Slow Quilt Monday--The Quilt Whisperer

Are you a Quilt Whisperer? 

Do you let your quilts talk to you? Let you know what they want? What they need?

Do you let them just hang out with you for awhile? Lounging on your cutting table? Leaning casually on your design wall, watching you as you go about your day? Do you hear them occasionally trying to get your attention?

"Hey. Have you thought about pink? I'm sorta in the mood for some pink. Right here, halfway down my right side. I don't see pink on anything else that you've made lately. Might make me different. I like being different."

"Could you put down that rotary cutter for a minute and come here? We need to talk. I'm just not feeling this border. Makes me look fat."

And what about...

"Hey. Over here. No. Inside here. I'm that quilt in your brain. I'm the one that woke you up yesterday--remember? I came to you in a dream--really, I did! You woke up and were sort of excited about me, and then your kid needed your help figuring out what to wear to school and then you needed to get your coffee because we all know what you're like before caffeine and then you decided you'd really better get a load of wash in before getting ready for work then you had two back-to-back meetings right away and thousands of emails and phone calls and by the time you got home your kid needed help with her homework and you can't really remember seventh grade math very well anymore and trying to do that while getting dinner ready was a real trial and by the time you--or she--was done with her homework you crashed on the couch in front of bad sitcoms then dragged yourself up to bed and...well...you sort of forgot all about me. But I'm still here. Waiting. See that sketchpad over there? Why don't you at least make some notes about me before you forget me again. I might start taking it personally."

Quilts can actually be quite entertaining company if we just take the time to get to know them. 

Excellent senses of humor.

Very understanding and patient.

But, like petulant teenagers, they can
get very pouty and annoying if we ignore what they're trying to say to us.

I've had quilts work my very last nerve. 

But that's usually because I wasn't listening in the first place.

Total Color Tuesday (Launch post!)

As I've mentioned, I've been doing a lot of reading on design principles and the like. Lately, I've been reading Color Magic for Quilters by Ann Seely and Joyce Stewart. Now, there are a ton of books out there on color for quilters. I just happen to be using this one. I'll do a full review on an upcoming episode of my podcast. But for now, suffice it to say that the book spends a chapter on each color scheme of the color wheel and talks about applying it to quilts. And it goes far beyond the usual monochromatic, analagous, split-complementary and other schemes we're used to seeing in these kinds of books.

I thought I'd play with it, and suggest you play too. What I'm doing to do is go through the color schemes in the book, one per week (on Tuesdays), and see if I can pull fabrics from my stash that might fit that scheme. So each week, I'll imagine, "If I were to make a quilt entirely from my stash using this scheme, what might that look like?

And then I'll post a linky on that blog post for you to do the same--once you see the color scheme of the week, try it for yourself and link up to my blog with your attempts. If you have tiny stashes, go ahead and use EQ or something like that--but it is important to use actual fabric or fabric images. It's much harder that way than just putting some plain colors onto a computer monitor!

So, this week we're starting with one color. Color Magic refers to this as "single color harmony," and, of course, it's more widely known as monochromatic. 

Monochromatic use a single color--but you can use shades, tints, and tones within that color. You can also add neutral fabrics if you'd like--white, gray, black, for example, don't add actual (technical) color to a monochromatic scheme so they're legal, if you like to think in those terms. 

Contrast and scale are crucial here. If all of your fabrics are the same value and all the same scale of print, it'll most likely be a less exciting quilt than if you're able to have nice contrast, and a nice contrast of scale as well (large prints, small prints, "read-as-solids," etc.).

Play time.

BTW, I had to work very hard to find prints that had no other colors in them. That was probably the trickiest part. (A multi-colored print is no longer monochromatic, right? At least, if we're being legalistic about it, which for the purposes of this play time I chose to be.)

I started with greens. This one took me awhile to find a set I thought might actually work. My stash of greens didn't want to play nicely together for some reason.

I don't think there's quite enough variety of scale of print in this one. Not my favorite, but it could work.

The blues feel a little more successful because I have a wider variety of scale of print, and some of the blues are less muted than the greens were, so there is more variation of saturation (if that's the right term).

The blues were a little more social. It didn't take me as long to find a set that I could easily see being made into a quilt.

And here we have pinky-orange. Or orangey-pink. I have very few pinks in my stash and was surprised to find that several of them were actually this same type of pink--sort of salmon, or coral, or whatever you'd call it.

The fabric in the center is interesting--it looks purple when you put it next to some fabrics, pink when you put it next to others. That's probably one of the biggest things I've taken away from this exercise so far. As value is a relative thing, so can be color. What color seems to be dominant in a fabric can be just as relative as its value. Try to do this with taupes and see what I'm talking about! (Taupe is probably one of the most chameleon-like of the color families.)

So, play with your own stash. How would you make a monochromatic quilt with what you have? Link to the specific blog post, please! (If you've already made a monochromatic quilt, you can link back to that blog post as well.)

Slow Quilt Monday--The Crappy First Draft

I took a rather unintentional hiatus from my blog schedule of Slow Quilt Monday, Donation Quilt Wednesdays, and Food Fridays because I needed some time to regroup after getting back into my workaday schedule. However, that hiatus also gave me some time to ponder and process, so it turned out to be a good thing!

One of the things I worked on mentally while I was on sabbatical was, with credit to Anne Lamott for the wording, the concept of the "crappy first draft." (I apologize to any for whom that may be a distasteful word, but it's the best one to really describe the concept!) Lamott's book about writing, Bird by Bird, can apply to our entire creative lives, really. She talks about how our first responsibility is to get the story on the page, let the characters tell us who they want to be, and let the plot reveal itself to us--no matter how messy it is to start. That when we start worrying about who will want to read it, or whether it'll ever get published, we stymie ourselves and the creative spirit within us. First things first. Just write that crappy first draft, and worry about everything else later.

That really spoke to me.

I do have perfectionist tendencies but, then, I think most of us do. We don't like to start something unless we're pretty sure it'll turn out well in the end. When it comes to making quilts, we convince ourselves that fabric is too expensive to waste, so we shouldn't cut into it unless we know the color combination is just right, or the design will have exactly the impact we want, or whatever. And so, there are a lot of quilts in our heads that never come into being because we don't have enough faith in ourselves that they'll actually work.

I have since developed a remarkably devil-may-care attitude towards my fabric.

I have come to the following understandings of my quilting:

• There are a lot of projects that will hit the trash can. I'm okay with that, because they will have been valuable learning tools. (General wisdom always says those projects should be saved into a book with copious notes about what worked and what didn't. But I have limited space, so probably not.)
• There are a lot of projects I'll make that I'll really like but no one else will "get." I'm okay with that too. If I enjoy it, that's the main thing. As for everything else, see next items.
• I'm not making projects to get applause at my guild's show n' tell. (Although I'll get that applause--they're very kind that way, fortunately. Everyone gets cheered on. Love my quilt peeps.)
• I'm not making projects to put in a show. I might decide to do that later, but that's not why I set out to make them in the first place.
• I'm not making projects to turn out a masterpiece. One might become that eventually. But I don't need that pressure in my head.
• I'm making projects to have fun. I'm making projects to play with a new technique, color combination, design principle, or whatever. (Note the very intentional use of the word "play.")
• I'm also a storyteller. I want my quilts, more than anything, to tell a story. Or convey a mood or a concept.
• And, yes, my quilts will be made slowly.

Awhile back, there was some conversation that floated around between a few of our quilty podcasts (mine and others) about the difference between product and process in the quilting world, and whether or not you're a product or process quilter. I'm definitely in the process camp now.

Slow quilting doesn't necessarily mean you can't get a project done because you're really busy--although if that's the case with you, cut yourself some slack. Who's got a timer on you, anyway? We create within ourselves a sense of obligation because we think people expect things of us (that perhaps they're not really expecting), or we can't say no. That's a topic for another blog.

Slow quilting, rather, means allowing a quilt time to breathe, time to reveal itself to you.

It means making thirty-five sketches of something before one jumps out at you and you get that little tingle down the back of your neck: "Me! I'm the one you need to make! Make me me me me!"

It means having fabrics laying on your cutting table or design wall for several days in a row as you audition one to another, collecting, editing, collecting again, until a particular combination reveals itself as the one.

It means buying a lot of fabric. You need a lot of options for all that, don't you?

I've been working on a project for the last five months. I started out one night just cutting shapes out of fabric and laying them down to see what they'd turn into. It has become a quilt that tells a story. It does have several problems with it. Awhile back, I'd have set it aside--or thrown it aside in frustration--because it wasn't "good enough." Now, rather than seeing it as the enemy, I'm looking at it as a friend who is encouraging me to move forward, to experiment, to have faith in myself. I'm still working away at it, looking at it as a chance to continue learning, to continue trying new things, to continue to experiment with techniques or methods to see how they turn out. The end result may still end up hitting the trash can, but it may not. It might work itself out. In either case, it's a slow process but an extremely valuable one. That quilt has told me, every step of the way, what I needed to do next. I still don't entirely know what the end product will look like. And that's the fun of it.

Would it help you in your quiltmaking if you could accept the concept of "the crappy first draft?" Can you be okay with something that doesn't turn out perfectly but helped you learn along the way? Is there a project in your head that you've been afraid to start because, frankly, you're afraid you'll screw it up? Could you use a little slow quilting in your life?

Episode 92 In Which We Talk Scraps with Charlotte

Episode 92 In Which We Talk Scraps with Charlotte, a set on Flickr.

Here is the photo gallery that accompanies Episode 92 In Which We Talk Scraps with Charlotte.

It starts with pictures of her organizational system. You'll see her bulletin board with ziploc baggies organized by size, and her white board where she keeps charts, and her project bags where she keeps detailed notes about where she is with each project.

Then you'll be treated to the eye-candy of her quilts--beautiful! Hopefully you'll get some good ideas for using up your own scraps!

So Stinkin' Cute

Receiving blanket #2
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz

I finished the second receiving blanket tonight. I was taking my time, listening to an episode of Crafty Garden Mom podcast, which seemed very appropriate since she's got a couple of little bitties in her house. I was just puttering along in no rush, so it was sort of a very zen process.

These are just about the cutest darn receiving blankets I ever did see. If you need a baby gift, I strongly recommend you check it out!

My Guild Retreat pics

If you're interested in seeing pictures of what happened at my guild retreat last weekend, you may want to check out our Canal Country Quilters blog. My quilty peep Lori and I administrate it, although she does the lion's share of the work. (Thanks, Lori!) She's working on getting the pictures from the weekend posted--she's gotten the first day, including our paintstik class, done so far. She's hoping to have the rest up this week.

You can find it at http://canalcq.wordpress.com/.

Consider subscribing! We always post pictures of our show n' tell there now, plus periodically other helpful information. I'll have a post about paintstiks going up in a couple of days that give a lot of information about how to use them (more than I've posted here, I believe).

As you know, I love love love my guild. We have a blast. So, you're welcome to have fun with us vicariously! (And if you live in the area, consider coming for a visit. There's an "about" page that lists our meeting times and locations.)

Another finish and some homework

 I finished the first of two receiving blankets tonight. These are going to be for a friend of mine who is expecting her first baby, a little girl, this July. I'm also going to be making her a quilt but just couldn't resist making a couple of these really cute receiving blankets using the same Missouri Star Quilt Company technique I used for all the donation quilts I helped new sewers make back in March.

I'll finish the second one tomorrow or Wednesday--it's all cut and ready to go.

Tomorrow night is our quilt design study group. Since we had to shuffle our schedule around a bit in April to accommodate travel schedules, we ended up with a six-week stretch between meetings. I suggested we do homework, which is supposed to be a regular part of our experience but we've been skipping a lot. (We do a lot more in-session, however, so it's sort of a toss-up.) I figured with six weeks, it wouldn't be a problem. Of course, I left it to tonight to do. Yes, I can spell procrastination.

We had just done a segment on color and Vicki, who led the session, had prepped all the materials for us to each make our own fabric color wheel and it contains little spinny cards to put in the center with a variety of color schemes on them. Our homework was supposed to be to choose a color scheme we wouldn't normally use and do something with it.

So, tonight, I pulled out the color wheel and threw all the little center spinny cards face down on my table and shuffled them up. Drawing one at random, I then put it in the center of the color wheel and, eyes closed, spun it around a few times then landed it somewhere. Opening my eyes, this is what I found:

(The writing says, "4 points on a square.")

Yep, that's definitely a color scheme I wouldn't normally use. Yellow, blue-green, purple, red-orange. My first thought was, "ick."

I burrowed through my scraps for awhile, still thinking at that point that I might just do a little fused something-or-other, so I didn't want to commit whole pieces of fabric. I found the blue-green and purple pretty easily--those are colors I do drift towards on occasion. Red-orange was a little trickier mostly because it's hard to find something truly red-orange and not red or orange. I finally landed on one. But yellow? Wow. That was a toughy. I've discovered I don't actually have a lot of yellow in my stash. I had a few random yellow scraps but they were all a lot more shaded (and I use that word in its official artistic sense) than I wanted to go with the other colors. Finally, I dug into my fat quarters and there it was. The perfect yellow. 

And, in fact, a lovely combination altogether. Bright, admittedly, but just imagine it with a some white thrown in there to calm it down. I'm picturing festive appliqued flowers on a white background with the yellow as a border. Or cute little mini-stars pieced into that yellow as a background in a mini-quilt.

But, to be honest, that's an image that will never get made into reality. I've got too many other more pushy designs in my head demanding my attention. It was a fun project, though, finding those colors. And now I do have some new color combination possibilities in my head. Try it yourself sometime!

Retreat Report

...And a good time was had by all.

Actually, a fabulous time was had by all! Have I mentioned before how much I enjoy my guild peeps? And there's a handful of women who aren't members of our guild but are linked through friends and such, so they come to our retreats on a pretty regular basis as well. Might I say, they fit right in. Very, very entertaining women.

I didn't bring the kitchen sink.

However, after a few years of going on retreat, the furniture I pack seems to grow each time. I just get a lot more done if I have a decent set-up. My Sew-Ezi table (somewhere under the bins on the left, there) is a godsend. Love that thing. I also have a lightweight, foldable craft table that's only an inch or so shorter than the Sew-Ezi. I brought that this time and mostly used it as a small pressing station with my travel iron, but sometimes moved it over to sit next to the Sew-Ezi to hold the extra bulk of larger projects while I worked. Also extremely useful, so that's now made it to my list of "always pack" items.

This time I'd also volunteered to bring my ironing board and iron as one of our four communal pressing stations, so that added just a bit to the stacks. Everything else pictured here are projects. My clothes? Last packed, least planned, lightest weight.

Sadly, the one project I really wanted to work on--a baby quilt for a friend--I stymied myself by packing all the fabric but forgetting to print off my EQ7 design and cutting instructions. Dang. Couldn't touch it. But I got a lot else done!

First, the setting...

A nice Methodist church camp/conference center on Silver Lake in Western New York. It was about 85 degrees most of the weekend. Gorgeous!

(Forgot to take a picture before I left so this one was shot out my car window as I was driving away--sorry about the rotten composition.)

This was the building we pretty much lived in for the weekend, although our bedrooms were in another building. The lower floor was our sewing room, the upper floor the dining room. There were a couple of other groups there that weekend but we only saw them briefly during meals. It's a nice space, although we can't plug too many irons in at once or we blow a fuse. Hence the communal pressing stations. However, we've also got fewer women going these days than a few years ago so we've been able to loosen up the restrictions on small travel irons. The conference center cook, Becky, is excellent. I probably gained five pounds.

Ah, but on to the quilting! What did I get done?

I got the binding put together and sewed onto the front of Fortune. All I have to do now is the hand-sewing on the back, a good TV project. (Planning on doing that tonight after I get this blog posted.)

And yes, our tradition is to tape our finishes to the wall as we go. Wall space gets slim by the end of the weekend!

(That's my little craft table with my pressing station on the left, btw, if you're curious. And our retreat schedule taped above it so I could keep track of when we were going to have our ice cream social so I didn't disappear at the wrong time. Priorities.)

I also finally found fabric (more about shopping trips below) for the third border on my medallion challenge quilt and was able to get that done. The colors are a complete departure from what I'd initially imagined, but the store didn't have what I'd thought I'd wanted and at this point, frankly, I was tired of trying to figure this out. So with guild-mate Florence consulting, I decided to go with this set of a light gray-with-blue/green speckles background, and a green and blue deconstructed star. The blue fabric is the same as the lighter blue fabric in the center block, so that was a happy find. Now I just have to do the last border, which will be that same black/gray as the other narrower border--if I still have enough! (I designed the border as paper pieced blocks in EQ7.)

...and I put borders on Paintstik Peacock. I'd made borders with blue/green/turquoise fat quarters using the stack n' slash method. I wasn't sure I wanted those borders all the way around because I was afraid they'd overwhelm the peacock. I had it all laid out on one of our communal cutting tables and a few folks walked over to see what I was doing and offer their two cents--as we quilters like to do. It was Vicki that hit on exactly the right idea--offset the borders. Only use the blue on two sides. Finish the third border with black, and leave the top alone.

Absolutely perfect.



Peacock has now been renamed Vicki's Peacock, although I told her that didn't imply she was going to get him!









I also started some receiving blankets but didn't get far on them, so more on that later.

Onto the shopping! Of course, any good quilter's gathering always includes some visits to local shops. A few of us went to Mt. Pleasant Quilt Company on Friday, and a couple of us went to Material Rewards on Saturday. Both great shops!

Got some fat quarters, just 'cause.

Some end-of-bolt stash fabric--pretty decently discounted so, why not?

Now, for just a minute, feast your eyes on this one. Mmmm.



A white batik.



Does anyone else love some fabrics so much you just want to ingest them?



Mmmmm.



So I had to find something to go with it.

Found these to start. Very pretty.



But it needed something.

Decided it needed more contrast. So I found the dark teal (bottom of picture) to add to the stack.







Still not quite enough.

There it is. Purple.



Mmmm.......



So that's my retreat report. Guild-mate Lori will be posting pics of everyone's projects on our guild blog, so as soon as that's up, I'll post a link. There was a lot of eye-candy going on!

Finally--A Finish!

This wallhanging has been almost a year in the making--and it was supposed to be a fast, simple project. I wanted something for my dining room wall that would say "summer!" and would rotate with the flag wallhanging I have that goes up Memorial Day and Fourth of July, but that I didn't necessarily want hanging up the entire summer. So I thought, "I know! Primary colors! Pinwheels!"

The basic pinwheel part was done pretty quickly. Then I pondered borders. "I know! I'll use the Double Diamond Ruler by Kim Templin!" (See episode 41 for my interview with Kim.) I thought it would look like a cute garden fence around my pinwheels, thereby turning the pinwheels into flowers. My summer wallhanging was beginning to take on a theme.

Unfortunately, I didn't have quite enough of the fabrics I needed to use for the double diamonds to do a full border of them, so I did half borders and framed the center with them. I actually like the way that looks better, anyway.

And, of course, I couldn't leave it at that. With the more complex border, the pinwheels now looked just a little bit plain. And they had morphed into flowers--so how could I make them more flower-esque? "I know!" I thought, yet again. "I'll do yo-yos!" This required finding fabric in my stash that coordinated but didn't stick out like a sore thumb...which was a task unto itself. But I persevered...and I think I only ended up having to buy the yellow because that's not something that typically exists in my stash much.

Yo-yos made (using the Clover yo-yo tool, which makes it very easy), I realized I'd need something in the center. Wait for it.... "I know!" I decided to use buttons. The first buttons I bought were white, because I thought I'd like the clean, fresh look of white buttons unifying the different colors of the pinwheels and yo-yos. The only buttons I could find at Joanns with 16 that matched were on the small side, but I thought I could make it work.

I sat down one night and started sewing those dang yo-yos and buttons onto the pinwheels by hand. It took me almost half an hour to get one done--it ended up all cock-eyed and didn't have the clean affect I wanted, plus I had 16 of those stinking things in total to finish. At a half hour a pop I wasn't sure it was worth it. I threw it to the side in frustration.

You guessed it. By now I was sorry I'd ever started the stupid project.

"I know!".... and I pulled out my sewing machine manual to check a niggling memory I had that I could sew buttons on by machine. Sure 'nuff, there it was. I sat back down with my wallhanging and little white buttons and started on the first one, high hopes and dreams of having it done by the end of the afternoon.

Urgh. And more urgh. The buttons were too small for me to really easily hold them in place while I was sewing, and they were just high enough that my presser foot couldn't quite mash them down far enough for the needle to do its work. I finally got one sewn on, but when I pulled it out and looked it...all cock-eyed and nasty again. Threw is to the side in frustration again.

A couple of weeks later, I decided to go to Joanns and see if I could find bigger buttons. Standing in front of the collection of white buttons, I kept counting and recounting different designs in mounting frustration again--there weren't 16 of any one design. And none of them were interesting enough to warrant getting different designs.

I was just about to bag the whole yo-yo button thing as I turned to walk away when my eyes lighted on a set of buttons that were very different than anything I'd pictured in my head. Interesting. The more I thought about it, the more it tickled me. Suddenly I went from "simple, fresh summer wallhanging" to "funky hippy fun wallhanging."

The new buttons worked swimmingly. I wasn't able to get the four different designs I wanted so I held up for a bit while I tried to order one of the designs online--and ended up losing money when the secure site I'd purchased from suddenly disappeared with no trace and...no buttons. But it was only $11 so I'm not sweating it. Just yet another delay in getting this supposedly simple project done. I ended up back at Joanns buying the other set of four buttons that I hadn't liked as well the first time but can live with, because done is better than perfect.

So, all that being said, introducing "Sandy's Hippy Peace Garden."

Podcastaversary Give-Away--Week 4--American Quilter's Society Gift Certificate

If you're a long-time follower of my blog or podcast, you know that my mother gets all the credit for introducing me to the world of quilting. After her passing, as I was working on cleaning out a set of drawers in her quilt studio, I came across her collection of pins from quilt shows she'd attended through the years, and a significant number of pins indicating her long-time membership in the American Quilter's Society. Once again following in her footsteps (my mom was a smart woman!), I joined the AQS as well and have enjoyed the benefits that membership has afforded me.

 For the final week of my two year podcastaversary give-away, I'm offering up a $25 gift certificate to the American Quilter's Society. 

You can use the gift certificate to become a member of AQS for a year, buy great quilting books, or subscribe to The Quilt Life Magazine--one of my favorites. Becoming a member of AQS gives you discounts galore, including reduced registration fees at AQS-sponsored quilt shows. (Paducah, anyone?) I've enjoyed my membership and am glad to have the opportunity to pay it forward!

To enter into this drawing, leave a comment below telling me what you think you would do with the gift certificate if you were to win. It's a random drawing--I won't be "grading" your answers. Just curious!

Leave your comments by midnight Eastern time (NY) on Saturday, April 28th, 2012. I'll be using my old friend "random number generator" to choose the winner! (Don't forget to make sure your email address is in your profile or comment so I can contact you. Hate to have to skip you if your name comes up but I have no way to be in touch!)

(Please note--I will be out of the country until May 2 and will only have intermittent email access. Although I'll make my best efforts to check in and do the drawing, I may not be able to announce the winner of this giveaway until after my return. So go ahead and enter, and spread the word to all your friends by tweeting this post or pasting it into your Facebook status update or whatever--but you may need to be a little patient in hearing the results. Thanks!)

Podcastaversary Give-Away--Week 3--Fat Quarter Shop

As an avid fan of fabric, I'm so pleased to announce that the sponsor of this week's giveaway in celebration of my two-year podcastaversary is...drum roll please...

The Fat Quarter Shop

As a fan of fabric, I'm definitely a fan of the Fat Quarter Shop. Back when I was a pretty new quilter, my sister (not a quilter) had done her research and gave me a gift certificate to the Fat Quarter Shop for my birthday--my first introduction to the online store. I thank her to this day! The Fat Quarter Shop has great selection and prices, a user-friendly shopping experience, and excellent customer service. So I highly recommend them!

The Fat Quarter Shop is sponsoring this week's giveaway by offering two (count 'em, two!) gift certificates of $50 each. Two winners! Woot woot!

All you have to do to enter your name is leave a comment below letting me know what fabric you might purchase if you were to win one of the gift certificates. Is there a new line that's caught your eye? Is there one you've been drooling over for awhile but holding off ordering it? Do you need some blenders or neutrals in your stash? Decided to do some jelly roll patterns? Need a kit for a quick gift? What would you use the gift certificate for, if you were to win?

By the way, if you're not already a subscriber to my podcast or blog, it sure would warm the cockles of my heart if you were to become so now. You can also follow me on Twitter and Pinterest, and friend me on SeamedUp and GoodReads--I'm sandyquiltz in all those places. However, that won't affect your chances in this giveaway. I'm just having fun this week!

Post your comment by midnight Eastern Time (NY) on Saturday, April 21st, 2012, to be entered in the drawing. (Don't forget to make sure your email address is in your profile or comment so I can contact you. Hate to have to skip you if your name comes up but I have no way to be in touch!)

Looking forward to hearing from you. And thanks whole bunches to the Fat Quarter Shop for being a sponsor!

(Please note--I will be out of the country for a couple of weeks and will only have intermittent email access. Although I'll make my best efforts to check in and do the drawing, I may not be able to announce the winners of this giveaway until after my return. So go ahead and enter, and spread the word to all your friends by tweeting this post or pasting it into your Facebook status update or whatever--but you may need to be a little patient in hearing the results. Thanks!)

Two Year Podcastaversary Giveaway Week 2--It's Aurifil Week!

Thanks to everyone who played along on Week 1: A Celebration of Quilty Podcasts! Congratulations to all the winners, and thanks again to my fellow podcasters who helped me celebrate! (I'll announce my winner on my next podcast episode; I'm in the process of getting in touch with her to let her know she's won.)

And now it's time for Week 2: Aurifil Week!

As you know if you're a listener to my podcast series, I'm an Aurifil girl. I use other threads on occasion for different kinds of projects, but for piecing, it's strictly Aurifil 50 wt. I love how thin it is, so it doesn't take up a lot of extra bulk in the seams, but at the same time it's really strong. It's also amazingly low-lint. Because it's thin, one spool lasts a l-o-n-g time. This is the current collection I'm working with, although I've got a few more in my thread drawer waiting their turn.

I've also gone through my share of the 28 wt thread in machine quilting. It's also incredibly strong, low breakage and low lint--great for free-motion quilting. It's also good for hand quilting, hand applique, and hand piecing--according to Aurifil's website. I do remarkably little by hand, so can't really speak to that!

I was intrigued to find out awhile back that Aurifil also has a wonderful wool thread, so I bought some to explore doing felted wool projects by machine. Can't report on that yet--haven't gotten to those projects on my to-do list at this stage. However, I am seeing some potential usage opportunities coming up soon in some of my art quilting--it'll be great for some hand-stitched accents.



I'm also looking forward to using Aurifil's monofilament (invisible) thread that I own--the invisible thread has gotten great reviews. That'll probably get put to use pretty soon--I've got a project in the offing that it'll be perfect for.




So, yes, I'm a fan. I'm thrilled that Aurifil has sponsored this week's giveaway, so now I have the opportunity to try to make a few more fans out there too!

Aurifil has provided several sampler packs for me to pass along. Each sampler pack has five spools of thread: (1) wool, (1) 40 wt, (1) 28 wt, (1) 50 wt, and (1) variegated 12 wt. Colors vary per pack.

I'm going to send one sampler pack to each of seven winners. Count them--seven winners! I'm going to give you two chances to enter in the drawing.

1. Leave a comment here telling me how you'd like to use your sampler pack, if you won one. Your name will get entered once in the drawing.

2. You can leave a second comment telling me that you've subscribed to my podcast series. (If you're already a listener--thanks tons! And leave a comment telling me so--you'll still be entered.)

Leave your comments by Friday, April 13th, 2012, at midnight Eastern-Sandy-Time (New York). I'll draw the winners on Saturday. Can't wait to share!

Thanks for helping me celebrate, and good luck! (Be sure to spread the word--tweet or post this giveaway to your sewing friends who may want to have some Aurifil in their thread collection too!)

Podcastaversary Give-Away--Week 1 "Celebrate Podcasts!"

Yay! It's my two-year podcastaversary! My, how time flies. When I started this venture, I had no idea that (1) I'd still be doing it two years later and (2) I'd have made friends doing it! A community has been created amongst quilting podcasters and our listeners and I thoroughly enjoy being part of that.

To kick off a month of celebrations, this first week, we're celebrating podcasts!

The giveaways officially start Sunday, April 1st. I've got to post this on Saturday to give the podcasters time to link up here--so if you're reading this on Saturday, come back tomorrow and see who all has joined in! :-)

First, my own giveaway:

You can win yourself this set of four fat quarters by leaving a comment answering the question, "Where do you listen to your podcasts?" If you don't listen to podcasts, you might want to subscribe to mine and everyone else's! But you can still leave a comment anyway. I'll put your name in the mix even if you're not a listener!

Leave your comment by Friday night, April 6th, midnight Eastern-Sandy-Time (U.S.)--I'll do my drawing on Saturday the 7th.

Don't forget: Your email address needs to be in the comment itself or visible on your profile for me to be able to get back to you to tell you you've won! If I don't have an email address, I'll have to award the prize to someone else.

And before we move on, want to help spread the word about the month-long giveaway? Grab the blog button at the top of the right-hand side of this page and put it on your own blog! Make sure people know they'll have the opportunity to win Aurifil thread, gift certificates to the Fat Quarter Shop, and more!

Check out below for other podcasters' pages and giveaways--support the podcasting community!

Lookie! Lookie!

 

Kinda makes you want to run out and buy you some Shiva paint sticks, doesn't it?

Slow Quilt Monday--Oh, the Possibilities

I don't have many words of wisdom today because I'm deep in the midst of finishing a UFO (which has developed a real back-story, by the way, but more about that later in the week when it's actually done). So I haven't been practicing "slow quilting" these last couple of days so much as "get 'er done quilting." There are seasons for both of those in our quilting lives, to be sure.

However, I started out this morning in an endeavor that might indeed fit well under the slow quilting rubric, as it's all about imagining the possibilities.

You see, I've developed a thing for Shiva paint sticks. I picked up a few at the Mid-Atlantic Quilt Festival and have been playing with them here and there. A couple of weeks ago I brought them with me when I made a quick drop-by to our guild's March Sew-Days. I knew my buddy Lori would appreciate them--I didn't realize the number of other folks who would fall in love with them too. Soon enough I had a crowd around me as we played with rubbing plates, sketching, and blending. Lori, Florence, and I decided a short shop-hop to an art supply store was in order. So, this morning we met in a grocery store parking lot, hopped into Lori's car, and did some financial damage in a short amount of time!

Today's purchases:

More paint sticks, of course; a few pigma pens, some stencil brushes and a couple of small stencils, some regular paint brushes of three different shape/sizes, and brush cleaner. And then a random bag of little bitty hair scrunchies to keep my bobbins in control, because they've started to bug me of late ($1 for a bag of 300 at Family Dollar, if you're interested).

Florence and Lori also picked up a few paint sticks and some other accoutrements. I'll let Lori blog about hers. Florence doesn't blog, so her quilting life will just need to remain a mystery to you all. Let me just say, though, Florence is a seriously prolific quilter. It's a rare guild show n' tell that she doesn't have at least three finishes to show, and often more. And she does tremendous charity quilting. We love Florence. She da woman.

I've done as much as I can get done on my UFO for the day--waiting for a shipment of remaining parts. :-) So now it's time to cover a work surface and get down to some serious play. I love me some paint sticks. Playing is a big part of slow quilting--you need to mess with something to get a feel for what it will let you do.

So, go mess with something. And have fun!

Sew-Day Tomorrow

It's like bunnies, the way guilds are multiplying in my life these days.

Y'all know how much I love my usual guild-that-is-not-a-guild. I've been with that one for about six years now. Actually started talking to people about four years ago. (That's the "i" word thing that we won't talk about at the moment.) Now they're my peeps. My main quilty squeezes. No one will ever replace them.

But a few months ago, I decided to go ahead and join a second guild. The second one is the big guild in the region--maybe something like 400 members? They've been around since the dawn of time, too--they're one of the oldest/longest running guilds in the country. However, they meet on a weekday. In the morning. Urgh. So really, I can pretty much never make meetings. But they do have good speakers and classes and such, so being a member means that if I can plan far enough in advance, I might be able to periodically take a vacation day and attend something. Meanwhile, I keep up through the newsletter and news groups. While I'm technically a member of that one, it's hard to feel like a member when I'll probably only be physically present maybe once or twice a year.

This week, a bit on a whim, I joined a third guild. This one doesn't have meetings, from what I've been told. They just do sew-days on a Friday and Saturday once a month. And, as it turns out, of the 30-ish people in that guild, about 10 of them are also in my Main Quilty Squeeze Guild. Always a bit easier for this i-word-person to join a group where I already know a third of the people. My thought process is that when I'm back to work in a few weeks, between my MQS Guild's sew days and this new one's sew days (never scheduled on the same weekend), I should be able to make one or the other every month. All the more opportunity to "go get my quilty on" on a regular basis.

New Guild has their sew days tomorrow and Saturday, so I'm getting my thoughts and supplies together about what I'll be bringing with me to do. Hence, this:

Remember the self-mitered receiving blanket from yesterday's post? I went back to the sale at Joann's this afternoon to pick up a bunch more fabrics and will be cutting the sets of 30" and 40" squares tomorrow. I'm planning on using this as a project to teach some of the women I've been volunteering with how to use a sewing machine. It's really perfect. All they have to learn to do is find the middle, pin, sew in a straight line,  mark a line, cut on that line, then sew a zig-zag stitch. Easy Peasy. And, what's more important, they end up with usable receiving blankets for all the many babies being born into their community!

I lost track. I think those three hangers of fabrics add up to about 15 receiving blankets or so. I had them all sorted out as to which ones were pairs when I was stacking the bolts in my cart, but then the woman doing the cutting kept flipping my piles back and forth, mixing the sets up. I decided I'd better take care of sorting them back out again as soon as I got home before I completely forgot what my original intentions were. There are a couple that I'm questioning, but ultimately I ended up with even sets so it's good enough for horseshoes.

I haven't decided yet what else I'll work on tomorrow. Here is my usual criteria for a sew-day (different from a retreat since I'm there for shorter periods of time):

• No machine quilting. I only do that on my regular set-up at home.
• Nothing that requires intense concentration. Who can concentrate with a cast of thousands?
• Nothing that requires a lot of parts. Hate packing it all just for a few hours.

I still have some hexies to mark, so those will probably come with me, then I may just bring my scrap bins and work on cutting everything to usable sizes. That's the kind of tedious work that's nice to do while I can be entertained by everyone else!

Donation Quilt Wednesday--Receiving Blankets

I wanna make me a bunch of these! How cute and easy are they?! Thanks to Missouri Star Quilt Company for this idea--great for donating to hospitals, women's shelters, clothing cupboards, and so forth. (As always, check with the intended recipient organization first to make sure there are no special requirements.)



I thought this looked like so much fun I picked up some flannel on sale at Joann's ($2.79 a yard! and a coupon on top of that!) and made one myself. It works! (Not terribly keen on the decorative stitch I chose for the finishing touch--it worked well on the sample but I didn't like it in the end. Next time I'll just do a zig-zag, I think.)

And here's the fabric I've got to make a second, more boy-like one.

Notes:
1. Make sure you bring the measurements with you when you go to buy the fabric. Oops. Since I made these on a whim, I stopped at Joann's while running other errands and didn't have the ability to double-check the measurements. I had in my head 20" and 30". Nope. That would be 30" and 40". Fortunately, while I'd only intended to buy a yard of each of the four fabrics, one in each pairing I'd picked up was the last of the bolt so I got a few extra inches. Bingo. Saved by happenstance.

2. It's flannel. Yikes. Flannel is hard to work with in the best of circumstances. In this case, you're sewing something smaller to something bigger, which involved a lot of smoodging around to get things to line up under the presser foot, so that was kind of a pain. Ultimately, it didn't turn out to be that big a deal when all was said and done. The miters still worked well.

3. The video could have used a little more detail in the "sewing everything together" section. Since you sew from the center out on all the sides, that means one seam you sew with one side up, then you have to flip it over with the other side up to get it under the presser foot correctly. Which affects how you pin or mark things. It wasn't a huge deal but took me a couple of sides to figure out how to do best, and it was still a lot of flipping around. If I'd thought ahead, I could have done four seams on one side, then flipped and done the other four on the other side. I didn't think ahead. I suppose you could try just sewing straight down one side without going center out, but with flannel as stretchy as it is, I'd think you'd risk not having things line up in the end.

4. Ten minutes? I don't think so. The first one took me about an hour. It took me ten minutes just to get the cutting done because my cutting table isn't set up well to do a 40" square. However, I think the second one will take me significantly less time, and if I were to do a bunch of them, I could probably get it down to under half an hour. I still don't buy 10 minutes. Still n' all, half an hour isn't bad either! And this could be a good project for a group to do in assembly line fashion--some folks cutting, some folks pinning, others sewing, etc. You could knock out a bunch in a few hours.

So I've now got a receiving blanket ready to donate. I'm hoping to knock out the second one today, as well as make progress on my other projects.

Have you ever made these? Leave a comment!

Slow Quilt Monday--I Think I Can

When my son was about going on 3 years old, we went through an entire summer of reading The Little Engine that Could every single night--sometimes two or three times a night. He had it memorized within the first couple of nights. Even though he couldn't read yet, he knew when we tried to speed things up on the umpteenth time through the story by skipping words here and there. He'd call us on it. "No, mommy, you missed a part!" (Sigh. Flip back a page, start again.)

At 21, he's now a very confident guy who thinks he can do pretty much anything he can set his mind to. Can I attribute my son's confidence to his early passion for Watty Piper's story of the little train engine that believed itself up the steep hill? Probably not entirely. But something in his little 30-month-old brain recognized that there was something to that story that he could relate to. Or that there was something to that story that he needed to remember for later life.

I've been reading a lot about creativity these last few weeks, and really, it all boils down to one salient point: If you think you can, you will. Yes, you may need to learn a new technique to be able to adequately execute that vision in your head. But there's nothing keeping you from learning that technique. Yes, you may have a few disastrous starts to a project before ending up with something at least closely approximating what's in your head. But who cares? It's only fabric. I've been reading about a number of great artists and novelists who were all angsty with fear every time they started out creating, and who were positive that what they were creating was just every sort of wrong through the whole process. But they kept thinking they could. And so they did.

What's the difference between me and the man or woman who created that gorgeous quilt I'm admiring in the show? Simply this: They thought they could. So they did.

This week, I think you should find a copy of The Little Engine that Could. Remember what it feels like to think you can.

A Little Bit about a Lot of Nothing

Random thoughts on a Sunday.

Here's what I'm reading:

The Brutal Telling, by Louise Penny. This is #5 in the Inspector Armand Gamache series. I just started them a few months ago and am trying to slow myself down--she's just started work on book #9, if I recall (I follow her blog), so I'm pacing myself. Love these books. I enjoy the characters, the storylines, the writing. Best mysteries I've read in a long time.



Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking, by Susan Cain. I'm finding this book entertaining. Cain's a good writer--you have to love nonfiction that keeps you coming back for more as much as a good story does.




Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life, by Anne Lamott. I read this book several years ago and got a lot out of it the first time. I'm getting as much out of it, if not more, the second time around. I've read several of Anne Lamott's books, although none of her fiction. She's earthy, funny, and wise. This book of advice for writers is full of her typical self-deprecating humor and sometimes pointed jabs; note that it's not about being published--it's about writing for the sake of writing. Great stuff.

And get ready for an upcoming episode on my podcast about some quilt design books I've been reading: A Fabric Journey: An Inside Look at the Quilts of Ruth McDowell; Transitions: Unlocking the Creative Quilter Within, by Andrea Balosky; Journey of an Art Quilter: Creative Strategies and Techniques, by Barbara Olson; and probably others by the time I get around to recording that episode. I'll also be talking at more length about my experience with The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron.

What I'm watching:
Modern Family, The Amazing Race, The Voice, American Idol (although I could skip that one pretty easily), The Bob Newhart Show (the original one, being shown on Hallmark Channel); just started watching Cranford on DVD from Netflix, but not sure it's grabbing me yet. Have some Masterpiece Classic DVDs of the Jane Austen persuasion that I'll be watching this week too, as my husband has a lot of evening commitments for work. And yes, I confess to watching Hoarding: Buried Alive. I don't understand why or try to explain it, but there it is. On the Great Courses front, I've finished Museum Masterpieces: the Louvre--which was wonderful, by the way. Now I'm working on From Monet to Van Gogh: A History of Impressionism. I hit a great sale in their catalogue a couple of weeks ago and picked up three new lecture series so I'm ready to go. Now that my daughter has gone back to college after her spring break, I get a lot more control over the TV again.

What I'm working on this week:

My still-unnamed funky landscape






The next border on my medallion challenge--it's supposed to be 6" finished, and somehow involve stars and/or pinwheels. I'm still pondering.






Remember "Fortune?" I'd intended to do the quilting myself but have decided I really want to move onto other projects now, so Fortune is making it's way to my wonderful long-arm quilter tomorrow. I'm sure it won't take long--just a basic overall pantograph, since this is a donation quilt. Not sure where I'm donating it yet, although I have an idea. I just need to do some asking first.




And it's time for me to start working on my paint chip challenge for my guild. It's due next month. Not that I'm waiting until the last minute or anything...

So that's where we're at as we look at the week ahead. What are you planning on reading, watching, or working on this week?

Food Friday--Homemade Pizza

I own a breadmaker. Do I ever use it to make bread? Uh, no. Let's name it a pizza-dough-maker and call it a day. Once every couple of weeks I make us homemade pizza. When it's just my husband and I home alone, I will make two personal sized pizzas and we each make whatever we want. Note: I'm much more creative than he is. He's happy with tomato sauce (and plenty of it), mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni. I lean towards a white sauce, spinach, caramelized onions, and goat cheese. But we'll keep it simple for this blog post.

I've adapted a bread machine pizza dough recipe I found on the Internet a little bit. Then I'm going to share with you three sauce recipes--I've tried them all, and they're all tasty!

Although the pizza dough recipe is made for a breadmaker, check out this link for some tips for how to make a bread machine recipe by hand instead: http://www.stretcher.com/stories/00/000117n.cfm.

Here we go:
Pizza Dough in Bread Machine
(Adapted from Allrecipes.com)

Ingredients

• 3/4 cup water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
• 1 teaspoon lemon juice
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1 tablespoon white sugar
• 1 tablespoon dry milk powder
• 2 1/4 cups bread flour
• 1 teaspoon active dry yeast
• Optional: approximately 1 tablespoon Italian Seasoning or mix of dried oregano, basil, thyme, etc., if desired, to taste
• Optional: grated parmesan or romano cheese for crust
  

If desired, make an olive oil mixture to brush on the crust before baking: olive oil, garlic powder, dried oregano or Italian seasoning, grated parmesan, or whatever seasonings you like.

Directions

1. Place ingredients in the pan of the bread machine in the order recommended by the manufacturer. Select dough cycle. Press start.

2. Remove dough from pan after rise cycle. Roll to 14-16". Allow to rest several times in the process of rolling--this will help it get to the desired size more easily.

3. Place in lightly sprayed pizza pan and allow to rise a few minutes.

4. Brush with plain olive oil. Poke holes in dough with a fork to prevent bubbles from forming. (Remember to also poke the edge of the crust.)

5. Bake in preheated oven at approximately 400 to 425 degrees for about 8-10 minutes, until slightly browned.

6. Optional: Sprinkle parmesan or romano cheese on crust after first baking, then bake again for a couple of minutes to melt the cheese, then add toppings.

7. Top with sauce and desired toppings, brush crust with olive oil or olive oil mixture, then bake again until toppings are at desired doneness. Brush crust with olive oil as soon as it's out of the oven if desired.

And now, onto the sauces!

Parmesan Sauce (not low fat!)
(Learned at cooking class at the New York Wine and Culinary Center)

Ingredients:

• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 pint heavy cream
• 1/2 cup grated parmesan cheese, or to taste
• salt and pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. In a large skillet, heat oil over medium-high heat and saute garlic until softened but not brown.

2. Add cream and heat until foaming. Add parmesan, salt, and pepper to taste. Turn down heat and heat until thickened to desired consistency. Use over fettucini or pizza.

Simple Margherita Sauce

• 1 can San Marzano Tomatoes
• Salt and pepper to taste

Directions:

1. Open can and remove several tomatoes to lessen volume and set aside. Using immersion blender, puree remaining tomatoes in can (or pour tomatoes into blender). Give removed tomatoes a rough chop and return to can. Salt and pepper to taste; use cold over pizza. (Freeze into 2 cup portions for other pizzas, or use as a base for spaghetti sauce.)


Susan's Pizza Sauce
(From History Quilter Susan--who gave me permission to post this!)

Ingredients:

• 1 28oz can diced tomatoes
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp garlic powder
• 2 tbl olive oil
• 1 tsp Kosher salt
• 1 tsp pepper
• 1 tsp oregano (add at end)

Directions:

Add all ingredients above (except oregano) to saucepan and let simmer about 20 minutes at the minimum. Puree to your desired consistency or keep it chunky. Add 1 tsp oregano just before you are ready to make your pizza. Makes about 1 1/2 cups - easily doubled/tripled.

(I made Susan's sauce for the first time tonight--thanks so much for sending it to me, Susan! We loved it!)