WIP Wed - a month of Sundays

Wow, it's been quite a while. But what better way to reintroduce myself to the blogging world than to do a WIP Wednesday entry and link it to Kati's guest post at Freshly Pieced?


In mid-June I made a point of finishing up some big projects in order to get ready to leave town for a few weeks. I had some quilts to complete and pack off to send to Sisters, OR (more on that in a later post) as well as fulfill some Etsy orders.

A good chunk of my trip away from home was spent taking an amazing 5 day workshop from Jane Sassaman. I got the pleasure of not only meeting and learning from this lovely, down-to-earth, creative powerhouse, but also met some wonderful ladies from around the world (there was one woman in from Sydney!) and best of all, hanging out with my mom! The workshop is entitled Abstracting From Nature, and though Jane adeptly describes her techniques and freely gives input on compositional and creative choices, each student's piece had a very different style and feel. Some examples:

Pixie's anemone

Cindy V.'s crocuses

Kim's chicory flowers

Donna's (my mommy!) kaffir lily

Judy's peonies

and I suppose I should show some of what I was working on too...

I still have lots of work yet to do on this puppy (or rather poppy), but am happy with the progress I made while in Greenville, NY.

And coming back to reality, my only time in the sewing studio since returning home was dedicated to finishing my June bee blocks for Eileen, in the Friends + Fabric Bee. She chose a paper piecingtutorial from Nydia who blogs at The ADD Crafter, Basketweave Braid Star Block.

Though not complex, this block is definitely a time-sucker. But on the plus side, it was TRULY a scrap-buster as well - I could work exclusively from my basket of strips up until adding the white background pieces.

So, I feel like I've been taking a summer hiatus which began about a month before summer. And it may continue longer than I'd like, but 'tis the season for family visits, gardening, cycling, and making up for a Vitamin D deficiency from the last 8 or 9 months! But do please bear with me and I promise to get back into the swing of things and hopefully find new inspiration to share soon!

A Robot Invasion, pt. 1

This month for the Design Camp [Think Outside the Block] 2 bee Tiffany chose a nice little challenge - improv robots and gears. She posted a mock-up of her idea here and her sample block here. I thought her sample guy is just the cutest thing ever, and a good inspiration for playing around with her idea.

So on Sunday I ventured into the baggie of fabrics she sent out and started cutting in.


I then chose the basic shapes to start with: body, head and neck.


Next come the features...






I'm afraid that my guy might be turning out to be something of a robot-Frankenstein amalgam, a reject from the factory floor, but he'll have personality! I'll be playing more in a couple of days and will share how he turns out.

Another task on my agenda is gathering supplies for a workshop with Jane Sassaman on the opposite side of the country. This is definitely more of a challenge than I could have imagined. How will I know what fabrics I will want, especially since this isn't necessarily a literal interpretation of my inspiration photos?




I guess I'm sticking pretty close to true colors, but it's still stacking up!

Yikes! Does anyone have any tips for the traveling quilter??

Something fun

As crafters we all probably have the long list and the short list of projects. And then there are the fun new inspirations that distract us on a regular basis. This means that sometimes the simplest of sewing projects might take much longer to come into being than they rightfully should.

You all know what I'm talking about!!

At some point in the last year or so (how sad that I have no idea when I saw it!) I bought a yard and a half of a beautiful Jane Sassaman fabric, a print from her Sunshine and Shadows group, in order to make a pair of pillow cases for my guest bed. I think at the time I purchased it I also picked up a coordinate, but if that is the case, it didn't last the test of time and got used in another project along the way.

Lately I've been staring at that fabric folded nicely on my "to do" shelf and finally decided it was time to do. So, after many many months I now have a pair of pillow cases, which took well less than an hour to put together.

And now my guest bed has its own pillow cases to look pretty against my piles of clean laundry that usually take up residence there! (moved aside for the purpose of this photo, however!)

So, does anyone else have a story of a quick, easy project that took the backseat for so long that it seemed almost silly once you put your mind to actually getting it done??

Oh, and a post-script to this entry... Last fall for my birthday my mom invited me to join her, her cousin Debbie and some of their quilting friends for a Jane Sassaman workshop at the Hudson River Valley Fiber Art Workshops this summer! SO looking forward to that!