#BFSI In Review

Friday was, yes, our Black Friday Sew-In! Woot! And a great time was had by all. The giveaway on my blog was great fun--loved reading everyone's responses! Congratulations to Brenda J (The Quilt Show subscription) and  Fiber of All Sorts (The Fat Quarter Shop certificate), the lucky winners of my blog giveaway!

Thanks to all the other bloggers who hosted their own giveaways and linked up here. It made the party even bigger!

And even more--I did four mini-giveaway challenges via Twitter through the day. Posted those winners via Twitter. Again, I loved reading everyone's responses to my questions!

What else did I get done on Black Friday, besides hang out on Twitter? (By the way, for me "BFSI lasted through Sunday morning--other than some Christmas decorating and going to a movie with the fam, I basically hung out in my sewing room most of the weekend--so this is a tally of everything done from Friday morning until this writing.)

I took an April Cornell charm pack (Portugal) I've owned for several years...

 ....made some 9-patch blocks out of it....

...and then turned it into this Disappearing 9-Patch.

The astoundingly oversized borders are because I'm making this a wheelchair quilt to donate to a local nursing facility and the one charm pack only makes a 26"x26" square center. Wheelchair quilts should be in the neighborhood of 36"x45" so I added 5" borders (finished) to either side and 9" borders (finished) to the top and bottom. Normally not a design choice I'd make but I think it works okay. I didn't have another charm pack that coordinated and I also didn't want to cut just a few squares from yardage in my stash, so I went with the honking-big-border technique. And hey, I got to use another yard out of my stash for the borders, 2 1/2 yards for backing and another part of a yard for binding. Big stash-busting happening this past weekend!

Disappearing 9-patches are fun. I'm already digging into the rest of my charm pack collection to see what ones I might work with next--they make very fast donation quilts! This only took about 90 minutes total to get to this stage. Since I'm just going to meander-quilt it, it won't take any time at all to finish completely.

Then, rather on a whim, I pulled another set of fabric off my shelf that's been there for a few years. I fell in love with a vendor's booth the last time I was in Houston in 2008. She did all her own hand-dyed fabrics with various surface treatments--super cool stuff. I bought a roughly one yard piece of fabric and then several small pieces that each had leaves stamped onto them. No idea what I was going to do with them, which is why they sat.

Finally today I just bit the bullet, did some arranging, lightly fused them into place as a basting method, pulled some yarn apart to make it a little thinner, then did some stitching and embellishing. I also loved the frayed edge of the background fabric so I frayed all the pieces to give it all a very organic, rough-hewn look.

It's not really a quilt since there's no batting, backing, or quilting. Let's call it a tapestry.








Leaf details 1














 Leaf details 2



I can't put a hanging sleeve on it because stitching would show through front so I need to find a hanging device with hooks that fits the mood of the piece.

And then I finished something I'd been playing with for a bit.

Karen Lee Carter teaches a dimensional flower technique that I've been wanting to try. Since this was a test piece I used some scrap fabric for it, so my fussy-cut flower (center) has a part of another flower overlapping the leaf. That particular fabric doesn't have any whole flowers untouched so it doesn't work well for fussy-cutting. Again, test piece, didn't worry too much. I did some satin-stitching for the first time--need to practice more on that. Then I also used it to test another technique I saw in Quilting Arts Magazine: cut a hole in the center of something and sew across it to create a web effect. Very cool!

Detail of dimensional flower















Detail of webby hole in the middle.

Love both techniques!

I also put together a few new "quilt sandwiches" to practice my FMQ on, and the rest of the time I spent poking away at Easy Street Week 1. I'll put pictures in the Flickr and Threadbias groups tomorrow (Monday) and be linking up to Bonnie's blog then. 

I had a very productive long weekend. What about you?

Black Friday Sew-in Giveaway! #BFSI

This giveaway is now closed!

I am in the process of being in contact with the winners and will announce them later!

Woohoo! 

It's Black Friday again here in the U.S.--the day after Thanksgiving when retailers publicize huge "door-busting" sales to entice as many shoppers through their doors as possible. Lots of people look forward to Black Friday for months, plan their holiday shopping lists around the sales they'll find, and strategize for how to get first dibs on their chosen items. I have a friend for whom heading out to Black Friday sales with her sister is just as much part of the family celebration of Thanksgiving as the meal the day before is.

For me, it sounds like the seventh level of hell.

I'm not a big fan of crowds in general, and crowds whipped into a frenzy of wanting to be first in line at the cash register is even more unsettling for me. I'd much rather unwind after hosting the dinner the day before by hanging out in my sewing room and petting fabric.

So I invite you to stay in with me and sew! 

Even if you do head out for some shopping, check in during the day or put your feet up with tea (or whatever your recovery beverage of choice is) and catch up with what's been happening with #BFSI.

On Twitter, we'll be posting pictures of our progress, asking for advice, cheering one another on, talking about the many ways we're eating turkey leftovers, and in general hanging out and having fun. Just use the hashtag #BFSI. You can also use Tweetchat to track all the tweets in one place: http://tweetchat.com/room/BFSI.

Meanwhile, back at the blog, I'm hosting a giveaway today to make it even more fun to just stay home!

The first winner will receive a:

$50 gift certificate from Fat Quarter Shop

Woot! Even better--Fat Quarter Shop is having a huge-a-mongous Black Friday sale too! Note that the sale ends at midnight CST Nov 29th, so you'll have time to spend that gift certificate during their sale if we can get everything timed right. Meanwhile, I'm just gonna do some cyber-shopping on Black Friday myself. :-)

Thanks, Fat Quarter Shop, for sponsoring this giveaway!

The second winner will receive a:

Gift certificate for a 6-month membership to The Quilt Show

 (Value $24.95.)

This gift certificate will give you the opportunity to try out The Quilt Show, Web TV for quilters and worldwide quilt community with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. Internet "TV" episodes, a daily blog, classrooms, and more. It's a great resource, and this is the perfect way for you to dabble your toes to see if you like it.

By leaving a comment here, you are entering both giveaways--I will choose two winners from the total number of comments. (In other words, I can't separate out who wants which giveaway; I'll just be drawing two winners at random.)

Also, your email address must appear in either in your comment or attached to your profile in order for you to be entered in the giveaway. If I draw your name and don't see an email address, I'll move on to another winner. Please check to be sure your profile includes your email address, or include your email address in your comment below. You may want to write it as "screenname at gmail dot com" to avoid web-crawlers.

To enter the drawing, please leave a comment here answering the following question:

What is one thing you have to be thankful for--quilty-related!--in 2012?

You may have a second chance to win!  

Just leave a second comment that tells me you've subscribed to my podcast (which you can find at www.quiltingfortherestofus.com or at iTunes).

This giveaway closes at Midnight Eastern Time Friday, November 23rd. (So it's a 24-hour thing!)

Now, guess what else? 

Other bloggers and podcasters are hosting their own giveaways today too! After you've entered my giveaway, use the links below to check out who else is giving great stuff away. Good luck!

Quilt Top Complete and Easy Street Prep

"You're Getting Sleepy" (aka Poppies) top complete.

 I've ordered more of the poppies fabric to use as the backing. I didn't have enough of any of the fabrics to piece a backing and I love the poppies fabric enough that I really wanted more of it anyway. Haven't decided how I'm going to approach the quilting yet, so it may be a few more weeks before this gets done.

Meanwhile, just a few days left until Bonnie Hunter posts the first "clue" for the Easy Street Mystery Quilt. I was just checking out the Flickr group to see everyone's fabric choices so far--very cool! Here's the slideshow from the group (if the embed works correctly).


 If you're on Threadbias, be sure to check out the Easy Street group I've started there as well--more pics of fabric choices.

Total Color Tuesday--Skipping About

We're playing hopscotch all over the color wheel this week. Three color harmonies again. The first one is actually pretty closely related to last week's; the second two are related to each other.

Two Colors, Four Colors Apart

 Start somewhere on the color wheel and choose your color. Then count four colors over, and the fifth color would be the other color you would use.

You're pretty close to complementary so you've got the pizzazz of that combination but it's just enough of a tweak to the side to make it a little different.

I could see putting this red-purple and yellow together if I had a variety of tints and shades of  each of them. Could be pretty.

Using the 3-in-1 Color Tool, even at four colors apart the colors are much closer together on the color wheel than on the standard wheel. Divided into 24 segments, five colors apart on this wheel is the equivalent of 2 1/2 colors apart on the standard 12-point wheel.

So starting with yellow again, I land on blue-green for the second color. I dig this combination. Very tropical. It also works nicely because I have a blue-green that includes some yellow hiding in the background, so I could see myself putting these two into a quilt. I'd probably include a nice, bright white. Summer, here I come!

Three Colors, One Color Apart

In other words, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color...do si do, change partners, do it again...

I decided to stay on one side of the color wheel and did purple, blue, and green. You could, of course, start closer to the turning point and have both warm and cool colors in a single quilt with this color harmony for an entirely different effect.

I wasn't keen on the dark versions of all three colors together, so I decided to play a little more with contrast.

I switched out the dark blue for a light blue. I'm still not keen on this one. That being said, I could see doing something very scrappy with all sorts of purples, blues, and greens on a white background. That would probably work really nicely.

ZING! Here's the same color harmony on the 24-point color wheel. Again, subdivided more, you have less division between colors when you skip around. I ended up with magenta, orange, and red. Wowzer.

On the other hand, black background and you've got something funky going on. Again, with maybe a little more contrast happening (shades and tints of these colors), it could be pretty exciting.

Three Colors and an Accent

In other words, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color, skip a color, choose a color...then take a big leap across the color wheel and find the opposite of that middle color and grab its hand for a grande allemande...

Okay, so that's a little long for a square dance call. But you get the idea.

Back to the standard color wheel: I started with my three original colors: purple, blue, and green. That makes the accent color orange (the opposite of the middle color, blue).

This time I went into my fat quarter collection and I was able to put together four fat quarters I could easily imagine putting together in a quilt. Some of that is, of course, that my blue fabric also has green and hints of orange, so it pulls everything together.

This combination, I dig.

For the 24 point color wheel, the accent color becomes aqua green.

I've been in a very aqua and turquoise mode lately, so I have plenty of that in my stash suddenly. I used the same red, orange, and magenta fat quarters from earlier and pulled an aqua-green fat quarter to go with them. These particular values of these colors are a little intense but, you know, it would work on a black background? I could see something really interesting that was primarily the warm colors with just little bitty pops of the cool sprinkled through it. It would still be intense, but could be really eye catching.

Play time!

Your turn! As usual, link up your blog posts as you play with these color harmonies. Let me know what you think--have you, or would you,actually use any of these types of harmonies in a quilt?

Slow Quilt Monday--Consider Color

If you follow my blog or podcast, you'll know that at the moment I'm not particularly in a slow quilt mode. Several months of no-time-to-quilt makes Sandy a pent-up-quilter-ready-to-explode-with-fabric. I'm compensating for the dry period now by churning out several immediate-gratification projects. I'll get over myself soon enough and return to former ways. But even while I'm spinning through a variety of projects, my brain is actually still in slow quilt mode. I'm still pondering and brewing. I have some mental quilts I've been working on for some time. I believe after the holidays I'll be going back to having things hanging on my design wall that are talking to me.

My Design Study Group is drawing near to the end of the Lorraine Torrance book Fearless Design for Every Quilter that we've been using for the last year or so. Admittedly, we didn't follow the process to the letter. Sometimes we did homework, sometimes we did the homework assignment right in our session together. Sometimes we said we were going to do homework and didn't. You know how that goes. Sometimes we critiqued, most times we just oohed and aahed. And laughed. Always laughed.

The group has said it wants to continue. And as we discussed how we might continue, the overwhelming interest was in working more with color. We're starting to explore what books we might decide to work through next. One of our members showed me a book at our guild meeting this week that I fell in love with. I think it's a definite contender. I also think it must come to live with me. Time to head to Joanns (where she told me she got it) with a coupon to see if I can do better than Amazon pricing.

So for today's Slow Quilt Monday post, I'm thinking color. With the work we've done in the Design Study Group, and with my Total Color Tuesday posts, I have been challenged to look at color combinations I wouldn't normally consider. I want to keep pushing that. So this week, as part of my Slow Quilt Movement process, I'll be paying close attention to color in the world. As our leaves disappear and the usual winter grayness descends on my area, I'll be looking for monochromatic color schemes in my backyard--the play of neutrals as things hunker down for winter. When I go to my stash, I'll continue to pull out the color wheel and play with creating color combinations from my fabric, just to see what it would look like if....

If you're needing a little slow quilting in your life, I encourage you to join me in just paying attention to color this week. Pull out your colored pencils and make some sketches, using colors you wouldn't normally use. Play with your stash. Take pictures of your yard and look at the palettes that appear. When you catch yourself staring off into space at work, let your eyes land on something and consider what color that thing is, and what colors you might put with it. Dream in color.

Starting to Plan for #BFSI

Friday is my now-annual Black Friday Sew-In, or #BFSI. (Last year I named it the Anti-Black Friday Sew-In which more completely captures my feelings about the day but I'm trying to minimize character count for Twitter purposes.) I'll be doing some fun giveaways and I've invited other podcasters and bloggers to join in as well--I've been hearing rumors of plans so I think it'll be a great day!

But the purpose of the day is really to stay in and sew, so I'm starting to make plans for what I might do. Part of me wants to work on current projects or UFOs, of course, but part of me also really loves the thought of finishing an entire top, beginning to end, in one day, for a donation quilt. I did that last year (mostly in one day) for Boxing Day Sew In (#BDSI). It was a hoot.

If that's what I do, I'm thinking I may play with the disappearing 9-patch design. It's been around awhile. If you're not familiar with it, Missouri Star Quilt Company has a nice, brief tutorial on it.




I've got charm packs galore, plus lots of my own charm squares I've cut from scraps, although no baby-style so I'd be making a lap quilt for an adult. Maybe most appropriate for a wheelchair quilt? Our guild collects a variety of sizes for a variety of places so I'm sure I could find a willing taker. Anyway, that's a thought.

Another thought is, truly, to knock out some UFOs. Here's my current UFO list:
1. Poppies--needs borders, backing, quilting, binding
2. Momufo Flower quilt--needs borders and backing (sending out for quilting)--I've not posted about this one yet because I'm waiting for the "big reveal." I worked on it during my vacation at the family cottage last August. The whole story will come out when it's done.
3. Vickie's Peacock--needs backing, quilting, binding
4. Guild Medallion Challenge--needs backing, quilting, binding
5. Stash Mystery Challenge quilt--needs a whole lot!
6. Hexies--so far, only cut and marked. Needs even more than #5
7. Jelly Roll Sampler--still in piecing phase
8. Guild BOM--still in piecing phase
and now I've added 9. Stack the Deck for niece and 10. Something for nephew--still just in my head, though, so not sure it counts as a UFO. Is there an IOUF category? Intended Objects UnFinished? (Pronounce it like "OOF!" and you're not too far off the mark.)

I guess I should start paying attention to my UFO list. I'd gotten it way down to only having two or three UFOs but now I've been doing more experimental things and my UFOs have been multiplying while my back was turned. They have a way of doing that, you know--sneaky boogers.

Oh, and I'll have some blocks to do for the Easy Street Mystery Quilt. Woot! (Check out pics as we go at the Flickr group.)

So, if you're planning on getting something done over the coming holiday weekend here in the U.S., or the regular weekend everywhere else in the world, what's on your list to do? Let us know your plans!
 

Food Friday--Corn Chowder

All right, already, Lori, I'm posting the dang recipe!

Actually, a few of you have pointed out that although I raved several times last summer about my corn chowder made with my CSA corn, I neglected to ever let you in on the party by posting the recipe. My apologies. My only excuse is that I was too busy eating corn chowder to get to my blog. Man, it was great corn chowder. Admittedly, some of that greatness was probably due to the incredible corn we got from the CSA. But still, you can easily make this chowder with the frozen stuff from the grocery store. It just won't taste quite as fresh and, well, wonderful.

I believe the original recipe came from Food Network. I tweaked it a little.

Corn Chowder 

 Ingredients:

• 2 tbs butter 
• Olive oil 
• 1 onion, diced 
• 2 garlic cloves, minced 
• 6 sprigs fresh thyme, leaves only 
• 1/4 c all-purpose flour 
• 6 c canned vegetable stock (I used chicken if my vegetarian daughter wasn't home; gives it just a little extra flavor) 
• 2 c whole or 1% milk (original recipe uses heavy cream; I was trying to cut fat a little)
• 2 potatoes, peeled and diced (russet work best--you want them to break down a little)
• 6 ears corn* (or a bag of frozen corn)
• salt and pepper 
• 1/4 c chopped fresh parsley leaves (optional--we're not fans of parsley so I usually opted out)

Directions:

• Heat the butter and 1 tbs olive oil in a soup pot over medium heat. Add onion and cook until soft, 8-10 minutes. Add thyme leaves about halfway through. Add minced garlic right at the end--the garlic should only cook about a minute or so or it may overcook and get bitter.

• Dust vegetables with flour and stir to coat everything well. Feel free to let the flour "toast" just a hair but be careful not to let it scorch on the bottom. Pour in the stock and bring to a boil.

• Add the cream/milk and potatoes, bring to a boil and boil hard for about 7 minutes, until the potatoes break down to thicken soup.

• Cut the corn kernels off the cob and add to the soup. Season with salt and pepper and simmer until the corn is soft, about 10-12 minutes. Stir in parsley and sprinkle just a little more olive oil+ over the top just before serving.

*Recipe doesn't require corn to be cooked. However, most often I was making this with leftover corn on the cob from dinner the night before so mine was already cooked. I didn't have any problem with the corn getting mushy.
+Are you a fan of flavored olive oils? This is a good opportunity to play with one. Just make sure it's a lightly flavored one as the corn chowder could easily get overpowered with anything strong.

And a Second Recipe If You Want It: Chicken Pot Pie

And by the way, just for another little treat since I've gone awhile without doing a Food Friday--I made myself Chicken Pot Pie last night. Very tasty! It took longer than the recipe said, so allow a little over an hour total for making this. I added some thyme and ground sage, although I don't think it really needs it.

Boy, do I wish I owned ramekins, though. Would've been better to be able to make single servings of this since I'm the only one in the house that eats it. Now I'll be reheating the leavings in the pie plate. For days.

A Finish! 9-Patch Pizzazz

 

No, sweetheart. I'm not trying to take a picture of you. 

There it is, as best I can do with no portable quilt hangers (aka people) in the house when I was taking the picture. A handy armchair had to do. Hopefully I'll get a better picture for my files later. Here it is, the 9-Patch Pizzazz finished and washed. It's been lightly quilted with a ribbon design vertically down the seams between each row which you can't really see in this picture, but they pick up on the ribbons that appear in the focus fabric. The quilt has been now renamed "Faith, Hope, and Love." If you missed previous posts, that's an adaptation of the Scripture verse that appears in some of the blocks.

Tomorrow night, back to Poppies, a.k.a. "You're Getting Sleepy". I might be able to get that top completed, including borders, in one evening--I don't have a lot left to do. Then I can start working on the Stack the Deck quilt while I'm debating how to quilt Poppies. I'm kinda sorta wishing I had a longarm machine in my basement. Shhh. I didn't say that.

Total Color Tuesday--Twosies All Around

We're doing three, count 'em, three color harmonies this week! They're all closely related, so just follow along in your songbook and we'll all hit the same note at the end.

Two Colors, One Color Apart

This one is pretty easy to figure out. Choose a color, skip a color, find the other color.

In some regards, this has a very similar effect as analagous colors would. You're still pretty dang close to one another on the color wheel, so you're related. But you're just far enough apart to create a little bit more visual pizzazz.

In my example here (let's look at the standard 12-point color wheel first), I started with purple, skipped over red-purple, and went right to red. If we'd included the red-purple in there, we'd have an analogous harmony.  It would be all sorts of calming, as analagous can tend to be. But by ripping out the center color and leaving the two outies, you get rid of a bit of the calm and find yourself feeling just a little bit zingy.

Pulling fabrics from my stash, here are my purple and red examples. I do actually really appreciate a good purple and red combination. If I used these two fabrics I'd want some blenders, or perhaps just shades and tones, to give it a little more interest. Or maybe just combining these with a bright white (if I wanted excitement) or a light gray (if I wanted to tone things down a bit). Pairing it with black would be heading in the direction of an Amish effect.




If you go back up to the first picture you'll see I also included the 3-in-1 Color Tool version of skipping a color. As always, since that's a 24-point color wheel, the two colors are a whole lot closer together. In that color wheel, violet and purple are the two colors and there isn't quite as much separating them visually.

I'm not sure I would do a quilt only using these colors, although honestly it just comes across to me as a straight-up analogous pair. This one doesn't jazz me as much.

 

 

Two Colors, Two Colors Apart

Next color harmony: Start with one color, hopscotch across two colors, then land with both feet on the third color. Bingo.

So now you've increased your contrast between the two colors and added just a little more zing. This one probably pushes our color boundaries a little more than others--it's not a combination we normally think of when we look at our color wheels. But with a good mix of shades, tints, and tones, or balanced out with some neutrals, this could still be a very effective color scheme.

Pictured--12-point color wheel and 24-point color wheel. I stayed with purple as my starting point both times. (Note here: The color I think of as purple, and is most often referred to as purple on the 12-point color wheel, is labeled "violet" in the 24-point wheel. I decided not to get overly sticky about terminology or I'd drive myself nuts. Feel free to mentally translate if you prefer one term or another. I know technically they're two different colors, that purple and that violet, but in the quilting world, I'm used to seeing what I call purple referred to as purple, so I'm rolling with it.)

 In my scenario with the 12-point wheel, my two colors are therefor purple (hop skip) and red-orange. Oooh. Jazzy.

By the way, have you ever noticed how hard it is to distinguish red from red-orange in your stash sometimes? The fabric I pulled as an exemplar here I always just think of as red, until I hold it up to my color wheel. Nope, guess it's actually red-orange. But if I held it up to another red-orange fabric, it would likely look more true-red. So color is often quite relative.

 Here's my sample for the 24-point color wheel. Starting with purple (oops, violet), skipping a couple of colors in the same direction as above lands me on fuschia. Boy, was I a fan of fuschia in college. It was all the thing back then, and I wore a lot of it!

Not so much anymore. I seem to be in a turquoise phase this year. But I digress.

I do like purple and fuschia together. In fact, I believe I wore a lot of purple and fuschia together in college. You might be able to recall what time period that was. For those of you alive back then, anyway...

And Finally, Two Colors/Two Colors and a Jazzy Friend

So for this one, we stick with the above color harmony but then jump directly across the color wheel and find the opposite. 

Okay, so it's a little tricky to find the opposite when there isn't a direct line. Color Magic for Quilters suggests you draw a line from your first two colors into the center of the color wheel, and then draw the tail of the "Y" from that center point to find your opposite color. Hmmm. To tell the truth, I couldn't exactly decide if I was going green, or yellow-green. It could actually be that I'm going somewhere in that spectrum of green to yellow-green. (Or it could've been that I was doing this at midnight and getting a little loopy with sleepiness.)

In any case, I pulled a green from my stash to accent my original purple and red-orange pairing. Looking at it, my green could just as easily be seen as yellow-green. Or somewhere between the two. This is where color theory becomes less of a science and more of an art.

The 24-point color wheel is even more problematic, trying to figure out exactly which color is directly across. Besides, mine's really really small and I was having problems seeing by then.

I ended up with violet, fuschia, and yellow-green set here. Eye-popping. Would be a really fun kids' quilt or teenage girl quilt!

 

 

 

Play time!

Your turn! As usual, link up your blog posts as you play with these color harmonies. Let me know what you think--have you, or would you,actually use either of these types of harmonies in a quilt?

Sneak Peek: Sew Day Accomplishment

Progress on "You're Getting Sleepy" quilt.

(Get it?)

Succumbing to Peer Pressure on Easy Street

So a few Twitter folks talked me into it. They talked me into walking down Easy Street with Bonnie Hunter and the crew.

Today I simply dug out my probable fabrics. May still swap some out. I still have a couple of weeks to live with them until it starts.

Care to join along?

Katie of Katie's Quilting Corner, Pam of Hip to Be a Square, and I have a Flickr group for anyone who wants to walk on Easy Street with us.

I've also set up a group in Threadbias (because you can post pics to Flickr and then simply import them into your Threadbias account--easy peasy to post them in two places at once).

Tomorrow is my sew day with my guild peeps. I've made pumpkin bisque with smoked gouda for our potluck lunch. I really have to remember to post that recipe someday. I guess I should start doing Food Fridays again, eh?

Of Pizzazz and Possibilities (and Soup)

Of Pizzazz

The center is pieced! Woot!

Debating borders. I have two fabrics left from this set that haven't been used yet. Both give some very interesting possibilities, but would take some finagling.

But maybe I don't want borders at all. I like the sort of vague ambiguity it leaves as it sort of wanders off the edge with no defined end.

I might ultimately want it bigger, though, so it can be more easily used as a cuddle quilt.

Pondering...

Of Possibilities

So here's the thing. I've already got a line-up of projects I want to do. The bins are sitting coaxingly on the floor near my sewing room door, just waiting for me to grab-and-go.

And yet...people are talking about Easy Street.

Who started this in my head? It was (like so many things) a conversation on Twitter among some of my tweeps. Was it @ddrquilter? Perhaps @Quiltedmagnolia? Or should I blame @quiltcabana? I know not to blame @Craftygardenmom due to her very succinct, but unrepeatable response indicating that clearly they had tempted her as well as she wasn't any too keen on it. I came in very late to the conversation--just to catch enough to get me thinking. And heading to Bonnie Hunter's website "Quiltville." And checking out her new mystery quilt that starts this month.

Kate from my guild did Orca Bay last year. It was gorgeous. But I'd watched her working on it at a retreat or two and had followed a lot of blogs of folks working on it--I know it was hard work! My first thought when I heard folks talking about Bonnie's new mystery quilt was, "I don't want to get into that. I have other things I want to get done!"

And yet Bonnie promises this one is going to be easier than Orca Bay. So maybe I could work on it and still have a life.

I emailed Kate to find out how she liked doing Orca Bay. So now she's working me over too: "Do it, do it, do it!"

Still haven't decided. I do, after all, still have those other projects in bins. Staring at me.

(And Soup)

Homemade chicken and rice soup tonight.

'Nuff said.

Banned Book Challenge Giveaway Winner Announced

Tanesha of CraftyGardenMom and I had a ball co-hosting the Banned Book Challenge Giveaway. Let me just start by saying, however, that Tanesha definitely wins on having the best blog posts about it! I was so tied up in my travel schedule during the challenge that I wasn't able to hold up my end of the stick as capably. However, never fear: We're already making plans for next year! Woot woot!

So, get out there and start reading some banned books!

I want to point you in the direction of Tanesha's blog post announcing her winner, and she also gave a very nice list of all who entered. Be sure you read it!

Meanwhile, my winner is (using the random number generator): SewExcitedQuilts! Jackie, woot! And I guess you were probably wondering what you were winning. Jackie, I'll be sending you a...

$25 gift certificate to EQuilter.com

As always, my rule is you have to send me pictures of whatever you make with the fabrics you win in any of my giveaways. I'll expect those pictures next week. Tee hee.

It was so much fun seeing how everyone interpreted their books and the inspiration for this challenge. I want to thank fionaogre, cyprium_misty, marisa-dot-onebyone, sewexcitedquilts, marissa_l (give the kids hugs from me!), jenny, and landscapelady (Tanesha's winner) for playing along. I also want to send a huge big thank you out to Tanesha for jumping on this idea and really running with it. It was so much fun working with you on this, Tanesha. and I've already got next year's on my calendar. Yes, we WILL plan ahead next time!

Okay, I've been brewing some thoughts about my 2013 challenge giveaways. So be listening in on my next few podcast episodes as I start giving you information about the next one. You can probably guess what it is--it's almost a new year, hint hint.

Total Color Tuesday--Splits and Points

Happy election day! Have you voted? 

I looked ahead at how many color harmonies we still had to go in this book, and there are a lot. So the rest of these posts will be looking at two or three at a time. Mostly, those pairing/triplings will be very related color harmonies that are simply variations on each other. These two for this week, however, are two distinct color harmonies.

Splitting the Opposite

Making alien antennae with my color wheel. 'Cause that's how I roll.

This one is a variation on the basic complementary scheme, in which you choose one color and then jump across the color wheel to find its opposite. This time, however, when you find the opposite, you use the color to each side of it rather than using the complementary itself. This way you still get the excitement of the complementary harmony (which tends to be visually energetic), but more interest using more colors.


So, in my case, I started with purple, and then moved across to yellow. If I were to use this scheme, then, I'd be making a quilt with purple, yellow-green, and yellow-orange.


Rummaging through my stash, I came up with an approximation of what that might look like.

I have this wonderful purple print that someday I'll actually use.

In itself, it pretty much encapsulates this color harmonie, although there's some deeper reds and a straight-up yellow in there as well. I know in the past I tried not to cheat like this, but I just don't have a big enough stash to be a purist all the time!

So the green on the left is about as close to yellow-green as my stash gets, and then the yellow-orange on the right is my close-enough there as well. It's a little more yellow than orange, but it's pretty close

Using the Joen Wolfrom 3-in-1 Color Tool was fairly problematic for me again--it leads towards a much tighter mix of colors than what my stash can handle.

But hey, I got to play with chartreuse! (I've heard rumor that it's Frances of Off-Kilter Quilt's favorite color. Tee hee.)


I did actually have something that could be considered chartreuse in my stash. Go figure.

I think I came pretty close on these, didn't I? I'd never make a quilt out of this particular set of fabrics, though. I'd want to work with a wider selection to make this color harmony really sing.

Four Points on a Square

Issue an all points bulletin!

Yep, we're using compass points here, although you could choose any four colors, as long as they're equally distributed around the wheel. Technical term: tetrad. Roll that one out at a party to impress the troops, as my high school history teacher used to say.

This time, of course, you're combining two sets of complementary colors. So you've got some visual pizzazz again, but more variation for interest.

For simplicity's sake I started again with purple and yellow, since that's how I started above. This time, though, you would use the yellow, and then you'd also be using blue-green and red-orange.

I find this an odd combination. I think I'd like it better if I shifted everything one to the right--red-violet, orange, yellow-green, and blue. But that's just me.


I messed and messed and messed with this one, and just couldn't find a combination of fabrics in my stash that would work in the four colors the color wheel indicated.

Here's my best attempt. Ick.

This is one that I'd definitely have to take the color wheel into a quilt shop to find four fabrics that really work well together.






The Wolfrom Wheel (that's got a better ring to it, doesn't it?) actually worked in my favor this time--I liked the particular hues this one indicated together much better.

Violet, aqua green, red, and yellow. I could dig this.

Play time!

Your turn! As usual, link up your blog posts as you play with these color harmonies. Let me know what you think--have you, or would you,actually use either of these types of harmonies in a quilt?

Sunday Progress--9-Patch Pizzazz

It was a quiet Sunday morning. We had our first snow. Sam was pensive as he watched. 

 

 

 

Later, we cleaned. I knew it was time to stop cleaning when blocks from my design wall decided to leap directly into the path of the oncoming vacuum cleaner.

 

By the time I'd hauled the vacuum all over the second floor, plus cleaned out a closet and two vanity cabinets and hauled all resulting garbage (it's been awhile) to the garage, I wasn't sure I was up to sewing. 

So I organized myself. 

This design means you can't sew blocks in rows. You must chunk. Jaye would be happy. 

 I just need to plan that out so I don't end up accidentally having set-in seams anywhere. 

Then I decided to do myself the favor of figuring out my seam pressing in advance too.

Those Fons & Porter directional pins have come in handy many a time. No, you don't absolutely have to press seams in opposite directions, but it sure can help.

I did get two chunks sewn, but I'm calling it quits for the day. It's a quiet, cold evening; time to sit in front of the fireplace with a quilt magazine or two while dinner's in the oven.

Saturday Progress--Organizing and Dreaming

Here's the latest version of the potential layout for my 9-Patch Pizzazz:

I think this is probably going to be the one. I posted it to Twitter and Threadbias to get opinions and people seemed to pretty much all agree it works. It's tough on this one to balance those two big blue blocks. My other 9-Patch Pizzazz had so little contrast it really didn't matter how I laid it out. This one has been trickier.

While I was waiting for responses from my online quilty consultants, I did some cleaning and organizing. I'd posted my niece's quilt on Threadbias and was remembering that the pattern was fairly easy and thought, "Gee, I could use up some fabrics from my stash pretty easily if I made another of these." So I pulled the pattern out and dug through my stash.

The pattern is on the right; the fabrics I'll be using are on the left. The red is really jumping out in this picture--it's really not quite that brilliant in real life. Bright, but not eye-dazzlingly so.

That's now in a bin ready to go with me to my guild sew day next weekend--I finally get to go to one! The pattern is easy enough I should be able to get it mostly pieced in one day.

(I love those fabrics--that'll be a keeper for me. Woot!)

Then I started thinking about potential Christmas gifts. May not actually get it done but thought it might be worth a shot. We have a couple of family friend-kids that should get quilts from "Aunt" Sandy, so if I can pull it off, hey, it would be nice. If not, no sweat--they'll get birthday gifts sometime in 2013.

One is a teenage girl. I've queried what her fave colors are. Meanwhile I'm contemplating a stack n' slash using these fat quarters:

 

And I also pulled out one of my favorite table runner patterns that uses charm packs. Yep, had a Christmas charm pack. I could use some more Christmas table runners.

 

So now I've got my collection to go to my sew day next week.

Hmmm. One would think I'm excited to finally be home for several weeks on end. Think my eyes are bigger than my sewing machine, so to speak?

Total Color Tuesday Returns! Woot! One Color and 3 Opposites

After something like a five or six month hiatus, Total Color Tuesday is back! We're getting close to the end of the book so I really wanted to finish this project. Since it's been so long, you might want to review past Total Color Tuesday posts.

This time we're looking at one color with three opposite colors.

So, for this one, you choose what your main fabric color is going to be. This might be your focus fabric, or just the color you start with. "I want to make a blue quilt," you might say, "But I want it to have some zip!"

Zip there is when you go directly across the color wheel to find its complement. (Remember that term from a few months back?) In this case, the complement to blue, using our traditional 12-point color wheel, is orange.

For this scheme, then, you also pull in the two colors on either side of that complementary color. In our example, you'd also be including yellow-orange and red-orange.

I dug into my stash. We've already established in previous Total Color Tuesday posts that I'm lacking in the orange department of my stash. That hasn't improved over the last several months that TCT has been on hiatus. However, I do have a fabric that's got both orange and yellow-orange in it, and then another that's got orange and red-orange in it. So in my example, I decided to use three fabrics to cover four colors. Probably not quite kosher, but it works for me. I could see doing a funky star quilt with this combo.

Again, if you recall, part of my challenge to myself on the TCT posts is also to look at the Joen Wolfrom 24-point CMYK color wheel to see if it would be different.

In this case, it didn't feel very different.

So now it's your play time! 

Put your linky here with a blog post of your own playing with color!

Found Time--and Some Quilt Progress (WIP)

So my eponymous (sigh) hurricane downed our offices server-wise (we're based in Valley Forge, PA), so I ended up with today off. I could've spent the day working on another closet, but I'm a firm believer in "Found Time." When you end up with time you didn't expect to have, you should enjoy it! Thus, off to my sewing machine I went.

If you've been able to listen to the podcast episode I posted right before the storm hit on Monday evening, you'll know I'm working on a challenge project for my guild. If you haven't been able to listen to it yet, you might need to wait a bit. The podcast host servers also seem to be down now so if you didn't download it the night I posted it, you might not be able to for a few days. Sorry about that!

So, to recap for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about--this is the Untouchables Challenge, in which the challenge is to use that fabric that's been on your shelf for a long time and you (1) haven't wanted to cut into it because it's too pretty and you're sure you'll ruin it; (2) it's a tricky fabric and you're just not entirely sure how to use it; or, (3) it's butt-ugly and you can't imagine what you were thinking when you bought it.

Fortunately, my fabric for the challenge falls into categories (1) and (2). It's a McKenna Ryan collection. In my podcast episode, I talk about how I ended up landing on the technique I'm using so I won't go into that here. The nutshell version: It's the 9-Patch Pizzazz technique by Judy Sisneros.

Right now the blocks are all just hanging out on my design wall--I haven't actually figured out my final layout yet. This layout was simply me seeing whether I had enough blocks to work with.

I'll eventually have it in a layout that helps your eye travel more and blends better. It's very low contrast intentionally--sort of a spa feel. I may do something with the border to give it more definition. Or not. Haven't decided yet. I need to let it brew for a bit.

I think the colors blend in person better than they seem to in this picture. Lighting issues.

I made a 9-Patch Pizzazz a few years back. This one is named "Roman Pizzazz." It hangs in my dining room most of the year until I switch it out with a flag quilt that hangs from Memorial Day to Labor Day (or, like this year, until tonight when I realized, "Yeesh--the flag is still up!").

It's named "Roman" because the focus fabric felt very romanesque to me. Other than the border quilting which you can see pretty clearly in this picture, I quilted the rest of it with climbing leaf vines to give it an ancient ruins-kind-of-feel.

Whenever you do listen to my episode, you can probably see what I mean when I referred to some of the fabrics blending *too* well in this quilt--you can't even tell that most of those blocks are 9-patches. But still, I like the colors!

Boy, does it feel good to be making progress on projects again!

Alice the Spider (Banned Book Challenge)

Alice the Spider
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz

The only quilt project I can lay claim to for the last two-plus months, sigh.

This is my project for the Banned Book Challenge that Tanesha of CraftyGardenMom and I are co-hosting this month. I decided to do something that would do double-duty: It's both inspired by a banned book and it's a Hallowe'en decoration! (The yo-yos from a previous post are the head and body--I wanted my spider to be a little dimensional and appliqueing yo-yos upside down seemed a heck of a lot faster than messing with trapunto.)

My inspiration book is Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (edited by Beatrice Sparks). This book is a diary-style story of a teenage girl who, after being given a drink laced with LCD at a party, descends into addiction and eventually (spoiler alert) dies of an overdose. It was put forth as a real diary but has since been pretty much debunked in that regard. But still, I was the target audience at the time I read it and it certainly worked on me.  Although it's somewhat unlikely I'd have ever tried drugs anyway, I read this book when I was 12 or 13 (it was in my school library--thank God they didn't believe in banning books!), and I still give it partial credit to this day for the fact that I never even experimented. There are a few scenes from this book that stick with me--one in which she was hallucinating about spiders crawling all over her. So here it is, my spider, in honor of Go Ask Alice.

I imagine it's on the banned book list because I recall it being fairly graphic. It's hard to imagine it's been about 35 years since I read the book. If I read it again today, I'd probably think, "Yeesh. This impressed me THAT much?" Funny, since I was about the same age that I tackled The Hobbit. I pretty much read anything and everything that I could find.

So, have you done your Banned Book Challenge yet? You've got a few days left!

Banned Book Challenge Giveaway

Woohoo! Another giveaway! Tanesha of CraftyGardenMom podcast and I are co-hosting a challenge in October, inspired by Banned Book Week. Tanesha's living is based on books, and I'm just a book-a-phile in general, so neither of us is particularly keen on the whole idea of banning books. I fully support your right to read what you want and to make decisions for your own children, but in return I'd like to make decisions for myself and my kids. (Or, at least, I did when they were still young enough that my opinion mattered!)

So Tanesha and I have created a challenge for you. Create a quilty project of any type that's inspired by a book that you've read and loved that appears on the list of banned books. Haven't checked out the list? You may be surprised by some of the books that appear on it! This is the list for banned books in the last decade; this one is the list of classics that have been banned. Thanks to Tanesha for providing those links.

Your project can be big or small--it can be a wallhanging, a totebag, a mugrug...whatever you're inspired to do. The only guideline is that it needs to be "quilty" and be inspired by a book on the banned book list.

When you've done your project, post a picture of it in the Flickr group that Tanesha created just for this challenge.

On November 1st, Tanesha and I will go into the group and each draw one winner from the people who have posted pictures there. Tanesha has already announced what her giveaway will be. I'm still trying to figure mine out. (Give me another few days...I'll post an update here.)

I'm already working on my Banned Book Project. Go ahead--just try to guess what it is and what book it's based on. Go ahead. Dare ya.