… quilting on the go

i'm a lucky ducky and was asked by jessica to be part of a blog tour for the release of her new book quilting on the go. i got to know jessica through instagram and bonded with her over our shared seven sisters education and the fact that we have a mutual friend who now lives in seattle. and strangely it was that same friend, a fellow member of the seattle modern quilt guild, who originally inspired in me a love of engligh paper piecing (epp). i saw her working on hand-piecing hexagons at one of our first meetings of the seattle mqg and though i'd seen it online before, watching her work made me realize how wonderful it was that you could take a quilting project with you wherever you went. i immediately went online after that and, after reading through some tutorials and printing out some paper templates, got started with my first hexagon project.

i just cut squares from my scraps and basted a bunch of hexagons without any real plan. i think i originally thought this would end up as a quilt, but as time went on i thought i might scale back my plan and turn it into a sewing machine cover or a pillow. i've been adding to it slowly (emphasis on slowly) over the past few years, and while it's still hanging out in much this same state, i do enjoy having a project i can take with me whenever and wherever.

in fact, i had it with me this weekend to take to our seattle mqg sew-in at island quilter on vashon island. it made a great project for the ferry ride. (and, wouldn't you know that same day, june 15th, was also international quilt in public day! just doing my duty to spread the joy of quilting to the rest of the world, be they seafarers or landlubbers.)

unfortunately, as luck would have it, i had a long wait for the ferry ride on the return home, and with a dying iphone and no book with me, i was again happy to have some epp to keep me busy. huzzah, quilting saves the day again!

i've tried my hand at some other, smaller epp projects over the years, and really enjoy the satisfaction of finishing something quickly but knowing i put a lot of love and hand-sewing into it.

for our seattle mqg nametag challenge i made my nametag with some precious pink liberty hexagons and hand embroidery. i bound it with black essex yarn-dyed linen.

for our do. good stitches charity bee a while back i had free rein to make any block i wanted in the color pink. for one of my blocks i chose to hand piece some pink hexagons (hmmm... seems i have a thing for pink hexagons) and frame them with more pink. this is one of my favorite bee blocks i've made.

and recently our do. good stitches circle made a quilt out of these epp stars. i love that, while making an entire epp quilt on your own can be daunting, making one as part of a group effort is totally doable. you can see the finished quilt (by rachel of stitched in color) over here. if you're stumped for a project for an online quilting bee or group quilt, i highly recommend doing an epp block for sure.

anyhow, enough about me, what about the book? well, it's is a lovely book and, as any good quilting book should be, is full of pictures pictures pictures! a lots of diagrams. oh boy, do i love me some good diagrams. the book covers everything from basics such as choosing fabrics and what to put in a travel toolkit, to epp essentials such as basting, stitching pieces together, and how to finish projects. even though some tips are targeted at the very beginner, there are more advanced tips for those who have some experience with epp but might have more to learn. there are 10 projects included, ranging from very small (a travel sewing kit or a pincushion) to very large (some seriously showstopping quilts).

some favorite parts of the book:

• the page on preparing a travel took kit. it's helpful, but it also appeals to my desire for neatness and having everything in place. how satisfying is it to have your own little kit that you can grab and take with you on the spur of the moment?
• the tip about using plain old paperclips to help keep fabric in place over your templates while basting. this had never occurred to me before, and yet seems so obvious now.
• the handy chart that shows you what size to cut fabric for some basic epp shapes. i love things like this, as it means i don't have to do the math myself.
• the pincushion project. so cute, and it looks so satisfyingly quick. i will definitely be making this one.
• the pattern chapter which shows you all the different kinds of patterns you can make with a few, basic epp shapes.
• the graph paper templates at the back of the book that let you design your own epp patterns, plus templates for all the epp shapes shown in the book so you can copy and print your own.

seriously, this book is just plain cool, and it makes me happy that it was written by such a lovely and devoted english paper piecer like jessica.

we're at the tail end of the blog tour, but there is still time for you to win your own copy of the book! lucy at charm about you is giving away a copy of the book. and do stop by her blog because you have to see her stunning epp liberty print star. it literally took my breath away. her giveaway is open until june 21st and the winner will be chosen and announced on the 22nd.

June 11 Lesly at Stitch Literate
June 12 Clare at Selfsewn
June 13 Christina at A Few Scraps
June 14 Victoria at Bumblebeans
June 15 Amanda Jean at Crazymomquilts
June 16 Laura at Quokka Quilts
June 17 Lucy at Charm About You
June 18 Katy at I'm A Ginger Monkey
June 19 Ara Jane at What Ara Jane Loves
June 20 Kathy at Pink Chalk Studio Blog
June 21 Jessica at Life Under Quilts

and during the blog tour, paperpieces.com is offering a 20% discount on your entire shopping cart if you use the promocode UNDER20.

hopefully you can find quilting on the go at your local independent bookseller or quilt shop, or it's available now from any of these fine retailers:

… my harlequin star quilt

(i just want to say that i started writing this long-overdo post before i saw the lovely and sweet shout-out from rachel over at stitched in color. seeing that made me get just a little misty-eyed and reminded me of why i love our blogging community so much, even when some of us don't regularly keep up with the blogging part so well [ahem]. thank you, rachel!)

i would like to say that i am able to finish quilts without pressure of a deadline, but yeah, i'm pretty sure that is not true. that's, in fact, the opposite of true. fact is, if there's no deadline, there's a pretty good chance of me never finishing something. so i was pretty glad the seattle modern quilt guild had a deadline last week to submit star quilts for a show that will go up at island quilter in june.

and this quilt was so fun to make! i had no real agenda other than to make a lonestar-inspired quilt in bright, exciting colors.

i used this quilt, from treasury of american quilts as a jumping off point. i loved the way the lonestar points used a checkerboard pattern instead of the traditional radiating colors. and the more i looked at it the more it seemed to me to look like a harlequin, so that's where my design process and color selection took me. i used a variety of solids from my stash, including kaffe fassett shot cottons, and robert kaufman kona cottons and essex linens.

once i finished piecing the lonestar itself, i wanted to set off the brightness by using just blacks and whites for the background. i initially created the small half-square triangle blocks to be the square inset sections for the star, but quickly realized that a) y-seams are crazy difficult and b) i didn't even make those sections big enough to fit anyhow. so i stepped back and realized that i didn't want to waste the work i had already done and decided instead to move all those pieces to the border and create simple, larger HSTs for the inset pieces. and i tried a bunch of methods for piecing the y-seams until i discovered one that worked well for me. not so difficult after all, really.

i quilted it with relatively tight straight-line quilting (all lines are about 1/2" apart) on my janome. the quilting follows each point (or wedge) of the star into the center point and back out again. i really love the effect. and, as i recently learned, this kind of straight-line quilting is definitely my thing. even though i was on a very tight deadline (i left myself about three days to quilt and bind) i was glad i didn't flake out and do simpler quilting as i've done in the past.

the backing is a whole cloth cynthia rowley for michael miller print that keli helped me pick out at drygoods design. i love that it's bright and festive and that it's difficult to see where i had to piece it together or where i used the same print to make a hanging sleeve for the show.

the binding is a scrappy pieced binding using all the solids from the lonestar. the quilt ended up measuring about 47" square.

after the show at island quilter this quilt will come home with me where it will be the new baby quilt for our little huckleberry, who we're expecting in early november. yup, you read that right:

i am pregnant! i announced this on instagram and facebook several weeks ago, but forgot that not everyone keeps up with those social networking mediums, so maybe i should spread the news elsewhere. the other great news? it's another girl! i'm sure i would have been thrilled to have a boy, but having another girl really warms my heart. it also makes it way easier to share all of ingrid's old clothes and baby crap. but really, this is happy news indeed. in fact, i found out i was pregnant while at quiltcon, which makes that trip even more special for me. actually, in honor of that, we're going to name her connie.

ok, no we're not. but that would be funny. but really, we're not. for now, she's the huckleberry. because ingrid's going to have a huckleberry friend and because, hey, huckleberries are delicious!

… quiltcon inspiration

what can i say? it was an amazing weekend. i got to spend time with my good friends from seattle, see old friends, meet friends i've only known online, and make new friends. i took two great classes and heard some inspiring lectures. but the thing is, i took almost no pictures. i guess i was having too much fun to be bothered.

but i did spend one morning by myself wandering the show floor, taking in all the amazing quilts. the main thing i started to notice is all the gorgeous quilting. i'm going to be honest with myself, i have not, in the past, done such a great job on my quilting. part of that was the limitations of my old machine, but i recognize that a lot of it is my own inherent laziness. i spend all this time piecing a quilt top, and then i get to the quilting part and just want to be done with it already. and i'm starting to understand how that really short-changes my work. i would have entered my arkansas, traveled quilt in the show, but i was actually quite embarrassed by my quilting.

and that is something i hope to change this year. i'll share with you some of the shots i took of quilting from the show that i found inspiring, beautiful and interesting. i am kicking myself now for not remembering to take photos of the labels as i can't identify many of these quilts. if one of these is yours or you know whose quilt it is, please let me know so i can give credit.

i'm pretty sure this is by the amazing jacquie gering. this quilting was so tight it was mind-boggling.

gorgeous hand quilting by joel ignacio.

i think this quilt is by latifah.

this loveliness is the work of dan rouse.

one of denyse schmidt's quilts.

i think this is the back of carolyn friedlander's gorgeous quilt

from the best-in-show quilt made by victoria findlay wolfe, quilting by lisa sipes

gorgeous hand-quilting from one of the vintage quilts from the collection roderick kiracofe

here are some things i noticed right off the bat about what i'm drawn to:

1. i love straight-line quilting
2. i like very closely spaced quilting
3. i am drawn to grids
4. i am not bothered by "imperfections"
5. i like small touches of hand quilting
6. save for one photo, none of these feature free motion quilting. hmmm....

this certainly gives me some things to think about and work on going forward. goals are good! yay for growth!

and yay for quiltcon!

… recent photos of me

i've been feeling bad that the photos of me from the last post are all not very recent (the ones from our wedding/honeymoon are a little over two years old… yikes). i mean, i'm not even wearing glasses in any of those pictures, which is weird because i pretty much always have glasses on.

so, c happened to take some pictures of me and ingrid today (today!) and i don't look like the hideous monster i imagine myself to be (i exaggerate, but only a little). and ingrid is pretty cute so that's worth something.

looking forward to meeting all of you who are going to quiltcon! now you'll at least recognize me by my glasses and the brown frye boots that might as well be glued to my feet.

… going to quiltcon!

geez louise, when i registered for quiltcon it seemed like it would take forever to get here. and now, look! it's only a few weeks away. i can't say how thrilled i am to be going, for the amazing classes (i signed up for jay mccarroll's class on friday and lotta jansdotter's class on saturday afternoon), and all the cool lectures, and the quilt show, and seeing old friends, and hopefully meeting new ones. like you!

*this is an old picture. i mostly still look like this

so i'm adding myself to the modern quilt guild linky party and sharing five things about myself. here goes.

1. i went to a women's college and majored in theater. seven years later i went back to school and got a masters in acupuncture and traditional chinese medicine. i practiced and taught acupuncture for five years. i am now a stay at home mom and even though i wouldn't want to be doing anything else right now, i still feel embarrassed when people ask me what i do for a living. i hope to get over that someday.

2. i've only been quilting for about four years. before that i never really did any sewing, aside from pegging my jeans in high school.

3. it feels like i am the only person on the face of the planet who doesn't really like text fabric. i know, i'm sorry. i've seen some really lovely quilts that use it, but it's just not for me.

4. my husband and i eloped in new york city. it was one of the highlights of my life. i would recommend eloping to anyone. new york city is also pretty awesome, too.

5. i don't really like to travel, i used to have a paralyzing fear of flying, and i'm painfully shy around new people. despite all this, i'm still pretty excited to be going to quiltcon. that says something, right?

hope to see you there!

… bee business

i'm feeling quite productive this january. at least for me. before i turned my attention back to my pearl bracelet trip around the world quilt, i wanted to get some bee business out of the way.

for january's do. good stitches love circle quilt deborah asked for foundation paper-pieced blocks using this tutorial and template from fresh lemons quilts. as an extra bonus stash fabrics sent us a bag of scraps to use for these blocks, which was awesome. there were some lovelies in my bag, and i added in a few of my own. i love the look of this block and am sure it will make a spectacular quilt.

i also made this sweet little block for a special project. i bought the pattern--called wichita planes--from equiltpatterns. paper piecing is fun and i love how precise and clean everything looks, but it was starting to hurt my brain, especially because this one didn't tell you what size to cut the pieces, and apparently estimating that kind of thing is not my forte.

and now february is my month to make the quilt for do. good stitches. i'm into flying geese so i'm asking everyone to make me any kind of geese blocks they want in this color palette. seriously, i'm really digging these colors right now. i think this one will be super fun.

… my second christmas quilt

yay for finishes! i was finally able to complete my second gifted christmas quilt for my other brother-in-law. only a few weeks late (ahem).

i kind of struggled with this one. it started with a stack of fabrics from my mother-in-law's stash that were red, white and blue, but my husband took one look and nixed that palette. too patriotic. so i decided to add some yellow, but then it looked too much like a little boy's quilt. so i pulled out the brighter yellow and added in a little bit of teal and some grey. i think that made it a little more interesting, but still, looking at the photos after the fact, part of me is still not quite happy with these colors. oh well. i do love the triangles, though!

the back is very simply pieced, but you can see the quilting a bit better here. i simply followed the triangles with some straight-line quilting. i like the look. i think i will always love straight line quilting.

and it appears i have a little photobomber on my hands. i could not keep her off this quilt, for reals. good thing she's cute.