Firemen, camping beauties and solid scraps

So, in my previous post I gave a little hint about some birthday gifts for this week (which admittedly became just one single birthday gift, with something waiting in the wings). Of late years, my friends and I rarely exchange birthday gifts beyond maybe a bottle of wine, a dinner out, or some silly token if at all, but yesterday was a milestone birthday for one of my closest friends here in Portland - the first friend I made after moving here 11 years ago, in fact. She loves throwing parties, baking, board games and for nearly as long as I've known her she has one consistent (if somewhat facetious) request for her parties, "Feel free to invite any firemen you might know!"

As far as I know I never did see any firemen at these get-togethers, but that was gonna change this time around! Maybe not as exciting as she had envisioned, but darnit I decided to bring her some firemen!

I think this surprised her new man, but he took it in stride ;-) Perhaps I should have offered him the camping centerfold version... maybe when his birthday rolls around, we'll see (or maybe I'll have to save that one for J to go with the camping babes flannel quilt his mom made him many years ago!)

And changing tack entirely...

For some reason my response time on bee blocks has slowed down tremendously over the months. I think earlier this season I actually was late on 2 different bees. I don't think I'm alone in this at this stage, but it is certainly different from how I started out on these guys. This month I got in just under the wire for Bri's block in the Friends + Fabric Bee. She asked us to make improv blocks using only solids, inspired by this quilt from Ashley of Film in the Fridge.

A gorgeous inspiration, wouldn't you say??
So, as I was working on a few other things over the weeks I was weeding out all of the scraps of solids I came across. Finally yesterday I took the afternoon and sat down to attack that pile, small cutting mat and rotary blade to my left, Cut 'n' Press and iron to my right.

I actually enjoyed this process much more than I thought I would (though it did, obviously, take me a few weeks to work up to it), and in fact was struck with the idea to make a baby quilt kind of like this. How fun and cool would that be?? I'm on the fence about using only solids - we know I do like my busy prints! I might play around with mostly solids, throwing in just a few tone-on-tones here and there to add another dimension, but let me tell you I'm excited by the prospect, so thank you Bri!

August's Improv Inspiration

August is my month as Camp Counselor for Design Camp 2 [think outside the block] Improv Bee. I've actually been collecting images onto a Pinterest board for the last few months in anticipation of this very thing! The new twist for me in this online bee is that each of the hosts chooses his or her own fabrics and sends packets out to the other members of the bee for their month. I've only ever participated in scrap/stash busting bees up to this point, so this is a whole new challenge for me!

I'm starting with this:

then breaking it down to groupings more like this:

Because this is an improv bee, we're not working with a specific pattern, but more of a guideline. In the past there has been a request for improv robots, drunk love log cabin blocks and in one of the other camps an interpretation of shipping containers. The guidelines I'm asking folks to follow are to stick to a more linear construction (though not necessarily straight lines!) OR to do a wonky or drunk love log cabin construction. Again, my pinterest board and Flickr favorites have a variety of examples.

Here are a few photos of my process with making a single block, using the fabric cuts I showed above:

and once a grouping seems sufficient, I join it with another group, end to end:

...and just keep going until it feels "done" (or at the very least, a decent size).

Once I finished that first block I still had enough fabric left to throw together a log cabin block. Don't think I need to go through my process with that one, but here's a photo of the finished product:

Sooo, the fabric packets will be going out by next weekend and I'm hoping that my fellow Design Campers will just have fun with this! Feel free to be creative!

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??

WIP Wed - Some recaps

This is getting to be an "every other week" thing for me (I guess one could say fortnightly, as opposed to weekly). But I was still over at Lee's blog Freshly Pieced last week checking out what other people had posted, and I suggest anyone here do the same! And today I will be linking up with the goings on.


New Projects
PMQG improv quilt
Well, new to me anyhow.

Blogged a bit more in this post.

PMQG-MM cotton couture block challenge

I'm still thinking about other possibilities, but have come to a bit more peace with this block than I maybe showed in this post (in no small part thanks to the lovely comments folks have made over on Flickr).

custom napkins

Working with someone to hopefully supply her wedding reception... fingers crossed it pans out!

more potholders

up on etsy!

Completed
table runner

I just don't have a table in my house clean enough to properly photograph! Going to try and do it while at work today at the quilt shop... Marie has those gorgeous wood cutting tables over at Cool Cottons!!

Almost Completed

Finished quilting my yellow scrappy yesterday, just have to select and apply binding. Thinking this might travel with me to Montana next week. (Can you see I've been craving sunshine lately??)

Some Progress
Nothing really new or exciting to write about.
backing for my Nubees sampler

Still haven't basted this puppy... heading into the studio after spending the previous afternoon weeding does not inspire one to spend another hour or two squatting on the ground. At least my back and legs felt that way!

borders on curved-piecing top

Both of these projects are blogged about a bit more here.

No Progress
Flannel Throw
Medallion quilt
Could be a Quilt...
Purple/Green Asian sampler
Seams Perfect Sampler
Batik Warm/Cool QAL
Lee & Glenn's quilt
red/brown/green I-Spy
girly hourglass
Judy Neimeyer double wedding ring
broken dishes
Trip Around the 9-Patch
Halloween Stack 'n Whack
leftover I-spys from Hopman quilt
tote bags
blue/green place mats

So, where does that leave me?
New - 4
Completed - 2
In Progress - 21 (yikes!)
Unquilted tops - I think about 14 (added one and took one off the pile since last post)

impromptu improv

At our last PMQG meeting, Michelle of Design Camp PDX gave a fabulous talk and demonstration on improv piecing, inspired by a class she attended with Denyse Schmidt and projects she's pursued since then.

One of the visual examples she brought to the meeting were blocks constructed by members of the guild at a sew-in exercise a month or two prior.

Not having been at the sew-in when these guys were originally made, at the end of the meeting I volunteered to "inherit" the blocks in order to piece them together into a quilt top that will then be quilted by Nancy of Just Quilting, and donated to the guild's chosen March charity organization, Quilts of Valor.

They have now been up on my design wall for the better part of the week, and I still have not approached them. For various reasons, mind you, but I KNOW that when I take them down and set my scrap baskets by me it will be hours of madness! I think the good kind of madness, not angry or frustrated, but madness nonetheless. I've been needing some clean finishes first, I think. And thankfully, I currently have 3 small binding projects at home with me for the next few days, then I might be ready to dive into the scraps!

Two birds, One stone

For Design Camp [think outside the block] 2, Michelle, the wonderful organizer and a fellow PMQG member, started our group off with a dry run this month. For a few of us this is our first improv quilting bee, and I think it just worked out that January was still open after the schedule was put together, so Michelle gave us some scraps of fabric (left over from our guild's Jay McCarroll challenge quilts last fall/winter, seen here and here) and a suggestion for a first exercise.

At the same time I have been trying to come up with 2 more blocks to make to work into my quilt from the 1-month Nubees block swap I participated in several months ago. I realized that by taking out the warmer colors of scraps, and using a grey as the "sashing" this block would fit in perfectly with the others I received back in September or October.

Now, to play around with that last block - getting much inspiration from a couple of books I just received for the holidays... more on that another time.

do.Good Stitches for Sept.

This month for the Bliss circle of do.Good Stitches, Carol, a.k.a. Orangebird242 requested a completely new kind of block to me. She requested blocks using a log cabin construction, but the logs are to be made using a strip-pieced fabric. Carol guided us to a blog entry by Joan, a.k.a. Wishes, True and Kind to get the pieced fabric swath together. This is how mine turned out:

Our fabrics are to be all solids, in medium to dark blues, greens and purples, EXCEPT the center squares, for which we were asked to use a contrasting color, and could incorporate a simple print. So, I started by slicing off a few strips from my pieced fabric

and then applying them to my chosen centers, going around, just like a regular log cabin block.

Until I ended up with 3 blocks, each approximately 8".

I decided to send the section of the pieced fabric that I did not use back to Carol, in the hopes that she might be able to use it if she needs to build out more blocks than what is received in the group. This was an interested technique for using up left-overs (though I actually had to cut strips from yardage for this particular project), but I'm not sure if it's one that I'll try again - only time will tell, I suppose.

Jay McCarroll Habitat Challenge

At the beginning of this summer, The Modern Quilt Guild presented a challenge in conjunction with Freespirit Fabric using Jay McCarroll's newest collection, Habitat. The challenge is relatively open-ended, allowing each guild chapter to define its own goals, but keeping to a few set guidelines. Each member who wishes to participate is given 6 fat eighths (approximately 9" x 22") of different prints from the Habitat collection. The individual does not need to use ALL of the fabric, but if he/she wants to supplement, it must be using only solids or other prints from the same collection. The Portland Modern Quilt Guild asked its participating members to each sew one (or more, if they like) 12" finished block, any design. At our September meeting the blocks will be collected, and ultimately be pieced into donation quilts. While working on another project entirely, I came up with a kind of improv-flying geese idea, and sketched something out.

And since I had such a limited amount of fabrics with which to work, I decided to do a test block (or two, as it turned out) using some of my own fabrics, but trying to keep with a similar feel and amount of activity - so of course I look to the Westminster guys! And this was the first one I came up with...

Though I am not unhappy with this, I wasn't sure if it shows enough contrast, so I tried one more using the same designers' fabrics, but selecting a couple more solids and contrasts to see what would happen. I was pretty happy with the outcome.

(who knows, this might become a quilt all its own!) This gave me courage to dive in and start cutting the Jay McCarroll fabrics and just see what would happen...

I still have plenty more of the complimentary fabrics, I just don't know about time, but I definitely think I'd like to make a couple more of these, and if I really get my act together, I'll take more process photos and put a tutorial up. I had taken photos while making my first of these blocks, but in subsequent tries, found better and more uniform ways of doing it, so I think I need to fine tune a bit. But I have to say, I do like me a challenge!