unbelievably,

this is the sum total of my black & white fabric.
























Becca sent strips of various colors to each of us for ASB, and asked us to try a new method for spider web blocks from Collaborative Quilting (2?--by Gwen Marston & Freddy Moran--bee overlap!).  She accdientally included just enough black & white for the corners of one block.  Since I'm clearly deficient in this area of fabric accumulation, what's supposed to look like this:






















is just this






















for the second.































Love this method!

For Bee Liberated, Susan asked for liberated log cabins using fussy-cut owls for the centers.
























I had never made a log cabin block before!  My only issue was that Susan asked us to build the blocks clockwise around the owl, but I ended up a little narrow on one side and had to add one last piece out of order--didn't have enough fabric (or think it would look good) to go around the whole block again.

But I'm sure that everyone who sees this quilt will only have eyes for this guy, anyway:

pro/con for VQBs

pros: working with different fabrics, making a block style that you might not have otherwise, trying a new technique, and being creative within structure, which is a good thing for this overthinker.

These baskets were so much fun to make for Kimber for Bee Liberated. In truth, I had skipped right over that chapter in Liberated Quiltmaking, and even though the bias handles (especially the tall one--my own fault, due to a cutting error, but I figured out a solution!) gave me a run for my money, I *so* love the finished blocks that I'm contemplating a basket quilt of my own.
























 Which leads to the con: I need a new quilt idea like I need another bag of scraps.  High-class problem, I guess.

these things are tiny!

Compared to 12 inch blocks, which is what I'm used to, I guess.

I also felt a little like I was back in junior high, writing my first name with some boy's last name, as I tried to figure out which penmanship looked best. Except this was on Kona white instead of on wide-ruled notebook paper.

a different species of bee

If you're here from QBB, welcome!

Speaking of quilting bee blocks, have you heard of the 3x6 mini bee, hosted by Tiffany?  A little different than a typical bee, but so much fun.  Each quarter runs three months (hence the name), and the group for a particular quarter is divided into hives of seven.  Each person makes six of the same block in the colors requested by each of the others.

Or, in my case, seven--one for me!
















The photos of the others are too embarrassingly dark/grainy/taken-at-midnight-like to be posted here, but they're up over on flickr...

Five of the six (I asked for orange and pink) have already arrived...
















Can't wait to get the sixth so I can start laying them out!  And, of course, to get started on the next round...

lake is the new charcoal

This is my block for my TBK quilt.  Inspirations here, here, and here; that last one is a block made by my friend Emily from CMQG, who sparked the idea that tied it all together.  Every print in my stash ended up in my packages, along with the lake blue Kona solid.  So much rethinking went into this design and I almost didn't go forward with it.  But I'm really, really glad I did.
















The wind and sun were not cooperating with our photo shoot, hence blowing, wrinkles, and shadows. 
















Luckily, Alex *was* cooperating...I'm just starting small and preparing him early for when he'll be made to hold up an entire quilt.

tea leaves

I know I keep talking about these famous sheets, but humor me one more time, if you would.

Margaret, from TBK, is a really accomplished quilter...an award winner...and she has her own longarm quilting buisness too.  It's only fitting that her blocks for the bee were the most challenging so far.  She gave us plenty of lead time (I think I had my fabrics at least a week before March began), and posted a thorough tutorial, but I was kinda busy in April.  They were the first thing I did after that craziness was over, because I hate to be late with bees & swaps (shhh!  I still have my Spider Bee blocks to do!--Tuesday at the latest, Tracy!), and I finally mailed them out midweek.
















Paper piecing is terrific, friends.  I had only tried spider web blocks before, but am now even more obsessed with seeking out other paper-pieced blocks.  I've been known to have issues with 1/4 inch seams, and for the most part, this process eliminates that stress.  Everything is so precise and tidy!  My only concern is the bulk when four or five pieces of fabric came together, but hopefully smooshing the life out of them with my iron and quilting will take care of that.















Aren't they cheery?

autumn in the spring

Theresa's great-niece is named Autumn, so even though it was March, she wanted fallish blocks for her month of ASB.

Her color choices were so thoughtful, and though I tend to choose brighter colors when I buy fabrics, between what she sent and some scraps I'd gotten in a swap a year or so ago, I had a pretty good selection.




















As usual, the less I thought and analyzed, the better they looked.

I couldn't resist cutting into a thrift store shirt for the mulberry plaid,
















and adding in some scraps of AMH
















from this project.  Not quite fall colors, but close.

my 15 seconds of fame

Remember this?
















It's a bee block that I made for Claire for TBK...and it's part of the masthead for the new Quilting Bee Blocks blog, an offshoot of the awesome flickr group of the same name.

Have I mentioned how much I love flickr?  It is the most ingenious website on the internet.  Where else can this and this and this coexist happily?

Anyway, of course, the credit for the block belongs to Claire...the idea for the blocks was hers--all I did was arrange the colors.  Still, it's kinda neat to see something I made up there in lights!

Happy Weekend!

it's not her, it's me.

These blocks are making me crazy.  Sewing is making me crazy!

The coolest idea from Debbie at Esch House Quilts for her Bee's Knees blocks--positive/negative versions of houses, swapping out a black-on-white and a white-on-black for the "sky" and the house itself, and colorful doors from our own stashes.  She offset them in the table runner she made to test out the block (which she designed herself)--it looks great.  So clever!  I can only hope to come up with something so neat for my month.
















Anyway, I had a little time this afternoon while Alex napped (the same child who, at 9:22 p.m., has just called for someone to fluff his pillow.  Goodness.) and thought I'd get a head start for the month.  I measured perfectly, sewed my seams at turtle speed, and instead of being 8 1/2 inches, they're more like 8 3/8.  Maybe 8 7/16 after pressing them with every drop of glycogen in my biceps, and I know she'll be able to work with them, but it's the principle.  This is not a new problem for me--I just don't know what I'm going to do about it, other than always make quilts where the blocks require serious squaring at the end.  I really wish I could interview (or watch in action) some of the notoriously accurate piecers out there--including Debbie herself, actually...check this out!  Can you even tell they're fabric?  Perfectly smooth, and flat, and probably the right size to boot!--just tell me what to do so that my blocks aren't too small, and I'll do it!
















Anyway again, they're done, they're cute, and I hope Debbie likes them.

Thanks for indulging my vent.  On to the rest of the weekend.

Marching

This is March to me: mostly shadows, a little sun.  Not quite spring, but getting there.

In March, I suppose we should be looking toward shedding winter gear, but the hat I just needed to finish is finished.





















For now, we're calling this particular model the Monsters, Inc. Cap, but the "pattern" is called Tweedish because that's just how it looks to me.  I'm planning to write up a tutorial one of these days, because it's kind of a cool technique, and a good way to use up scraps of different yarns.

Interest really started to develop when I got out the pompon maker,





















in an effort to work a little bit during playtime, and it actually went pretty well.  I am now a devotee of this tool (I actually bought a bunch of sizes with coupons and another project in mind), and once we noticed that the colors matched favorite characters Mike & Sulley,
















he's barely taken it off.































These blocks are for ASB--mailed off to the UK this afternoon.  Very springy, even if the weather's not.  This quilt is going to be gorgeous.

more metacognition

of quilting, that is.  I finished my February Bee's Knees blocks last night...
















::  I officially love quilts made only of solids.  There's a flickr group for this, in fact (I think there is a flickr group for every topic conceivable to man).  I'm not sure I'll ever commit to a solids-only quilt, though, because there's some small part of me that would feel disappointed to not be using prints, which makes no sense, but so it is.

::  Even though I didn't love each of these colors individually, or even each pair of geese, I definitely love how they work as a whole (also true of my star--the less I thought about it as I went, the better it looked).  I can't wait to see this quilt finished!

::  I had a theme as I sewed, but you'd never know it to look at the finished blocks.

::  Bees blocks are great for motivating me to try new things.  I don't think I would have chosen this block on my own, but making these certainly got my wheels turning.  Half-square triangles and variations are amazing to me.  So many different design possibilities from such a simple base.

















::  How can the back of a quilt play off the top?  In the tutorial Claire asked us to use for the blocks, Crystal mentions using the triangle scraps for mini-pinwheel blocks...how cool would those be scattered over the back?  I'm sending my scraps back to Claire in case she wants to go that route.

















:: it is extremely satisfying when points match. It is extremely irritating when they are off by a hair.

and finally...

::  For heaven's sake, what do I have to do to get my blocks to lie flat? 

















Happy weekend, all!  Mine will be full of cleaning the kitchen, spider web blocks for Brioni, and pizza!  Oh, and we'll get our basement floor back.

spiderwebs on the brain

I did so much thinking while I was piecing these--call it the metacognition of quilting.

Partly because making them is simple and therefore meditative--right down to peeling the paper while watching Law & Order--

















but also because their scrappiness brings to the forefront of my mind so many parts of the creative process.  I am not particularly "scrappy" by nature--not because I don't like the look of scrappy quilts when they're done well (like this one, or this one), but because I tend to obsess and then become paralyzed by anxiety over fabric (and other design) choices.

I guess, then, that it's encouraging that even my least favorite block looked pretty good once trimmed.

A favorite block developed as I worked, and I only added favorite fabrics to it, as if to preserve it.  I wonder if anyone else could identify it?  I wonder if that person would have to be someone who knew me well, or whether the fabrics would be universally appealing so that it was obvious to anyone?  And no, this is not it.
















Fabric choices.  How and why had Anna chosen these different fabrics?  Some I would have chosen, some not...how do people develop their preferences? Would she like the outcome?  Stressful to make something for someone else.
 
Deliberate randomness--maybe there's a technical term?--is scrappy the same as random?  If I'm supposed to be working randomly, then is it wrong to skip or replace a fabric that's "next in line" because there would be two greens in a row, or because it wasn't a favorite?  Would it have been OK to put two Christmas fabrics in the same block, or would that have made it a Christmas block?  How long did others spend choosing the perfect fabrics, or did they truly work randomly, or did they develop a few rules to guide their choices?  Many designers (Bill Kerr & Weeks Ringle and Denyse Schmidt come to mind) incorporate improvisation and randomness into their piecing; is this a feature of "modern" quilting, or, in a way, a return to the most organic kind of quilting (Gee's Bend, or quilts as the most basic form of reuse)?

Too much thinking, perhaps, about how to sew together some scraps of fabric. 

















For me, though, this is what makes quilting more interesting than knitting.  There is thinking to be done in knitting, for sure, and math, and problem solving...but the effects of changes are more subtle and realizing them is slow (for this turtle knitter, anyway).  In quilting, I can see different designs just by rearranging.  Immediate.

So much to learn.

In the interim, I hope Anna likes her blocks.

muffaletta, Chicago-style

I've never been to New Orleans, but man, can they make a sandwich.  Or, rather, man, can I make a sandwich that is sort of like their original.

Bread.

Provolone.

Salami.

Cajun-spiced chicken.

Olive salad (1 part Kalamatas, 1 part Spanish green, a couple of roasted red peppers, chopped and drained--don't skip that!).

Stack in order on foil, wrap tightly, bake for 20 minutes at 375°. 




















Seriously, so good.  The perfect Sunday-dinner-in-front-of-the-TV.

On a completely unrelated note, I finished my January blocks for TBK:















 They're wonky pinwheels for Tracy, tapered outward per her request.

















I'm looking forward to seeing how this quilt comes together--such an interesting variety of fabrics.

On to Monday!

when the whole is greater than the sum of its parts

My first spider bee block=a new addiction.

They're fast, the seams don't have to be exact, you don't have to love every fabric (these are extra scrappy, as Anna is using the bee to help her get rid of all of hers).  Also, there's something strangely satisfying about peeling off the paper.

The best part is that this (if you think it looks messy, you should have seen it before I trimmed it!):















becomes this.

















My mind is racing with all the spider quilt possibilities.  And what other paper-pieced blocks are out there (besides this one, of course)?

I'm thinking a lot about Haiti.  Don't quite feel qualified to donate here.  So many posts, so many perspectives.  So much to think about.  Feeling so fortunate.





















 Finally, how could I have forgotten this photo?

it's Friday...

and life is super.

I've got some pumpkin bread in the oven...
I joined another bee (someone stop me!...I can feel an addiction forming!)...
and I get to go to this tonight; can't can't can't wait.  Can't wait!

 Happy weekend!

disappearing friendship block

The first block tutorial for the Block Party QA was up earlier this week, so I made a friendship star block using some of the fabric from my Christmas-quilt-in-progress, thinking it would be fun to incorporate it into the back.

Then I started thinking about this block, and wondered what would happen if I quartered the friendship star.  Fun ensued!  So many choices.

How about just sashing in between?

Not sure what to call this one:

I tried some other arrangements (note to self, when basement is finished, get a design wall up...my cutting mat on the floor isn't so inspiring)--boats?  birds?--but finally settled on this one,

which I love because of the mini-star in the middle, and also because I think that a quilt with staggered rows of this block would look so cool--the quarter stars matched up with others in contrasting fabrics.

For some reason, I'm really into this quartering thing, or rather, into cutting and rearranging blocks.  Next up, I think I'll make a couple of other traditional blocks for quartering...maybe in some of the other fabrics from the Christmas quilt--might as well have a use for my experiment.

If you haven't heard about the Block Party blog and (companion flickr group) that inspired all of this, take a second to check it out.  What started as a virtual quilting bee has grown into a book deal for the admins, a quarterly quilt-along for anyone and everyone, and the flickr group...which has inspired a bunch of new bees, including mine!  I've been wanting to join one for a long time, but they seem to fill up so fast!  With so many interested people in one place, the flickr group was the perfect opportunity to start a new one.  The Bee's Knees is up and running, with a start date of January.  So excited!