Flower Friday-Spring Sprung

I love it when I forget about where I've planted various bulbs so that it's a nice surprise when they bloomed. "Oh my, why hello there"

Grape Muscari view.

Another year of my grandmother's Cymbidium blooming.

I guess it's probably time that I admit that it is mine now after all these years.

 I just didn't want the responsibility of it in all likelihood.

Wait, what? I planted this last year, and I had no idea that there would be these strange red flower thingies. Helichrysum "Ember Glow, well what do you know the picture I took of the plant pot label mentions a red or orange flower. This is also more commonly known as Strawflower.

 

Wandering Wednesday - On The Way Home

 

Oh my goodness the purple and yellow hillsides on the way home! It was in full bloom on the hillsides as we left Santa Clarita. This was in the Grapevine area, and I'm assuming it's likely lupines (the purple) and mustard (the yellow).

I don't know if it's going to be a particularly good year for wildflowers in Southern California or not, but it was pretty spectacular on the side of highway 5. Superbloom years are always interesting, the traffic gets crazy to the areas where the wildflowers are growing.

Off into the sunset we went. I don't usually get to take sunset photos, so even though it's through the windshield, I kind of had to. I like the reflection on the car hood. And yes, this is us in the HOV lane.

It was a long drive home, we broke it up into two days because it took almost 4 hours to get from San Diego to the north end of LA. Yikes! Thankfully there's a nice group of hotels in Santa Clarita that we've used before, it's a pain, but better (and safer) than driving for six more hours that night.

Auction of Sister Artists 2

 

On the occasion of International Women’s Day, The Advocacy Project is pleased to announce the launch of Sister Artists 2, a collaboration between fiber artists in Africa and North America.  The project comprises 39 art quilts on the theme of Kenyan wildlife that were jointly made by 80 artists in Nairobi, Canada and the US. Their quilts will be displayed and auctioned in early March. Profits will be re-invested in the Kenyan artists. Online auction: The quilts will be auctioned here between March 8 (12:00 am EST) and March 19 (11:59 pm EST). You can also use the QR code below to reach the auction. Profiles of the quilts and quilters can be found online here and in a catalog that is available for purchase at $30. Please email us. Visit us on social media, where we are featuring a quilt a day: Instagram - @advocacyproject; Facebook - The Advocacy Project; and Pinterest. Email us with questions

To Access the Sister Artists 2 auction on your mobile device, open the camera, hold your device over the QR code on the left and click on the "betterworld" notification.

No Name Yet

So exciting! We got to meet our new kitty yesterday at the animal shelter. She's an Abyssian mix, so she has these incredibly long elegant legs but she is so very tiny. They think she's likely 10 months old. I forgot to take pictures while she was exploring the get to know you room, at one point she jumped up on the counter and was curled up in the sink. So these are of her after they stuck her back in her cage setup. 

Currently her shelter name is either Lavender or Basil, but we will likely change that, not that she'll really care of course. We get to pick her up after she's had her spay surgery. We can't wait to introduce her to Meg who's been pretty lonely since Spike's passing in December.

As you can see, she's going to fit in just fine around here.
 

Uncovered Designs

I'm always fascinated by what's left behind on the walls of old brick buildings when they're uncovered, like when a neighboring structure is taken down to make a parking lot. I noticed this wall in San Diego and took several pictures. 

I've cropped them so that the walls are the focus, try to ignore the trees, parked cars and lamp posts. 

I think these color combinations, textures and shapes would make a pretty great starting point for a quilt.

Especially once you play around with editing the color so it's not so sun-drenched and washed out. A further thought, what if I turned this design 180°? Then it could be a similar shape/size that I worked with for the Prism Play triptych quilts, 15"w x 45"h. This may require some sketching.

Under Texture

More Ephemera Visual Journal fun with colored pencils. Can you tell what’s making that great texture?

The inside of a deconstructed coffee sleeve.Something about the change in direction of the lines really does it for me.

 

Silk Stitching

This is the hand-stitching project I brought with me on our trip, the Kawandi that I started in February last year. I've been continuing to add new pieces as I stitch the parallel (well mostly) lines. Each edge of the new fabric piece is either overlapped or turned under and held in place by subsequent lines of stitching so that there will be no raw edges.

 I'm using mostly silks in a pretty wide range of colors, but some are just silky I think. The blue circle fabric on the left is from a tie remnant sampler that one of the CQFA people brought back to share many years ago when they took a field trip to the Robert Talbott Outlet in Carmel Valley if I remember correctly. So that one at least has a legit provenance of sorts.

Wandering Wednesday - San Diego

 A real-time Wandering Wednesday this week, as I'm in San Diego. This was the fluffy-cloud sky as we drove down 5.

We're staying in the Hard Rock Hotel which is kind of funny and weird, but this was the sign in the gym which I greatly appreciated as this song is on my workout playlist.

My DH had a free lunch break so we got to eat outside under very lovely palm trees.

I got a nice surprise by the window cleaners, thankfully I was fully clothed!

I got a good haircut and styling.

Our "view" is the parking garage for the Padres stadium. But I like the angles and textures.

Balcony Journal

 

It's a very sunny morning and our hotel room balcony gets a whole lot of it, so I'm out here sketching and drawing and glue-sticking in the ephemera I've grabbed on the first day of our short trip to San Diego for my DH to attend a conference. 

I brought my Art Bin travel case, which has a lot of color packed into it, colored pencils and pens, watercolor crayons and pencils, and lots of other mark-making implements. And of course my favorite green vacuum cup for tea on the table next to me.

The small journal I've been using for the ephemera journal has fairly lightweight paper so I'd just been sticking to colored pencils and pens so far. But today I experimented to see if it could take a little bit of water along with the watercolor pencils. It did pretty well, some slight wrinkling after drying in the sun, but the paper did not come apart under my brush and it also didn't soak through to the other side either. That means there'll be more of this in the future for this journal. I just have to be careful to not overdo it, especially around glue-sticked elements. Sometimes the water will wick it's way through the paper and undo what I've already glued down, especially if the glue hasn't dried all the way yet.

Instagram Quilt Fest

I’ve been participating in the Instagram Quilt Fest this month. There’s a daily prompt and then people share pictures and an answer of some sort. It’s all over the map, there’s some advertising, and also some interesting quilters to discover and maybe follow. You can follow the #️⃣ at #IgQuiltFest2022 and check out the influx of new QUILTY content.

 I posted about this quilt from 2003 “I Guess I Like Pink After All.” It’s so striking to me how “modern quilt” it is, if it wasn’t made with my hand-dyes, but commercial solids instead it would fit right in. It’s also obvious to me just how little I’ve changed my approach to improv construction.

Hold On

Reminder, even if your hands hurt sometimes, you can still make progress, one stitch at a time.

Reminder: your hands have so much power and strength, use it wisely.

Reminder: take turns and let your non-dominant hand do the work. 
 

B/W Baby Back

 

The backing fabric I chose for the black/white baby quilt is this great alphabet flannel.

But unfortunately the quilt turned out to be more than a couple inches too wide for the flannel which shrunk up a lot after being washed and dried. I think it was just barely going to work before I preached everything. I always forget how much flannel shrinks.

That meant it was time to do some cutting and rearranging. This is what I came up with. I had four extra HST from the front. I sewed those together and then added a square from the layer cake assortment to the top and bottom. I think it works out pretty well visually. Sure the letters are going two different directions, but that couldn't be helped. I can also write the label on the white part of the HST. I like how the busy black/white print blends in so well with the alphabet flannel.

Now to do some quilt sandwiching.

Next to Last Quilty?

 

Perhaps the next-to-last Quilty Box? I'm not sure, but it sounds like it's going to be on pause for a while. I think supply chain issues would make it pretty impossible to keep doing a well-planned-out subscription box like this for too much longer. Well, at least I really love the fabrics this maybe almost last time, and the notions are interesting too.

The next time I make a quilt block I'm going to definitely give the Strip Stick a try. It's supposed to help with pressing seams open without distortion.

And another Sewline pen, this time a fabric glue one. The grey Glide thread is a nice color and weight, very useful and I've never tried this kind out before.

B/W Baby

I wasn't sure how the printed side borders on the panel were going to work out once I sewed all the block units together. It looked like it'd be close to fitting.

Not only did it fit, the points exactly matched up with where the printed side borders began. I couldn't have planned this to work, well maybe I could have if I'd used EQ8 or actually did the math. But I'm chuffed nonetheless, I lost a small amount of the printed border but that didn't really bother me. This looks more intentional. 

Now on to the quilting!
 

Black White Design Wall Fun

Trimming time for the black and white baby quilt HST. I made a lot of them, and they were mostly very accurate. But once I started trimming I decided to go through and do them all. Now they're all 4.5"

I wanted to highlight this black and white variation on this pattern so you can see just how nice the fabric design looks with the two colors sewn up together in a HST.

Time to make visual decisions visually, aka playing around on the design wall.

I have resigned myself to the fact that white and not-quite-white are close enough to okay for me to go ahead with using them together. 

Very toothy looking, maybe a little too aggressive for a baby quilt? I think it works pretty well with the side "border" looking columns on the central panel.

 Constrained and orderly up on the top and kind of going crazy down on the bottom. I have to say I like this quite a bit. It almost looks like three undefined hearts. I definitely like this arrangement of two rows on the top and four on the bottom. I'm feeling like I should just start sewing two HST together randomly and then see where it ends up. But no, I think I need to play around with it a little more before I start sewing.

Hello March

Well hello there, March. In like a lion? Not so much at least weather-wise around here. Fingers and toes are crossed for some actual rain this month. I feel like we should be washing our cars much more frequently to make sure it happens.

The monthly marker is as per usual a combination of two photos mashed up and modified in SnapSeed. First is the Dotsy table runner.

And the second is the third (fourth?) growth redwoods on the Lime Kiln trail in Felton.

There weren't quite as many seconds in February, but I kept track of 28 of them in the 1SE app.

And finally here's the list of: What The Heck Did I Actually Do In February??? 

I finished the Orange Prism Play Quilt that I started in January.

I started and finished 2 more Prism Play Quilts - Chartreuse and Aqua Blue.

I photographed and entered all three quilts in the Prism Play exhibit. 

I assembled the Dotsy table runner to quilt-a-ble stage.

I started a baby quilt.

I started a Peace for Ukraine paper pieced block.

I started my 100 Days project (but haven't posted it here yet.)

I started a Secret Lives of Color quilt a long.

I hiked 3x: Quail Hollow, Lime Kiln and Dry Creek.

I designed one quilt in EQ8 but I haven't posted it here yet.

I sketched ideas for a mini quilt for the Curated Quilts Utilitarian issue. 

I made a Valentine's Day card for my DH on the CriCut.

I made four new napkins for our table.

I attended the BAMQ meeting in person.

I spent 2 days at jury duty.

I added nearly daily to my Visual Journal.

I blogged here 28/28 days.

Which adds up to a whole lot more than nothing. I'm glad that I wrote it out here for myself again. I think I'll continue to do this next month too.

February 2022 Cornucopia

 

Yes you are! Well, that was quite a February, wasn't it? I'm writing that sentence on the 1st, but I'm just guessing...

Here's my monthly cornucopia scheduled post wherein I try to round up all the links to things I read, consumed, was inspired by, want to share or remember, etc. from the previous month.

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I know I have too many email subscriptions already, but I added one that I'm finding quite useful, the weekly one from Aurifil. You can find the subscription box way down at the bottom of their front-page.  They also have some interesting stuff on their blog, well worth looking at.

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Here's a half-rectangle tutorial from swimbikequilt. Very useful with great illustrations.

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This short interview with Jan Beaney was a great reminder about using water-soluble films in layering embroidery, etc. There's also a 15 minute teaser video from Beaney and Littlejohn taken from their longer class DVD.

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Here's how to make your own mustard! This looks amazing.

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I'm enjoying this Yoko Ono tribute album, Ocean Child which is all re-recordings of her songs, all to benefit Why Hunger.

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Ahhhh, Faith Ringgold gets a great write-up in Harper's Bazaar, she's 91and has a major retrospective show in NYC at the New Museum.

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Chatting the Pictures discusses a very evocative image taken by Greenpeace.

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This newly discovered mosaic in London would make a great inspiration for a floor tiles quilt. I'm especially interested in how it looks partially uncovered. That would be a cool design for a quilt. I would call it Londinium after the name of the Roman city founded there in 50 CE.

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If you've never heard all the verses of Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land", do yourself a favor and listen to this powerful and righteous version by Sharon Jones (RIP) and the Dap-Kings: