Swap Inspirations

The Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild met last Wednesday night.  Most months we have some sort of swap going.  Sometimes it is just a fat quarter swap and other times it involves things we've each made.

Our theme for this month's swap was "Frank Lloyd Wright."  I definitely had to participate in that one since I'm a big fan of FLW's architecture.  I made this mini quilt/mug rug/whatever (it is about 6" x 14") that was inspired by some of the houses he designed.  I associate FLW with strong horizontal lines and high windows, so I reflected that in my design.

As luck would have it, Jenna and I ended up with each other's items.  She got my mini and I got this great notebook cover she made!  The background is quilter's linen and the rest of the design, inspired by one of FLW's window designs, is stitched.  I haven't broken it in yet, but I will soon!  It is resting on top of the mess of fabric on my cutting table :)

We always use the "Yankee Swap" method.  In case you aren't familiar with this idea here's how it works:  Slips of paper are prepared with numbers equaling the number of people/items participating in the swap.  Everyone draws a number.  Number one chooses first.  They choose which of the items on the swap table they would like (we always wrap ours).  The person with #2 goes next.  They can either "steal" them item chosen by #1 or pick a new item from the ones on the table.  Person #3 chooses or "steals" next and so on.  If anyone is "stolen" from, they get to have another turn either picking a new item or "stealing" a different one.  They may not "steal" back the item which was "stolen" from them.  This continues until everyone has had a turn and then person #1 gets a final chance to "steal".  No item may be "stolen" more than three times.

It is a lot of fun when you have a big group and a bit of "stealing" goes on.  When the group is smaller, though, we all have a tendency to stick with what we pick off the table.  We discussed this a little this week as to why nobody was stealing  and decided the curiosity to open the next item on the table is greater than the desire to steal an item already opened.

Next month's theme is "Metamorphosis" - I'm not much for butterflies on my quilts, so I have some thinking to do on that one!

Design Frenzy

How did it get to be so long since I've blogged?!  I've been in a bit of a designing frenzy lately.  Every time I sit down to sew, I seem to get an idea that I need to jot down before I forget it.  Two hours later, I've got the basics of a new quilt design, no sewing done and need to go make dinner or pick up my daughter or....

I love designing new quilts - I get in the "puzzle-solving" zone and have a hard time stopping til I get it worked out.  How big should it be?  Should I make it block based or not?  What size are the pieces?  How much fabric would I need?  Can I make it bigger or smaller and still have a good design?  What colors am I thinking of?  How does it look if I change the darks and lights?  And on and on.

As much as I love designing, sometimes I think I'm wasting my valuable sewing time.  After all, I already have more quilts designed than I have time to make!  But, it's just too much fun.

I'll try to get some sewing done soon so I have something to show you :)

Cinci III - the FABRIC!

Did I save the best for last?  You can make your own decision on that :)  Here are my great finds in chronological order:

Even though I had heard of Fabric Shack in Waynesville, OH before it is nearly a 4 hour drive from where I live in Michigan, so I hadn't been there.  You can bet I'll be going back more often now!  First, they had their tent sale in the parking lot.  Lots of pre-cuts and kits on sale.  I picked up these charm packs of Jovial and a jelly roll of Fruitcake, both by Basic Grey.  I can't say I NEEDED more Christmas fabric, but, at these prices, why should I resist?

Inside the actual store even more fabric delights awaited!  I had assumed Fabric Shack would be a traditional fabric store with a few modern fabrics - NO!  They had so much wonderful fabric I can't even remember it all. One of the lines I have been interested in is Urbanicity by Michele D'Amore for Benartex.  I haven't heard much about her fabric online, but I picked up some fat quarters of her Habitat line at Quiltology in Chicago last year.  Then I saw an ad for Urbanicity in a magazine and knew it would be right up my alley.  Graphic shapes in black, grey, taupe and cream??  Uh, YES!!!  After much deliberation, I settled on a half yard of each of these prints.  Truthfully, if I had no budget considerations I would have bought a full yard of every print in the line!

After a short detour along a country road, we arrived at the darling Sewn Studio in Cincinnati.  What a great space they have there - lovely high ceilings, hardwood floors and round paper lamps add to a great atmosphere.  I figured I'd better pace myself a little for fabric buying at the show itself the next day, but I couldn't resist these great stripes.  I love a good stripe and, especially, a great striped bias binding.  The black and the grey are by Riley Blake and the yellow and grey one is from Michael Miller's Retro Mod collection (thanks Rachael!).

Considering the total number of vendors at the show, there wasn't all that much modern fabric, but we still managed not to walk away empty handed.  I picked up these three pieces of Basic Grey's Curio line that I had been admiring for a while now.  (Oops, those butterflies - second fabric - aren't Curio, they are Papillon by 3Sisters for Moda).  The "rice" prints are Lotta Jansdotter's Echo that I actually got at Fabric Shack.  I just think they are so versatile.

I got this five yard bundle of Moda's Half Moon from a vendor who was selling the bundle for $30!  Half Moon for $6/yard?  SOLD!

My final purchase was at Marcia Derse's booth.  Her fabric is quite different from most of what is out there and I just love it!  She gets such wonderful depth to her colors.  I bought a charm pack and a couple of half yard pieces.  She has new lines coming out sometime soon too.

Adding it up, I bought almost 20 yards of fabric in two days!  I'd better get busy sewing.  I hope you enjoyed hearing about my wonderful trip to Cincinnati.  Believe it or not, my Handwork group is going on retreat in a few weeks.  What will I work on?  So many choices...

Cinci - the people

Before I get to some of the people I met in Cincinnati, let me mention the lovely ladies I traveled with - Brenda of Pink Castle Fabrics and justabitfrayed, Anna of woollykat and Ashley of SassafrasGirl.  They were great traveling companions and didn't even complain when I missed a few turns that threatened to cut our time at Sewn Studio short!

I also have to apologize for the lack of pictures.  As I said before, my camera battery was very low, but, honestly, I'm not very good at remembering to take pictures of events while they are happening.  I get too caught up in what is going on to think about recording it.  It is only afterward that I smack my head and think "I should have taken pictures!"  I did manage to snap this one, not very good shot, of the MQG meet up hosted by the Cincinnati MQG.

Soon after we arrived in Cincinnati, we met up with Heather of Olive and Ollie.  I've been following Heather's blog since I first saw her fantastic quilts as part of the Project Modern challenges.  Of course, she is just as nice as can be!  Aren't quilters wonderful?  Heather has lots of things going on these days including some great patterns she has recently released.  Check out her blog to see what else she is up to!

The next morning, we had hardly been at the quilt show more than a few minutes when Brenda and Anna ran into Faith of Fresh Lemons Quilts.  Faith has a giveaway of some Marcia Derse fabric and other prizes going on over on her blog today.

Speaking of Marcia Derse, I was thrilled that she had a booth at the show.  Her fabrics are so wonderful and it was great to have a chance to meet her.  She had some sneak peaks available of her newest fabrics that she will be showing at Market.

If you've been reading my blog for long, you know that I am a long-time fan of the work of Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr of Modern Quilt Studio.  Their booth was filled with their wonderful books, (I wanted to buy some, but I have them all already!), their new magazine Modern Quilts Illustrated and great fabric.  It was fantastic to see them both again.  I was lucky enough to get a chance to chat with Weeks at the Modern Quilt Guild meet up - she is one amazingly creative, organized and energetic woman!  Check out her blog at Craft Nectar.

The Cincinnati MQG hosted a great meet up with lots of wonderful door prizes - thanks ladies for all the fun!  While I was there I also briefly got to meet Jessica of A Little Gray (she designed and made the most darling skirt for the Project Run & Play contest), Rachel of imagine gnats and popular quilter and teacher Anita Grossman Solomon.  Whew!  Quilters are such a wonderful group of people - I can't wait to see some of these lovely people again at Quilt Market and meet some more amazing and talented quilters there.

Back soon with the FABRIC...

Cincinnati Part I

There is so much to tell about our fantastic trip to Cincinnati, I think I'm going to have to break it down into three posts.  First, the quilts; second, the people; third, the fabric.

We were so excited to see the Cincinnati Modern Quilt Guild's exhibit at the International Quilt Festival!  It is my understanding that this is the first time the IQF has included an exhibit of modern quilts.  The Cincinnati MQG challenged it's members to make a modern quilt inspired by the classic Ohio Star quilt block.  Of course, the interpretations were varied and amazing!  I believe there were thirteen quilts included.  I didn't take pictures of all of them, but you can get a pretty good look at most of them here on Heather's blog.


This first quilt is called "Supernova" by Heather Jones.  Heather started the CMQG and was it's first president.  We were lucky enough to spend some time with Heather, but I'll leave that for the people post :)  Heather's quilt was quilted by the amazing Angela Walters.  I'm afraid the spotlights on the quilts make it tough to get good photos of the quilting, but you can see a bit in the lower left corner.  I love Heather's "blowing up" of the Ohio Star block and her limited color scheme -just beautiful!

Next is "Ohio Still" by Sarah Smith.  You know how much I love neutrals.  Some parts of the star blocks almost fade into the background here - I just love it!  Sarah chose colors representing Ohio's land and fields and pastures and sky.  The herringbone centers add wonderful interest to the star centers.

The third quilt I want to show you is Christy Meyer's "Wingin' It."  Don't you just love how the stars overlap each other, yet you can still see each one?  I know this quilt is called "Wingin' It", but, I certainly would have had to meticulously plan what went where to achieve such a stunning result :)

My second favorite exhibit was all of the Twelve By Twelve quilts!  I followed this group of talented art quilters at the beginning of their journey about four years ago.  They have a book out about their first series of quilts made in response to inspiration words (one word picked by each quilter).  Their second series is color focused.  Here is one shot for Lynn:

Many of the exhibits did not allow photography, so that is part of the reason I don't have more pictures.  The other reason is that, while I remembered my phone charger and my laptop cord, I forgot my camera battery charger.  You wouldn't want to see any photos taken with my phone :)  After I took these shots, I had just enough battery left to get one shot of the MQG meet up before the battery quit altogether.  Back soon with a bit about some of the great people we met and the fabric I bought.

Too excited!

 I am leaving in about an hour for the International Quilt Festival in Cincinnati!  I am so excited. It has been quite a few years since I've been to a major quilt show and I can't wait!

I'm going with some others from the Ann Arbor Modern Quilt Guild.  We will be stopping at Fabric Shack on the way to Cincinnati and at Sewn Studio when we get there.  Fabric Shack is apparently having a tent sale! I should probably set myself a budget for fabric purchases, but I won't.

Last night, instead of packing, I made myself a new sunglasses case.  I bought a new spring/summer purse a few weeks ago.  It has a jazzy black and white dot lining.  As you can see, my current sunglasses case just doesn't match :(  What else can I do but make a new one?  Since I don't really have time for experimenting, I'm using my Essential Sunglasses Case pattern that was published in 101 Patchwork Projects and Quilts last year.

There, that's better.  (Sorry about the terrible picture!  As you can see, it was after dark by the time I took the picture.)

Do you have any quilt show plans coming up?

The Modern Patchwork winner is...

Julie!  Julie said:








I love gathering fabrics for a project the way Julie is!  Several of my quilts are made from fat quarters or pieces of fabric of a specific color.  Usually I shop in my stash for what I have and then collect some more to use with it.  The fabrics in A New View and Sedimentary were collected this way.  I love going into a quilt shop with a mission like this - it is specific enough to give me some focus, but vague enough to leave room for fun choices.  I've never tried collecting through swaps, but that sounds like lots of fun too.

Here's the random number generator shot for those of you who like numbers:

Playing leapfrog...

How do you decide what to work on next?  Most of us who make things have long lists of projects we'd like to make.  Deadlines and partially finished projects usually figure heavily in my decisions.  This week, however, this pillow leapfrogged itself past the rest of the list.  Most likely, I allowed it to do that because it combines three items on my list.

1.)  Need new pillows for the living room!  The deep reds of the holiday season that I keep out through February (Valentines Day you know), are now looking totally out of place in April.

2.)  Make a quilt inspired by the work of Yoshiko Jinjenzi - specifically something where the background color in the blocks blends with the background fabric of the quilt and provides interesting results.

3.)  Make a quilt with some of those fabulous Echo by Lotta Jansdotter fat quarters that you couldn't resist last year.

If I do say so myself, I LOVE this pillow!  It doesn't accomplish item #2 quite as well as I'd hoped - I should have made the pieces smaller, but, all in all, I am extremely pleased with it.  It was hard not to use some of the deeper colors from the Echo line.  The navy, orange, golden yellow and deep grey are all so luscious!  But, this is a spring/summer pillow, so they can wait patiently for fall.  The background is Kona Snow.  I quilted it with lines about 1/4" to 3/8" apart using white Aurifil 50 wt thread.

One more pillow to go!

Modern Patchwork!

Yesterday's mail included my copy of the new Modern Patchwork magazine!  I've been waiting and waiting for this special issue to come out so I could share the projects I have in it.

First, I have to say how much I love the quilts on the cover!  How could I not love a grey and yellow quilt with text prints - pretty much impossible.  And the quilt on the wall behind it - FAN-tastic!

There are lots more wonderful projects inside.  The major categories are kitchen & dining, quilts, gifts & accessories, bags & totes and home decor.  There is something for everyone here.  Many of the projects are by people whose names I recognize from various quilting blogs.  However, my favorite quilt in the magazine is by someone whose name I don't know - I'll be checking out her blog soon!

The Carpenter's Star block is one that I've admired since my very early quilting days.  However, and I know how lazy I sound, but I really don't like piecing lots of blocks with lots of pieces.  So, I decided to make one big block instead.  I used a Sweetwater Hometown charm pack and some Moda Grunge for the background and "Twinkle" was born.  It is the perfect baby quilt size at 40" square.  I'm really pleased that the picture in the magazine shows off the quilting very well.   (The picture here is one I took).

One of the projects on my long-term quilting to-do list is a Christmas quilt for my bed.  Wouldn't four big Twinkle blocks be great!  We'll see if and when I get to that one :)

My second project in Modern Patchwork are these coasters.  I always seem to be short of coasters!  (So happy that my partner included some in my PTS7 swap!).

My design constructs the coaster "tops" as one piece, which then gets cut apart into four pieces before layering and quilting.

The lovely publishers of Modern Patchwork (Interweave) sent me an extra copy so I'd love to pass it on to you.

To enter the giveaway, tell me one - just one- of the projects on your long-term quilting to do list.  If you'd like additional chances, follow my blog and/or my Facebook page and tell me about one or both in a separate comment.  Good luck!

PS  I haven't quite caught up with the Facebook Timeline thing yet but I'll be adjusting my page soon :)

Edited to add:  I always forget to say how long the giveaway is open - I'll pick a winner at the end of the day on Saturday, April 7.   Also, if you are a "no-reply blogger" don't forget to include a way I can reach you!  If you aren't sure, check your Blogger profile to see if your email is listed there.

For The Love of Solids 2

I've been meaning to post this for a week or so now!  I received this fantastic package from Yeechi of kirianth in the For the Love of Solids 2 swap.  When Yeechi first posted her ideas in the group on Flickr, my comment was "Be still my heart!"  I just love the colors she chose and the way she used the idea of transparency where the lines of color meet.  The hand stitching and quilting adds the perfect final touch.  Plus, it is reversible!  You can see her photo of both sides here.  I just smile every time I look at it :)
 
I'm using this wonderful piece as a sewing machine cover, but Yeechi is so clever, she added loops on the back side to put the ties thru.  This way, I can take the ties out and use this amazing quilt as a wall hanging or table runner too.  She also included what I have been thinking of as a needle book, but it really is so much more.  It has a pocket inside as well as a felt piece for storing needles and pins, so it is really more like a mini sewing kit. I should put the darling scissors that Lynn gave me for the Pillow Talk Swap in this pocket and I'd be ready to take my sewing on the road!

My package also included two darling little notebooks and a hera marker.  I love little notebooks!  I am always drawn to them in the office supply area and have to tell myself - "no, you have enough paper."  I know I'll fill them up with sketches and ideas in no time.  I've never used a hera marker before so I'm anxious to give it a try.

(Sorry about the distracting grid in the background - my sewing machine sits right in front of a window and I needed to use my cardboard grid to block the light so I could get a halfway decent picture.)