Finishing Handwork

I've been working on finishing the last of three blocks for Social Justice Sewing Academy.

 I purchased some really perfect embroidery floss, Sue Spargo Eleganza Perle #5 at The Stitchin' Post. It stitched up so nicely compared to some of the others I've been using.

 If you're interested in doing some hand-work for a good cause, you can request blocks right here.

 The smallish embroidery hoop worked out pretty well.

I'll post the three finished blocks soon.

Uncountable Arils

 Here's my quilt for this year's Stretching Art & Tradition exhibit. The theme this time was Under Scrutiny so I went close-up on pomegranates with this piece entitled, "Uncountable Arils."

I based my quilt design on elements of this picture.

 I found lots of red batiks to use in my stash. There's a lot of color variation and depth in batiks perfect for this kind of use. That and I find that the tight weave of the batik fabrics is great for raw edge appliqué.

The backing fabric was a shall we say "more assertive" pomegranate print. I like it a lot, but it didn't work on the front of the quilt.

 I don't know why but this little bit is my favorite part of the quilt. How do you like that cream on grey pomegranate print? I thought it was perfect for this.

Tokyo Banana

Sometimes when my husband has a trip to Japan he brings us back goodies from a shop called, Tokyo Banana. They're almost always very good, (every now and then there's a flavoring I don't care for), these were quite tasty. Kind of a squishy cookie/cake filled with vaguely banana-ish almond-is creamy filling. Japanese treats tend to not have chocolate, so that you get to give other flavors a chance. Not my preference, but Not Absolutely Everything has to be chocolate. 

I really love the packaging design. And one of their stores in Japan has an enormous banana on the roof, gotta love that.

Back of Solstice Quilt

 Now that I'm posting the back of the Solstice Quilt, I'm realizing I never showed you the front. Well that will be another post I suppose.  So here's the back of the king-sized quilt. It's comprised of all the scraps from making the blocks as well as some larger pieces of batiks.

 I assembled it in sections and framed the "blocks" of scraps and floated the strips on a background. Sorry about the yellowy pictures, I guess they didn't get color corrected.

 There that shows the color better. I had all these little pieces and sorted them into similar sizes and sewed them together into longish columns. I like how it looks floating against the green.

There were some little teeny pieces left from one of the blocks, so I sewed them together into something that looks pretty interesting. In some senses I like the back better than the front.

Word for Word Class

 I was lucky enough to get into Rosalie Dace's three-day "Word For Word" class at the Sisters Quilt Show. I've always enjoyed seeing her quilts at shows like PIQF and was excited to get to learn from her. She turned out to be a very excellent teacher, inspiring, informative and organized.
Our first exercise was to cut out a letter from very nice thick black paper that she brought with her all the way from South Africa. I chose a kind of curvy letter Z, with the cross like my family taught me to do. (boy did I ever get in trouble for that in school!)

Then we were instructed to deconstruct the letter and find an interesting design(s).

 And also to play with the background pieces that weren't part of the letter.

And then we were asked to do a final design incorporating all the pieces. This was up on my design wall. It reminded me quite a lot of the research we did for the Notan class. This was a great warm-up for me, and I was ready to make a quilt out of this design, but nope...there was a lot more to come...

Random Flowers

Secret Hair

My undercut haircut is perfect for the hot hot hot summer. I can actually wear my hair down occasionally which is a nice change. The design grew out pretty quickly, not sure what I'll get next time...

Sisters Finally

 Love the clamshells along with stripes in these bold colors.

 Ken Scott's Imagination metal work gallery was really beautiful. And blessedly shady.

 The quilting on this one was great, it was in the shade so it's a bit hard to see.

 I loved the 3-d effect of these blocks.

 Here's the big side of the Stitchin' Post building absolutely covered in quilts.

Jaye matching many of the quilts!

Sometimes it was hard to take a picture, I was in direct sun, and this vibrant quilt was in the shade. By then I was so hot, it was getting hard to care too much.

 One last look down the main drag, made us realize we'd only managed to see half the quilts.  But after four hours, that was enough.

 Last look at the three Sisters mountains on our way out of town.

Sisters Again

 This lovely grey and yellow quilt was kind of all by itself on a quiet street and I could have stayed in the shade for quite a while taking in this lovely scene.

 How about all those grays together? The dynamic improvisational style piecing was very arresting, it pulled me across the street to get a closer look.

 How cherry and fun is this one? I believe it's a Jen Kingwell design.

 I really loved this graffiti quilt. I bet it was super fun doing that spray painting. Very authentic graffiti font too, great use of colors in the letters.

 Seeing this sign in front of one of the businesses made my heart feel very happy. It's a tough political environment in Oregon (and everywhere else) so it's good to see a business take a risk and put it out there right up front.

 Two Bonnie Hunter On Ringo Lake quilts that Jaye was quite taken with.

 Hey a 100 Blocks Tula Pink sampler, isn't it gorgeous? Made both of us want to get home and sew ours together. (Note to self: Hey go sew your 100 Blocks sampler together)

 The Stitchin' Post was really covered in quilts, we didn't go in again, it was packed.

The main street in town is closed down to traffic, which is good because the sidewalks are absolutely packed. I can't imagine how much traffic in the area is impacted, but we were already there so we didn't have to experience it thankfully.
Please check in tomorrow for even more quilt pictures.

Wandering Wednesday - Sisters

 Hey long time no blog!
Through the smoky skies, past the grasslands of Northern California, friend Jaye and I drove and drove and drove to get to Sisters, Oregon for the annual outdoor quilt show.

 We took a short detour to see Crater Lake, which I'm happy to report is still very very Blue and Beautiful and Big.

 Finally! We arrived at the mecca of quilt-dom in July, and hey! There Are Quilts Hanging Up Outdoors. I'm not sure why, but I am just enchanted by this idea somehow.

 Jaye was glad all that driving was done with.

 I was happy to be out of the car too! What a great store the Stichin' Post is, it definitely is all it's made out to be.

 Beautiful sunsets from our air bnb house's backyard.

 I don't know what I was really expecting, but the first selection of quilts we saw hung up, just blew me away. They really are right there, on the sides of all the buildings, hung up with clothespins.

 We were there early enough to see one of the last quilts being hung up. It seems to be a "whole town pitches in" kind of thing which is cool. I could see it happening in my own small town.

Some of the quilts went So Well with the backgrounds they were hung against, it made me wonder if it was planned out or not.

More pictures tomorrow.

Solstice 24

 The twenty-fourth block in the Solstice quilt is a nice square centered star. I did a little more thoughtful placement of some of the batik patterns this time. Not exactly fussy-cutting or anything, but I like how it turned out.