Bloggers' Quilt Festival, Fall 2011

Welcome to Fall 2011 Bloggers' Quilt Festival. I'm so happy you stopped by!

The name of this quilt is California Ice Crystals.

I have always enjoyed kaleidoscope blocks. This quilt was inspired by a single piece of fabric designed by Paula Nadelstern:

All of the blocks were made by placing the kaleidoscope template on the same identical portion of the fabric eight times per block, and then positioning the template in another part of the fabric for the next block.

The spectacular machine quilting was done by my  husband's cousin, Ione.

It was then donated to a quilt auction which raises money for Third World relief.

I'm not  a "blue" person but I really love this quilt.

Thanks, Amy, for hosting this amazing show-and-tell twice a year.

WIP Wednesday, 10/26/11

Paper piecing and ticker tape.

And a little knitting. I'm using a Japanese yarn called Noro Kureyon. The name of this afghan will be Azekura, which is Japanese for a very old, traditional type of Japanese log cabin house (thanks for the translation, Ayumi!)

I wonder if there will ever be a completed project to show. Although I guess completed projects belong to another day and place.

See what everyone else has been up to in the past week.

Tuesday Odd-Angle Paper-Piecing Tutorial...and a Giveaway!!

I'm not going to give you a tutorial on how to paper piece. There are lots of them, and Kerry has a very helpful  list here. This is the great thing about paper piecing--aside from its accuracy. There are several different methods, all of which will get you from Point A to Point B, so you are sure to find one that is most comfortable for you.

Since I have been working on my donation quilt, I'm going to show you how I started cutting my fabric for those really odd angles.

At first I wasn't really paying attention so much. I would just cut a bit hunk of fabric and then trim it down later.

The largest scraps went into a special box for Amanda Jean, who makes fabulous quilts out of teensy pieces.

But after awhile, even I, who has no shortage of fabric, was feeling the need to be more frugal. Part of my problem was that the pattern has been enlarged by 133 percent, to make a 16" block.So because some of  the pieces were quite large, no matter how careful I was, pinning my fabric down, invariably it would flip and I would sew it. Grrr.

If you have paper pieced before, then you know that sometimes it seems  you are sewing upside down and backwards. Because, in a sense, that is exactly what you are doing! I don't know about you, but just when I think I have the right amount of fabric for the next piece, after I sew the seam I realize that it doesn't fit at all because the angle is all wrong. And then I have to do what I just read somewhere is called "froggy" sewing: rip it, rip it, rip it. Finally  I remembered how I handled that problem when I was in a block exchange involving paper-pieced birds. I chose to make the scissor-tailed flycatcher. When I was little we lived in Oklahoma and that is the state bird. But mostly I chose it because it is fun to say. Go ahead. Say it out loud. Scissor-tailed flycatcher.

Enter the paper piecer's friend, freezer paper. And being super organized, of course it took me awhile to locate where I had stored it.  Kerry uses freezer paper when she paper pieces as well, but we have slightly different techniques. This link gives the basics of how I learned to paper piece and it is the most comfortable process for me.

I use freezer paper just for those pieces of the pattern that have the odd angles.In fact, I don't even use this method for all the pieces--you can pick and choose where you need it.

The first thing I do is make a quick sketch of the pattern on the non-shiny side.. Really. The lines don't even have to be perfectly straight, just close. Then cut them apart on the lines. No need to add seam allowance.

We'll use example of pieces #1 and #2. #1 will be pinned to the back side of your paper pattern (if you are following the method that I use...)

The next thing is to iron the freezer paper template to the wrong side of the fabric and cut a generous 1/2 inch around each side.

Now on the back side of your pattern, (the one without the lines), you can line it up with piece #1, right sides together, removing the freezer paper template, and pin if you want to. Carefully turn it back to the front side, the side with the sewing lines.

Stitch on this side on the line between #1 and #2.

Then flip it back to the fabric side, and start the process over for piece #3.

This method was really helpful when I got to #7 in this particular pattern, which was a large piece with odd angles.

Before I started with the freezer paper templates I would just have cut a big piece of fabric and hoped for the best. This works SO much better. And the extra time it takes is really miniscule. My pattern happens to be constructed in four quadrants and the freezer paper templates are easily reusable at least four times, if not more.

Pile of scraps before freezer paper templates:

Pile of scraps after using the freezer paper templates:

So while Amanda Jean is probably sobbing now because these scraps are too small even for her, at the same time, through her tears, she is probably applauding my fabric frugality.

If I have just confused you beyond belief, please email me (liveacolorfullife@comcast.net)and I'll try to do a better job of clarifying things.

And guess what? It's giveaway day. Again! Kerry designed the most awesome  paper pieced pattern, Winter Woolies. So cute.

Here is my version (I still have to do the mittens).   But I couldn't wait to post a picture because of the fabric that looks like actual knitting is just too fabulous! (It looks kinda stiff because the paper it still attached...)

The pattern is available in her etsy shop.

OR you could win a pattern here. All you have to do is leave a comment. So tell me: are you a "summer" person or a "winter" person? Personally I'm kind of a "rainy day" person. You know. The kind who loves rain for days on end...So I should actually be paper piecing an umbrella!

Just leave a comment and Random Number Generator will choose a winner on Thursday, October 27, at noon PDT.

The Name Game: My Crafty Crap

Today, I'm so happy to have Bree from My Crafty Crap. The name of her blog has been intriguing to me for a really long time, mostly because having read most of her posts, I know for a fact that she does not make crafty, um..."crap." 

So, Bree, how did you choose the name for your blog?

I started out with a personal blog just to share basic day-to-day stuff.  Before too long though, it was turning into nothing but crafting projects (mostly crochet at the time), so I decided to move just the crafting stuff over to a new blog & keep the personal stuff separate.  I called the new blog something along the lines of Crafting in Spare Time (I can't remember now exactly what it was!).  Around the same time, I was sharing pictures of my crochet stuff on Facebook, but then borrowed a sewing machine from a friend & made my first Pillow Cover bag

I wanted to share the pictures on Facebook, but obviously it didn't belong in the crochet album, so I named a new album "Other Crafty Crap," so it could be kind of a catch-all for everything that didn't fit in the crochet album.  My husband will ask me sometimes what I'm going to work on or what I'm doing, and I usually respond with "Oh, just some crafty crap."  The name seemed perfect for the album.  Then it hit me that it was also a perfect name for the blog, and it was available, so I switched it right away.

Were there other names you considered,and can you share any of them with us?

Like I said, I originally used a personal blog, so it was something along the lines of our family name. Then when I switched it to the craft blog, it had something to do with crafting in my spare time, or not enough hours in the day, or something along those lines.  I do wish I could remember what it was exactly.  I just remember trying to think of something catchy & memorable, but failing miserably!

 

 The quilt Bree made for her son

 

 Isn't he adorable?

 

And she is hand quilting his quilt!

Now that you are recognized by your blog name, are you happy with it, or do you wish you could change it to something else?

I still love it!  It still makes me chuckle, and I get a lot of comments about other people getting a kick out of it.  I also get a lot of people who will come visit after seeing the link on other blogs just because the name made them laugh.  I certainly can't argue with that!  I can't think of anything that would fit better, and can't imagine changing it.  I especially like it since I like to do all types of crafts (although I've certainly stuck with sewing much longer than anything else lately!), so it covers pretty much everything I might decide to try.

I hope you will head over to Bree's blog, say hi, and check out all her crafty crap. Thanks, Bree. It was fun having you play the Name Game today.

Farmer's Wife Friday: Country Home Life

The writer this week is from Cascade County, Montana, and she would definitely wish her two young daughters, not yet of marriageable age, to marry farmers "...because the country home life is more nearly complete in itself, and therefore productive of real happiness...The city draws from the home, not toward it."

She enjoys the social gatherings at the school or community hall.

I haven't done this before--adding some personal thoughts this week. I didn't grow up on a farm. I was raised in the city. I was born in Los Angeles. My father was a minister and when I was about 2 1/2 we moved to Enid, Oklahoma, a good-sized town at that time. From there, when I was in fifth grade, we moved to Phoenix, and then right before my junior year in high school we moved to Seattle.

I married someone who was raised on a farm, and he didn't move to the "city," Butterfield, Minnesota, a metroprolis of 600+, until the summer before his junior year. As much as I loved Seattle, my high school graduating class was larger than the town of Butterfield, and I longed for a smaller college. We both went to a small college in Kansas, where we met. We spent the first five years of our married life in Scott City, Kansas, a farming community in western Kansas. It had a population of about 5,000. I cried.

But what I remember are some of the social gatherings. Mark was a P.E. teacher in the only grade school in town, but he also traveled to three very rural schools each week. We often attended pancake suppers in those rural schools and I remember the sense of "community" that thrived there.

#39 Friendship

I mentioned the fact that my father was a minister. We were fairly conservative in our social beliefs, and dancing was something that I wasn't allowed to do. I remember in grade school resenting the fact that I couldn't dance, because I could never really explain to my friends the reasoning behind it. However, for some reason, square dancing was not forbidden, probably because there was so much movement involved that you were never with one person for very long before you were moving on to the next partner.

#85 Square Dance

I vowed that our children would be able to go to school dances. And then we had a son who wasn't really interested. When senior prom time came around, we told him that missing it was not an option. You know, I still think about the fact that I never got a chance to shop for a prom dress of my own.

I couldn't get all the blocks into one picture. 46! Can you believe it??

I really need to start working on next week's blocks--four of them--and each one looks like it will take a bit of time.

The winner of my charm pack giveway celebrating 500 blog posts (still can't believe I wrote that much. Really if you met me, you wouldn't believe it either--I'm not a chatty person...) is #23.

Carla, the winner, didn't tell me whether she lived in the city or the country, or whether she wanted to move somewhere else, but she did say this very appropriate comment for Farmer's Wife Friday:

I like the farmers wife blocks. I just posted my first blocks today! Thanks for the inspiration.

Speaking of Carla, but a different Carla, go check out her thoughts on this week's farmer's wife, and I know her blocks will be lots of fun as well.