This was Funny

Here is a funny sign we saw on our trip. I think it may have been in Spokane but it's all a blurr at this point. Unfortuntately the store was closed so we couldn't find out whether the sign was accurate or not.
I made it to the studio today but didn't get anything done. It seems that driving and riding are more tiring than I thought. It is also probable that you never get as good a sleep in a hotel as at home. We live in the country so our nights are absolutely quiet. Most motels are near the highway so it's never quiet. We were also very anxious to get back to homemade bread. All in all, we are glad to be home even though it was a great trip.

Our Trip

We're back!
If you look very closely in the bottom of the picture you can see me standing under one of the California Giant Redwoods. Sooo amazing!
We flew to San Diego, picked up Robin's car and headed North the same day. We had spent quite a bit of time in San Diego during the winter so we decided to skip it this time and start home. We drove right along the coast on Hwy 1 and for someone who lives 3000 miles from the nearest ocean, it was wonderful to be right on the edge of the Pacific. We spent a couple of days checking out galeries in Carmel, California and then headed on up the coast. We went inland to Eugene Oregon when we finally got tired of the twisting, turning roads. We were far from tired of the scenery but with so many miles ahead of us we thought we'd better hit the four lane highway for a bit. We went North all the way to Seattle but didn't spend time there as planned because all the hotels in the city were booked. We went across the top of Washington, Montana and North Dakota and headed North again at Vally City ND. We were gone ten days and saw some amazing scenery and met some great friendly people. We are still glad to be home though.



Finally made it to Haight Ashbury, only 40 years too late!

Internet Woes

We have been having internet probelms (I accidentally typed "internot" and that about says it all) for about a month. We keep calling the satelite people and they walk us through the same rigamarole each time. Finally , we convinced them to send someone out to look at the physical setup and they found a pinched cable on our roof. Why did it take them a month to send someone??? I'm guessing they didn't want to spend the money. The funny thing was that the tech guy was my student in Grade Three. Good thing I was nice to him back then! Lol.
We are leaving tonight for San Diego to drive our son's car back home. We will be gone for a week or ten days so I will not likely be posting anything until we get back.


Meanwhile here are a couple of possible layouts for the log cabin quilt



.

More Quliting

Here is my Wonky Log Cabin in a different arrangement. I am not sure which one I will do. There are so many ways to arrange a log cabin block. I plan on making lots more blocks. It is so amazing to get this many blocks done and there is hardly a dent in the pile of scraps. The best part about this block is that it uses up so many odd sized pieces and they end up looking great instead of going into the garbage.



Summer has done a lot of work on her quilt. Now she is ready to sew on the dark pink border and then she has one more border to do. Then comes the big decision of how to quilt it. There will have to be some quilting in the white spaces and I think she wants to do it by machine. She is thinking of stippling but that might be quite a challenge on something so big for her first time. A challenge has never stopped our Summer yet though.



The last picture is Free getting a rotary cutting lesson from summer.

Summer's Quilt Update

We had company last night but Summer went out to the studio alone and did quite a lot of work on her quilt. It is looking pretty good up on the design wall.





In the meantime I have started a wonky Log Cabin. I just love using up scraps.

Summer's New Quilt

Summer has started a new quilt. She made her own design on graph paper and we are translating it to cloth. She has the four corner squares partly done and it is looking very good so far. The first photo is her design in her sketch book and below that is what she has done so far. I must say that I am quite impressed, but of course I am her Grandma.

Irish Chain

I have finished piecing my Irish Chain. It was hard to decide on the borders but thought it needed two of them to bring it to a size I liked. It is now about a twin bed size. I think I might hand quilt this one so I can do something quite fancy in the white squares. I like to have a quilt on my big quilting frame and I just took the Double Wedding Ring off.



I had Free working on my computer yesterday. In the photo Robin has the screw driver but in actual fact Free did most of the work. I just happened to snap the picture at the wrong time. He took out a lot of components that are no longer being used and tweaked it so that it is much faster. Sky and Free are total techies and know a ton about computers. They are thinking of starting a computer repair company and calling themselves Techno Sherpas. We call them Sherpas when they are lugging computers around to set them up in a different spot. They have done a lot of that since they have been staying here.

More Bags

Due to some internet issues and lots of family activities, I haven't had the opportunity to do much blogging lately. I did, however, find time to make a couple more bags.




This first one is done with blocks from the Flower Boxes quilt that I cut wrong. I tried some fancy quilting on one side and the other is just stitched in the ditch.

And the one below has more of the strip pieced fabric and this time I remembered the piping.

Flower Boxes

I have the binding sewn on the most recent scrap quilt. I decided to call it Flower Boxes because the fabric is flowered. I have to hand sew the binding down. I made the binding out of lengths of the fabrics used on the front of the quilt. I didn't have enough of any one piece. I'll see how I like it once it is all sewn down.
This was a very easy pattren to put together and I really like the way it looks now that it is done. It is all scrap fabric from the burgundy one I did, except for the dark blue around the edges. That one was given to me and the backing I bought for a dollar a yard at a craft sale, where they were selling left over craft supplies. It's nice to make something from left-overs and have it turn out that you actually like it.

When I'm not Quilting...

I often bake bread. These are just out of the oven. They are multi grain. There are probably ten or twelve kinds of grain and potatoes in them. I have been baking my own bread for years and we are so spoiled that we can hardly eat store bought bread any more.

Or we help Summer celebrate her 13th birthday with a home made chocolate cake.

Sewing Girls

Summer and Ariana are very happy now that Summer has returned from San Diego.




They came over here and spent the day sewing purses. They fused the design on and then quilted. I had no input at all into the design or colors. I gave advice on possible ways to quilt it but they actually came up with better ideas of their own.



In the background of the photo of Summer looking over the fabric selection, you can see the Double Irish Chain that I am making from leaders and enders.

One Word

One Word for -

1. Yourself: artistic
2. Your partner: artist
3. Your hair: long
4. Your Mother: gone
5. Your Father: 92
6. Your favorite item: fabric
7. Your dream last night: forgotten
8. Your favorite drink: Water
9. Your dream home: mine
10. The room you are in: computer
11. Your pleasure: nature
12. Your fear: heights
13. Where you want to be in ten years: here
14. Who you hung out with last night: family
15. What you're not: mathematical
16. Your best friends: fun
17. One of your wish list items: car
18. Your gender: female
19. The last thing you did: sewed
20. What you are wearing: shorts
21. Your favorite weather:cool
22. Your favorite book: mystery
23. Last thing you ate: blueberries
24. Your life: interesting
25. Your mood: happy
26. The last person you talked to on the phone: daughter
27. Who you are thinking about right now: quilting

Tag, you're it!

Some Bags

Here are some bags that I have made lately. I have been enjoying the process of turning lots of small scraps into something useful. The pink one second from the right would have been one of my favorites if I hadn't forgotten to use piping on it. The piping sets off the string piecing so well. It just lacks something without it. It took me a while to figure out what was missing on that one. The round one is waiting for a handle of some sort. I ran out of the navy fabric before I got the handle made. Also the rings for the handle are a bit too low and I don't think it will balance quite right. It has been fun making these and I still have alot of string pieced fabric left so there may be a few more before I am done.

Flower Bag

Here are the instructions for a flower bag. Bear in mind that the exact measurements are not at all important. I have made tiny ones of silk for keeping earrings in and large ones to use as lunch bags. This one is made of two layers of cotton but that is a bit heavy. A double sided fabric like batik, nicely hemmed would be better. I have also used thrift store scarves. Anything that is square will work.


I started with two 14.5 inch squares because that is the size of my square quilting ruler. I sewed them together, turned them and sewed around the edges so I wouldn't have to get out a needle and thread to sew up the opening.



Mark about 5 or 6 inches down from the point on each side and draw diagonal lines connecting the marks. Fold all these triangles to one side.





Sew across the angle. I used a half inch seam because I have only fairly thick yarn to use as a drawstring. On a tiny silk bag I would use a narrower seam and probably fine ribbon for drawstrings.


Thread in two drawstrings. I usually start from opposite sides. This is a very common thing in Japanese bags, but not so common over here.

Turn it over and pull up both drawstrings at once. Voila! A flower bag, all done.

Crazy Bag

I made my first attempt at Crazy Quilting today. I thought I'd try a round bag. Not so crazy about the results but I will finish it anyway. Not sure if I know anyone crazy enough to carry it. The one in the book had round handles. The top was scooped out and the handles fastened on with tabs. I thought I had some round handles but can't find them. Then I thought of a zipper and shoulder strap but not sure about that either. I am going to think about it a bit befroe I finish it. The dark circle is quilted but it doesn't show up very well in the photo.


The second picture is of some books on making bags that I bought in Japan. They are written in Japanese but very well illustrated so that if you know how to sew it's not hard to follow them. My DIL is Japanese so if I get really stuck I call on her to translate. I have made several of them and some are very cute designs. There is one that is basically a square that is sewn so you can thread a drawstring through it to make a bag that looks like a flower. It opens up flat so if you use it as a lunch bag it also becomes a place mat. So cute. I will maybe see if the instructions will photograph well enough to follow and if not, take photos when I make the next one. (Soon)

More Bags

What do you do when your studio is such a mess that you can't see the table top let alone the floor? Why you work on something small like bags. Anything to avoid cleaning. As a result, here are three more bags.
We are taking part in a studio tour this fall so I want to have some smaller items for sale. Hopefully, there will be a market for patchwork bags.

Another Burgundy Bag

I am trying to use up some of the string pieced fabric so here is a second bag. It is a bit smaller than the first one and I think I prefer it, maybe because the shape of the bag itself is better.

Thanks for all the compliments on my Double Wedding Ring quilt. As I mentioned in a previous blog, I didn't piece it. I found it in a trunk at my Dad's place. I remember as a kid asking my mother why we didn't take it out and finish it. She never wanted to, but now that I am into quilting, I couldn't resist. I'm not sure who pieced it, maybe my mother in her teens back in the early thirties. I think it was done by someone without much piecing experience but I love it anyway. The fabrics are so unique. I hope I will be able to find or dye some fabric for the binding and finish it this week.
Forest Jane asked about my bread. I always make our bread, have done for years. I make multi-grain bread and often add left over rice or mashed potato. The grains I use include oatmeal, oat bran, flax, barley flour, sunflower seeds, sesame seeds, wheat germ, rye flour and anything else grainy that I can get my hands on. I didn't bake last week because it was so hot but yesterday we just hit the wall with bought bread and I baked, heat or no heat. It warmed up the house quite a lot but we thougt it was worth it.

Double Wedding Ring

Here is the antique Double Wedding Ring that I have been hand-quilting forever, it seems like. Actually it's only a few months. I am not the world's best or most dedicated hand quilter, but I like to have one on the frame to dabble away at in the mornings. I was baking bread today so I had to stay in the house to keep an eye on it (the bread that is). That meant I had all morning to finish the quilt. Now I just have to find some pink or blue fabric that more or less matches the corner pieces and have my first attempt at binding curves. The only thing I really know is that you have to use bias strips. One problem is that the edges, over time, have frayed quite a lot. I guess the piecing is far from perfect, as is the quilting, so I won't get in a twist about the binding.

String Pieced Bag

Here is the first bag made with the string piece from yesterday's post. I learned a few things. First, do it on paper as Bonnie from Quiltville suggested. I thought that since this would be a bag, the extra bulk would give it body. It did but was nearly impossible to match the points with all that bulk. Also the burgundy part is only one layer so the difference is noticeable. I also had to do some figuring to decide what size of triangle since I don't have the ruler Bonnie uses. I made the string pieced fabric about 12 inches wide and the piano key strip along the top is the left over piece that was too narrow to use on the triangles. I might try some smaller triangles with the left overs.
Still, I am quite happy with the results. I have lots of the string pieced fabric left, some with the burgundy and some not made into triangles yet. Today I want to make some more bags with the triangles in different configurations.

String Piecing

Here is a photo of some string piecing I did in hopes of reducing my huge pile of scraps. There is something very satisfying about making something beautiful from a messy pile of what looks like rags. It is not a neat task as you can see by the mess on the floor but fun to see what will look good side by side. Now I will cut them into triangles and perhaps make a bag from them. (Note to self: organize scraps instead of jamming them all into large plastic bags when cleaning.)
Meanwhile I am quilting the flower boxes that I showed in my last post and still using up leaders and enders on the Double Irish Chain. I am at the point where I need to cut a lot more 2.5 inch squares so that will be the next thing I do with my scrap pile. I wonder how many quilts are lurking in that mound of fabric?