Curves and Spikes

At last, I've learned to sew curves! Now I can make New York Beauty blocks. Not only can I sew them, but I can also draw those curves and blocks in Electric Quilt 6! I sewed these three. I'll be making a set of 25 with flowers, mostly roses.

Sewing these curves was one thing. I needed to learn how to put the curves together to construct a block for my guild's opportunity quilt. The designers of the quilt know that I love paper-piecing, but they didn't know I had never sewn curves. The three NYB blocks are this page were my practice blocks. I think I did a great job, even for a beginner at curved piecing.

For the opportunity quilt block, I was expected to leave the paper on, but I don't think I'll do that again. Leaving on the paper does not give the opportunity to ease and utilize the bias curves.

Drawing those curves and blocks into Electric Quilt was something else! I used Andrea Bishop's EQ6 arc tutorial to clone and rotate sections of the NYB block. That didn't work for me in every case, so I also used the EQ6 User's Manual to draw, partition, and stagger nodes on arcs.

I received additional inspiration from two books: Radiant New York Beauties by Valorie Wells and Karen K. Stone Quilts.

The blocks I'm working on now are from a collection of New York Beauty patterns by Christina Carl. She used to have an active website called Quilter's Corner Club. The patterns were offered free as a block of the month series in 2007. As of this writing, no one seems to know how to contact Christina Carl, an enthusiastic and talented designer. She certainly inspired me.

Great States Quilt Math

Just check out Iowa! This block is 12 inches, and I paper-pieced it. All those little triangles!

I own a copy of the teacher resource book Great States Quilt Math by Cindi Mitchell from Scholastic. The book contains reproducibles for practicing arithmetic skills. Plus, the students get to color real quilt blocks. My 5th Graders love doing these pages for homework.

Where did the blocks come from?

Some are similar to the clipart blocks by Dawn Stewart at Dawn's Quilting Clip Art State Blocks.

Others I found in Electric Quilt's BlockBase Collection by Barbara Brackman utilizing some of the Hearth and Home Magazine Collection of state blocks.

Bella Online also has Quilt Blocks of the States Series by Judie Bellingham and guest author Kim Noblin.

I have ordered editor Barbara F. Bannister's book State Capitals Quilt Blocks: 50 Patchwork Patterns from "Hearth and Home" Magazine.

I'm still curious -- where did Mitchell, Stewart, Brackman, Bellingham, Noblin, and Bannister get the blocks?

Paper-Piecing

I love paper-piecing!!

Went to a guild meeting one evening a few years back. We had been told to bring our machines to learn this technique that Carol Doak had taught the guild members years ago. The "new" technique for making blocks was paper-piecing. I was hooked!!



By that time, I had joined the newsgroup RCTQ (rec.crafts.textiles.quilting). Carol Doak posted in that newsgroup back then. Nowadays she has her own Carol Doak Quilting Yahoo Group where she gives advice and free patterns. The photo here shows my versions of the 2007-2008 BOM. I've put each block into Electric Quilt's EQ6, and I have been playing with layouts to include all the blocks in a quilt.

So what happens to those patterns once I have made a quilt? I enlarged one of the patterns, added interlocking borders, and made a small lap quilt. Now I'd like to use one of the patterns for the local Ben Franklin March Block of the Month.

Carol Doak's patterns are so beautiful, I'd like to find lots of ways to use them!

Fabric Detective. . . . how to found more fabric

I had a little bit of this red fabric. Used it in this block from the Pat Sloan Good Book Cafe Block of the Month. Boy, did I love the colors and fabrics together! BRAINSTORM -- make an entire quilt, maybe just a lap quilt, for myself!! At first I did not see the tiny writing on the very narrow selvage. Thought I'd just hop out to the fabric store and get some more of that red.

Now where did I buy that red fabric? Making the rounds of the local quilt shops was fun, but I found nothing. One shop did say they had carried it, but it was an old fabric and they had no more. In a few shops, I bought several yards of different red substitutes I was maybe willing to use.

There had to be a way to find this fabric!!

I took one last glance at the selvage and discovered the letters "RKS." It sure didn't stand for Sparks, the city where I live in Nevada. So I put a photo on my favorite Yahoo Group and hoped for the best. Sure enough, someone realized that "RKS" was probably the end of the company name Clothworks!

Now what? Head to Clothworks Textiles to see what it could be. Got frustrated looking through all the collections, so I had to head somewhere else. (It was there, so I realized later.)

eQuilter.com has a search feature and tons of fabrics! That's where I headed. And it was there!

Meanwhile, a member of the Yahoo Group came through for me. She had found the red fabric by searching for "red swirls" in an item search at Quiltshops.com. Found!

A week and 5 yards later, I'm a happy quilting camper! So what about the other fabrics? I had yards and yards of each of those, thank goodness!

Heart Block

Each month for the past year, I've been contributing to the Ben Franklin Block of the Month in Sparks, Nevada. Participants buy a fat-eighth of focus fabric to make a 12-inch block. At the end of the month, a drawing is held to see who gets all the contributed blocks. If there are more than 20 blocks, two names are drawn.

I knew I wanted to make a heart for the February 2009 block, but what heart pattern would I use? I don't know what triggered my memory to go to Dawn Stewart's Quilting Clipart site. I had used her site several years ago to help build a front page for a quilting guild's website. She has a long list of suggestions for how to use her clipart. I took the last suggestion.

You can find the rest of my Ben Franklin BOM blocks at Webshots.

Are you ready for some football ?!!

I love to sew during NFL football games. Tomorrow the Super Bowl. Then the last one for the season is the Pro Bowl.

When I was almost a teenager, my mom would let me use the sewing machine when she wasn't home. I just had to have the mess cleaned up by the time she got back. She was out shopping or visiting friends while my dad was watching Sunday football games. I taught myself to sew, and my dad taught me how to watch football.

I still seem to get lots of sewing done with an NFL football game on TV in the background. I think it is the crowd noise that pushes me on. Isn't there a football cheer that goes something like, "Make that block"? (Such a terrible pun!)

Later in life I got the opportunity to attend NFL games. Had access to season tickets for my hometown Cincinnati Bengals for two years. My neighbor in Virginia frequently offered me tickets to Washington Redskins games, but I was awfully busy doing other things. (Oh, how foolish!) Later had a fellow computer trainer (who didn't like football) give me her free tickets to Indianapolis Colts games.

So now I'm living in a town with no professional sports teams. Ho hum. TV it is!! Besides, going to the game means I'm not getting any sewing done.

Red and White and Blue All Over

You know what goes in the blank in the title, don't you!! :-)

A couple of years back, Carol Doak's Quilting Yahoo Group started making red-white-blue (RWB) blocks for Quilts of Valor (QOV). We sent our blocks to one of the group members, and she was to assemble them then send them off to a quilter. We've never heard back from her. I was disappointed that I had make my QOV blocks for nothing.

No one in the Reno/Sparks area seemed interested in making Quilts of Valor. I didn't have the skill to do much more than make blocks at that time in my still short quilting career.

I finally found quilter at the USENET newsgroup rec.crafts.textiles.quilting (RCTQ) whose guild in Virginia was making Quilts of Valor that year. So I started making blocks again. (RCTQ can also be accessed at Google Groups.) She finally didn't need any more blocks from me.

I started making red-white-blue blocks to make a quilt for myself. I decided to practice making blocks with half-square triangles (HST). Electric Quilt was my RWB HST buddy! All the blocks are 12". Try measuring a 7x7 patch into a 12" square! I paper-pieced the ones that didn't divide evenly. All my blocks are pictured above with larger single photos in my Webshots album.

The blocks are finished!! It's time to put some white sashing in and choose a layout. I think this might be it --


The blocks might not truly go in the order shown here, but I do like the border of little RWB squares repeating the fabrics in the 12" blocks.

I'm looking forward to using my quilt on Flag Day or 4th of July!

It's A NEW Day!!

"It's a New Day" is still the slogan for Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims and their The Quilt Show website. And now it has an additional meaning in quilting -- check out Debra Gabel’s 2009 Obama Quilt. And then there is the quilt at The Alliance for American Quilts.

I'll probably never make an art quilt or a landscape quilt. I'm a math person who loves geometry. I'm happy cutting and sewing squares, triangles, rectangles, half-square triangles, and half-rectangle triangles. I haven't cut or sewn circles yet!

Even though I'd never make one of these quilts, I do admire the workmanship and color sense that goes into art quilts. I think these presidential quilts are absolutely amazing!

Maybe there have been other presidential quilts in other years. I only started quilting about 4½ years ago, so I would have missed the earlier quilts of presidents. So maybe I'll search! I wonder what kinds of commemorative items quilters made even back in the day of George Washington?

[The black and white drawing of the White House came from Enchanted Learning.com.]

I love my coffee!!

I do love my coffee!! My favorite is Dunkin' Donuts coffee. Unfortunately, there is no Dunkin' Donuts shop in my town, so I buy bags of the coffee in the grocery or off the Dunkin' Donuts website. I've even thought of making a quilt with those pink-orange-white brown colors.

The first product I ever ordered from the Internet was coffee. I was a CompuServe subscriber and was able to find Green Mountain Coffee Roasters. Back in the late 1990's when I was teaching a computer class in Washington DC, class members came from all over the United States. One session we had people from Vermont. They went home over the weekend and brought me a Green Mountain Coffee Roasters mug and brought the class some ground coffee! I still use that coffee mug!

Nowadays I order coffee from CoffeeAM. Love the Mistletoe Joe flavored decaf and regular all year round. Rainforest Crunch is the most mellow coffee I've tasted! Well, not really -- Jamaican Blue Mountain is THE BEST. At close to $40 per pound, I don't order that very often. But maybe it's time.

Remember December

I enjoy visiting The Quilt Show with Alex Anderson and Ricky Tims. A challenge was issued to make a piece to Remember December. The item had to contain 80% fabric and could not be any larger than 24" on a side.

My neo-natal quiltie made it just under the size specifications! I made a smaller version of the free download pattern Midnight Mischief designed by Rochelle Martin for Clothworks. My little quiltie has Santa and the reindeer joyfully romping in the forest after completing yet another hard-night's Christmas Eve run.

I wish we could have submitted virtual quilts. Electric Quilt's January 2008 EQ Challenge was to Make It Seasonal. The December rainy season in Reno creates some beautiful cloud sets with magnificent sunrises and sunsets. My virtual quilt reminded me of sunrises and snowflakes on my early morning commutes to work. It was an opportunity to put a feathered star into a virtual quilt.

The Quilt Show's Stars for a New Day 2009 BOM has a feathered star center . The directions by Sue Garman are wonderful! I might be able to use her directions not only for the BOM but also for my Make It Seasonal wall hanging.

Happy New Year !Morning Has Broken . . . .

. . . . like the first morning of 2009! Blackbird has spoken, like the first bird of 2009. Happy New Year!

Actually, a couple of blackbirds have spoken to me lately. Regina Grewe's Electric Quilt Rabe has said, "Go buy fabric and make me into a beautiful wallhanging." I found her site through via a newsletter from Electric Quilt. In addition to the blackbird, she has flowers of the month available in EQ6. Follow the links from The Electric Quilt Company website from the top horizontal menu bar at Users | Fun Stuff | Project Sharing.

And by some strange coincidence, for the past two months, I have been waking up to Cat Stevens' "Morning Has Broken" recording on my CD clock radio. (You might have to refresh the link to hear the song.) Of course the song lyrics refer to the blackbird.

Some folks harken to the Bluebird of Happiness -- I have the Blackbird of Quilting! Regina, thank you!

BELIEVE

Can you hear it ring? I have a wonderful WAV file of jingling sleigh bells. Now if only I could figure out how to embed it here.

Have you seen the movie The Polar Express?

I've watched it before -- in the background while I'm quilting or cruising the Internet. I won't watch it that way again.

I had the great privilege of watching it with my 5th Graders on the last day of school before Winter Break. You have to see this movie with children and watch the expressions on their faces! Who would have thought that even 5th Graders would be entralled!

I've ordered the soundtrack. First I listened again to some of the music before I decided. My clock radio has a feature where I can wake up to programmed tracks on a CD. How much fun would it be to wake up on a cold winter morning to the tune Hot Chocolate.

I even found a fantastic applique of a sleighbell by Sindy Rodenmayer at FatCat Patterns. Follow the links from the homepage menu on the right with Holidays | Christmas Blocks. Then you'll find the Jingle Bells pattern. Looks like a sleigh bell. . . .

So did Santa give me the sleigh bell? Well, actually I bought a box of them at JoAnn's when I was shopping for fabric for Microsoft Office's Christmas Trees!

Microsoft Office's Christmas Trees

Aren't these tress beautiful!! They came straight from Microsoft Office's Clipart.

Seems like I could turn these trees into paper-piecing patterns. Looks like there are only four different shapes. I think it's the "fabric" that makes these trees. Aren't the stripes just perfect!

How could I put the stars on top? Maybe a small raw-edge applique cut from silver or gold or white. Or maybe a bead or star-shaped charm that could be sewn on.

Looks like I could use a trip to JoAnn's or Michael's to look for tree-topper decorations. The size of the trees would probably have to depend on the size of the topper I could buy.

This could be a scrappy project! It wouldn't take much fabric for the tree part. I have the perfect white-on-white background with snowflakes -- well, they look more like asterisks.

These trees remind me of my drive to work years ago. Along Route 29 in Gainesville, Virginia, there used to be (and maybe still is) The Christmas Shop, open all year. Inside the shop were all sorts of decorations and trees decorated in themes.

By next year at this time, I could have my own little Christmas tree lot immortalized in a wall hanging! Or a lap quilt to bundle up in during cold holiday weather.

A piece of trash found on the floor . . . .

Cruising through my 5th grade classroom, checking work on students' desks. Stepped over a giant piece of paper. Had second thoughts and decided to pick it up and look at it. Tim had been experimenting with the Geometry template and looking at the compass rose on a map.

Wouldn't this make a wonderful quilt block? One of my quilting friends has already put it into Electric Quilt. She left out the sunglasses and smile. Also put a center octagon rather than a hexagon within an octagon.

I can picture the block on the back of a sweatshirt cardigan. Then maybe take some of the kite and triangle shapes and string then down the front of the sweatshirt. If I split the triangles for paper-piecing, I can make one side a darker shade for the 3-D effect.

Batiks? Yellows, greens, and browns for a sunflower? Pink, cranberry, and Valentine red -- the two kite shapes side-by-side make a heart.

Oooooh, the possibilities!

Arizona Challenge

About a month ago, Janet Wickell at About.com issued her Arizona Challenge. A few days after that, she provided Through the Windows, a pattern she had created based on inspiration from a carpet! The photo here to the left is my version of her pattern and my entry into the challenge. You can see other entries in the Arizona Challenge Gallery.

I had been collecting southwestern-themed fabrics for quite a while. I wanted a quilt with Kokopelli. The border next to the black has Kokopellis marching along it. And I just love the turquoise! And I have even more southwest and Kokopelli fabrics!

Luckily I was on a four-week break, so I was able to start and finish the top. I think it's the best quilt top I've made so far in my short 4-year quilting career. The top is enough to meet the challenge's January 15 deadline. I think this may be my first quilt that I send out to a professional longarm quilter.

Why don't you join the challenge too?!

Lone Star Quilt Blocks

Well, it all started off very innocently. I was early to a meeting in the school library, so I headed for the electronic card catalogue and typed in “quilt.” I’ve been on break for three weeks, so my brain wasn’t totally in gear: I decided I’d just take a look at the easy picture books. I found this beautiful Eagle Star Quilt in the book Shota and the Star Quilt. [Authors: Christine Fowler, Margaret Bateson-Hill, Gloria Runs Close to Lodge, Philomine Lakota; Copyright: Zero to Ten Ltd 1998]

Got home, scoured my quilt book shelf, and found Easy & Elegant Lone Star Quilts by Shirley Stutz. Her stars seem to be mostly the stack-n-whack style. Beautiful! I also have the book and DVD Lone Star Quilts & Beyond by Jan Krentz. These quilts have all those rhombi (rhombuses?) and even some spikey corners. Also beautiful! An online friend recommended Eleanor Burns’ Radiant Star directions. Her booklet and DVD are available, so I’ll have to go online shopping today.

LeMoyne Star, Lone Star, Sawtooth Star – they all seem to have the same outline shape. But the innards are magnificently different.

And then comes my love of Feathered Stars. I have one in the works. I was in the quilt shop The Uncommon Thread in Fallon, Nevada last winter. Saw a beautiful feathered star sample hanging on the wall. I asked the owner if I could buy the pattern. She said she didn’t have one, but she did say it was OK for me to take a photo and try to copy it into Electric Quilt. My version will end up about 22” square. I’ve got two of the inset seams done, and I’m not brave enough yet to do the last two! And I managed to find real fabrics similar to the ones I found in EQ6.

Do I have a Lakota Star Quilt started? Only in my dreams!!

Paisleys

Isn’t this beautiful? It’s from the side of a Kleenex tissue box. I love paisleys! I have fond memories of a navy blue and maroon paisley shirt from the 70’s. I wore it with a wool skirt. On second thought, that must have been in the 60’s.

Hummm, took a close look at that tissue box. There was a website listed. And you can make your own Kleenex box! Can you imagine a Kleenex box with your own quilt on the side? Wonder if there is a way to refill the box . . . .



I’ve been collecting paisleys. How about a scrappy paisley quilt? That pink one looks more like Jacobean than paisley, doesn’t it. And I absolutely must have that brown/green paisley for the Hoffman Challenge 2009.

Only once a year?

So will I remember to update this blog only once a year? Maybe I'll try for once a week!

This is the wackiest little quiltie I have ever made! It measured out at 28" x 28" -- a size that just fits the requirements of being between 21" and 30" square. The block is Sky Rocket, a paper-pieced pattern from eQuiltPatterns.com.

So how did I happen to choose these colors? Well, I really just wanted some inexpensive fabric that I could experiment with. I truly want to use the pattern with Jackie Robinson's Fushia fabric. The fabric I really wanted was in the Ben Franklin in Sparks. I decided to try the sale table in Hancock's, the fabric shop next door.

My friend Koyya works at that Hancock's, and she provided wonderful customer service that evening! We were downright silly and chose these wacky-colored fabrics. What looks like a solid is a variegated fabric. (Not on the sale table!) I even went back another time to buy more of the stringy background fabric.

I learned something important about paper-piecing while doing these 4 blocks. I had been told not to take the paper off the back of the block until all the blocks were sewn together. Now I know why -- I had a hard time getting the points to meet at the middle of the quiltie. I think I did a great job with the points in the middle of each block though.

Now I'm off to do some more sewing. I decided to do Janet Wickell's Arizona Challenge at About.com. My version is almost finished. I'm adapting Janet's Through the Window pattern.

RCTQ 2006-2007 BOM

Oh gee, I just found all the fabric for this project. It started in April 2006. I did all the blocks for April and May -- paper-pieced, regular pieced, applique. Then I pooped out!

This block is my favorite. It's called Card Basket by Marcia Hohn. It's available on her Quilter's Cache website.

Now I feel so much more confident about my paper-piecing skills! I'll finish the set of paper-pieced blocks then go to the regular pieced ones. I didn't like my fabric choices for the applique blocks, so maybe I'll start those over again.

Long Time No See

Haven't been here for a while. Lots of things have happened since last March. I've moved back to elementary school, now teaching 4th grade. It's time to think about retiring in the next few years. My hair has gotten long, and there's lots more gray. I turned 60. WOW, the big six-oh! I took advantage of the senior discount at Long John Silver's today.

I'm on a 5-week break. I'm in a year-round multi-track school. I'm on Red Track that has off pretty much of September, January, and May.

So now I'm enjoying the peace and quiet of Christmas Eve. Hoping to accomplish lots of quilting during this 5-week Christmas break.

Merry Christmas!