Just a Smidgen of Stitchen'

I can't really claim more than that since my last post. The sum total of my sewing can be seen in this photo of the progress on the 4" blocks for Lynn's class. 

The color is off in this photo. I tried to correct it, but not sure I improved it much. Interesting story about the tree block in the center--Lynn gave us a chance to take a photo of his tree block, then told us he wasn't going to give us a pattern.  That is Lynn's block below.

Just wanted us to go home and try making it, and report back on what we decided and how it worked. I love a challenge, so even though I should have been doing a hundred other things, I went right home and dug into it.

 

I decided to construct my tree as a 9-patch block.  So I printed out the photo, drew a grid to create the 9-patches and went to work. I knew I wanted a little more green in my tree, but I also wanted to retain the original design. My first attempt involved a soft green replacing the background in the 4-patches. When that didn't click for me, the second attempt was removing the plain background blocks and replacing them with a medium green, as shown below, right.

Attempt #3 (below, left) was scaling back the medium green to just the blocks that touched the trunk, and I liked it better than numbers 1 or 2, but wasn't quite sure it was the answer.

So I added two more medium green blocks to the third row of that color of block (above, right), and decided to call it final.

Got this sewn together and started second guessing, but was done playing with it. This is the final answer, and that's final!!

The next block we had been assigned has been named by Lynn "The Martian Block". Lynn's current iteration of this pattern is being made in very bright fabrics. Here is a shot of the photo of Lynn's block next to my block laid out and ready to be stitched. You may notice a slight variation in the way I am doing it.

The above photo makes my fabrics look brighter than they actually are, but the finished block in the photo below looks darker than it really is.

The flying geese in blue and green don't have enough contrast, though I thought they did before I sewed it all together. I am going to deconstruct this block and use a lighter green for the goose body, and then hopefully get a photo in truer light. I hope that brings the block to life.

This is a rather rushed post, without much variety, but it is all that has happened in the sewing room. 

Fall is in the air, and hubby and I are headed out on another adventure--we are not sun-seekers, so we go when and where there is a nip in the air, if we have a choice. 

Village Dry Goods, the shop over the mountain, is finally able to have a retreat again, for the first time since COVID hit. I am so excited, I can hardly stand it! They used to be January events, but this one is the middle of October. After that I should have some quilting that I can share. I stay pretty focused at retreat, so I actually get something accomplished. Are you a talker or a sewer when you attend a retreat--or are you able to attain that elusive balance, and accomplish both?

Until next time, be creative and be kind!

Janet O.

p.s. Blogger's messing with my font size again. I give up. You don't need glasses--the letter size varies in the last few paragraphs.

The smoke from forest fires in states north and west of us makes for really dirty air at times, but also beautiful colors at sunset.

"What I did this Summer"

Trying to catch you up on the past 1 1/2 months, I felt like I was writing the typical report for the elementary school student returning to class each fall.

I've done very little sewing since my last post, but I'll share those few things first.

For the class I am taking from Lynn to make this quilt (those are Lynn's hands holding up his finished quilt)....

...I completed the June assignment.

These are the four blocks that radiate out diagonally from the center tree block. They will be 4" finished in the quilt top.

We were also to make 40 of the blocks used in the border. I think there are 160 of those blocks needed, so in theory, if we do 40 each of the four months we have class, we would have them all completed when we finish the class. 

I'm not sure, but I think we were assigned 12 or 16 blocks to make for this month. Class is in another 1 1/2 weeks, and I haven't made a single one of the assigned blocks, let alone the border blocks.  Looks like I am going to flunk July's homework.

What I have done this month (and very little of it, at that) is piddle around with the parts for the National Parks quilt I promised youngest son I would make for him. It has only been 2 1/2 years since I made that promise, so I thought I'd better get around to it.

What you see on my design wall are the parts I have so far. The map panel at the top is what started it all. Then I added the four poster panels (which are not trimmed yet, and will probably get bordered) of the first four National Parks he visited. They are obviously not placed in the final layout, because I have no clue.  After a FaceTime conversation with Wendy Reed a while ago where I shared my dilemma, she made a couple of suggestions I really liked. I toyed with different color combos for the flying geese she suggested, but didn't act until I received the little pattern card below with an online order.

I really liked the way the flying geese in this little design are all in earthy colors. So I gathered a bunch of fabrics in the earth tones from the National Parks panels. Today I finally used my die cutter to cut out a bunch of large flying geese from those fabrics.

I don't know how many of these I will need, or the size to which I will ultimately trim them--or even if I will like all of those colors once they are made and placed next to the panels, as that short row you can already see in the photo above. But it is a start--and it is about time!

Aside from that, my sewing room has been very quiet since you last heard from me many weeks ago. But I did have an adventure this summer I'd like to share. If you only want quilty content, go no further.

This is where I was the first week of July. My first time ever off the North American continent!

We spent July 4th in Normandy, visiting Point du Hoc, Omaha Beach, and The American Cemetery. It was a very emotional experience for me.

American Cemetery

Omaha Beach

Point du Hoc

We also visited Rouen (where Joan of Arc was executed), and Mont Saint Michel (the inspiration for the royal castle in Disney's "Tangled") while in the Normandy region for 3 days.

We spent four days in Paris, and saw many Olympic venues being prepared, and Olympic banners on buildings, and hanging from light poles. 

 You can see the Olympic rings on the Eiffel Tower in that earlier photo, and on the Arc de Triomphe they had the emblem for the Paralympic Games.

This is the view from atop the Arc. We never got a chance to go up the Eiffel Tower, but I think I went up anywhere from 300-500 steps almost every day to get to the top of one tall thing or another.

Cathedral of Notre Dame (left), and the Basilica of the Sacred      Heart (yes, I climbed to the windows up in the tallest dome)

We took in so many other sites in the four days we were in Paris, but we were actually there for a choral presentation by members of nine choirs from the United States (one of which includes hubby), commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day. The concert was held our last night there, in the Cathedral Madeleine.

My apologies for the travelogue, and the overabundance of selfies. It was just such an amazing experience, and I couldn't help gushing about it. And even though I couldn't eat the French pastries, I did eat more than my share of the macarons, and I had gelato with chantilly cream when I didn't trust choosing a menu item for lunch that would be gluten free. It was tough. ;)

But it was good to be back home again, even if the fires in nearby states were leaving our air very hazy. On the bright side, it makes for some colorful sunsets. 

Until next time, be creative, and be kind.

Janet O.

I'm Still Here!

Though I have given you no reason recently to think so. My thanks to those who have checked on me. I just don't know how life gets SO busy!! It has been so many weeks since my last post, and I am sorry for the delay. I haven't had much time to sew, but I can share a couple of projects with you that have seen a little progress.

Soon after my last post (weeks and weeks ago), we were off on a road trip to DD#1 and her family, in Oregon. This is the second time we were there at the right time to see the rhododendron park in bloom.

I took along my "Stars In The Garden" project, and got a start on the second-to-last full flower (there are still a lot of partial flowers to make).

This was in the Spring 2013 issue of Primitive Quilts and Projects. I didn't start it until a few years later, and loving EPP as I do (NOT!!--but I do love the look), it will be a miracle if it is finished in my lifetime.

I used Bonnie Hunter's Floribunda pattern (click the link to see my finished top, and the link to Bonnie's pattern) to make a Jacob's Ladder quilt of what Bonnie termed "ugly florals." I really liked the finished top and donated it just a few years ago. Last month I was doing a deep dive in the sewing room and came across the leftover blocks. I am piecing a few more and making a smaller version, which I plan to call "Jacob's Stepladder".

I will make another row of blocks and intersperse those darker ones that are across the bottom throughout the quilt. But I have put this away for now. I have a promise to keep and that will be my focus the next time I can sit and stitch.

Lynn Hopkins has been up to his tricks again, but this time he has gone larger. This is the quilt he has designed, and the blocks are 4", not his usual 2". So if 2" frightened you, this may be your jam!

The magic of his exclusive rulers and patterns is that they allow you to create patterns that use a 3x3" or 6x6" grid in 2" or 4" blocks. You can't do that gracefully with standard rulers. 

Lynn is a lot of fun, and we get plenty of laugh therapy in our classes.  He is experimenting with the idea of Zoom classes, so let me know if you are interested, and I will pass your contact information along to him (but only if you have an email address attached to your blogger account, or you include your email in your comment. I can't give him what I don't have!)

September 21 is National Sew a Jelly Roll Day this year, and Lynn shared this pattern with us, that I think is one of the nicer looking Jelly Roll patterns I've seen. If I wasn't going to be out of the country that day, I would probably try to sew it up.

This is from justgetitdonequilts.com. You can find the free pattern here.

Another free pattern that caught my eye was on Taryn's reproquiltlover blog. This would make a great wall hanging or table topper.

Find it on Taryn's blog here. And thank her for the pattern. :)

That is it for quilty content, but I do have a couple of other things I would like to share. 

I started playing the violin at age 9, but after college I didn't do a whole lot with it--an occasional chamber group or duet, but nothing consistent. In these more recent years I could go for several years without getting out my instrument. And it was still the upgraded student violin my parents bought me at age 15.

Last year I was invited to play a duet in church with a young woman almost 50 years my junior, so I had my violin refurbished, and practiced daily for over 2 months to be ready. It was not as scary as I thought it would be after all those years (17 years since I had last played in church).

We were asked to play again in May, before the young gal left for a summer job. I felt it was about time I did something about the instrument I was playing. I finally upgraded to a master class violin--and it was a major upgrade. I spent almost twice as much as I had planned on, but when I heard the tone of this instrument, I knew it felt like home. Even though I only bought it the day before our duet, its warm, mellow tone was so soothing to me that this was the first time I have played a duet where I didn't have shaking knees and hands. 

This may explain why I am not getting much quilting done. When I am stressed and have a few minutes for a "therapy activity", I find myself more often in the music corner, than in my sewing room. I need to find a better balance.

This is the man who sold me the violin. It had been one of his personal instruments, and I feel honored to have it. If you do a google search for the man who played the violin for his nurses while intubated with COVID, you will get this.

From that link you will see that his story was picked up by CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, People online, even BBC. He is an incredible man, and incredibly humble. If you have time, watch a couple of the reports. 

Final thing--I don't know how many of you got to see the Northern Lights over Mother's Day weekend. I know I didn't. We were in Oregon, and just didn't have a great viewing opportunity where we were staying. But our son, back home on the farm, sent us a few photos he captured, and I wanted to share one.

This was taken with the 3-second exposure setting on his iPhone camera.

I did draw a name for my long ago giveaway, and I have notified the winner. I'm not sure if they wanted to be included or not. So the winner will know who they are, but you may not learn their name until my next post--and as busy as July is, I will try so hard not to go this long again.

Blogger has messed with my font size, randomly making some larger. I can't get it fixed, so I am letting it go.

Until next time,

Be creative, and be kind.

Janet O.

Lucky Thirteen!

That is how many years I have been blogging, as of next week. There is a lot going on next week, and I wasn't sure I'd get a post written on the very day, so this will do. More on that at the end of the post. 

This two-year-old project is a finish! This was started two years ago this month as a SAL with Chooky. Just barely got it bound, after picking it up from my quilter less than a week ago. That must be some kind of record for me, to have a king-size quilt bound in less than a week.

It took two men in the family to hold this over the deck railing for the photo. Its  93" x 106" size was too much for one wingspan.

I've always loved a Churn Dash, and I've made several mini quilts with the block, but this is the first bed size Churn Dash quilt I have made. It was a lot of fun to dig through my scraps and find coordinating fabrics to go in each block.  Then I was crazy enough to accept Chooky's challenge to do some triple Churn Dash blocks. That got tricky, trying to create the 1" Churn Dash blocks in the center. There is a good reason why I only put 3 triple blocks in the whole quilt. Go ahead and try dividing an inch into thirds. ;)

Didn't get the best shot of the quilting, but maybe if you enlarge this you can get an idea of the texture.

And while I am on the subject of this quilt I just bound, I have a question for those of you who use Clover Wonder Clips when binding. Have you had clips breaking on you very often? I have used them for years, having originally purchased a large package of the red (which I think was the only color available in the beginning). Then I was gifted a large pack of multi-colored ones a few years later, and had dumped them all in a container together. I was interested to note that after I had clipped the binding all the way around this quilt, as I stitched my way around the quilt I found several broken clips--and they were always the red ones. Anyone else have a similar experience? I have used these for years, and have clipped around entire quilts before, including the only other king size quilts I have made. Don't remember ever seeing a broken clip before. And now on this one quilt I have all of these. I even found another after taking this photo--that makes it a total of 20 broken clips. 

In April I did my last class on the tiny club blocks for my guild. It has been a delight to work with the gals who were crazy brave enough to make all of these 2" finished blocks. I just want to share one of the last ones we worked on in that class.

This little thing has 68 pieces in it!! That is insane in a 2" block! I think this is the only one where I had to trim some of the seams down to 1/8".

My fabric choices for the lower right quadrant weren't the best for contrast, but you get the idea.

I have learned a lot while making all these little blocks. Lynn is an incredible designer of tiny things, and I look forward to seeing what he does next.

As I wrap this up I need to say thank you to everyone who has read and commented on my blog over the years. I am so grateful for the encouragement, suggestions, sharing of ideas and fabrics, fun surprises in the mail, friendships, Zoom visits, and even visits in real life. I am a better person because of the goodness I see in all of you, and a better quilter from the things I have learned from you. I thank you for enriching my life.

This little "anniversary" drawing involves the following: 3 bars of my handcrafted soap, a magnetic closure sewing themed notebook, a new seam ripper (like rotary blades, I never replace these as often as I should), and a mini quilt I made over a year ago from an original pattern. It was a sample when I taught a class for a guild on a very snowy, blowy day.  If you aren't into batiks, you may not be interested in the quilt. Just mention in a comment if you would like to be included in this drawing.

Until next time, be creative, and be kind!

Janet O.

The valley is green now, but there is still snow on the mountains. In fact, they received more today.

Drawing is now closed.

Much to Share From March

Couldn't believe when March came to an end and I hadn't found time to post. I had been stitching more than I have for a while, but never wrote about it, so I will dump it all here.

Rocky Mountain Christmas was finally bound and sent to its new home.

I had hubby hold it in front of the snow covered mountains for this photo to match the Christmas theme. Made from Men's thrift store shirts, this is based on Bonnie Hunter's free Smokey Mountain Stars pattern. Being a very overcast day, the colors are darker than in real life.

The picture below, taken in my living room, gives you a better idea of the true colors.

I tucked my little Christmas gnome into the quilt to give this a holiday touch. :)

I also FINALLY got the borders on my Churn Dash quilt. This was sewn along with Chooky last year. I had the blocks finished and arranged by the deadline, but hadn't finished sewing it all together and adding borders. I so often stall on borders, even when just doing these long, straight borders with no piecing.

I just draped this over my living room sofa. I don't have floor space anywhere right now to lay out a king size quilt, and it is currently wet in the great outdoors, so this will have to do. I have always loved the churn dash block, and these scrappy ones were a delight to stitch up.  Even the challenge of putting a 1" churn dash inside the triple churn dash blocks was fun to attempt. As soon as I get a back pieced, this will be off to my longarm quilter.

In March I also made another batch of the tiny blocks for my guild class. Only one more month of these and we will have been through both sets of blocks Lynn Hopkins has designed so far. These will finish at 2" square. The rotary cutter gives you a little perspective on the size.

Also for guild I got another 5 placemats made up for our service project for Meals on Wheels. In February the gal in charge of this service project sent me home with a large bag of strips she had leftover from the placemats she had made. 

She told me to make what I wanted from them--she didn't want to see them again. I had fun digging through the strips to find things to coordinate for each placemat. The two on the left are definitely out of my usual comfort zone.

With the talk of the upcoming eclipse (which I am sad that I will be missing), I was recalling our experience in 2017 when we car camped to see the total eclipse a few hours from our home. You can read that post here. Canuck Quilter has a great eclipse pattern out that you may have seen Pat Sloan making. What a fun way to commemorate this event.

This is more than I have usually accomplish lately in a month, and it felt good to make progress on some things. Time with family and friends, time in the sewing room, time with books or violin, and time outdoors walking all fill my bucket when stress presses in. What, besides quilting, brings you joy and peace when you need it most? Please share with me in a comment.

Until next time,

be creative and be kind.

Janet O.

Yesterday morning I saw a glorious sunrise. But to make it even better, when I hurried outside to catch photos, I could hear the Sandhill Cranes trumpeting to welcome in the day. Do you have 20 seconds to see (and hear) how my day began? Make sure your sound is turned up.

Tiny Blocks, and other favorite things

I have had many unfinished Tiny Blocks left from the story boards I create to teach the process of making the blocks at my "Sew Small" guild. I decided it was finally time to get them sewn together. The photo below shows all of the blocks I have put together in the last few days. All of them had already been somewhere in the assembly process and on a story board I have used in the last couple of months.

 The 2 1/2" ruler and the rotary cutter help give you size perspective. Believe me when I say that even when I have them already cut and partially assembled, these do not go together quickly. And the one in the upper lefthand corner went together incorrectly. It is supposed to look just like the orange one below it. By the time I realized it was wrong, I was not prepared to pick it apart and start over. I just call it a new and very awkward design. :)

You can see that some of these blocks have a white background (which is not a batik), and others have a creamier colored background (which is a batik). As I finish these blocks I place them on different boards, according to whether they have the white background, or a batik background. Below are the white background blocks.

It is a little harder to get a nice, flat press with the white background, which is probably a Kona White. 

I started making these blocks about 3 years ago when Village Dry Goods sponsored The Tiny Club, taught by the mastermind behind these mini creations, Lynn Hopkins. At first I was making them out of reproduction prints, and I was using scraps from my cutting table, and leftover HSTs cut down to size. These are the blocks I made while a part of that club.

The teeny star in the center was one I cut with the wrong template and made too small, but I like it. This is as far as I got before the club ended, when Lynn went on an 18 month mission.

When I joined the Sew Small guild shortly before Lynn left on his mission, he was a member of the guild and had been teaching the blocks to them. I was asked to step in and teach while he was gone, and that is how I ended up doing this. I switched to batiks when I started teaching, knowing they would give a crisper example, but I started out pairing it with the white fabric, because I didn't have good backgrounds among my batik stash.

Once I found some good backgrounds in batiks, I have pretty much been using them exclusively, and below you see all of the blocks made completely from batiks.

Altogether I have over 60 completed blocks, but due to the different fabric types, they won't all end up in the same project. I am still playing with different ideas in my head as to what to do with them. I have two more months of teaching, which means I will be adding a few more blocks to the pile. And if you like random facts, 52 is the largest number of pieces so far in one of these 2" finished blocks!

The only other quilting I have done this month has been working on the binding for my Rocky Mountain Christmas quilt. I had waffled back and forth on what to use for the binding. Everything on the front so far had been from men's thrift store shirts, and I didn't want that to change, but I also didn't want the binding to be too terribly scrappy. There is already a lot of that going on in this quilt.

I dug through my shirt stash and finally came up with two that I thought would play nicely together. If you look closely at the photo you may be able to see where one shirt ended and another began. Only one of the two shirts was actually used in the quilt, but you'd have a hard time believing the other one wasn't in it as well.

A favorite wintertime activity is assembling puzzles. For my birthday last fall I was gifted this puzzle, and I finally had a chance to put it up this month. It was a fun one to do.

I received another similar (but different) puzzle for Christmas, but I think next I am slipping in a recent gift of a puzzle about the state of Maine. The giver knew I have enjoyed several visits there, most recently just last September.

Another favorite thing is my winter garden on my kitchen window sills. (you can click on this to get an enlarged view)

These orchids usually bloom from around December until late into the Spring, and often I am enjoying this riot of color while outside it looks like this...

If you enlarge this photo, what looks like speckles in the photo are the big, fat clumps of flakes that were falling from the sky.

And this is the same view a few days later, zoomed in a little, as the almost full moon rose this month. In the photo above, you cannot even tell there are mountains in the background, as the snow was coming down so heavily.

I hope you are doing well, wherever you live, whether it is winter or summer or somewhere in between. And I hope that you are finding time for the things that sooth your soul in these times of so much chaos. I have actually found, since picking up my violin again last fall, that it is very beneficial to my spirit to express my feelings through the music. And it doesn't take as long to play a few songs as it does to finish a quilt! ;)

I am pleased that I actually got a second post in during February (but only because February had an extra day). My hope is that in March I get more done than tiny blocks and binding!

Until then,

Be creative, and be kind.

Janet O.

One last photo looking out from the front deck. Can you see the bird up in the treetop? I believe it is a hawk.

These are the eastern mountains, and the color on them is the reflection of the sunset in the west. (In order to get the photo without the power lines, I would have had to run downstairs and outside. But I was afraid the hawk would be gone by the time I did that.)