Sewtopia Palm Springs Part 3

Sorry for the break between posts! Sewtopia Palm Springs outings on Day 1 ended with a visit to the Palm Springs Art Museum.  We had a little trouble getting in to the museum--there was apparently a miscommunication about payment and we had to wait about 25 minutes before it was sorted out.  There were lots of great art pieces--I'll just share a few. 

The San Jacinto Mountains looked very quilt-like in this very wide and narrow painting. 

Interesting bio for this 1960 painting. 

I left the bit of the museum floor to show how large the Pueblo painting was.  Love the colors of this painting. 

There were also sculptures. 

One could not exactly tell what this was at first glance, though I did have an idea before reading the bio. 

Can you see the horse now?

Upstairs were lots of modern art pieces including one of my favorites...

A very large sculpture by Alexander Calder. 

I don't really see a lizard, but I liked the shapes!  It would be fun to see this in motion. Okay, just one more to share...

This huge basket sculpture was made from an usual group of materials. 

Crushed aluminum cans mounted on a satellite dish!

 

There were many more pieces of art I enjoyed--and there was also a turn through the museum store--but later I learned from my sister that I missed the basement treasures, including glass art by Dale Chihuly.  Oh well!  

Finally we returned to the hotel and at last entered the sewing room for some actual sewing.  I started with my main sewing project, Sidewalk Chalk (pattern by Meghan Buchanan), sewing together all the HRT pieces before calling it a night. 

The next morning we had buffet breakfast in the conference center and then got back to sewing.  It was great to have a design wall close by and I slowly filled it up with the blocks over the hours. 

It was slow going to keep track of my different fabrics versus the pattern colors for each block, but I managed to get them all done.  then I made my task longer by sewing each of the block pieces  together individually, but I wanted to be sure of my placements!  

 I ended Friday night with the individual rows sewn and packed them away to assemble into a top at home. 

One more post to finish off Sewtopia 2022--and share the destination for Sewtopia 2024!

Sewtopia Palm Springs--Part 2

Sewtopia Palm Springs started off Thursday 11/3 with checking in to the large conference center, which we had all to ourselves. We picked out lanyard colors for nametags, got our Sewtopia goodie bags, and found our assigned tables.  My sister, sister-in-law and I were all together, and we met our fourth tablemate soon after.  Then we piled onto the bus for several outings that were all on Palm Canyon Drive, the same as our hotel.  There are no quilt shops to speak of in Palm Springs, so they got creative and took us first to Moorten Botanical Garden, a family owned desert native garden and nursery.  The son of the founders--who looked to be in his 80s--presented a short background history and some anecdotes related to his parents and the many artifacts around the area. He was very knowledgeable about the plants, and entertaining, too. 

This wagon disintegrated decades ago beneath this large ocotillo. 

Agave and cholla cactus among large pieces of ancient petrified wood found in the desert. 

Lava flow and native cacti. The founders went on many forays for plants in the Southwest and into Mexico. 

Moortens' Spanish style house looking lovely through the huge cacti and palms. 

I really liked this species of cacti---Totem Pole cactus. Very old Saguaro towered behind. 

This unusual hummingbird was hanging around the old wagon and resistors on a wire. It was hard to get a closeup...

 

See his purple beard?  Very pretty hummer, among many that were flitting around.  

We then got back on the bus to the main retail district where there were lots of quirky shops and plenty of places to eat.  

I was curious why they kept the long beards on these palm trees. They are trimmed off here!

It was Pride Week but we were there before the weekend parade, so it was busy but not crowded.

I had to take a shot of this pillow in the restaurant we where we ate lunch.  I had the most delicious crab chowder there, and my sister and sister-in-law also had great meals. 

The last stop was the modern art museum.  I'll share that in the next post, as this is getting too long. 

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!

Design Wall Monday--Windham Challenge

I'm late as usual for Design Wall Monday--but still wanted to share the sewing room project of the moment.  See more design walls on Judy's Small Quilts and Doll Quilts blog. 

The Sewtopia Event this year in Palm Springs is coming up fast.  I signed up for the Windham Fabric challenge and received a fabric bundle. I showed it a few posts ago with the block I wanted to make. 

The challenge rules allow any Windham fabrics.  I had some scraps of solids from a previous years' challenges and pulled those to play with the new group. 

I cut and sewed, cut and sewed...

The block turned out pretty well---but it was far too busy.  I let it stew overnight and tried again. 

After some careful surgery of some of the non-current challenge fabric, and and frustration with wrong-sized strips, I was happier with my changes. 

It took nearly all day but now it looks like this!  Much better.  I believe I will make a quilted pillow sham from the block.  I have made binding with the remainder of the blue and white striped fabric.  There is a light-colored fat quarter from stash that will do for half of the backing, and I'll cobble together extra block parts/pieces of challenge fabric for the rest. 

In other Sewtopia prep, I sewed together one of the blocks for the Four-Patch X quilt I also plan to work on--but it turned out too big!  I am blaming that on the sewing machine foot I was using.  Still to finish is a general swap gift and my sister's birthday quilt...as well as packing, etc. 

Pismo Getaway

We were happy to have a recent weekend getaway to visit friends--I took a day off work and we headed up the coast to Pismo Beach on Friday.  It was cloudy and cool and the drive easy. Toni and Dan have a house high up on the hill with wonderful views. We had wood fired pizzas in their amazing hillside pavilion--built since the last time we visited. 

 

Their hilly lot has an unobstructed view to the ocean and the freeway is far enough away to be mostly hidden. 

It was a wonderful way to spend the first evening catching up by the fire table and under the heaters. 

Their rescue Golden rested on her fake lawn--Callie is still pretty young and ready to get into mischief :)

We went to Avila Beach for a late lunch one day.  The ocean was very calm with hardly any surf all the way from home.  All the tourists didn't seem to mind. 

The pier was closed some time ago for safety reasons but there were lot of folks enjoying the many shops/restaurants along the boardwalk.  

Toni wanted my help sorting out sewing machines she had from her mother and aunt after they both passed about 10 years ago.  While she was getting them all out and set up, I sewed down the binding on a tablerunner I made her--she didn't know it was for her until I finished it :)

Toni and Dan have a lot of grey tones in their decor and I wanted to match that.  How did I do?

These were leftover Chunky Churndash blocks, hourglass block and sashing from my Dad's quilt. It is a Betsy Chutchian fabric called Eliza's Indigo. Wish I had more of this!

Backing from a fat quarter and more scraps. Very simple quilting. We sorted through Toni's machines and she made decisions on what to move on.  One machine we could not get the bobbin case to stay in; the other was a late 70's fancy Bernina with embroidery menus that she will keep.

Another sunset enjoyed from the pavilion...The colored bands from the deep fog bank above the ocean and a huge upper cloudbank were so unusual.  The drive home on Sunday was an easy couple of hours.  I forgot a bag of shoes so Toni mailed them to me!  We look forward to visiting again. 

And Yet Another New/Old Project

Years ago, at the first QuiltCon in Pasadena, CA (in 2013!), I saw a quilt that totally grabbed me. It is called Sidewalk Chalk, designed by Meghan Buchanan of Then Came June.  I bought the pattern then and there, but have never made it. Part of the reason was that it called for 1/2 yard cuts, which is not a size I generally buy.  However, on closer re-reading of the pattern, there was a twist!

Meghan included instructions to use scraps to make up the different color groups called for in the quilt. I pulled all these from my fat quarter drawers, choosing mostly tone on tone and small patterns.  I already have the solid background fabric on hand. 

A couple of weeks ago I had ordered a bolt of Kona Snow from Joann's Fabrics.  I had received a great mail offer deal and this 10 yard bolt that was originally $99 only cost me $65.  It was also shipped free to the store for pickup.  I didn't even have to get out of my car, as they brought it out to me.  Nice to have on hand and I will certainly repeat this in the future! Meghan has since written many more great modern patterns and recently opened a studio in Portland, Oregon, finally getting her business out of her house.  She has a great eye for color and design and sells curated fabric bundles. I participated in her Meadowland quiltalong in 2020 using a fabric bundle I won at Sewtopia.  It is still a top....

The fabric line is called "We Whisk You A Merry Christmas". This needs to turn into a quilt before Christmas, don't you think?

Wart Fix, New Projects

 I fixed the Wart in the Easy Breezy quilt top...

Much better swapped out for this block with the light prints around the center 4-patch!. Another squirrel popped up while I was taking care of this fix, however...

I have so many four patches in baggies,  and remembered an idea I'd had for another of Bonnie Hunter's quilts, from her More Adventures with Leaders and Enders book.  I liked her Four Patch X quilt (photo below copied from her blog post on the book release) and sketched out a portion of the design for a small quilt.

However, I want to emphasize the Churn Dashes a bit more in my version, so will be using red for the corner triangles in the X blocks.  I liked the yellow setting triangles, so cheerful. However, I only had a partial fat quarter of solid yellow.  So I drew out the square from the pattern directions and used washi tape on Bonnie's Essential Triangle Ruler, so I could cut the right sized strips for the QST. 

I did get all the setting triangles I planned, however will need more of the yellow for the pieced border.  That may happen during the Sewtopia Shop Hop :) I will take along two choices to audition for the striped sashing, in case I get that far along in the construction. I had fun cutting up red scraps for the sets of 4 corner triangles.  More red scraps will be needed in the pieced borders, but that is a future job!

Here's a cartoon that made me smile: