Charity Quilting

[Note - I started this post about 2 weeks ago and got completely sidetracked by life...]

At our guild meeting mid-October, I received blocks back from members to piece into a quilt we're donating to the school where we met for quite a number of years, up to this fall. The quilt will be donated to the school so that they can use it in their holiday auction in December.

I'd passed out packets in September with instructions and a consistent background fabric. I was pleasantly surprised to see that nearly all of the blocks came back and were usable (I just had two that I couldn't use due to size or being totally warped out of shape), as the meeting had been crazy and I hadn't really been able to document who had returned blocks to me. In the end, I had to sew only one block in addition to the two samples that I'd showed at the September meeting.

Here's the top (my apologies for the crummy photo. Poor Ben was doing his best to stretch out and make the top viewable):


People's notions of red and green certainly vary - there are some oranges and pinks in this quilt, as well as odd greens - but it certainly emphasizes the scrappiness of the quilt. Dropped it off at the machine quilter's yesterday and hope to get it back and bound before heading out on vacation.

If you're interested in the Craft Fair and Silent Auction, more information is available on the Fairview South School's home page.

Beading Basics and Beyond

Last week our guild had the fortune to host quilt instructor Mary Stori, who made the trip out from North Carolina to give the lecture for our monthly meeting and a day-long workshop, "Beading Basics and Beyond." I had the privilege of spending lots of time with Mary, picking her up at the airport, eating meals with her, and helping her set up for the meeting and workshop. What a pleasure! I am definitely inspired to put more beads on my quilts as embellishments and am trying to figure out how I can incorporate beads into my small art group "assignment," due next week.

In the full-day workshop, we learned all kinds of techniques for how to bead on different objects. Here are a few pictures of what we accomplished in the morning, after learning about needles, thread and other important practicalities:



And a close up of the same:
In the afternoon, we learned all kinds of really cool edge treatments, which are pretty much based on what we'd learned in the morning. Unfortunately, most of my photos aren't turning out very good, which is disappointing, as the edge treatments are absolutely amazing and don't really seem all that difficult (easier said than done, right?). Here's one that seems somewhat decent:

I picked up copies of Mary's Beading Basics book and her All-in-One Beading Buddy to help me remember how to make the various stitches, learn others, and to keep me inspired by all of the creative ways you can use beads in your quilts. Unfortunately, I was so busy with everything else that was going on that I didn't take any real pictures at the workshop or guild meeting and I even forgot to get her to sign my books. Bummer.

My lucky week

A week ago yesterday, Ben and I went to the Brewers/Cubs game after work as part of our 20-pack of tickets. Right after returning from the bathroom midgame, I was asked if I wanted to be the contestant in one of the regular between-inning contests: the Crazy Cap Shuffle. I usually do pretty good at this when playing along, so agreed to participate, the scariest part being that I'd be live on the Jumbotron before the 40,000+ fans in attendance. Even with the staff allowing people to cut in front of me while the game was in action, I was able to pick the correct cap and won a $50 gift certificate to one of the restaurants at the Potawatomi Bingo Casino downtown. I've heard they have pretty good food there; perhaps we can try it while Julie visits Memorial Day weekend.

One cool outcome of being on the Jumbotron was that our friend Jeff, who was at the game and seated several sections over, saw me on the big screen and came over and said hi. And our neighbors, who were also in attendance, took a few pictures of the screen, one of which I've included here (the Brewers also gave me access to photos, but I have to pay for them!). We also were lucky enough to see ourselves on Fox News (which we don't usually watch) that night, as they were there to cover the Brewers/Cubs rivalry as well as the Danny Gokey hoopla at the game. They did the bulk of their in-game coverage from the area directly behind our seats, so we weren't surprised when we could see ourselves in the background of the broadcast.

My second awesome gift of the week was a HUGE basket of batik fabrics that guild members presented me at our year-end potluck and meeting on Wednesday night. Seriously, look at all of these lovely half-yard cuts of batiks donated by members as a gift to me as outgoing president! I truly am humbled that everyone gave these batiks and for the really nice notes that many people included with the fabrics. I'm guessing there are close to 70 (if not more) fabrics in this basket and I don't think any of them are the same, which just blows my mind. Now I need to search out some more pattern ideas to use up these yummy fabrics... if you have suggestions, I'd love to hear them.

More quilting posts soon (I promise!), including a post on Mary Stori's visit to the guild.

Sleepy Baby - Linus

On Saturday, the guild had a charity quilt workshop, which basically meant bringing along whatever project you might want to work on for charity. We had a decent turn-out of about ten members over the course of the time I was there - from 8:30 to 3. This year our designated charity is Project Linus, whose mission is "to provide love, a sense of security, warmth and comfort to children who are seriously ill, traumatized, or otherwise in need through the gifts of new, handmade blankets and afghans..."

I decided to start on a kit that I'd picked up at Patched Works in December because I thought it was just too cute. The pattern is called Sleepy Baby by local Milwaukeean Connie Griffiths (at least I'm guessing local based on the 414 area code on the back of the pattern). The pattern uses the Sleepytime fabric line by Lori Gardner. This was a pretty quick and easy project that looks fabulous too. The pattern is definitely straightforward, but could benefit from a bit of spellchecking and editing. (Not that I ever make mistakes in my blog posts...)

In contrast to yesterday's post, the quilting on this went quite quickly as I just meandered all over. Interestingly, the same threads used to quilt Swirly-Gig worked perfectly for this project!


The guild meets tomorrow night, so I'll be showing this quilt and it'll make its way to some deserving child. Tina, if you like this one, I have an extra set of the panel blocks and could make something similar for nephew #2...

Checkerboard Challenge

Tonight was my quilt guild's checkerboard challenge program. The challenge was to create a checkerboard that could be used in actual play, using whatever style, inspiration, etc. you might want. Pretty much the only limitations were on size (no larger than 45" square) and that it had to include checkers (which could be purchased) and a means for storing the checkers. All of the finished checkerboards went to a local charity, Sojourner Truth House, and all members voted on a number of categories, in which awards were presented.

We had 15 members complete the challenge, which is much better than we've done with many of our other recent challenges. I wish I'd taken pictures of some of the other entries, as there were many fabulous ones. Here's mine:



My design inspiration was the "Game Board Quilt" in Kathleen Tracy's book Prairie Children and Their Quilts.



I pretty much simply resized her pattern so that you could really play checkers with it. I originally attempted to do that with EQ6, but kept coming up with really bizarre measurements for the flying geese (seriously, does someone know how to get just a single flying goose from the block library - all I can find is a unit of three flying geese!), so in the end, I did all of the math by hand, which wasn't terrible. I did miscalculate the width of the red inner border once and had to tear it off and put on a new one, but in the end, it wasn't too difficult. I think the final measurement was about 31.5" square.

I made the top (with the exception of the corner half triangles and inner border) from charms of Minick and Simpson's Coming Home line, which came out a while ago. They had just been sitting around, so I decided to finally use them up, and the only thing I had to buy for this was the fabric for the backing!

My checkers, while not always perfect circles, were functional. I made them as if you were sewing a case for a pillow: I cut one circle for the front (thanks, Olfa, for your circle rotary cutter) and two slightly larger circles for the back. Folded the ones for the back in half, right sides out, overlapped them, and placed the smaller circle right side down on top. Sewed a quarter inch from the edge of the smaller circle, clipped the seams, and turned them inside out. No need to hand stitch seams closed and finished edges all around, thank goodness!

Oh, and one final thing: I did win a prize tonight for the "pieciest" quilt!

Modern Quilt

Yesterday I took a workshop through my quilt guild with the quilt artist Norma DeHaven. She was the lecturer at our last guild meeting and does some impressive stuff using freezer paper templates.

I'll admit that I wasn't so sure about the particular design we were going to make (a bit too abstract for my tastes), but was interested in the process and in supporting the guild's efforts, so I signed up to take the workshop. It was nice that the instructor provided a diagram in advance so that we could plan ahead and color in what fabrics we wanted to use where, etc. Of course, I did very little of that. Plan ahead? Color in a diagram? That requires too much work.

I did go to my fabric stash on Thursday night and pulled the suggested fabrics: three colors with a light, medium and dark value of each. I opted to work entirely within my existing stash (I had no time to go to the quilt shop for more fabric anyways) and took some other fabrics along with me as well, as I wasn't a true believer in the notion that this pattern required three different colors or that there had to be hard and fast distinctions between the values. I'm glad that I took those extra fabrics, as I did dig in and use some. Do you notice that one of the biggest areas - in the bottom right - is made from fabric I used as the backing to Russ and Shannon's quilt?

Preparing the template and cutting out the pieces was pretty easy, although I think we devoted way more class time to this task than was necessary. The afternoon portion of the workshop was devoted to sewing and if you pay close attention, you might realize why. See those rectangles on my finished top: they are all sewn in. Yes, sewn in, as in around a "u" to do those corners, etc. The ladies at my table - Caren, Sandi, and Diane - we all had issues with the technique taught to do this and experimented with our own. Caren came up with a pretty good one, although after I fought and fought and fought with my first seam sewn in this manner, the others flowed much more smoothly.



See the big circle inset at the right? She showed us a really cool technique for that requiring no pinning or matching registration marks. But it does involve a glue stick. It was pretty slick, other than I managed to catch fabric from the other side when sewing mine in and had to rip it out. Sigh. It was probably because I was in a hurry at the end of the workshop, attempting to sew it so that I wouldn't forget the process, which I think they'd showed us at Bigsby's a while back, but I'd forgotten, of course (really, how often do you inset a full circle into something else?). I'll probably forget again, and I'm sure that I can't explain the process well enough here for you (or for me). I tried Googling for other instructions to point you to, but to no avail. Just know that there is a really sweet technique out there...

I was impressed at how flat my finished project laid, given the number of curved seams and the fact that I cut it out of my fabric pretty haphazardly, with absolutely no attention to grain. Did I get lucky? Or is paying attention to all of that just overrated?

Now I have to think about how I want to quilt this... any ideas?

Quilt Show Photos

Whether you missed our quilt show last weekend or want to see the quilts that were there again, you're in luck! Ben was a sweetheart and took photos of all 300+ items at the show. I think this took him longer than he expected. He killed the batteries on both of our cameras and had to borrow memory from Lisa, another quilter. But he was going to get through all of those quilts!

And then he spent a good portion of Sunday fixing the shots, uploading them to his Picasa album, adding all of the information from our program book so that people could search by quilt number, category, quilter, or quilt name. I think that probably took longer than he expected, but he was totally into it. I wasn't going to complain or intervene! What a sweet guy - a keeper - as one of the guild members described him!

I've also linked to his album to create the slideshow running at right. Enjoy!

Quilt Show - Recovery

It's hard to believe it, but our quilt show is over already! Lots of work, but a fabulous show, and everyone came together to make it happen. I feel lucky to be a part of a group that makes such fabulous works of art.

I entered nine quilts in the show; some of which I've shared previously on this blog, others of which were made before I began the blog, and one of which I finished up last week and have yet

This first quilt, my French Braid Quilt, is the one that I just finished and have yet to share. I started this quilt in a class at Fabric Fusion last fall. I fell in love with the fabric I selected for the outer border and used it as my starting point for this quilt, based on the Oriental Palms pattern in French Braid Quilts by Jane Hardy Miller. While most of the images in the book featured one-color palettes, I chose to work in both the blue and green ranges because I didn't want another blue-only quilt. The quilt finished at 68x96 and was quilted by Sandi Goulet.

I bought the fabrics to make this heart bargello for Ben just before our fifth anniversary when I was in New Hampshire for my fifth college reunion and had the opportunity to go shopping at Keepsake Quilting. Unfortunately, I was a bit slow in getting around to it and finished it about two years later. While the colors aren't exactly masculine, Ben does love the quilt, which is based on the book Bargello Hearts by Nancy Podolsky. The quilt is 76x95 and I had it quilted at Patched Works.

I finished this Lone Star quilt shortly after our last quilt show, and just before the Cutting Table quilt shop closed. I was looking for a challenge and the Lone Star is a good one with all of those inset seams and this arrangement also uses some curved piecing blocks. Alicia Avila taught the class; the central portion of the quilt is based on the book Lone Star Quilts and Beyond by Jan Krentz, but I modified and enlarged a paper piecing pattern from Quilter’s Newsletter for the outermost corners. Juli Meeks did an awesome job custom quilting this piece for me (final size is 47" square). I had it professionally appraised at the quilt show and was surprised at the value placed on it.

When 3 Sisters first came out with this Vienna Nights line and pattern, I fell in love with it. The red in this quilt is one of my favorite colors ever and I’ve used the colors in this quilt to pull together other items for our living room. I was a bit annoyed with the kit for this quilt: I didn't have enough of some of the fabrics in the borders, but had WAY more than necessary of the interior fabrics. To date, I've made three table runners from the leftovers and still have a fair amount of fabric remaining. The quilt finished at 76x92 and was machine quilted by Julie Meeks.

This Twisted Sisters quilt was begun in a guild-sponsored workshop with Ami Simms two years ago. Up until the day before the workshop, I was undecided as to the colors to use; in the end, I went into my closet, touched fabric until something really spoke to me. In this case, it was the luscious sea greens and blues. The finished quilt is 56x75 and was quilted by Patched Works.

I just loved this sweet pattern (Taffy Treats by Bunny Hill Designs), especially because it gave me the opportunity to learn how to create a scalloped border and use bias binding. Once I saw the pattern, I knew I had to make it in these sweet April Cornell fabrics. Julie Meeks quilted this one, with a finished size of 56x65.

I took a Drunkard’s Path class at the Cutting Table just before they closed to practice my curved piecing and to spend more fun time with Alicia, the instructor. For the central portion of the quilt I used only fabrics that I had received in the guild’s batik and dots exchanges earlier in the year. I machined quilted this 37" square project myself, using some yummy King Tut variegated thread by Superior Threads.

The other quilts I entered were the Country Stars and Civil War reproduction quilts I wrote about earlier this year. No ribbons for any of my quilts this year, but that's okay. I'm inspired to begin work on a whole bunch of stuff and to finish up some other projects that I just knew wouldn't make it in time for the show.

Television Star?

On Wednesday morning, I had the opportunity to appear on a local television program to promote our quilt show. Kelli Effinger, one of the co-chairs for the show, and I appeared on The Morning Blend, an hour-long show that appears Monday through Friday on WTMJ-4 here in Milwaukee.

It was great to have this publicity for our show, but we were a bit disappointed in that the questions Molly and Alison asked were more about quilting in general and less about the quilt show. And they led in by giving the wrong dates for the show! But overall, the message came through and it was a fun opportunity; once you get started, you kinda forget that there are cameras out there, and the time flies.

If you're interested, you can watch my segment online.

I'm exhausted today, having spent all day yesterday setting up our awesome show. Watch for more postings with photos in the coming days.

Creativity Workshop

Last Saturday, my quilt guild hosted a creativity workshop with Amy Climer, an art quilter from Madison. The point of the workshop was to let the creative juices flow, to try some exercises where we might get inspiration, and to work towards letting go of our inner critics. I was a bit hesitant: I know that I don't draw well and haven't attempted things like this since middle school at the latest. But I knew that it was time to try something new, to challenge myself to grow in new directions, and I'll admit that it was really nice to go to a workshop and not to have to pack up my machine and tons of other supplies. And I chose to borrow Ben's chalk pastels, a medium in which I have never worked before. What fun!

Amy is an advocate of The Artist's Way, a book by Julia Cameron and finds much inspiration for her own creativity in its pages. I thought I'd share some of the stuff that I did (or at least the ones that I feel comfortable sharing).

We started off by sharing the magazines we brought along and going through them and ripping out anything that caught our eye, then pasting the images into a collage. Here's mine. It's interesting to see that there is a group of colors that apparently is working for me lately (a rather muted group of colors) as well as to see that I really like elements like maps, plans, and type. Next time I'm struggling for color inspiration, I might give this a shot again and see what emerges.

Another exercised involved reacting to short pieces of music (3.5 to 5 minutes long) in a variety of styles. We listened to five or six different ones and each piece does really evoke a different feeling - and requires a different COLOR. Here are three of mine - the first in response to a "classical" piece, the second to a modern-rock-type piece, and the third to a more African drum piece.



Another exercise involved doing some quick drawings - 20- 40 small ones - of an object found around the house. In some sketches, you might choose to focus in on one small part of the object, in others, you might zoom out, or you might skew the proportions, etc. I had a spatula in one of the two exercises we did. Here are two of the quick sketches I made.

It was really interesting to see other people's drawings of the objects they had. Some sketches could easily be translated in quilt designs and/or quilting designs. I'll have to use this exercise sometime when I'm bored and see what happens. (I'm thinking this could be fun to do sitting through some long meeting.)

After the fact, I learned that Ben probably would have enjoyed attending; I didn't really even think to ask him and feel badly about that. AND I learned that somewhere in this house, he has a copy of The Artist's Way. I'll have to go root around for it and work through a few of the exercise on my own, as I do believe these exercises can be good sources of inspiration.

Antique Quilts

Last night my quilt guild hosted Julie Hendrickson, owner of the JJ Stitches quilt shop in Sun Prairie. Julie provided a trunk show of antique quilts from her collection, ranging from the mid-1800s through 1930. These quilts were amazing. The work was beautiful and the colors gorgeous, but what was most amazing was how imperfect they were - blocks totally cut off, huge bows in the borders, borders noticeably mismatched, etc. - things that most of us today would rip out or never show to anyone. And those imperfections made them all the more loveable. This program reminded me that a quilt need not be complicated to be beautiful, that it need not be perfect to be beautiful, and that it is highly unlikely that I will make a quilt with significant amounts of cheddar yellow.

While I didn't have the best seat in the house for taking pictures, I tried to get some reasonable ones. They're available in my Picasa web album. (They are also currently cycling through as a slide show at right).