Margaret Atwood: In Other Worlds: SF and the Human Imagination
Daniel: Stray Sock Sewing: Making One of a Kind Creatures from Socks
Diana Taylor: Fast, Fun & Easy Fabric Ficklesticks: Art Sticks to Bend, Wrap, Weave & Wear
Kim Schaefer: Cozy Modern Quilts: 23 Easy Pieced Projects to Bust Your Stash
Karen Seiger: Markets of New York City: A Guide to the Best Artisan, Farmer, Food, and Flea Markets
Over the festive holiday weekend I was reluctant to descend into the sewing dungeon while we had company visiting (or I didn't want to watch football on a non-HD tv...you can choose which sounds more likely). So I did some crocheting. Here is a picture of a cat hut I made for my grand-kitty using 1 inch strips of an old flannel sheet:
And here is a photo of it in use.
Each year at the Festival of Trees about 50 decorated Christmas trees are auctioned off to raise funds for The Shelter. Individuals, families, groups and organizations put together themed trees for this event and the creativity is always amazing. I have marginally helped with a couple of trees that my sewing group did in the past. This year we had a bit of trouble coming up with a theme so I offered a Christmas-y quilt as a stand in for our tree. I think it will be auctioned off with the trees, not sold with the wreaths and other decorations that are available at the festival. Either way, this is a fun set of trees to see every year and the money goes to a very deserving organization. Here is the quilt that we will be donating:
What a table full of people and food we had today! Just enough time to sleep it off and head out to Bizarre Bazaar tomorrow. Our table will have monster bags...made from real monsters:
Next to the distainful cats at Bizarre Bazaar will be some Happy Horses:
Just look at those grins! If you'd like to make your own horse, the pattern I worked from is in the book Stray Sock Sewing by Daniel.
If Halloween is over, then it is time to start talking about Bizarre Bazaar. Held at the Lawrence (KS) Arts Center every year on the Saturday following Thanksgiving, Bizarre Bazaar offers one of a kind art and gift items. Last year the Bazzar started being open the Friday night before as well. My daughter and I have been participating in this event for several years and it is always big fun. Here is an example of what we offer:
Distainful Cats made from an upcycled embroidered sweater....
I like buying handbags and lately even shoes. Probably because I don't have to be in a plus-size department to get something that fits.. But anyway, expensive handbags are a temptation that I have resisted for the most part. I recently bought a bag at the Plaza Art Fair that cost a bit over $100, and that seemed quite extravagant to me. Prices on designer bags are often shocking and I guess that is most of the appeal. Carrying a bag that cost thousands of dollars shows that you are wealthy and successful (or that your consumer debt is out of control). Well, a few weeks ago I ended up in the local hospital ER and then spent the next 36 hours in the hospital. I am now the proud owner of this bag that I now use to carry my towel and suit to water exercise class. It cost just over $16,000.00
Top that Prada.
Nearly every day I give my birds a treat of corn bread that I bake for them using Jiffy cornbread mix, sunflower seeds and chopped dried fruits. On the rare occasion where I haven't had time to bake a batch, it seems to me that the birds sit and look at their food bowl in disbelief when breakfast is served. One bird gives a "do tah doo" sound when the food arrives but on bread-less days there is no fanfare. So, I am motivated to not disappoint them. This time of year my hoarder instincts take over and I save up the empty Jiffy boxes along with other various containers. Then I paint them, add labels from Ten Two Studio and stuff them full of Halloween candy.
Do Tah Doo!
All things quilted and quilt related are heading to Houston starting tomorrow. First comes Fall Quilt Market, then the wholesalers and shop owners clear out and the general public arrives for the grand and possibly overwhelming Houston Quilt Festival. I'm not going but some of my Paisley Birds will be there. Pokey Bolton has organized a fundraiser for a no kill animal shelter (for more info click here). She has asked that folks donate mixed media postcards to be sold at the festival and all funds go to Friends for Life. I suspect my birds will be quite out numbered by dogs and cat postcards, but hopefully there will be at least a couple of bird lovers there.
Here is a baby quilt I made using the pattern "Charmin' the Monkey" by Crackerjack Quilts. A simple quilt, but the fabric is so fun!
The on-line random number generator picked Carolyn Hosier of Lee Prairie Designs to win the Moda fabric prize. Congratulations Carolyn! We will be interested to see what you can do with these scraps. Below is another quilt I did with some of last year's scrap fabric from Barbara Brackman.
I pieced together the strips, ironed Wonder-Under on the back and ran the fabric through AccuQuilt's Go Baby using the circle die. Then I cut the two biggest sizes of circles in half and fused them along the seamlines of some hand-dyed rectangles that I had sewn together. The smallest circles seemed too small to cut in half so I just fused most of them on the ends of the quilt, with a few floating loose towards the center.
My first ever give-away! Leave a comment on this post by midnight September 15, 2012 to be entered in a Moda Fabric Giveaway. Barbara Brackman has given me a USPS Large Flat Rate box jammed full of her Metropolitan Fair fabric and (I think) I am willing to pass it along to some lucky person. This is beautiful, high quality cotton fabric scraps left over from the production of "pre-cuts"... you know... the jelly rolls, charm squares, layer cakes that Moda does for their most popular lines of fabric.
You will have big fun with this fabric! Sorry, only U.S. addresses please.
Ever wonder what is done with the scraps left after fabric is cut into "pre-cuts"? The scraps that result from the production of charm squares and jelly-rolls? Well, sometimes they box up those scraps and ship them to the fabric designer! About this time last year, Barbara Brackman received a large box of the fabric left behind after the precuts of her latest fabric line were produced. Barbara gave me a stash of those scraps and I had a lot of fun with them. One of the things I made from them was this quilt:
I added in a hand-dyed green fabric, and quilted each stripe with circles as large as would fit. These circles began to remind me of coins, so I named the quilt Nickles and Dimes.
Keep an eye on this blog. I have a new box of scraps from Barbara that I will be giving away soon. You too can be distracted by scraps.
Here is another small quilt I put together from a wad of abandoned scraps in the guild's fabric exchange bin:
I call it Leftover Love.
p.s. Should I be concerned that a friend made a point of emptying her sewing room trash before I arrived this week? If folks are deciding to stop enabling my scrap distraction, is an intervention on the horizon?
p.p.s. This quilt is part of the current exhibit at the 1109 Gallery in Lawrence,KS. I have two other quilts and several stuffed creatures on display there as well. Check it out!
A friend of mine just happens to be a very talented and well-known fabric designer. A while back she designed and printed up some fabric inspired by the current election climate that we are all in right now. A second talented friend used that fabric in some lovely boxes. Because I was in the right place at the right time, I got one(!)
Here is a close up of the fabric:
You too can have a version of this fabric because it is now available for purchase, just click here.
The designer wrote a very interesting article about the historic inspiration for this fabric which you can read here. She also posted a how-to for making your own box which you can see here.
Our quilt guild president issued a challenge to the membership to stay in from the summer heat and make a small quilt top that makes us think of winter. Then she offered to quilt these quilts for us. Since she is a very talented machine quilter, I was more than interested in taking on this challenge. Here is what I came up with:
A Christmas tree...just in case you were wondering. It started out as a "primitive" style tree, but when I got out the jewel-toned fabrics and shiny threads, it went a little off track.
I am very pleased to be a part of the blog "Quilt Inspiration". They are featuring my vegetable quilts that I made using patterns from the very inspirational Ruth McDowell's book "Pieced Vegetables". Here is a picture of an eggplant quilt I did as a part of this series:
As I mentioned before, I have the job of hauling the fabric and magazine exchange tub back and forth from my quilt guild's meetings. Each month I have seem to find an abandoned clump of scraps in the tub that I have to adopt. The latest was a sack of factory fabric cutoffs (offcuts?) in an odd horse-less carriage print. The pieces had a long narrow part and a short wide part. I could cut a 3 by 6 inch rectangle out of the wide part, and I could piece the narrow strips together and cut them into additional 3 by 6 rectangles. There were also some checked gingham curtains left in the tub that I used for the back, binding and four fill-in squares on the front. So, here it is... another quilt for my guild's "WarmKids" project, and overall, this quilt just makes me dizzy:
The blocks were arranged in a brick pattern, with solid block rows alternated with pieced block rows... sort of... there is some randomness in the product. Here is a close up where you can see the carriage better. I kept thinking the man in the carriage is saying "Where is the driver? For that matter, where are the horses?"
p.s. I have always thought my autobiography should be titled "Roller Skating on a Brick Sidewalk", but now I think it will have to be a two volume work with the second book titled "Distracted by Scraps".
Sometimes you just have to break down and buy some new fabric. Sometimes the fabric stash seems too old and blah. Here is a table runner I made using some "stash" fabric and also some new fabric I got from Sew Mama Sew! and eQuilter:
Here is a picture of a bag I made for a friend/client out of Kaffe Fasset fabric:
I need to make one of these for myself.
Oh, if only it would rain! We are drying up and blowing away here in Kansas. Lets look at something pretty. Every town seems to want to be the "City of the Arts" and my town is no exception. I think we should steal Agueda, Portugal's idea of installing dozens of colorful umbrellas over our main street:
We could walk down the street, look up and have fond memories of rain, while we are protected from the relentless sunshine. These umbrellas were hung as a part of an art festival called Agitagueda.
Beautiful!
