In The Shadows

 

Here's another picture for my shadows file. I really love the slightly more transparent shape of the glass shelf. It would be fun to do a quilt of this one and play around with the different transparencies. 

This is the garden window in our upstairs bathroom where I am only able to keep succulents and cactus alive. It gets the first real direct sun of the day so it really heats up and stays hot. I've got the usually not-drawn drape drawn. But you can see a bit of the blue of the sky through this curtain, which means it's not doing much at all to help keep the room cool. It's more of a psychological thing to block out some of the sun. But, realistically, it might be time to invest in insulated curtains. Something tells me these heatwaves are not going to get better any time soon.

Too Hot

 

Welp, this is what I did yesterday. Survived the heat. It got up to 86F inside the main part of our house and it was too much for me. Supremely grateful to have a house, even one that's so hot, and to not have to be working outside. 

I just realized that I didn't send in my submission to Quilt National which was due yesterday. Not meant to be this time I guess, putting it on the calendar for two years from now.

We have a room air conditioner set up in our bedroom, so I'm holed up in there already today, woking on hand stitching stuff and coloring in more postcards for voters. And all the pets are lined up on the bed soaking up the cool air just like yesterday.

Yesterday, I made us a nice cold chopped Greek salad for lunch, and DH made grilled salmon and cold soba noodles and steamed broccoli for dinner. He set up our camp stove outside and cooked the noodles there to not heat up the kitchen. I think I'm going to use our Instant Pot outside today and make some good beans.

It's crazy y'all. It only cooled off to 69F overnight, so who knows what will happen today. At least our area didn't have one of those very frequent localized power shutoffs, and the CA power grid just barely made it through peak demand. We did have one fire started (not sure how) near one of the state parks near us, but it got handled quickly. Fingers crossed for today. I've got to go water everything...again.

Unpacking Day

Yesterday was all about unpacking from the three days of Super Sew Day, and I pulled out my filled-up scrap collector pouch. I had intended to empty it into the schnibbles bags that the guild fills pet beds with, but they got packed up before I had a chance. To me, schnibbles is a technical term for non-usable scraps, usually the trimmed edges when rotary cutting and other little fabric and thread pieces.

 So into my own pet bed it will go.

Another thing I unpacked was a package from Amazon that included a rainbow assortment of pen refills. I only wanted the violet one, but it wasn't available to buy just on its own, so I "bought the rainbow." I guess my journal is about to get a lot more colorful. 

Also included was a big cone of Bottom Line thread in my favorite disappearing color "silver". I'm curious to see how long 3,000 yards lasts me so I wrote the date on the inside of the cone in Sharpie.

My design wall is no longer empty, I've got the now-quilted and halfway bound Kitchen Sink quilt pinned up there as a to-do reminder. That big white space is no longer taunting me.
 

Super Sew Days

I'm just back home from a three-day Sew-stra-va-gan-za, an extended Sew Day for BAM, and I got so much done! I made myself a little to-do list and got to cross off many things. Best of all I got to hang out with friend Jaye and get to know the guild members I've met online and in the couple meetings I've attended. Such a great group of people, all sorts of interesting projects getting worked on, so it was lovely energy in the room the whole time.

Above is the back I made for the Japanese Houses. I got to use up so much of my sort of vintage Hoffman Asian prints. I also made the quilt binding too, so it will be next up on the to-be quilted list.

I finished off quilting the Kitchen Sink Quilt with a bunch of diagonal lines going off of the star blocks and other angles in the quilt. Very dramatic sunset picture lighting, but I'm very pleased with how the quilting turned out. I also made the binding and half way sewed it on too, so almost a finish.

When I went to pack up to go to the first day, I took my Tutto rolling bag out and there was a crumbled up wheel left behind. I thought one of the new wheels I'd put on had disintegrated while it had been stored. It's been a few years since I used the bag. But all four wheels (which were replacements) were just fine and ready to roll. It was just a momentary panic, but kind of weird. Did I not throw away the old wheel somehow? 
 

Illustrated September

 Here's my design wall on the first of September. Just kidding I don't have a picture, but it's pretty empty because most of the stuff is being worked on over at an extended guild Sew Day.  I have to say it's strange to walk in the room and have this big white expanse. Makes me want to make something! Which is good I suppose.

So here's my Monthly Illustrated List of To-Do's to help me organize my time this month, these are mostly the same as last month, but several projects are in different stages:

1. Photograph and enter my quilts in Quilt National. This entry is due on the 5th. I'm not putting any pictures on here because I'm not sure of the rules as far as sharing images of the quilts.

2. Make a back and binding for the Orange Bullseye and quilt it.

3. Make a back and binding for the Japanese Houses and quilt it.

4. Make a back and binding and label for the Kitchen Sink quilt and finish it.

5. Keep up with making the Pantone Project blocks.

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

7. Start the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt using the EQ8 design.

8. Make the 4 green living room pillows.

9. Make a removable cover for the newer pet bed.

10. Work on printing fabrics for the SAQA Printmakers challenge.

Sublime September

September is usually our hottest month, and this year there's a "heat dome" in the area, aka a heat wave. The meteorologists coming up with new terms like atmospheric river and heat dome just to keep us interested/entertained is funny to me. I'm not that read-in on the subject, so maybe they're new actually new concepts taught in meteorology courses or something? Anyways...enough about the weather. When it's hot hot hot, I tend to spend more time inside, watering the garden early before it's not worth it because the water evaporates so quickly. So hopefully this September I'll get some good work done.

This month's marker photo is the usual mash-up of two photos from the preceding month, edited in Snapseed.

A combination of a zoomed-in section of the completed Orange Bullseye quilt: 

and this ever-so-perfect curl of madrone bark I brought home after a walk with the dog and DH:

The One Second Everyday video made with the 1SE app is here:

And last but certainly not least, here's my list of: What The Heck Did I Actually Do In July???  aka The Monthly I-Did

I arranged the orange bullseye blocks, sewed them all together into a completed top.

I kept making blocks for the Pantone Project (but haven't posted the new ones yet)

I sewed the rows for the Japanese Houses quilt into a completed top.

I completed the quilting for the Kitchen Sink Quilt.

I re-started hand stitching on an older collage quilt.

I finished the quilts I'm submitting to Quilt National but haven't photographed them yet.

I carved a few new cork stamps.

I designed a quilt in EQ8 for the MQG Ruby+Bee challenge.

I kept going on the Secret Lives of Color quilt-a-long (but still haven't posted it here yet).

I steadily added to my Visual Journal aka Ephemera Journal.

I put all the new ICAD pieces into a photo page book.

I blogged here 24/31 days and Instagrammed 7 times.

Not bad for the "dog days" of summer and all.

August Cornucopia

 

Another August is done, here's a cornucopia post full of links to the articles, exhibits, podcasts, etc. that I enjoyed consuming this past month.

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Combining fashion and horticulture, why not? I really like the grassy shoes.

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The annual SAQA benefit auction pieces are up in gallery format with the auction happening in September. We got to curate our own mini dream collections, I did one called "Circle Up" with all circle related quilts.

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An ombre puffy quilt instruction video from Art Gallery Fabrics.

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Traditional wind and rainproof bear gut parka sewn with fascinating waterproofed stitch.

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A bunch of free to use California Native plant garden designs for various situations.

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In Kentucky, teenagers are learning embroidery (and talking feminism, etc.) at the School of Needlework for Disobedient Women.

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Librarians discovering all sorts of ephemera people leave between the pages of books, just fascinating.

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Donate to the 25 Million Stitches gofundme so they can travel the awesome show!

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This time around, Curated Quilts new mini-quilt challenge is paper piecing. Not sure I'll do it, but who knows, maybe you will? The colors to use are quite nice.

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This looks like a very cozy and lovely scarf made out of flannel. If it ever gets cold again, I might like to make one of those, or maybe it would be a good gift.

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Another great idea to use one's Circuit or other automatic cutter to do some surface design on fabric. Inspiring! I've got to try this one.

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Long live the practice of Exquisite Corpse. I know I had fun doing the fiber version of it years ago.

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Podcast consumption report, I enjoyed listening to: Amicus and Strict Scrutiny which both cover the Supreme Court, great explainers for non-lawyers. Scam Likely - a podcast about the scam callers (who have scammed my folks twice!) and how the whole thing works and who these people are, and how they're getting caught.

Kitchen Sink Quilting

Just about one year after finishing the top, the quilting on the Kitchen Sink Quilt has gotten underway, and I have a plan.

I'm doing an overall vertical with a medium gray thread. Not even close to matchstick quilting, about 1/2" apart. 

It's visible but not too terribly visible.

Once all the vertical stitching is done, I'm going to do some angular stitching as well, based on the odd angles of some of the blocks. Likely I will use one of the colors from that block instead of the grey.

I think the additional angles of quilting will add some interest but not be overwhelming.

One Orange Top

One whole top completed, which, as you can see, is all about the Orange. 

The orange bullseye experience is not quite over, as now I am working on a back and binding. 

But that's going to be a project for next month which is in two days, wow, August went by so quickly! 

 I took all these detail photos to show off all the great fabric combinations in the quilt top. 

The colors are still a little off in all these pictures. Other than getting daylight bulbs in my studio room, or setting up my quilt photography setup (not doing all that for just a top, sorry) this is the best I can do for now.

The sort of chaotic design I came up with has ended up emphasizing the squares of the background, which is one of the things I was going for. There may be another bullseye project in the works if we can agree on a color and timing, etc. What a fun and rewarding project to do with friends!

Half A Top

 

Half of the orange bullseye rows are now sewn together. 

Again, I find that I'm having a bit of trouble photographing this well, it's so much browner looking in the picture than to my eye. Probably due to just the lighting. But there are several of the background squares that were definitely on the browner end of the oranges used. I am still considering whether or not this will have a border and if so, what kind.

Paper Sewing

I haven't been doing too much sewing the last few days, but I did sew some paper today. Specifically Rancho Gordo "Bean Club" paper. This is a nice thick printed packing paper that's in our regular shipment of their very awesome beans four times a year.

But what could it be, with just one line of sewing?

It is a cat tunnel of course. She's been playing with the last shipment's piece of paper all this time, I thought I'd up the fun a bit for her.  We shall see how long it lasts...

She's pretty happy about this new paper format. We're calling this the upstairs paper. The other stays flat and remains downstairs. The reason is that she likes to run then belly flop and slide on the wood floor underneath it to "hide". Hard to do that maneuver on carpet.

She's been hiding in it for hours since I sewed it up for her. A good use of my sewing time I'd say.

 

Hands On

 

Here I am, using some waiting in the car time today to stitch on my to-go project as my son gets his wisdom teeth taken out. This is a collage "scene" with a lot of machine stitching and hand-beading. You can see the beads on the right. Note, this is a closeup, not the whole piece.

Just some little chicken scratch stitches with the lovely Spagetti (I agree with you spell-check, very dumb spelling of that product) embroidery thread and a nice big needle.  The fabric on the left is a cotton/linen/hemp woven checkered fabric that I dyed and over-dyed. It's one of my favorite fabrics I've ever worked on. The way the fabric took the dye in layers of color, and how it transformed as it was washed several times, the oils from the hemp really do get released and it ends up with a very soft hand.

Orange Around Here

The Orange Bullseye quilt top is coming together, row by row.

 Five more rows to go, so the end of this stage is definitely in sight, and then it's one last chance to change things and possibly switch up the row order. That would be a new version of playing around with this quilt top design that I haven't tried yet.

Corked Up

Lately, whenever we finish a bottle of something that has a cork, I take it up to my workroom and set it on my table until I feel like it's time to carve a new small stamp. This time, I tried a new kind of cork, one of those faux cork replacements that they're using now. (Note, not because we are literally running out of cork trees or they're endangered, they've just figured out that screw caps preserve wine better so now there's not as much demand for cork. That may lead to cork forests not being managed or replanted in the future though). This new type of material is a very dense plastic, slightly stretchy just enough so that it conforms to the bottle neck. It was very hard to cut. It is not at all absorbent like the real cork and is very smooth almost texture-less. Thus, for my purposes, it does not make a great stamping material, although it does work to transfer an image once you've spent the extra time trying to carve it.

These are my most recent cork carves. All random shapes and odd almost symbols. I either use a stamp pad or use a nice juicy new marker.

It's fun to compare the different doodle shapes that I come up with and use them all together. I haven't tried them on fabric, and might attempt that next with the fabric ink stamp pad I have.

I keep them all in a bin, and am adding to it slowly, as we drink enough wine or other beverages that have suitable corks.