Whew!

I'm so happy I made it through the school year--a little tattered, but still chugging along. Immediately after school let out I embarked on two projects: I had my house painted on the outside, and I started packing up my office to move to a new building on campus. The painting is done, and I'm very happy with how it came out. Here's a shot of the front door. Once the painting was done, I did a major clean-up of the landscaping. Next, the decks will be refinished (hopefully my daughter will do this part) and then the outside will be done for now. The move is on-going, and I'll continue to purge and pack next week.

In the meantime, here are some shots of quilts I've been working on in dribs and drabs over the past month or so. First, a top I finished piecing. This is my birthday quilt for myself, hence the cake fabric.
Lately, I've been very attracted to pink.

I've also been working on a brown quilt featuring embroidered blocks Debra sent me. Aren't they great? When I finish piecing the top, I'll post a picture of the whole thing.
My strategy lately seems to be to use up various batches of fabric in my stash. This quilt and another brown one I have in the works are practically emptying my drawer of brown fabrics. I'm not sure what I'm making room for, but it's very satisfying to use up fabrics I'd been saving for some mysterious future project.

I hope everyone has a great long weekend. Look for more frequent posts in the coming days.

Seven Things

Allie tagged me to do the 7 Things About Me meme. Here's some fuel for those inquiring minds.
1. I have two boyfriends. One is the amazing Michael:
The other is the lovely Louie:
2. Michael brings me flowers and chocolate every week. Yes, every week. This week it was pink tulips and a chocolate banana slug.
3. The banana slug is the mascot of U.C. Santa Cruz, where both Michael and I went to college so it's a kind of inside joke. He got his undergraduate degree there in the 60s, and I went to graduate school there in the 80s.
4. Louie doesn't bring flowers or chocolate, but he sleeps faithfully next to my legs every night. Except for that time last week when he slept with my daughter--hey, this is sounding like an episode of one of those tawdry afternoon t.v. shows.
5. Speaking of questionable t.v., I love to watch some these shows in the name of studying popular culture, and of keeping up on the things my students are watching. I like The Hills, Project Runway, and America's Next Top Model. A woman can't live on literary criticism alone.
6. I'm resistant to new technology. My t.v. is almost as old as my almost 19 year-old daughter. It's a good thing I have a man and teenagers to nudge me into the modern world, or I'd be watching The Hills in black and white. I do however love my laptop, wireless internet and my ipod...
7. Speaking of ipods, my latest indulgence is listening to podcasts. I worship Brenda Dayne, whose knitting podcast Cast On is total bliss. If you don't have an ipod, you can download it to your computer and listen to it there.

I took forever to respond to the challenge, so I may be the last one to post in this go-around. If anyone is left who hasn't posted yet, consider yourself tagged. I hope everyone had a wonderful Mother's Day.

Cats and Quilts

I've finished the top of my third QOV. Vicki is quilting the first two, and did a fabulous job. You can see the photos on her blog

This quilt is made from Hawaiian fabric donated by Debra and from fabrics from my stash. The pattern is yet another one from Evelyn Sloppy's book Sew One and You're Done. I think I've made four of these quilts now, and there's still at least one more I want to make. It's amazing that I had the exact colors in my stash to go with the focus fabric. When I saw it, I thought I would have to go out and look for the right red to coordinate, but low and behold, I had a large piece of the perfect shade. I've pieced the back of this quilt from the remaining blue fabric, and I'm going to take a deep breath and quilt this one myself. This isn't my favorite part of the process, but I've done it a number of time before.
Louie is again the subject of the cat portion of this post. Recently in a fit of nostalgia I took out some of the kids' dolls from storage and installed them on chairs in the living room. Louie has decided that if he needs a lap, they will do just fine.
Aren't cats experts at getting comfortable and taking it easy? Now that you've seen such a good example, I hope you find a moment to curl up and take a rest.

Lucky Days

We had a little excitement around her for Friday the 13th. My daughter Allie was in a car accident with two of her friends. No one was seriously injured: the three girls got whiplash but otherwise are fine. Allie's friend Maggie was driving, and her car was rear-ended while she was waiting to make a left-hand turn. A teenage boy driving a large truck didn't stop in time, and rear-ended the equally large truck that hit Maggie's car. Her small car may be totaled, but neither of the trucks was damaged. After the three girls got checked out in the hospital, we went out for ice cream to celebrate the fact that everyone was fine.

Here's my lucky girl modeling a jacket I recently embellished. As part of my on-going love affair with Aunt Martha embroidery transfers, I ironed this peacock transfer to the back of an old denim jacket. The transfer, which was black, is permanent, and I traced over it with a fine point sharpie marker. In the places where the transfer blurred, it looks a bit like shading, but otherwise, I like the way the image looks almost like a tattoo. This is also a fast project. It only took about an hour to trace the transfer.


I started cleaning out a drawer of some old leftover 4-patch blocks made from home dec fabrics, and it morphed into this quilt. I pieced the 4-patches into the center of this quilt, and then kept adding other home dec sample pieces. I also decided to use the vintage bark cloth fabric you see in the outer border, rather than let it keep warming the shelf. I'm really in a stash busting mood these days.

I love these soft gold and pastel colors. As soon as school lets out I'm planning on doing some painting and re-decorating, and this will fit nicely in my plans for my bedroom.

Since I cleared some space in the stash I felt good bringing this home Saturday morning.
The Methodist church near me has an annual rummage sale, and they always have some good deals. I got this office paper box of flannel pieces (there's also a bit of regular cotton) for $2. Not in the photo is a 2-yard cut of beige and orange flannel. I think whoever donated this was making ragged-edged quilts. Some of the pieces are cut into rough 10-12 inch squares, but there are also a lot of bigger pieces. I won't be making a ragged-edge quilt, but will probably make a modified rail-fence pattern.
The irises in my garden have come up. I really need to get out and weed the yard, but this corner looks magnificent right now. The cats are enjoying our sunny afternoons, which are interspersed between rainy days. Here's Louie, our newest (and sweetest) cat, who's been with us for about 6 months, enjoying the sun.
I'm waiting impatiently for the summer, for some time off work and some gardening weather.

Morning Glory

I've finished my piece for the 12x12x12 challenge. It's a crazy quilted block that I've also used to incorporate some of the stitches from the Sharon B's Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge. Being that I'm an expert multi-tasker, this is also the last piece in the series on the Madonna that I've been doing with Debra Spincic. We each set out to make four quilts incorporating images of the Madonna roughly based on the seasons. We chonicled a lot of our earlier work on the series on our blog The Madonna Idea. Morning Glory is my Spring quilt in the series.

Some of the stitches I used in this piece include: cross-stitch, fly stitch, eyelet stitch chevron stitch, open cretan stitch, detached chian stitch, buttonhole, and herringbone stitches. The hummingbird and morning glory motifs are transfers from an Aunt Martha package. You can still buy those and I find that Walmart, of all places, has a good selection. The hanging charms are hearts and leaves that were part of a bracelet I bought on clearance at Target.
One of my challenges in this piece was to connect the motifs so that they weren't so isolated from each other. I did this by extending the vine to connect the motifs, even through the floral print in the background. If I had planned ahead, rather than made it up as I went along, I would've used a higher contrast green to make the vine. But live and learn, right? I ripped out and edited a lot as I was making this piece. Perhaps I'll move to working more on paper as part of the process. In the future I might make a photocopy of the block and them play with embellishment options.

My future 12x12x12 pieces are going to incorporate bird images. I feel like I'm not quite done with the Madonna images yet, so I expect to continue to use those as well.

Here are links to my other Madonna quilts in the series:
La Ofrenda (42x43) 2005
House of Gold, Pray for Us (26x16.5) 2005
O Serene Like the Moon, O Resplendent Like the Sun (24") 2006

Another Service Quilt

This is my second one-block quilt from Sew One and You're Done for the 40 Quilt Service Project. All the fabrics were in my stash except for the pink floral. Without it, the quilt was a bit somber, and the pink makes it more cheerful. I'm going to use the same pink fabric for the back. Originally I used more green, but that really made it dark and formal looking, so I substituted the blocks with other colors until I was happy with how it looked. Vicki is going to quilt this one and the one in the last post.

Doing this quilt has really caused me to review my stash. I've bought little fabric in the last year, but before that I bought a lot of remnants and fat quarters in a random fashion, which is good for scrap quilting, but not so good for more coordinated projects. As I make these quilts I'm cutting down any small pieces of fabric I find into uniform sizes for a big scrap quilt. It's a way to clear the stash of stuff that I'm not likely to do much with because the pieces are small. On the other hand, these 1-block quilts are great for using 1 yard pieces. 4-5 one yard cuts make a 60" quilt, so I've been clearing out a few larger miscellaneous pieces as well.
This blue quilt was made completely from stash. I haven't sewn it together yet, but it's waiting patiently for me on the design wall. The black floral is actually from a dress my mother gave me specifically so that I could use the fabric. I think I may have to make this one up for her for Mother's Day.

I'll be making at least one more of these 1-block quilts. Debra sent me a cut of Hawaiian floral fabric from her stash, and I'll use it to make another charity quilt. That one will be a lot of fun since the colors are so vibrant, and nothing says "vacation" like tropical prints.

WIP Wednesday

I had some scraps left over from the service quilt I made as part of the 40 Quilt Service Project so I included them with some stash and made this quilt, which will be part of the next initiative in the project to make quilts for wounded service women.

I was excited to make this quilt totally from scraps and stash, with the exception of the blue stripped fabric in the border. I am also pleased with how it turned out.

I got the pattern from Evelyn Sloppy's Sew One and You're Done, which I bought at JoAnn's (with a coupon) and it's the perfect resource for this kind of project. All the quilts are lap-sized and made from one large block. You can use from 3-5 or more fabrics in each quilt. By themselves, the quilts come out from 45-60 inches square, and she gives suggestions for adding borders to make the quilts a little bigger. You can also join 4 big blocks to make a large quilt.

I'm eyeballing my stash to see what's next.

Motifs

I've been adding motifs to my crazy quilt piece, which I'm tentatively calling Morning Glory. I made a discovery which I may be the last to know about, but which has changed this whole project for me. I was unsuccessful at transfering motifs to the piece with dressmaker's carbon or with iron-on transfers because some of the fabrics are dark and because (as I've discoverd) textured fabrics are hard to mark. but I decided to try water-soluable stabilizer, which works great. It's opaque and you can easily trace any motif onto it. If you use marker or gel pen, you need to wait until it dries completely, or it will smear, and this can take awhile (like a day). Other than that, it's easy to position, pin down, and stitch through. It holds up well and you can even remove stitches and re-do them (ask me how I know) and the stabilizer remains, well, stable.


When I was done, rather than wet the fabric, because I wasn't sure if it would show water spots, I blasted it with steam from an iron held above (not touching) the fabric, and it easily softened up enough to pull apart.



Here is my feather stitch from Sharon B's Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge. It goes from a single to a double and triple feather to fill the triangular space. In the center photo you can see my fly stitch, which I will embellish. In the first photo you can see my blanket stitch, which also will be embellished. I've finished adding the last of the motifs, so now I'll concentrate on the seam treatments.

It's Wednesday!

It's time again to post WIPs. I've managed to finish a quilt top I'm making as part of the 40 Quilt Service Project. The quilt was designed by Debra, the blocks were cut and pieced by Julie and it will be quilted and bound by Kay. If you're wondering Jules what happened to your blue setting triangles, I discovered an error in the formula for generating the size of those triangles, but there was plenty of fabric left to cut red ones. Because "waste not want not" is my motto, I'm going to use the blue triangles in my next service project. I found this great complimentary fabric in my stash and I'm taking votes on which option looks best:
I think I'm partial to the second option myself, it has almost a Provencal color scheme.

I've also done a bit of shopping. I had a great thrift store day recently and scored some quilting magazines and embroidery books.
I've set aside some clothes for embellishment, so these patterns will come in handy. And speaking of embellishment, I recently bought Altered Couture at Borders after having visited it in the store a few times. Yes, I balked at spending fifteen bucks on a magazine, but I decided it was really a book, which made it okay. It's full of great altered fashion ideas. It is light on instructions, but anyone with a modest sewing background can easily follow the instructions. Mostly it's a source of inspiration.

Speaking of inspired, those brilliant people at Alexander Henry have put out some new Mexican-themed fabrics. I was very happy to find this new print.
The images are from Mexican loteria, or bingo cards. I had actually looked for these images on the web, thinking of making fabric transfers, and now I'm ready to go. The possibilities are endless. Handbag? Embellished blouse or denim jacket?

I hope everyone has a happy Valentine's Day. My honey and I had a wonderful lunch at a romantic crepe restaurant. This being a small town, we knew half the people there, but we had a dark table in the back, the day is rainy, and our hearts are warm. Good love to all.

WIP Wednesday

I've been working on my piece for the 12x12x12 Challenge and also for Sharon's Take a Stitch Tuesday series. The photo above shows a seam embellishment made from two layers of overlapping cretan stitch dotted with French knots.
This photo shows that I've embellished the central image with a second hummingbird and that I've given the Madonna a kind of veil of some old rick-rack with crocheted lace to which I added beads. I'd made the mistake of cutting off the top the the Madonna's head when I pieced the block, but I feel I conpensated for it by creating the arc and filling in the space above her head with detached chain flowers in some of the colors from the image and with clear seed beads. Although Sharon recommends in her fabulous Encrusted Embellishment class that we add "hard"embellishments last in order to stitch with a hoop, I wanted to see what this focal point looked like with the beads before I proceeded, and I find that I can manuver the hoop around the beads well enough to continue to use it.
My other project, my daughter's sweater, is coming along nicely. The pattern has only charts for the cabled panel, but I find it easier to translate the chart into conventional written instructions, which are just easier for me to work from. I'm zipping along and hope to finish this sweater before the weather warms up.

Fabric at the Movies

I don't go to the movies that often, but I went to see Curse of the Golden Flower not knowing what to expect, and found it to be full of great eye candy. It has an interesting palette: gold predominates, with pink and red coming in a strong second. I loved the gold, but I'm undecided about whether or not I liked the pink and red. The costumes are opulent with lots of diaphanous fabrics and heavy brocades. As a bonus: embroidery is part of the plot. I'll warn the sensitive that there's a big bloody battle sequence, complete with flying ninjas, but it's one of those very stylized representations that seems, like the rest of the film, more epic than realistic.

I think the film has a quesionable message about the consequences of resisting authority, but the visuals are intriguing, and I always like a fiber-oriented plot.

WIP Wednesday

I'm currently working on a project both as part of Sharon B's Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge and for the Quilt Studio 2x12x12 Portfolio Challenge (sorry, couldn't get the link to cooperate). I've made a buttonhole stitch fan

and a seam treatment with laced herringbone stitch, detached chains, and French knots. The hummingbird and morning glory is courtesy of an old Aunt Martha embroidery transfer. It's amazing how handy those can be.

I'm also knitting a sweater for my daughter. She picked the color, which I love.


I just finished the back, which is basically a big rectangle, and I just cast on one of the fronts, so I'm starting the cable stitch band. Now I'll have to pay attention. I actually love mindless knitting, so for me the best part of the sweater is done.

Yesterday was a great mail day. I got the parts for a 40 Quilt Service Project quilt from Julie that I'm going to assemble and then pass on to another quilter to finish. This project is going to be donated to a children's charity. I also got a lovely CD of birds from Debra. Wasn't that nice?

Speaking of sharing, I'm recovering from my second bout of flu since Christmas. This lastest one I must've caught on the plane on the the way home from my vacation. Then rather than stay home, I dutifully started back to work and promptly infected practically the whole faculty of my department. "Thanks for sharing," eveyone says politely. At least they haven't started addressing my emails to Typhoid Barbara.

My Winter Vacation

On New Year's Day Michael and I flew to Southern California to begin our week-long cruise to Mexico. Neither one of us had taken a cruise before so we weren't sure what to expect, but the timing was right and the price was in our budget and we both love Mexico, so it seemed like a safe bet.

The coolest thing was traveling by ship. It's amazing to be constantly surrounded by water. We had wonderful sunrises and sunsets throughout the trip. We got a stateroom with a balcony, and we spent a lot of time just sitting and watching the ocean go by.



The staff was attentive and friendly, the ship was clean and well-run, and the food was good (sometimes very good) and plentiful. It was a bit of a challenge for Michael to eat sometimes as a committed vegetarian. I'm a more relaxed vegetarian, so I eat fish, and I'll eat anything if I decide I really want it, but the vegetarian options were sometimes limited.



Once we were at sea a day or two the weather warmed up and we had three lucious days in port with weather in the 80s. The first port, Acapulco, was one of my favorites because we got to visit Fort San Diego. The current fort was built in the 18th century, and has been converted into a museum documenting the important trade route between Mexico and the Philippines, which connected these two important sites of the Spanish empire for 250 years, and which brought Asian goods and cultural influences to Mexico (and vice-versa). One of the important commodities of this trade were textiles, and expecially silk. There were wonderful examples of silk embroidered objects. Asian textiles and embroidery influenced embroidery and textile arts in Mexico because of this exchange.



When I arrived back home it was actually snowing, so it was good to get a reprieve from the winter weather. I've returned with lots of photos and ideas for new projects.

Two Birds with One Stone

I've signed on to participate in a couple of challenges in the new year. One is Sharon B's Take a Stitch Tuesday challenge. You can find the details on her blog, but she's going to post a stitch per week that participants can use and vary in a variety of formats. I'm going to be embellishing this piece for the challenge.

You'll notice that I used a Madonna photo transfer in the block. This is also going to be my last Madonna piece in the series I've been doing with Debra. We've blogged about the other pieces in the series at the Madonna Idea.

Ever the multi-tasker, this piece is also my first in the 12x12x12 Journal Quilt Challenge sponsored by the Quilt Studio webring. I like to be involved in these projects, and this is my way of concentrating my efforts. If you look carefully in the lower right of the block above, you can see the transfer outline of a hummingbird. My theme for this challenge is birds.

Here are some photos of the 8.5 inch block I embellished in Sharon's on-line encrusted embellishment class this fall. The class was full of very helpful design information. I got really good at French knots making those wisteria blossoms.


I really love doing this kind of work, and I'm anxious to get another block underway. In the meantime, I wonder what I'll do with this finished block. For now it's on my design wall inspring me.

San Francisco, part 2

One of the highlights of my recent trip to San Francisco was seeing the Gee's Bend quilt exhibit at the de Young Museum. When I was a kid I went to the old de Young on a regular basis: I'm a native, this is my home town. They had an extensive collection of Asian art housed in what must've been one of the orignial structures in Golden Gate Park, which was damaged beyond repair during the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989. The new building stands at the site of the old structure, and is a shiny and very modern-looking state of the art building. The Asian art collection has been moved to a new museum downtown (which is on my list of things to see on my next trip).

We had excellent timing when we got to the quilt exhibit because a docent tour had just started. The docent was very well informed about the exhibit, and related a lot of annecdotes about the quilters and about their life circumstances. This information was handy for Michael, who knew nothing about this thing I'd dragged him 300 miles to see, but he quickly understood the context of the work and some of the reasons why so many people appreciate it.

The quilts were very moving for me to see. My favorite piece was a quilt made from work pants, with all the variations of wear and color. To me it was a testimony to the maker's creative will to make something she needed out of what was at hand, and of the asthetic spark in what seem to be the most utilitarian acts. These works have a vitality that is impressive, and I'm convinced that this is due in large part to the spontineity that comes with irregularly-cut pieces. I think we should all try to make something without using rulers just to see what happens. The use of "forbidden" fabrics like polyester and courduroy also adds energy to these quilts. I'm predicting a resurgence in the popularity of polyester myself. I think it is underappreciated. No photos were allowed in the exhibit, but Michael bought me the beautiful book that documents it.

The new museum is wonderful, and sports a funny-looking observation tower which has a panoramic view of the city.

Here are some scenes from the Japanese Tea Garden next door.


Here are a few seasonal scenes from Union Square.


Merry Christmas Everyone!