October Retreat

We've been having quilting retreats three to four times a year for over a decade now. Projects have varied from table runners to full-sized quilts, knitting projects (remember the amazing knitted Christmas stocking?), fabric floor mats to last week's project, the Ultimate Market Bag. This had to be one of my favorite projects. I love art for art's sake, but have an even greater fondness for functional art. What could me more useful than an oversized tote? And, what could be more artsy than the beautiful flowers we made of hand-painted fabrics embellished with stitching and beads? I've been reluctant to include pictures, because they don't begin to do justice to the gorgeous colors we achieved with the fabric paints and inks or delicate beading. However, for those of you who missed the fun, here are a few pictures of the flowers we created, beginning with Maria's sunflower...

and Sally's hibiscus...

 and Cece's zinnia...

I'm inspired by the results we achieved over the weekend and plan to come up with several more flower designs to be used with the market tote and eventually a garden quilt comprised of a dozen different flowers. I'm the first to admit I'm often big on talk and short on results. Well, this time it's going to be different!

P.S. Besides working hard and feeling a great sense of accomplishment by Sunday afternoon, we all had a good time, Verne's food was, as always, delicious, and Lauren shared music and movie entertainment from her large collection, with Magic Mike (definitely a Chick Flick) as the feature movie on Friday night! LOL!

October Retreat - The Ultimate Market Bag

I just completed our October Retreat project and it's awesome! Pictures don't do it justice, so I'll only include this close-up of the front panel as a teaser.

I'm calling the project The Ultimate Market Bag. It's practical...large and sturdy with wooden dowel handles. It's fun...denim with a large sunflower on the front made of hand-painted fabrics and further embellished with stitching and metallic highlights (shown above). The lining is a fabric from my stash...sunflowers with cat heads for the center. Perfect! 

Of course, my bag is just an example. If you'd like to make a similar bag of denim and the lining shown above, I've got plenty of yardage available. If you want to bring your own fabric for the background (outside) of the bag and lining, the yardage amounts will be included on the list of supplies/materials. I've created designs for two different sunflowers and an hibiscus. I will also have a pattern for a chrysanthemum available (from Jean Well's book). 

Here's a quick overview of how we'll be spending our time together:

Thursday afternoon/evening:
  4 p.m. Show and Tell
  6 p.m. Dinner (LA Times Tortilla Soup)
Friday morning:
  8:30 a.m. Breakfast (Continental) 
  Choose design and plan project  
  Fabric painting 
  12:30 p.m. Lunch (Light) 
Friday afternoon:
  Transfer design to freezer paper
  Cut flower from hand-painted fabrics
  Quilt flower to background
  5:30 p.m. Dinner (A Fall Meal)
Saturday morning:
  9:00 a.m. Breakfast (French Country Omelet)
  Embellish flower and background
Saturday afternoon:
  Construct market bag
  5:30 p.m. Dinner (Chipotle Enchiladas and Mexican Rice)
Sunday morning:
  9:00 a.m. Brunch
  Finish market bag
Sunday afternoon:
  4:00 p.m. Dinner at the Union Hotel

October Retreat - List of Supples and Materials

Bring following:
Smock, apron, or old shirt you don't care about for painting
Sewing machine with all feet
Thread (navy, yellow, green) if you will be making a denim bag
Scissors (fabric and paper)
Rotary cutter
Applique pressing sheet
Travel iron and ironing pad
Seam ripper
Pencil
Beads, buttons, embroidery floss, etc. for embellishing flower

Optional:
1 yard each of coordinating fabrics (background and lining)
If you have fabric paints/dyes, please bring them

I will provide following:
Paint, inks, PFD fabric
Light-weight denim for the market tote
Sunflower-cat lining
Batting

Deanna's Birthday Quilt

Back in August, one of my longarm projects was a beautiful geometric design pieced by Maria before she left to spend her summer fishing. She made this quilt last spring when she was snowed in and couldn't leave her home for almost two weeks. Good thing she completed this gift early, because unbeknownst to her, she would be spending from June 1st to mid-September on a commercial fishing boat in the Bering Sea and upon her return to land have little time to complete the quilt in time for her friend's 50th birthday. Below are a couple of pics of Maria and the birthday girl, Deanna Russell...

ULS Finished!

I've officially completed the Unusual Lone Star and here's a pic to prove it...

ULS Finished!...Almost

I am down to about 4" of sewing on my Unusual Lone Star and the piecing will be complete! You might wonder why I'm taking a break to write this? Because it was one of those "just get up and walk away" moments. I've stitched and ripped for two days and just about reached my limit. Have you ever worked on a project that brings out the worst in you? That makes you swear when you're not a swearing-woman (at least words I don't normally verbalize...like the "F" word)? Well, Karen K. Stone...Mission Accomplished! I've seen my dark side and not just muttered, but screamed f_ _ k, f _ _ k, f _ _ k!!! (I'm home alone, so nobody heard me, and it felt good. A release of sorts!)

Let me begin at the beginning...Sandy and I each began a ULS after the retreat in June. At the time, the biggest challenge seemed to be making 128 blocks that form the star. We both plugged away on our blocks during July and August. I finally finished mine and went on to the next step of sewing the blocks together to form eight diamonds, which form the points of the star. Some of the blocks missed the mark slightly, but overall they looked good. Next, I sewed together the diamonds forming each half of the star (four on each side). Still, it looked good. It has been in that state for most of the last month.

Mid-September I began working on the inner border, which is made up of a sawtooth pattern of two colors. That was a bit of a challenge, because I didn't have enough of any two colors that I liked to complete these borders which I found eat up the fabric very quickly. Fabric Depot in Portland came through and I returned from our trip late-September with just what I needed. I worked diligently on the 12 borders that are set in between the star's points and finished them this past week. Wanting to have this quilt finished for our October retreat, I pushed on to the next step. Karen K. Stone, who designed this quilt, provided some guidance in her book on assembling each of the 12 units that form the background of the star, but it was minimal. In fact, her lack of direction in this section of her book managed to take this quilt from one that could be intermediate in difficulty to intermediate-advanced! First of all, the final border was to be cut at 5 1/2", sewn to the first two shapes and then trimmed at the "same angle". This wasn't a problem for me and seemed to make perfect sense (although, someone with less experience might find this a stumbling block). I decided to cut the border at 6" and then trim the final quilt. Thank God! It was BARELY enough to give me a final 1/4" seem allowance that will be covered by binding. Karen K. Stone: what were you thinking when you wrote 5 1/2"??? Also, Karen, do you expect people to just read your mind? Your book could have been about twice it's size if you'd provided adequate directions. For example, your direction on the challenging task of setting in the background squares and triangles read: "4. Set the background pieces into your Lone Star." That's it!!! Fortunately for me, I spent years making clothing and "setting in" sleeves, gussets, etc. were commonplace. But, for a quilter, who in some cases has never had experience "setting in", directions and diagrams would be helpful. I love your quilts, Karen, but your directions suck!

Back to my tale...I managed to set in all but two of the background pieces, as I had to finally sew the two halves together. There had been some ripping/re-stitching up to this point, but nothing like the ripping and re-stitching (replay that about 20 times) that I encountered when I sewed the dead-center (think bullseye) of the quilt where about 100 seams converged to create a...bump? lump? very thick spot! I ripped, picked and sewed again and again. Finally, I ripped, re-ironed, re-trimmed, and got it this morning. That was after "just walking away" last night. I thought I'd never get it. But, I did. And now I'm down to the last set-in triangle, which is giving me fits. 

What I haven't shared are a few of the other challenges I faced yesterday. Wanting to make the most of my day I decided I would multi-task by roasting tomatoes while I was sewing. I'll share the recipe later, but briefly, I roast sliced romas that have been drizzled with olive oil and balsamic vinegar, topped with salt, pepper, dried oregano and basil for about 2 hours and then freeze them to be used later in sauces or as a topping for crostini. While I was preparing the tomatoes, one rolled and my very sharp knife sliced my thumb rather than the tomato. You never know how much you use your thumb until it's disabled. To make a long story short, the bandaid fell off and I bled on my quilt! Damn! Next, as some of you know, I'm a big tea drinker. Sun tea in the summer, hot tea the rest of the year. When the weather here changed just a few weeks ago after a long, hot summer, I returned to drinking hot tea. I always have a cup going while I'm quilting and am really fond of using my to-go cup with a lid. In keeping with my usual practice, I made myself tea and took it into my sewing room. My first tea mishap was when I knocked over the freshly brewed tea emptying the entire cup on the floor and partly on my quilt. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't forgotten to tighten the lid, which was just resting on the cup. The good news is I drink green tea and it blended very nicely with my quilt colors. That wasn't my only tea mishap yesterday, as later in the day I backed up against the table where my tea rested and knocked it over again! Shit! It was later in the day that I attempted to combine the two halves of the star and began my ripping and re-stitching. I was determined to finish the quilt, but by about 9 p.m. I'd had it and I took my swearing to a new level. You guessed it...F_ _ K! That's when I turned off the lights, shut the door, and "just walked away!" 

I'm feeling quite calm now and ready to finish the last 4" of my quilt. This has been helpful and put the whole quilt-making process in perspective. It's like that old saying about losing battles, but winning the war (I'm very bad at old sayings and really have no idea how it goes or who said it)...I've lost a few battles with this quilt, but am ready to go win the war!

P.S. While my patience was tested yesterday and I clearly failed, one of my "challenges" had me smiling...

Another Month Gone :(

You'll notice that the date of this blog is October 1st, although I'm writing it on October 11th and backdating it (the marvels of technology!!!) I accomplished so little during the month of September that I decided to "extend" the month just a wee bit in order to longarm more than the measly one quilt I finished on September 29-30. Even with the extension of time, I didn't get anything else done. With the disappointment of a slacker month hanging over my head, I avoided my journal, the StixChix blog, where I document our work and other happenings, and (like a child) closed my eyes and hoped it would go away. In this case, I guess "it" is the accountability I feel towards maintaining my blog without exception. 

Ok, I'll say it again. I only longarm quilted once in September. And, it was out of NECESSITY. After a lot of encouragement (pressure) from all three girls in So Cal, we had planned a whirlwind 3-day trip to visit all of them. A few weeks before the trip, Jana told me she'd like one of her 30's quilts that she'd made during college (under-grad...so that was about 5+ years ago) to use as a picnic blanket when she attends Movies in the Park. I pulled out the quilt and as usual it was only half finished (maybe 3/4), as it needed borders, quilting and binding. In defense of myself, I'm making this sound like a lot more work than it actually was...two days. Bottom line...the quilt was adorable when finished and should make the perfect picnic blanket. I'll share a picture of Jana with her blankie soon. We had a great trip with the highlight being dinner at Rick Bayless' Red O restaurant in West Hollywood. It was amazing and an experience we'll long remember, hopefully (at our ages I'm not so sure about that!). 

September included our trip to Portland and my class with Patt Blair. Now that I think about it, I stayed pretty busy during the month, just not quilting. I'd like to say I'll do better this month, but October and November are filled with more travel plans (another Portland trip, Washington to celebrate my sisters 70th, and Connecticut to see Jeff and family)! I may need to adjust my goal of longarming three quilts per month!