Being a Virtual Student

The days are long, but the years (weeks, too!) are short. 

How is it that while standing still (aka staying at home), each day passes slowly, but when I turn around a week has passed? Some days I feel like I'm simply existing my way through my life, and other days are full of meaning, with focus to achieve small personal goals. 

I am reminded of a Bible verse in Psalm 91, a chapter I memorized in April, when we were beginning to settle-in to the ramifications of this pandemic. The last verse, 16 says: With long life will I satisfy him, and show him my salvation. A long life spent at home can still be a life well-lived. So, I continue to engage in activities that make each day worthwhile. 

Last Saturday and Sunday I attended, via Zoom, Jenny Hayne's "Twice Cut Drunkard's Path" workshop, along with 23 other people from all over the world. Jenny led the workshop from her home studio in Sheffield, England with students joining in from Finland, Denmark, and US states: Washington, California, Massachusetts, Georgia, and... Florida.

Jenny has a great teaching set-up with three cameras! She primarily speaks to the class from this view. At the center left you can see the trapeze sort of mount that's holding her phone with which she demonstrates cutting and pressing. Another camera is aimed to watch sewing at her machine. All of the views are interchangeable, along with occasional looks at her computer screen with pattern instructions. 

This is one of the screens she shared, showing some of the possible quilt layouts of the "Hole Punch Ribbon Quilt" (the one I made) and the "Hole Punch Hoop Quilt."

After shopping my stash for materials, and realizing I didn't have enough of needed background fabric, I visited my LQS, Sew Together Quilting, to buy yardage for a couple options. The fabric I chose for the background is an ombré print by Christina Cameli for Maywood Studios called "Moongate."

It sure wasn't the easiest way to go, because I had to be very careful about which direction to cut, but I like the effect an ombré gives. I bought 3 yards, when only 2¼ was called for, and used nearly all of it.

Jenny began by demonstrating cutting and machine piecing, and concluded with how to trim each block. It was the piecing that tested my skills - sewing without using pins to join tight oval curves on 4"-tall blocks. 

I'd begun cutting out fabric Saturday morning around 11 am, attended the workshop from 1 to a little after 4 pm, and after eating, continued to work on blocks until 11:30 pm... and that was just to keep up for the next day's lesson! Of course, there was no need to keep up - as Jenny reminded all of us - but that's just how I roll. In fact, some of the students only attended the workshop, and didn't sew at all. That's understandable if your cutting and sewing area aren't in the same room as your computer. In any case, the nice part was that Jenny recorded herself giving the lesson and answering questions, and emailed us the video as reference for later reviewing. It was pretty easy to conclude that she knows what she's doing, and is good at it!

In fact, I've discovered that learning virtually is preferable to learning in-person!

No one has to pack up a sewing machine and supplies (and maybe forget something) to go to a workshop.

All of the students can see, close-up, what the instructor is doing. None of the students have to take turns moving closer to see the teacher's sewing machine demonstration.

Virtual learning is so appealing, it may be the only way I'll want to take future workshops! 

This is basically what we made during the workshop: two rows of 7 blocks. It kept me on my toes, keeping the front/back and right/left fabric pieces properly arranged. Besides the ombré background, the only other print I used a Moda Grunge for the white holes inside the ribbon. The remaining four fabrics are solids.

Jenny meant the quilt to be viewed horizontally, but vertical looks good too.

On Monday I completed the 39" X 65" quilt top with my personal addition of two large drunkard's path blocks at the ends of the quilt that give points to the ribbon, rather than blunt ends as in the pattern.

Tuesday I pin-basted. Because I often see quilters pin-basting in regimented rows, I offer a picture of how I prefer to baste: randomly.

Here's why:

Right: An irregular pin layout, and change of pin directions, picks up more warp and weft threads across an expanse of fabric.

Left: A regimented, columns and rows pin layout captures the same warp and weft threads over and over and over, placing more strain in concentrated areas of the fibers. 

I was anxious to move onto quilting because Jenny offered some of her collected Papper, Sax, Sten Pinterest designs as ideas. Since the quilt design is three-dimensional, she pointed us to three-dimensional drawings that illustrate how dense lines create depth, while widely-spaced lines suggest nearness.

I attempted to apply that concept to the "dowel shapes," and "holes" in my quilt. I used a ruler foot for free motion quilting curves, using the side of the foot to eyeball the distance between stitches, and used a straight ruler for quilting vertical lines. 

Now I'm considering whether waves of ribbons are doable for the background. I seldom see the whole quilting picture, but rather work quilt designs as I go along.   

Other Makes

In quieter moments I've finished the second (orange one) of four chair pads. Yellow or aqua will be next. Crochet continues on my Moorland afghan too, and it's nearing a finish. 

Book Recommendation

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by Alan Bradley is the first in a series of books about Flavia de Luce, a precocious 11 year-old who is unusually adept at chemistry, and figuring out a mystery. It's 1950 and she lives in Buckshaw mansion (England) with her philatilist (stamp-collecting) father and two annoying older sisters. Flavia's adventure begins when a dead bird, with a stamp skewered to its beak, is left on the doorstep. She then overhears her father in a late-night argument with an unknown man, and when she goes into the garden the following morning, she finds a man lying in their cucumber patch, breathing his last breathe. It's then that Flavia takes off on Gladys, her bicycle, to pursue answers - to police questions, and her own. 

Linda's score: 4.2/5.0

The story is told in first-person, from Flavia's point of view. I kept reminding myself, she's is only 11 years old! But Flavia is a charming, intelligent girl whose adventures I would like to read about further. The second book is The Weed That Strings the Hangman's Bag. However, as it often happens with my public library, the first book in a series is an audiobook;  the rest are in print! Why isn't a series that begins as an audiobook made available entirely as audiobooks? There must be a reason. 

Zoom Presenting

It's exciting to me that I'll get to do some Zoom presenting next month! While I won't be "live" as Jenny was, through Powerpoint-type presentations I get to share some of how I do what I do. 

On September 15 I'll give a "Quilt Photography" presentation to the Big Cypress Chapter of Quilting Guild of The Villages, sharing a little of how I take pictures of quilts

On September 19  I'll present "No Tails Binding: Mitered Corners by Machine" to the South Florida Modern Quilt Guild, sharing the atypical way I add binding to a quilt, machine-join the four corners, and then trim.

I'm very honored to have been invited, and excited about these opportunities because such things give purpose and meaning to long days and short weeks! Linda

Catch Up

Time is passing at lightening speed. Or is it just me? My beginner quiltmaking classes are already coming down the home stretch. Today I showed one class of students how to sew binding to a quilt. My thanks to whoever picked up my camera to take this picture!

This Friday is an all-day free motion quilting workshop. For those quilters who have never attempted FMQ, I'll do a pin basting demo as I've done on this "Spinner" quilt. Spinner is a 36" X 48" quilt I recently designed for First Time Quiltmaking students. It's simply an additional pattern option, besides the four basic designs students have had since 2005. (Oh my! I've been teaching for a long time, haven't I?!)

Catching up on a long-intended to-do, I recently had two more books made of my Flourishing Palms blog posts. While I managed to have volumes 1, 2 and 3 printed shortly after the end of each year -  2009, 2010, and 2011 - somehow, I never made the time to create Volumes 4 and 5, from 2012 and 2013. Both those years were pretty monumental for us, so I didn't want to lose record of them.

Having blog posts made into a print book is a pretty easy process. I did it through Blog2Print. You get to choose a date range, and then several options for formatting - a cover style, front and back cover photographs, and whether to include a table of contents, or blog comments. I didn't include either. It takes a couple weeks to have the book order fulfilled by Shared Books.

Here are pages from a post about a Carolyn Friedlander trunk show I attended last year. It's great having lots of pictures.

The only posts I didn't include were those about giveaways.

I'm expecting that someday, probably after I'm gone, my children and grandchildren will look through these books and find that their Mom/Nana was crazy for quiltmaking. As if they don't know that already! They'll also know I'm proud of them. After all, they made the covers of several books!

Below are four churn dash blocks for Carla, the February queen of our Mid-Century Modern Bee.  This is the link to our new Mid-Century Modern Bee blog where you can see pictures of blocks and 2013 quilt finishes by our 12 bee members. I'm sorry to say that my 2013 quilt isn't there yet - because it's not finished - and I don't have a clue what I'm going to ask my bee mates to sew for me when I'm the July queen.

Carla's churn dash blocks might look familiar because she asked for them, and I sewed them, in January 2013. Now she's requesting them again because she needs a lot of 4" blocks for a queen-sized quilt! All the blocks are bright - orange, red, pink, yellow, and white/snow. The quilt will be appropriately named "Juicy Fruit." If you ever need a clever method for sewing a churn dash block, check out Carla's super tutorial!

 

When I sewed together each little block, I used my web method of piecing. If you're not familiar how to sew a web, check out my tutorial here. This joining method works for sewing together blocks to make a quilt top, and can be applied to sew together little patches to make a block like this.

Chain-pieced columns to make a web.

All four blocks as webs.

Then, I sewed rows together to finish each block.

Last weekend I finished improv-piecing my 2014 Pantone Challenge quilt. That was a lot of fabric-chopping and resewing! I've pretty much decided improv takes longer than sewing together more traditional blocks. The four sections, and the gray and white strips are all improv-pieced.

With fabric leftovers, I pieced together very scrappy single-fold binding. It's ready to sew to the quilt when I'm done quilting. Happily, I'm on track to meet the March 21 entry deadline.

So far, this is the quilting - very much an improv quilting design since none of the quilted arcs have uniform spacing.

To quilt those arcs, I used this handy FMQ tool - a Fine Line Curve Ruler made by Accents in Design. 

Stay in touch! In an upcoming post, I'll show you how to use the ruler, and you'll have an opportunity to win a set for yourself! Linda

Life's Bloom-in!

I need a new project like - not!  But I just couldn't resist another of Emma Jansen's designs after seeing her Bloom quilt posted on Instagram. (Oh, am I ever hooked on that technology... a reason blog posts have become less frequent.)

Emma and me at Spring quilt market 2012

Emma's talent just oozes out of her... one beautiful quilt pattern after another. I wish I had a thimbleful of her giftedness. And isn't she a doll?

Anyway, I ordered Bloom from her Ballarat Patchwork on-line store. The purchase was too easy, even converting Australian dollars to US dollars.

When the pattern arrived, I pulled fabrics. I've wanted to make a rainbow-colored quilt for a long time now.

From these yummy-colored prints, and using Steam-a-Seam 2, I drew, cut, fused and cut 345 appliqué pieces.

An unused (perhaps that should read "never-used") muffin tin helped me separate each bloom fabric combo.

After more than a week of cutting, fusing and sewing, I ended up with this 78" X 78" quilt top. I've decided to "appli-quilt" it. It's a term I made up to describe the method whereby you fuse shapes to a quilt top, make the quilt sandwich, and then appliqué and quilt at the same time. If you know Kellie Wulfsohn (also an Australian) and her work (Don't Look Now), that's how she makes many of her quilts. 

The back is made using "Twirling Blossoms" Lush, a Michael Miller fabric from Fabrics.com.

Of course, I always save selvages.

After waiting a few days for batting to arrive - Hobbs' Tuscany Wool, from Patsy Thompson - I headed to the garage for spray basting. I moved out the car and golf cart so I could lay a couple of old sheets on the concrete. Then, I laid out the batt. I actually sprayed one side and then turned it over to spray the other side. It was a little difficult to handle, but it worked. I'd heard it's best to take spray basting outdoors, but it always manages to be too breezy on the days I want to baste!

I went back to my sewing room with that sticky batting, and put it onto the backing that was already taped-down on my big table. On advice from a quilter in our MQG, I pressed the entire quilt top. Supposedly, it helps bond the adhesive and batting... bonding being a concern I had since the 505 Spray and Fix can instructions state it's for use with cotton batting. Until I start quilting, I really don't know how well this is going to work!

You may also wonder why I chose wool batt, living as I do in sunny-hot Florida. Well. Bloom isn't so much about being a quilt for warmth, as for an opportunity for free motion quilting. Wool is a favorite of Diane Gaudynski, a domestic machine quilter whose work I respect and admire. She likes wool for its resiliency and trapunto-ish-ness after quilting. I've also found that wool doesn't leave fold marks like some cotton battings do. I know this because I used a wool batt in Snowflake Medallion, another Emma Jansen design.

The step I'm working on now is marking for quilting. It's a step I really struggle with. I manage to do a much better job of suggesting quilting designs for others' quilts than my own! However, taking some time to think through possibilities, and with the help of freezer paper, Frixion pens, and several rulers - including my beloved, oft-used 12" set of nested acrylic circles - I'm slowly working through marking quilting designs. Some shapes will be "organic" - a term that I think really means "quilt on the fly as best as you can."

Now you know what I'm doing. That is unless this little man happens to come for a visit. Of course, then all quilting activities cease.

Linda

Slow-go UFOs

No new UFO finishes, but progress is a good thing.

Though I've stopped doing hand appliqué because it's such a slow process (for me), I've vowed to finish the hand appliqué UFOs I've started. This 20" x 20" Hawaiian appliquéd palm fronds piece was begun in 2008. Finished as either a wall hanging or pillow, it will find a place in our Florida palm tree-themed home.

20" X 20"

However, it will remain a UFO for a while because I've run out of the exactly-the-right color (894) Mettler #60 thread, and can't buy it locally. (sigh) I'm so weary of having to mail-order everything.

My UFO Bonnie Hunter "Roll, Roll Cotton Boll" (RRCB) mystery quilt was offered in December 2010-January 2011. I haven't touched mine since then, though I had even pieced the last border's parallelograms before putting it away! Happily, it didn't take long to complete the top that measures a whopping 86" x 101".

The weekend was spent rearranging my sewing room so I could pin-baste.

Besides RRCB, I basted this 55" X 70" UFO (no name yet) from 2011 when I was in the One Block Over bee. Would you believe... all my safety pins are now in quilts!

Because I had an I'm-tired-of-moving-around-this-pattern-and-fabric moment, I sewed this skirt one afternoon last week. The pattern was a bargain purchase (like $1) from Fabric Recycles, a Kansas City business that operates on the concept of buying, and then reselling, perfectly good sewing and quilting fabrics, notions and supplies. The store was the recipient of 70 quilting and craft books I divested myself of before moving last year.

My skirt was made from one yard of home dec fabric. Like it!

Now back to those UFOs and re-rearranging my sewing room for some time-consuming FMQing. Linda

Some of This and That

When the backing fabric for my Great Granny Along quilt top arrived last week, I promptly washed it, pieced it and set to pin-basting. This is the first time I've pin-basted a big quilt in our new house, so I had to make some adjustments. I did it in the garage!

I sure don't regret having moved my favorite hollow core doors! They have so many uses. I was able to get the two white trestle table legs (from Ikea) adjusted to the same height as two sawhorses so the doors made one even surface. I had nice weather for pin-basting, in between waving to neighbors passing in cars and golf carts. 

For those of you following our furniture shopping progress, our living room is done. There's a new clock on the wall, and the recliner and rug are in place. Since we couldn't find a rug at any of the nine or so places we shopped, we bought carpeting from Home Depot that a local man cut and bound for us.

Add this furniture consignment store find, a Tommy Bahama-style cabinet and I'm likin' how this looks. The cabinet is ideal storage for books, travel guides and maps, bible study workbooks, wedding and photo albums, Scrabble, Mexican dominoes, and playing cards that until now have been crammed into the hallway closet.

When the fella delivered the living room rug, I arranged with him to also pick up and deliver (because they wouldn't fit in our car) two 4' X 8' sheets of 3/4-inch thick Owens-Corning insulation. This is the tongue-and-groove style of insulation.

Duct tape is my friend!

It took me only an afternoon to duct tape together two sheets, on both sides; trim 16" from the left side length, and 1" from the top; wrap the whole thing in Hobbs 80/20 batting (secured to the back with duct tape); and wrap the whole thing again with white flannel (also secured with duct tape).

I also made a cutout for the electrical outlet, albeit a bit off kilter. To determine where to cut the opening,  I measured the distance from the wall corner instead of from the baseboard corner. Oops. Still, the whole thing fits snugly between the floor and ceiling, and is held securely by several 3M velcro-type mounting strips. It's a whopping 80-inches by 95-inches of creative play space!

With my hollow core doors now set up in the sewing room around the sewing machine table, and the design wall in place, I'm eager to be productive. I've begun FMQing the quilt, without the aid of the Bernina BSR. This room will be finished if I can ever find a cabinet for fabric, not seen in this photo but sitting out on the left.

quilts in the closet

Did you see my "Ugly" quilt on the sewing room wall? I've used lots of 3M mounting strips to hang seven quilts on walls in our home, with two more quilts on beds, and three on a quilt rack. The remaining 103 quilts I brought in our move are in pillow cases stacked in the guest bedroom closet. Yes, I really do have that many quilts. They're of every size - from miniatures to table runners, pillows and wall hangings, to twin through queen-sized quilts. Twenty-plus of them are earmarked for selling or donating.

It was a happy surprise to receive an email from Angela at CuttoPieces, saying I'd won a giveaway on her blog. What a thrill to receive 22 fat quarters - yowsa! - of Heather Mulder Peterson's "Seaside Cottage" collection from SprightlyFabrics. They're beautiful! You won't be surprised to know I have something in mind for them.

However, there won't be much sewing for the next several days. Our son and his family are with us, intentionally avoiding the high security around their home near the site of the Republican National Convention. While mom and dad work remotely from our house, we're taking care of this cutie...

Austin, 2 years/3 months

... which is just fine by me. Linda