Encyclopedia Brown

 

I've almost bought the combination of BlockBase software and the third edition of  Barbara Brackman's Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns from Electric Quilt so many times. Those email advertisements get to me eventually.  They had a big sale on the duo, so I went for it, downloaded the software and it's really great. Very much like EQ8 as far as the look and feel of it. So many blocks in there, 4,000+! 

My book arrived this week and wow is it ever heavy. It's basically all full-color images and printed on that heavier paper, very dense. It's not a hard cover, and was not very well packed for being such a heavy book as one of the corners of my copy is really smashed. Bummer for the price of this thing.

It might smooth out a bit once it's on the bookshelf. 

Hey! Electric Quilt, you need to put some corner protectors on this book when you ship it! Even those cardboard corner thingies would have worked.

A short overview, this isn't at all a how-to book, it's more of a reference tome, really truly a capital E Encyclopedia. A visual history of the evolution of quilt blocks. It's very fun to look at how and see how Brackman organizes all the blocks. I enjooyed watching this video of Brackman describing the why and the how of her long-term endeavor that resulted in the Encyclopedia.

Now to figure out how to hook up Block Base to my EQ8, so I can get designing.

Another Five

 

While I had the Pantone Project stuff out on my worktable, I made the the remaining five blocks that I'd pulled fabric matches for previously this month.

I like this picture because it really shows how the white on white background makes such interesting shapes together.

Hot Stuff

Birthday lunch with friend Jaye of course involved some shopping, I only bought two things which was rather amazing to me. Maybe I finally have Enough? Don't laugh, it could maybe possibly happen at some point. 

One was a new project that is very new to me, and something I need in my kitchen. The Hot Stuff Everyday Mitt, which involves a heat-resistant silicone oven mitt and a pattern for adding fabric to it. I bought the clear version, so that you have a fabric design showing through in the mitt as well as on the cuff. It also comes in red (pictured) and green.

This fabric has a really lovely hand, Color Wheel by Annabel Wrigley for Windham Fabrics. There's a green/blue/yellow/brown version of this design as well which is pretty too.

The reason I chose this particular fabric was to pair it with the solids that I bought for the Hot Hot Hot quilt idea I'm working on to utilize the Pantone color of the year, Viva Magenta. This would likely end up being a border, binding or maybe sashing of some kind, definitely a candidate for the backing.
 

Six At Once

 

I worked on making some more Pantone Project blocks because I wanted to give them to Friend Jaye in person. Six of them got done. I arranged them here with the corresponding postcard adjacent. Stepping back from them up on the wall, I think I did a pretty good job with the color matching exercise. I paper pieced most of these which helped with the ease of making them.

And then I tried another arrangement. These are really fun to play around with and I continue to be glad that we're doing this long-term project. 

Four-Leafed

 

Here are all four of the Clover blocks that I've completed so far. It took a while, but they have finally been fully assembled and ironed.  I really like how they look, very graphic and punchy especially with these colors. I intentionally worked with just four of the color provided in the fabric bundle of solids. It's interesting to see how the different combinations work out visually.

I think I'm going to stop here and not make an entire quilt full of the blocks. I decided I'd just make them into an enormous pillow, which would be about 30x30" as the blocks themselves are 15"x15".

I asked my DH what he thought about this idea and he liked the thought of having a big pillow. He also said and I quote: "I can't imagine an entire quilt made out of them. It would be So Much." I found myself in agreement, and also if I'm brutally honest with myself here, I'm just not into the idea of paper piecing an entire quilt's worth of these blocks. My feeling on paper piecing is that it should be reserved for shapes more intricate and harder to achieve with regular ol' piecing. The juice is not worth the squeeze here (for me at least!). 

So, on to the next project in the Color Collective which is entirely made up of half-rectangles...excited to work out how to do them accurately.

Bag O' Goodies

All kinds of goodies were inside the wonderful bag I showed you yesterday, as seen above in this group photo. What a generous gift from friend Jaye. First is a very cute pair of socks that actually fit pretty well, a new to me tarot deck that has lovely illustrations. True Grips to make my rulers less slippery, Bohin chalk marker, pins, lighted needle threader, scissorFobz to protect the tips of scissors in bags.

A very lovely smudge stick, sage and wildflowers, which I will use on a nice day when I can open windows and doors.

A new to me sort of pen, Lamy, the barrel is a nice size for my hand, it writes super smooth and easy.  I really love the big clip on the lid and the intense color.

A SumoGrip eraser, it goes with my favorite mechanical pencil as seen above. That bigger barrel size really works well for me, and wow does this eraser work really well. I like the unique plunger style too.

And finally, two really cool enamel pins by The Gray Muse, very inspirational!

Fabulous Bags

This year for Christmas friend Jaye made me two amazing new bags, first is this one which is called Take A Stand.  The pattern is by By Annie.  I'm definitely going to use this one when I travel, such a great size.

Here's the inside, with lots of space.

Look at this awesome colored pencil fabric Jaye used. I love those mesh pockets, things don't disappear when you use them.

The zippered exterior pockets have the pencil fabric too.

I really love the end of the bag, everything is so perfectly matched up. The zipper opens all the way which means you can utilize all of the interior space. The buckles and mesh webbing are great colors that suit the fabrics. So cheery!

The second bag is a super useful zip up flat project bag with a clear vinyl front. Jaye has made several of these, using the By Annie pattern.

This is the back, I love that purple ammonite fabric and the black/white stripe binding.

Here's what it looks like with something inside, which makes it a little easier to see!

Both of these gifts are so great, I love having a friend that is practically a professional at this point at bag making.
 

Situation Update

 

We're back to Situation Mostly Normal now. The three weeks solid of rain have finally taken a break. It was gloriously sunny out yesterday. We're cleaning up from the garage flood, which is a lot of bleah work I won't bore you with, but the drier days will help out. The slide on our road hasn't budged, and the trees have gotten trimmed back from the power lines in more than a few places.

Our power finally got restored on Sunday night, so we ran around and did chores like laundry, running the dishwasher, and vacuuming with All Of The Lights On. One of the very rare occasions I was happy to do chores. We also got to turn the lights on our tree back on. 

It was a long nearly two weeks (12 days) of no power, which meant we didn't plug in the tree. It made me sad to have it sitting there all decorated but dark.

It's really really nice to have our tree lit up again. Thankfully, it's still very green even with the use of the wood stove keeping us warm during the power outage so it can stay up a little while longer. 

The Situation

 

So here's a pictorial adventure of our Situation. Over December (19")and January to date (17") we have had a total 36" of rain, That's too much for most mountainside communities. That's a normal amount for an entire rain year. For us personally, all that rain has meant that on our road we have a mudslide.

This is how it looked after our neighbor with a tractor and front scooper cleaned up the slide including downed dead trees. We are lucky that it only partially blocked our small road. And that he had to get to work.

Some organisms are quite happy with all the excess moisture.

There are mushrooms all over the place.

I don't know the names of these, just admiring them from afar, and certainly not foraging and taking the risk of eating them.

Further up the road, we come to the main issue, the reason we've been out of power continuously since 1/4. Trees came down and hit the power lines, snapping them off the power pole. Small dog for scale.

This is on the other side of the crossed trees over the road. You can see the power line coming down diagonally toward the pavement.

The line is being pulled out of the road by the red caution tape so that one car can just pass by.

You can see a small red diagonal line, that's the red caution tape holding back the power line. We've been assured that it's not live, but you never know, especially when they're working on getting the power back on.

The rest of the mountain we live on has had their power restored, but we have not. I guess because it affects so few people on our small road we got prioritized down lower on the list. Understandable, but still very frustrating. We're lucky to have the Powerwalls and a great generator (and lots of extension cords), but it's getting very very old. And still the rain keeps coming.

Iron Generation

 I finally got to try out some ironing powered by the generator. My DH asked me to tell him when I turned on the iron, he wanted to see how much it would affect the generator we have powering the house. It really dipped down to accommodate the sudden surge, then evened out, every time the iron needed to re-heat itself, another surge, but it held up and didn't poop out on us. Irons really take a lot of power. We don't usually think about it, except maybe at retreats when a bunch of irons and machines are plugged in and breakers are tripped.

I finished sewing another Clover block and now there were 3 that needed pressing so that I can sew them together for 4 finished blocks.

I finally got to try out my new wool pressing mat (Oliso Felt Pro-Press Link) and it worked really well. Here's the before, a big wrinkly mess that I didn't want to try sewing together with the other 3/4 blocks.

Nice and flat! And not wet wool smelling at all (phew).

Here they all are, nice and ironed, but only one of the Clover blocks is sewn together so far.

As seen from the side angle. That's the "please photograph me" pile of quilts in the center. And my studio assistant on the red fabric.

Nicely ironed fabric is of course, a great place to take a bath.

Another Bundle

 

I received the 3rd bundle of Color Collective fabric this week, and I love love love this color selection. So lovely and vibrant, especially with those two on the bottom, the brown "Roasted Pecan" and the weird yellow "Grellow". I also apparently love the grape Hi-Chew that was so nicely included.

 I'm unfortunately not able to wash them as our power is Still Out (9 days now!) so I can't even contemplate trying out the new pattern suggested. Also, there's the issue is that I haven't even finished the first or the second one. Not that I have to do them in order or whatever. But I'm just finishing my fourth block for the Clover quilt. They take a while, that's paper piecing though. The new pattern is a curvy one, so I'm honestly not as excited about it as I still kinda suck at doing curves consistently.

Feeling a bit like I'm drowning in solids lately, my next project will have to have lots of prints or something.

Wrinkles In Flood

Storm Report Update: Power was finally back on last night at 7pm, so we ran around and did 2 loads of laundry, ran the dishwasher, etc. Then it went back out at midnight, so we're back on the generator. There were than four inches of rain over night so it's flooding all over here, and we're sort of cut off from driving due to trees down and mud slides. 

So I'm hunkering down, staying inside and sewing Pantone Project blocks and trying not to be too disaster-maven-ish. They're coming out a little wrinkly as you can see as I'm not using the iron, only the seam roller. The sewing machine doesn't take nearly as much power to run. 

How funny, out my second story window, I just saw our neighbor from down at the end of our street drive by with his tractor with the scooper on front to clear the mudslide partially blocking our road. Pretty handy to have a dude with that equipment around.

Color Choices

Storm report: Power is still out, Internet was out and is back on, still have cell service. We got another 2.25" of rain yesterday. More to come today and a lot more expected on Monday. 

Instead of sewing, I decided to choose fabrics for the backlog of Pantone Project postcards that I've received from friend Jaye. As you can see it's a nice selection of colors to work with.

This red plum was fairly easy to match up, I had a lot of plums-y colors to choose from.

This one took a while, sorting out the different grays (brownish, purplish, bluish, etc.) and then choosing.

This is not a great picture of the card, it's showing up as rather dark. I didn't have my usual studio overhead light, only my table light.

This is a nice green isn't it? Kind of soft.

This is definitely not the color of a mimosa that you can drink, but it's a nice in-between mustard and cheddar yellow.

I almost chose that top fabric which was Grunge, but it had too much green overcast to it.

I thought I was just about done, but then my DH came home with the mail and there were two more cards. My studio walls are fairly close to these colors.

The orange was fairly easy to match up.

Here's the whole eleven color family ready to get worked with and made into blocks.