Surprise

If Lily would just move I could show you how I've been quilting the border of Rumspringa.



Surprised? I know, hardly. Yes, I've been hand quilting unmarked freehand fans. Or have I? Maybe Lily has been doing the quilting around here:

My husband hasn't seen these photos, but I can hear him in my mind, noonooo Lily is going to get hurt by that needle, be careful, aaaaaaah. Not to worry, no kitties were injured in the making of these photos.

Speaking of my husband, he says why don't you ever put pics of the big cats in your blog? Well, they just aren't nearly as photogenic as the girls. But here's Habibi sitting in the wreckage of a cardboard box, one of his and Howlers favorite resting spots.

Links, links, links. Let's start with some Fungly Challenge links. I'm sure this isn't everybody, but I do my best. If you want to make sure people see your fungliness, then link your fungly post to this post. That way it will show up here and folks can follow it back to your blog.

Kristin has made a great Jacks on Six fungly top plus she's using the triangles she cuts away to make liberated Shoo Flies.

Finn has made some of the wildest funnest blocks. They appear here and there throughout her blog, but make sure you catch the blenderized Tweety.

Master of Patience Lynda has finished her Jacks on Six Fungly quilt - hurrah!

Roz finished a liberated orphan sampler fungly - great to see her playing and experimenting.

Speaking of liberation, Brenda finished her wonderful basket quilt top with free-pieced letters and Collaborative Quilting baskets. The colors are marvelous. And actually, you should read all of Brenda's blog if you're not already. I love her work and look forward to seeing how her Words Fail Me quilt turns out.

Check out the new-ish blog Bumble Beans by Victoria. She's just pieced a top in the spirit of Gee's Bend and it's marvelous.

Speaking of Gee's Bend quilters, check out this great Smithsonian magazine article on the most recent show Gee’s Bend: The Architecture of the Quilt. I just finished reading the book. marvelous.

On a more serious topic, Persnickity Diane recently wrote about the impact of Multiple Sclerosis on herself and a good quilting friend. MS is a horrible cruel disease. Please consider a donation to support the work of the National MS Society.

You can actually still donate via Quiltville's Bonnie and Dave Hunter, even though the race he rode in is already over. Boy, I've been in a fog, meant to post about that weeks ago. Oops. At least the sun is out now and I'm thinking again.

Bummer of a note to end on. Maybe I should have put the depressing stuff first and then the cute photos of kitty paws...

Jasmine's Baby Quilt

I want to share a quilt with you that I made ages ago - I'm not sure when, sometime in the late '90s. This is Jasmine's baby quilt. I wasn't smart enough to take a photo of it before I sent it (isn't that always the case?) but Jas's dad sent me a photo - this is what the quilt looks like now. Very Velveteen Rabbit.

I picked the Snowball block specifically to show off all the wild, fun, bright fabric. Because I'm me I had a hard time getting the triangles added correctly. So I did what I usually do, trim down the blocks to a consistent size, probably about an 1/8" smaller than the blocks were supposed to be. And then I put the blocks away while I worked on another project.

So got back to it and started piecing blocks together. Somewhere along the way I realized that I hadn't actually cut down ALL the blocks - about half of them were the original size. Did I panic? Nope. I pieced the blocks into two sections. I added oversized black border fabric to the top and sides of one half and then oversized border fabric to the bottom and sides of the other half. To make it interesting I added that wedge of black in the middle before joining the two sections together. And then I just straightened out the edges and voila, a fun quilt.

Wow, I just looked at the quilt closer and realized that the black fabric isn't just faded out, it's completely worn away in areas. I have heard horror stories about black fabric disintegrating and geeze it certainly looks like I got some of that. Look at how well the high quality quilting fabrics have held up. Hmm, wonder what other quilts that same black fabric went into?

Lots of links for you today. Funglies have been popping up all over the place. Here are a few: Joyce, Magpie Sue, Siobhan, Michelle, Cheri's Linus Quilts project, Dot, Brenda S, Katie, Finn, Kristin, and Carol E. Some of these don't look fungly to me at all - always interesting to see how tastes differ.

I love this string quilt of Roz's - in particular how she added the turquoise sashing.

Cheri is making this delightful baby quilt for Otto.

In my last quilty post I showed you Fran's Sleepover Quilt. Well, Fran has started a blog called Making Memories One Stitch at a Time.

Changing topics, I watched the new BBC miniseries of Sense and Sensibility. It was marvelous and I love how the longer length allows for more depth. My heart still belongs to Hugh Grant's Edward though.

The Fungly Challenge

You know how I've been giving you all hints about my crazy, wild project? Well it's finally time for the reveal.

The Fungly Challenge

Play along with Tonya and Bonnie and sew a Fungly Quilt. What is a Fungly Quilt? It's FUN and UGLY and will bring the Quilt Police to tears.

The FABRIC

You will need fabric that is:

horrendously ugly
high contrast, hard to use
really busy
boring boring boring
past its sell-by date (just how long has it been sitting unused on your shelf?)
stuff you just plain old don't like. no reason or explanation, it's perfectly nice fabric you just can't stand it.
leftover novelty fabrics (think I-Spy and Bug Jar)

We recommend that you use fabrics from several of these categories, not just one. If you only use boring fabrics you'll put yourself AND the quilt to sleep. The best way of all to do this is to work on this challenge with friends. That way if one of you has lots of busy novelties and the other calicoes from the '70s, wheee, you can have some fun. If you can't sew together, then exchange strips of fabric ahead of time.

you may also throw in a solid or near-solid or two, just so you don't get seasick...

The RULES (more like suggestions)

be casual, mismatch seams, make blocks the "wrong" way - if you're already a Liberated Quilter, this part will be easy
NO seamripping (except to resew a seam that is too narrow and will come apart when the quilt is used)
make it work - if it's too short add more fabric, if it's too long, cut some off.

If you want deliberate liberation, cut your squares and triangles in different sizes. Make some bigger, make some smaller. Throw in some rectangles and angles. Be a very lazy cutter who can't read a ruler. Use your miscuts. I cut some of my 3.5" squares into triangles rather than the bigger 4" squares. D'oh, but I used them!

The PATTERN

Pick any pattern you'd like to play with but choose one that is BIG. For instance a 9" Jacks on Six block. That way the ugly fabric can't hide. So if you're exchanging strips with friends, 3.5" is the minimum. If you're going to use half-square triangles, than add some 4" strips too.

The GOAL

Have a lot of fun. Make the "worst" quilt you can. Experiment and play. What are the ugliest color and fabric combinations that you can come up?

The goal is NOT to end up with a quilt that you will love (although you just might). Instead, plan on using it for having picnics, making forts, letting sleeping dogs lie. A quilt that is so hideous you don't mind kids throwing up on it or leaving it up in the treehouse during a rain storm. Or, you can always use it as a really outrageous quilt backing.

The WHY

I was listening to a Talk of the Nation interview with author Lynda Barry about her new book What it Is (which sounds really fun - looking forward to reading it) and they discussed a writing exercise in which the students write an essay. Then they are told to revise it to make it the perfect essay. And the final step is to make it the WORST essay possible. Both the caller and Ms Barry agreed that when the students are trying to be deliberately bad the essays are really lively and show more energy than either of the other essays. It struck me this would be a great quilt exercise. But we're skipping the first two steps.

I have to say, I think it works. My quilt top IS lively and fun. I know I had a great time sewing it. Most was fabric I'd consigned to "never want to use it for real" and that really let me play with it without worrying about wasting it.

Please don't be offended if you look at some of this fabric and think "I love it, how can she call it ugly?" Remember, some of this is fabric I do love, but I've had sitting around for too long. The only exception to that is the monster balloons which I think are a hoot and I just wanted to USE - it's fairly new fabric.

Some of the tropical prints in my top are from the early 1990s, when I used to buy fabric mail order from a 1" square that could so often be misleading esp with big prints. I do love them, but they've been sitting on my shelves for 15 years. Time to play.

Go to Bonnie's Fungly post to see what she came up with. She focused on strange fabric combinations. I've now sent her a bunch of my leftover fungly bits so I'm really looking forward to seeing what she comes up with mixing both our fabrics together.

Play with us! Make a fungly quilt.