I need to work on my sewing/cutting posture...

(Would you believe it took me more than an hour to make that stack of trimmings?)

So for a little while now I've been annoying all my friends about how my birthday is coming up "soon." It's actually 30 days away, but it's a milestone birthday so I guess it's been on my mind. What didn't occur to me until this week, though, is that if my birthday is soon, my mom's birthday is sooner! You'd think after almost 25 years I'd have that down... Anyway, I was really struck by the design of this quilt featured (with full pattern/tutorial) on the Burgundy Buttons blog last week. I had a layer cake of Glam Garden by Josephine Kimberling (purchased, of course, from Burgundy Buttons!) and some yardage of Kona Hibiscus just waiting to be made into a quilt. Of course, my mom's hobby of choice is gardening, and her favorite color is purple. I think you know where I'm going with this...

(ninety-nine 4½" blocks!)

For the Friday Night Sew-In, I decided I'd better get cracking on my mom's birthday quilt, which I'm thinking will be called "Garden Windows." I love the way the sashing looks like windowpanes, and the bright colors in the fabric line remind me of stained glass. I was a little upset to find out that my set of forty 10" squares wasn't exactly made of 10" squares... They were a little wonky, and some edges only measured 9½"! Luckily, this pattern calls for creating a bunch of triangles, sewing them to a diagonal sashing strip, and then trimming them to 4½". This was lucky in the sense that my not-quite-10"-squares worked well for the project, but unlucky in the sense that I spent something like five hours sewing, pressing, sewing again, and trimming all ninety-nine blocks. Don't they look pretty all neatly stacked up there?

I realized two things after the sewing and trimming marathon: First, I tend to hunch over a bit at my machine... I think I was trying to get a better perspective on the fabric going under my ¼" presser foot, because with ½" finished sashing, you have to be painfully exact. Second, all that trimming is hard on your back, too. Spending that much time hunched over my machine and then hunched over my cutting table has left me very sore today!

(first three rows)

But as I started laying out the rows, I decided it was all worth it. Also, it seems the worst is behind me. It only took me a few hours this afternoon to assemble seven of the eleven rows. I'm hoping to have the top done by the end of the week. I'm pretty excited about this quilt... the one I gave my mom for her birthday back in 2005 is getting a bit ratty.

My quilty day

Happy Monday, y'all! The blog re-design is almost complete. I am in full orange and aqua mode with a new header and template! I just need to create some pages for tutorials, finished projects, etc. What do you think of the new look?

I haven't been sewing a whole lot lately. I've been knee-deep in planning mode for my geese and coins quilt. But I did have a very quilty day on Thursday. As many of you know, I have an odd work schedule, so Thursdays are my "Saturdays." I whipped this little wall-hanging up Thursday afternoon using the free template from Denyse Schmidt:

Thursday was also the August meeting of the Austin Modern Quilt Guild. I was so excited to finally be able to attend a meeting. The meeting was in north Austin, about a 20-30 minute drive from my house. Rather than battle rush hour traffic — in Austin on a Thursday afternoon, this is definitely not something you want to do, especially if you want to be in a good mood when you arrive at your destination — I headed up north early to visit the two awesome quilt shops nearby. (I can obviously find any excuse to go shopping!)

I was determined not to break the bank, so I just got a bunch of fat quarters (rather than any larger cuts). One shop neatly folds their fat quarters, while the other rolls them up into fun bundles (which is what's going on in the top picture).

One thing I don't like very much about buying fat quarters is that you don't always get a piece with the printed selvage info. So while I recognized some of these, some are a mystery to me. I know I got some Urban Landscapes by Kathy York, some Alexander Henry (the print on the bottom left is the same design I used on my purse, but in a very bright colorway), and some Amy Butler. I haven't done the research yet to see what the rest of it is. Do you know?

After my shopping spree, I went to the meeting. I got to meet some fabulously fun and talented women who live right here in Austin. I had so much fun chatting and playing show and tell with fellow quilters! With advice from the meeting, I was finally able to conquer the inside corner binding for my hexagon quilt. I took a bunch of photos, and I'm working on putting together a tutorial.

One of the Austin Modern Quilt Guild members used to teach sewing classes, so she led a tutorial on needle-turn appliqué. I'll be honest, until last week I had no idea what needle-turn appliqué was. But by the time I left the meeting, I had sewed a circle onto a square! I didn't actually use the needle to turn the fabric under like you're supposed to (hence the name), but the circle is on the square, so I think I did just fine.

Of course I have no idea what I'm going to do with this little guy:

Ideas?

the alt-quilter

I can't tell you how excited I was to open the New York Times Thursday Homes section and see a good portion of a page dedicated to a modern/contemporary quilter. Let me just say it's a good thing newspapers put most of their content online these days, because the page was in black and white!

The article was really just a brief Q&A with a Seattle-based, metal-head quilter, Boo Davis. The Web version of the article refers to Boo as an "alt-quilter." I wonder, though, if this is how she sees herself. I googled the phrase and found next to no results — interesting with all the hubbub in the quilt-blogger community over whether we're "modern" quilters or "contemporary" quilters or something else entirely. I just call myself a "quliter."

In the article, Boo Davis talks about the evolution of her book from a "hard-edged, metal-infused guide to quilting" to a book of patterns that "skew more cute than evil." This girl quit her job, took out a loan and spent three months in her condo (which she calls her "hoven") cranking out her book, "Dare to Be Square Quilting." Despite the fact that the end product wasn't what she set out to make, she says she's happy with the results. On changing the attitude of the book, Boo says: "Craft books are a pretty expensive endeavor, and you want to make sure they will sell." I think I might pick it up just for the cute owl quilt on the cover!

Among Boo's other repeatable quotes from the article:

The appeal of quilts is that they are usable pieces of art. To me, when a quilt ceases to be cozy or if it’s so precious it has to be stuck on a wall, it’s not of interest anymore. Anything outside of classic cotton, that’s just crazy to me.

I just want to say that it’s extremely upsetting to see quilts and patchwork projects being sold for next to nothing on Etsy. You’ll see these elaborate, queen-size quilts for $300. That’s pennies an hour. So much of a person goes into a quilt. It’s an artistic labor of love that deserves respect. I think the quilt makers of the world need to rise up and start throwing elbows.

Sing it! I myself have never sold a quilt, but the thought has entered my mind, and then promptly leaves when it comes to pricing. To those of you who sell quilts, how do you determine price? Do you feel adequately compensated? And to my non-quilty friends: What would you expect to pay for a handmade quilt? Were you shocked that $300 for a queen-sized quilt is "pennies an hour," as Boo points out above?

NOTE: This article is in the Aug. 12 edition. The New York Times gallery has more great photos of Boo's quilts, as does her website.

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ps: Thanks for the tips on my design delimma! I'm still mulling over the options and waiting for my test-cuts of sashing fabric to come in the mail, so keep the opinions/advice coming! Also, I'm in the midst of a blog redesign, so if you click over and things look crazy, don't worry, it's all part of the process!

design help?

I've been in the process of designing something for my Fandango jelly roll. I got the "craving" for a jelly roll after seeing Aneela's quilt at Comfort Stitching. I've been wanting to do something with flying geese for a while, and the other night while perusing the Fresh Modern Quilts Flickr group, I found myself being drawn to stacked coins quilts, too.

I designed a geese and coins quilt that could be made with a jelly roll and some background fabric. I really love the problem-solving that comes with pre-cut fabrics — how many 4½" strips can you get from a jelly roll? It's fun to play with the math and try different ideas, maybe a border or make it taller and thinner or wider and shorter? There seem to be two types of quilters: those who love the math and geometry of it, and those who hate it. I am definitely the former! As such, I have a hard time playing around with color — I always try to make it mathematical in some way. For example, my Fandango jelly roll has 18 blue/aqua strips, 13 red-orange/pink strips, 3 yellow strips, 3 mostly cream strips, and 3 brown strips. A pre-cut is like a puzzle to me, and it's so fun to solve! Does anyone else do this? Or am I just crazy? :)

OK, so this is where I need your help:

Now that I've counted the colors/values, I need to decide how I want to play the color values in the quilt. I could do columns of geese in particular colorways, and have the coins be a mash-up of sorts, like this:

Or, I could make all my geese be my cooler colors, and have the coins be warmer tones:

I could also have warm-colored geese and cool-colored coins. ("Warm geese and cool coins" has a ring to it, no?) Or I could do a kind of gradient from cool to warm across, like this cool stacked coins quilt ... The possibilities go on, those are just the ones I made up in inDesign last night. I'm also hoping to avoid using white sashing, because I think the prints on creamy backgrounds will get lost, and also because I don't have much experience playing with different background/sashing colors. I really want to try using a darker background, possibly with a different texture to it. I ordered a few small cuts of quilters linen, moda crossweave and kaffe shot cotton so I could see and feel the textures and test some different colors. (I'm not telling yet which colors I got, because I want unbiased advice!)

What would you do, color-wise? What color/type of background fabric would you use? Any other thoughts/advice/questions?

Back from my deathbed

OK, that's a little dramatic. I was by no means on the brink of death, but I was holed up in my apartment with chicken soup and water for days this week. I woke up Tuesday morning with a 101.5° fever! I chalked it up to a summer cold, called in to work, took some ibuprofen and went back to sleep. A few days later I broke down and went to the doctor, and I'm glad I did. It cost me an arm and a leg (oh health insurance, how I miss you...) but I got antibiotics, and I'm all better now!

And since I'm all better, I finally got to take the mystery wall-hanging to its new home! It's a housewarming gift for my friend Erika and her husband, who recently bought their first house. (Erika, you'll have to send me pictures when it's hung up!) Since the gift has been gifted, it is no longer a mystery:

I wanted a way to let the text prints shine (and be legible), so I made them the center of some star blocks. The windowpane border is a print from the Denyse Schmidt Katie Jump Rope collection that I picked up at my LQS. I've been using it a lot lately (in my purse and some bee blocks), I need to see if I can pick up some more before its gone.

To keep the outer border of 4½" squares a little more interesting, I quilted stars echoing the shape of the stars in the center blocks. I used a programmed stitch on my machine in the center of each windowpane strip.

After mapping it all out, but before I started cutting, I made a tester block out of some charm squares that wouldn't make it into the top (front?) of the wall-hanging. After leaving it on my "design wall" for a few weeks, I decided it would make a perfect label (but evidently I didn't decide to take pictures of it!). The rest of the back is simple muslin. I made a sleeve and added loops with embroidery thread so they could decide how they wanted to hang it. I'm really happy with how it turned out, even though I think I stretched the backing a bit when I basted it.

I was hoping to post some progress in the Hexagon Quilt Along, but I don't have any pictures to show yet. Before I got sick, I finished quilting it (I took the easy way out, but I still like the effect), and on Friday I sewed the binding to the front. I intended to hand-stitch the binding down last night, but those inside corners really threw me for a loop, so I put it away. I'm determined to finish it, as well as my August blocks for the Bee in my Bonnet, before I start cutting into this:

How are you motivating yourself to finish projects this week?