Altered Fabric

Summer quilting

2011-09-02T12:03:00.000-07:00

Lest anyone be under the impression that I am not creating because I haven't been writing, I hereby submit a collection of photos of my summer projects, all quilts for our church's Bags of Love project, made of donated fabrics. I remembered, belatedly, that I could have prevented camera distortion by standing farther away from the quilts when I photographed them. These have all been squared, but the camera distortion, in addition to the tacking to the design wall, makes them look wonky.

Pink Cats

I started this one a year ago and showed it here. It disappeared during a major cleaning session. This baby quilt was made of blocks created by someone else. I sewed them together and added the borders. A helper at church tied it for me. During the time it was lost, it collected some dust that wouldn't shake out, so I had to wash it, and that accounts for its extra poofiness.

Dinosaurs

My quilting buddy, Linda Miller, put this youth-sized quilt together, and I free-motion quilt-outlined the dinosaurs.

Floral Patchwork

Linda had already cut these blocks, so I put them together for another baby quilt.

Happy Flowers

Linda had a lot of scrappy leftovers, so I made this crib-sized happy block quilt.

Jeannie's Quilt

Jeannie Flory is an expert quilter, producing lots of brightly colored quilts. She donated this full-size quilt top. I backed and quilted it.

Hot Checkers

Jeannie also donated a pile of four-patches, and I put them together for this youth-sized quilt.

Mr. Potato Head baker bags

2011-07-10T22:23:00.000-07:00

Microwaved baked potatoes? Ugh. A slight gag reflex ensues. Or at least used to. Along came the potato baker bag, and everything changed. No more wizened, wrinkled, bake-in-a-hurry potatoes. When baked in a quilted bag, potatoes retain their moisture, and -- voila! No wrinkles! And better texture, too.

I went a little overboard on this project, as you can see below. At first I made them in various sizes, depending on how much scrap fabric I had on hand. The Mr. Potato Head bag holds about four standard potatoes (not the Costco size).

If you were to examine one of these, it would be easy to figure how to put it together, but just in case you want detail, here are some basic instructions, but first a word about fabrics. My first potato bag had a muslin lining. Why not? It would be inside and no one would ever see it, right? It turns out the potatoes stain the fabric, and it's just not appetizing even after being washed, so now I use prints from my stash.

I have been warned that polyester thread should not be used because it would melt in the microwave. I have doubts about this, but am passing the word along. If anyone has melted their cotton-wrapped polyester thread while baking potatoes, please tell me about it. Mine is doing fine, but then I bake potatoes only about once a month.

Cut cotton batting, outer fabric, and inner fabric 10 x 22 inches (does not have to be exact, but 22 inches works well because it's half the width of most bolts).
Place fabric right sides together, with the batting on top (or bottom, whichever way goes best through your sewing machine).
Stitch short ends only, using about a 1/2" seam.
Turn right side out so batting is between the two fabrics, press, and top stitch about 1/4" from both seamed ends.
(Optional steps) Add a few lines of quilting or an appliqued design, if you wish. I thought Mr. Potato Head was cute, though I know he is a copyrighted design, so I will definitely not be selling these. After fusing on the scrap fabrics that make up Mr. PH, I stitched around the edges twice, using thread that matched his nose. Since Mr. PH is not an anatomically correct potato or person, I figured the stitching could be folksy, so I purposely made the stitching wander a little.
This is the length of the fabric just after top-
stitching the ends,
before being folded into a bag.
Mr. Potato Head, after fusing, before outline stitching
Form the bag. Right sides together: Turn the bottom end up 2 inches and pin. This is the flap. Watch out for wrinkles in the folds of the fabric.
Fold the remaining length in half, right sides together, so that the seam of the other end is 1/4" from the edge of the flap's fold. I know. I should have taken a photo of these two steps. Pin. Be sure to watch out for those inner -- soon-to-be outer -- wrinkles. My philosophy: A few wrinkles are okay, big ones need surgery.
Stitch both sides. I used a 3/8" seam, but it doesn't matter, just somewhere in that ballpark.
Trim edges if needed.
Finish edges with zig zag, serging, or binding.
Turn right side out.
Bake your potatoes. Wash and dry them, place in bag. I don't think they need poking. Bake as you usually do in your microwave. Or as I do: Nuke on high for 3 minutes. Turn over and nuke on high for another 3 minutes. Depending on how many you are baking, continue until they are cooked through.

The evolution of the potato baker bag: First I used scraps,
then found potato fabric, and finally had fun making Mr. Potato Head.

Jam without (much) guilt

2011-06-29T09:53:00.000-07:00

Blackberries from my garden

I am probably one of the foremost toast eaters in the world, and as such, I like jam, especially homemade jam. But there's always been the problem of All That Sugar. It just can't be that good for you. After years of testing every low or no-sugar pectin that came along, I have finally found one that works great, apparently every time, at least in my experience.

MCP, which I have used for years, includes in each box a list of jam recipes requiring squinting or a magnifying glass in order to read the EXACT amounts of fruit and sugar needed, different for each kind of fruit. The amount of sugar called for equals or exceeds the amount of fruit. If you can't find a recipe for your specific fruit, pomegranate, for example, you have to go online and find one.

The fruit I use never needs as much sweetness as regular pectin apparently needs in order to set properly, but when I tested it using less sugar, the jam did not set at all. I also tried Sure-Jell low sugar, but was not pleased with the results. Even when I followed the recipe exactly, I had setting failure at least half the time, meaning I had a lot of jars of fruit syrup, nice for waffles, but not what I had in mind.

Enter Ball Low or No-Sugar Pectin (see jar in third photo below). This pectin has only one recipe! No more reading a list of recipes in very small print. It's all on the label; you can't lose it. Another thing I like is that I can make a large batch all at once; no more having to do just four cups of fruit at a time, and I've used it for over a year now, since before it was sold in its current packaging, have made dozens of jars of jam, with no setting failures.

As per instructions on the label, for each 2 cups of fruit, add 1/3 c unsweetened fruit juice and 1 1/2 tablespoons pectin. Blueberries, peaches, and sweet cherries require 3 tsp lemon juice. After bringing this mixture to a boil, you add up to 1/2 c sugar per 2 c fruit, if you wish -- less than 1/4 the amount of sugar needed for regular pectin.

How I made my berry jam:

I picked my berries using latex gloves, since my skin hates those little hairy stickers on the vines.
I rinsed the berries by pouring them into a bowl full of water, sloshing them gently, then pouring off the water. The few ladybugs inhabiting my picking floated to the top, and I took them out to the garden. Ladybugs a wonderful, but not for eating.
I used my trusty Victorio strainer to strain out the seeds, then ran the seed pulp through four times in order to get most of the fruit off the seeds, giving me an extra 2 cups of thick juice. I tried to run the seeds through a fifth time, but they jammed in the spiral. This caused a momentary panic during cleanup when I couldn't get the plastic spiral out of the screen, solved by my putting the screen on the floor, holding its lip with my feet, and pulling up steadily on the spiral. It worked. Whew!
The strained berries amounted to 11 cups, but I did all my figuring based on 10 cups. This meant I would need to multiply the recipe ingredients by 5, since the recipe is given per 2 cups fruit. 5 x 1/3 c = 2 2/3 c unsweetened juice, 5 x 1 1/2 tablespoon = 7 1/2 tablespoons pectin. According to my Android app, 7 1/2 tablespoons = 1/2 cup, so that is the measurement I used. Since my berries were somewhat tart due to this year's cool weather, I chose to add the full 1/2 c sugar per 2 c juice.
I chose white grape juice as my non-sweetened liquid, which adds natural sweetening without noticeably changing the flavor. I added my calculated 2 2/3 cups of juice.
I whisked in the 1/2 cup pectin slowly. This pectin does not dissipate as easily as other powdered pectins. In my last batch I got lumps of pectin, even after processing (strange to come across while eating on toast), since I was not careful enough to stir in the pectin slowly.
I brought the mixture to a boil.
I added a dab of unsalted butter to reduce foam, though there was not much to start with.
Added the sugar, brought back to a boil.
Boiled 1 minute.

All the rest was as per usual - add jam to sterilized jars, put on sterilized lids, etc. The pectin sets slowly, takes up to even 2 weeks, according to the label. It's never taken that long for me.

My batch that started out with 11 cups of fruit made 16 cups of jam, but since I had only 12 8-oz jars on hand, I used a quart jar for the last 4 cups. I took that quart jar on a camping trip this last weekend, and most of it was consumed by 9 persons in one pancake breakfast. Yum!

The flavor of this jam is very good, undiluted by unnecessary sugar. You can pile it on your toast and waffles as thick as you want, and not feel guilty for consuming all the sugar you might normally eat. The set is slightly softer than high-sugar jam, but that just makes it easier to spread.

I hope every jam maker starts using Ball Low or No-Sugar Pectin, because I don't want it to disappear, like some of my other all-time favorites, off the market shelves for lack of sales. Ball has the same pectin in packets for small batches for those of you not inundated with seasonal fruit. They also have regular pectin in the same lovely green packaging, so be sure to read the label and get the kind you want.

I'd love to say I'm getting paid by Ball for this article, but I'm not. Maybe I can persuade them.

Puppy quilt

2011-04-14T07:31:00.000-07:00

Once in awhile I succumb to the temptation to purchase a panel. This one, if I remember correctly, was part of the Hound Puppies series, though I may be only giving a close approximation of the actual name.

Of course, I can't leave the panel as is; I chopped it up and added wonky borders, maybe not wonky enough. I have decided that if you are only a little bit off, it looks like a mistake. If you're way off, it must be on purpose!

The blocks on are my design wall (below), where I am trying to decide how to put it all together. I added the black paw print as sashing, and once I have the last couple of blocks sewn on, I will step back and see how close to rectangular the quilt actually is.

Rice bags (second edition)

2010-12-13T16:37:00.000-08:00

When you make a project more than once, you find out new ways of doing it. I just finished making seven rice bags, some for me, some for guests, some for gifts, and this is the way I did it this time:

Materials:

1/3 yd fleece OR 1/3 yard muslin plus the same amount decorative fabric of your choice with which to make a removable, washable "pillow case" for your muslin rice bag. You should be able to make three or four bags with 1/3 yard of 45" or 60" fabric.
5-6 cups short or medium grain white rice, or your grain of choice. See discussion of different grains, #8 below.
Large-mouth funnel (makes pouring in rice SO much easier). A narrow funnel won't work because the rice gets too crowded to flow through.

Directions:

Measure and cut a rectangle of fabric 12 x 15 inches. This does not have to be exact, but it should be exactly rectangular.
Fold in half - you choose which way you want to fold it. Short is good for feet; long is good for warming your neck.
Using a tight and narrow zigzag stitch and 3/8" seam, sew right sides together, leaving an opening on one narrow end just wide enough for your funnel.
Trim corners.
Turn right side out.
Stitch again 1/4 from seams and folded edge, remembering to leave the opening open. This second stitching is VERY IMPORTANT. Prevents rice leakage.
Pour in 5-6 cups of rice. When you fill the bag, you want it floppy, but not so thin that it loses heat quickly.
Short or medium grain rice works well; it is scent free, and the rounded grains move well and are less poky than long grain rice. Flax seed has a wonderful feel, but smells like linseed oil when heated. Potpourri is an interesting addition for foot warmers, but I wouldn't want that perfume next to my face. I have a buckwheat neck bag that works very well, but it smells like pancakes when warmed. Millet or barley are other options.
Sew opening closed with a tight top stitch, making sure all rice grains are at the other end of the bag! Repeat 1/8" close to the first stitching.

To use:

Microwave for 2-3 minutes.
Tuck bag into the foot area of your bed 10-30 minutes before you go to bed.
Your tootsies will be warm and toasty. It's amazing how long these bags keep their heat!

NOTE:

I have received warnings and recommendations from several people that the rice can dry out over time and should not be over heated for fear of causing the rice to smolder and start a fire. The recommendation given by a couple of friends is to microwave for no more than 90 seconds. I have microwaved my bag for 2.5 - 3 minutes almost every night for three winters, and it comes out of the microwave moist. I put the bag on the chair by the bed during the day, so it has plenty of access to room air during the day - probably the source of the humidity, which sounds like it's a good thing. I suspect my rice bags are larger and can therefore take a longer time in the microwave. Take heed, however.

Little pink bags

2010-07-09T16:17:00.000-07:00

Charitable stitchers often receive, as donations, unfinished quilt projects. The ladies at church, when they saw these blocks come in the donations pile, immediately passed them off to me, figuring I could do something with them. I made a baby quilt with most of them, well, finished piecing the top, anyway. Still have to find border fabric. And with the remainder of the blocks I made these little bags. They are about 7x8 inches with a zipper opening. I find this type of bag handy for taking on a cruise - you can carry your card and camera without having to deal with your big bulky tote. They are also good for transporting a few CDs, postcards of your travels, and your cell phone. The biggest interest I've had so far, however, is from little girls and from people who want to buy for little girls.

I am selling these bags to buy supplies for making more charity quilts for children in hospital or protective custody. Ten dollars plus shipping is the price, but I can't ship until my vacation is over! If you have questions, you can reach me at califgold at, what else, geemail in the meantime. In a few weeks I will advertise them elsewhere as well.

Eleven dyed sheets

2010-07-08T10:52:00.000-07:00

A lovely warm day spent dyeing white and whitish sheets in the shade of my sycamore tree produced this rainbow of fabrics -- to be used for the Vacation Bible School costumes for the kiddies, run by my church next week.

One of the frustrations I have had as a newbie dyer is the plethora of dyeing instructions available in books and online, most of which do not give a person a step-by-step method to follow, instead getting sidelined into, "if you want to do this..." "or if you want to do that..." -- leaving me a bit confused. I had a great time last summer making all the fun low-immersion dye projects in Anne Johnston's Color by Accident (a book I always remember as being titled Dyeing by Accident, so to all to whom I've recommended this book, I apologize) -- but it didn't help me with measuring proportions when it came to dyeing sheets in sizes from twin to King.

Dharma instructions were good, but left me with questions, and Paula Burch's site answered tons of questions, but still did not have the sequential how-to information I needed. I guess what I was looking for was a "Dyeing for Dummies" instruction manual.

I finally happened upon PRO Chemical's instructions for immersion dyeing (not low-water). Ahhh, exactly what I needed. I decided to pretend each of my donated sheets weighed one pound dry, soaked the sheets in water, laid them all in my hammock to drip while I measured out the various dye concentrates (mask firmly in place), figured out each of my ten new IKEA wastebaskets held about 3.5 gallons, barely enough to manage 2.5 gallons of dye liquid, but went ahead. I dyed and stirred, and then stacked the wastebaskets in three tall leaning towers to batch in the sun. The fit in the wastebaskets made stirring a little bit of a challenge, but since I didn't require an absolutely even result in the color, it worked out fine for me. And... surprise, surprise, surprise -- everything turned out exactly how I wanted!

I will watch the leaves on the sycamore tree, to see if they turn the same colors as my sheets, since all the washout from the sheets saturated the ground under one side of the tree... (j/k)

Trusted rusted busted pants

2010-06-25T14:30:00.000-07:00

Part 2

Well, hmmm... rusting my trusted pants didn't turn out anything like I expected. I don't know exactly what I expected, but I didn't want them to look like I'd been sliding around in the barnyard. Ah well, they have now reached the "nothing can hurt these pants" category, and nothing can stop me now!

Photo 1: The first wrapping didn't produce much rust, probably because I had twisted the fabric too tightly before wrapping the rust pole. The main spot of dark rust that resulted was right in the crotch, not a spot where anyone wants a big brown splotch!

Photo 2: The back of the pants after a vertical roll around the pole on two separate marinate-in-rust occasions.

Photo 3: The front of the pants showing the bleed through of the rust from the back.

I am going to do to the fronts exactly what I did to the backs, and then some around the hems, and wash-wash-wash, and then figure out how else I can bust these rusted trusted pants. Progress (or regress) to be reported here. I'm thinking paint, buttons, fringe, "interesting pockets." Someday, maybe very soon, someone will come across these in a bin of tossed clothing and wonder...

Fusing experiment

2010-06-25T14:02:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I worked on my Mosaic Quilt, now dubbed "Z's Under the Trees," due to travels, my garden, midday heat in the studio, and other distractions. The main distraction was that I wanted to outline the details in black thread, but not being sure how it would look, I didn't want to ruin it without doing a test of the technique first.

To test it, of course I had to make another mosaic quilt. This one is from a photo of flowers I took on the island of St. Thomas a couple years ago. They were against a blue wall, but I took out the blue in Photoshop, because I didn't want to use up all my blue ink when printing.

After printing the photo (11x14), I taped a firm but translucent interfacing on top of the paper, leaving the details of the photo perfectly visible for fusing on my bits of randomly trimmed, hand-dyed fabrics. I chose to trim curves on the pieces representing the petals and leaves.

Next step: Stitching. I took off the paper before doing any sewing. I wanted the stitching lines to be loose, not exact. Easy peasy, I can do that! I used very thick thread I had on an old spool, and my Janome 6600 handled it just fine. The interfacing was firm enough to work as a great stabilizer, and the tiny bit of puckering was easily pressed out. I fused on thin batting and did echo quilting with monofilament, and zigzagged the edges - OK for an experiment, but definitely not great, as far as I am concerned.

Here is the finished test sample. I think I will dabble with adding a bit paint here and there.

As far as adding black stitching lines to the much larger Z's Under the Trees, I am going to go ahead with it, but with trepidation, especially on the face details. Maybe will use a color other than black in those areas.

QuiltArt at 15

2010-06-25T13:28:00.000-07:00

Curved Stairs

15x15

This is my submission for the Quiltart.com Quinceañero.

Techniques/Materials/Methods: My own hand-dyed cottons, paper pieced, fused, beads, paint, angelina, free-motion quilting. From an original photo by Allen Hrenyk, used by permission.

"Curved Stairs" includes fifteen levels on which I've FMQ'd the numbers from one to fifteen, in addition to the words I put on the banisters. It includes some of the techniques I've been inspired to use through reading the many helpful messages from the Quiltart list. Without Quiltart, I probably never would have tried dyeing or painting fabric, and now I know it's tons of fun! I have only been a member of Quiltart for about four years, but I benefit from all fifteen years, since I can search the archives for answers to my questions on just about any quilt-related topic. Feliz cumpleaños, Quiltart.com!

Rusting the trusted pants

2010-06-16T11:49:00.000-07:00

PART I

Some dark spots appeared on the rear of my favorite comfy pants, making it appear I had l sat one haunch upon some tiny spots of fresh tar. Not so good, couldn't even wear them to work in the garden. Several attempts at spot removal were unsuccessful, so the next direction for a problem like this is the If You Can't Beat 'em, Join 'em philosophy. I enjoyed so much my first rust experiment that now I am expanding into clothing (remembering that perhaps there will be a discomfort factor due to the rust, but that remains to be seen). This is all experimental. I don't know how it will turn out!

Since my first experiment went so well, I am using the same rusty iron rod and the same vinegar I used last time. First I took my dampened pants out of the washing machine, where yet again the black spots had not come out, and painted both sides of the pants with vinegar.

I twisted the pant legs. The smudges on the pants are due to my having handled the rusty rod, and loose bits of rust sticking to my hands and transferring to the fabric. Oh! Idea! I could probably scrape this rod and make myself some rust paint. Hmmm...

I coiled the twisted pant legs around the rod.

I covered everything with a couple of white plastic bags and recycled some previously used painter's tape in order to keep the fabric in close contact with the rusted rod. Now I will let it stew in its juices until I have a chance to get back to it, early next week.

I haven't tried twisting or coiling before, so am curious as to how the rust pattern will look. I anticipate at least one, possibly two, more rounds of rusting on these pants. We'll see...

Fabric postcards

2010-06-10T17:22:00.001-07:00

Here are the faces of a couple of the fabric postcards I sent off yesterday. I kinda like the Dad's Day one!

Inchies

2010-06-10T07:09:00.000-07:00

After making my pile of fabric postcards, I had scraps of Peltex left over, too small for anything else, so I fused fabric scraps on both sides, quilted, and chopped into Inchies. Next step: satin finish all the edges.

This is a great project for finishing up dibs and dabs of threads on all my old wooden spools. For instance, I have lots of "Belding Corticelli Pure Silk size A" and lots of nylon, including an old spool of "Heminway Bartlett Made for xxPont" (Dupont?) Nylon 490 that sold for ten cents. I have no idea how old it is, but I am guessing at least 80 years. I love having - and using - old threads for Inchies! Sure, I have a few battles with breakage; uncooperative threads get moved to the bobbin.

Fabric postcards

2010-06-08T06:29:00.001-07:00

This stack of postcards represents a portion of the cards I took to the post office yesterday for mailing. I goofed when putting on the stamps, forgetting that some went to Canada, some to Australia, and some to the United Kingdom, in addition to all those going to the USA. When I got to the counter at the PO, I laid out all the cards needing extra stamps, beyond the 64 cents already stuck on them (20 cents extra due to the non machinability of the cellophane envelopes), the postmaster immediately called an additional person to work the counter so that all the people lined up behind me wouldn't be ruining their lunch hour.

He happened to notice I had forgotten to write a note on one of them -- don't know why I didn't notice the big blank spot! -- so I will mail out the 29th in the swap today. In addition, I sent out a birthday fabric postcard to my mother, and am creating a Father's Day and friendship card today.

It's been an "fun and educational," as they say, but I don't know that I will do a big swap again. I put a lot of work into mine, and there are so many other projects I want to get into! I have enough of a collection now, I think.

What color is the Golden Gate Bridge?

2010-06-01T15:22:00.001-07:00

This color, April, 2010. It always looks a little oxidized to me, except when it's wet. Dusty orange-orange-red might be a good name for it!

Strike the band

2010-05-16T18:33:00.000-07:00

The charity quilts we make at the church are always a challenge, because we like to use the fabrics that are donated to us. Sometimes it is difficult to find enough matching fabrics to make an entire quilt, but the challenge is part of what makes it fun! My November 30 blog post detailed the whys and wherefores of the words I pieced for this quilt.

I usually use a colorful print fabric for the backing, but not being able to find anything that didn't clash, this one has a muslin backing - muslin with an "N," that is. I have seen several amusing references to quilts having a "muslim" backing - and that I like to think is due to spell checkers and not quilter-writers.

This hilarious misunderstanding about the word "muslin" came out awhile ago on one of those TV Judge shows. The plaintiff was having a custom dress made for a wedding, and complained that the "Egyptian" had not been made when she expected it. "Egyptian?" What on earth? It turns out she, like many spell checkers, thought the word was "muslim," and by extension her brain turned it into "Egyptian." Maybe she was thinking Egyptian cotton. (?)

Fiber mosaic pt. 2

2010-04-27T19:50:00.000-07:00

OK, got the image uploaded. I wonder why we have to go through an intervening step now instead of having the option of doing it in one step from a hard drive... Will stop complaining now! I am sure I will get used to it, and if I get over my bad attitude, I think I'll recognize the benefits that are already peeking around the corner.

The last part of the mosaic was more exacting than what I did previously, so it took a lot longer to fill up less space with the little, precisely-trimmed, fused pieces.

I am playing with my brand new Bamboo tablet deciding on thread details. I don't think what I plan to do can be legally called thread "painting," but will see what evolves.

Fiber mosaic

2010-04-20T20:08:00.000-07:00

In between running back and forth from the house to studio beneath the thundering sky, pouring rain, and avoiding falling hail, I added a lot of little fiber pieces to my quilt mosaic. Here you can see that the lines on the paper are clearly visible through the woven interfacing I used as backing and stabilizer.

I was almost afraid to start on this project, sure I would make a mistake, and then I remembered what I used to tell my students when I taught them how to use polymer clay -- "THERE ARE NO MISTAKES!" So I took myself out of frozen-in-fear mode, kept reminding myself of my own advice, and plunged ahead. Below is what I accomplished yesterday. I will be making some changes, but I'm okay with it so far. Actually, it's much better than I expected, and I am thrilled! It's the first time I've tried anything like a fiber mosaic.

My goal today was to finish the background. When I stepped back, I didn't like some of what I had applied, and was pleased to find it wasn't too difficult to pull individual pieces off the interfacing. I do not have before and after pictures.

I still had some energy left at the end of applying the background, so I started on Mom, napping on the ground.

I'm thinking that instead of giving her dark socks, maybe I should just extend the pant legs down to the shoes. Her shirt turned out a little stripey, but who's to know I didn't plan it that way? I think I will also take out the bunch of grass above her arm, and make her arm color lighter.

All that's left is Dad and the chair -- and then, I think, thread painting to add detail and hold down the pieces. I've never done thread painting either. All this experimentation almost hurts!

A side note: While industriously chopping little bits of fuse-backed fabric, I ran over the tip of my finger with the rotary cutter. A gush of blood ran from my finger while I looked stupidly at the little disk of skin sitting on my cutting mat. Have you ever tried to apply a bandaid to wound where the blood is coming so fast the bandaid won't stick? It's a tough job, and on top of that, I was trying to stick the cut off piece back on my finger. I needed another hand to help me, but eventually got it done, after one round when, on closely looking at the whorls on the cut-off tip, realized I needed to rotate it.

About ten years ago I cut off the tip of my finger (these types of incidents happen when you are constantly thinking of what comes NEXT instead of being focused on what you're doing NOW) -- I forget the context, but it wasn't quilting -- stuck the bit of skin back on, put on a really neat bandaid I had just purchased, and three days later when I took the bandaid off, the skin was fully attached back on my finger! Those bandaids were so miraculous every time I used them that I went to get some more just last week. They apparently are not sold any more. Too bad. They were so good - but very expensive.

Projects in the works

2010-04-06T10:29:00.000-07:00

Architectural photos, and I consider the Waterwheel in that category, translate well into textile art. I am currently working on another piece from a photo of a Curved Staircase. My challenge to myself is to branch out in my color choices, since I've noticed I lean towards greens, reds, and blues, and even in my black and white projects, I always have a touch of red. My first branching out was the waterwheel -- turquoise and orange, and the staircase is mainly monochromatic yellow-green, with a touch of the complementary red-violet. It is pieced and fused and needs finishing touches; I don't know what yet. Photos soon.

Another project, in paper form so far, is inspired by this door photo, one I took in the Napa Valley near Bothe Park last year.

At first I was leaning toward making it surreal with bright colors, but when I looked at the result on my computer, there again were my favorite greens, reds, and blues. So now I'm thinking I might steer away from saturated colors and experiment with a range of browns and tans, not exactly like the photo, but more realistic than my rainbow ideas.

I don't know! I don't know what I'm doing! I'm lost and confused! But I'm having fun pretending to be an artist, and that's what counts.

Another project in the works is from the photo of my Venerable Ancestors Napping, posted last August in my Mrs. Noodles blog.

The first step was to again use Quilt Assistant to translate the photo into lines.

Pages printed and taped together.

Enhanced with a sharpie.

This one will be 24x24, and I'm going to try fiber mosaics. Lots of little fabric pieces. Like the Pizza Factory, it'll be something like, I'll "toss em, they're awesome!" Well, one can hope. Again, this is all new stuff to me. But since I've always told my students, you can't make a mistake in art, I will plunge ahead, and if I don't like it, I can doctor it, or laminate it and make it into something to wipe my feet on. Oh no! Can't do that! That's Mom and Dad on there, after all...

I'm thinking I will attach this paper pattern under my translucent stabilizer, and the lines will show through so that I can work directly on top of the stabilizer without having to redraw lines on the stabilizer. Those who have done this before probably wouldn't be as iffy about this as I am.

On another front, a friend wants to donate some quilt tops to the charities I work with, where we make quilts for homeless families and for children in the oncology ward at the hospital. I am thrilled, because her quilts are so bright and cheery and are perfect for our projects. I can't wait to show the ladies our new bonanza, as soon as they arrive.

What direction am I heading in my Altered Fabric life? Maybe teaching, I think, once I get a little more experience and confidence. All I need to do is advertise a project to teach, and see if anyone shows up. Now I'm trying to figure out what project they'd like to do. Members of the Guilty Quilty Girls Quilting Guild and Stitch & Itch Friendship Garden Club have a special "in" for participating in any upcoming classes.

Waterwheel

2010-03-18T21:10:00.000-07:00

Waterwheel

15" x 15"

You can see the threads still hanging (waiting for sore finger to heal before burying them), but I couldn't resist the urge to "show and tell." I converted a photo (photographer: Allen Hrenyk, used by permission) to a paper-pieced pattern by using the free software, Quilt Assistant. The aspect ratio was changed because I needed a square, but I'm sure I would like it better with the original aspect ratio. The fabrics are my hand-dyed fabrics. The photo was taken by a friend who gave me permission to use it as a basis for quilt design.

Quilt Assistant was difficult for me to get started with because the instructions are a bit sketchy, but now that I've used it once, I've got an urge to do another one right away! I learned a lot, especially on seeing some of the problems in the above design that glare out at me. One thing is that if a line looks a little off to you in the design, it'll look WAY off in the final quilt. I thought I'd be able to easily adjust while sewing, but it turned out not to be so.

Timeline: One afternoon designing on the computer, two days piecing (117 pieces; the program counts 'em for you), one afternoon taking out and replacing pieces I didn't like because of the colors I'd originally chosen, one evening quilting.

Silly face fabric postcard

2010-03-16T22:48:00.000-07:00

I wanted to collect fabric postcards -- stiff little quilts that go through the mail like a postcard but require more postage - so I joined the Trading Fabric Post Cards Yahoo Group.

The first swap in the group that I signed up for is the Silly Face swap. It's turned out to be a one-on-one swap, and this is the card I made for it. Belatedly I remembered I should have made a duplicate for myself in order to add to my collection. This little lady either has leafy eyes or leaves over her eyes, trying to get rid of eye wrinkles, probably. Her hair is couched novelty yarn. She will be going to Michigan tomorrow. Hope she doesn't get too cold.

I'm looking forward to a larger swap, where I can send out a dozen or two and get that many back.

Painted cane

2010-03-16T22:22:00.000-07:00

When I promised to paint flowers on Lillie's cane, I didn't know it was an aluminum cane. That stymied me for about two months, but then I just went ahead and did it. I scratched up the aluminum surface with steel wool, sprayed on black Krylon, painted flowers (acrylic paint mixed with a little gesso to make it more opaque) and sprayed on a couple coats of clear Krylon. I know the paint will scratch off. Perhaps I'll check into automotive paint next time. Suggestions welcome!

Great Grandma's block, pieced

2010-03-11T09:34:00.000-08:00

The challenge was to use four colors in the last round, and I think I more than met the challenge! I wanted to use little blocks the same size Great-grandma used in the center block 100 years ago. The piecing has been done for a couple weeks, but finishing the quilt has been interrupted by a fabulous cruise to Mexico, and by unseasonable cold weather, making heating the Hideaway studio more expen$ive than I wanted to pay for at the time.

Though the photo above looks as if the quilt is in final form, I have not yet quilted it nor bound it. Not bound, you ask? It looks bound! Yes, that's the magic of Photoshop. I added a black line around the outside to see what it will look like when finished.

Now I have approximately sixty-three other ideas I want to try soon...

How not to change a light bulb

2010-02-23T23:00:00.000-08:00

I thought I'd pop in here and write a short blurb on how not to change a sewing machine light bulb, but then I looked at the clock and realized it is past the time when my brain is at par - which was the problem when I changed the light bulb yesterday. Never fear, everyone is alive. Details next time maybe!

Felting

2010-02-17T19:21:00.000-08:00

Since there are so many projects out there calling, calling, calling... wanting me to try this, try that, I thought I'd add another to the list: Felting.* The above woolens came from the local thrift shop, photo taken after they came out of the drier. I should have taken a picture before I felted them, but believe me, they are 1/2 to 1/3 their original size. I am not mentioning the plaid blazer I thought was wool, but wasn't, and whose lint filled the washer drain and the drier lint catcher with its nasty shreddings and did not shrink or felt at all.

The two sweaters on the left were handknit and felted the best. The remaining three woolen items were commercially made; the orange jacket (formerly salmon, don't know why the color changed) is the only woven item and felted the least. I might run a couple of these through the process again.

Next affordable item on my wish list: felting needles and some roving.

Plan: Make handbags of the above. I think the sleeves would make a number of cute little cell phone or camera bags. The felt purse projects are now lined up in proper order behind a dozen or so others. Strange thing, though, about my orderly plans. Sometimes projects jump queue, and next thing you know, lovely chaos!

*To felt a wool item, wash with soap in hot water, and dry in hot drier.

Foundation for fabric postcards

2010-02-11T08:04:00.000-08:00

A few days ago I posted the four snowmen fabric postcards I made for a swap. In looking through my cell phone gallery of photos just now, I noticed I had taken a shot of the background made of cut-up fabrics fused to Peltex. Since this is a cell phone picture, the colors look dingier than they actually are. You can even see the shadow me holding up the camera to take the picture!

After this was all fused and quilted, I could barely bring myself to chop it up for postcards, but I ended up with enough for ten cards and a pile of inchies.

The theme for this piece was January/winter. Though winters in my part of California are the greenest time of year (grasses start turning gold in late spring), my memories of winters elsewhere are of icy blues, bare browns, and warm plaids, but always in our hearts we have the promise of spring and flowers.

Quilt - "Christmas Boxes"

2010-02-09T16:32:00.000-08:00

Five-inch swapped squares form the centers of the blocks for "Christmas Boxes," the quilt I finished today - number three of four of my Works in Progress (WIPs). Here is the back:

Just as I was beginning to think I was reaching the end of my WIPs, I realized there are two more in the works, and really another, if I can persuade myself to get out of the denial stage.

"Do not buy any more fabric until the WIPs are finished, do not buy any more fabric until the WIPs are finished, do not buy any more fabric until the WIPs are finished," I keep telling myself. But it does no good; I succumbed to the alluring charms of eleven different plaids and stripes while at the Folsom Quilt Show earlier this week.

Fiber postcards - Snowmen

2010-02-05T13:06:00.000-08:00

I participated in a winter-themed postcard swap. My cards are like real little quilts, with fused surface fabrics, a thin layer of batting, quilting, Peltex to make it stiff, fabric backing, and the card is satin-stitched around the edges. On these I also did free-motion stitching of the word "Winter" - going over it three times to make it visible. I was surprised, in this swap, to receive in trade three cards that didn't involve padding or quilting, but I guess "fiber postcard" isn't, by definition, a "quilted postcard."

I wonder if there is a "quilted postcard" exchange anywhere out there...

Quilt - "Softscape"

2010-02-03T13:02:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I finished another of my scrappy Works In Progress. I call it "Softscape," a term for the plant portion of a landscape. I shouldn't say this quilt is completely finished, because I still need to weave in the ends of the quilting threads; for some reason I never mind doing that. These fabrics were leftover from the Aster-go-round quickie quilt I made last June. Naturally, I did not have quite enough scraps left over, so I had to buy more flower prints to complete this one, thereby defeating the purpose of "using up the stash."

So what to do? All this floral fabric, and little inclination to do another flowery quilt. The quilt backing saved me from having to add the florals to my dwindling storage space - I made the backing of big and little patches of floral fabric; the larger pieces are older fabric that was given to me from several sources. In addition, I made the binding out of five different fabrics. I like the effect.

The first photo was taken at night, and the second in the daylight, that one a better representation of the actual colors in the quilt (and walls).

This quilt does not yet have a destination, but I am thinking, "back bedroom."

Next goal: Sandwich and quilt Christmas quilt. Starting today.

Quilt: Books I Have Read

2010-01-25T23:18:00.000-08:00

I suppose that if you turned this quilt on its side, it would be the "stacked coins" traditional pattern, but since I'm putting it the other way, it looks like books on shelves to me, and that's why I'm calling it Books I Have Read. All the fabrics except the border were in my scrap bin, leftovers from other projects. Once I decided it looked like books on shelves, I scrounged through six or seven quilt shops before I found what I wanted for the border fabric - printed words - in a quilt shop in Napa. I had to have a very wide border in order to make it big enough to cover my double doors.

Next step: Get a track system for hanging it so that it will insulate the room (Warm Window fabric serves as batting and backing) on very cold and very hot days. When not in use, it can slide aside and serve as simple wall decoration. Photo to come when that is done.

I am SOOOO glad I don't have to manhandle this stiff and heavy thing through my machine any more!

A wrestling match

2010-01-18T19:42:00.000-08:00

This ambitious project of mine, the insulating quilt, "Books I Have Read," that I plan to hang on a track over the double doors in The Hideaway studio, was horrible to quilt. On the fun scale, quilting it ranked somewhere down near "root canal" and "leg cramps."

"Books I Have Read" is seven feet square (84x84), and backed with the Warm Window insulating layers, it is the heaviest and stiffest thing I have ever pushed through a sewing machine. I did only minimal quilting, long wavy horizontal lines varying from two to seven inches apart, but it still took me several days to quilt, because it was so exhausting.

I started out with the quilt rolled, but that meant I had to hoist the stiff roll up over my shoulder, while still fighting the tendency of the heavy folds to pull downward and refuse to move evenly through the sewing machine. I enlisted an extra chair to hold fabric on my side of the machine, in addition to the extra table behind the sewing machine. The roll was still difficult to manage, so when I could, I laid the fabric to the left of the machine flat, continued to fight gravity since my table was not big enough to hold it all, and was forced to stitch only a foot or so at a time before needing to stop and engage in battle with the quilt, forcing it to bend to my will. I was NOT going to let it win, and it didn't. I am the champion!

Now I need a liniment rub.

Next up (after binding): Research track systems at interior decorating and garage door supply houses. I want this thing to slide out, completely flat, to one side so that it will serve as a wall hanging during times of the year when I don't need insulation from heat or cold.

Fiber portrait - a break from the routine

2010-01-07T22:31:00.000-08:00

If no one missed me here, I missed myself, but I have a good excuse: I was spoiled in Colorado during the holidays. Family there all have high-speed internet and new computers. I came back home and connected at my top available speed of 28.8 kbps, and it was like trying to crawl in gooey goo after having soared through sunny blue sky. Hey, if anyone should ask me to marry him, I think one important factor would need to be determined before I gave my answer: Does he have high-speed internet? Ha!

Yesterday, before meeting with the Guilty Quilty Girls Friendship Garden Stitch and Itch Club at my place in the evening, I had the urge to try something new instead of finishing any of my Works In Progress, so I threw together the fused piece below, from a picture of my daughter trying to look shocked. I used scraps of fabric I had on hand for this test run. Pay no attention to the background; that's just what was on my design wall at the time. If it looks too paint-by-numberish, scoot back from your computer ten feet or so.

But if you, as I suspect, did not move back from your computer monitor far enough to get a blended view, here's another view, below. The face looks great from a distance, don't you think?

Experiments are so much fun.

I am currently working on a quilt I have named "Books I Have Read." It is going to be backed with Warm Window insulating fabric and hang in front of the cold-producing double doors in my Hideaway studio. Now what would a quilt called "Books I Have Read" look like? You will see. I am not excited about the outcome, but it will be useful, and most of it came from my scrap box. My plan is to give it pizazz by adding embellishments and applique to it as time goes by.

Procrastination on the construction front

2009-12-16T13:05:00.000-08:00

I'm late! I'm late! For a very important date! (I think the White Rabbit says that). What am I late for? *think think think*... Oh yeah - Christmas presents. I am getting ever closer to having to pass out those dreaded IOUs to the little nephews instead of handing them their quillows, which I am sure they will at least use for awhile, and possibly enjoy, even if they don't fit in the toy category.

As a kid I used to be somewhat disgusted with anything practical when it came to Christmas presents, and when it came to clothing, well, that was quite low on my list of desires. I wanted something that would give me hours of pleasure (e.g. a toy or paints), not just keep me looking decent. Things changed when I was about 12. The first item of clothing I appreciated at Christmas was size 28AAA. Mom has a weird sense of humor, wrapping that item and putting it under the tree for the whole family to watch me open. Fortunately I was not alone; my sister received the same present that Christmas. We did not model our gifts for the family.

Back to the salt mines (deadlines caused by procrastination remove some of the fun of creating).

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Piece out

2009-11-30T14:24:00.000-08:00

I stopped by Lazy Gal Quilting's blog, a quilter whose quilting philosophy closely matches mine, though she's had the courage to be more free about it than I have. I looked at the "incredible" heading to her blog, and decided that was just what I needed to make my current charity quilt more interesting.

I took off the boring borders I had originally sewn on and instead will be inserting these words within each border of the music-themed quilt. I would have liked to have made my letters more irregular, but I was working with a scarcity of fabric and a bunch of 1" strips, so I just used what I had. I quickly sketched out the letters on scratch paper and worked out how to make each one using strip piecing. The "y" was my main headache, maybe because I'd had too much turkey earlier that day. The rest were relatively simple.

I am working with two groups who do charity quilts. The Roseville group meets weekly. They have worked primarily on quilts for babies who are born with drug addictions due to being exposed in utero. In order to give them a clean start, they cannot be exposed to any of the items in the home where drugs are used, because the drugs permeate the fabric and can still get into the baby's system. The quilts and other items we give the babies help get them free of the drugs. We learned recently, however, that it is not just babies who need the quilts; they need them for teens also, so while the rest of the ladies really love to do cute little baby quilts, I am specializing in quilts for older kids. The focus of most of the Roseville group is on getting as many quilts made as possible. Therefore, most of the quilts are whole-cloth and tied. I usually machine quilt mine, because it's about as fast as tying.

The Carmichael group makes quilts for kids in the cancer unit at the hospital. They meet monthly and are truly quilters in the traditional sense. They take a lot of pride in doing really great quilts. Speed is not their main goal, and many of the quilts being produced are quite impressive. Most of the quilts they have made, again, are themed toward younger children, but since children of all ages get cancer, there is a shortage of quilts for the older ones.

Both groups receive a lot of fabric donations, mostly brand-new quilt fabric that someone bought a few+ years ago and never used. I try to make my charity quilts purely from the donated fabric, since there is a lot of it. Just using some of those prints (think "ugly") and finding something in the stash that goes with it is a big challenge.

I haven't spend a lot of time with piecing intricate patterns, but once I got started on piecing the letters for my music words, I decided maybe I will fit in the second group a little better than I did, even though my quilt is still not "cute." Final product will be posted when I finish it, December or January.

Christmas postcards

2009-11-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I busied myself making fiber Christmas-themed postcards. The ones I like best, close up, are the ones I like least from a distance. Interesting, hmm? Contrast is the key. I keep forgetting

These include angelina, foil and couched threads on top of the fabric and ribbon background. I am going to be swapping only one card; had planned to swap all but one, but it turns out I didn't sign up correctly for the swap (you have to sign up repeatedly, depending on how many cards you want to make). So now I have extra cards. Maybe I'll just send them off to the very special people on my Christmas card list.
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Yo-yo assembly line

2009-11-15T10:12:00.000-08:00

On these colder days I spend more time inside the house doing handwork than out in the studio sewing on my machine. Debbie Babin heads a Yahoo group, Studio Quilts-Goldilocks and Friends, and on there I mentioned an idea for making Christmas ornaments out of my stash of yo-yos (why am I making these things?), and she suggested a yo-yo ornament swap. Just what I need to do when I have all these other design ideas in my head, but I am interested, nevertheless. Now, of course, none of my previously made yo-yos are holidayish, so I am making more yo-yos with Christmas fabric.

I use two different sizes of the Clover Yo-Yo Makers (no affilation, etc.), and I find that, over all, they are faster for me than using a cardboard template, though the stitching step is slower, because you can't weave your needle in and out of the fabric while it's in the Maker. It's just needle-in-pull and needle-out-pull, or needle-down-pull and needle-up-pull, over and over. I suppose one could use the Maker to cut the circles, and since the two plastic layers mark a slight fold around the edge of the fabric, the fold could be finger pressed while stitching or iron pressed before stitching. I'll have to experiment. Laziness is the mother of efficiency.

Here are the steps I've been following for making a pile of yo-yos relatively quickly:

Followed Yo-yo Maker directions for making the circle.
Threaded a dozen needles and stitched a pile of yo-yos, keeping the needle with each yo-yo, because I still have to gather and knot the threads after pressing.
Pressed all the yo-yos flat (makes gathering easier). I also noticed that using thinner fabrics makes the gathering easier. I like to press them all at once, so as not to have the iron on all the time.
Gathered them, re-knotted the threads on the needles for the next set of yo-yos. After awhile, if your thread length has been on the long side, the thread starts unwinding its twist or may start knotting. At that point I discard it and re-thread the needle. Slightly stronger thread than usual is a good idea.

Now I've got to do some experimentation for making the ornaments. My plan is to attach 2 yo-yos to each other, back to back, somewhere along the line embellishing them with beads, etc.
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Fiber postcard exchange

2009-11-04T22:18:00.000-08:00

Making and sending a fiber postcard seemed like a fun challenge, especially after seeing the box of dozens of fabulous fiber postcards my friend Marylee has collected in all the exchanges she's done. However, I begin to wonder if exchanging fiber postcards is fad that's already had it's day, since I've had such a hard time finding any group that's doing it. Without any confidence at all, since I've never made a fiber postcard before, I forged ahead and created two cards, one to trade and one to keep. This trade is one-on-one, so I'll send out the above -- to South Africa, as it turns out -- and I'll eventually get one back.

I made inchies (tiny quiltlets -- what size, do you think? You're absolutely correct!) with the scraps. I'm not sure what to do with inchies, but I suppose they can become embellishments and danglies on anything one might want to decorate.
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Great Grandma's block, round 5

2009-10-27T08:57:00.000-07:00

Two more rounds to go!

With each month's revelation by International Friendship Quilters of the block to be added to one's quilt (one-person round robin), I've jumped right into the project and finished in a day or two. No such success this time. Fruiting, jamming, and pie-ing intervened, and then the challenges of how to do this Friendship Star round slowed me down.

I really, really, really didn't want to do the 40 star blocks I eventually ended up constructing. Repetitive measuring and cutting is just too tedious for me, and I greatly admire anyone who can make an entire quilt with little carefully-measured and cut pieces. My first idea was to make the blocks bigger, but checking it out with Photoshop fiddling revealed that they would be out of proportion with what I had already done (the giant pink flying geese blocks notwithstanding).

I spent a lot of time calculating and measuring, then forgot that the long side could not be evenly divided for the blocks, and decided to take out a red star on each side and add black spacers near the yellow stars. I cut my very last piece of black hand-dyed fabric too narrow, so that idea was kaput. I set the project aside and scoured my stove top, then was inspired to add gray spacers on both sides of the red star (much better than my first idea). All of this involved so much sewing and ripping out that I began to wonder if the fabric would survive.

I'm not sure I like that there are two red stars on the ends and one red star on the sides, even though part of my intent with this quilt is to make it not quite mirror-image. The single red star looks better than two, and if I add gray spacers on both sides of a single red star on the ends, it would improve the situation, and not be too difficult to do (after all, I spent much time yesterday picking out stitching and fixing attempts I didn't like). However, I no longer have enough of the darker gray fabric I used for spacers on the sides, so would have to use lighter gray spacers (same color as red star background) for the ends than I used on the sides.

One friend said, "Why don't you just dye more fabric?" Because it likely wouldn't turn out the same, for one thing. That's what dye lots are all about, and since I dyed these fabrics with Color by Accident procedures, nothing is exactly precise, and therefore not precisely repeatable.

So, should I leave it as it is, or change the ends from two red stars to single red stars and matching light gray spacers? Decisions, decisions...

Off to make fiber art postcards.
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Stir 'n' Roll Pie Crust

2009-10-24T15:15:00.000-07:00

So there I was, calmly "thumbing" through various blogs, and I see a certain Altered Fabric person hasn't posted for two weeks! What is with her? I gave her a good boosting kick, and here she is.

My creating days during the past couple of weeks have primarily involved apples, pies, and pomegranates. I took no pictures, because I've posted them all before on previous years' blogs. However, I now recall that I may never have taken a picture of one of my pies. Should do. Maybe next year. (Added 10/27: below picture of my last 2009 pie sent by Dale - thank you, Dale!)

Besides the apple pie filling I canned until I was out of jars, I made apple pies for:
1) Friend Kerri, home from the hospital
2) Quilt group (a couple of extras joined us, just for the pie, and it was fabulous to have them come)
3) Girls' night out potluck
4) Piano technician that revived my piano (the guy was stunned by the pie offer)
5) Daughter in Napa (pleasant excuse for a drive)
6) Kerri again (you can't help but repeat when you are so appreciated)
7) Friend Dale, home from the hospital

That looks like seven pies, but there were nine. I know, because I ate two of them, a piece of pie every meal for two weeks, there being no one around to help me with the task. Gets old, believe it or not.

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Everyone loves my crusts and wants my recipe. I will share it here, but let me warn you that it is not easy. If you are off just a smidgeon in your measurements and your timing, the crust is in serious danger of not holding together (though will still be edible).

I use Gold Medal unbleached white flour for this crust. Other flours usually need slightly different measurement (tried it = disaster), and since this is critical and I'm too lazy to test the proportions with a different kind of flour, I only use Gold Medal with this recipe (no affiliation, etc. I'm not getting paid anything for this by anyone).

I don't recommend doubling this recipe. If you try, I am not responsible for your results.

Stir 'n' Roll Pie Crust (from my mama, Barbara Sturges)

Here's the list of what you need; no time for running for the wax paper and rolling pin after everything is mixed, so get them now. Y'hear?

Wax paper - rip off four approximately square sheets (slightly too long is better than too short)
Rolling pin
Medium mixing bowl (plus extra bowl for lazy girl flour "sifting")
Mixing spoon
Measuring spoons
1/4 c and 1/2 c measuring cups (or 1 cup with good graduated lines on the side that you trust)
Butter knife (needed to cut dough ball in half)
Flour
Salt
Oil
Cold milk
Dictionary of Forbidden Words (optional)

Combine the following in a medium mixing bowl, and dig a hole in middle of the flour and salt in order to mix in the liquid ingredients faster.

2 cups less 1 scant T Gold Medal unbleached white flour (before measuring, pour a pile into a separate bowl to fluff it up a bit; lazy girl's way of "sifting")
3/4 tsp salt

Now is the point where you don't answer the phone, go to the bathroom, or duck and cover for an earthquake. You don't have to rush; just don't delay. Delay = crumbly frustration.

Measure the following exactly and pour simultaneously into the hole in the middle of the flour:

1/4 c cold whole milk
1/2 c oil (I use light olive oil, but other similar cooking oils also work)

Stir quickly, just until all ingredients are moistened.
Dump dough out on one of the wax paper sheets.
Mound with your hands.
Cut mound in half with the butter knife.
Transfer half to another wax paper sheet.
Round and flatten both balls of dough with your hands and smash remaining wax paper sheets on top.
Roll both dough mounds into circles, as close as you can eyeball (almost to the manufacturer-cut edges of the wax paper). Dough edges will probably be crumblier than you are used to.

The dough will stiffen as it sits, so you want to get it into the pie plate as soon as possible. Turn wax paper sandwich over, remove what had been the bottom piece of wax paper (this is because it is harder to remove than the other one and should be removed first, especially if you lightly dampened your counter top first to prevent slippage while rolling), turn pie plate upside down on center of dough circle, hold dough on and turn over, gingerly remove second piece of wax paper, and carefully push dough into the pie plate. You can smoosh together or patch cracks and breaks.

Putting on the top crust is easier, no special instructions necessary. When crimping the edges, remember that thinner edges burn more easily.

Extra crust pieces can be piled up in a little Pyrex dish, dusted with sugar and cinnamon, and baked for the kiddies along with the pie (remove early).

This is a messy, exacting job, but it is worth it for me; the fragile dough makes into a nice, flaky crust. Sometimes I add a tablespoon of sugar for a slightly sweet crust.

You will want to use a different recipe if you are weaving the pie crust top. Well, weaving actually is possible with this one, but you may want to pull out your Dictionary of Forbidden Words to use in the process. Weaving this dough may not be so hard for quilters; you already know how to do piecing.

© 2009 LynnDel Newbold

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In the quilting arena, I squeezed several shopping trips into my cooking and working-around-the-place days, looking for needed-but-not-readily-available springy floral prints. I've been steering away from floral prints for years, as has most everyone else it appears, and now that I want them, they're difficult to find. I ran across a few good pieces at Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) in Santa Clara, so was doubly pleased by the trip - inspired by the beautiful and innovative quilts, happy with my fabric.

For the last several days I have been working on another round of my great-grandmother's block quilt (40 star blocks in the works), and will post pictures in a couple of days. I now realize I will run out of desired colors of my hand-dyed fabrics for future rows/rounds, and will therefore be more challenged than I want to be on how to design the final sections. But it will be an adventure, and what is better than a good adventure?
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Handbag

2009-10-07T18:52:00.001-07:00

It was time to try making a hobo bag, so I did an online search and found this pattern from jcaroline creative. The directions are very detailed and easy to follow.

The background fabric was from my stash, and the fabrics were pieces from my explorations through Fabric Arts Workshop by Susan Stein. I had to set my machine's speed on Extremely Slow while doing the decorative stitches with metallic thread in order to keep the thread from being shredded in the needle, so doing the decorative stitches was the most time-consuming part of the purse construction.

As I was working, I thought, "Why does a purse have to have a front side and back side? I don't have time to look down and see if I'm letting the best side of my purse be visible to my adoring (ha) public," so both sides are decorated as front sides.

The interior is lined with print fabric and has a zipper pocket in addition to two plain pockets that I added (not part of the original pattern) to hold my cell phone and blue tooth. If I were to put my own twist on this pattern, I would make the purse wider, because it is too narrow (about two inches) to stand up on its own.

Embellishing fabrics above are dyed silk, and DyeNaFlow painted fabric using gel glue as a resist.

Fabric squares above have fused Angelina, foil, and metalic ribbon (sprayed with Krylon in the hope that it would somewhat protect the Angelina from getting pulled off too much in daily use); the other is a Paintstik rubbing.

The handle rings are curtain grommets. Will see if they hold up to doing purse duty.
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Wrist gaiters

2009-10-07T18:52:00.000-07:00

It's coming up on the season when my hands get cold while computing, so today I made myself a pair of wrist gaiters. Tube of fleece, sewed down the side with a hold for the thumb. Simple. Will see how they work, and next time make them of stretchier fabric, perhaps.
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Inside my quilt scrapbook

2009-09-29T15:54:00.001-07:00

Awhile ago I posted a photo of the quilted cover of my quilt scrapbook, and Melinda suggested that I show some of the interior pages, so I am following through on that great idea. The book pages are 6x8, just the perfect size. I made the information form with my scrapbooking program. I am not completely satisfied with the form headings for the quilt details. They may change over time.

I had a lot of fun making this quilt, inspired from the Thinking Outside the Block book.

The "Happy Blocks" for this 75x53 quilt were obtained in an internet swap with the StashBuilders Yahoo group. A quilt back is often a place for me to play around, and I had to work hard to make this one purposely off-kilter!

A number of my pages do not yet have the information filled in. I am saving that job for cold winter days. This quilt, about 30x40 (rough estimate, since it is hanging on the wall of my Hideaway studio where I am NOT, at the moment), was created entirely of 1.5" squares (hence the pixelated look) from a photo I took near Moab, Utah. I hand drew this one, though now I discover there are programs that can do all the work for you.

I now have more quilt pictures than pages in my scrapbook, and no more room to insert more pages, so I am shopping for a new book. The next quilted scrapbook cover will most likely make use of some of my surface-design practice pieces.

A chairful day

2009-09-22T16:01:00.001-07:00

Whilst moving my studio furniture, AKA stuff other people have gotten rid of, I came across several extra ugly chairs and decided to do something about them.

The first one is a very old wheeled office chair. The black nylon fiber covering the seat and back was in such a state that the chair was not inviting to sit in. I made a couple of quick tie-on denim slipcovers after appliqueing (fused and zigzagged with monofilament) beautiful fabric leaves from yardage Linda gave me from her extensive fabric stash.

The second two chairs are still in progress. Today was the wash-and-sand day. These chairs are incredibly sturdy, possibly due to the many coats of paint holding them together. In the various dings in the finish, you can see the evolution of color over the years from light to dark:

Plain wood (pine? I don't know)
White
Pastel yellow
Green (that icky institutional green)
Dark brown
Red
Tan
Black

I don't want to lose the history of this amazing amount of paint -- and in the most recent case, amazingly drippy paint job -- so I am going to add another paint layer over what's already there. They will be multicolored, though I am not exactly sure in what way, possibly crackled. The design will grow with the project and will somewhat depend on the colors I already have on hand.

My philosophy: I can't make a mistake with these chairs, so I will forge ahead with confidence.

Stay tuned for further developments.
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Critter haven for rest and relaxation

2009-09-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

On the way to getting my Hideaway studio floor all polished - a seasonal thing I do after the harvest has kicked up the dust and spread it thickly over everything I own, I got sidetracked. It usually turns out to be a three-day job, this floor-polishing project, because I always get a little sidetracked.

Today, as I was moving all the previously moved furniture from the unpolished part of the room to the part I polished yesterday, I considered my antique sewing machine. Its wooden case could use a little Tung Oil, I thought. So out came the tung oil, and a-polishing I did go. Just as I finished the last of the six drawers, I knocked over the tung oil can, one of those pesky things that can't stand on its own foot when jostled a little. It went plop on the floor, splashing oil three feet away, and glugged out a half-cup puddle onto the unswept floor. I saved as much of the now-dirty oil as I could, and thinking it might work as a solvent on the Jackson Pollock-style floor paint, as many oils do,immediately cleaned it off the floor with Spic and Span.

OK, that was interruption #1.

Interruption #2 came when I considered my ironing board cover. My ironing board is a wooden table about the size of a twin bed, originally made by my dad, along with about ten other tables, for use in our packing shed when we were growing Asian pears commercially. I love it. Perfect for ironing large pieces of flat fabric. It is covered with batting, a mattress pad, silver-coated ironing board fabric, and a stretchy knitted bottom twin sheet. The sheet had started to turn brown in the middle from many ironings scorching the fabric and the dust that settles there every minute of every day.

The words, "Dye it," were recognized in the nether regions of my brain. First it had to be washed, and now it is sitting in a bucket of blue dye, topped with black dye (modified "color parfait" method from Color by Accident) out in the nearly 100 degree afternoon. I hope it will come out darkly mottled. Then I might do a little discharging with my bleach pen, just for fun. "Ain't nothing bad can happen to this bottom sheet," so it is said.

Interruption #2 ended, #3 was fast approaching. It must be noted that I have not yet mentioned the "To do" list I kept running to and scribbling full of to-do ideas as they made themselves apparent during my furniture-moving moments. Make covers for folding chairs. Paint mismatched cabinet wood. Handpaint grassy flower border along walls. Make sleeves for small quilts. Etc. Ten or eleven items so far. I now have enough projects to keep me going until Thanksgiving, providing I don't take a trip anywhere. Ha.

All furniture having been moved, I started sweeping, and there was interruption #3, horrible sight, a pile of doggy doo (should have been #2) in the corner under my ancient TV (any TV that is not flat now looks ancient). I touched it tentatively with my broom, wondering how many years it could have been since Mattie had left such a mess there and I not seen it. Impossible; I'd swept under there only last March. :) It was dry, totally dry. Swept it out all the way, and this is what I saw:

Poor little froggy. Came into the Hideaway one evening, probably, while I was sewing with the doors open, which I love to do, and never found its way out again. I went out to show the little girls, and they were all properly disgusted, but then told me about the hummingbird that had gotten caught inside the Hideaway several weeks ago and was now hanging from the wire from which my dad used to hang his model airplanes. I hadn't noticed, but went inside, and there it was, hanging head down, looking like it had gone to sleep and never let go of the wire. When I retrieved it, however, I found that a spider web was what was holding it to the wire. I believe it is the skylights that always confuse the birds when they come in. They are so bright that the birds always fly towards the skylights rather than the doors when they try to get out.

The mummified hummingbird looks as if it's drawing nectar from a flower.
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Great Grandma's block, round 4

2009-09-16T15:59:00.000-07:00

Round 4 of the International Friendship Quilters' "Round Robin" Ostrich Quilt was revealed on September 9, a churn dash block. I started out with green and gold blocks (cutting into my beautiful hand-dyed gold fabric was hard to do) and didn't like the brightness of it, so decided to make this round, and probably the next few rounds, more subdued, making the center square up to this point a colorful medallion in the middle of the rest of the quilt. You can see that the churn dash blocks on the far left are a reversed image of those on the right.

This quilt is different than anything I've made before, and since at this point I don't think I'll ever do anything like it again, I've decided I will enjoy the little bit of tedium (brain vacation) that comes from cutting, sewing, ironing, and trimming repetitively. While the colors are symmetrical, I decided to break away from the strictly traditional look by not making the block designs themselves symmetrical. It makes a person take a second look, which may or may not be a good thing.
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Piecing, traditional style

2009-09-14T23:35:00.000-07:00

What is a traditional quilt? That's a question that comes up now and again on the Quiltart.com list. I don't have a hard and fast definition myself, but I know what it feels like to make one: tedious, at least for me.

As part of my ongoing project to make a quilt from my greatgrandmother's block, I made sixteen (only 16, and felt I was persecuting myself) churn dash blocks from my hand-dyed fabric, only to decide that another color combination would have been better. Cutting and sewing 128 rectangles, 128 triangles, and 16 center squares is repetitive enough to make me want to wash windows for relaxation (ha), and now that I'm facing going through the whole process again in order to improve on the color choice, I have special appreciation for the quilt makers of more than a century ago, when it was all done by hand.

So what is a traditional quilt? As soon as I start feeling as if I'm a machine, doing the same thing over and over again, I know I am making a traditional pieced quilt, even if the end result is nothing like my grandmother would have devised.

As to what I will do with these, I'm not sure, but I'm thinking: handbags.
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Black widow

2009-09-10T15:54:00.000-07:00

While I enjoy traveling, camping, visiting family and friends, it is so nice to be home again and back in the Hideaway, creating away with my always-present eight-legged companions. I wouldn't mourn much if most of them were gone, but was thankful for their presence yesterday when swarms of fruit flies erupted overnight from the piles of apples and grapes in the kitchen area. The spiders have been feasting on the flies, and are now probably in the process of multiplying almost as fast as do the fruit flies.

I recognize there is a small part of me that hasn't grown up yet, and that came to the fore a couple of weeks ago when we visited the bug museum near Colorado Springs. There I saw little bags of plastic bugs, and had a great idea.

"Do you have a bag of black widow spiders?" I asked, thinking of the worst of the denizens of my Hideaway, and of my quilting friends who are strangely paranoid about them.

"No," said the lady running the shop, who just happened to be the granddaughter of the founder and collector of most of the bugs in the Natural History Museum, "but I have this," and she drew out a black widow replica that is about six inches long from toe to toe.

"Good enough," I said, and bought it, planning to share it with my friends. heh heh

The quilting friends' arrivals last night were well spaced out, giving me opportunity to give them individual attention. Ahem.

Friend #1 was mildly surprised.

Friend #2 said, "Thank you for the spider."

Friend #3, whose introduction to the spider was when she found it on the seat of her chair, was startled, giving an indescribable vocalization that would be gratifying to the ear of any practical joker.

I know, I know. Time to grow up.

I wonder if I still have any friends.

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Great Grandma's block, round 3

2009-08-23T16:38:00.000-07:00

Round 3 consisted of Flying Geese blocks (triangle within a rectangle). This makes the quilt balanced again, and everyone can now relax.

Even though I am away from home, without quilting means, I do have my camera with me, and am able to post the most recent additions to my great grandmother's center (trip-around-the-world) block, a photo that I took just before leaving on my trip. The International Friendship Quilters' "Ostrich" quilt has only four more months (rounds) to go. I think I mentioned that it is called an Ostrich quilt because you are allowed (amazing that I would join in something so regimented) to sit out one round if you choose. The month you skip, you are an ostrich.

Great Grandmother's block wasn't exactly straight sided, and with each successive round, the lack of straight sides became more obvious. I couldn't trim the sides with the blocks I had on there (you can't cut off points of triangles, after all), so I decided to add the striped round, hoping to be able to unobtrusively trim the sides for round 4, the block design to be revealed to us on September 9.
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Today's Write Prompt: Odd Plant

2009-08-21T09:55:00.000-07:00

From the One-Minute Writer:

If you could plant something non-living and make it grow (such as planting a dollar and growing a money tree), what would you plant?

I desperately need a plant that grows already-wound bobbins. My plant would produce bobbins in just the right threads and colors. That was an easy question and took me only 30 seconds to answer, once I got my computer under control. What's the next?

Why, and why?

2009-08-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

Why am I too embarrassed to show my recently produced ugly quilt? Maybe by the time I get home I will have worked up the courage to share it. Overdyeing, I think, will either rescue it or relegate it to the doggie blanket category. I decided not to make it overplush. Instead of batting, the interior will be flannel, washed, washed again, and rewashed, getting out all the shrinkage possible.

Why doesn't Blogger have an option where all the comments generated by all your posts are listed in order of when the comment was made? That would be so nice, and so easy, and help me so much in not missing comments, especially while traveling.
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Traveling without fabric

2009-08-21T05:42:00.001-07:00

I am going through withdrawal from busy-ness. Vacationing takes will power. No one seems to believe I can spend 6+ hours a day creating with fiber and enjoy it, but the answer is Yes, I can! Likewise, no one seems to believe I've spent that much time creating and not have made a single effort to sell anything. The answer again is, Yes. And I did!

That issue is soon to be remedied, the effort to sell part, that is. The family will soon be glutted with my gifts of quilts, and sis-in-law has proposed an online partnership. Definitely intriguing.

I shipped my last quilt to Grand Junction on Tuesday, arrived in Grand Junction myself after two fast hours in the air between Sac and Denver, then 1.5 slow hours going west again, to GJ, in a small plane that smelled suspiciously of failed urine neutrlization attempts. I mentioned this fact to my sister, and she said she has been on that plane and endured eau de vomit, so I guess I shouldn't complain.

The quilt will arrive in GJ sometime next week, having cost less to mail than to pack on United. I did not insure the quilt this time, because the man at the PO explained that to make a claim I would either have to have an appraisal, or receipts for the fabric -- impossible when you sew from a stash collected over a number of years, and especially in this case, where I sewed from a scrap box, not to mention the pieces I rescued from the wastebasket when a member of our Guilty Quilty Girls Quilting Guild and Friendship Garden Stitch and Itch Club discarded some cool blue scraps.

Yeah, currently separated from my fabric and busy-ness, spending more time with words and with prayer.

Dragged into rust dyeing

2009-08-12T22:20:00.000-07:00

Rust dyeing, rust dyeing, rust dyeing. Blah, blah, blah. That's all I've heard about for months. I resisted it, like I resisted Facebook, like I resist just about everything that "everybody" is doing. And why? Because I don't like to follow the crowd, that's why. Then this class comes along, and this book (Fabric Art Workshop, by Susan Stein) for the class comes along, and here I am, rust dyeing, just to get my assignments done.

I go out to the pole shed and find the biggest, rustiest piece of metal I can find. It's -- oh dear, now I forget the name of it. I researched it with my guy friend, a reliable authority, and all I can tell you is that it is a rod used when pouring concrete, to keep the forms where you want them. No, not rebar.

So I wrap this yard-long, 3/4" diameter rod with my muslin, strap it on with fishing line, soak it with 50-50 water vinegar solution, wrap it in plastic and wrap again with fishing line (none of which is as easy as it sounds), and muster up the patience to wait 24 hours to see what happens. I have my doubts. I remember trying to rust fabric for Home Ec when I was 14, the purpose being to test stain removers on different stains. Couldn't get any rust to show up on my fabric, so to this day don't know if rust stains are removable.

But... there she is, tadaaa! -- or at least a part (12"x16") of the fabric I rusted. The darker area on the lower portion is the fabric that was actually touching the metal. It's washed and washed and rewashed, and still feels like it's been starched. Rumor has it that miniscule rust particles remain in the fabric, causing the stiffness. They say the rust will adversely affect my sewing machine needle. Remains to be seen.

So what am I going to do with this astounding piece of fabric? I don't know yet, but I think I might make more of it. Yeah, I'm joining the crowd. You can find me on Facebook, too, and I'm not in the market for rust removers at the moment.

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Shopping bag

2009-07-30T12:55:00.000-07:00

Here are both sides of the bag that I made with the fabric I struggled with yesterday. All night long my brain wandered through alternatives as to what I would do to make the letters, the ones created with the gel glue resist, be more visible. I settled on outlining them with free motion quilting, and set about to prepare for that by fusing a stabilizing fabric to the back (now inside).

Then I thought, "Paint, I could use paint!" It would be so much faster, too. I looked at my various paints, but then my Pentel fabric sticks (look like little crayons) hollered at me from a dusty corner, "Try me! Try me!" so I did, after cutting off the plastic shrink wrap - mute evidence of an impulse purchase a year or so ago, a successful toting home of something I wanted but didn't have immediate need for. I outlined the letters, swirls, and dots with various colors, set with an iron. and completed the bag.

Now I think my next project will be to create a note to family recipients of my output that says something like, "This item was made with love just for you, but when it has fulfilled its purpose in your life, whether now or later, send it on its way without guilt."

Adventure with gel glue resist, part 2

2009-07-29T16:56:00.002-07:00

Photo: Shows fabric after scraping off the gel, wax not yet removed. Close inspection reveals glue is probably still in the fabric in spite of all my efforts; it shows as darker green squiggly lines in the dyed-green parts.

Before scraping off the gel, I rinsed this particular piece of fabric over and over and over in the bucket out under my sycamore, and the water ran clear. I scraped off the gel (see previous post) and ran it through 3 wash cycles on my washing machine, because now the water was green. Every time. I included with it the green fabrics from my dyed octave (big mistake; see why below), using Synthrapol, but still the water was green.

Mistake results #1 : Little bits of wax were over all the other fabrics like a bad case of dandruff. I rinsed them again, by themselves, but still the bits of wax were there. I let them air dry, since I didn't want to put anything waxy in my dryer, shook them out, and brushed them off with a dry washcloth. When I ironed them, I could still see spots of wax melting, so I pressed them between layers of paper toweling.

Mistake results #2: Little bits of gel glue transferred to the other fabrics, not much, but enough so that I had to wet at least one spot one each piece and peel off the gel that had hardened there. It wasn't difficult, just another fiddly thing that I won't have to do next time, because I won't process any other fabrics with gel-glued fabric again!

I spent a lot of time ironing the purposely waxed areas of the fabric-to-someday-be-a-bag piece, using paper toweling, a lot of paper toweling. Just like the red wax candle that spilled on my carpet a few months ago, most of it came up with the application of the iron, but not all, and not enough. I'll just boil this thing, I thought, still mentally composing a blog entry having to do with the failure of gel glue as a resist with fiber-reactive dyes.

So I boiled it. The water turned a nearly opaque green. As the water cooled, I soaked off the wax that had risen to the surface with a couple of paper towels, and dripped the fabric over to another boiling pot. The water again turned impressively green, but considerably lighter than the first run-through.

I laid it out on the floor to take a picture, and was I ever surprised!

Photo #2: Besides the absence of toes, you may not notice much difference between this shot and the one above it, but if you look closely, you can see the gel glue resist actually worked.

The contrast is not strong because of the highly patterned background, but I am not concerned. This little guinea pig of a project taught me a lot, the last lesson being that boiling gets out both the wax and the rest of that gel glue resist. Too bad I can't boil the wax out of my carpet.

Adventure with gel glue resist, part 1

2009-07-29T16:40:00.001-07:00

I purchased this fabric about four years ago, mainly because it was on sale and it was wild. Since then I haven't thought of any projects to make with it, because it was SO wild!

Making shopping bags, the kind that prevents you from overpopulating your closet shelf and the rest of the earth with disposable plastic bags, has been on my agenda for awhile. This fabric would make the perfect guinea pig shopping bag project, I thought. I've been wanting to try gel glue resist again, as I did a couple weeks ago.

In the above view you will probably not be able to see the dried Elmers gel glue words and swirls on the fabric, but you can see the waxed parts - along the top and down the bag gussets. I used leftover paraffin wax from when I taught the Candle-making honor to the Pathfinders. After letting the gel dry overnight, I soaked it for 24 hours in approximately 50-50 yellow-turquoise dye mixture.

The next job was to get off the gel. It was plenty slimy, having soaked for so long.

The gel had soaked up much of the dye, and was nasty nasty nasty to get off. I used a spatula to create the above pile of gel. It's a lot of glunk and wanted to stay on my fingers instead of staying attached to the paper napkin where I piled it.

As I scraped off the gel, I could see that it had not done a good job of making a resist. I next used a fine plastic pot scrubber to clean off remaining residue. Still no discernible difference between the glued and unglued areas.

My sad tale continues. Or at least that's what I thought I'd be blogging. I thought I was going to be saying something like, "You can use glue gel as a resist only for projects that use a quick-drying paint, or a dye such as Dynaflow. A long soak in a dye solution makes the water soluble glue cease to resist as one would hope." But sometimes one has happy surprises.
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Altered octave

2009-07-29T16:23:00.000-07:00

This lemon-yellow to turquoise octave has nine notes; that's why it is an altered octave. Notice the big jump between yellow and the next color, and that could be because when I was measuring the turquoise concentrate, I thought the book said 2 Tbsp, when it really said 2 tsp. I caught myself after the first Tbsp, but wasn't able to take back all the extra turquoise powder I had put in. In other words, this is not a scientifically done gradation!

Dyeing is most enjoyable. I do it in the shade of the sycamore tree, on the table under the overhang of my potting shed. I get some good exercise, because I have to tote softened water out to do dyeing, since the sink in the potting shed is (I think) the hard hard hard H20 straight from the well. When I want to take a break, my hammock is right there under the tree, catching the slight breezes that are a near constant here. I let the dyed fabrics stew in their juices all the hot hot day, and rinsed out this morning next to the compost pile, my rushings of water scaring out the buggy creatures who live there.

The purpose of this dyeing exercise was to see what kind of green I could get for my shopping bag project. Next post.
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My quilt scrapbook

2009-07-27T15:01:00.000-07:00

Photo: Quilted cover for my quilt scrapbook.

I've gotten behind on my quilt scrapbook, so while my gel resist is drying for another project, I am taking advantage of this hot studio day to stay in the cool house and catch up on my scrapbook. Each two-page spread features the quilt on the left, and details on the right.

I have made 37+ quilts so far (I think I missed counting one somewhere), for beds and for walls, not counting the scrapbook cover above. In addition, I've also made many placemats and potholders. I decided to lump them together, counting all placemats as one quilt, and all potholders as another. In the process of counting up my quilts, I've discovered that my one-block wonder quilt didn't get photographed after it was finished, so as soon as the temperature cools, I'll take it out to the design wall in the Hideaway studio and get it to pose for a shot.

Four-plus (this is where I'm not sure of the count) of my quilts were made between 1976 and 1995, the first of which never made it in pictures, and all the rest were made between 2005 and the present. My first 6x8 quilt scrapbook is full, so now it's on to the second, as soon as I find another sturdy one that I like.

In the meanwhile, I am sitting here wondering when is a good time to make a run to the laundromat. Which day is least likely to be busy? I haven't a clue. I want to wash and fluff up my Diamonds in the Rough quilt before I pack it for mailing, and my machines aren't big enough for the job.
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Stars for Henri

2009-07-24T16:13:00.001-07:00

The christening of the quilt: My quilts are usually do not receive a final name until they are completed, not due to any master plan of mine, but because that's when the name appears in my mind. The working title for this one has been Beverly's BOM, because it was Beverly's Fabrics Block of the Month. Now that the quilt is finished (except for tying off and hiding thread ends, and a few minor fixes), it tells me its name is Stars for Henri, because the colors are like the jungles of Henri Rousseau.

My camera must be on a weird setting, because it makes everything look like I'm peering through a peephole; that is, all rectangles look rounded. It's not the quilt, because even the design wall, which is factory straight, looked rounded in this shot, before I zapped it out of the picture.

The BOM for 2009 looked like more of the same, so I decided not to do it this year. It was fun once, but I need something new - and there are already numerous ideas stewing in my brain.
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Beware the leftover dye!

2009-07-22T19:22:00.000-07:00

T-shirts, left in a closet, will multiply like rabbits. One begins to use them for grunge wear in activities such as gardening and painting -- and for eating spaghetti, tacos, and other leaky foods.

Below are three of my stained T-shirts. I never did like the color of the Cesky Krumlov shirt, but bought it because it was the least objectionable T-shirt color I could find when I was visiting Cesky Krumlov.

Below are the same three shirts dyed with my leftover dye. The orange one was supposed to turn out redder, but one can't complain with a shirt I wouldn't wear anyway because of the stain which now I can't find. Woohoo for dye!

Should you come to visit when I'm in dyeing mode, keep moving, or you may leave a different color than when you arrived.
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First rotary-cut quilt

2009-07-22T18:14:00.001-07:00

Photo: My first rotary-cut quilt (c. 1992), recently overdyed (not an improvement).

The trials of cutting strips of fabric with scissors for my first string quilt in 1976 (queen size) kept me from trying again until 1992, when I bought a Dritz rotary cutter and a 30x36 translucent cutting mat, both of which I still have and use. I had no quilting rulers then, only a piece of plexiglas on which I made marks with a permanent marker.

I had a quilting book called Amish Shadows, loved the op-art look of the blocks, and made two or three little quilts (about 36" square) including the above, and used polyester batting, because what else was there? The quilting was stitch-in-the-ditch. I had a horrible time with puckers on the back, but I persisted picking out stitches and re-sewing, until not one pucker remained (now I use spray basting, which eliminates all that frustration; recommend wearing a mask while spraying). I was so proud of these hideous little quilts! One of them hung on the wall for awhile, and they have served as table toppers and foot warmers for couch potatoes, but now I find them boring.

With a bit of blue dye leftover from a dyeing project, I overdyed this one quilt, but learned that the fabric must be polyester, since the colors of the quilt darkened, and none of it looks really blue. The lightest strips were an off-white, and now they're a very light green. What now looks like bluish pink was originally more of a peach.

Since I need a lot of practice with free motion quilting (FMQ), these little ol' quilts will be a good canvas on which to do some FMQ practice. Can't hurt 'em, right?
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Ribbon netting

2009-07-17T13:10:00.000-07:00

I've had a package of Super Solvy sitting around for several years, and am happy to finally use it.

I chose an interesting ribbon from my small ribbon/yarn collection and sewed the verticals with a narrow zigzag, slowly, and with much frustration. It was hard to keep things straight, and the Solvy would pucker as I sewed. I thought of pinning, started out pinning, and discarded pinning when the pins just got in the way and slowed my already aggravating progress.

The instructions called for a second layer of Solvy before adding the horizontals. I do not understand the logic of another layer, except perhaps it's because the Sulky company, already awash in fund$ due to their prices, wants you to use as much as possible. I chose not to add the second layer of Solvy, and sewed the horizontals with much more ease and enjoyment than the first layer. The first rows of ribbon gave the machine and the perpendicular pieces something on which to grip, and was probably easier to sew than if I had added the second layer. That's my theory, and I'm sticking to it. For now, anyway.
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Color discharge with bleach

2009-07-17T12:57:00.000-07:00

Crawling out of my full-speed-ahead-with-only-one-thought-in-my-mind blogging mode for a moment, here's an interesting thought from an interesting blog: Stuff Christians Like, on forgiving someone who has not apologized.

Back to fabric stuff.

Almost all of the exercises in Fabric Arts Workshop deal with supplies and materials I've never used or combined before, or not to the same purpose. I'm not saying that I have never discharged color from fabric before (witness unplanned bleach spots on various articles of clothing), but using bleach for more than getting my sink or my tidy whities tidier and whitier (I think I've said this before somewhere) is something new for me.

Using bleach on various black fabrics will result in differing colors, because black dyes are made of differing combinations of colors. The two fabrics on the right are from the same bolt, but the other two are each different, resulting in red , orange, and amber tones.

Top left: Two crocheted doilies were laid on fabric before misting with 50-50 water/bleach solution. The book called for cheesecloth, but since I had none and doilies were handy, I did the honorable GREEN thing and did not drive to town just to buy cheesecloth. The color changed almost immediately after I sprayed the fabric, and I put it in the neutalizing solution too soon, I thought, but when it dried, it showed good contrast.

Top right: Torn file folder used to mask the fabric as I moved it repeatedly and sprayed. If the sprayer mist hadn't been quite as heavy and fine, the lines would show better.

Bottom right: The directions were to use dishwasher gel (I used Cascade gel, in the green bottle) on a stamp. I used a rectangular foam stamp in the upper left and lower right corners and waited for the color to change. And waited. And waited. A quarter of an hour passes (our grandchildren will never truly understand why this generation and those before ever let "quarter of an hour" pass so easily through our lips), and no change is visible. OK, I decide, gotta try something else. I remember Soft Scrub, my favorite sink cleaner. I remember it has bleach in it (witness unplanned bleach spots on various articles of clothing). I use a giraffe foam stamp in the upper right and lower left corners. I wait. And wait. Another quarter of an hour passes. No change is visible from either the dishwasher gel or the Soft Scrub.

I pulled out my bleach pen and made sun, moon, and stars on the stubborn fabric. I misted the fabric with my heavy-duty mister (ah," heavy-duty mister," that could have more than one meaning). The stamped areas looked as if they might be more of a resist than a bleach. I rinsed and neutralized the fabric, and, voila! the dishwasher gel and Soft Scrub had been working, after all. If I hadn't misted the fabric, the giraffes would actually be visible, I truly believe. Will need to re-test the Soft Scrub. Interesting that the Cascade areas are an almost lavendar color.

Lower left: Bleach gel pen. Works great; the effect spreads, but not too fast. Can have ghostly or vivid results, depending on how long one lets the gel remain on the fabric.

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Fabric painting - sponging

2009-07-16T21:30:00.000-07:00

I didn't quite follow the directions for this one, primarily because I had some interesting stencil possiblities open to me.

The laser-cut greeting card and 12x12 piece of "lace card stock" from the scrapbook store needed protection before being used as stencils, so I liberally sprayed both sides with clear Krylon. I dabbed paint through the spaces on the greeting card and the lace card stock with my sea sponges.

One thing I am learning from all these exercises is that I no longer have to spend hours searching for just the right bit of fabric for a project. Instead, I can create my own!
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Fabric painting - painted fusible web

2009-07-16T21:23:00.000-07:00

Painted fusible web, whoever would've thunk it? This exercise has a lot of possibilities, as long as one remembers that it is fusible web you are using. FUSIBLE WEB, sister, means, "THIS WILL STICK TO YOUR IRON!"

I randomly painted my fusible web, having no design in mind, and adhered it to the front of the black and white print, per Wonder Under instructions. On top of that I fused a fussy-cut flower from another black-and-white print, and fused over that two more pieces of painted Wonder Under, not having one prepared piece that was big enough, and resulting in the line through the middle of the flower, which I don't like. The result felt truly like one piece of fabric.

With all that fusible reaching out and needing something else to fuse to, with my iron I added a mylar ribbon, pink angelina, and gold foil bits, surprising myself by remembering to use a pressing sheet each time. If I ever use this as a background for something, I will have to remember the fusible is there before I set my iron to it. I should pin a note to the fabric, "Iron this and die!"
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Fabric painting - resists & found object stamping

2009-07-16T20:17:00.000-07:00

There's an advantage to having a somewhat obsessive personality. If only I could be obsessive about the right things. Of course, the "right things" are in the eye of the beholder. Without a man around the house to say, for example, "What's to eat, honey?" -- I find myself spending hours of time in the Hideaway studio, successfully ignoring annoyances such as dust and spiders accumulating in the house during the week -- until I get to my cleaning day, Friday, and then it's catch-up time. But it's not Friday yet, and I can focus my tunnel vision on my projects. I have, however, returned to an old habit that had gone by the wayside for a bit. I am washing my dishes as soon as I use them instead of waiting for a dishwasher load of dishes to accumulate before thinking, "Hey, it's time to wash my dishes."

Fabric Arts Workshop explorations have filled some of my days.

Masking tape resist (left) - The blue painter's tape worked as a resist with medium-body paint (Textile Colors). After the paint dried and I pulled off the tape, I diluted the paint and colored the resisted areas.

Elmer's blue gel glue resist (top) - The glue was an excellent resist. Instead of using a toothbrush to get the gel off after soaking (I felt it would take too long), I laid the wet fabric on the counter top and scraped it (in the direction of the grain) with a spatula, soaked and scraped again. and followed withone of the micro-pot scrubbers (one of those plasticky kind, often green and adhered to a blue sponge). I don't believe ALL of the glue was removed due to a feeling of
stiffness in the white areas, but what's left, if any, shouldn't cause a problem. I should try to dye the resisted area. however, to see what happens.

Found object stamping - The shimmery quality of the metallic Lumiere paints I used for stamping makes the stamped areas much more visible than appears in this photo. I scrounged my work area for "found objects" and found bubble wrap, buttons, a hand-carved rubber stamp, and spool ends (I have hundreds of empty spools). Some of the spool ends, especially the white plastic Coats & Clark from a few years back, have an interesting design under the label. After stamping, I played around by painting the white fabric with thinned leftover Textile Color from the masking tape resist exercise. Not beautiful, but a learning experience, nonetheless.
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Diamonds in the Rough

2009-07-14T20:23:00.001-07:00

I have finished my scrappy string quilt, everything but the label. I now call it Diamonds in the Rough, and it will be wending its way to my sister in Colorado. It is 96x96, and for once I did not piece the back. I love piecing leftovers into creative backs, but thought I'd try something different this time.
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Fabric painting - sun print

2009-07-14T19:28:00.000-07:00

Up until today, I'd always thought you had to buy special fabric and/or chemicals in order to do sun prints. It turns out you don't! I don't know why this works. I was amazed at how well it turned out, though I do have questions about the white spreading out from the edges of the leaves.

Looking at the bobbins, you can see the ghosting of the sun's shadow from when I first put out the wet fabric in the morning. I know you're supposed to set out your project when the sun is high in the sky, but I had to run to a dental appointment and just had to do it today. I think the ghosting of the bobbins is interesting. The top of the piece was oriented north, so the sun went from right to left over the fabric. It would have been dry long before the sun reached its zenith, with the hot, dry weather we experienced today. By the time I returned in late afternoon, the leaves, weighted down by rocks, had curled up into fetal position, scorched by the 101+ degree heat.

Can anyone tell me why the leaves have the fuzzed-out edges in places - and why in some places and not everywhere? Was the fabric too wet? Answers, in case you are unable to comment here (I don't know why the Blogger comment feature continues to give people problems) can be emailed to me at califgold at that good ol' gmail.com
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Fabric painting - splash and puddle

2009-07-14T19:16:00.000-07:00

Last night I continued with my explorations through Fabric Arts Workshop. I used Dynaflow transparent fabric paints.

Bubble-wrap printing (left): It turned out just like the book said. Woohoo! While wet, I wasn't sure if it would work, but once dry, you can see the circles.

Color pleating (center): Also fun. I used blue painter's tape to secure the edges before pleating the foil, and noticed that the paint seeped in under the tape, which I think is a good point to note for something, sometime. The fabric was VERY wet. I held it up and let the water drip out of the valleys for awhile, so that it would dry faster.

Dribble painting (right): I used TONS of paint from my tiny little eyedropper in order to get a line from one edge of the fabric to the other. In fact, there was so much paint on the fabric that the underside had a plasticky feel when I pulled it off my 12x12 tile. Originally there was quite a bit of white space between the colors, which I liked, but I tried a spritz of water, and whoosh, the white space disappeared. The tile retained an interesting pattern on it after I pulled off the fabric. The tile washed off easily. I think I'd wet the fabric first next time.

Great Grandma's block, round 2

2009-07-13T16:32:00.000-07:00

Round 2 is a pinwheel. I decided to put it on two contiguous sides, spacing with two large flying geese (the pink triangle in a rectangle)blocks. Right now it has a lopsided look, but that problem will be fixed with next month's block, whatever it is!
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Fabric painting

2009-07-09T14:50:00.000-07:00

Our online group, going through Fabric Art Workshop together, took a hiatus while life intervened for all of us. We have now reconvened and are continuing the book, though I am a little lost as to where we are actually supposed to be at the moment.

Below are the results of my most recent explorations in surface design. I am not aiming for beauty or perfection, just enjoying the experiences and possibly adding new techniques to future works.

After two weeks of diligent search, I finally found my Fabric Arts Workshop book nestled between a couple fat quarters in my stash. I admit I had been procrastinating a long time, even without my 5-week trip away from home (helping sister-in-law in Virginia recuperate from hip surgery). I had originally planned to make something meaningful out of each one of my experiments, and that plan was getting in the way of trying out the projects. I ran to the window,
flung open the sash, tossed out that grandiose idea, and now I can flow.

Top: Monoprinting, using Lumiere paint and a plastic sheet protector . You smoosh the paint inside the protector, than place in two layers of fabric, resulting in two prints. I liked the idea of using and abusing a sheet protector. My Lumiere paints have been around for awhile, a sampler pack in little squeeze bottles. One of them, in spite of being shaken to smithereens, didn't mix, and squirted out at least a Tablespoon of clear liquid before a pile of worm-like paint oozed out. Squishing inside the plastic protector did little to even out the worms, but once on the fabric, the problem isn't noticeable.

Top right: Lasagne dyeing on silk - This did not go at all as described in the book. All the layers ended up pretty much identical. Perhaps other silk weaves would spread a little more.

The bottom three are brayer painting exercises. Kinda fun, though frustrating because my brayer refused to load evenly on the slimy paint. It wouldn't roll until the paint became sticky.
My brayer comes from a set I purchased for my elementary school classroom a few years ago, and was not the best for the brayer experiments. For one thing, the brayer printed less in the middle than on the edges, and for another, it didn't roll easily in the slimy paint until the paint started drying a bit and became sticky, so it was hard to get it loaded evenly.

The results of the brayer plaid (center) show the concavity in the middle of the brayer. With several different sized rollers, one could cover a lot of fabric very fast and possibly interestingly, as a background for something.

Bottom left: Textures were placed under the fabric and brayered over with paint. I learned that not only is it a good idea to tape down the fabric, but also the texture plates. Their movement resulted in smudgy prints.

Bottom right: Brayer over polymer clay leaves. I had made impressions of leaves in polymer clay a few years ago, and not wanting to run outside in my bare feet in order to look for leaves, I used the cured clay leaves. I think real ones would be easier, but I still got an identifiable leaf print from them.
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Ode to a Stash

2009-07-09T14:29:00.000-07:00

I am building a small fabric stash, but not without a degree of guilt, for how does one overcome an early indoctrination that goes something like, "Don't start something new until your current project is finished?" (I have no idea how to punctuate that ast sentence, but I don't think the question mark belongs inside the quotes -- but I have also been indoctrinated with the American punctuation "rule" that requires quotes to go outside of punctuation marks, no matter how illogical at times. Perhaps that punctuation rule is the Simple Rule for Dummies, such as the non-rule teachers drill into students heads in their elementary years, the one that goes, "Never start a sentence with the word And." I haven't yet absorbed a more sophisticated system into my internal logic). (And periods always go outside of parentheses, so I was taught).

Jane, a member of my quilting guild, the Guilty Quilty Girls Quilting Guild and Friendship Garden Stitch and Itch Club, gave me the above panel, and I added the gaudy strips around it. Had to use up some of my stash in order to make room for guilt-free purchase of more.
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Journal quilt - June

2009-07-02T18:23:00.000-07:00

Last month I joined, rather late (I hope to catch up), a group making "journal quilts." Each month in 2009 a different technique is defined as the challenge for that month.

June's challenge was decorative stitches. This year the month of June has meant SUNFLOWERS SUNFLOWERS SUNFLOWERS to me, with probably 100 acres planted to the immediate north, east, and west of me. It's been lovely. After wrestling interminably with my machine on the third sunflower, I discovered my threads had popped off the lifter arm thingy (too lazy to look up the real name), and once that was remedied, sewing went smoothly. I was able to use multiple threads, metallic threads, and coarse buttonhole threads with no problem on my machine.

The background is distressed silk, all embellishments are thread, with the addition of textile paint on the F. The edge is satin-stitched. The leaves were afterthoughts, and after thinking about them, I'd arrange them differently, but what's done is done.

Why an F? I am going to use these as a sign for my Friendship Garden quilt guild. Each month's quilt will include the following 3 elements:

A needed letter as the starting point
Seasonal event from my yard as inspiration
Technique of the month

What is a journal quilt? It is a notebook-sized (8.5x11") art quilt that can veer far from the traditional. This is my first one. It's a nice break from the big pieces I usually do.
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Scrappy strings

2009-06-27T19:38:00.000-07:00

Here we are with the scrappy strings quilt on my new design wall, which I put up just in time. Next step: combine triangles into squares, squares into rows, rows into a solid piece, etc.

Also on the back burner but now moving forward: journal sized quilts attempting different techniques.

In the meanwhile, temperatures in the Hideaway rise early these days, so I've set up the family room in the house for summer scrapbooking, for those hot hours when the house is cooler than the studio.

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Scrap usage

2009-06-19T21:04:00.000-07:00

I have multiple boxes of fabric strips, much of it from borders, bindings, and sashings that I cut too much of - or decided to go in a different direction once I saw how they looked on a particular project. With all those strips, I decided to make a string quilt. A good, mindless thing to do while pondering my next project.

The blocks above are 12.5" square (a block comprised of two back-to-back triangles, all strings parallel). I originally started out sewing strips together and then cutting out the blocks, but felt there was too much waste, so now am foundation piecing on quilter's grid, a triangle at a time. The foundation helps stabilize the strips that are cut cross grain and on the diagonal.

Back in 1975, I made my first quilt, a string quilt from our discarded clothing (ah, the memories!). I well remember how tedious the cutting was - back before rotary cutters - and wondering how it could hold together with 1/4" seams. It turns out that it didn't hold together that well, but I shouldn't complain. It got heavy usage for a dozen years, and if some seams of the gauzier material fell apart, who's to be surprised? I've looked all through my photos from those years and can't find a one that includes a picture of that string quilt.

Great Grandma's block, round 1

2009-06-09T22:39:00.000-07:00

Because of my travels and other projects, I've been inactive in the International Friendship Quilters group for awhile, but their definition of a round robin, one in which you sew the rounds yourself instead of sending the quilt around and hoping it will actually eventually make it home again, intrigued me, especially since I had this block above, made by my great-grandma on her treadle sewing machine in the early 1900s.

Do you see where Great-grandma apparently ran out of one of her colors? This block has been sitting in my collection for awhile, waiting for attention, and I decided NOW is the time.

The Ostrich Quilt term comes from IFQ. Each month for the rest of the year they will reveal instructions for a new block to be included in the quilt. You can incorporate the block in any way you want, and are allowed to sit out (put your head in the sand like an ostrich) for one round, if you wish.

I haven't previously done anything with Great-grandma's block, because it included colors that are not common now, and that aren't in my preferred color palette. However, I also recently dyed 30 yards of fabric, and decided some of those colors will work.

The first block was revealed today, a square-in-a-square. Since tonight was guild night in the Hideaway, I got busy and made 20 squares from my dyed fabric and added them to Great-grandma's center block. It looks more interesting already, I think. I am looking forward to seeing what block will be introduced for the next round.
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Aster go round

2009-06-08T13:34:00.000-07:00

This is the quickie quilt I talked about earlier, but I ended up sewing it yesterday. It's about 48" square. The fabrics came in a half-yard pack that I purchased at Web Fabrics in Purcellville, VA. As with the "Gingko go round" quilt, I fused quilter's grid to fleece, and used that as a foundation for sewing on the strips. I did a little quilting on the nine patch, but it wasn't needed elsewhere because of the foundation piecing method. No batting needed. I kind of randomly put it together, and think belatedly that the binding should have some pink in it. Not going to change it now!

This is taken with my new camera and edited with the latest versions of Photoshop (Elements 7.0). I haven't gotten to the intuitive level on either one, having owned them for about two hours, but I'll get there eventually. This quilt is actually brighter than it looks in this shot.
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Beverly's BOM

2009-06-06T14:15:00.000-07:00

This is Beverly's BOM, hanging on my design wall. I am in the process of enlarging the wall, since this 4x8 piece of rigid insulation (looks like beanbag chair pellets all squished together; works fine, since I don't iron on it) covered by fleece isn't wide enough.

After finishing with my three-day dye session (to be finished when I locate the three extra yards of ready-to-dye fabric I have somewhere), I got to work on the block-of-the-month (BOM) quilt I started early 2008. Beverly Fabrics in Fair Oaks produced a sandwich baggy of batik pieces each month, along with a pattern, and for the most part I was able to cut and sew the block as soon as I got it. I would never save this kind of work for an all-day-put-the-blocks-together project, because as much as I like the blocks, doing them is tedious. I think what I dislike most is trimming between sewing steps. In spite of that, I would have done their BOM this year, except I didn't sign up soon enough.

Around each 12" block I sewed a 1/4" batik border, then a 2.5" shaded mitered border. My original plan was to place these pieces on point, separated by plain blocks, but when I saw the 3D effect would be lost, I changed my mind. I now need to decide about the border, which will make it a full-size bed quilt, my first bed quilt in awhile.
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Dyed stack

2009-06-06T14:11:00.000-07:00

This is the rainbow of fabrics (30 yards) I dyed in my potting shed about a week ago. It was a lot of fun, but I learned one thing: This fabric is a lot coarser now that it is dyed than it was before. I don't plan on using Kona PFD for dyeing again, because if I were to make a bed quilt of it, it would not feel good against one's skin.

I am wondering if I wash it again with fabric softener, if it will help. Will have to test.
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Overcoming an artless past

2009-05-30T16:57:00.000-07:00

I read in Transitions - Unlocking the Creative Quilter Within (Andrea Balosky) that "after years of focused, committed, hard work, artists go on to create with less blundering. Eventually they approach their work with impenetrable awareness, having developed and refined those instincts that best foster the expression of their ideas. Their point of view and the ideas that extend from it are enmeshed with their execution. It's a fusion which, in retrospect, we label visionary. The concept and the delivery are synthesized powerfully as one and the same."

Note, however, that it takes "years of focused, committed, hard work" - probably a generalization, but true for the most part. I can't let that generalization discourage me, for though I have years of a relatively artless past, I know that I have good innate instincts. My lack of years of focused, committed, hard work results in a lot of blundering. I am unsure from one moment to the next of my final goal - but, nevertheless, I enjoy the journey. My philosophy is, and has been, that a true mistake is very rare. Most "mistakes" can be capitalized upon to result in surprising and even wonderful works, many better than the original idea. I would not ever want to be without these surprises.

What may appear to be self deprecating is more of a defense mechanism to onlookers who can't figure out what on earth I am doing. You might hear me say, "I goofed. I always goof." The friend nods sagely or pats me on the top of my little pointed head to keep me from feeling bad about myself, not aware that I don't feel bad at all - I'm just acknowledging for their benefit that I've been ambushed by circumstances for which I am responsible. It may also be that I am avoiding answering questions.

I goofed. So what? I move on, excited with possibilities for fixing the goof. After all, the piece is no longer what it started out to be. It's something new that will grow on its own, unfettered by plans. The original intent has been sidelined, and behold, a new thing is born.

I lack technical skills that many artists have, because up until recently I have been focused on child rearing, housewifery, farming, and teaching. For instance, I don't have the drawing skill I would like. Drawing is a talent I once had to a degree above the norm, but I have not developed it or even kept it warm in recent decades, and that talent was buried where moth and rust doth corrupt. Use it or lose it, they say. But this kind of lack is not overcomeable. I can work around it, work to improve it, or both. It's a whole new adventure.

To infinity, and beyond!

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Trying dyeing

2009-05-29T17:26:00.000-07:00

Yesterday and today I've been dyeing fabric, following directions in Color by Accident, by Ann Johnston, for low water immersion dyeing using fiber reactive dyes. I don't know what I'm doing, so am just going lock-step through the book, creating colors I normally don't use in my quilts. But this will be a chance to try new color schemes. On many of these fabrics I will be doing additional work, such as painting, stamping, coloring, and overdyeing.

"Color by accident" is a good description for what I am doing, since "accident about to happen" described my experience. Blue-dyed fingers is one example (forgot gloves yesterday, but the color wore off by today). Since there are waiting periods in the dyeing process, I found myself overlapping batches, and since I'm a newbie at this, keeping several different time schedules and sets of instructions in my brain resulted in a few mistakes.

One thing I will do next time is to write in big letters on my containers: PLAIN WATER, and SODA ASH, so I don't get them mixed up. I did, several times, and am not sure what the effect was. I know I messed up on the green-blue piece, and maybe it would have been more pleasing had I done it correctly.

Another thing I will do is hang a clock on the potting shed wall to keep my cell phone from getting drowned in dye when I turn it on with a rubber-gloved finger to see what time it is. The cell phone remained miraculously dry for the most part, but I could see the possibility of a very wet phone if I weren't careful.

Today I remembered to wear rubber gloves, but they proved useless due to my great skill and grace. Ahem. I had a rubber-banded ball of cloth in a bowl, and decided it needed to be in a deeper container so as to be covered with the dye instead of sitting in a puddle, so I poured the dye from the bowl into a quart jar (mistake in sequences) and worked at forcing the ball of wet fabric into the jar. It slipped in suddenly, of course, and with the impact, the dark blue dye spurted out the sides of the jar like a volcano, splots landing on my face, head, other pieces of fabric, but with most of it going down inside my glove. My arm, wrist, and hand were again blue, and while my right glove was drying out, I tried to do everything left handed.

My little potting shed by the garden has been transformed into my dyeing shed. I love this location under the growing sycamore tree. It's a solitary outdoor place to enjoy myself. The shed has a sink and cold-water faucet in the far corner that is handy for some of the process, but since my water is very hard, I bring out warm, softened water from the house for the dye baths.

I've been washing out the dye with a hose in a bucket. Maybe someone can tell me if that's a good idea or not. I follow up with a warm rinse, then a hot wash (Synthrapol or substitute) in the washing machine.

Purple asters - next project in the works

2009-05-15T15:59:00.000-07:00

Since the last quilt was so fast and fun, I'm doing another the same way - this time in purple and yellow, with a 9-patch in the middle. Now waiting for the sewing machine repair man to appear. Hope he can find the place.

Can't wait to get home and start painting, dyeing, gluing, etc!

Later: The sewing machine repair guy showed up just fine, fixed the machine, which turned out to have rusted inside (humid East), regaled us with lengthy right-wing political comments, and went on his way. However, I ran out of time to do more than cut the strips for the Purple Aster quilt, so boxed them up to be sent home. They will be arriving in the mail shortly after my return.

Gingko Go Round 4

2009-05-08T19:21:00.000-07:00

After a busy day of exercise in the pool, chauffeuring, shopping in an unfamiliar store (always a challenge), in late afternoon I answered the Call of the Quilt and returned to my almost-finished project.

In this photo you can see the stitching lines on the back of the fleece and the applied binding. Wild, isn't it?

The binding: Two inch strip, pressed in half, sewn to the BACK (approx. 1/4" seam), fold brought around in front so that it barely overlapped the line just sewn , finished with a decorative stitch (in this case, narrow herringbone). My stitching lines on bindings are never 100% straight, but with a decorative stitch, it's not obvious. None of it was done by hand, but even at that, it took nearly two hours, including all the steps: measuring and cutting the strip, pressing, stitching, and sewing area clean-up.

The birthday girl doesn't yet know it is hers, but she may have suspicions.

Gingko Go Round 3

2009-05-08T07:03:00.000-07:00

Here it is, except for the binding. I would have been finished in one day if I had not chosen to do a two hour shopping trip mid-day, or taken a break for mealtimes, or gone to bed early.

It's a great hurry-up gift (think Mother's Day, or that last-minute quilt for a baby shower) for someone who doesn't particularly appreciate explorations into quilts for the walls.

Gingko Go Round 2

2009-05-08T06:56:00.000-07:00

The center focal fabric is a 21x21 Japanese print. I pinned it to the center of the fused-to-fleece grid, and stitched on the first round, a print that makes me think of a Japanese screen.

It's just like foundation or paper piecing: Stitch and flip.

Here it is, round 1 sewn and pressed, ready for round 2.

Round 2 and 3 have been stitched and pressed. I will spare you the details of the following rounds. They all went on in the same way. Easy peasy.

Gingko Go Round 1

2009-05-08T06:08:00.000-07:00

I had so much fun making my fleece-backed quilt last fall that I decided to repeat the performance.

My idea is to make a light-weight lap quilt with no batting, and no quilting required after it's put together -- though certainly some could be added for detail interest.

This quilt will be foundation pieced directly onto fleece. On my previous quilt made this way, the fleece stretched a lot in the making, and I was using cross-grain-cut strips, so it was hard to determine whether I was keeping it square. Even though the fleece was a plaid design, the print was not completely straight on the weave, so things went a wee bit wonky.

This time I applied fusible quilters' grid to plain dark green fleece (see photo) to use for squaring-up purposes, in addition to preventing some of the stretching. This is a 2-inch grid; a smaller grid would be easier, I think.

The inspiration for this quilt design was Roberta Horton's Brick Brack Medallion quilt done with Kaffe Fassett fabrics. What appealed to me in that design were the striped rounds. This time I used fewer stripes than previously; I would have done more if I'd had the fabric on hand.

Earlier this week I purchased 7 fat quarters from G Street Fabrics in Centreville, Virginia. These are 21x21 squares instead of the usual 18x21, something I didn't know until I opened them up and saw the beautiful size. I wish all fat quarters were cut this generously. It's certainly worth going out of one's way to purchase your fat quarters there.

My favorite fabric of the bunch was a gingko print, hence the name of the quilt.

Because I used fat quarters for everyting but the stripes, I had to piece my strips, probably something a purist would never do, but no one has ever accused me of being a quilting purist. I spent a good hour figuring out how many inches I would need for each round, and how wide I could cut the strips from the one fat quarter I had of each print. Then, once I discovered the fat quarters were more than 18" long, I refigured everything. It was time well spent.

More next time.

Shopping lesson learned

2009-05-06T13:47:00.001-07:00

Oops, 'scuse me a moment while I turn off my music. I never could understand why my kids could do homework with the sound of the radio filling the room, and I can't do anything requiring deep thinking while music of any kind is on. Then someone told me I was auditorially sensitive (that is true; can't sleep with a ticking clock in the room), so if music is running, it takes priority in my brain and other functions suffer. Thanks, I knew that!

Anyway (music off now), yesterday I trotted meself down to G Street Fabrics in Centreville, VA, and after an hour of looking, finally settled on a beautiful piece of fabric with which to make a dress. It was the only fabric in the whole store that I wanted, and it was perfect. Took it to the table, the cutter unrolled it, and there it was, one yard short of what I needed. I was SOOOOOO disappointed. Bought some quilt fabric to console myself.

Today, on the way to Physiotherapy for sister-in-law, Linda, I trotted meself over to Joann's, and, with a 30-minute-deadline, found the one and only piece of fabric that I wanted in that store. I also needed some fusible interfacing, so perused the stash of interfacings without immediately finding what I needed. Three ladies were heading across the store toward the cutting counter, carts full of bolts, and "Danger, Will Robinson" motivated me to saunter quick-step to the cutting counter, so as not to be behind them and get Linda late to her appointment.

Arriving, finally, at the head of the cutting line, I told the girl I needed 3 1/2 yards, then stepped over to the interfacings again while she cut the fabric. She was a shy young thing, seemed a bit uncertain, probably new.

At the checkout line, another little wait, I looked at my cutting slip. 3 yards. THREE. No 1/2 anywhere to be seen.

"Oh, no!" I said.

"Something wrong?" asked the very tall, very cute, very young checker guy, probably just out of high school.

"I asked for 3 1/2 yards, and I only have three," I said. "I can't fudge on this, because I'm tall, and I usually add a couple inches anyway."

The young man was very helpful and professional (he should be promoted). He remeasured the fabric to be sure (yup, 3 yards), checked the bolt (not enough), and called another store to look for more of the fabric (no luck). I paid for my other items, he made change for my $100 bill without complaint, and I was on my way.

It's a good thing I bought that quilt fabric yesterday. I am consoled.

Lesson: Always watch your fabric as it is being cut.

LynnDel

Alterations

2009-05-06T07:16:00.000-07:00

Altering my blog title. Ya-Ya Quilts posts have been imported here. If you found me, I'm glad you could follow the clues in the treasure hunt. Yeah, the hunt you didn't know existed!

LynnDel

Quilt = altered fabric

2009-05-05T19:50:00.000-07:00

A few people in my life - OK, men - can't understand why I buy a perfectly good piece of fabric, cut it into all kinds of pieces, stitch it back together, fuse it, paint it, sew on buttons, beads, sticks and rocks, and am as happy with the process as with the end results.

A lot of other people in my life - OK, just about everyone - can't understand why something that is not made to be put on a bed can be called a quilt. That's why I decided that Altered Fabric is a good term, at least for me, whether it is, after all, a bed quilt (I make those, too), or something meant to hang on a wall or a person's shoulders, or be propped on a chair or against a door.

Since I am in the midst of travel at the moment, this blog will be slightly stagnant until I have a chance to do a bit of blog altering, probably once I return home.

LynnDel

More bunnies

2009-04-21T18:06:00.000-07:00

The second round of bunnies are completed. These are made of what I guess might be called pleather ("plether?"), in a dark brown color. I like the little one - it's nice and cuddly. The larger one has a zipper in the back for storage. The whole shape of his shield-shaped body, small head, and twirly antenna-like ears (it evolved that way, wasn't in my plan!) makes me think of a rather large and ugly beetle who has met up with a small boy who likes to pull legs off of bugs.

Further explorations in bunny creations will take place later, when I return from my journeys. I'm heading off to Leesburg, VA, for a few weeks. Expecting new adventures!

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Bunnies in the garden

2009-04-16T10:41:00.000-07:00

These are the kind of bunnies I like to find gathering amongst the chard. The tallest bunny measures two feet. Now, of course, I have so much chard that the hopping-around kinds of bunnies can have all they want. Their nature, however, is to eat brand-new sprouts and ignore the big leaves, so now that the chard has actually survived past early childhood, a fence is no longer needed.

You will note these bunnies have interesting eyes. This is by design, not because I don't have tons of buttons that are the same size. They're heading off in the mail shortly. The next one has a zipper in his back; the next after that will be leather; and the next after that will be a full-blown backpack. Daughter who is anti-furniture may have to get a crib to put them all in.

Must sew (that's right, sew, not sow) some carrots to feed all these bunnies.

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A creative vacation

2009-04-09T21:00:00.000-07:00

I took a small vacation from overt creativity, not that I wanted it, but I needed to display some of my creations, do a bit of spring clean-up, and check in with other parts of my life.

This is not to say that I'm not creating anything. My mind is never on vacation, and I am currently making the second of three stuffed bunnies. The first two are prototypes: a long, skinny, floppy one; and a round fat one with stand-up ears. Both these are made from adaptations of someone else's patterns. The third will be a result of the DNA of both the previous, and will have a zipper for stowing stuff. I'm anxious to get back to them.

The best thing to do when one is afraid to try something because of lack of experience (i.e. never made bunnies before), is to go ahead and give it a try. Fun!
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Tumbling Block Munget*

2009-03-27T19:52:00.000-07:00

I finished the tumbling block quilt this afternoon. It's been in the procure-fabrics process for a couple of years, and in the put-together-while-I'm-making-other-quilts process for nine months. I used the strip method for piecing, and backed it with minky. I know, scandalous -- synthetic fiber backing natural cotton. It's supposed to be cozy, and it is. The red minky is not as fluorescent as it appears in the photo.

I was surprised when I started quilting it that not all the fabric was black and white as I had thought -- after all, I'd gotten them off the black-and-white shelves at the quilt shop, so I just assumed. Wrong! One print was navy and white, and another brown and white. Never noticed until I saw it under my sewing machine light. All I can do is just look and smile at the mistake.

*Munget = recipient's name for blanket when she was a baby.
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Why quilting is addictive

2009-03-26T08:08:00.000-07:00

The joy of finishing a quilt
is not so much that I can now sit back and admire it,
but because I am now free to start a new one.

My studio layout

2009-03-23T19:56:00.000-07:00

Recent posts on the Quiltart list have discussed studios, and I've seen some beautiful work spaces. Here is how my "Hideaway" is laid out. It is in one half of a 40x80 metal building, the other end occupied by cars, mowers, more storage, and a more masculine workshop (which doesn't keep me out of there, however).

I'm not saying this is ideal or the most efficient, but I absolutely love working here. I had not planned to spread out and fill the whole area, but since it is available, I followed the rule about stuff growing to fill available space, and therefore expanded from wall to wall.

The colors depicted here approximate the actual colors in the room. The high, white ceiling has four very large skylights so that the room always feels well-lighted during the day. The interior walls are brick red, hung with a bunch of finished quilts, and the painted green concrete floor is splattered Jackson Pollock style, and stamped with leaf shapes.

You can see that my ironing table is across the room from where I sew, calculated to force me to keep the blood circulating in my legs. When I have a lot of little seams to press as I go, I use a little Clover iron by the side of the sewing machine.

Here is a shot of the Hideaway when I had it rearranged for a church potluck.

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Purse mania

2009-03-23T17:17:00.000-07:00

My latest foray into purse construction (previous purses not yet posed for photos):

At our last Tuesday guild night Linda brought me a simple purse pattern, and I couldn't help but try it out immediately. It starts with a square, and with a bit of simple folding, voila, there's your purse. It is a flat purse with three pockets. Naturally, the size of your beginning square affects the size of your finished purse. The larger purse started with a 24" square and ended up about 10x12", perfect for carrying a magazine, logic puzzle book, or spiral notebook while traveling, with pockets for pens - and chocolates (but of course). One of the two outside pockets is seen in the smaller purse.

Instead of using the recommended covered cording for the handle, and which I hate, hate, hate struggling with (can't find the nifty turning tool I bought a year ago), I made bound flat straps.

I am in the process of making a denim rag purse with the same pattern, washing my patched square over and over so as to make it more ragged.

Pattern source: Three pocket tote by Karen Montgomery
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Standard sewing machine, 1887

2009-03-13T09:08:00.000-07:00

My newest machine is also my oldest one, purchased from an octogenarian friend whose mother had been the original owner. This is a Standard sewing machine with a breadbox-looking cover. Later they made the machines to fold under the top so that it could serve as a table when not in use. The latest patent date on this one is 1887. The machine has been serviced and is in working order.

Located in Cleveland, Ohio, the Standard Sewing Machine Company began manufacturing sewing machines in 1884. Standard was one of the many manufacturers that sprang up shortly after the dissolution of the Sewing Machine Combination of Singer, Wheeler & Wilson, and Grover & Baker. Their most popular model was the Standard Rotary, which was manufactured basically unchanged from the 1880s through 1910s... The Standard Company was apparently acquired by the Osaan company around 1929 and is believed to have later been bought out by the Singer Manufacturing Co. in the 1930s.
--From The Encyclopedia of Antique Sewing Machines, 3rd Edition

I use my other three machines (I should start giving them names) on a regular basis; the 20-year-old Kenmore (made by Janome) is in Alabama for my visits there; my little black Singer Featherweight 221 (8th grade graduation gift) for trotting out to quilting groups; and my Janome 6600, my workhorse in the Hideaway studio. My goal is to make a quilt using the above machine, partly to justify its existence in my keep-it-simple life. But as I said, we do have power outages here once in awhile, and a treadle sewing machine is a good backup.

Fabric Art Workshop: Foil, Fabric beads, Shiva, Lasagne dyeing

2009-03-13T08:53:00.000-07:00

Last night, since my quilt project was stopped by the lack of batting, I did some catch-up with the Surface Design book.

First I did foiling on fabric using fusible web and hot glue gun. The book did not mention what kind of foil to use, and no one in the group discussed it either, so I used the foil leaf I had on hand. On looking closely at the pictures in the book, I think they used plastic-backed foil. With little bits of foil leaf floating all around my studio, I do believe the other kind would be the best choice. I scanned my finished experiment, but the foil does not show up well on the print fabric I used. The dimensional foil shapes using hot glue were very interesting -- will use in the future!

Second I made fabric beads, similar to the paper magazine beads I made back in the early 70s, only much easier since fusible web was used to back the fabric. The drawback to the paper beads was the inevitable leakage of white glue resulting in sticky fingers. The beads above were made with Fairy Frost fabric. Having a variety, and using embellishments on the beads, would make them an interesting addition to a quilt. They would be a good project for a day when you don't want to have to think about what you're doing. The background is my experiment using Shiva Paintstiks. I don't know what future Shiva Paintstiks have in my work, but I'm glad to have them in my fabric-painting repertoire.

The last catch-up experiment was the least successful: lasagne dying with silk. I cut my five 6-inch squares of silk, stacked them, and applied the Dyna-flow paints, as per instructions. This morning I pulled them apart, and each layer was almost identical to the top layer. Neither had the paints wicked out laterally to the degree I had hoped. Today I will try again, perhaps adding more paint. I only have one piece of silk from which to cut, so experimenting with other types of weaves will have to come later.

Back to the basics

2009-03-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

I am happy to report the following:

I've always wanted a treadle sewing machine, and found one this week, still with the original family. The patent date on it is 1887. Still works. Will post photo soon. Now I can sew next time we have a power outage!
I'm almost finished with the scrapbook I thought I'd finish last Friday. I need a change of pace, so the next ones will be 8x8 instead of 12x12.
After all morning scrapbooking, I spent all afternoon and into the evening quilting. Had planned on a minkee backing for the quilt I'm working on, but the tumbling block seams were too bulky and need batting to even out the texture.
Having no batting, I finished off the evening experimenting with foiling, fabric beads, and silk painting as per instructions in the Surface Design book. Made a big mess, foil leaf pieces fluttering all over the place. Will post photos soon.

Color & Composition: Achromatic

2009-03-09T21:23:00.000-07:00

I had plenty of black and white fabrics on hand to do this exercise with real fabric. However, some of it had been cut into diamonds for my tumbling block quilt, so I had to do some piecing in order to keep from having to drive 30 miles to the closest quilt shop that carries a good supply of black and white fabrics. Again, I didn't read the part about making a focal point of the extreme ends of the value scale, and I think that if I had, the results might be a touch more interesting. However, the strong values in the left foreground provides a focal point of its own, don't you think?

Color & Composition: Monochromatic

2009-03-09T21:10:00.000-07:00

Ideally I would be following instructions and making this composition of fabric, but I looked through my stash and found almost nothing in the way of solids, and considered the two fabric sources in town and knew they would not have the all the colors I needed. With those limitations, I ended up doing this exercise with Photoshop, and probably experienced working with value just as well that way, and learned more about Photoshop, which is always a goal of mine.

The inspiration for this composition was to be taken from a small portion of our original contour drawing, which I did. What I didn't do -- I discovered too late (I thought I'd read all the info, but obviously skipped a section) -- there was to be a focal point created from the two colors at the extreme light and dark ends of the monochromatic scale. I don't plan to re-do this exercise, but will keep it in mind as a possibility if ever working with monochromatics again.