Happy Hollydays

Last year my Mom and I made "funky trees", and for this year's holiday season I made a 12"x12" decorative piece to go with the metalwork display that I introduced in the Welcome Fall blog. Again, I used a pattern from Amber Fenton Designs:

We have two full bins of miscellaneous holiday fabrics in "the stash", so I drew my choices from that. I used the blanket stitch for some of the red and green leaf applique. But, because this is a very small piece just for displaying, I didn't think it really needed a lot of quilting or securing of the raw-edge applique pieces. I also experimented with some free-motion quilting -- and unfortunately was not very happy with either the experience or the results. I have a number of other applique quilts that are nearing completion ... and I'm starting to think that I'm just going to have to save them until there's a long-arm quilting machine in my life!

12"x12" decorative holiday quilt

Decorative holiday quilt in metalwork display.

Happy Hollydays!!

Mumbo Gumbo

In 2004 we went to Disneyland for my 35th birthday, and while in the Los Angeles area in January we also attended the Road To California Quilt Show -- where I bought one of my first quilt patterns, called Mumbo Gumbo from Pie In The Sky Quilts. It's another project that's perfect for using fabric scraps. Since I've recently been rather obsessed with trying to "put a dent in" our scrap baskets (introduced in 'Got Scraps?'), I finally started -- and finished(!) -- this pattern.

Mumbo Gumbo quilt top

My version is slightly different from the pattern, in that each "log" is of a different fabric -- this allowed for strip piecing, which was much speedier. I had started out matching logs (see the set of two blocks framing the center), but the remainder of the quilt is from randomly selected fabrics. I remember many of these fabrics from previous projects, all the way back to when my Mom was sewing during my childhood. So, this quilt is also kind of a memory quilt.

And no, our scrap baskets are still not empty! In fact, they're as full as ever, sigh. I need to keep a Mumbo Gumbo project continuously going!

Update, June 2013: I decided to get the Mumbo Gumbo quilt finished -- so I chose a marbled yellow wide backing fabric and sent it to B&B Machine Quilting in Oroville, CA for just a simple all-over large stipple. It came out great (the quilting doesn't detract from the pieced design, which is what I wanted), and I decided to just fold over the backing with a machine zig-zag stitch for the binding (very quick!).

Mumbo Gumbo quilt finished! June 2013.

The Eyes Have It

Last month, my Mom and I enjoyed two very full and fun days at the Pacific International Quilt Show in Santa Clara, CA: One day for viewing all of the show quilts, and a second day for shopping the 300 vendors. Of course before the shopping day, we had surveyed our massive collection of un-finished objects (UFOs) and promised ourselves that we wouldn't buy any new projects. Well, you know that promise is a difficult one to keep, especially when you find something that's "just TOooOO CuuuUUUuute!!! That was the case with the "Eleven Owls and One Moon" small wallhanging quilt by Morning Glory Productions at the Quiltin' Cousins booth; it was love at first sight! The sample -- of small 3" blocks of winking and peeking owls in 1930s fabrics -- reminded me of my Aerie Parrot (he often peeks out at me from behind his toys).

My Mom bought the pre-cut iron-ons for me, which are of 1930s fabrics, and I then used scraps of polka-dot fabrics for the background and miscellaneous 1930s fabrics for the sashing and prairie points. The finished wallhanging is about 12.5"x16.5". This was the first time I'd done prairie points or any hand embroidery (the eyelashes), so the small scale of the project was ideal.

Here's a pic of the wallhanging before adding the eyes:

And, here's a pic of the wallhanging after adding the eyes:

I think the eyes have it!!

Welcome Fall

I took a hiatus from quilting over the summer, but have started working on a few projects again.

After a brief "last hurrah" heat wave in the Bay Area last week, the season is beginning to turn now --with the music of fog horns along the river in the mornings, and even a few occasional raindrops. To welcome Fall, I just made this small (12"x12") quilt to go with a cute little tabletop metalwork display that my Mom got me recently. It features a little crow button (perched on the upper left ribbon) and several (glue-on) Swarovsky crystals in the middle of the sunflower. I used Lite Steam-A-Seam double stick fusible web for the applique, and quilted a small blanket stitch around the flower petals and stem (using rayon embroidery thread) plus straight stitch-in-the-ditch around the inner border. All of the materials came from my Mom's stash. This was a perfect instant-gratification project: I started and finished it in the same day. And, it was also good (relatively low investment) practice for trying out some machine applique.

A happy sunflower, with crow friend, to welcome Fall.

I used a pattern from Amber Fenton Designs, which my Mom got with the metalwork stand:

She also got a few other small 12"x12" patterns, and I'm planning to make a little quilt to hang on this stand for each of the seasons.

Quilting Heats Up At The Winters Outdoor Show

My friend Bonnie deserves a medal for venturing out with me today to Winters, CA -- on one of the hottest days of the summer -- for their annual outdoor quilt show. The forecast was for 106F, and the day was indeed a roaster!

Winters, CA

It was a bit of a bummer that the usual crowds to this show were deterred by the heat this year. However, there were many inspiring quilts:

Bonnie said this quilt is "toothy". ;)

Bonnie's favorite; Love the swirl in this Texas Lonestar.

As usual, going to a quilt show has made me just want to get home and do some quilting!!

Got Scraps? - Part II

Let the scraps fly! That's what I decided for finishing the scrappy star quilt, making over 200 flying geese units for the borders. I used the squares-on-squares piecing technique for constructing the flying geese from our scrap supply: 2.5"x2.5" squares sewn onto both sides of the dark center 4.5"x2.5" rectangle. However, I would not recommend this approach -- many of the geese ended up wonky. Next time, I will use slightly larger little squares, and then trim the geese units after piecing. So, it was definitely a learning experience!

Chain piecing flying geese.

However, I was still able to schmooze my less-than-perfect geese together to utilize a majority of them for the borders. But because of the inaccuracies, getting a whole number of geese to fit each side of the quilt was problematic. So, I decided to "cheat" and use an asymmetrical border design with the geese, which would conveniently skirt this issue. I'm quite happy with the "finished-is-better-than-perfect" results:

Scrappy Stars finished top.

I lost a few geese points, but this quilt is so scrappy that I think these little boo-boos get somewhat camouflaged in all of the busyness.

There's a little bit of whimsy in the quilt: there is one fabric that appears only once!

This top has been added to the collection destined for eventual long-arm quilting service.

Wine Country Quilts Show

One of the great benefits of being a quilter in the San Francisco Bay Area is that on many weekends there's a quilt show within day-trip distance. So for my parents, going to the many quilt shows has been a hobby in itself. And, now that I've returned to my home state of California, I'm also enjoying the frequent trips to see these wonderful shows.

This past weekend we went to the Wine Country Quilts Show, presented by the Moonlight Quilters of Sonoma County, in Santa Rosa, CA. The featured quilter was Barbara Confer, whose art quilts are composed of raw-edge applique, toile, thread painting, and embellishments. I'd love to try these techniques myself sometime, since I like the realistic look that can be achieved.

Quilt by Barbara Confer.

Quilt by Barbara Confer. This was my favorite; the brown dog reminds us of Ginger!

Close-up of "Ginger" in quilt by Barbara Confer.

Quilt series by Barbara Confer.

I can never pick favorites at the quilt shows, but here are a few of the quilts at this show that I especially liked: