I live in a quilting laboratory!

I was living in a rather small apartment, 880 square feet, in Nevada. As I became more and more absorbed in quilting, I was accumulating quite a bit of quilting fabric and paraphernalia. I’d had a great 1220 square feet apartment in Indianapolis. Rattled around in all that space. And there I was in Nevada, beginning to realize how that space could be utilized for my quilting and other sewing activities. On a lark, on Memorial Day Weekend 2011, I contacted a rental agent in my old Indianapolis apartment complex. At that point, the agent knew there would be two of those 2-bedroom + den apartments available August 1. There are only seven apartments with that configuration in the entire apartment complex. Couldn’t pass that up!! Lots of faxes, emails, and a deposit check later, and suddenly I was ready to move back to Indianapolis. The idea that germinated on May 30 became reality on August 19. That was fast!

The designated living room is my computer and quilting area. The designated dining room (with ceiling fan) is a sitting room with bookshelves, stereo, and futon. The den? It’s an 8x15 stash room. The closet has floor-to-ceiling sliding doors – what a great design wall! The smaller bedroom has the ironing board, serger, and sewing embroidery machine. What a great floorplan for a quilting lab!

Back home in Indiana

I live in Indianapolis now, since August 2011. Why Indianapolis? I loved living here 1998-2001, but I left for a public school teaching job in Reno/Sparks, Nevada.

Retired January 2011 and started wondering what I wanted to be when I grow up. . . . a quilter.

Quilting activities around Reno are few and far between. Far!! Driving at least 5 hours or flying someplace. I wasn’t a quilter when I lived in Indianapolis back then, but I know its highways are pretty much in the center of everything “Midwest.” (Indiana isn’t called The Crossroads of America for nothing!) So here I am!

Now there are so many quilting activities that I sometimes feel overwhelmed!

Robin Hood, Robin Hood, riding through the glen . . . .

. . . . feared by the bad, loved by the good. . . .

There's a new Robin Hood movie coming out.

I've loved Robin Hood since I was a kid. Richard Greene as Robin Hood is still on my local Channel 11.2 in the afternoons. That TV program dates back to the late 1950's.

The next Robin Hood I remember is Kevin Costner. His movie Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves came out in 1991 when I was teaching at Columbia Elementary School in Fairfax County, Virginia. I had to drive past the theaters on Little River Turnpike to get home. Stopped there after school one day and saw the movie first run. Bought the movie too.

I also have a Sean Connery movie from maybe 1976 called Robin and Marian. The Robin Hood character has aged in that movie.

Are there other Robin Hood's that I haven't mentioned?

Russell Crowe as the new Robin Hood? I'll have to wait and see.

Bisquick!!

I remember my mom making Bisquick biscuits back in the 1950's. She'd roll out the dough and use a donut cutter (without the center hole cutter) to make biscuits to go with our Sunday fried chicken dinners. Fast forward to the 2000's. I remember me dropping biscuit dough on a cookie sheet for a fast version of Bisquick Cheese-Garlic Biscuits.

What's my fascination with these quick biscuits? I really love those cheesy biscuits from the national chain restaurant Red Lobster.

A few years back I searched the Internet for one of those copycat recipes for the Red Lobster biscuits. One recipe even contains Bisquick! Then a routine cruise through Raley's grocery store took me to the aisle for baking ingredients. And there was the small package of the cheesy biscuit mix from Bisquick!

But then came the day when Raley's didn't have any of the cheesy-garlic biscuit mix on the shelf. I settled for the buttermilk biscuit mix instead. Aaaah, these buttermilk biscuits are great with honey for Sunday breakfast. Can you smell them baking?

National Quilting Day

It's National Quilting Day!! The National Quilting Association has provided a pattern to help celebrate the day. The pattern is called Tie One On For the Troops.

So what am I doing on National Quilting Day? So many choices!! I have a quilt top layered and ready to baste. The graphic on the left shows my Electric Quilt version. I enlarged a pattern called Spring Pinwheels from FreePatterns.com. Their pattern contains directions for a 20" x 20" wall hanging. I needed a 40" x 40" version.

Did I say "choices"? My neighborhood Walmart will be closing soon! A new Walmart SuperCenter will be opening about 4 miles away. Of course it is opening without a fabric department. So today I could celebrate National Quilting Day by buying those Walmart fabrics that will soon be gone. They have some beautiful butterfly fabric I've been looking at for months. Then there are the pillow panels with roses. Then there is the tone-on-tone white that can be used for backgrounds.

Another choice? I've been overwhelmed with work for the past several months. Hardly any time for myself. I think it's time to bust out of this town for the day! About 1½ hours from here is a wonderful nursery and quilt shop. It's open seven days a week and has fabrics I don't usually see locally. It's called Workman Farms Crafts & Nursery in Fallon, Nevada. It could be a beautiful day for a drive.

And even another choice! At the No Quilt Police Yahoo Group, we have a quilt design challenge. Some folks started last month to be finished by National Quilting Day. Others are doing something special today. We'll share Electric Quilt and Quilt Pro project files. Last evening I started putting blocks from a children's book into Electric Quilt. Then I'll design a quilt or two with those blocks.

Soooo, what shall I choose. . . . . . ?

I am ready for some football ! !

Where have I been all this time? Well, school started August 3. It's been a tough month so far. Thank goodness the NFL Football season is starting. Gives me a chance to yell and cheer and do some sewing.

When I was a kid, my Mom would go shopping or visiting friends when my Dad watched football games on TV. That also meant that I had the sewing machine to myself. So football and sewing go great together for me.

There's a new freebie at the Carol Doak Quilting Yahoo Group. The group's homepage photo shows a Halloween version. Aren't the spiderwebs great! The 17" pattern is called the Holiday Mini Challenge with evergreen trees in the corners. I was originally attracted to the red-white striped fabric that Carol Doak shows in her PDF file with the pattern.

Then I happened to see some blue-white striped fabric in Hancock Fabrics. For another project, I picked up a bolt of fabric with football players. Wandering around the store with the two bolts, I realized that they coordinated well. So I think I'll make a football-themed mini, enlarged to 34"! But I don't want trees in the corners. Maybe goalposts.

To enter the challenge, I would have to use all the different pattern pieces at least once. That means having at least one tree in the quilt. So maybe I'll make a Christmas mini also. I'll be on break again in November, so I probably have time to make both the Christmas and the football minis. Starting today!

Nevada and Silver Lake School

Whew! It has been a busy month or so. Finally finished this Nevada History Quilt. I had a group of 4th Graders involved in a Math, Reading, and Social Studies enrichment project last year. The school principal had suggested the quilt as a fundraiser for the annual 4th Grade overnight trip to Fort Churchill for an experience in living history. Luckily, I had an experienced quilter in my classroom for part of the day as the instructional assistant. She worked with the enrichment group -- researching Nevada history (a 4th grade history standard), choosing important Nevada events and icons, and designing the quilt layout.

The instructional assistant moved away during the last four weeks of the project. We knew she was leaving before the end of the school year, but not that soon! She and I made schematic drawings of the quilt with handwritten measurements. But how to put it together? What section first? Which border first? Over the next several months, I learned a lot about quilt design.

The project seemed never ending. I made the usual mistakes -- cutting fabric in the wrong direction, sewing a part on upside down, and sewing inconsistent seams between the letters. The teacher who had been planning these trips for 20 years suddenly retired, and the rest of 4th Grade teachers decided to discontinue the yearly field trips. So what was to be done with the quilt, if I ever got it finished?

For the past ten years, there was one parent who had worked preparing 4th graders for the overnight trips. She and I decided that the quilt should probably go to the teacher who had initiated the living history project so long ago.

Meanwhile, what to do about quilting this thing? A quilter from my guild said she would quilt it for free. The she thought that $40 would be a fair price. After a few months, she decided not to do the quilting at all. I felt lucky to get the quilt back. She disappeared from the guild and her phone number was disconnected. A local quilt shop wanted over $150 to do the long-arm quilting. The quilter said she would do it at home on the side doing free-motion quilting on her domestic machine. Quilting and fusible batting for $95. Done! The quilting looks great.

That retired teacher who had begun the living history program all those years ago? She was in our building as a long-term substitute since the third week of school. We gave the quilt to her at the end of the year during a lunch period when this year's and last year's students were there.

I swore off doing any more quilt projects related to my school. Then someone left a T-shirt in the lounge. There was a sign on it -- "FREE." I snatched it up. I could cut off the embroidered part and put it in the center of a quilt. Then eQuilter had the dolphins fabric on sale. We are the Silver Lake Dolphins.

So in the next couple of weeks I'll be designing something wonderful in Electric Quilt! It should be a great project to work on when school starts again in August.

And then I'm not doing any more school-related quilts! (Famous last words.)

BATIK

I have been introduced to the wonderful world of batik fabrics for quilting. This block is my contribution to the block of the month at Ben Franklin Crafts in Sparks, Nevada. The focus fabric is the multi-colored batik in the corners. The center star is also a batik.

Years ago, back in the 1970's, I purchased a piece of art that was batik. It showed a young lady in red with long blonde hair playing a mandolin. The waxy feel was still apparent on the wall hanging. I loved the effect.

I used to frequent craft shows. I've purchased several T-shirts from Grebe Batiks. A moose, front and back. A rose. An evil cat. A cosmic star. A fire-breathing dragon. All fun T-shirts that wash well and last a long time.

Recently, the quilting guild I belong to began making blocks for its 2010 opportunity quilt. Because the opportunity quilt coordinator thinks I'm good at paper-piecing, I was asked the make several blocks. My first experience sewing batiks! All the blocks have black batik background and batik flowers.

What is batik? A history of the process can be found at Bali Fabrics.

What is batik to me? A beautiful new medium for touching and viewing and quilting.

Starry Night

Vincent Van Gogh was an artist who created the painting Starry Night. Don Mclean recorded Vincent (also known as Starry, Starry Night) to describe Van Gogh's tragic life.

This past week, an actual artist came to my 5th Grade class to teach art. They used pastels to recreate Van Gogh's Starry Night on black construction paper.

The artist's visit reminded me of a quilter named Jessamy Thompson. Jessamy lived in The Netherlands in Van Gogh's town. Every year the town celebrated Van Gogh's life. Every year Jessamy sponsored a centralized swap of quilt blocks commemorating Van Gogh's Starry Night. In 2007, I took the opportunity to participate, probably the last time Jessamy sponsored the swap. I received star blocks with labels from Finland, England, United Kingdom, Germany, and the USA. This photo shows only part of the collection I received. I guess it's time to think about assembling those blocks into a quilt.

See you at Elm Creek. . . .

Have you read the Elm Creek Quilts series by Jennifer Chiaverini? I've read all the books in the series and purchased all three accompanying quilt pattern books.

In one of the books, Elm Creek Quilts needed a new instructor. The book was about the people who applied for the job. I wanted to be one of those applicants! I've never been to a quilt retreat. Is there a place like Elm Creek? A beautiful setting and permanent building with resident quilt instructors? I don't think I would be interested in attending a quilt retreat at a motel or rented camp. I want Elm Creek!

I think there is now a fourth pattern book: Sylvia's Bridal Sampler. It has been out for about a month. Must order my copy soon.

Meanwhile, maybe I'll meet up with you at Elm Creek
for a week of quilt camp. . . .

Inspired by Young Students

I find inspiration in the strangest places. These two inspiring pieces of artwork are from the elementary school where I teach.

The top drawing was done by a 5th Grade student "playing" with the Geometry template. The paper had fluttered to the floor. I almost just stepped over it but decided to pick it up for a closer look. I loved what I saw! When I asked whose paper it was, I got no response. Students probably thought they would get into trouble. I finally begged the person to identify himself or herself -- I told the class I wanted to be able to take the drawing home to put it into Electric Quilt. It will take a few more lines so it can be paper-pieced. I'd like to make one huge block and applique it to the back of a shirt.

The second piece of art might be a flag. It is construction paper cut and glued to a 9" x 12" piece of lighter colored construction paper. I found it attached to the southern hemisphere of a HUGE world map on the wall of the school's common area. I'm embarrassed to say that I don't know what country it might represent. Maybe I can ask around to find out whose class the "flag" came from.

And what more might I find . . . I'll have to cruise the hallways to see what else I can find. I promise I'll carry a Hall Pass!

Same look, different color scheme. . . .

What a difference color and fabric make! The block pattern is from the Florida Cabin Fever Quilt Guild April Block of the Month.

One aspect of quilting that I need to learn more about is color. I'm accustomed to sewing clothing where colors tend to match and blend. In quilting, fabrics need to contrast -- light, medium, dark, and even the visual texture on the fabric.

I have purchased several quilter's books to help with with color theory related to quilting. All these books are on my quilting bookshelf:

• Quilting Color Magic from House of White Birches
  
• Color Play by Joen Wolfrom
  
• Color Magic for Quilters by Ann Seely and Joyce Stewart
  
• Color: The Quilter's Guide by Christine Barnes
  
• EQ5 Color: Applying Color Theory to Quilts by Susan McKelvey
  

Even a couple of the many color theory websites could be helpful to me:

• Color Wheel Basics for Quilters at About.com
  
• Moda's Color Theory
  

But I haven't used any of these resources . . . . yet.

Now, where is that color wheel I bought? How about just a box of 96 Crayolas?

How about a black quilt . . . . ?

I've begun to work with black background fabric this year. I had seen photos of Amish quilts using solid black background and jewel-tone solids. Working with black and solids did not appeal to me until I visited the Florida Cabin Fever Quilt Guild website to find their 2009 block of the month. It's called A Touch of Amish. "A touch" was right up my alley! I've made the first four blocks, but not quite with jewel tones! Love my avocado green. Yes, a throw back to my favorite color of the 1970's.


Then the quilting guild that I belong to asked for help paper-piecing the blocks for the 2010 Opportunity Quilt. Those ladies know I looooove paper-piecing. I had to learn to sew curves and New York Beauty blocks to do that first one. These three blocks are made with batik fabrics. The black is not solid but seems to have a touch of turquoise marbled through.

So now I've decided to make myself a black lapquilt. I'll be using Carol Doak and Electric Quilt paper-pieced blocks for flowers, stems, and leaves. I've found some beautiful background fabric from Kings Road. Not a batik, but it looks like it -- black with dark green shooting through it. No, not avocado green. :-)

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!