Loved and Stitched

It's great to be home again! These are the little people I left behind, and who were the reason I was in Kansas City - to take care of them while their parents were away. 

Aesa, 2 years; Tay 3 years

Honestly, I didn't see much of 13 year-old Celina who was in school or in her room studying during about 90 percent of my visit.

I also left this color behind. This tree was next door to our daughter's house. Check out that blue-blue sky! I very much appreciated seeing this beauty.

I also had the chance to visit with - several times! - my good friend, Carla. Here we're at the Blue Valley Quilter's Guild quilt show, standing in front of Carla's "Liberated Crosses" quilt, a perfectly lovely, free block pattern you'll find here on her blog.

L: Carla; R: me

My Monday flights went fairly smoothly - Kansas City to Chicago to Tampa - and I arrived only 20 minutes late, due to a strong headwind, or so the captain said. The best part was that my hubby and my luggage were waiting for me. My suitcase was easy to pick up, sitting as it was in the American Airlines baggage claim office. Note. Don't lose track of that little baggage claim ticket! It was used to confirm that the suitcase was in fact mine.

While traveling, I had a happy finish. I completed the last two of the 21 embroidered blocks for the Snowmen A to Zzzz quilt!

Checking back to older posts, I first blogged about embroidering these blocks here, in September 2009. So it's been a UFO for three years, two months. And it's still a UFO until I get it made into a quilt!

The Snowmen embroidery project was something my friend, Miss Kim, and I did together. Mine was mostly embroidered while traveling, by car and by plane, and at 90 minutes of Happy Stitchers every week since June.

Kim came to visit me from Iowa while I was in Kansas City. It's so great to connect with friends!

L: me; R: Kim

She brought along her Snowmen A to Zzzz quilt top so I could see it.

We agree that the border fabrics are what set the tone for the quilt.

Being one who's into brights, I'll be looking for something modern, perhaps with aqua. (And who would have guessed that?!)

As for my next embroidery project, I have a small piece in mind, an Australian design of Matroishka nesting dolls.






But for taking along to this afternoon's Happy Stitchers, I've resurrected a hand-pieced UFO, this Starfish quilt that I began in March, 2011. (Isn't blogging a great way to keep track of one's projects?) It's only about 30" X 40", and is looking a little rumpled for being jammed into a bag for so long.

On Thursday, I'll be focused on preparations for the first meeting of the Central Florida Modern Quilt Guild. I'll be at Sharky's Vac 'n Sew (Wildwood, Florida) at 5:30 pm to get set up for our 6:30 meeting where I'm offering the program, "The Modern Quilt Guild: Quilting for a New Generation" that will mostly be presented on a big screen TV. I'll show modern quilts from the Flickr Fresh Modern Quilts group, while explaining what modern quilting is all about. We'll have about ten modern quilts on display too. I'm just not sure what to expect as far as turn-out. Twenty? Thirty people? Sharky's can seat 42. Here's hoping to filling up the place! Linda

This, That, the Other, and the Other

My hands have been in a mish-mash of sewing projects past week. It seems that every time I open a bin looking for an item needed for the project I have my hands on, I see another project that needs attention. UFO overload! I feel terribly guilty.

So what do I do? I work on something for someone else. Makes complete sense. Especially when the someone else is a dear friend, (blogless) Linda to whom I gifted for her birthday free motion quilting on this 36" X 36" wall hanging of "Glinda" the good witch from The Wizard of Oz. I'd given Linda (So many "Lindas," I know! When more than two Lindas are together, she's "Lola.") the Glinda panel, and the ruby slippers fabric too. Lola sewed them up with pink Fairy Frost to make this cute thing. The rest of the "magic" is up to me!

Wanting to try curved cross-hatching, as Quilter Extraordinaire Wendy of Ivory Spring blogged about here, I ordered the curved ruler to give it a try on Lola's quilt. I like how the ruler works; it just didn't work for this quilt. I purchased the small, 6-1/2"-long ruler, but for the curve size I needed, I should have had the larger, 10" curve. 

So instead, I straight-line cross-hatched Glinda's bubble. For the first time, and also following Quilter Extraordinaire Wendy's example, I stitched with silk thread on top (awesome stuff!) and Bottom Line in the bobbin. Very nice. I'll be doing that again for sure.

Lola's given her approval, thus far. Next, I must come up with a design for the triangles areas, the ones with the ruby slippers print. Then, those pink Fairy Frost triangles will be filled with cyclonic-like swirls surrounded with more feathery-type swirls. Maybe you can tell that I struggle much more with what to quilt, rather than the mechanics of domestic machine quilting. If you ask me to pick the right design for the space, we're in trouble! But gosh, just tell me the design you want and I'll come through for you.

Another ongoing project is RRCB - "Roll, Roll Cotton Boll" - the quilt along that Bonnie Hunter offered in December. I thought I was making good progress until I started sewing the strips of five HST to the block centers. They didn't fit; they didn't even come close! Turns out that because I'd sewn the HST strips on one sewing machine, and the block centers on another sewing machine, the quarter-inch seams were not the same. Argh.

Not that I'm counting or anything, but those 120 strips of HSTs each have four seams that have to be resewn.

I'm resewing each seam, stitching deeper than the first time, and removing the stitching that's nearest the raw edge. For this tedious stuff I'm putting in IPod ear buds and listening to a book - "The Secret," by Beverly Lewis.

During the last car trip to Kansas City, I stitched most of this block. I forgot to take along floss for the border, so this is a recent finish in my on-going "Snowmen A to Zzzz" embroidery project. The letter "I" is prepped for the next time we hit the road.

My Florida trip in March was the last time I hand-pieced. Since I'd sewed up all the patches I traveled with, I needed to cut more. This time, I added 150-grit sandpaper to the back of the acrylic cutting template (see the red pieces), and that greatly improved my ability to rotary cut without template slippage. I bought the package of 4-1/2" square, adhesive-backed sandpaper from the local home improvement store and used scissors to cut small shapes.

While in Florida, I hand-pieced 36 "Starfish" blocks and have enough of the colorful print for only 9 more blocks. I'm hoping that with the connector fabric between each starfish, I'll end up with a decent-sized quilt. I have no clue how to go about calculating those dimensions!

I'd planned to use the white tone-on-tone print (see lower left) as the connector, but at commentors' suggestions, I'm auditioning solids. From the bottom to the top they are Kona: caramel, palm, charcoal, ash, and snow. With 219 Kaufman Kona solid colors to choose from, with names like: ocean, Carribbean blue, Pacific, lagoon, clouds, champagne, and sand - they all fit with starfish - I don't know how I'll ever decide!

There's one last makeover to address. A kind-hearted quilter pointed out that this block really doesn't fit my Supernova quilt layout. She's right.

So, the green will be out and yellow/turquoise will be in. 

Thursday night the Batting Buds (Not baseball related, but like quilt batting. It's what's on the inside that's the most important part of buddies.) got together. We had a great evening, though they might complain about the "torture" I put them through, teaching them to hand-piece apple core blocks.

Linda (yet another blogless Linda with the nickname "Bug") showed us this "New Life" quilt she made with scraps.

Every print seems to go with the others, though Bug included a full color range of scraps in the 4" X 4" (finished) blocks. Her choice of beige sashing and burgundy cornerstones really pulls it together.

She longarmed it and will add binding next. Bug plans to take this quilt with her, to give away when she goes on a Lutheran Church of Hope mission trip to South Africa in June. Good on you, Bug!

Thanks for sticking around to read through lotsa this, that, the other, and the other. I should stay busy for a while. Linda (the Linda with no nickname!)

Lookin' a Little (Star) Fishy

Remember playing along with the TV show Concentration? (1958-1991, according to Wikipedia.) It was a game show where contestants matched pictures that eventually revealed a picture puzzle. This is my super easy version, with no puzzle behind the squares! Do you see how these "Swirling Star" blocks look like star fish? Okay, not quite exactly, but very similar.

Since my last post, these are the shapes I've been hand piecing. To make each one, I begin stitching at the outside of two pieces, moving toward the center. When I've stitched the two pieces together, I pick up another shape and stitch back toward the outside edge to complete joining three sections together. This makes one half of a block. I repeat the steps to make the other half of the block. Then I piece together the two halves starting at one outside edge, stitching across the center, and ending at the opposite outside edge. It takes me about 35 minutes to piece one star block.

I now have 36 of these.

I have been a little uncertain about what fabric - color and print - to use as "connectors" between each star. I cut out only a few connectors using a white, tone-on-tone print. Here they are, laid out for my first assessment of what this quilt top will look like. 

None of the connectors are yet pieced to the stars, so the lay-out isn't precise, but I think I like it. While arranging stars, I decided I need another blue print, and maybe another aqua. That means I won't be hand-connecting anything until I make all the stars I need, but at least I know where I'm headed.

... down a star-fishy path. Do you agree that I need to come up with a name that has "Starfish" in it?