Give Me Some Color!

With all of that black and extreme quilting detail going on in "Little Lanterns of Tokyo", I had to take a break and get my color fix with "Vivid Imagination". Some of you might recognize this one as my cranky quilt that wasn't cooperating with the quilting process a while back. With a few adjustments, we are off and running again.

Many, many years ago, one of my college professors had advised me that it was advisable for detail artists to have a fun project they could use as a release. He told me about a scientific illustrator who threw bright paints at a large canvas at the end of each work day. Apparently, he also yelled and bellowed as he let loose.

So even if we are being creative...

 

 we might need to switch up every now and then.

 

 

Batik Shower Curtain

Sometimes necessity demands that I stop quilting for a bit and do some regular sewing. In this case, it had to do with a shower curtain that somebody had used as a swinging vine earlier in his kittenhood. Yes, that would be Nico.

I had heard stories about white swimming cats that sported a spot of color on their heads and a color coordinated tail. Hmmmmm.....had to be exaggerated. NOPE! If Nico is any indication of the nature of Turkish Van Cats, I would have say the stories are true.

Nico does not have access to Lake Van in Turkey where his ancestors swam, but he does have a shower Central California. And with all the spraying water--not to mention the excitement--the shower curtain didn't stand a chance.

Nico also plays in the bathroom sink and drinks out of the faucet. He washes his front paws in his water dish and goes nuts when he hears ice cubes being twisted from their plastic trays. After all, he's gotta have ice for his water bowl--more so for playing than for drinking. The really cool water is pretty good on hot summer days, though.

Back to the shower curtain. I thought I would make the new one out of batik since I had received so many compliments about the bathroom window curtain that I had previously sewn from a fish batik. The fabric had blended with the shower curtain, bit it wasn't a perfect match. Not to worry. The window curtain had seen better days, too.

Nico could not be blamed for that. The sun had taken it's toll on the window curtain. Talk about faded! Even shredded. Needed to do something about that before the new neighbor decided to take a peek.

I found a couple matching lengths of Indian batik on the bargain table at Beverly's Fabrics. Five dollars per yard.

This is the result:

 

Nico really likes his new shower curtain. He doesn't hang from it like Tarzan, but perches on the side of the tub between the batik curtain and the white waterproof liner. And there he stays, listening to the water while I take my shower.

This snapshot shows how bright the sun is behind the curtain in the window. It provides a beautiful blue green light, but it is hard on the fabric. You can see just a tiny sliver of the shower curtain to the left. It is the very same fabric as the window curtain--without backlighting.

 

Here is Nico enjoying the window. He is normally not allowed up there, but he seized a rare opportunity to stretch out on the sill when he noticed the open window. Gotta love that clown!

"Little Lanterns of Tokyo"

For those of you who were waiting for Curry, the cat, to get off of this quilt so that you can finally see the whole thing, you are in luck today. Curry is hanging out somewhere else in the house. It's around 100 degrees in the big valley as I write, and no one seems to have much energy.

This quilt was a bit difficult to photograph. It is 72 X 72", and obviously, does not have a hanging sleeve on it as of yet. I stood on a chair, hoping to get a better view.

Here is a partial view of the middle section. It is comprised of hexagonal blocks--some pieced off-center log cabins, and some solid cuts of various black and metallic Asian prints.

 

This is an even closer look. The smallest strips are less than one inch across and were cut from hundreds of Asian charm squares I received through a charm swap at my guild many years ago.

 

This snapshot shows the Japanese lanterns that frame two of the corners. I am going to be quilting orchids on the large black border with my typical gold thread.

 

 

The abstract lanterns and night sky will be quilted with clouds and a few flying cranes.

 

 

The quilting on the outer most border will follow the printed hexagonal pattern on the fabric. I usually don't work on the outer border so early on, but with the major components of the quilt already anchored, I think I will be all right. I am sure loving working with the black Hobbs cotton/polyester batting I snagged from my stash in the linen closet. It is so lightweight and rarely shifts.

 

 

If you have any questions about "Little Lanterns of Tokyo", please feel free to ask. This quilt has been very slow in the making. It feels good to finally get to this point.

 

It Doesn't Get Any Peachier!

It's the beginning of peach season here in the Central San Joaquin Valley, and my two Sugar Lady white peach trees are taking their jobs very seriously. I gave them some Ironite, which is a granulated mixture of minerals, in February.

Look what happened! This tree in my front yard covers almost half of the house. It is absolutely loaded with peaches. I have hundreds of pounds of work ahead of me.

                                                        Here are some closer views.

 

 

Here is one of the medfly traps I let the Department of Agriculture put in my fruit trees every summer. They stop by once a week and monitor the traps.

 

So far, so good. I am happy to help them out.

 

 

This is a younger tree in my back yard that I started with a seed from the first tree. Much the same, but the peaches come ripe about one week sooner than the other.

 

 

With the drought hanging over us, I figured that I could judiciously water my fruit trees or my grass. You can see what got the water. Now I will have fruit to freeze, can, and share with my friends.

 

Better get busy!

 



Time to Focus

Now that I have burned through the first two weeks of summer vacation putting out fires, it is time for me to get focused. Otherwise, I will jump from one UFO to another and not finish even one quilt by the time I have to go back to school.

I have been spending way too much time with various dentists. Then there are those other obnoxious summer chores that need to be performed--like cleaning out closets, the garage, and under the patio cover. All that makes me just want to sew something easy, ignoring any promises or show deadlines that might be looming on the horizon.

Curry is also somewhat of a distraction, but he knows which quilt I should finish. He will move one of these days so you can see the rest of it.

 

I can't tell you how many years I have been working on this quilt. It started off about the time that some of us at my guild were participating in an Asian charm swap. Somewhere around 2007, I believe. The charms were 5 X 5", and I sliced them into 1 1/2" strips. Does that give you an idea of how small the pieces in this quilt might be? I don't know what I was thinking, and I have to say that I grossly underestimated the amount of time this project was going to take.

 

Last summer I thought I had it ready to sandwich and quilt, but decided that the third border was way too busy. During spring break, I ripped off that border and found a long forgotten length of fabric in my stash that was a much better candidate.

 

The picture below is the "before" view. The outer border is now a proud member of my scrap basket.

 

By the end of spring break, I had the quilt sandwiched and ready to quilt come June.

 

Well, June would be NOW, and I really don't feel like focusing. I have some tedious mega-quilting ahead of me.

 

 

I did manage to get all of my "Clueless Beauties" blocks completed and arranged. The blocks do need to be sewn together. Then there are borders. As much as I love that project, it is going to have to take a little nap while I get some work done on the other. Drat!

 



Friday the Thirteenth and a Full Moon



          Enjoy this rare event. There will not be another simultaneous Friday the 13th and a Full Moon until 2049.

 

 

Yesterday was a very busy day for me with appointments and errands. When I finally arrived home in mid-afternoon, I decided that I had had enough of all the junk in my kitchen and utility room cabinets. I moved my garbage dumpster to just outside my back door and began filling it up with old stuff that I had no reason to be keeping. Now my floor to ceiling utility cabinets are empty save two narrow shelves of canning jars. They will be used very soon to contain the multitude of peaches that are burdening two of my trees.

 

I bet you can't guess what's going in those utility room cabinets. Tee hee.....

 

Since I was on a roll, I loaded up two large green waste containers with rose clippings and set those in the alley for early Friday morning pick-up. That means they will be empty for Tony the gardener to refill come Tuesday. He is not going to like me standing over him, but I am going to make sure that the only thing that gets clipped in the backyard is the grass--not the tomato plants that are leaning out of their raised beds, heavy with fruit. As I keep telling him, I eat the tomatoes, not the grass.

 

There was no time to work on "Clueless Beauties" yesterday, but I did make some progress the day before. It's a good thing that I stopped long enough to take a picture because I am noticing that I have too many rows off to the right, but need another one along the top. I am still working on adding some lighter colors.

Happy Friday the 13th, and a nice Full Moon to you!

 

Supposed to be Ugly

Several months ago I went through my stash and tried to pull out every cotton print that was cheap, ugly, or looked like I would never use it in a hundred years. That was a lot of fabric! I am still cutting that pile into 4 inch squares.

Today my summer friendship group, the Pinheads, met at Bolts to Binding for a little sewing. There were only four of us, but that did not diminish our fun.

I took my basket of fabric squares along with me and a bolt of Pellon Quilters Grid. For those of you who have not tried Quilters Grid, you are missing a real treat. It is a fusible Pellon with a light grid of gold one inch squares printed on it. Any size of squares or rectangles can be fused to the product, but they must all be the same size, and preferably, cut in even inch increments.

After a couple hours of arranging squares, then pressing with an iron, I got a fair amount done. This is a sample.

 

Another view. This project was supposed to be an ugly cover for a big ottoman that Zee the cat likes to perch upon. I might have to rethink that idea. All of the ugly squares amazingly combined into something that is pleasing to the eye. Go figure.

 

After the squares are secured, the project is flipped over, then folded along each grid line with the right sides facing, and sewn a quarter inch from the grid line. In this picture, you can see the light grid on the Pellon.

 

This picture is a little better.

 

 

This is what the back looks like with the fabrics adhered. You only need to fold and sew on the lines where the raw edges of the blocks meet. After sewing all the lines in one direction, you have the option of cutting the seam open and pressing it flat before stitching the seams that will cross them. Usually, I do not cut the seams open because the bulk is negligible. I also like the idea of having the raw edges of the squares being encased in a little sleeve.

 

I'll be working on this, bit by bit, over the next few weeks between other projects. Sort of a fun way to relax and make an easy project.

 

 

In the meantime, I will try to decide who gets this quilt. Zee the cat, or me.

 

Busy Beauties

In spite of the 100 degrees plus temperatures yesterday and today, I am finding lots of energy somewhere to jump into reworking this project. In fact, I am having a difficult time stepping away from my sewing machine.

I guess I am making up for ten years of procrastination. (See the previous post for the history on this long-standing UFO.)

This is how far I got as of yesterday evening. Sorry that many of the blocks are overlapping. My design board isn't big enough. I am going to have to change those messy blocks around in the very center since there is not enough variety and contrast there. Some of the block components are just pinned in place, but at least all the points are now sharp. That's a miracle.

 

I still have lots of pieced arcs left to choose from. I am auditioning fabrics for the setting pieces. There are many fabrics that were used again and again and again when these blocks were originally made. Need to change things up!

 

I am thinking I need to add some new prints and colors to make it sparkle a bit. As it stands, everything is either yellow or the same grayed value of green, orange, brown or burgundy. All of the bright oranges are ones I just added yesterday. It was a tough leap for me, but probably a good decision. I want to stick with the autumn colors, but with some highlights of lighter values.

 

 

We'll see........

Clueless Beauties

Many, many years ago--not long after I started quilting--I met my first New York Beauty block. I was fascinated! I found a book with a pattern in it, made some changes, and got busy assembling the blocks from autumn batiks and cotton texture prints. I knew exactly how I wanted to lay those blocks out and actually got a few sewn together before I had to put them all away. I was starting some sort of teaching course at the local university and knew full well that there would be no time to quilt for several months. So I neatly pinned the blocks to a flannel sheet, folded it, them tucked the bundle into a closet.

Years later I took the sheet out, unfolded it, and much to my dismay, the pinned pieces had come loose. They fell in all directions when I opened up the folded sheet.

So much time had passed that I couldn't remember how I originally wanted the blocks arranged. And since I had changed the pattern, there was no going back to the book to get some clues.''

On closer inspection, I also sadly noticed that my piecing skills on that project had much to be desired. Ugh!

At least I put all the pieces in a BOX before shoving them back into the closet.

Yesterday I took said box out of the closet, and things did 't look so bad.

 

 

There was still that mumble of blocks and pieces, but I think I can rework most of the inaccurate piecing. I still love all the colors. I am not sure how I originally intended to connect everything, but now that does not seem so important. It's okay to be clueless sometimes.

 

 

While I was ratting around in that box, I did figure out one thing--where I had put my autumn leaf batiks. I knew they were somewhere.

 



A Bubbly Border

Now that summer is here, I can get back to several projects that are ready--or almost ready--for quilting.

"Ice Kachang" just needs a border. I found this wild bubbly batik online that looks like it will do.

 

 

This is the top minus the border. I constructed it from commercial batiks and hand-dyed fabric I made at Vivian Helena's Aumond's class. Her blog can be viewed at:

 

http://vivianhelena-creates.blogspot.com/ 

 

 

 The most difficult part of this so far was ironing all of the seams open on the back. The dyed fabric was Kona Cotton and was too thick to just press the seams to one side as usual. Not to mention all of the diagonal seams. It took me way over an hour just to get those seams to lie flat.

 

If my current plans for quilting and embellishing this little jewel prove valid, I will taking quite a while with this one. The 100 pieced squares measure only 35 X 35", but I can squeeze a whole lot of fancy stitching and beading into that small space. Not a project that will be finished anytime soon.

 

Here are a couple older posts about the making of "Ice Kachang":

 

http://quiltedtimeposts.blogspot.com/2013/01/ice-kachang.html

 

http://quiltedtimeposts.blogspot.com/2013/02/ice-kachang-revisited.html

 

Well first things first. Let's see if I get this border sewn on and mitered today.

 

Glorious Garden

This morning I went out into my garden with the intent of sweeping up some magnolia leaves. Just a quick look around sent me skipping back into the house for my camera.

Bees were buzzing around the first squash blossoms of the season.

 

I don't know how these peppers got so big--so fast. They are are about eight inches long and the variety is called Big Bertha. Go figure.

 

 

Sugar Lady peaches. They will be ready in a couple weeks.

 

Green tomatoes.

 

Red Early Girl tomatoes. I have some turkey bacon in the refrigerator, so you know what I will be having for dinner.

 

A Sewful Good-bye to Janice

Tuesday evening, the Sewful Sisters threw a party for our dear friend Janice, who is retiring and moving clear across the country. Corey made her famous chicken adobo and a rice noodle dish. Everyone else contributed a salad, a side dish, or dessert. I have never known a group of cooks like these. They can throw a feast together at the drop of a hat.

Besides bringing her delicious chicken, Corey brought a huge quilt to share. She is sitting on the right. Notice that we also have a new junior quilter. Lily was so well-behaved all evening. Her mama, Angela, is new to our group.

 

Corey used wool batting in this quilt. It made it lightweight, soft, and not so prone to holding creases when folded.

 

The quilting design was an overall rose motif and was exquisitely done.

 

Here is a picture of Janice, our guest of honor. This is a snapshot I took of her a while back with an exchange quilt she had received.

 

 

We are really going to miss this gal.

 

School's Out For Summer!!!

 

See me smile?

 

Actually, that is a sun medallion on the side of my garage. I wish I had about ten more. That's how happy I feel.

After lots of research and just plain yacking with a lot of nerds, I ditched my old laptop and got a Microsoft Surface. So far, so good, but I will reserve my judgment until later. The biggest issue for me was finding a tablet that would accept photos from an external camera.

I also found a cool cell phone feature. My landline and home internet service were getting more and more unreliable. Lots of squealing and static on the phone. The internet router stopped lighting up on Friday, which meant that I did not have a broadband connection. Ugh! I DID pay my bill!

Then there has always been the issue that I only had internet access on my laptop while I was at home. What if I wanted to travel?

Well, I called around, and Metro PCS had a solution for me. With a very reasonable phone, and monthly plan--not to mention that they PAID ME $49 to port my landline number to them--they charge me a mere additional $5 per month, and my phone becomes a hotspot. That means that my tablet can snag the WiFi signal from my phone and be truly mobile. Woo-hoo!!!

I just love good deals. And freedom.

Anyway, with school being out as of today, I am hoping to squeeze some quilting into my summer. And gardening. First I have to deal with a tooth that has been giving me fits. After almost a month of antibiotics and visits to two dentists for diagnostics, it looks like I am having my first root canal with a third dentist. Good thing that I haven't really been in pain. Just really tired.

Am looking forward to feeling better.