House to House

Again with the "help" from my studio assistant, inspecting my row joining skills.

Now to add on the sky colored borders. Hopefully I had cut enough 2.5" pieces back when I started this whole project, they've been pinned up on the design wall all that time, hanging down. I'll find out soon. Looking at it all put together like this, I'm pretty happy with how the background sky colors changing worked out.

Lucky Place and Pegasus house.

An anime girl fighter.

A green-faced demon in a house of Alice in Wonderland with a sushi chef roof.

You Are A Glutton! in the house of Math symbols.

A slightly off Cheshire Cat, not exactly the Disney-fied version.

 

132 + 2

Here's how the Japanese Houses quilt is looking, all 11 rows of 12 houses are done, all 132 of them. Now to sew the rows together and put the borders on. I'm pleased with the distribution of colors in the houses. It's gloriously random, but still looks a bit intentional. Is that my "Personal Quilt Style"™? Yes, I think it might be.

I have to say that I am quite thoroughly sick of making houses at this point, so I'm very glad that part of this quilt is done with.

The + 2 in the post title refers to the two lonely houses on the left of the first picture. Here they are in close-up. Somehow I made two extra! I think I'll add them into the back. Maybe I can throw them in there along with some of the scraps, triangles, etc. leftover from making the houses.

Final Cards for ICAD22

This is it, the final 8 cards I made for ICAD (Index Card A Day) for 2022. Again, I'm very glad to have done this for several years now. ( 2017, 2019, 2020, 2021)  It's very worthwhile to me and I find it quite fun to go back and flip through the years worth of cards. 

This first one was a sort of test, and it reminds me of one of those test screens on old TV's. I made lines with all of the black, white or grey, all of them, pens pencils & markers. I think this would be a fabulous fabric and might just get some made via Spoonflower.

This one has a lot of depth to my eye.

I've had a disturbing forest fire magazine photo in my workbox for a while, and I finally ripped it up to use it. Somehow, interrupting the flow of the image, using it as blobs of color, greatly lessens my fear of the flames.

Blue skies after fire. They really do happen. 

Once I get on a circle thing, it continues for several days. I love the look of imperfect circles.

The purple/yellow combination remains a favorite.

A muted rainbow of sorts.

A very simple collage using a magazine photo I've had in my workbox for ages. I've watched a couple movies lately that were set in the UAE and featured enormous sandstorms, that's the looks I was going for.

Cutting Up Orange

It took a while to trim and cut up all 48 of my completed Orange Bullseye blocks so I did it in chunks instead of all at once. This is how it looked when I started with one block trimmed to 10" and cut into 4 quarters.

My accuracy in trimming and cutting had to pass a very rigorous inspection, phew.

And then voila, all cut up and ready to send out.

The two stacks on the left are the two quarters I kept from my blocks, and the stack on the lower right is the  block of quarters I received from friend Jaye. Once I get the other quarter from friend Adrienne, I'll start playing around with them on my design wall. I can't wait. We started this project back in April, and I can't believe that we're already at this stage, woohoo!
 

Eight More ICAD

I've finished ICAD for the year, but I skipped a posting, so there'll be one more coming.

I had to buy some new 4x6" index cards to finish up and the surface of the paper is quite different. It's taken a bit to figure out how to handle it.

There really are some pens I like the look of more than others.

Still working on picturing depth.

This one is very gesture-y. That feeling in your body when you're handling the pen just right.

Competing whirlpools I guess.

More depth attempts.

No No no no all over. Hiding one's disagreement can be exhausting, but sometimes necessary.
 

Wandering Wednesday - Emerald Bay

 

Back to Emerald Bay we went, this time with my sister-in-law's family and her husband's sister and 7 year old visiting from Israel. It was fun vacationing with a kiddo once again, it really changes things up in a good way.

It was pretty smoky from the fire that was to the south down near Yosemite and there was a lot of cloud cover. The bay was not so very emerald looking.

This sight made me stop in my tracks, we had to go feel it ourselves to make sure we weren't making it up. I'm guessing the center of the tree burned out, and the zillions of tourists were going into the space and harming the tree. But who knows, maybe there's a body in there?

It actually rained on us for like two seconds. We sat here to eat our ice cream bars and watched a mama duck and 7 really teeny babies swimming around.

Always fun to see the sod roofs on Vikingsholm.

Some really pretty wildflowers in the wet spots of the trail, like these Crimson Columbine.

A pretty cool quote on a bench.

These are called Ranger's Button.

There were a lot of small boats anchored in Emerald Bay. A lot of our group rented kayaks to paddle around the little island.

By the time we made it back up to the top, the skies had cleared and the lake was blue-green like it was supposed to be. The visitors from Israel oohed and ahhhed at the sight, I was glad they got to see it.

Illustrated August To-Do

For the beginning of August, here's how my design wall is looking. Still pretty crowded around the right hand side because I didn't want to upset my progress on what I was working on last month by tearing the place apart. There are a few easy things to take out from that area that won't be too upsetting to the whole applecart that I want to work on actually removing. Specifically those two are the box of books/magazines I was trying to sell on eBay years ago and a big box of fake fur scraps. Start with the do-able, right?

The Illustrated To-Do list for August is:

Finish up and photograph my entries for Quilt National because they're due the 1st week of September.

Sew together the Orange Bullseye quilt top.

Quilt and finish the Kitchen Sink Quilt.

Keep up with making the Pantone Project blocks.

Finish putting together the Japanese Houses quilt top.

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

Make the four green pillows for our couches.

Finish the removable pet bed cushion cover that I started.

Work on printing fabrics to use in art quilt(s) for the SAQA/Printmakers exhibit.

Start and finish EQ8 quilt design to use for the Ruby+Bee challenge.

Around To August

 

It feels like we're finally just getting around to August. As a month, August always feels delayed to me and then it's *here* *bam* all-of-a-sudden. Leftovers from the realities of the school year looming ahead no doubt. Thankfully no longer my concern, hah!

This is the usual combination picture of two pictures from the previous month that is made in the app SnapSeed to kinda sorta represent the month ahead. 

The above is the Japanese Houses I've been working on all July and intend to keep working on in August.

This one is the big blue sky as seen from the beach in Zephyr Cove, Nevada.

The 1se video or One Second Everyday for July is above. I still am finding doing this teeny tiny process very useful and inspiring.

And finally here's my list of: What The Heck Did I Actually Do In July???  aka The Monthly I-Did

I cut out and ironed and sewed and trimmed the third circles for the orange bullseye project I also squared up the blocks and cut the blocks up into fourths to distribute.

I made a binding and sewed it onto Courthouse Steps for a finish!

I made a back, quilted and bound the Faux Goose Chase for another finish!

I kept making blocks for the Pantone Project.

I made many many house blocks and sewed them into rows for the Japanese Houses quilt

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

I kept moving stuff around in my workroom so that I can better see the whole design wall and get to things.

I made 31 Index Card A Day pieces using various media to finish up the yearly ICAD event.

I very occasionally added to my Visual Journal.

I blogged here 20/31 days

So...there were some finishes and a whole lot of piecing. I'd say that I got plenty got done for a summer month. Very much not even close to nothing.