Welcome from Georgia

Last July I participated in an embroidered quilt swap. It's the first time I'd ever done anything like that... and it will be the last. Unfortunately, the person who received my quilt never acknowledged it, and the person I received a quilt from had never embroidered, and didn't follow the swap instructions.

Taking pity on me, Shannon of Pieceful Kwilter decided to make something for me, to make up for my bad experience. Her "something" arrived in the mail. 

Shannon made this darling 20" X 31" wall hanging.

Appliqued with homespun fabrics, and quilted on her longarm...

...just look at the detail. How clever to quilt following the plaids in the fabric.

It just speaks, "Hospitality."

Even more loudly, it speaks, "Friendship." From the bottom of my heart, thank you Shannon for your effort and time. What a thoughtful and caring thing to do. I am blessed by you.

Linda

Des Moines Modern Quilt Guild

I'm excited to announce that we are getting the Des Moines chapter of the Modern Quilt Guild off the ground in May! Doris and I are co-chairing the group, for now.  We are inspired by the success of our neighbors, the Kansas City Modern Quilt Guild, who have a very strong group of talented sewists and quilters that gather once a month to share ideas and inspiration, and are even trying to organize a quilt show! 

If you are an Iowa quilter, or know someone who might be interested, please come to our first meet-'n-greet. 

• Thursday, May 19
• 6:30 to 9:00 p.m.
• West Des Moines Public Library, Community Room (main floor)

If you plan to attend, please bring a show-and-tell or a work-in-progress to share with the group, and feel free to invite your friends! Linda

Supernova Blocks

Over the weekend, and after much consternation followed by hours of un-sewing, re-cutting, and re-sewing, I finished making nine 18" X 18" Supernova quilt along blocks.

If you compare them to the patches I showed you in my previous blog post, you'll see there are lots of differences.

What I belatedly realized is that I had pieced the patches wrong. I placed colors in the sequence: light, dark, medium when I should have pieced them: light, medium, dark. I decided which ones to keep as they were...

...and which ones to make-over.

Here's the arrangement on my design wall where I could step back and look - without my glasses, so I could "see" the values instead of the colors. But don't be surprised if I decide to swap around some blocks before I sew them together!

The rest of Lee's instructions to complete the Supernova quilt top will be released Thursday. Hopefully by then I'll have the coal-colored Kona solid I need to complete the top! I've had issues getting the fabric. First I ordered it, sight unseen, from an Iowa quilt shop about an hour north of me. The fabric arrived and it's a Kona solid that's darker than coal. Then, I tried re-ordering it from where I'd ordered it in the first place - Fabric.com. Using the same item number from my previous order, I received an aqua-colored Moda Marble! That issue hasn't been settled yet.

In the meantime, I'm relieved to restore order to my sewing room. These are the piles of rejected, over-cut and unused pieces. What should I do with all of them? I really don't want to sew that big pile of gray solid and print triangles into half-square triangles. But I might be willing to cut 3" squares from the remaining pieces, to add to the pile of 3" squares there in the middle. And then maybe make a patch quilt? What do you think?

Linda

Supernova Quilt Along

Lee at Freshly Pieced began her "Supernova" quilt along (see button at right) two weeks ago, and I've been scurrying to keep up. Being away from home causes that!

Before the quilt along started, I shopped. I bought 11 fat quarters, mostly "Central Park" by Kate Spain, and filled in with pieces from my stash. Each of the nine blocks in Supernova uses five to seven fabrics. As Lee suggested, I spent some time arranging 3"-wide strips for each block, and took photos of each block. Then, using Picasa, I created a collage rotating and arranging blocks until I liked what I saw. This now my printed reference for cutting my fabrics.

 

Here are the cut pieces for each block.

Using a solid in a quilt and the color gray?! That's out of the ordinary for me. Supernova could change my life!

I had to place an on-line order the solid background fabric online because our two local shops sell only a few solid colors. I purchased two shades of gray, and auditioned both of them before settling on Kaufman charcoal.

Here are a few of the blocks as they're on my design wall.

If you've noted the little markers, that's how I keep track of where the block is positioned in the layout. Just like an Excel spreadsheet, rows are horizontal and numbered; columns are vertical and alphabetized.

I figure each four-patch block took about an hour to sew, so this represents at least nine hours of piecing. I was fussy about getting the diagonal seams to join precisely. Of course, that involved some unsewing and resewing. 

On Thursday, Lee released the third step of the Supernova Quilt Along, so it's back to work for me. Thankfully, it's fun work. As I'm sewing I'm thinking about how I will quilt this. Gosh, I'm looking forward to doing some sit-down quilting again. It's been too long. Linda

Kansas Family

We went to Overland Park for four days to spend time with family. Here are a few of the people and places we visited.

We watched Celina play volleyball on the first organized team she's ever been part of.

 Celina's dad, in the background with hands on hips, was a line judge.

We visited our new great-nephew, Tripp. He made my younger sister a grandmother for the first time. And thoughtful little bub that he is, Tripp was born on my birthday, March 18! Trying to lean over to kiss him is Tay, our 18 month-old grandson, who has his little brother, 5 month-old Aesa, on his lap... sorta.

Tripp and his mom, Danielle.

Tay recently made his first visit to the dentist. He's showing us his "dentist face."

 Our daughter Jill, and Aesa.

Our young nephew Evan, is opening a pet store. We stopped in to say hello, see the place, and wish him well.

The shop is about 3,000 square feet and after much work putting up walls, painting, and installing shelving and tanks, he's working hard to stock shelves.

Fish are expected to arrive this week.

Olathe Pet Shop truly is pet-friendly, as Hogan was allowed to wander through the store.

Evan anticipates opening the store in the next couple weeks. If you're in the area, please stop by and tell him Aunt Linda sent you.

Olathe Pet Shop

16651 West 151st Street (corner of Mur-Len)

Olathe, Kansas 66062

913-764-1904 

It's always difficult to say good-bye to the little ones, and make the three-hour drive back home. 

Hopefully, the next post will be about progress on some quilt-y things. Linda

Birthday Present

Since my flourishing palms have been doing a lot of spring housecleaning this week, I don't have much to show you. But I can tell you that I've:

orange-oiled oak kitchen and bathroom cabinets 

scrubbed off the gunk inside the stove hood 

cleaned out and organized a kitchen cupboard and bathroom linen closet

and re-painted a bathroom - from this 90s pale blue faux paint design I texturized with a plastic grocery bag - to Boring Beige or Big Yawn Beige, whichever value of beige puts you to sleep. No picture of that is needed!

90s pale blue faux paint that is no more

The only quilt-y stuff that got done was cutting out pieces for Lee's Supernova quilt along. Because I always pre-wash my fabric, I ended up short on yardage to cut out the solid background fabric. It's been ordered, so in the meantime I made and sewed labels to three quilts. 

Since you may be here to see something more interesting than paint, let me show you what I received for my birthday (two weeks ago) from Carla. I wish I'd taken a picture of the package this arrived in. I use the term "package" because I don't know what else to call mail that arrives in an 12-ounce clear plastic coke bottle! Yes indeed, Carla's giftie was rolled up inside a plastic bottle. I wonder what the letter carrier was thinking as he delivered that bottle to our mailbox. 

Anyway, what was inside was very nice. Tied with a selvage (she knows I'm collecting selvages) were two lovely fabrics (she knows I'm collecting grays), and this cute 7" X 9" mug mat made by Carla herself. Mug rugs are the blogospheric rage, and I hadn't made one yet, so this is a perfect pressie! 

I'd like to think she meant those two little figures in the doorway to represent us. Can you believe that we met through our blogs and our first real time get-together was last September? It's still a marvel to me how blogging makes our world smaller and our friendships larger.

Carla's grandchildren call her "Lolly." Isn't that a charming name? 

I've put my mug rug by my sewing machine and one evening used it for this.

Sauvignon blanc in an antique wine glass looks just as nice as a mug, and made a quilt-y evening quite satisfactory. Linda