DWM 6/15/15: Girly Colors

Green, Iris, Raspberry, & Lime...
Last week I finished the boy donation quilt made from a FQ bundle of batik dots I had picked up in Paducah several years ago. This is the girl colorway using the rest of the colors in the FQ bundle. To have enough patches, I added in four unique black & white batiks from a charm pack. Zebra goes with everything, right?  I was able to get this top pieced while at camp last week. Now I'm hoping to get it quilted and bound this week. I have enough yardage of the lime dot to bind it with.

Both the boy colorway and this girl colorway will go to one of my guilds' donation drives later in the fall. Since both quilts have white in them and since I have about 1/2 yard of backing fabric left over from each version, I'll make drawstring bags to put the quilts in. The bags will keep the quilts cleaner until they reach their new owners, then the new owners will have the bags to use, too.

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times. Check out all the other design walls over there.

Stash Report 6/14/15

Nothing IN again this week.
OUT this week: 1-1/2 yds backing and 3/8 yd binding for boy donation quilt; 2-1/2yds for handbag. See Friday's post below for pics.
I'll tally up the totals at the end of the month. I'm moving in the right direction so far this month!

That will change Tuesday. My guild is holding a special social meeting in remembrance of Darlene, a member who passed away about a year and a half ago. Her friend has organized her stash and her family is making it available to guild members. The organizer will hand out numbers to attendees, and when your number is called, you get to "shop" Darlene's stash, then tell a story about how you remember her. A voluntary donation to her favorite charity is suggested, which is the right thing to do.

Unfortunately this is not the first time our guild has distributed the stash of a deceased member, at the request of their family members, nor will it be the last.

Do you have plans for how your stash and the contents of your sewing space/studio will be dealt with when the time comes?  How do others handle this?

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times.

Friday Finish: BOYGI and Bag

Whoo-hoo! I have two finishes to share today!

BOYGI donation quilt

This is BOYGI, a donation quilt in boyish colors. Brown, Orange, Yellow, Green, and Indigo dot batiks. I have so little boyish fabric in my stash but I had this FQ bundle so I pulled out these colors and used them for a boy quilt and I'm using the rest of the colors for a girl quilt. The two quilts will be given to one of my guilds' donation drives in the fall.

I spent a few days with friends at camp earlier this week and I had such a good time! Thanks, Chrissy! And this is what I accomplished at camp:

Zippered Tote



This bag is from a pattern called Laura's Zippered Tote by The Creative Needle that I purchased in Paducah. I liked the samples in the booth. The pattern is copyright 1996 and 2009 so I figured it's tried and true. I made the smaller of the two tote sizes because the larger tote is called the Overnight Bag and I didn't think I wanted one quite that big.

This bag came out smaller than I expected and it's an odd size, too large for a handbag but too small for a tote, especially with the zipper closed. The zipper opening finished about 16-1/2". The directions were clear and I didn't make any cutting or sewing errors, but there are a couple of things I would change for myself next time I make this pattern. And I'm sure I'll make it again in the larger size and maybe in one of the smaller handbag sizes.

I was so busy having fun at camp that I didn't think to take any in-process pictures. I was able to get some piecing done on another project, make this bag, and help my friend with a memory quilt she's working on. I also tried working on a BOM, but I made a cutting error which prevented me from making any more progress at all. (The kit includes exactly the right amount of fabric each month, so I'll have to find replacement fabric from my stash in order to make the block.) I had a great time at camp, and I really appreciate the opportunity to go.

Further Whoo-hoo !...
We saw a bluebird at camp. Although it's the Missouri state bird and I've lived in Missouri for 38 years, I've never seen one before. We just happened to be sitting outside enjoying the pleasant weather, and there he was on a post. Again, no picture, except the memory in my head.

Linking up with Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict and Friday Finish at Crazy Mom Quilts. Check out all the other whoop-worthy finishes over there.

Stash Report and BOYGI

No fabric in this week. I did buy fusing and webbing for a tote bag, but since it's not fabric, it doesn't count for the stash, right? 
OUT this week: 1-1/2 yards for backing for boy donation quilt. I'm pretty sure the top was already counted but I'll check before I tally the totals at the end of the month.
I'm making progress in the right direction!

We're all familiar with ROYGBIV for the colors in the rainbow, but here's a variation, BOYGI:

BOYGI

Still a WIP, a boy donation quilt, using some of a batik FQ bundle I picked up in Paducah about 10 years ago. Brown, Orange, Yellow, Green, Indigo. The fabrics are actual wax-resist batik dots; in some places you can see where the chop lined up. Now to find something that will work for binding...

Donation quilts for older boys are needed more than baby and juvenal quilts. I don't have anything in my stash suitable for an older boy, and I don't usually like to purchase expensive fabric specifically for a donation quilt if I can possibly use stash. I did buy the backing, a blue plaid from Eleanor Burns' warehouse in Paducah, but at only about $6 a yard, that's OK.

I have the rest of the FQ bundle of batik dots in fuchsia, teal, purple, and yellow, which I'll use for a girl donation quilt. I like to have donation quilts available when needed. Both of my guilds have donation drives for kid quilts going on later this year.

On tap for this week: GS Camp Retreat! Three days of sewing and hanging out with friends. Fun! I've packed the tote bag project for which I bought that fusing and webbing. We'll see how close to finished I can get it. I packed the girl donation project, too, in case I have time to get to it. Or in case I get frustrated with the tote bag project.

Linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times.

Book Update, Good News

My book

 

A total surprise earlier this week -
An email from AQSBooks telling me the final proof was ready for my review.

WHAT?????

Back in March they told me I would not see it again, and led me to believe it was going directly to the printer without an opportunity for me to see the corrections. I was distressed because I was forced to just trust that they made the corrections. At that time the executive director of publishing told me there was a chance it would be out in time for the Paducah quilt show. My editor said "You probably won't hear anything more until one day two cartons of books show up on your front porch." 

Now - SURPRISE - 11 weeks later here's another "final proof."   What's up with this???

So I reviewed the latest proof and found that they had made the corrections. I did find a few more things I wanted fixed; only two were content errors, the rest were for consistency. I sent them my edits Wednesday. 

Yesterday I got the corrected version. YAY! They made all the corrections and it looks good.
I feel so relieved.

I signed the release. They can go to print with it as is now and I'll be satisfied with the final product.

They still haven't actually told me when it will be published. Their website has an August availability date. The communication could have - should have - been so much better on this project. But at least I know now that the book is as error-free as I can make it.

Here's a sneak peek at another of the quilts in it:

Singing the Blues

I'm linking up with Whoop Whoop Friday at Confessions of a Fabric Addict. I think getting a final review of my book and making sure all the corrections were made is totally whoop-worthy!

Inspired by Lorna

I've been inspired by Lorna over at Sew Fresh Quilts. She's making Little Blooms, her original pattern, and I am reposting her photo here:

Little Blooms by Lorna at Sew Fresh Quilts 

 

I commented on her post that it would be interesting to reconfigure the wrench-shaped block segments and make them look like gears, and she agreed. So, thank you Lorna for the inspiration! I played a little in EQ:

Inspired by Lorna's blocks

 

Definitely not a final design yet, but it certainly has possibilities. Lots of interesting shapes in the sashing/negative space here.  Maybe half-drop the blocks to make the gears look more interlocked...

 

I'm starting to see other pieced gear motifs; Shelley over at The Carpenter's Daughter Who Quilts has a really cool one that you can see here. I like how masculine they look. You can make gears as Dresden Plate variations, too.

 

I love how this quilting blogging community we're all a part of is so inspiring! What have you been inspired by lately? Check out all the quilty eye candy at Lorna's Let's Bee Social linky party.

 

 

DWM: Flowering Snowball block variation

I have nothing on my design wall today but I'm inspired by other blogs I've been seeing recently to share projects from awhile ago that I haven't shared on my blog before.  I'm linking up with Judy at Patchwork Times.

Recently I've been seeing a lot of quilts using the Flowering Snowball block. Here is the block from EQ7:

The quilt below uses a variation of the Flowering Snowball block. I'm hosting Piecing Group tomorrow and we have some newer members so I've pulled out my earlier Piecing Group quilts to show them. This is the first one I made; Piecing Group hand-pieced the blocks for me in 2002.

ETGA 1, 2005, 54" x 54"

Hand and machine pieced, hand-dyed and commercial batik fabrics

Machine echo quilted

The block is actually a variation of the Flowering Snowball, but I didn't know that at the time. I drew a 9" block with a compass with overlapping curves, which turns out to be like the Flowering Snowball block but with additional quarter-circles in the corners.

For lack of a better name, I called it ETGA, after the shapes of the templates, Eiffel Tower and Gothic Arch. Here are the original templates, without seam allowances:

Here's the layout, from back in the days before EQ. I used graph paper and a copy machine and made reduced blocks to play with layouts and colorings. This block lends itself to transparency effects. This layout has the blocks offset by one-third so there were lots of inset seams.

 

It may not be apparent in the top photo, but the background is shaded ranging from brighter and more reddish at the upper right to darker and more purple at the bottom left. This was back when I was playing with dyeing fabrics, and there are actually 8 shade lots used here, arranged to flow smoothly so you can't see where one ends and another begins. The other colors are commercial batiks, selected for the transparency effects the overlapping colors create. Here the quadrants are rearranged so you can see the shade difference:

After languishing as a UFO for awhile, it was finally finished and quilted in 2005, and it won an Honorable Mention ribbon in my guild's biennial show that year.

In 2003 I used my ETGA block again for this quilt, a completely different layout. This one had 12" blocks and was machine pieced, for my sister for my niece's baby quilt. DH took one look and said "That's a whole lotta circles going on," so I named it Whole Lotta Circles.  (Sorry for the bad pic - it's a new photo of a film photo print since I don't have the quilt.)

Whole Lotta Circles, 2003, 60" x 60"

Thanks for indulging my walk through memory lane. Now to go clean house and plan desserts for my Piecing Group meeting tomorrow....