Unexpectedly Inspired

One of the things I do for my job is to order parts, software, licenses, etc. for clients.  The website of a technology distributor is probably one of the least likely places to find yourself inspired, but today I logged in and this is the sight that greeted me:

Wouldn't the box design for this product make a perfectly fabulous quilt block?  I love the colors they have chosen and the pattern they placed the triangles into.  I envision this being a block that you make 12 ish of, smoosh them all together in mixed up orientation and call it a quilt.  Bind it with that deep grape color and be happy.

Who's with me?!?

Crafternoon

 We had a great group for Crafternoon this past weekend with very diverse crafts being represented. 

Maggie and Aly were doing some quilting.  Maggie has a very precise way of pinning pieces of a quilt together to ensure that they don't shift and that the seams you want to line up are in fact aligned.  She taught Aly this pinning method this weekend and as you can see, they're both pleased with the results!

 Keva decided to join the group and keep herself close to the action!  Mom was laughing because she's really the perfect crafting dog.  She's quite content to lay around while everyone crafts.  

 Kim was working on a knit washcloth.  Interestingly enough, she stated what many crafters probably feel.  This wash cloth is taking way too long; if it were a blanket square it would be different....even though it's the same exact work, for some reason it seems more worth it.  She happens to fit quite comfortably in Tyler's chair so she got the squish chair! 

 I worked on spinning some fantastic fiber that I received in a Mad Color Fiber Arts Geek Tour shipment. 

It's based off of an episode of Doctor Who called "Blink" in which there is the most perfect pick up line ever...."Life is short and you are hot."  I swear, if any guy ever tried to pick me up with that line, I'd fall in a heart beat. 

Aren't the colors fantastic?!? 

 Here I am tucked away at my spinning wheel making great progress.

And this is what the singles are looking like.  I'm trying to keep the colors together on the bobbin because it pleases me to see them all lined up in sections.

 Gary got the other squishy chair and was working on knitting the most lovely green shawl. 

When Aly first walked in the door with her sewing machine and sewing supplies I swooned.  She uses this vintage suit case to keep all her project and supplies together in one fantastic kit. 

 Maggie is working on a machine applique block for a quilt for Aunt Lois.  I tell ya!  Machine Applique takes the patience of Job.  It takes For-Ev-Er to get one block done...But the results are stunning!

Like any good Crafternoon, we had food!  There was an egg, potato, cheese casserole, Cheetoes, Oreos, chocolate bundt cake, orange juice and cranberry juice.  Yum!  But the real treat came in the form of poached pears with fudge sauce over top.  I have never had anything poached before, but now I'm a convert!  Gary has great cooking skill and flair so even though I hadn't had poached pears before I knew I'd be thrilled to eat them. 

 He even put together a fantastic presentation!  They say the eye eats first, but I'm pretty sure my taste buds were the real winners here.

Here is the progress I had made by the end of the day on my stripey yarn:

 Not quite as tidy on the color chunks as earlier in the day, but I'm still very happy with how it looks!

Quilt camp 2013

Quilt Camp this year was a little different from years previous partly because real life leading into Quilt Camp weekend was quite hectic with schedule changes, and partly because Kim, Jessica and Valerie were not there this year to add their zest and joy. We did get to make new friends this year though since Emily brought her mom and her friend/cousin/chosen family, Aly.  Though there was one point during the day when I looked around and wondered where my pressing expert, Valerie, went off to since I needed her desperately. 

On the last day that we were there it rained quite a bit and hailed a little.  One of the quilters even talked Roger Zimmerman into starting a rip roaring fire in the Lodge fireplace.  I swear the fire started so fast I thought there was a gas pipe underneath it that allowed it to start up so quickly, but Roger assured us that it was all him!

Back in the saddle...

North Fresno Church quilting started back up for the year and I got to go today! Yay!!

Stashy Sunday--delayed

Technically my Stashy Challenge has been successful this week since I haven't purchased any new yarn; however, I've also not gotten a lot done on my Stashy Projects. I did a wee bit of knitting on my sweater, no knitting at all on my Tilting TARDIS Cowl, a little bit of knitting on my Where's Perry Project. I have finished seaming three of the four adorable platypus feet:

So now all I need to do is finish the fourth foot, seam the who thing together. I also count it as a semi-Stashy thing because I helped Jessica reduce the size of her stash by using this perfect orange yarn from her bin.

The other Stashy (yarn) project I worked on was a cowl using two yarns I've had in my stash for almost a year. The pattern was written by Jessica and is really fun. Apparently, unbeknownst to me, I am not a Gryffindor (as everyone wants to be) but rather a Ravenclaw, since blue and grey are much more my style than maroon and gold (shhh...don't tell my high school alma mater). Do you see the cool "Sammy" and "Dean" stitch markers? Supernatural is going to be back on TV soon!

Finally, the thing that has been eating up most of my crafty time is a quilt. I have been inspired (goaded?) into entering a quilt into the BIG Fresno Fair and the deadline for completion is September 16th...Yeah...the September the 16th that is 10 short days away. So I have been stitching like a madwoman to get the binding put on in time. No pictures, I don't want to jinx it!

Arrrrr Me Mateys!

You know how sometimes parents are sooo excited about having a kid so that they can play with kid toys without feeling silly or go to kid movies without people giving them a hard time? Yeah...I'm glad to have a boy child because it means I have an excuse to do Piratey Things. (Which makes me think of Veggie Tales). Last night I started a new quilt and although I'm claiming that "it's for Tyler...", I really mean that I bought the fabric because I liked it and it makes me happy each time I see it. I love the blues, greens and reds together...So fun!
The line of fabric is called "Pirates" and it is super piratey. Ships, skulls, pirate sayings, etc. So far I have 9 out of 20 blocks completed, which I consider great progress considering that I spent about 2 1/2 hours on it and I was watching a movie so spent a portion of that time distracted.

On the Catwalk...

I was so excited to receive the call on Saturday morning that my "Yellow Brick Road" quilt was done being quilted that I popped out of bed (this kind of wake up call is welcomed) and tried to rush right over to get it. I ended up waiting until noon to go, but WOW! I love it!! There is just something special about seeing a quilt that you've created using all fabrics that you adore and put together with the backing finally quilted up. It's the time when you get to fall in love with your craft all over again. The time when you get to realize your vision of the project or adjust to a shifted vision. In this case, the quilt that I've been working on (sporadically) for so long is one step away from being completed and on my bed.

In the showing off of this quilt, I had a model auditioning for his turn on the catwalk. What do you think? Paris bound?

I just LOVE the angles of the quilt pattern juxtaposed with the swirly curviness of the quilting design. Perfect!

Quilting in the 30's

Long, long ago we did a 1930's Friendship Quilt. In case this is a new concept, it's where a bunch of people get together and agree to make a bunch of the same block using certain unifying parameters and then you all trade your blocks around until everyone has one of each person's blocks. In this exchange, we had 12 ladies and were all making blocks out of 1930's reproduction fabric using the Chips and Dip block pattern. Well...FINALLY, and only with the urging and inspiration from seeing my cousins, Jessica and Valerie, handquilting their exchange quilts (picture of one on Jessica's blog here)and my mom piecing together the top that will be donated to Mennonite Central Committee's annual quilt auction. During our Monday Night Quilting, Jessica sketched out a few possible settings for my 12 blocks. I picked the one I liked the best (after seeing it a declaring it the BEST EVER!) and then the whole group worked splendidly to put it together. Here it is in all it's glory!!

And here's the team of magicians that made it all happen:

A Very Merry unQuilt Camp For ME!!

Usually when referring to Quilt Camp, I would be talking about the Quilt Camp we do up at Huntington Lake at Camp Keola. But just as in Alice in Wonderland they celebrated unBirthdays, I am dubbing this one the unQuilt Camp. In March of this year, Mom and I were invited to join a group of other quilters who were renting a cabin at Shaver Lake to spend a wonderful weekend filled with fabric, food, jokes and the like. It was a marvelous time! I finished my first ever quilt top (above) and also my third ever quilt top(below)

Somewhere in between all that finishing up of lingering projects, I made the backing of my second ever quilt and worked on another quilt that I started at last Quilt Camp (the real one!).

Disneyland and a sneak peek!

My family has had a longstanding love of all things Disney. I wouldn't say we were "Over the Top" Fans...but we have spent a LOT of time there over the years. In fact, when my sister, Kim, was attending UC Irvine we had season passes.

This year for Christmas I decided to buy Tyler tickets to Disneyland and I am soooo glad I did because I saw a lot of this: That look of wonder is worth every penny scrimped and saved for the tickets. As he grows older, he is wowed by different things, but Disneyland has the ability to wow people of all generations.

One interesting turn of events for this Disney adventure was that originally the plan was for my whole family to go--but then Dad had foot surgery less than a week before we were scheduled to go and wasn't able to make it. Kim decided to stay home to help him out, but Mom was still up for the adventure. Mom, however, had broken her foot right after Thanksgiving and was still in a cast. Soooooo...we did Disneyland like this:
With me getting a great work out pushing the wheelchair filled with Tyler, Mom, crutches, snacks, jackets, etc. For all those years that I thought it would be just great to have someone in my group in a wheel chair, I take it back!!! Disney has done a great job (darn them) of making nearly everything wheel chair accesible, which means that even if you're in a wheel chair you wait in line with the rest...There were a few rides which we got to go to the front of the line for, but for the most part...the wheel chair was quite tricky.

We got some good Mother/Son pictures:

It was a great trip and it was especially nice to be on the trip with Tyler and my mom because we were able to make the trip all about Tyler and what he wanted most. Every kid's fantasy!
One of my favorite non-people pictures is this one that we took at California Adventures at night:

I love the way that the colors on the wheel are so bright, cheery and inspiring.

In fact, it was that color wheel that inspired me to buy this fabric:
Which will turn into a quilt project that looks a wee bit like this:

More to come on that later!!

Grandmother

What started in August 2010 as a fun little obsession has grown into a wonderful outlet for those Fat Quarter Therapy purchases. It is so satisfying during a stressful time to go into a fabric store and buy a few fat quarters worth of fabric that I'd NEVER in my life consider making a whole quilt out of, but which give me endless moments of enjoyment to look at. These never-a-whole-quilt fabrics are perfect for the Grandmother's Flower Garden quilting project because each time I see them they make me happy, it is a low level of investment, and if I buy a few at a time over the course of the project, I hope to end up with an eclectic mix of fabric.

Here is a picture from when I was playing around with placement of the existing flowers. And this (very bad) picture shows what it looks like today. I love to play with colors and textures in fabric to get the most pleasing (to me) effect. Here are a few future flowers that I'm planning.
Why the renewed inspiration to work on Grandmother's Flower Garden? Well, I went to a Crafternoon at a friend's house and Janice brought this to work on: Not only does she have a waaaaay more completed piece, her Sexie Hexies are 3/4 inch (mine are 1 inch) and she's using all 1930's reproduction fabric. I am in awe.

We did a little bit of quilting...

On Jessica and Valerie's primary colors 1930's quilt.

See that stretch of argyle patterned quilting on white? Yep. That was me!

Eagles, Waffles, Chicks, Mitts

Continuing on with my handmade updates, I thought I'd combine some sewing and knitting projects I gifted. I revisited my Magic Pillowcase obsession by making my dad an eagle Magic Pillowcase. Since he's not such a "frills" kinda guy, I left off the wee tiny contrasting strip that the pattern specifies. He tells me he loves it!

I also knit him a Waffle Hat using Cascade 220 Superwash that he can wear while at Lakeview Cottages, during his SAR/CARDA activities or when he's feeling particularly rugged.

Tyler's favorite colors in the world are blue and green. A few years back, I made a brightly colored rag quilt using flannels. Tyler really enjoyed cuddling up under it on chilly mornings before school, so I thought it was high time I made him one of his own in colors he enjoys. It's probably dumb, but I imagine him carting this same rag quilt off to college someday to snuggle with when he's homesick. I also knitted him some fabulous Chickies.
These chickies were a specific request after listening to the Never Not Knitting podcast episode in which she talks about knitting a Chicken Family for her daughter. Since it's just an audio podcast and he had never seen a picture of her chickens, I had asked him to draw me a picture of what kind of chickie he wanted to go with Pock, whom Tyler received when he contracted the Chicken Pox.
I found a pattern that most closely resembled his drawing and make two chickies for Pock.

I knitted Kim some Alice Mitts with some Bristol County Dyeworks yarn in the New Moon colorway. I LOVE this yarn. It's fabulously soft, great colors and it's washable to boot! They are meant to look like the mitts that Alice Cullen wears in the New Moon movie and you can see a picture of those here.

Blog Reading is Expensive--or "I have no self control"

I have been intrigued by Japanese crafting books for a while now after hearing about how fabulous they are for inspiration on a podcast. Well, yesterday I came across The Sometimes Crafter's blog about the amazing Japanese craft books she recently acquired and I FELL in LOVE with the one known to me only as ISBN 978-4-391-62952-1 (since I don't speak or read Japanese). It was the picture of the projects that got me. I mean, really...who could resist this:
I LOVE the photography, the fun projects and the fresh fabrics that just seem to mesh so well, but not be boring. Perhaps it's because I love the blues and reds, perhaps it's because I love the mix of the traditional (dresden plates) with the modern (houses). I am enamored with the idea that a craft book from another nation that speaks a different language, has an entirely different culture and history from my own could have such similar likes to mine. It makes me think that crafters/sewers really are all kindred spirits and are just a super classy bunch of people. In any case, I now have my very own copy of this fantabulous book winging its way to me from Aichi, Japan (thank goodness for promotional free shipping deals!) and it should be arriving in 3 long weeks...

Quilt Camp

North Fresno Quilters Fall 2010

Keola Fall Quilt Camp 2010

I know Quilt Camp was nearly a month ago so I'm finally blogging about it quite late. However, it couldn't pass without any recognition at all, so here goes:

There once was a girl who was going to quilt camp. She washed and cut her fabric to begin a new quilt project. She packed fabric for her Grandmother's Flower Garden Quilt and backing fabric for two quilt tops that only needed to be measured so the backs could be cut and assembled. She gathered her tools and packed them in her car. She packed clothes for the chilly mountain weather. She purchased yarn, needles and printed a pattern for a "back up" knitting project *In case the sewing became tedious*. And then drove up the hill to Camp Keola. Once the table were set up for sewing stations, she began unpacking her projects to get a jump start on sewing projects. And realized that she had left the whole box full of washed a cut fabric for the new quilt project at home. Yep. That girl is me. I hied myself off to Quilt Camp without my quilting project. I had the pattern, the thread, etc. But no fabric. I called Jessica and Valerie who would be heading up the hill later that day. No answer. I called Doug to see if he could pick up the fabric from my house and take them to Uncle George's or Mark's house since they too would be coming up the hill later. He was on the path to do just that when I called Mark to see if that would be ok...No go...They were already in Prather. Bummer! Call Jess and Val again. Yay! They answered! And they were about 90 seconds from my house at Riverpark. Fweeeew...No wasted Quilt Camp weekend for me! Huge thanks to the team effort to enable me to be able to quilt!!!!

I was able to get quite a bit of the piecing done on the Vintage Cross quilt that almost wasn't:

Tyler LOVES to "help" Grammy sew. He takes his job very seriously:

Until the task is done and it's time to take a break:

Mom finished this amazing quilt:

Kim was able to wear this FANTASTIC sweater top that she knit:

(I love how in this picture, the sunlight totally highlights the top)

Obviously, "Quilt Camp" is a term loosely applied that does not necessarily indicate that quilting will be the main activity, as you can see by the fact that Kim, Jess and Val did not even bring a sewing machine:


Deb Friesen and Jessica showed me how easy it would be to make Magic Pillowcases: