Design Wall Monday--Chocolate and Cheddar

 Design Wall Monday--see more great projects on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

I have a finished quilt top to share--I'm now calling this Chocolate and Cheddar.  I had a lot of fun making up this quilt along the way, starting with a pile of  precut 3.5" scrap squares.  Everything came from stash, and I continued the 3.5" measurement for all the additional rounds. I ended up making a total of four blue background stars to use for each corner.  The top measures 45" square, a good size for a wall quilt, and I am stopping here. 

A backing will be cobbled together from stash--I sure have plenty of fabric to choose from.  This scrappy foray  was a good distraction from recent real life concerns. 

My sister was the victim of a very bad rollover car accident on the freeway last month and suffered a neck, sternum, and clavicle fracture, but fortunately no brain injury. She was in the ICU for four days and has been in a hard cervical collar since the accident. She worked very hard in physical rehab at a local hospital and is doing very well, but has limitations.  She is staying with us temporarily until she is cleared to remove the collar by a specialist and can cope on her own. I took her to the harbor mouth today for some outdoor change of scenery.

It was a pretty calm day and lots of folks were enjoying the sun and sand. There was even a seal swimming in the harbor, but I didn't get a very good picture. Kathy motored about slowly but was glad to be out of the house for a bit.

Lots of beach visitors on the South Jetty side, too.  

Now I really must get back to the Bookshelf Quilt top I planned to work on this month!

Sewtopia Palm Springs, Part 4

Sewtopia project #2 was a tablerunner, a cropped portion of the Beachside Bungalow quilt by Kim Brackett, in her Scrap Basket Beauties book.  I had all the block pieces cut and ready to sew.  I needed my husband's help to take a photo of the layout directions in the book, as I had only written down my changes on a piece of paper.  Eventually he got back to me after golfing! By that time I had finished all the blocks. 

Very scrappy but fun.  Most of the fabrics were from a JoAnn's store jelly roll, with some additions from stash.

The "corner" blocks alternated with a "twist" block. There was no further assembly as I will have to figure the  the setting triangle size for the sides.  I am glad all the center pieces got sewn, anyway!

My third project was the Four-patch X by Bonnie Hunter, but I was only able to get one block completed before the end of the last day.  

The pillow cover I made did not win the Windham challenge; I am not sure who won!  The winner was chosen when I was busy elsewhere, I suppose.

There was a great trunk show from Latifah Saafir as well, with lots of HRTs.  She was selling her new HuRTy ruler afterwards. 

Sewtopia swap gifts were on the tables in the morning.  I received a very clever zippered folding tray with goodies inside. 

When opened, it was full of loot. 

A needle minder, needle book, needle setting tool, magnetic pin holder, and mini charm pack.  Thanks, Mandy!

Look at all the Sewtopia loot given and some I took home after we played games.  I did buy the strawberry print yardage and couple of fat quarters in the Sewtopia shop.  

An ironing board cover and several bottles of Soak spray, with a Kona color book were also gifted. 

Finally, I got a couple of birthday gifts, since mine fell during Sewtopia. My sister made me an H-bag. 

Love the sewing theme and the Lucite handles. Kathy cut up and covered used campaign signs for  a sturdy base inside the bag.  Our sister-in-law gave me a beautiful lipstick holder and thread winder butterflies. 

Finally, next year's Sewtopia was announced as NASHVILLE, TN!  I have never been to Tennessee.  Kathy is excited as her daughter and friends from Missouri.can easily visit.  We look forward to another great time put on by Amy and her SEWtopia crew!

Sewtopia Prep

Hi there!  It has been a busy few weeks.  I will have to travel back in time to fill in all the fabric and fun leading up to and during Sewtopia Palm Springs.  I previously showed all the fabrics for the first of three projects I planned to work on during the retreat, which was the Sidewalk Chalk pattern by Meghan Buchanan.  Cutting was a little stressful given that I was using color groups rather than single fabrics, but I was so happy to pull from stash. 

Blue fabrics are limited in my stash, but I found a good mix of print, scale, and tone. 

This late night pic of the greens turned one of them brown. 

Reds, yellows and peaches rounded out the groupings. I prewashed all the pieces to prevent running colors...look at the sink with the reds!

It required a number of rounds of soaking and rinsing before the water was clear. 

I also did a lot of cutting and sewing for a secret birthday gift for my sister, as her birthday fell during Sewtopia. 

Kathy loves blues so I put those in the middle.  Most of the pieces were cut from 5" charm squares. I used two different white on white prints for fun. The pattern I bought from a speaker at guild a few years ago. 

As you can see, I chose to do only one row and make a tablerunner size of the Mini Spikey pattern. While I got the binding sewn on by machine, I had to finish hand-sewing it down while at Sewtopia. The border and binding are Kona Navy, which is near black, it is so dark!

I participated in the general Sewtopia blind swap; I made this reuseable gift bag and filled it with a few fat quarters, a pattern, and other goodies. This is about 9" tall in real life.  I put it in another gift bag and added a notebook sized graph paper book as well. 

We were able to be less choosy about how much to bring to Sewtopia  since we were driving;  I brought my own sewing machine.  The drive was not short, but everything went pretty smoothly through LA and we got to the Margaritaville Resort in good time.  As we walked into the lobby, our brother was at the desk checking in his wife!  Too funny.  This was Laura's first Sewtopia, and she brought her  brand new machine, a fancy Quilter's Edition Bernina.  More about that later....

Our 3rd floor room overlooked the pool...

I caught a UFO cloud near sunset :)  It was nice to be settled into the hotel before the big event started the next day. More about that in the next post!

Scrappy Stitching, Sisters, and Weather

Scrappy is the current  mode in the sewing room.  I'm piecing the long rows of  Easy Breezy blocks (Bonnie Hunter's Quiltville leader-ender) in my chosen setting with a 3.5 x 6.5" spacer.  I ran out of 2" squares I was making into 4-patches, so went to my precut drawers to find something else.

I found a bunch of 1.5x2.5 rectangles and decided to make rectangular blocks.  I had lots of green pieces so played around and came up with this setting.  

These were fun to sew up--they were just finger-pressed so look a bit wonky.  Not sure what they will become yet! In case you are wondering--no, that is not the smallest scrap I save...

This scrapbooking drawer is loaded with color-sorted 1.5" and 2" strips and squares...

...with 1.5" squares as the smallest scraps.  I am not really a string quilt lover, so cut my scraps down pretty much as I go.  I was just thinking it might be fun to make a mini Jelly Roll Race quilt from all the 2" strips.  

We somehow survived all the horrible scorching hot weather that lasted for so many days last week in SoCal.  Temps were up to the high 90s at our house and there was damage to the landscape. Here's our poor avocado tree. 

It only got burnt in this one spot, luckily. 

The avocados themselves survived just fine.  

 

My daylily doesn't look too happy here!  Thankfully we have two room air conditioners to use, but due to the immense humidity up to 90% for multiple days due to the unusual west coast hurricane off Mexico, it was not pleasant to move around much at all.  Power flex alerts lasted for the whole week. I didn't mind the air-conditioning at work, for once!  I felt bad for all the kids out practicing sports, including our grandsons who are starting soccer again. 

Next on my list is figuring out what I want to take to Sewtopia, coming up in November.  My sister Kathy and sister-in-law Laura were here over  the hot hot weekend and we cut out all the pieces for Laura's project, Everbloom by Paper and Pen patterns, in a sweatshop manner we called Amish Day.  Kathy ironed the fabric and Laura and I got all the cutting done. This will be Laura's first Sewtopia and we wanted her to be able to start right in to sewing!  Luckly this year we will be able to drive to the event in Palm Springs and bring our own machines.  The travel to Florida last year was tiring!

Sewtopia Orlando--Part Four

 Sewtopia has a secret swap for those who wish to participate.  I made a pin and clip cushion for the handmade part, and included some patterns, thread, and a needle book in a Snap Bag. 

I found this pattern on thesewingdirectory.co.uk.  I liked the applied fabric strips for clip portion, but felt it might be too flimsy with just folded fabric. 

I stuffed mine with scraps of batting--this was the sturdy kind you can use for potholders. My sister wants one for clips only--she hates pins.  I received a beautiful handmade bag--it was so professional, I was looking for a label!

Jennifer included lots of great little sewing items, chocolate, and stickers.  Very happy to have received such a fine swap gift.  We learned on the last day of Sewtopia that next year's event will move back to November--and it will be in Palm Springs, California.  That will be a great money saver for my sister and me, with only a 3.5 hour or so drive from home!  

Sewtopia ended at noon, so there was a lot of cleanup and packing of all the projects.  Many folks had left mid morning to catch flights home.  My sister and I were staying over another night.  We were hanging out in our top floor room when suddenly the power went out and the fire alarms started blaring.  Kathy began throwing her stuff into suitcases. I had already packed up most of my belongings.   The fire alarm soon went off, but there was still no power.  Kathy became concerned about the power outage and our morning flight and we decided to change to a hotel closer to the airport about 30 minutes away. It was not much fun dragging two suitcases each down 5 flights of stairs, but we did it.  We later learned the power came back on within a couple of hours at the original hotel.  Upon reaching the airport the next morning, there was a major glitch.  My sister's plane ticket I had somehow booked in her maiden name, which did not match her ID.  Security in Los Angeles had missed this, and neither Kathy nor I had noticed my error!  Orlando  ticketing agents finally let us through, though later in Security it was pointed out to me that I needed to sign my passport...sheesh. 

We flew Delta back and once again the flight was completely full, but people were better behaved.  I worked on a cross-stitch and played a few games on the airplane video screens. We caught the shuttle back to pick our car at the hotel parking, and luckily got out of LA before rush hour traffic picked up.  

I laid out all the loot on the cutting table for a picture.  Lots of fabric to find a place to store!  We will look forward to next year's event and hope lots more folks will be able to come. 

Holiday Times Keeping Me Busy!

Well, gosh, didn't mean to disappear for so long.  It's been sweatshop sewing, decorating, and plenty of work and family of late.  I did get the binding on my Lucky quilt in time to share at the guild meeting, but haven't gotten any better photos.  You can see the random box quilting my sister Kathy did pretty well here.  I think it looks great and hope to get some outdoor photos sometime this week.

 Kathy also quilted this lap size Sliced Cake (a la Canoe Ridge Quilting).

I finished this top during my Three for March self-challenge.  Kathy hooked up the longarm's computer to quilt this design she named "Annie's BS Swirl", lol.  I haven't had a chance to make binding for it yet.  This is a fun method for using lots of prints.

There was also a lot of work on the star blocks for Barb's Oh My Stars swap.  

I saw a hint on Instagram about cutting apart flying geese a fast way.  It worked really well.  There are now 17 completed blocks and the remaining ones in various stages of completion.  I want to get these in the mail right after Christmas.  

Speaking of Christmas, decorating was finally accomplished Saturday, only a week after we got our tree, sheesh. 

Very happy to have the tree skirt I finished for the Fair now under the tree.   

A few vignettes on the kitchen cupboard end shelf.  

 

And my latest cross-stitch staged on my Grandma's recipe box.  This was a free Lizzie Kate design I jazzed up with a border, extra cookies, and my own color scheme for the cup.  

I posted this guy on IG, noting his pensive look while resting up for the big night with Santa :).

There will be lots more sewing this week, I have a Secret Santa gift to finish up, plan to sew some fabric wrapping bags, and a couple of scarves.  Oh, and do some Christmas shopping....

Hope everyone is taking time to enjoy the season and plans with family and friends.  

Design Wall Monday--Thanksgiving and Quilting

It's Design Wall Monday again, see more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog.  I have several things to show for the long holiday weekend's work.

First, Thanksgiving prep meant moving a lot of my sewing room stuff into the garage so we could make room for moving furniture to extend the dining tables.  My husband took the opportunity--and unusually cold and rainy weather in SoCalif--to use our fireplace.  

Usually my cutting table is directly in front of the hearth and hides the pretty ginkgo leaf firescreen I got as a gift one Christmas.  We have had piles of logs from an ornamental pear tree that the drought killed years ago--Grant fed the fire all day with them and it made him very happy :)  We were only 11 for dinner and there was plenty of everything, with lots of leftovers!  It was a lovely time together and we got a visit from the grands and their folks later. 

Friday morning I partially reassembled my sewing room to work on two projects, the Oh My Stars swap blocks from the fabrics I showed last post, and the ongoing background fabrics for Jen Kingwell's Dreamweaver quilt for our son and new daughter-in-law.  I got seven more rows sewn together.

 That's another 140 squares completed....and another 140 to go.  I pulled out the project bin and applique template instructions and will need to confer further with the 6-month-weds about fabric choices in the near future.  Then I got to work on the swap blocks.

I used my GO cutter for the 2.5" red print squares and cut the remaining pieces.  The flying geese were made the four-at-a-time way and then trimmed to final dimension.  In this photo the muslin background looks pink, for some reason...

...this photo has truer colors.  I'll need to keep being careful with the seam allowances to keep the 1/4" from the points, but I am really pleased with the fabric choices.

I'll have another quilt to share next time--my sister quilted my Lucky word quilt top for me today!  We got it on the frame together and she finished it tonight.  Here's a sneak peak...

So excited--here's how it last looked...two years ago after Sewtopia New Orleans in November 2017.

Sewtopia Wrap Up

Final post of the fun we had in Seattle.

Sewtopia Seattle had two swaps this year, a general blind swap, and a super secret swap with a named attendee.  I participated in both.  For the blind swap I made a zippered selvage bag and put a bunch of sewing goodies, mini charms and thread, a selvage coaster, and some treats.  I was the very lucky recipient of an amazing bag.

Isn't it gorgeous?  It is quite large, with leather straps and an inner pocket with a zipper.  I love it.  My bad memory of names leads me to guess this was by a Kathy...so terrible I can't be sure, but I recognized her from previous events.  Many thanks!!

For the secret swap, we left each other little things for the first two days, then the reveal was on the third day.  I was again the recipient of a very generous swapper.  

There was tea, treats, a teacup, tea towel, quilted tote with handles, ruler, thread, notepad, ruler, and the beautiful pillow with sewing machine.  Kathryn from Calgary is a talented maker herself and I appreciate all her time and care in the swap, just awed at the effort!

As I mentioned before, for the blind swap I made a Snap Bag and filled it with sewing goods, a pattern, fabric, and other treats.  Somehow, at stupid o'clock when I was packing, I never got a photo of it.  My partner, Jill, was very sweet in her appreciation of my gift.

Shop Hop finds were fun too.  I bought a bunch of fat quarters for our game night, which were all lost, haha, but I did make it home with plenty of fabric, including the swag bag from Sewtopia. 

Missing from this photo is another length of a Christmas print from Quilting Mayhem, and a length of solid fabric from Dry Goods.  

Our last day in Seattle, my sister and I were glad to have the afternoon to sightsee before our 7 pm flight.  We luckily were able to check out but leave our luggage with another attendee who was staying another night.  We took another Uber to the Space Needle area, first exploring the grounds and perusing all the eating places at The Armory.  

Kathy posing with another enourmous totem pole. The people watching was great while we enjoyed a stone fired pizza. The Children's Museum is below the Armory and it was fun to see all the kids.  We bought our passes and rode up the Space Needle with the crowd. 

The sky was gray and dramatic and I liked the contrast with the fall leaves on the trees lining the streets far below the tall buildings.

Lots of folks were posing on the revolving glass floor.  It was entertaining to watch :)  The Seattle Eye is there in middle at the edge of the water. 

I caught a seaplane flying low as the sun hid behind the clouds.  Too soon, we took the elevator down, perused the gift shop but did not buy anything, and made our way to the Chihuly exhibit and gardens.  Dale Chihuly is a famous Seattle glass artist who works in a team approach to making all his glassworks, which are displayed all over the world.  I'll  share just a few favorites of the many I photos I took!  I really loved the garden the most, with the dramatic plantings chosen to go along with the glass art. 

 Sort of a forest with all different shapes of glass.  The spires were about 8-10 feet tall.

This boat he found washed up on shore was filled with huge glass spheres.  The reflective black manganese floor is very unique.

As you exited the gallery, this large spray of glass shapes greeted you. 

Different glass shapes among plantings at the base of the Space Needle.

I loved this enormous bouquet of glass shapes wiggling atop the mound of Black Mondo Grass contrasting with the striking bright green tips of the bushes at the base.  Very dramatic!  Before we headed back to the hotel, we watched a live demo of glass blowing taking place alongside the gallery.  Three women were creating a vessel.  So many steps are involved, all of which can result in a collapse of the hot glass.  We had a terrific time in Seattle and with all the Sewtopia ladies.  Next November's Sewtopia will be in Orlando, Florida!  I've never been there, either!