Doin' Brigham City with Bonnie

What a time we had for two days in Brigham City, Utah! Bonnie has more energy than I think I ever have had in my whole life. And she is a constant source of hints and tips for better and more streamlined quilt making.
Here she is in front of her Garden Party quilt, which was our first class.

This quilt has 100 posy blocks that finish at 5". I planned to make my blocks finish at 2.5", and only do a mini with about 20 blocks. Last week I was up in the wee hours cutting and kitting my fabrics for the two quilts we would be starting here.

So how did this happen?

These teeny things are going to finish at 1.25"!
Did you catch that I had done my cutting in the wee hours of the morning? Well, as I sat in class this week I realized that my pieces were not all cut correctly. There was a part of the block that I had miscalculated in my sleep deprived stupor. My only option at this point was to go smaller. So I had to cut my size in half again! Could I do it? Apparently.


Here you see one of my little finished blocks by a block in Bonnie's quilt. If you go to Bonnie's post here, you can scroll down and see my blocks in a bowl with a penny in the center for comparison. In her post you will also get more info and shots of the venue, which was amazing.

This is The Academy Conference Center (a former ballet academy) from the middle, looking toward the front, as Bonnie gave a demo.

 This is the same room looking from the middle toward the back.

Here is Bonnie giving my friend and roomie, Kim, a personal demo on pressing. In the background you can see where we were served our lunch.
 
Kim spent her time focused on making Scrap Crystals. Bonnie was teaching this later in the week at another venue, but we could not make that class. 


The first day we had fun getting to know Wendy and Courtney (who came from Minnesota to take the class with her friend) as we worked. 
The second day we had the table to ourselves. The class was only about 2/3 full that day.

 
Following class, the LQS provided  some retail therapy. It was fun to see Bonnie shopping in one of my favorite little quilt shops.
 






That night we had dinner at a local iconic restaurant, Maddox. There were 15 of us from the class that day, and two that would be in class the next day.


Our second day was Midnight Flight (shown below). I had to leave a little early that day. As we got started that morning I made a management decision to make my color placement a little different. As I worked, I realized it wasn't a good choice, so I had to start over again sewing my strips and making my 4-patches. That left me a step behind the rest of the day and by the time I had to leave I had not finished a block. Maybe I can get some finished next week and share them with you.

Kim, Bonnie, and me in front of Midnight Flight.

It was about 6 1/2 years ago that I bought Bonnie's "Adventures With Leaders and Enders" on Amazon. That led me to her blog (my intro to quilt blogs), and eventually got me blogging. I had many fun email exchanges with Bonnie back before she had a bazillion followers, when she actually had time to respond. It was delightful to finally meet her! She is as real as they come, and an excellent teacher. If you have a chance to take a class from her, I highly recommend it!
 Until next time,
Janet O.


 

What now?

Well, the Tree of Life quilt in my last post had been on my design wall for so long that after taking it down and finishing the borders, the room seemed strange without it. What goes on the wall now? I wish I could show you, but it is a gift for someone who reads this, so I won't be showing it until after Christmas (and she knows who she is). I will say that it is a quick pattern and I am loving the result. I will probably make another one in the future.
I spent much of last night cutting out more blocks for John'aLee. I was going to make one a week, but like Freda, once I had the fabrics out to make one, I figured I would cut them all. Once they are cut it is hard to not just get them sewn up. Tonight I made another one.

I really like to try and make each star unique. Gets the creative juices flowing. I have five more blocks cut and hope to have them all in the mail by the end of the month.
In the meantime I am also working on a Christmas quilt for the family room. After digging up the entire strawberry bed this afternoon and separating plants and replanting, my back was really talking to me. So this evening I sat on a heating pad, deconstructing shirts, while watching the world series game. Apologies to my friends in Texas, but I have a SIL from St. Louis, so we have been cheering on the Cardinals, and what a night they had!

These are the shirts I took apart while the
 Cardinals kept crossing home plate!

Anyway, back to the shirts. I am planning on making Bonnie Hunter's Smokey Mountain Stars, but I want to only use red and green plaid shirts, along with the tan background color. My dilemma is this, should I make the centers of the stars one color and the points another? Should I make some all red stars and some all green stars? Or should I let the red and green fall randomly? This is Bonnie's quilt below (which I love), but if I am just using two colors besides the background, I can't decide if I should control the placement of the color more, or just let the chips fall where they may. Do you have an opinion (you know you do)? Please share--I love brainstorming--even via blogs!

From Bonnie Hunter's free patterns. The link above
will take you right to this pattern.

This is uncharacteristically short for me, but the heating pad calls.
Until next time, from the little mountain valley where the sagebrush grows,
Janet O.

Floribunda Lives!!

...and I love it! Mine does not have that 50s look of many others posted, but my florals tend to be of the "dark and dirty" variety and my yellows are more golden and patterned, rather than lemony and solid.

The top six blocks are sewn up (but not together). The
four blocks on the bottom are still each nine separate
pieces waiting on design boards to go to the sewing
machine and get sewn together.

That's okay--it is the pattern and scrappiness that I love about it. I have all of the pieces cut and ready to go. The original was 6x8 blocks. I have cut mine to be 7x8 blocks. I wanted this to be totally from my stash, but today I broke down and picked up 1/4 yard of more yellow (and I grabbed a floral remnant while I was in the store--I can't resist the remnants). I use a lot of mustard and gold in my quilts, but not much yellow, so I couldn't quite make it without a tad more. Can't decide yet what I will do for borders.
 Now I will set aside "Eye Fooler" as my leader/ender for a time, and let this one butt in line. It just wouldn't patiently wait its turn. In fact, it got so impatient that when I was just going to sew up one block to get a feel for it tonight, something happened and you can see the results above. I am going to put my foot down now and keep it in its place as my leader/ender project. Wonder how long that will last?
I am following Bonnie's instructions for this quilt, but I want to share with you one tip I like to use. Maybe you all are doing this already, but in case not, here goes. When I have a bunch of strips or squares to cut in a row I like to use the June Tailor Shape Cut ruler. On this quilt, when you have the two 21" strips sewn together and are putting half of one set on top of the other half (or whole ones on top of each other if you are making two blocks from the same fabric), butting the seams to prepare to slice every two inches as Bonnie shows ...

...then I like to pull out this ruler, which has cuts in it every 1/2 inch,  and line it up so that one of the black lines follows the seam on the strips. Grab your rotary cutter and slice through every two inches.

 

After you have sliced every two inches down the length of the fabric, remove the ruler and you are ready to sew the 4-patch units, and you never had to reposition the ruler. It is so slick! Yes, the ruler can be a bit pricey, but that is what those 40 or 50% off coupons at JoAnn's are for!

Of course, no matter how many slick tricks I use, I have to include some major error along the way. Why couldn't I catch this before having it all sewn and pressed?

I wanted to say thanks to all who responded to my last post. It really seems to have struck a chord--or a nerve, or something. As we are drowning in Bonnie's creative juices I guess we can take comfort in the fact that we are not going down alone. : ) I had some good chuckles over your responses and have met some wonderful new people. I know many of you found your way here because Bonnie put a link to that post on her Facebook page, and thanks to whomever it was that mentioned that to me in an email. I'm not on Facebook, so I wouldn't have known. If you are a new follower, I hope you don't expect me to be that entertaining all the time. I'm usually pretty dry.
My mini, wonky 9-patches are finally a flimsy. I'm trying to talk myself into my first attempt at machine quilting on this, but I really don't want to ruin it with my noviceness (when there isn't a word that says what I need, I'll make one). I'll have to think about it some more. If you can recommend a good book or website about quilting on your home machine, I would appreciate the input.

Until next time, from the little mountain valley where the mosquitos are returning like swallows to Capistrano (I'd rather have the swallows--besides, they eat mosquitos),
Janet O.

An Open Letter to Bonnie K. Hunter

(With Tongue Firmly Planted in Cheek)
Dear Bonnie,
You know I follow your blog faithfully. I love your quilts, your methods, your fun-loving spirit, your boundless energy and enthusiasm for quilting. I have learned so much from you! I now keep baskets of little "leader/ender" pieces by my sewing machine.



 I have a stash of men's shirts from thrift stores that I have begun to disassemble.

I am slowly cutting up my color-separated scraps into the "scrap user system," where they will then be separated by size rather than color (all of this change takes its toll on a person). And I am determined that no fabric is too ugly to go into one of my scrap quilts--it just needs to be cut smaller!!
 But I have to say this is turning into a love/hate relationship. I hate the fact that every time I turn around you are showing off some wonderful antique quilt that hits me right where my quilter's heart lives. And it isn't enough to just show the quilt--you actually figure out the pattern, start making one yourself, and invite the rest of us to sew along. How strong can a body be against such temptation?
The leader/ender method has revolutionized my quilt production and I am doing more than I ever thought I could, but there are limits to what a person can take. One can only do so much (well, I can only do so much--you seem to be able to do everything). I have downloaded several patterns from your website and carefully set them aside telling myself, "Someday." I have taken a vow not to begin a mystery project to turn out one of those fantastic mystery scrap quilts you have created in the past, should you start posting one (I got a bit sick to my stomach when you mentioned something in a recent post about a mystery). I drooled over the Floribunda quilt and even printed out the pattern and started pulling fabrics before I got a grip on myself and put them all back.(Boy, that was a close call!)
I quickly turned away from the cute little bowties that are in wonderful vintage colors! I already have a leader/ender project!!! (I REALLY do love that floribunda quilt!)
Just today I was reading another quilter's blog and she happened to mention that though she doesn't need another project (who does?) she caved and is doing those little bowties you posted. She caved! Is that a good thing? (Did I mention that I have a bunch of old florals that I need to use up somehow?--Floribunda would be just the thing!)

 Before you know it they will need a 12-step program to help people overcome their Bonnie Hunter scrap quilt addiction. (And you know, I got a lovely piece of yellow on sale at a recent shop hop.)
So I am writing this letter to ask beg you to consider your readers. Just show us some really ugly quilts for a while--with no patterns included. (That Jacob's Ladder pattern in Floribunda has been on my bucket list for years!) Who needs another really great scrap quilt to make anyway?
Oh, forget it. I can't resist either. Where did I put all of those florals? But I will draw the line here--I will not put these two very cool colored florals in this otherwise very warm toned quilt!!

See, I really am in control after all.
Sincerely, and with genuine admiration (tongue out of cheek)
Janet O.

Many Thanks & My Design Wall Audition

First of all I must send out a big "Thank You" to Bonnie Hunter for the link to my blog. I am meeting some great new people, and as a relatively new blogger, that is fun. Her book, pictured here, gave me new enthusiasm for finishing some projects that had seemed like they would never get done. I had to send her some of my handcrafted herbal soap as a thank-you. In an earlier post I said that when I had enough people reading this blog I would do some kind of soap give away, so if you stay tuned you may have a chance at a similar package.



Well, the design wall finally went up last night and I am so excited to use it. The only problem is that my current project is still mostly on the design boards, not ready for the wall. One block on the wall is not that inspiring, don't you think?

But I had to try it out, so I pulled out a set of blocks that I made using a pattern I picked up at a shop hop 5 years ago. They have been simmering, waiting for a great setting idea. I think I finally found one when I got Sharyn Craig's book referenced in a previous post, but I won't be working on this for a little while. The baby quilt, t-shirt quilt, and another one I have yet to post about have to take priority. But hey, they sure look good on the new design wall.

Each block contains 16 different fabrics in the center. It was fun collecting the fabrics from remnants, fat quarters and other quilters' scraps. The orange and purple colors were the most challenging to find in large variety. Hopefully next time you see the design wall it will contain something that I am really working on. Thank you DH, for making this a reality.

"Til next time, from the little mountain valley where the sagebrush grows (and where it DID NOT snow today!),

Janet O.