Three Pantone Blocks

 

I was thinking I'd be going to the BAM meeting today, so I wanted to make the Pantone Project blocks that I've received postcards for lately. Unfortunately the weather has knocked me out once again and I'm not up to driving there. I hate being so reactive to weather changes, but it is what is. I'm glad the meeting was a hybrid one that I can still participate a bit. 

So that meant that these three blocks are done and instead of getting to hand them off in person, I'll be sending them off to Jaye so she gets a nice squishy envelope surprise sometime next week.

I've now made 3 of each of the 27 blocks (wow, that's 81!)  from  Doreen Speckmann's book, Pattern Play.we're working with, so I'm going back around another time making my favorites for the last nineteen. That's wild that we're finally winding this project up. That's if I get my postcards sent of course, I'm a bit behind on that.

Two X's Question

The first design for getting some quilting done on the houses I came up with was to do two X's one for the "window" and one for the door, with the bottom of the door and the top of the two sides of the houses. It isn't quite enough stitching.

It's almost enough given all the free motion quilting around the house, as well as the horizontal line of walking foot quilting between the rows of houses.

But when there's no sky space between the houses, there's a hand's width of non-quilted space.

That's too big of a gap, I think. Also, I don't really look how floppy the sides and roofs of the houses look in comparison. But I don't want to do more free motion quilting and get really dense with it, this is a bed quilt after all and it needs to be soft and flexible. 

I bet if I washed and dried this quilt I wouldn't feel that way, most of this fabric is not pre-washed so it's going to shrink up at least somewhat. What would happen if I tried that and then re-evaluated the need for more quilting beyond the two X's? I don't think I've ever tried quilting then washed and dried and then went back to do more quilting. It seems kind of risky and I've spent a whole lot of time on this one already. Seems like I'm talking myself out of it, doesn't it?
 

A Drawing Board Of Sorts

 

Today in unnecessary products. Dry-erase index cards. I honestly have no idea why these were in my Amazon cart, I heard something somewhere or read it, and I ordered some out of curiosity. I think I need to start keeping better track of this as a lot of times I leave things in my cart for a month. Anyways, they showed up and I am stumped and intrigued just by the idea--much less the reality of this odd product. I truly do not understand the purpose of these things. They smudge, just like a dry erase board does. They never dry so these are not portable or for long-term or important use. Temporary use only.

I kind of like the colors,  the pens included with built in erasers are quite handy. But again, what are these for? Thinking of all the things I've used index cards (or dry erase boards) for over the years, mostly as homemade flashcards to study, for ICAD (index card a day), for making lists and keeping track, for labels in clear plastic boxes. None of those things would be accomplished by using this product. You can't write on them and then stack them up and carry the stack around in your backpack (and surely kids are using apps now for flashcard kind of memorization). Just a weird thing. 

I came up with two quilt related ideas, block designs, and to practice quilting designs.Of course you can do this on actual paper index cards, or scrap paper or whatever else just as well.

I sat down to try and figure out how to quilt inside the houses on my Village/Japanese Houses quilt. and I ended up drawing and erasing several times an idea for anchoring down the houses that have only been quilted around. It was fairly easy to prop it up next to my sewing machine as I tried out the final idea to refer to. And it helped to practice the directions of the lines a few times. Could I have just as easily done this on paper? Yes.

 Back to the drawing board though, as it's still not quite enough stitching for the houses that are right next to each other with no sky in-between. Guess I can erase and try again on the card.

Dragon Assembled

 

All the pieces of the dragon were ready to sew together.

And tah-dah, there she is! This is the biggest paper pieced thing I've ever made and it turned out pretty well.

The messy back with all the paper to remove.

As I'd printed the paper foundation papers out on the special newsprint paper, I thought using the water pens woul

At first it seemed pretty helpful.

But then it was too much water all at once and the paper kind of went blah all over the place. Probably would work better if it had been used on regular printer paper. 

A final kind of still damp picture of Sylva.

I really like how the teeth turned out.

The back is very cool looking without the paper.

Now to figure out what to put her on and quilt her. Maybe a tote bag or something?

Assemble the Dragon

 I've gotten all the pieces of my paper-pieced dragon done, that took a whole lot of sewing time today.

I didn't use all of the fabrics I selected, but I used most of them. I'm not sure about some of the choices I made, but I'm not doing any un-sewing at this point. Calling it good enough.  The gold circles on the teeth are a particular triumph, it took some doing to get those exactly in place.

Now to sew the pieces together.

Happy Lunar New Year!

About this image
Dragon paper-cut
From Paper-cuts of Yangzhou, China 中國揚州剪紙. Gift of Ann Tompkins and Lincoln Cushing to the C.V.Starr East Asian Library & Chang-Lin Teen Center for East Asian Studies at U.C. Berkeley This is the Year of the Wood Dragon, that's me, I'm a wood dragon. And if you were born in a year ending in 4 or 5 then you are too. That means it's really our year!

Happy Lunar New Year! It's the year of the dragon, the wood dragon in particular. And I just happen to be one. You are also a wood dragon if you were born in 1964 or early 1965. 

Since it seems to line up with "being My Year", I decided to commemorate it with making myself a dragon from a paper pieced pattern from Happy Sew Lucky. I really love her patterns, they always turn out so well.

 

I picked out a selection of fabrics 

and mapped them out to all of the many many pieces on the helpful chart provided with the pattern. 

I got out my paper piecing set of tools, my small cutting mat that can fit right next to my machine, a smaller rotary cutter than I usually use, a shortl add-a-quarter ruler, a regular square ruler and a seam roller. And the first section (the eye!)  is done, just like that.

Am I turning into someone who likes paper piecing now? Maybe...it could be turning out that way after sewing all those paper pieced blocks (and minis) for the Trinket quilt. But ask me when I'm done with this project.

Edges Out

 After a whole lot of machine embroidery stitches, I called this Project Quilting 15.3 entry done for the prompt "Inside Out". And I titled it "Edges Out."

I was thrilled to discover that if I did one of the embroidery stitches in one direction and then in the opposite direction it created this cool interlocking circle design. 

Yes, I used the embroidered circle stitch on each of the plaid intersections.

Edges are definitely out, they are fluffy, they are stringy, they are full of texture. This is one of those pieces that feels really really nice to my fingers.

Fringing And Raveling

 I began work on my piece for Project Quilting 15.3, the theme of which is "Inside-Out". This is where I left off last night. I'm shooting for something about the same size of the previous two 8.5"x11"pieces, for Sky Color and Nest. That size was dictated by the use of a digital sketch printed out on fabric.

 The theme of Inside Out made me think of ravell-y raw edges. Which of course led to me going to the extreme of ravell-y goodness causing me to pull out my bin of smallish squares of silk and linens from FabMo. These are always so fun to work with as they act so much differently than plain ol' quilter's cotton.

I began stitching some of these pieces together with a kind of loopy machine embroidery stitch, with wrong sides together. I made sure to leave a lot of seam allowance and then spent a lot of time picking the threads to get it fringing and raveling right down to the line of stitching.

I'm using two different color threads in the top and the bottom for a little bit more color among the neutral fabrics.

This neat and tidy side is showing the wrong side for this piece as made so far. Although in any other context it'd likely be the "right" side. It's still somewhat interesting because of the different fabrics, the checks vs. stripes, but not nearly as much texture.  This piece is due to be posted by 8am tomorrow so I'll be hopefully finishing it off today.

5-4-5-7 Finished!

After much hand sewing accomplished both by spotlight and regular light, my quilt for the Stretching Art & Tradition exhibit is now done and on its way to the coordinator. I'm so pleased with how this one turned out. You'll be able to see this exhibit at several of the Mancuso Bros. shows this year:

SAT24 Shows -

• Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival - Thursday, February 29 – Sunday, March 3, 2024
• QuiltFest Greenville, SC – Thursday, April 18 – Saturday, April 20, 2024
• Pacific International Quilt Festival – Wednesday, July 24 – Saturday, July 27, 2024
• Pennsylvania National Quilt Extravaganza – Thursday, September 19 – Sunday, September 22, 2024

The title is 5-4-5-7, which is my shorthand for: 

5 gray fabrics in the background - 

4 lines in the machine embroidered # - 

5 hand stitches in a row - 

7 different green circles filled with grey embellished centers

The theme of this year's exhibit is Rhythm, so here's my artist's statement: There's a rhythm to my day, time that is spent consciously creating or goofing off and playing. All of it filling the work day in my work room. All of the regular ups and downs adding up to creating something new.

I like the look of this grey fleece with the freehand quilted design.

Most of these centers turned out to be quite different one from the other.

Some were more calm and restful like this just plain suede one.

Others were complex and interesting but still kind of calm.

Then there were the very layered complex ones. That's what I was trying to get at in my artist's statement. The rhythm of my days are compartmentalized into really distinctly different types of my work. They're all similar colors and shapes, but the sizes are very different. Most importantly no matter how difficult or challenging they are, they're still part of my whole day.

I really like this overlapping circles quilting that I did on this section. Reminder to self: do that again. Putting this in the "quilt motifs to repeat" category.
 

Just Peachy

 

I think I’ve found a Pantone color match. The non-tan underside of my arm is really close to 9241. Peachy-beige is what I’d call it.

Whisper Pink that I just received in the mail from friend Jaye,  seen in context with some other nearby colors. Not so very pink at all. I suppose the Pantone Project is going to just have some boring bits, but that’ll just highlight the colors that are a little more exciting.

And hooray, the power and internet and cell service have returned. Nice to re-join the 21st century once again 🥳

Stitching by Spotlight

 

Hand stitching down the facings on my SAT 24 quilt. And using WonderClips to hopefully clamp the corner edge.

No power still, and now no internet 🛜 🥸sigh. I’m posting on one bar of cellular so hopefully 🤞 this works. 

It’s going pretty well, I’m using my around the neck lights. DS saw me and started laughing,,he said I looked like a submersible!

Kaleidoscope Outside

 

Power is still out, so instead of sewing, I'm fooling around with apps on my phone, like KaleidaCam using some pictures I took outside during a dry-ish spell.

DS says this looks a lace tablecloth.

It's the underside of a Turkey Tail shelf fungus.

Here's the right side, love those turkey stripes.

Another picture from right outside my front door.

Ah, it's a big banana slug on our woodpile. Guess it got tired of being in the wet redwoods.

The latest from PG&E was an unwelcome update, our power will no longer be restored tonight at 10, but instead Thursday night at 10pm. We will live in hope I guess. Our Powerwall got us through 2 whole days, but it wasn't getting recharged due to all the cloud cover. After half a day, I'm already tired of the generator noise. Tomorrow I can sew because we'll have it going, so there's that to look forward to.