Much Kreativity

I’d entered my heart quilt in our biennial quilt exhibition this Spring. Of course, after a month of deliberation and trying to fix my pesky prairie point border, I gave up and took it apart the week before it was due. Spent an evening cleaning off all the little bits of thread. Fun!

Once I laid everything out flat again, I set the points to the correct depth, pinned them on, and pillow-topped the border again. This time, all went as planned and I could begin quilting.

Ah, but my creativity got the best of me and, since it’s a two-sided quilt, I designed an internal sleeve for hanging.  Took 4” apart on either side, slipped through the sleeve and blind stitched it all back into place. It looks pretty nice, but I’m not sure if it will hang right. Plus, I’ll have to deal with quilting the top when it comes back from the show.

And then, I ran out of thread!

Before I’d decided not to use the rose pink backing, I had some wonderful heavy, glazed thread to match. Spent one morning looking for burgundy quilting thread. I didn’t think it would be so difficult, however I couldn’t find much in the way of burgundy fabric either! What I used ended up giving me such a headache by knotting up every stitch and occasionally fraying that at one point, I sat down and cried.

Pulling myself together, I realized that I could only do so much quilting this week. So I decided to do the ‘bare necessities’ to stabilize the natural cotton batting, ie: one inch from the edge, one zigzag in the border, frame the heart border & just along the bottom heart lines. This worked out just fine.

Yup, I’m way beyond part 2!

Another quilting retreat and finally, I can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Everything is relatively square border-wise, though on corner is still a little wonky ~ Ah well!

On to the next burning decision: to “prairie point or not?” After a little research, I find a tip for continuous prairie points and augment it with pairs of points to create a scrappy look befitting my design. They are remarkably easy to assemble (though I hit a snag sizing them), and I zip up the points and painstakingly press throughout Friday night. It’s maddeningly tedious work, but every time I set a strand of triangles to a border, my excitement bolsters my resolve to continue throughout the following day. After the dinner break on Saturday, I finally ‘pillow-top’ the border.

Moment of truth… reaching inside for the top corners, I hum the theme to ‘Rocky’ as I shake my fabulous quilt of hearts and stripes right side out and run from one end of the room to the other… flying high now!

I’ve begun to hand quilt it, but really wanted to see what it would look like on the bed. Both sides are really quite stunning and more importantly, it’s kitty-approved.

Finally emerging from my cloud, I decided to make Valentines.

Upon discovering this 2-sided paper and cupcake embossed card stock, I knew I had a winning design.

Enjoy my ‘cupcake’ Valentine inspiration!

Sometimes when your weather turns gloomy with rain, it’s best to try new things… specifically new quilty things… and specifically new quilty things in cheery colors!

Took another ‘last-minute’ workshop where I learned ‘origami with fabric’ techniques. I chose to work with a spunky turquoise, lavender and butter floral that I added to my stash this autumn. E gave me some matching turquoise and I played with the colors for each folded design. The edged Prairie Points and Square-in-Squares came together very easily, while the Harlequin tucks and smocking were both interesting and time consuming. Stay tuned… these will make a vibrant purse!

Another Autumn Retreat in Marin brings the saga of my ‘Labor of Love’ Heart quilt closer AND (sigh) further from completion.

Let me start by saying that I almost finished the backing Saturday. Seems I only had a 24” x 95” piece of the burgundy left, so I split it for the two outside borders and pieced the middle with all the leftover 3-6” strips. It looks so nifty and could be a quilt on its own. Other quilters would say I was crazy to be putting so much work into a backing, so I decided this would be reversible! It’s a traditionally pieced design on one side and the modern stripes on the other. Yeah, I’m crazy.

My step backwards has to do with the heart front, specifically those bias squares-on-point & 1” borders. You see, after the backing was wide enough, I put a 2” border in burgundy on the top and laid the whole thing out atop the heart-front to see how much more I’d need for the bottom border. I’d been so thrilled this Spring, but realized that the wonky front corner just wasn’t going to fly. I consulted with Joan C, an experienced quilter, as to my options for the fix. First, she reminds me to measure the middle vs the bottom which turns out to be 6” too wide; then I could just systematically pleat the bottom and square it up. That sounded too difficult, so I decided to remove some borders and have another go of squaring it up.

Decision made, I set aside the backing to begin ‘Project border removal.’ I rip the wide burgundy border from the bottom, as well as halfway up the side. My tedious Sunday continues fairly well with the help of Joan’s ‘seam shaver’ and at the end of the day, I have a couple borders ‘true-measured’ and pieced back together with relative confidence.

Sigh, I’ll have to pick this up another time as I’ve run out of time. Stay tuned this Spring for another installment of my Labor of Love!

Late March, I took a ‘create fabric using curved piecing’ workshop at the last minute. I’ve never tried to sew curves (intentionally) before and this seemed like it might be new and exciting.

There were 4 techniques for ‘creating fabric’ and we started right in with the curved piecing. Choose 4 fabrics; layer them and freehand cut 3 curves. Shuffle them and sew your blocks. Stack and repeat cutting 3 more freehand curves the opposite direction; then shuffle and piece together. So here’s my first block. Oops! It came out perfect. I don’t think I could have matched the corners so well if I tried! Weird; I was supposed to offset the pieces and to make it more interesting. To remedy this, it was suggested that I add in a fifth fabric. Hmm, the other three blocks are slightly more fun with their blue/with stripes. Now do I make a throw quilt or 4 pillows? The peanut gallery says pillows!

For the second technique, cut a wider length of fabric basically in half and sew a long wedge of a second fabric in between the two. Now, slice up the layers into various widths, shuffle and piece them back together. Again, I found my blues to be boring, until I added thin red stripes. This could have been a skirt (albeit a short one!), but it makes a nifty pillow.

The third technique is a quilt block called Tessellating Windmills. I really like this one as a large pillow and will think more about making a full or queen quilt. Fun!

I really didn’t quite figure out the last technique for making heart blocks. Mine was all wonky and not in a good way. I pressed the heck out of it and it lies almost flat. Oh well.

Funny, these all seemed destined for pillows. At least they are finished!

When last we visited the Necktie Quilt, it was hanging in the SCVQA biannual Quilt Show in 2011. Although it wasn’t chosen for the Scrap Art Show at the SJ Quilt Museum that year, it found it’s way into the San Mateo County Fair in June 2012. And earned an Honorable Mention ribbon in the Art Quilt division!

Birthdays can be low-key and surprisingly nice.

A colleague returned from Hawaii and brought me chocolate covered macadamia nuts for helping her out while she was away.  (mm, what a tasty birthday treat!)

Upon finishing my grocery shopping, when the cashier innocently asked how my day was, I said, ‘Fabulous, it’s my birthday!’ He decided not to charge me for the $4 mini rose bush. It was unexpected and appreciated.

Went to a new place for dinner and had the place to ourselves! The owner gave me a bottomless glass of Sangria, ‘for the birthday queen.’

Oh, and my sweetie wants to know if I want a new MacBook Air, iPad or fancy camera for my gifty. Life is good!

Flowers, chocolate, alcohol & the promise of new electronics!

What more could a girl want?

May 2nd Addendum: Lunched at Naschtmarkt Restaurant in Campbell, CA today for a belated celebration. The food was exquisite! And here I encountered my 4th surprise: they had ‘gifted’ me dessert, a fabulous Viennese Sachertorte!

Thirteen years ago, I embarked on a ‘Labor of Love’ as it were.

As the story goes, in 1998, I wanted to make a nifty Holiday quilt, but I wanted some practice first. So I planned a quilt-a-month project for 1999 to get warmed up. My Heart Quilt was only the second quilt on the list. [Insert heavy sigh here] It was a great start, sewing and piecing the hearts together that February. Unfortunately, the corner blocks stumped me and nothing I tried looked right. I shelved the project momentarily, but between travel, distractions and moving to another house, the better part of the decade zipped by with little more than a passing glance in 2003 & 2005 as I still had no better idea about how to finish those corners.

Then, I started going to March & September quilting retreats in 2009 and soaking up the knowledge and inspiration of my quilting collective. After my ‘Tie-land hiatus,’ I worked out the corner quandary and was emboldened in the home stretch to declare a brilliant decision to use Prairie Points around the border.

Ah, but I’ve gotten ahead of myself as I need to fill another 12″-16″ of border. The squares-on-point border is a perfect complement and although my triangles get a little wonky, it works. I’m still a tad short at the head & foot and adding an extra-wide burgundy border just seems too simplistic. Perhaps more shaded 4-patch blocks along the bottom, which fittingly look like a string of hearts when set on point surrounded by all that burgundy fabric.

So after a handful of dedicated weekends working through various design dilemmas over the past 3 years, I’m finally finished piecing. Lest I rest on my laurels too long, the binding incorporating Prairie Points is just beginning. What’s a Prairie Point you ask? It’s a square of fabric folded diagonally twice into a triangle. I hope to find a quick way to attach & finish them so I can start hand quilting, but you know easy isn’t my modus operandi

With all the detours, it has been quite an amazing journey; and seeing everything fall into place now is priceless!

Whoosh!

Yup, it happened again. The year has vanished and, without warning, March 1st is rushing by me.

Ah, but my ‘kreativity’ has taken form already this year!

Last week, I decided to take another quilty workshop, a Purse-making Intensive to be exact. There were 2 designs to choose from: a nice structured little bag or a cast-your-cares-to-the-wind drawstring number, complete with grommets. You can guess which I chose.

This was a last-minute decision, so I had to hope I had something workable in my stash. I fished through my linens and other odds from FabMo and found a couple peach velvet materials that coordinated amazingly well, plus a bonus piece of dusky leather I chose to reinforce the bottom.

I worked all day, deciphering directions, matching seams, posing questions of my instructors (if I add leather at the bottom, how do I finish the corners?) and after the last grommet was gingerly pounded on, I threaded the drawstring through and breathed a sigh of relief. Holy cats! I just finished my ‘peachy bohemian.’

Whoosh!

Completed. Nice.