Picking Favorites

I'm almost at the finish line with. making the Orange Bullseye blocks. The final third circles have all been sewn on now, and the back has been trimmed. All that's left is pressing, and cutting into quarters. 

As I was going through them, I snapped some pictures of my favorites, color and fabric pattern-wise.

Here's how they look all stacked up with the trimmed circles in the front. I'm planning to make a pillow of some kind with all the trimmed circles.

It's a pretty big stack of blocks, and quite heavy!

A planet? A sun?

Such an odd background, an almost peachy pink, but the other fabrics really work.

All such different styles of prints, but they all together tell a story.

Sherbet colors, right?

This reads as Miami to me.

This one, oh, I just sigh every time when I see it, not sure exactly why.

 The blocks are really going to be great when all cut up and re-sewn together.

First Six PP Blocks

Here are the first six blocks I've made for the Pantone Project with their accompanying matching postcards. We're also cutting 4.5" squares of the color fabric along with making the blocks. It's nice to be caught up for the moment.

I started out with the easier blocks to convert to 4.5" unfinished size.

They were pretty easy to put together.

But then, friend Jaye very nicely put the rest of the Pattern Play blocks into EQ8 so I don't have to do the math, woohoo! Very helpful, and will be a lot easier to come up with a quilt design in the end when we have 200 blocks to work with.

The very very light grey fabric that we chose to use as our background is reading just about as white as my design wall. It's not coming across to my eye as grey at all. But that's okay, I think it sets the colors off very nicely. It has a very unobtrusive white print on top of it, which is somewhat challenging to see when sewing, hopefully I'll get the right side showing on the blocks that I make.

Pantone Project Begun

 

The Pantone Project that I've mentioned previously is based on this lovely box of 100 color chip postcards. Friend Jaye and I each have a box of them and we're sending them to one another at fairly regular but random intervals. It's just really a lot of fun to both write and receive postcards.Very "old school" of us I know, but we like what we like.

These are the six that I've received so far. They're on top of the background fabric we've chosen to use for this project. The plan is to make 2 blocks in fabrics that match the color, one for ourselves and one for the other. We're using all of the block designs in Doreen Speckmann's book, Pattern Play. At the end of the project, we'll have 200 blocks to play with.

Sometimes, but not always, I take a picture of the card that I'm sending. I am writing down the number of the cards I send and receive. Maybe given the iffiness of them actually arriving in one piece will make that worth it in the end.

Our plans have gotten a lot more solidified so it was time to start in sewing. And that started with matching fabrics up. I'm trying really hard not to buy any new fabric for this project. I don't need a lot of fabric for the blocks, less than FQ worth, so I'm combing through my color boxes looking for good matches.

Don't these colors look good together?

When final choices get made, it's time to decide which of the 26 blocks to make.

We decided not to use just solids, but it can be hard to match up when there's a print. 

This picture was taken when the sun was coming in the window, so it looks a lot different than some of these other photos.

I'm really struck by how different these pictures look compared to what my eyes are seeing in person. Especially the color of the postcard, it doesn't translate well, perhaps because of the shine of the postcard versus the fabric?

Courthouse Nears Completion

 The Courthouse Steps quilt is now quilted, I'm not actually responsible for construction of an actual courthouse. All that's left to do is trimming, making and sewing on a binding and a label. I haven't decided where this one will end up. 

I don't like it enough to hang it up. It's a good baby quilt size I think, so maybe I'll donate it somewhere. 

I did the quilting without marking any lines, and I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. The piecing was pretty accurate except in a few spots because the blocks are paper pieced. The light green thread that I quilted it with did a pretty good job of mostly disappearing without reading as a colored line. 

Final 4"

 

Oh happy and very orange day! I received my Orange Bullseye squares back from friend Adrienne with her second circle sewn on top of friend Jaye's first circle. Aren't they pretty and cheery?

Unfolded all 48 of them and slapped them up onto the design wall to see what's what. What a variety, wow!

I had already prepared 18 final orange circles so I matched them up to see how they'd look. So far, so good. Not having the same orange as the backgrounds, trying for as much contrast as possible so the circles remain distinct.

Time to cut out 30 more 4" squares, (I actually cut to 4.25") iron into folded quarters and then cut out the circles with the template.

And there we go, looks awesome to me. Now to pin and sew them all together. This has been an extremely enjoyable project, and I can't wait to see how all the quarter blocks turn out.

Ten Days of ICAD

"You are ready to let your creative talents blossom"

This one feels hopeful.

No a million times no, made while listening to the podcast Amicus detailing the extreme actions of the Supreme Court last week.

de means of

Canicas means marbles.

Juego means play

Illusion of depth

There are pieces of brown dress pattern paper glued on top of some of the pen/pencil/watercolor.

And of course, my studio assistant had to inspect the photography session.

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.

Ilustrated Monthly July To-Do

Last month I showed a picture of my design wall, and was noting that I was happy that it had been offloaded from all the many big projects pinned up on top of each other. But I wasn't pleased with having the stuff under and to the side blocking my view. I rearranged and it's a lot better to my eye. But those boxes to the right don't really need to be there or in this room for that matter. So there's more work on that room environment to be done

So here's my To-Do List for July:

Somehow dispose of/disperse/use up/donate the contents of the four big boxes taking up so much room in the corner of my workroom. 

Go through my giant stash of magazines and toss, donate, sell. I need the room for the books I want to keep around in my workroom.

Cut and sew on the third (and final!) circle onto the Orange Bullseye blocks, cut up the finished blocks and distribute.

Finish Faux Goose Chase, make a back, sandwich, quilt, bind, label.

Catch up on making the Pantone Project blocks.

Bind label and donate (maybe) Courthouse Steps.

Quilt, bind and label Kitchen Sink.

Make more Japanese House blocks.

Make more blocks for the Y.E.S. coat.

Make the four green pillows for our couches. 

Finish up  ICAD

Make a removable pillowcase for the big scrap bag.

That's a lot, but it's a lot of variety of things to choose from. Onto July!