Stretching Art Surprise

PIQF was really great to get to go and see yesterday. I was honestly pretty shocked to be out and about and surrounded by So Many people. It's the first big event since Covid that I've attended in person so it honestly took some time to get used to it. As I was traveling up and down the aisles marveling at all the variety in quilt styles and techniques, etc., I was shocked to see this one. My first thought was, "Wow, that's a pretty cool quilt, but it looks familiar." Then I of course realized that it was *my* quilt, Doors Unopened, being exhibited along the others in the traveling show, Stretching Art & Traditions. A Lot of laughing at myself ensued of course.

Portrait of the mask-wearing artist by friend Jaye who was still rightfully laughing at me for being surprised to see my own quilt. I've participated in Stretching Art & Tradition several times over the years, 

What's Your Twenty?, Uncountable Arils,  and Dream Vision most recently. But it is kind of random which Mancuso Bros. shows it is sent to. This time PIQF lucked out.

This is the exhibit organizer's quilts, Amy Nelson, "Beyond the Revolving Door". I was lucky enough to meet her at the SAQA conference in San Jose a few years ago. She's really great and has making this event happen for many many years.

 

Back Into Orange

Back into the orange bucket I went to make the back for the Orange Bullseye quilt. You can see the bullseyes through the lighter colored fabrics. I'll be using the new brand of fusible batting I just bought, hopefully it will hold as well as my old standard Hobbs.

And while the orange bin of fabric was out, I made the binding too.

The binding babies are stacking up, only one official one there in the middle corralling the blue/grey binding for the Japanese Houses quilt, the dark blue for the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt and the orange for the orange bullseye quilt on the left. I used empty thread cones to wrap them up.  Guess I better get the quilting done on these three quilts, right?

Oh no....I made the mistake of looking at the binding babies website when I went to grab the address to link and they have a Halloween Binding Babies collection and they are way too cute and luckily for my wallet they are sold out.
 

Label Label Label

Well, my labels arrived! They are made by Wunderlabel, a company (and an idea) that came from David Owens Hastings.

So many choices, colors, type of label, fiber used, graphics, fonts, etc. Mine of course ended up lime green and orange, and I chose to put the name of this blog on there. I may get some with my name, we'll see. But don't worry, I'm still adding the usual sort of informative label on my quilts.

These are the woven type as you can see by the back. They are very soft, especially on the edges and wouldn't be at all scratchy on a garment, a pillowcase or a bed quilt.

I'm quite pleased with how they turned out and can't wait to sew one on the first thing that I finish. 
 

The title of this post of course refers to this! You are welcome for the ear worm, hahaha.

Sunday Funghi

 

The title kinda rhymes, at least enough for a Sunday morning. This photo was taken on our street on one of our many dog walks this week. I believe this is a Pine Bracket, or something similar. It's not functionally good for the tree, and tends to make a home on older trees. 

The PG&E tree trimmers were on our street, this is the madrone they cut up and left behind. I really like the colors of the bark, and underbark and bright green leaf for comparison.

Fuse On

 

Amazing the difference a small border makes isn't it? To my eye, the border completes the total image in this case and ties together the dark blue pieces in each of the four big blocks. Using a thin dark blue binding around the edge would not have been enough visual weight to have the same effect.

Pieced together some fusible batting to use for this one. Reminder to self, check for threads under the off-white parts of the quilt top before fusing the batting on.

And since this quilt is 51"wide, I had to piece some backing fabric together as well. Now it's all fuse-basted and ready to quilt

Fusible Shop

More fabric shopping happened, but I had kind of forgotten until the package showed up and surprised me. It had been nearly 3 weeks since I ordered. If you need something very fast, don't order from Missouri Star Quilting. They are not super fast on shipping, but they have a great selection. They did have something I saw in a lecture and wanted to try out. So these super on-sale fabrics landed in my shopping cart, free shipping at a certain $ point really works on me psychologically. 

A Tula Pink, a Kaffe Fasset, and two mum prints that I liked the colors of. Stacking them up together, it looks an intentional fabric pull for a quilt...hmmm. Usually my fabric choices in online shopping are rather random.

I also ordered another type of fusible batting that I've never tried, Quilter's Dream 80/20. And Missouri Star also carries American Made solids which I really like. One is just black, and the other is PFP white, prepared for printing. Since I'm doing this printing/quilting quilt I thought it would be worth a try.

This cute little canister is the reason for the whole order. It's sprinkle-able fusible powder, Free Fuse from Quilters Select. In one of the quickie lectures in the Global Quilt Connection sampler, I was really intrigued by the fabric fusing technique presented by Julia McLeod.

Now that I've been sewing more with solids I've encountered an annoying issue. Solids don't have the usual ID on the selvedge that prints have, so it's hard to tell who is who and which is which. Sometimes I'd remember and pin a little piece of paper with the info, but invariably those fall off.  So, I used my alphabet stitches and stitched it out right onto the selvedge. My plan is to cut from the other end first and once I get to the stitched area, I'll trim the label off, and baste it to the remainder pieces.

Ocean Stitches

The first SJSA block is in process and is getting stitched. The stiff glue-y situation turns out to be no problem. Although I've had to re-glue-stick some of the pieces that were coming undone. There are some really nice fabrics on this one.

So neat, so tidy! Well, at least it is for me. Not doing any exciting or complicated stitches so far as I'm trying to hustle this along and get them done.
 

Giant Hexies

 

I won something from the Quilters Take A Moment event! A package arrived from Hoffman Fabrics, and inside were two  packs of 40 enormous pre-cut hexies. 

The fabrics are a nice range of colors and the printed patterns are contemporary.

When I read the list of winners and what we each had won, it just said Hoffman Fabrics hexies, so I had pictured something in the 2" range, to use in English paper piecing, etc. So I was surprised to get these giant sized ones, I think they're 8" across.

These are not that by a long shot, or well...several extra inches.

And they helpfully included a pattern as well, A Hop Skip & A Jump. Some of which involves cutting up the hexies into equilateral triangles (?) and adding sashing to each shape. These will be fun to play with and I'm surprised at how happy it made me to win something. 

Four Done

 Four things off my to-do list already. Well, actually only one item, but quantity four. Four pillows, yes! I t was briefly sad that my family sad no to a pillow fight. The first one that I did was a bust, and I had to un-sew it, it was way too big, and I had neglected to finish off the raw edges which messed up the zipper when it was turned out. So I un-sewed the zipper side, and trimmed off the hem on the other three sides. 

Starting over, I trimmed all the squares down to 16.5", leaving this big pile of trimmings.

Then I got out my overcast (or over-edge) foot and did all eight edges. Annoying and time-consuming? Yes. Very noisy? Yes. But I put on a good podcast on my earphones and turned it up. 

You can see the nicely finished overcast edges, which were definitely worth the time. Back to the regular foot to sew the edges and then the zipper foot to sew the zipper. I felt so fancy using 3 separate machine feet on a project.

Time to reveal the zipper. Must more satisfying un-sewing.

Yay, done!

I'm very glad  that I pieced two sides. They're a little small but they pack a punch.

They really turned out just how I'd pictured them.

They really stack up (haha).

Arkansas Blocks

 

Two new SJSA blocks are in my hands and ready for stitching. I'm excited to get started because I haven't done this work in a little while. BAM has volunteered to help with a quick turnaround quilt that will end up getting displayed pretty quickly at the Clinton Presidential Library museum in Arkansas for the Women's Voices, Women's Votes, Women's Rights exhibit. 

Apparently these blocks were made by Arkansas locals, which is really kind of cool. I hope that some of the people who made them get to go visit the finished quilt while it's on display, just to see how their work looks when it's all assembled into a completed quilt.

These are rather glue-y and quite a bit more stiff compared to the other ones I've worked on in the past, so wish me luck on hand-stitching these blocks. Maybe they used a different sort of glue in the workshop?

Illustrated October

 

Starting out on the first of October, here's what my design wall looks like. Kind of a crowded situation.

The eight pieces for the four green pillows are quilted and pinned up on top of the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt top. It's a lot of just about onto the next stage kind of transition happening. So...onto the illustrated to-do list for this new month.

October's Illustrated To-Do

1. First on the list just because they're on the top of my work surface and closest to done. Finish the four green living room pillows, add zippers, sew up sides.

2. Ruby+Bee challenge. Square up, add border to finish quilt top, Make backing, quilt, finish making binding and add. Photograph and enter.

3. Japanese Houses - Sandwich the quilt, quilt it, bind and label.

4. Orange Bullseye- Make a backing and binding, sandwich, quilt, bind and label.

5. Do some printing, Gelli plate or otherwise for the SAQA printers/quilters exhibit.

6. Catch up on making Pantone Project blocks.

7. Now that it's maybe hopefully getting a bit colder, back to working on the Y.E.S. coat.

8. Hand stitch the two blocks for the SJSA quilt that BAM is helping with.

Onto Outstanding October

 

No way, it's October?! I honestly feel like that every single month, you'd think I'd be used to it by now, but time slipping away month by month, week by week is still somehow astonishing. It's nice starting out the month having the big rain we got in September all soaked in, the outside world doesn't seem so direly dry. Fingers crossed that we get some more at some point. 

The monthly marker picture is a combination of two photos, manipulated and mashed up in Snapseed.

I used a photo a manipulated in Percolator 

and one of a chestnut.

Here's my One Second Everyday video for September:

And last but certainly not least, here's my list of: What The Heck Did I Actually Do In September???  aka The Monthly I-Did

I completed the Ruby+Bee challenge quilt top and made the binding.

I kept making more blocks for the Pantone Project 

I sewed a backing and made a binding for the Japanese Houses quilt.

I completed the quilting and binding and label for the Kitchen Sink Quilt.

I started and almost finished the four green living room pillows.

I kept on hand stitching on an older collage quilt.

I designed a quilt in EQ8 for the MQG Ruby+Bee challenge.

I kept going on the Secret Lives of Color quilt-a-long (but still haven't posted it here yet). I guess it's an actual secret or something!

I occasionally added to my Visual Journal aka Ephemera Journal.

I blogged here 23/30 days and Instagrammed 6 times.

I attended an actual in-person quilting event, Super Sew Days at BAM and a virtual meeting and lecture with BAM as well.

I virtually attended two quilting lecture events, Quilters Take A Moment and Global Quilt Exchange Sampler.

I took an online FPP design class from Melissa de Leon Mason.

Pretty happy with my doings this past month during all the weather extremes.

September Cornucopia

 The month of September has come to a close, and here's a cornucopia post filled with links to the things I read or watched or listened to. Hopefully we all got to splash around in some nice cool water at some point to celebrate the end of a very hot summer.

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I'm really looking forward to the MQG Sessions happening in a couple weeks. I think you can still sign up if you're a MQG member.

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A very helpful, how to do a French Knot video.

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I saw that SAQA is having an exhibit entitled StitchPunk, and the definitions of work requested aren't necessarily of what I expected, but I'm intrigued.

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Order your own sew-in personalized woven labels from Wunderlabel. You can choose from so many colors and fonts, and symbols. Spoiler, I chose to put an eye on mine. More on this next month when they arrive. David Owen Hastings suggested this idea, to stitch in a label in your quilt binding.

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Stitch Meditation a creative mindful practice developed by Liz Kettle looks very interesting. She has a short video explaining her method.

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The Quilt Alliance held a great online event Quilters Take A Moment (instead of the in-person Quilters Take Manhattan event)'. There were several terrific lectures, including one from Tula Pink. Also a fund raiser for Quilt Alliance.

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You can still sign up for and receive the pattern for a really pretty quilt-a-long with Christina Cameli,  Harmony & Light.  It includes video lessons as well which is a nice touch. Two of the BAM members were working on this at the Super Sew Day and I thought that it was really pretty pattern.

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Lizzo playing James Madison's crystal flute in the Library of Congress, not to be missed just for the joy of it all, did you even know that we had a Flute Vault?? So very cool. I swear I would watch an entire show of Lizzo going around the world playing historic instruments.

Onto some politics stuff:

A great excerpt from Sarah Kendzior’s new book, “They Knew”

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A wonderfully clear lecture by constitutional scholar Norm Ornstein. Really worth the tie to listen to it or watch.

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And the AMACAD (American Academy of Arts & Sciences) report that Norm Ornstein references, Our Common Purpose - Reinventing American Democracy for the 21st Century. I haven't read through all of it, but so far what I've read is quite good.

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