A pop of red

Black and grey and red.
These colors have been swimming around in my head since I saw a quilt on flickr.  And it wasn't so much the same color palette, you can see for yourself, here.  It was this formula for 25% red and everything else reads as a neutral.  Not too much red.  Not overwhelming.  Just the pop.


First I did a single improv block...thinking maybe it's a pot holder.

Then I did some string blocks...then some more...and I've bought more gray and red fabric...for more blocks...maybe more quilts, actually.

I'm almost done with this quilt.  So of course I have lots of strips leftover.  I could do this, or this next.

Or more koozies.  Never enough of those when you're having people over.

Imagine my surprise when I saw a sneak peak of the next issue of Fat Quarterly.

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Someone's been peeping in my window!

And they have excellent taste.

LQS on Kauai

Local quilt shop....

no, not really local to me.  Not this week, anyway. 

*sigh*

If only I did live in this little round island of tropical paradise.  I was really getting into the batiks.  The swirly purples and greens and aquas, tonal prints with dolphins almost hidden in pools of turquoise.  The lovely Hawaiian ladies showcased their beautiful hand appliqued quilts.  To be recognized as a traditional Hawaiian Quilt, these guidelines are used: 

1) the design is primarily appliqué work
2)the design is a circular repetition of 4 or 8
3) the design uses one or two fabrics (there are exceptions)

Although I hear there are some break out modern Hawaiian Quilters blending some new ideas with the wonderful island traditions.  That's me and my S-I-L with one of the quilters (below).  Looks like we all learned to manage our island hair with the same pony tail style, huh?  My hair would have taken up considerable airspace in that room had it been unleashed.   And in my defense, we were about to go zip lining in a tropical jungle...after I got my fabric fix.

I'm such a tourist.

 This was such a charming store,  loaded with the batiks, japanese novelty prints, and a small selection of exquisite kimono silk fabric from Japan, as well as some cotton kimonos and custom made Hawaiian shirts.  It's been in business for some thirty plus years and I read countless positive reviews from TripAdvisor submitted by tourists awestruck at the local island flavor's offerings...tourists who admitted they did not sew or quilt or plan to do either.

It is a must see if you go to Kauai.  

Deadlines...

Let me brush the cobwebs away and get myself acquainted with this blog again.  I disappeared for a while there, didn't I?    Nothing major keeping me away.  Kids' rehearsals and concerts and "graduations" (myself baking 20 pizzas for that one), family gatherings for a birthday...Life.  Good things.

But I was sewing as well.  I've had my fat geese project going since I first spied Katy's in Fat Quarterly.  I knew I wanted to use MeadowSweet with the reds and browns and pastel pinks, celery greens.  I made this for my mother.  She has geese.  And that other broderie perse thing?  It's never going to be finished.

There's no beginning-middle-end to embellishing is there?  I'll work on it some more when the weather is cold.  I promise.

I am thrilled with this quilt.  I want one for myself.  Enthralled with the whole idea of half square triangles.  I free motion quilted some little flowers in there as well.  Don't see a close up of it?  Well, I'm still a beginner, so let's just call it ambitious and leave it at that.  I self-imposed a deadline of this morning, 7 a.m. to finish this one.  That's the time my nephew leaves for work.  And since he's going to see Nanaw this weekend, I thought I'd save on postage.

My daughter wanted a quilt for pajama day at school. (top) She wanted it to match her pajamas (an earlier effort), so I pulled out the Mendocino stash and made her a quick little blanket.  In a day. Because that's how much notice I got. 

And finally, my last deadline is June 8th for this little guy here.I'm officially early!  La la la.

This goes to the local Project Linus Charity.  They pass blankets out at local  hospitals on children's wards.  The theme for this session was "puzzles" so I looked up some  puzzle quilts on flickr and drew it up on graph paper.

That was fun.  I didn't work out all the seam allowances in the beginning, because there was a line of steam coming out of my ears just from manipulating the pattern to be symetrical.  So I worked that out later. 

la la la.

Just ticking things off the list this week.

It's Friday, and I think I'm done!

Here's to a lazy weekend!

And we have a winner...

The winner is number 256,  Miss Prickly.

Congratulations, you and thanks so much to everyone who commented.

Miss Prickly, I've sent you an email.  Contact me and let me know your address so I can send you some dots!


Thanks to my husband for excel spread sheet calculations I can't begin to understand.
Beats pulling a number out of a hat!

Sew Mama Sew Give Away!! I'll Play!

So here's the deal.  Give away day starts officially Monday, May 17th.  It is open til the 20th.  That button over there about Sew Mama Sew takes you to a link where Lots and Lots of people are giving away lots and lots of fabulous stuff!!! My contribution are Two not one, TWO!! Dots on a roll.  One is a TaDot variety with some blues, reds, pinks and yellow, the other is a Love Sunspots variety with all of the colors, two of each precut into 2 and a half inch strips.Let's see...where are those rules...Okay--Yes!  I will ship internationally!  You must leave a comment and a good email address for me.  

Comments!  What to comment about??

Tell me the last give away you entered, what was up for grabs and from whom.  That way maybe I'll get some virtual window shopping done myself.

I'll choose a winner by random number selection on the 20th that evening, 10:00 p.m. central time.

Oh sweet Sara, I hope that's everything.

Ready, set, go!

Comments are closed now!

Charmed, I'm sure

Summer Circles quilt for my little hometown quilt challenge.  Theme is hometown summer, size is less than 24 inches.  Must use some amount of mystery fabric--which was the red gingham.  All together, very fun, tried my skills out at hand applique (that blanket stitch again), and hand quilting.  Do you ever have those fantasy conversations in your head where for whatever reason, you're on Oprah, declaring, "oh really, Oprah, it was nothing.  I just think of fabulous things like this while I'm stirring up the pancake mix for the children in the morning.  I mean granola...I make my own, you know.  I'm just a multi-tasking whiz like that, I suppose.  Yup.  I guess you're right.  I'm really something."

You don't do that?  That's just me?

Okay.  Fair enough.

I can't even take credit for the original design.  I saw it here:  and I was floored, and inspired, and whipped up my own.

Went to drop it off yesterday, and they were so sweet, really.  And supportive.  Which prompted me to quickly qualify my offerings--

"I'm a beginner!!"

I spied the stack of mini quilts from my competitors and asked if I may....

Oh.  They were gorgeous, inspired, perfections of points and embroidery and applique and whatever you call it when you make your own fabric by painting it?  And I will post them here later when I can snag pictures of them hanging in shop windows.

So my little Oprah bubble smacked up against the hard unforgiving wall of reality and I wandered back home more than a little awestruck at the talent in my little hometown.  And inspired and what's that feeling you get when you feel like you need to tackle about a kazillion blocks and techniques and tutorials...

I think my beginner quilts can be called "charming."

I like that.

Charming.  Suits me for now.

And last night while carefully parsing out my time between Pointy Beaks on Flying Geese, and piecing a humongous back for my Hexy Love quilt, I scheduled a little what the heck time for something small and cute and spontaneous.  Instant gratification.  We all need a little of that sometimes.

Just a little potholder, I think.  

Is it wistful in here or is it just me?

I've been at the 99% completion range for my latest quilt for ---well, some time now.  It's a very sweet wonky star block made up of Anna Maria Horner's voiles in the deer print and the four square print.  So soft.  The baby arrived and the quilt just sat there looking at me accusingly, day after day.  Finally, an unplanned trip from the new grandmother,  my aunt, spurred me into action again.  It really only took five quick minutes.  Funny how that works.

Anyway, as I was putting the finishing touches on it, I thought about all the baby quilts my grandmother made in her lifetime.   She had seven children who each had several children and we have since had our families.  She made each of us a quilt for graduation, and then made each of our children a quilt upon their birth.  All hand done.  That's quite a legacy of quilts.   And now I was  happily filling her shoes, some eight years later.  My last child, Ro was just an infant when we last visited her.  She had at this point, lost the ability to retain information from her short term memory.  About every five minutes, she would realize anew that we were with her.  "Oh what a pretty baby!"
I was sad to see her this way, but thought that it is not such a bad thing to be  profoundly happy each time she discovered us there again.

I remembered my aunts had thoughtfully set aside the last quilt she had worked on, for my daughter, and made sure I got it.  I had tucked it away without the slightest clue of how I might go about finishing it, but knowing it was a treasure.  So today, as I was sewing in my label and snipping wayward threads on my cousin's baby quilt, I remembered it.  I thought, "wow, if that quilt is still in blocks, I could somehow work a grandma block into each quilt I do for the cousins."  I know I would love to have a grandma block.  I was surprised to find--I hadn't remembered at all what stage it was in---that it is already pieced,

quilt sandwiched to backing and pinned.   And furthermore, I had been inspired to do this very pattern after seeing Katy's version here.  I was going to use Heather Bailey's Nicey Jane with the huge roses.
You know what kept me from doing it?  Vanity.  Knowing I was going to give it away and realizing those curved pieces would give me fits, I put that quilt on the back burner for a time when I would feel less pressure.

Wouldn't that have been a great story?  To finish up cousin Tash's quilt and get a wild urge to pull out Grandma's last quilt?   And, people, those are big roses in that print up there.

Needless to say, I cannot undo the quilt for the sake of having blocks.  I may be able to quilt it, though, and bind it.  If I can just bring myself to remove those pins she put there.

Then I'll start on my own.