Wednesday Part Deux

I didn't get the block done at lunch.   I had to run errands, and buy a new notebook for quilting info!  I got about 30 minutes in, enough to cut the white strips and make two sets of square-strip-square pieces.  Another 30 minutes should do it.  A lot of the time was spent figuring out the best way to mark and align the pieces.  Using the wonderful iron-off marker I got Monday.  I can't recall the name, but will come back tonight and provide a link.  


Did discover a great new site -  Quilter's Pastiche on Tumblr.  (Discovered via Pinterest.)  She just posts lots of photos of quilts.  Mostly art quilts, it seems, many by well known quilters.  I don't know anything about Tumblr. Guess I need to find out.  Between Pinterest and Flickr I'm not sure I can absorb anymore quilt sites, but this one is worth looking.

Lull

Ever since the rush to finish the big quilt on April 1 I've been in sort of a quilting lull.  It's a natural cycle and I'm not stressing about it, but don't want to let precious time slip away either.  I have been cleaning up and reorganizing supplies and equipment, which is always necessary after the chaos of a projects' final days.  I'm refolding and reorganizing fabric which gives me a chance to discover things I'd forgotten I have.

In preparation for the idea of doing some 15-minute scrappy play with the Bumble Beans group I had to admit that my little scrap box was WAY to small to contain many more scraps, so I dumped it into a plastic bin more than twice as big, and fluffed them around randomly, rather than having them all folded neatly, so I'd feel free to root around without "messing."   My OCD tendencies sometimes cause me to spend WAY too much time trying to define in my mind what constitutes "fabric folded and organized by color"  (i.e. the bulk of my fabric, fat quarters - halves).  What's then a regular scrap, or a "teeny scrap?"  Teeny scraps just go into a zip lock baggy.  Why? I guess the bigger scraps were thought to be enough for some projects.  See what I mean about OCD?  I also need to start thinking about strategic packing for this trip to Ohio, and what I might just buy there rather than worry about transporting.

I spent a nice lunch hour yesterday cutting out different inspirations I'd saved and taping them into my sketch book.  Then I added the goodies from this week's Moonlight quilters workshop night to my binder of instructions and patterns.  (FUN!  Learned 5 new things in one night, with handouts as well!)   At that point I really NEEDED to sew something, so I ended up pulling out Dear Jane and working on my next block.  That turned out to be just what I needed, I was ready to sew, but not to design.  

I also got three books from the used book sale at the Guild meeting Monday, including one on reverse appliqué, which I'd like to learn (along with forward appliqué!)  So I tried doing something like that on block B-5 but I didn't do it anything like the suggested method.  I just cut out and folded back the openings and sewed some white fabric behind them.  I did it in a sort of "topstich" way on the machine, and it's not so pretty, but it's going to be acceptable (to me) and I'm going to move on and complete the block at lunch today, I hope.

Rockin' Robin!

I usually don't get too into givaways - but when I discovered that I have a chance to win a map quilt made by my current idol - mentor - girl crush? -  Valerie Goodwin  - I had to follow instructions.  It wasn't hard,  and I'm really interested to know that there is another architect/art quilter out there, just down the road in Seattle.  I am looking forward to browsing Louise Wackerman's blog, I'm Feeling Crafty,  and read more about her art quilt work.  If you want to get in on this giveaway, head over to her blog and leave a comment.


In other news, through a bizarre accident, I missed out on the first meeting of the Moonlight Quilter's Art Quilt (Rockin'?) Round Robin.   The organizer's last name is Daily, and all her e-mail messages got dumped into my "Quilting Arts Daily" folder.  These are e-mails I don't want to see every day, but like to browse through occasionally.  I only found out Saturday morning that the first round of trades, where each person brings in their base quilt, was due on Monday - tomorrow!    I didn't have much of an idea, but as I was obsessively re-folding  brown fabrics yesterday the idea suddenly came to me that I should do a "tree of life" quilt.  


From there it was just a matter of creating a base - and putting together a little journal of ideas and inspirations.  I am not sure if others were taking the base/theme step this far -it seems like they were just making a piece of fabric, but the instructions did say that you could choose a theme.  So- whatever!  Here's my base piece:

Flash Only

(The lighting is so much different with the incandescent bulbs on!)

I found several great examples of Tree of Life quilts, from Ann Fahl, Susan Shie, Jane Sassemann and Judy Coates Perez - so I'm in good company.  It will be interesting.

Splurging

I had such a great day in Seattle shopping yesterday, and just being in the "big city."  I went down for a meeting that only took about 1 1/2 hours, but the timing was such that I wouldn't have been back to the office before 4 pm anyway, so I decided to stay and play.   I checked out two quilt shops that had been mentioned on the Janome Yahoo Group.  One was Undercover Quilts right next to the Pike Place Market.  Their website is under construction but this link to their Ebay store shows a great picture, or  you can visit them on Facebook.   In addition to a great collection of fabric they have many finished quilts for sale, and on display.  


After that I found my way to the Quilting Loft, in Ballard (still part of Seattle).  They have a large selection of very nice modern quilting fabrics.    Not having a particular project in mind, I just wanted to see what their selection was like, and I wanted to buy EVERYTHING so it was hard to narrow it down too much, but since I've been on this thing about stripes lately and they had a very nice selection, I grabbed up a few fat quarters, and a couple half yards of some fun stripes.  Now... to decided what to do with them all!

Stolen Moments is Done!!

I was so busy trying to finish "Stolen Moments" in every moment of spare time, that I had no time for blogging.  Besides I'm starting to feel a little silly blogging away to myself.  I figure people will eventually come if I have anything interesting to say, but there are SO MANY quilting blogs out there.  I click "follow" whenever I see one that seems interesting, but there are now over 100 on my list.  I need to pare this down a bit.  Anyway, without further ado, here is the finished Brown Bag quilt, now officially named "Stolen Moments."

Greg was kind enough to stand on a chair and stretch his arms full length, but I still couldn't get the whole thing!  If the yard dries out I'll take it back out there tomorrow.  The indoor shots always have more of an orange tint to them than reality.

It's not as long as I'd expected, so it has to be folded down at the pillows. I guess I'll just have to make some matching pillow cases and curtains.  

Hard to photograph such a big thing!  Not to mention hard to quilt it.  Even though it's "done" I'm going to go back and quilt more inside the squares.

I was happy enough with the back, though there are a few wrinkles here and there.   This picture shows the left over 6x6 squares, I combined three colored ones with one white in each square, then put them together with the whites in the middle.  

The final bits of the four "gift fabrics" are on the right.

I'm happy with it, and happy there was the pressure to actually finish it!  Now I can take it to the guild for show and tell next week, too!