Twenty-Seventh Study Square

I've been continuing to work on my weekly study square quiltlets between rainstorms and power outages and road closures, but I got off-track sharing them here. Time to catch up with the twenty-seventh in the series!

As you can see, a lot of embroidery stitches were used on this one, including some text. Never Ever Ever

Words for the week are:

horsepower

• bullfight


• cow


• vitamins


• hair


• memory


• printer


• store

Sixth Solstice

Here's the sixth block in Pat Sloan's quilt-a-long Solstice Quilt. I like the imbalance of the rectangles in this block.

All six together are not looking too cohesive, but I'm going to see how the rest turn out. I like each block separately but not all together. The setting options Pat is giving us might help with this issue.

Twenty-Sixth Study Square

The twenty-sixth Weekly Study Square Quiltlet is made from the scraps left from my efforts at the CQFA retreat the previous weekend. As part of unpacking from that trip, I was going to mix these scraps in with the rest of my scrap basket but I decided to limit myself this week and just work with this smaller subset. I like the results.

 All the fuzzy raw edges get to stand out on this one.

 The texture of the wool and a detail of the stitching.

The words for the week are:

• eyebrow


• faith


• paranoia


• taxi


• prison


• pimple


• carousel


• smile

Starting With a Title

Last week I made a small quilt (18x36") for a show that had a loose theme of Vision.  Here's where I started out.
Well, no I actually started out with a title: Dream Vision and a sketch:

I free-motion quilted several sections.

And zig-zagged the edges of the "hills" along with some quilting in various colors.

And then I pinned the rest down securely, packed it all in my car and drove up Highway 1 to the CQFA retreat in Half Moon Bay, taking pictures as I drove (I know, I know) and what do I see when I look at them when I arrive (and am no longer driving)??

Look familiar?

The color and shapes of the coast side hills and vegetable crops right up to the edge of the sea.

I had no idea, truly.

Closeup of vegetation edges and quilting.

Wandering Wednesday - Hong Kong

As seen in the Hong Kong Airport last week, an enormous floral display. All photo credit to my husband, Marc who knows how much I love orchids.

All because of the New Year, Happy Year of the Rooster!

 Unclear what the central decoration is there, but it is flanked by two trees decorated with red envelopes, traditional New Year's good luck gifts.

I finally spotted a rooster, in the midst of all the day lilies.

Twenty-Fifth Study Square

 The twenty-fifth Weekly Study Square, is all about comparing grey and not-quite-grey, vs. yellow and not-quite-yellow.

 I used some of the selvedge edge words.

For some reason I decided to quilt this in metallic thread, which involved a special needle and sewing very slowly (Sulky metallic is rather fussy in my opinion) but I like how it  turned out.

This week's words are:

• pyramid


• rumour


• headache


• tattoo


• minute


• anchor


• recipe


• salmon

Fifth Solstice

The fifth block for the Solstice Quilt-a-long was a combination of piecing and appliqué. I liked how this one turned out and am happy with the placement of the batik pattern on the basket.

I used Soft Fuse (as recommended by friend Jaye) for the first time for the fusing step of the basket. It has a very nice hand and was undetectable as I zig-zagged the edges.

What's On Your Design Wall

Here's the update on what is up on my design wall.
Still playing around with and rearranging the triangles on the Calendar Quilt. To the right is the 2016 calendar towel that will be going on the back of the quilt. Along with the yellow notes on ideas and plans and instructions for said Calendar Quilt.
Up in the right hand corner are the four blocks I've made so far from the Solstice Quilt.

That's all that fits up there on the design wall(and in my top-of-mind brain) for now.

So....What's On Your Design Wall?

Twenty-Fourth Study Square

 I have been continuing on with making the Weekly Study Square Quiltlet, here is the 24th one. I liked how the white selvedges worked in this design so I didn't cover them up.

Words for the week:

• region


• drinking


• railway


• fairy


• shout


• tractor


• credit card


• staple

Unintentional Slow Stitching

 Slow, I'm just plain slow at hand stitching anything. And not on purpose, not for any cool intentional Slow Stitch reasons, it's just not a skill of mine. Not one I've ever really worked on improving. I wish I found it to be reliably meditative or relaxing, but it's usually just frustrating. Of course that's likely related to not having the skill completely mastered. I do have some actual right-hand control/stamina issues due to the double surgeries to repair pinky finger tendons and arthritis in both knuckles of my forefinger. It's not that handwork really hurts, I just can't do much stitching with good control for very long at a time. Now that I think about it more, I'm probably nearing the stage of "use it or lose it", so I'm going to choose "use it"!

I was just working on this quilt on Friday when I took this close-up. This is a quilt that I last talked about on here back in 2009. But I started it in a CQFA Laura Wasilowski class in 2007. All of the hand-dyed Perle Cotton thread is from her, some bought at the Houston IQF show.
And looking at it close up, as much as I love the look of it, I'm not thrilled with the bits of batting coming through some of the thread holes. sigh. More texture right?

I'm within sight of the finish line on the hand-stitching required for this little quilt though, only a very small amount of surface still needs stitching. Maybe I need to just keep this project out and work on it, instead of packing it away in my creative to-go bag. It has lived there all these years with my sketchbook, pencils, and portable watercolors which have definitely gotten used much more often. This project has traveled with me to all sorts of places over the years, and rarely ever gotten worked on. I guess when I'm out on a trip somewhere I'd rather pay attention to that. And while at home I've never really liked hand sewing stuff while watching tv, because I tend to watch tv that needs one's eyeballs not just one's ears.

But now that I'm listening to podcasts while I sew...there's a unconsidered possibility. I have a few episodes left of Ars Paradoxica to catch up on, maybe I can finally get this thing done.

Twenty-Third Study Square

 Here's the twenty-third Weekly Study Square Quiltlet. I Really Really like this one, probably mostly due to the fabrics, but I really do like the way it all went together.

A detail shot of all the corners coming together. I didn't do any quilting on this one, other than the zig-zag on the edges of the fabric pieces.

The words for the week are:

                                                  justice

• boxing gloves


• table


• hosepipe


• fish


• ladybird


• sunrise


• snail

Another Solstice

I'm up to four blocks done on the Solstice Quilt. Here's how they all look together. I'm using batiks that I already have in my stash. In looking at the blocks grouped together, I may just re-do the churn dash block, the black and almost-white one as it really stands out from the other three. 

And wow, I just noticed that the colors on the new block (lower left-hand corner) is really off in this picture. It's not nearly that yellow.

 In making the new block (Pat Sloan calls it Cobble Stones) I chose between two fabrics for the "light" one, I went with the one on the right-hand side.

I really liked this block, and there's an additional challenge to make a whole quilt top to use up scraps and I might just do that for a Leaders/Enders project.

Calendar Update

 The 2016 Calendar Quilt is coming along, I am still in the process of cutting new pieces out and have been playing with arranging them. I've been noticing that some of these fabrics Do Not play well with others or are very fussy, even hard to blend in with the rest. Specifically the Sashing fabrics which are such a big scale print and pretty much have the ultimate contrast possible (black/white, red/cream). The first picture shows how it looks with those super-contrasty fabrics scattered around.

And here's how it looks before I added them in (along with a whole lot of other different fabrics). Comparing the two pictures I find I overall do like the look of the super-contrasty Sashing triangles. But, having them scattered around I find they really stop the eye, so maybe I'll use them as an intentional design feature. (A feature not a bug!)  Or maybe I'll only use a few of them just in the corners, or even to make a star appear. Lots of possibilities and nothing is sewn together yet.

Big Muddy

 The "Big Muddy" is finally back again, it's been a while since the drought has been going on for years. That's what we've always called the river near where we live in Boulder Creek during big rainstorms. The river's real name is the San Lorenzo river. It eventually flows all the way down to meet the Pacific in Santa Cruz.

 There's usually a nice wide beach there at the bottom of these stairs. During the summer this is a good place for wading and to watch the ducks. The river is wide and slow here at this bend, but not when we get so much rain all at once. This was taken on a day where we'd gotten about 5"of rain overnight.

 During big storms we always have to go for a walk on the bridge to check out how high the river level has gotten up to (our version of disaster-mongering.) Usually you'd see concrete flood gate barriers where that line in the river is. But when the river rises they pretty much disappear. Years ago, before all the trouble with salmon die-off they used to block the river here during summer time to make a nice swimming hole for everyone to enjoy.

After the storms, the morning was misty and beautiful. Unfortunately that didn't hold for long, we had several more storms come through over the next few days. My unofficial rain totals for the week was around 15"!

Keeping a Balance

The Quilty Resolution Challenge for this year is all about Balance in our quilting/sewing. The one that I made was: To pay attention to keeping the starting of new and finishing of old quilt projects so that overall my quilting time feels more balanced.

I decided to quantify for myself why I was feeling so out of balance lately as far as my quilting/sewing has been going now that I've gotten going again. Quantifying of course means...making some lists!

So last year, I finished these quilt/sewing projects: 

1. False Flag Sorbet
2. Tumblers
3. Retreat 
4. Midi Bag
5. Halloween Banner
6. Pulse Donation Quilt
7. Purple skirt

But I began and have yet to finish these new projects:

1. City Sampler, I've made all 100 blocks, but now need to assemble them into a quilt.
2. Italian ABC's  ditto.
3. Row by Row barely begun making a few blocks
4. Mini Waves cut out, some pieces sewn together
5. Pies n' Points a lot of it cut out, some pieces sewn together
6. Door Quilt - started in class
7. CQFA Round Robin at the ready to be quilted stage.

Weekly Study Square - well maybe this shouldn't really be on these lists, or it could be on it weekly I suppose. So that's 20 on the projects begun side and 20 on the projects completed side, so pointless to put on here.

So I'm actually balanced! Honestly, that surprises me quite a bit. I think the surprise comes from having a pre-existing way-too-long list of quilt/sewing projects. I think I'm up to 78 now. It's almost too much to keep track of, much less store in my workroom. But in the end, no one but me knows or cares about the length of that list, what's on it, how long it's been on there.

So far this year I've completed 0 quilts and have begun 2 quilts (Solstice and Calendar) so I'm already out of balance after a week and a half into the year...

Thanks, Sandy, for getting me to think about balance for the coming year.

Twenty-second Weekly Study Square

 Here's the twenty-second Weekly Study Square Quiltlet, all caught up on posting them now. This one has a lot of stitching for some reason, but it works for me.

A detail of the stitching. I added the zig-zag around the triangles after doing the circular stitching on the entire quilt let.

The words for the week are:

sack

• shape


• pension


• encyclopedia


• pumpkin


• war


• skyscraper


• fact

Wash the Rainbow

Can't ever resist the rainbow! Now that I've washed, dried and ironed all of these new FQ's from Lecien, L's Modern Basics I'm about done with new fabrics for a while. Pshew.

It sure is fun to play with all these colors though. Nice fabric, good hand, seems well printed and it washed up very well. MassDrop wins yet again.