lake. 

The trees don't always take too kindly to having metal signs nailed to them.

There was a Co2 issue at this lake after an earthquake and it killed a lot of trees. There were signs that said don't lay down on the beach (Co2 is heavy and accumulates at ground level). Of course there were lots of people, kids, and dogs at the edge of the water, sigh. It was windy so hopefully they were okay.

It was really beautiful and not too terribly crowded, thankfully. It was awesome to get out and about.

Forever Figs

Forever figs, we have sooo0Oo many of them this year, so I went searching online for something quick to make with them. I found a recipe that was a play on the melon/prosciutto taste, but substituted figs for the melon. Turns out it was awfully tasty. Looked kinda weird as you can see in the above picture. Also, if you have a problem with the texture of the seeds of figs, I probably wouldn't recommend it for you.

Figs, Tomatoes, Prosciutto and Fresh Mint~ the Recipe for this very excellent salad. 

Next up tonight (if *someone* hasn't eaten the fresh mozzarella,)  I'm going to try making the Fig Caprese Salad, and then maybe if I get super ambitious, I'll try and make my own Fig Newtons.

Kitchen Sink Work

 The second and final class meeting for Kitchen Sink Quilting with Maria Shell arrived with me having worked on making a whole lot of "bits" to use with the orphaned blocks I'd chosen. I stuck with mainly the solids I'd originally chosen as well as some of the prints that were in my blocks. It turned out that it was much easier than I'd thought it would be to find them in my stash. 

Maria had all the students check in with pictures of their progress and provided very useful direction and advice as well as encouragement. It was very instructive to see each person's work and hear her take on where it might go with this Kitchen Sink technique with so many different sets of color/print/solid palettes and types of blocks. The picture above was the one I received comments on, and her suggestions were very helpful, I feel like I know how to proceed and make this all come together cohesively enough to work.

ICAD Complete

The last of ICAD for this year. This red-hot arrow-y one inspired by the one below.

There's something commanding about that emphatic red arrow.

Collage of Nat Geo words and images.

I think this would make a nice fabric print.

One last sushi grass collage.

Not quite circles.

 More oval than circle.

Kitchen Sink Getting Filled

Working on the Kitchen Sink Quilt and making some "bits" to fill in the blanks to eventually make an entire and hopefully somewhat cohesive quilt top out of the random blocks. The first piece I made was this yellow and pink on the top left. It happened to be the exact same size as the two star blocks, so they got sewed together. First chunk done. Feel like I'm actually on my way.

I thought this was a nice color combination that would pick up a lot of the colors in the blocks.

 

And the column that I made out them works really well. I added that pink/cream print along the edge of the two star blocks.

Another longer but skinnier column of greens with two solids and one print because several of the blocks have green.

This color combination really works for me, it's a pale lavender and a citrus-y yellow green. It really glows. I made a 14" block out of the strips I'd sewed together.

Then I cut it into four pieces. If I was making a square block, I would have left it just like this.

But I needed smaller pieces to use in the quilt top.

 And here's how it's all looking together. I took out some of the other blocks and am sticking with these 9.

Welcoming August

 Happy August, it's really hard for me to believe that the hottest part of the year is already here. 

The weirdness of the last few months continues and also changes from day to day, it's all feeling very unbalanced to me. There was a huge earthquake **8.2** in Alaska the other day and I just was gobsmacked. I'd forgotten to worry about earthquakes.The part of my brain as a native Californian that always had that program running had been repurposed to worrying about the pandemic. Wild, huh?

As per usual this picture is a combination of two, manipulated in SnapSeed.

And here's my video of One Second Every Day for July.

July Cornucopia

 

Another month of the year done, and here's the monthly cornucopia scheduled post for July.

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New Quilts of Northern California exhibit applications are due very soon, August 9th. I don't know if I'm up for actually attending PIQF this year or not. It seems iffy as far as COVID goes over the next few months, but maybe if I remember to enter and actually get into the exhibit, my quilt will just have to go as a stand-in for me. 

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This is a cool idea for learning more about clothes-making. I'm considering joining up to expand my knowledge base which is not much at this point. And they have a pretty good companion podcast too.

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Here's a useful short video on photographing your quilts for exhibition entries.

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Did you miss World Emoji Day? Here's some of the proposed new emojis pending approval from the Unicode Consortium 

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One of the most interesting art installations I've seen in a long time, a hot-air balloon in Tokyo of all things.

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If you're interested in block printing, there's a couple of short videos on the Stitchin' Post youtube. 

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A helpful round-up of tips for pre-washing and starching pre-cuts such as jelly-rolls.

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I enjoyed this presentation about colour by weaver Margo Selby.

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Almost Done ICAD

Hard to believe ICAD is almost over. Here's a group of last week's + work.

 

I quite like the landscape-ness of this one.

Those little green diamonds are the very sticky stickers from my recent mammogram.

Kitchen Sink Process

This was my first selection of "orphan blocks" for the Kitchen Sink Quilting class. Pretty varied, probably too varied.

I narrowed it down a little, and this is the picture I sent in to our teacher, Maria Shell.

During the class, I worked on some possible combinations with the background solids I'd cut.

I tried a lot of combinations, but got too wedded to some of the solids placements. Especially the part on the lower right. I did like how the 3-d cube was floating on these blue/greens, but I decided that I love that block TOO much to throw in with a bunch of other stuff, I want to make something just for it.
I took out the background solids 

And then I added back in some of the bright crazy pieced blocks.

This is how it looks at the moment, I've added in some other orphans I hadn't tried yet on the left side. And I took out the crazy pieced blocks, they are just "too much" for the rest of the blocks. Too busy, too colorful, too much.

 

Kitchen Sink Preparation

 

Getting ready for the first day of a two day class on Kitchen Sink Quilting with Maria Shell. This was the first selection of solids that I chose and I laid them out pretty randomly on my work table just  to get an idea of the color range. 

And....I really really like this "design". Like I want to make a quilt that looks exactly like this. I'm tempted, really tempted to cut up pieces to assemble this exact thing before I take the class tomorrow. 

We shall see. I have to take the diabetic cat to the vet which is always exhausting because he yells the whole time there and back.

More Yes Please

Tools of the paper piecing game. The add-a-quarter ruler is essential. That seam roller is really working out well instead of having to keep an iron going the whole time I'm sewing. The seam ripper because yes...mistakes are made.

It's all so very very fussy for a 6x6" block, but I'm liking how it turns out in the end.

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YES

yes

Here are the two font versions together. I like how it looks, almost visible, but not really.

One more font left to do and then that's it for paper piecing for awhile. The rest of the work on the coat will be other types of piecing.