Spring is in the Air...

I WISH!  Anyone else tired of this cloudy/rainy/one day chilly, next day chillier crap? At least it's warmer today :-)

Anyway, I have been trying to blow through old projects and get them finished, quilted and to wherever they were supposed to go.  This little beauty I have had for about a year and a half just sitting in a ziplock bag and I got it done.  

Now it's off to the quilter to get quilted up with some flowers in variegated yellow thread.  I'm not a huge fan of pink or yellow, but I LOVE those big dots. 

Modern Quilt: Terrible Twinkle

Got the first 3 quilts back from Frances...my Dino quilt from about a year ago (yeah, only just finished), the Tula Pink Salt Water quilt and the modern style stars quilt.

Here's what the stars quilt looks like all finished. I ended up naming it "Terrible Twinkle" which is a quilt name I've been wanting to use a while.  Long story, but the abridged version is that a few years ago, I was in an accident that pretty well destroyed my lower back.  A genius at Kings Dominion while I was on vacation in Virginia decided to put two people down a water slide at once...we met in the middle and the impact was 100% to my lumbar vertebrae.  I have never in my life been in more pain than in that moment, it was intense.  Well, after being pat on the head and sent home by the ER, I flew back home in incredible pain.  After 3 days the pain got worse and I gave in and went to the doctor, who aside from popping my leg back in joint (who knew?) gave me vicodin.  Let me preface this by saying...I hate taking pain killers. Hate. Vicodin does two things to me - makes me sick to my stomach in a big way, and makes my brain fly away, two sensations that I am not a big fan of.  Well, I got bored and went back to work the next day, but I hadn't taken the painkiller yet. I ended up in so much pain mom twisted my arm into taking the meds, and monitoring me to make sure I didn't get too ill.  So she put me in a spinny chair and had me roll around putting patterns away.  I was a total looney toon, and as I was putting the stuff away (in weird flippin' places) I misread a pattern called "Twinkle Twinkle" as "Terrible Twinkle."  I remember laughing myself even stupider, and interestingly, because I am apparently easily amused, I still think it's hilarious.  So now my wonky star quilt is called terrible twinkle.  Bravo, vicodin!

A Color Theory Quilt: There's a Bull in the China Shop

Let's get one thing straight.  I am not fond of blue and white fabrics...you know, the ones that look like someone's nice china?  I don't think they're ugly per-say, but let's just say those fancy pantsy florals just aren't my gig.  I can appreciate that they're pretty, but to me they're just flat and boring.  Every quilt I've seen with those prints as the focus have been very monochromatic, very elegant, very tame.  But recently, I learned they don't have to be tame or boring.

There was a blue and white line that came into the shop, and when I saw it, I believe my words were something like "bleeeh."  Articulate, I know.  I didn't think much of it beyond that.  But when mom was having me edit the Newsletter, when she was discussing those pieces, she mentioned turning it on it's ear and pairing it with magenta, lime or orange to give it a little kick. Magenta and lime would look nice, but orange? Fine, Mom, you got me.  I was interested.  So I tottered into the batik room, grabbed a bright coral orange and grabbed one of the new blue and whites and...well...the rest is history.

If you look at your handy dandy color wheel (or, if you're just really into color theory) you know that blue and orange are opposites on the color wheel - complementary colors. That means that they're going to amplify each other, giving you the makings for a bright composition.  This quilt exemplifies how complementary colors play with one another, and how color placement effects the way the eye percieves pattern.

Here is a smattering of the blocks.  Each has a blue half, and an orange half. The middle block is the one that inspired the rest of the quilt. LOVE that combination.

Here are 2 examples of how complementary colors change each other depending on where you place them.  This quilt has alternating, concentric diamonds.  Look what happens if you start with an orange diamond in the center (left).  The blue diamond almost gets lost on the orange background.  Orange becomes the dominant player, and while I much prefer orange to blue, this looks chaotic to me.  To my eye, it's difficult to focus on the pattern because each fabric is screaming for attention - this is due to orange being a highly reflective color, and the eye has natural difficulty staying focused on reflective colors because they force the eye to move.









Yet, when you start with blue in the center (right), the orange diamond appears to float on a sea of blue.  It's a little calmer for the eye to focus on, because the blue becomes the dominant color.  It isn't as reflective as the orange, and this allows the fabrics to play a little more harmoniously rather than and each of the fabrics competing with each other.

Here is the finished product (right). Well, the quilt top anyway.  Once I got it all together, the blue became the dominant force and the orange is just that kick f color that the blue and white desperately needs.  I love the way the batiks and blended oranges (and magenta) pop in contrast to the extremely busy patterns in the blue and white fabrics.  I just gave it away for Frances to quilt today.  We picked out a really fantastic pattern and some gorgeous thread...I cannot wait to get this puppy finished and hung up!

The Mothership has Landed

I'm all for supporting local businesses for pretty much everything quilting and sewing related, but this time, I had to venture into the wild, weird world of the Internet to get the machine I wanted.  No where local had it, so off to All Brands I went to buy my machine.

After they waived the $35 shipping fee...because the machine did say "Free Ship" after all, they got my machine to me from Baton Rouge, LA to Salem, OR in 2 and a half days. Nuts!

Well, according to FedEx, the mothership has landed and it's waiting for me at home. Pesky work and haircut getting in the way of my sewing time. lol.

But no seriously, I cannot wait until I get home to give that little tree a twirl!

Murphy's Law of Quilting

Naturally, once I got my quilting groove back, Murphy's Law figuratively punches me in the face and steals my wallet. Seriously, it's uncanny. IN the last few months, with years having followed patterns and not deviating a whole lot, I've been making a lot of things without patterns...just letting them develop as the ideas come to mind.  It's been a lot of fun sewing without the safety net of a pattern, and it's been one of the few times in my creative life that it's come with just about unilateral success.  I've felt like lately I've been growing as a quilter, becoming more adventurous, more willing to try new things and new ideas, and developing my skills more.  I've always been intimidated somewhat by all the brilliant quilters around me, that I can't hold a match to their skills but it's been a really encouraging experience finding my groove and finding confidence in my work.

But I'm beginning to think somewhere someone installed a camera in my sewing room and waits for every time I am on a real creativity streak and pushes the "ruin her day with something ridiculous because we can't have this kind of fun just happening willy nilly" button.

My machine has bit the dust, and all because of a stupid pin run over while making a shop sample. 

Son of a bee sting.  Everyone runs over pins, every day, all the time.  It's like the one quilting "rule" that everyone knows about and laughs in the face of.  Wellllllllll now, isn't this special.

To the right, is the quilt I was working on when my machine up and croaked, only it was at a lesser state of completion.  I was in the middle of piecing Row flippin' 2. Finished the rest at the shop.

 But back to the machine.  Like I said, I ran over a pin. Broke my needle.  Check out the half-a-pin still in the fabric. It happens to everyone.  But where's the other half?

Well...there's the point of impact but uh...the rest of the pin is MIA and this time, it didn't hit me in the face like it has in the past.  Go figure.  

Would you believe that just before I started this project, I dusted out my machine?  Anyway, I opened my machine up and the other half of the pin is still nowhere to be readily seen. There's my bobbin thread, and some dust, but uh...no pin. What the hell, Bernina?

 Oh riiiiiight. It's THERE.  Stuck in the bobbin region, see it to the right?  I took out the bobbin thing, and got the pin out.  Surprisingly, it wasn't in there tight at all, really it pretty much fell out on its own when I went to grab it (gently) with some needlenose pliers...because in that space my fingers might as well be Oscar Meyer weiners. I thought "hey, if it came out this easy, all I have to do is put my bobbin region back together like I have a million times before, clean it out and I'll be back in business!"  Foolish, foolish me.

Foolish me indeed.  Remember Murphy's Law?  Yeah, here's where it punched me in the face.  I reassembled everything as I always have, got it all clean and rethreaded everything and got ready to sew.  When I used the hand wheel (as always) to pull up the bobbin thread...well, Houston, we have a problem.  My needle was getting bent, like so.  I thought, hey man, what gives? So I figured I didn't get the bobbin region put back together correctly. I took it apart, made sure it was in right (it was) and tried again...5 times.  Same thing every time.  So what do I do in these situations?  CALL MY MOMMY!  No seriously, she's good with machines, and knows Berninas. I told her what happened, and she confirmed what I was reallllly hoping wouldn't be true - the timing on my machine was beyond screwed up and I had to take it in to be looked at.






Well, at $135 for the shop to even look at my machine, plus whatever it cost to fix it plus whatever else they found was wrong (which I know there are other issues with it, mainly electronic) plus whatever parts were needed to fix it...Yeah, Murphy's Law stole my wallet too, because Berninas only take Bernina parts and Bernina's prices are just laughably ridiculous. 

Were this machine not a hand me down from Mom, I could never afford to buy a Bernina at all.  But I also can't afford to fix it right now either.  $135 to look at it plus $X to do whatever it needs?  I can buy a good little workhorse machine for that much and I plan to once my paycheck hits, hopefully. It was recommended several times that I look at a Brother machine, because they're relatively inexpensive but are good quality machines. So I'll give one a look and see what I come home with. 

So yeah...My creative burst got stymied by one stupid little pin.  Well played, Murphy you asshole, well played.

The Case of the Mysterious Vanishing Quilt

I have never, ever, ever ever ever made a quilt just for me. None. So now I started making one for me.  The colors are bright, weird and garish and I LOVE them.  They are some remnants of the sales pieces from reps that didn't sell and they hated, so they gave them to me because hey, they know my taste can be a little left of center.  And it is.

I haven't been this excited about a project in a long time, because it is 100% my style, and I love every single little weirdo piece in that quilt. It clashes, and it's supposed to.  I love it because it's bizarre and there's so much for the eye to try and focus on.

So I cut these into 2.5" strips and squares, made 16 patches and 4 patches...arranged them how I wanted...

...pinned them together... and took them home from the shop to sew at home and to figure out how much black accent fabric I needed for those blank spaces...

Then...it vanished. Straight up disappeared, somewhere between the shop, my car and my house.  I turned my car upside down, shook it out, found nothing.  Checked my bags, the shop, my living room, my sewing room, my yard, the bathroom...nowhere.  John looked for it.  Mom looked for it. No one found anything.  It vanished into thin air.  David Copperfield's got NOTHING on this quilt, I swear.

So apparently some UFO has floated down and stole my U.F.O. So far that's the only logical answer yet.  lol.  I'll find it eventually when I least expect it, and I'm sure it'll be somewhere completely stupid.

Next time I walk into my kitchen, it'll show up on top of the fridge. (just kidding, I already checked)

Freedom!!!!!! Well, kind of.

Now that the holidays are over I can go back to doing what I do best....starting too many projects at once and going forth with a "I'll finish it when I feel like it" attitude.

Right now I've got a comfort quilt that's been pushed to number 1 priority.  After having a rough few months, everything came to a head for a dear family friend when his wife an daughter got rear ended by a drunk driver going 70.

Here's my public service announcement about that... Don't drive drunk.  Seriously.  If you drive drunk, you're not only selfish and entirely moronic, but dangerous to everyone on the road.  Don't do it.

Luckily, the story has a happy ending and no one was seriously hurt, but after everything else...let's just say they need a quilt. They're outdoorsy folks so I made this for them from a pattern by Aardvark Quilts:

I was going to add a border but...after trying a few different borders...eh.  It looks better borderless. Hopefully it'll come back from the quilter soon and I can send it to them in the next month or so.  I take FOREVER to bind things.

Then...during a slow moment at the shop I got bit with an idea, another out of that Modern Quilt Blocks book and I decided to do my first truly "Modern" style quilt, by stepping out of my box and going with solids.  I'm not thrilled with solids.  I know a lot of folks love them...but I don't.  The colors are beautiful, but the lack of even one iota of texture makes them boring to me. Just, blah.  But they're getting really popular again with the Modern Quilt Movement, so I thought it was time to give that little tree a twirl.  And as you guys know, I like playing with odd color pairings so I went with ochre and yellow paired with dark and light purple.  I couldn't go 100% solid, so there are 2 complementing and subtle prints in the center of the blocks. I'm pretty satisfied with it, I have to say.

I Love the Holidays...but Thank God it's Over.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know...captain diligent blogger is at it again.

Anyway...Christmas.  I know I say this every year, but man...never again!  This year, with the exception of my boyfriend (for whom I bought a Playstation 3, and who has several quilts already) and my aunt who requested an ornament exchange, everyone got made something sewn.  I made more wall hangings, table runners and tablet cases than you can shake a stick at, and yes, I even quilted (and bound) them myself.  I have a wicked callus on my right middle finger...from binding, not from road rage, I swear.

And the thing is...I have next to no pictures to prove it!  Damn the bad luck, I had to do a factory reset on my phone and because I am techostupid, I managed to lose a good chunk of my pictures between the phone and Picasa...who the heck knows where they are in cyberspace now.  I guess it's a good thing I don't have naughty pictures on my phone, huh?

Here's the few that I DO have...

 <-- A wall hanging for my grandmother, who loves elephants.  She also has a fondness for the colors of 30s prints.  The pattern is from a Modern Quilt Block book, but without the embroidery.  I drew out an elephant and hand embroidered it in the center for her.  I hate hand work, but love my grandma, so I
did it.

 My cousin Sam is a big Doctor Who fan...and since I didn't have the cash to get him some Doctor Who thing, I made him one.  For this I printed out a picture of the Tardis, used spray adhesive to affix it to the fabric, and stitched over it in varigated thread. Yep, I'm a tracer! But it turned out really well and he loved it.  I echo quilted around it in black. Yeah...and my toes are there for size comparison

 My uncle Tom (Sam's dad) is also a huge Doctor Who fan, which is a large part of why Sam is a fan.  There's an episode where there are these weeping angel aliens who are going around and killing people (I'm simplifying it a LOT, go watch the episode if you want the real scoop), and they are super creepy.  He'd mentioned getting a weeping angel christmas tree topper, and so I decided to make him a weeping angel wallhanging.  I took an open domain paper piece pattern for the Doctor Who weeping angel, and had it blown up by 250%.  Even at that size, some of the pieces were stupidly small.  But I am really proud of how it turned out, no matter how teeny those pieces were...I'd hate to have done this as a 12" block like the pattern was designed for.  Yeesh.

 Dad of course is a lifelong gearhead, so of course he had to have his cars and bikes.  He loved it, and asked why I chose to fussy cut the car I did.  I had fussy cut the yellow car because I needed to pull out some more yellow...I really had no reason for it.  As awesome coincidence would have it, that is his favorite year model of that car, and has had his eye on one.  Whelp...let's just say I totally knew that and picked it for that reason...not because it was a yellow car.  Yep.

 And for my friend Isabelle, I stitched her up this while I was watching the movie Insidious (you know, a classic Christmas movie...ha).  She has a lot of stress with work and school, and when I saw this is my "Subversive Cross Stitch" book, I knew it was perfect for her.  Besides, everyone needs this reminder once in a while...whether you enjoy the language or not.  I tossed it in a neat frame I found at Goodwill and voila...foul mouth cross stitch for a foul mouthed girl (she's not too bad...I'm worse, lol)











I made several more things but yeah...the evidence is lost.  I need to try and get more pictures of them to repost someday but you know...we'll see :-)