Friday, January 27, 2017

Friday Finish: Briar Rosary

The story of this quilt began back in 2013 when Amy from Diary of a Quilter invited me to design a block for a series she was running called the Virtual Quilting Bee (the series is available here).

There were 16 designers and we each had to come up with a block, and then make it in both solids and prints.
The block I designed is called Chiral Music (named by our son, Aaron), a rather quirky name. I had texted him a picture of the block and said I felt it needed a better name than "In and Out" or "Hello-Goodbye," and he immediately texted back "chiral." I wondered if he had meant "choral" because I had never heard of the term "chiral." He said that chiral refers to a molecule that appears to be a mirror image but actually is not exactly superimposable (he knows a lot of scientific information). I liked the name a lot, and added "music" as kind of a play on words since I had originally thought he meant "choral."

I really liked the block. It is basically just a 9-patch, with a frame, and finishes at 8"x8". I had a fat quarter stack of Heather Ross's line, Briar Rose, so I made another Chiral Music block.
Then I decided to play around with it, basically turning the four sets of half-square triangles in a different direction, and came up with this block.
 At about the same time, I had a stack of Cherrywood hand-dyed fabrics in beautiful blues and greens. I made a quilt to submit to Modern Patchwork for possible publication and it looked like this. I really liked the graphic element of the chain seeming to connect the blocks together, and named it Chain Link.
After all these years, I have finally completed the version done with the Briar Rose fabrics. I thought of beads on a string, and named it Briar Rosary.
The one Chiral Music block was added to the back.
I love the way the quilt turned out, and it was beautifully quilted by Darby.


Name:  Briar Rosary
Quilt Size: 40" x 40"
Block Size: 8" x 8"
Designed and Made by: Cindy Wiens
Quilted by: Darby Myers

I'm linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Fort Worth Fabric Studio and Confessions of a Fabric Addict.

Have a lovely weekend.

Thursday, January 19, 2017

Really Random Thursday, 1/19/17

This will be just a mishmash of random things--which is kind of the point of Really Random Thursday in the first place.

Our daughter-in-law's mother, Debbie, is a genius with succulents. I don't have a single green finger on my hand. We had this cool pot that was just laying around, so she took it and made it a piece of art, which is now hanging near the front door. I merely ask that she stop by periodically to check on things to make sure I haven't killed it. :)
My good friend, Dotty, detests the color orange. I love it, and I don't understand her dislike at all. We agree to disagree. She sent me this cartoon.
Jill had an eye appointment the other day, with Aaron, so Ruby and Amelia came over for breakfast, still in their jammies. Cuteness overload.

Aaron and Christa went to the Bay Area over the weekend and the grandkids stayed with us. So much fun. During Ella's naptime, they enjoyed the new spa.

Made lots of projects with perler beads (wow, random perler beads end up in the oddest places...)

And the oldest three started sewing projects, which obviously makes my quilting heart beat a little faster. Especially after they each requested a one-on-one sewing day to themselves. This grandma's arm does not need any twisting!
I moved most of my solids from one room to the other. They had been in stacked plastic containers, but every time I needed a color, it was always in the bottom container. I found the perfect shelves at Target and now any color I need will be much easier to access. Yes, I do love solids...
I sewed this block, a free paper pieced pattern by Kate Basti (link available on her IG account, @katebasti). My plan is to make a lot more blocks, pairing some of my favorite fabrics with their selvage, and call it "Best Sellers." See what you can do with one little selvage?
I'm teaching a class today at Authorized Vac and Sew, on sewing with selvages. Such a cool store.
Oh, look, there is my Kona Color Card quilt. Proof that I do indeed love Kona solids.
Truth.
So I guess this as good a place as any to end with this--NOT my motto. Unless it involves fabric. And most likely, solids.  Have a lovely Thursday.

Friday, January 13, 2017

Friday Finish: Supernova Starburst

Last weekend I took two quilts to the beach (see Beach Diaries) and asked our son, Aaron, to take some photos.
my favorite picture of the whole photo shoot :)
First of all, you should know that I started this quilt back in 2011. I found a blog post dated 7/5/11 that showed the finished top.

It has spent the last five-plus years folded up on a shelf.  The original pattern is by Lee Heinrichs of Freshly Pieced. She did a quilt-along called Supernova, back in 2011. I loved the pattern. At that time, batiks were not embraced by the modern quilt movement, so my goal was to use batiks, set against a grey background, which was considered modern, and try to disprove that theory that batiks could not be "modern." I believe I succeeded.
According to that blog post, I looked up the definition of supernova. I liked this definition: "the explosion of a star in which the star may reach a maximum intrinsic luminosity one billion times that of the sun."  I liked the explosion of colors, the hot saturation in each block, and the subtle luminosity. I named the quilt Supernova Starburst.


A few months ago, I took it to my machine quilter extraordinaire, Darby, and she worked magic on it.


Even a photobomb by the other quilt we photographed (I'll share that one next week--it's a beauty!)

It took awhile, but I'm so happy to finally show this quilt. I love everything about it.

Linking up to Crazy Mom Quilts, TGIFF, Fort Worth Quilt Studio and Confessions of a Fabric Addict. Have a colorful weekend.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Really Random Thursday, 1/12/17: The Beach Diaries

Welcome, 2017!

I always love the new year, full of possibilities. So it is hard for me to wrap my head around the fact that this first month of 2017 is nearly half over!

Last week at this time, we were enjoying our third annual Oceano Dunes beach house adventure.
 We arrived on Wednesday at noon and it rained the rest of the day.
By Thursday, the skies had cleared up and it was time for the sand and surf.
 Lots of sand time, both Thursday and Friday.






Walks on the beach.
Watching vehicles cross the "stream" to get to the other side--lots of four-wheelers.
Charlotte and I ventured into Pismo and took some fun pictures in the photo booth.
Crazy morning hair.


We ate most of our meals at home.
 Charlotte and Mark had a good time making breakfasts together.
We played games by the hours. Favorites were: Apples to Apples (Disney Version), Eye  Found It, Old Maid (I had no idea Old Maid could be so action packed!), and for the adults, Code Names and Colt Express.
Some quilt photography happened--more on that later.


The kids wrote the cutest notes in the guest book.


Family pictures.



Everyone, aside from the two of us, went home Saturday morning.

We drove into Pismo for another two nights.
I can hardly wait until next year.