Trinket Supplies

As I posted about previously, I"m doing the Trinket Sew A Long in April, and I needed a little more variety in the Alison Glass fabrics I was going to be using. There were several curated bundles on offer from various quilt shops and I ended up buying the 32 piece fat 1/8th bundle from Pink Door Fabrics. 

I'm very pleased with the variety of prints in the bundle. 

There are selections from several of Alison Glass's collections which are all so different from each other when you look more closely at them. I didn't realize she had a fabric design called Trinket which has the little symbols we'll be piecing. I guess I'm not a very thorough Alison Glass fangirl.

But they all use very similar colors so they all play very well together.

I also ordered some of the SunPrints range along with some solids from SF Bay Quilts.

The two peppered cottons are in Cheddar and Green Tea, and the FQ on the right was a freebie that they throw in. (Isn't that a nice touch?!)

This is the random palette I was assigned for a mini quilt that's due in early April for SBAMQG, they're all Kona colors, but I don't have to use all of them in the quilt. The color names are yummy aren't they?: Geranium, Lipstick, Gumdrop, Turquoise, Deep Blue. I like these colors and think I will make it a size and shape that will fit well on my dining table and use it as a table runner.

Here's how the SF Bay Quilts and the Pink Door fabrics stack up together, I really think it's gonna work for the Trinket quilt! I still need to decide on which version I'm doing and thus which and how much of a background fabric I'll need though. 

But, I can't start in on anything yet because I need to wash it all, and we're on day 6 of no hot water, sigh. Our hot water heater went kaput and is getting replaced on Wednesday. Guess what I'll be washing first (after myself of course)?
 

Magnolia Sunday

We're having a super bloom on the small magnolia tree I planted years and years ago.

The entire tree is absolutely covered in blooms. Normally there aren't so many so it's very striking.

I love how the blooms come first and then the leaves follow afterwards.

They really are extraordinary trees.

This tree hasn't been struggling exactly, but it has been a bit more shaded than it probably should have been as we allowed an enormous butterfly bush to take over the nearby airspace. A lot of that plant has been taken out now, so maybe the magnolia will expand.

I'm really glad that I planted this magnolia, it looks so pretty against the darkness of the redwood grove behind, and the neon green of the new growth on the buckeye to the right.

And a bonus Alex + Meg shot from yesterday at parent's house. We were helping cut up and move a big sycamore branch that had fallen down in the storms. Their fence was being repaired as well, because part of it was blown down in the storm, along with three other homes in the neighborhood. They just hired the dudes that were working on the other fences. 

Eyes Have It

 

Over the last couple of days, I got the fussy-cut Rock Candy table topper all sewn together and quilted. Mostly because I really want to put the blocks for the Slopes quilt up on my design wall. Here's how it looked when I got started.

The six triangles being assembled. I love how easily this goes together, having those diamond and triangle corners notched off really helps me.

The two halves are all ready to go together. I reminded myself how to sew this bit as it's the hardest part to get right by re-watching the very helpful video that JayBird Quilts put out.

Tah-dah! After playing around with this for so long, I'm so happy that it's all sewn together, woohoo! My eye-centric version, of course I'm calling it "Eyes Have It".

I added the borders and got to quilting and am putting on the binding right now. I went with just outline quilting as it's so busy anything fancy would be lost in the happy color chaos.

Clover Quilted

I pushed on and got the curved line quilting done. As you can see I jettisoned my four corners idea and just went with one all over curve. It would have been too much quilting and I want this quilted pillow-top to be soft not stiff with stitches.

It got a little shaky in the upper corner, but I'm not going for perfection here, obviously.

Those atomic star looking shapes aren't highlighted but they're still quite prominent to my eye.

I like the juxtaposition of the straight lines and the curves, especially when they meet up so well like this.

So now onto piecing the back where I'll be using the HST's that I contemplated using in the borders somehow. And I'm thinking that will also be quilted so that the front and back match up in structural quality to not screw up the zipper.

Clover Curves

 

I've now gotten a bit more quilting done on the Clover quilted pillow top. I've finished with the lines along the four sides of each block's center square, and I've also gone around the interior edge of each flower. Those are of course sort of curves, but somehow they're not very visible Instead it's a lot of straight lines that are really showing up. So, now I'm adding even more curves that count. Starting in one corner I'm doing some widely spaced echoed curve lines. 

I like the look of those curves and will probably do the whole piece like this, with possibly stopping the curved lines once they reach the center. And then starting another set of curves coming from the other four corners. I'm using my walking foot with the little quilting guide bar snapped onto it. It's working pretty well so far.

Wandering Wednesday - Visions & Liberty Station

 

My annual trip to Visions Museum of Textile Art in Liberty Station was really fun. I took a Lyft over which is always an unusual experience for me.

This whole Liberty Station thing is such a terrific re-use of a former military base. It's a really lovely place to stroll around, wide tree-lined streets, sidewalks, etc. And it's fun to see how the original buildings are creatively put to another use. Like the Visions museum.

I love this bench, and sat on it as instructed. I won't share the photos I took inside, but I do want to point you towards one of the three exhibits, Topaz Collages. It's really worth reading about and taking a look at the images on the website. I was very moved by the subject and have been thinking about the beautiful combination of collage and stitch and how it was presented. 

I again stopped in an Apricot Yarn & Supply, did I buy yarn? Yes, yes I did. Do I knit or crochet? No, I don't, but I love this shop. It has such a nice vibe, lovely selection of yarn, and helpful owners. At some point I do want to knit and/or crochet. I guess I'm an aspirational knitter or crocheter at this point.

Then it was time for lunch, which was a short stroll away is Liberty Public Market, it's kind of like a food court, but with really good indie restaurants instead of chains. It was a former barracks, for the Naval Training Camp.

It's bright and airy and open feeling even with all the shops.

I got to sit outside in the sun and enjoy my falafel salad. And tried my best to ignore the airplanes taking off right overhead. That's the only drawback for this place, it's located right next door to the airport and is right in the flight path.

You Are Exactly Where You Need To Be, indeed.

This was one of the walkways into a bakery, I'm not sure what "The Ship's Bell" means on land like this, but it's rather cute. I'm glad they left the tile mosaic in place.

This sort of nightmarish lit-up Easter bunny was seen in one of the many vendor stalls in the Sea Hive Station,  which is formerly the naval base PX, so it's the size of a large grocery store. It's full of vintage and maker vendor stalls, each so different from the next.

Clover Quilting

Thankfully I got a jump on ironing a backing fabric for the Clover Pillow right before the power went out (again) . Then I steam ironed it really well, thinking it was a fusible batting, nope. Out came the bucket o' safety pins and I was ready for stitching. I used a Hera marker to mark some diagonals.

The walking foot cah-chunked away. I always have to get used to the sound of it all over again. So ratchety.

Here's how it is looking after a few diagonals and all the other big seam lines stitched down.

I've got to think on how to accentuate these star-ish shapes between blocks, because that's my favorite part. They remind me a bit of those atomic mid-century star shapes.

I started out with the orange thread first, but I may add in some other colors.

Maybe some curving lines to highlight those stars? We'll see.
 

Framed Clover

 I decided that a 2 1/4" border frame would work out pretty well for my quilted pillow purposes. So I took the leftovers and sewed together the pieces I had left in the colors used in the blocks. I briefly considered adding something else to the mix but discarded it. There's enough color intensity going on as it is.

So here's how it looks with the four sides with the border added. I tried to not line up the joins between the colors with the seams between the blocks and succeeded except for in one spot. It was all a very random series of color placement and sizes of the leftover pieces. I mainly didn't want too much matching going on. I like it, and it will be mostly not too visible as the edge of the pillow curves over and around. Now on to the quilting!

Clover Together

 

Finally time to sew the Clover blocks together, I need to get this one moved off the design wall. The blocks fit together very easily.

Here it is all sewn together. I really like the stars where the blocks meet.

So, my idea is to quilt this thing before making it into a pillow, but I'm feeling like I want a border of some kind so that the edges of the blocks aren't in the main pillow seams. Also in the right hand corner, there's a little HST fun with the leftovers, I have many of these, so they may end up on the back? Or in the border? Not sure yet. 

Watercolor Travels

 

One of my outings in San Diego was a rather long walk to Dick Block Art Supply in Little Italy. They've got everything in this place, just like online, but you get to see it and hold it in your hand before buying it. I bought a new to me type of bendable color pencil from Derwent, their new Chromaflow line. I was just going to buy some more watercolor pencils, but I reminded myself I have plenty of those already so I really wanted something different.  This review was the reason. 

The four mile walk was lovely, but definitely a bit too long and I'm still dealing with a bad blister on my foot, but that was because I was wearing new tennis shoes (d'oh!).

The new sketch pen in grey from Windsor Newton worked really well, even on the toothy watercolor paper. I sketched the view looking out our hotel window.

The new watercolor brush worked very nicely, it had a smaller brush tip than the one I usually work with, but that was fine with the smaller images I working on. I tend to use watercolor pencil the most, so I had to remember how to work with the pan colors.

I've had this little travel watercolor set for ages, and I'd forgotten that it has a sort of secret picture of Van Gogh that's only visible at the right angle or in the right light (like this!).

The next view I sketched was this one.

I like how it turned out. The reflective surface of the hotel was quite striking at some times of day, capturing the blue of the sky vs. the blue of the water. 

Here it is, trying to approximate the viewing angle from where I was sitting.

I wish I'd felt up to sketching out in public this trip, maybe next time I will, but at least I had this nice view to work with from the comfort of the hotel room.