Our Sister's Huts

A completed quilt! "Our Sister's Huts", made for the Sister Artists exhibit for Quilt for Change. 

It measures 23.5"w x 38.5"h and has a whole lot of materials in it. Upholstery fabrics, ikat, denim, cotton-polyester woven jersey, commercial cotton prints, silk brocade, printed mulberry paper, eyelash yarn, paint embellished brocade, my hand-dyes, rayon and polyester thread.

This was one of the quilts on my Finish-a-Long list, so I'm very happy to check that off.

The denim at the bottom is dimensional, I left the seam in and showing so that it juts out of the bottom of the quilt.

Wandering Wednesday: Palo Alto

 I spent Thursday through Saturday in Palo Alto for a mostly CQFA retreat that friend Jaye organized. It had originally been scheduled as a class with Rosalie Dace, but unfortunately she'd encountered Visa problems entering the US and wasn't able to be there. Instead we gathered for an impromptu and unstructured retreat instead, which was fabulous.

This picture was taken of the almost full moon across a parking lot full of lights. I thought it made a nice contrast.

 Antonio's Nut House is still there (with their original sign), after all these years. We didn't go there for dinner, but I took this picture to send to my husband. Way back when we worked at Lockheed in Palo Alto in the mid 80's, this was one of the lunch places we used to go.

 This is the only picture I took in the retreat space, but I thought the shadows and colors of this were very beautiful. Adding to my shadows quilt design folder...

The church activity room we were sewing in was unfortunately un-air-conditioned which was pretty rough going, on the first day, On Friday, it was 92F almost the whole time. Yikes. Let's just say, I was very salty by the end of the day, and at one point I had to switch over to hand-sewing as my machine was getting hot to the touch from being in use in the heat.

The next morning found me at CVS in search of some fans to buy and bring to save us from the heat. At first I only found heaters and I was worried they'd already switched over the seasons, all the Halloween stuff is on display already of course. But then, stuck way on the top of another shelf, there were three fans. I bought two of them and it made it much nicer to sew on Saturday, *only* 83F, which is doable if you have a fan blowing air on you.

Besides all the issues I had with the heat, it was a such a great space to sew in, and I can see why Bay Area Modern likes to meet there for their monthly sew days. We had a lot of room, and it was great to have access to a kitchen. I always forget in-between retreats, but it is wonderful to get know some  people better and to just all be together while we worked on our projects.

I got a whole lot done, and I'll be photographing stuff to show my finishes for my quarter three finish-a-long list.

Rotating Color Collusion

 Here's a better picture of Color Collusion, with all the stitching done. It is hard to see it until you're close up, but you can see the texture which is the effect that I wanted to achieve. This is the direction I chose to be the "right way", but I thought it would be fun to show it all four possibilities. One of the goals with making abstract work is trying to make a piece that works no matter which direction you turn it to display.

Note: The following three pictures are from just rotating the photo around, not turning the piece around and re-photographing it again. So the lighting isn't uniform through all the pictures since I wasn't using my special photo light set-up.

I almost chose to use this direction, but went with the other horizontal.

So, I guess I really do like it in all four directions. To me, that means it's a successful abstract piece.

Another detail picture because I really like this particular section and how it turned out.

Okay, now to figure out how to finish the edges (square up and add facing or??) and get the sleeve stitched on to call this  one done for my finish-a-long list!

Slurpee Squared Stitched

I've gotten the additional hand-stitching done on the squaring up the edge slivers on Slurpee Squared. That means all this piece needs is facings, a hanging sleeve and a label to be able to count it as done for my quarter 3 Finish-a-Long. I am also toying with getting this framed, but I'm not sure I like the idea of glass getting in between the viewer and all that hand-stitching I did. It's just so *touchable*.

I think it blends in pretty well now that it's stitched. And once part of it is pulled around with the facings, it'll be fine.

The fusible really has held up well over all these twelve years of being handled and carried around in my car trip bag. Steam-a-Seam 2 for the win...

Color Collusion Quilting

A rather blurry picture of one of the quilts I'm working on finishing for this quarter's Finish-a-long, Color Collusion. It's made up of scraps of my hand-dyes. And it needed a lot of free-motion quilting. I sat and worked on it at the CQFA-ish retreat yesterday and finished the quilting, woohoo. Here's a bunch of detail shots of the quilting. Haven't taken an overall one yet, but that's next.

Practicing my pebble stitch.

 A good illustration of how hard it is to photograph reds. The first picture is much closer to the real color.

This is probably my favorite of all the quilting I did yesterday. Back to my old standby, spirals and flames.

Really pleased with getting this quilting done. That was a lot of thread color changes, and four bobbins worth of thread to boot!

Our Sister's Huts In Process

I've been working on a quilt for the Quilt for Change, Sister Artists exhibit, the title is "Our Sister's Huts".  This is a photo of the quilt before cutting it to size, or doing much stitching, and the backing is showing.

Then it was on my design wall for a while, not exactly squared up or done, but closer.  I found that I didn't like the relation between the stark off-white background of the embroidery square with the rest of the quilt. I wanted to integrate it, pull it into the design more.

  So I began playing around with some printed papers, sheers and fabric scraps.

I was happier with the design now, the dark pieces relate to the darkness at the bottom of the quilt, the blues and greens pull in the top of the quilt and they enhance the scene the embroiderer was depicting.

Some details of the quilting.

The fragility of the piece of fabric that is framing the embroidered piece is clearer in these photos.

There's still some quilting left to go, but I'm happy with how it is looking.

Two More Shadows

 Two more pictures for my shadow inspiration file.  This one is at our favorite sushi place in Felton, Sushi San.

And this one from my allergist's office.

Here it is in color, to show how much the black/white makes a difference.

Wandering Wednesday: Staying Local

 Right here in our little town, a second mural has been done on the side of the OG grocery store, "Johnnie's Super." I think it's lovely and fresh and bright, and very much an improvement on what was there before. I need to take a photo at different time of day when the shadow isn't there. It shows the logging industry history, natural beauty of our area, and a great Welcome to Boulder Creek like an old-school postcard. They were working on it all summer so it was fun to see it finally get revealed.

 We made a pilgrimage to Penzey's Spices in Menlo Park with my parents and then had a nice lunch at Cafe Barrone and then a quick look through Kepler's Books. Such a nice bookstore, I'm really glad it's still here. That was a lot of walking for me, but it was worth it.

 The sky was really beautiful.

 Wouldn't this be an interesting picture to make a quilt design from.

We went to the Felton Farmer's Market and the Bacon Bus was there. I absolutely cracked up at this sign.

Finished SJSA Block

I finished the embroidery on the Social Justice Sewing Academy  quilt block I've been working on. I'm very pleased with how it turned out. Such a powerful and challenging piece, isn't it?

I listened to a few podcasts as I stitched that had to do with this very subject. I highly recommend both of them:

Bundyville season 2 (It's also a long-form written story)

White Lies an NPR podcast about the 1965 murder of Rev. James Reeb in Selma Alabama

 There was some paper and glue right there under the WH in WHITE that I thought looked strange and visually took away from the message. These fabric letters are glued down with fabric glue and it stays wet for a while, so I'm guessing it picked up the paper inadvertently. So I took it out, and I really hope that's okay.

 Some close up pictures of the stitching.

This is how you see it as you're stitching, close up and personal.

 I thought the back was very stark and interesting looking.

 So I'm not the best at keeping it neat and tidy on the back of a piece, no surprise there, but I don't think it affects the functionality of the quilt block.

Looks like a strange alphabet.

September Partway Through

Can you believe we're a little more than a week into September already?
I haven't been posting much lately, but I have been back at it sewing again, now that my knee is rehabbed enough for me to be able to:

1. Push the pedal down on my sewing machine
2. Get up and down from my chair
3. Stand at the ironing board

It took a little while to get there, but it's the little things, right?

It was well worth having the surgery, because it's a lot less painful now, but I'll still need to deal with the whole arthritis thing in both knees going forward. Unfortunately the only thing that'll fix that is a knee replacement and I'm too young for that (for now...). But they are doing all these new things with artificial cartilage, etc. that are super interesting, so maybe that'll be an option for me soon.