Fiber Babble: June 2014

Sharp as a Marshmallow

June 30, 2014

I'll take forty more years with this man. "Murder on a Girls' Night Out" by Anne George ♦♦♦♦◊

While at retreat I went a-surfing one evening and found a picture of the quilt on the cover of this magazine.

I fell in love. I don't know why (gah! hundreds of half square triangles!) but it grabbed me faster than a momma whose toddler is headed for the roadway.

I immediately sent out the call to my lovelies at The Quilter's Last Resort and within hours learned that the lovely Anita not only had the issue of the magazine, but was quite willing to send the magazine to me so that I could make the quilt!

Here's what I've gotten done so far. Using scraps as I find them with a consistent white-on-white print as background. (There are two more in the 'almost blocks' stage on my sewing machine.)

Funny thing. I'd lost the white-on-white fabric that I was using for my background. When Mom came to visit I did a mad dash to clear out the guest room and I figured that the fabric had gotten buried somewhere.

I dug around (at times balancing precariously over and between boxes and stacks of almost- organized sewing closet stuff) and couldn't find the fabric. I looked at the tiny pile I'd laid on the guest bed - the one that came off the sewing table, to make room to, erm, sew. I did find some plain white fabric nicely folded, but not what I was searching for.

I finally cut bait and pulled out a fat quarter I'd been holding in reserve in case I ran out of the cut I was working from. Two days later (today) I thought I'd take another shot at finding the fabric. More gentle digging, another trip or two to the guest room (touching that nicely-folded plain white fabric a time or two), checking to make sure I hadn't :gasp!: actually put the fabric away...

One last time to the guest room. Look yet again at the folded fabric.

Guess what? It turns out that when one folds white on white fabric wrong side out it looks like plain white fabric.

Sheesh.

I'm linking up to the Sew Darn Crafty Linky Party over at Karen's blog. Because why would I hide this example of brilliance from the world wide web?

Labels: quilting

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I Retreated

June 17, 2014

"Fuggheads." "Zombies of the Gene Pool" by Sharyn McCrumb ♦♦♦◊◊

So, first we drove through lots and lots of this gorgeous rolling-ness (um... not quite so blue in real life!).

Then we arrived at the top of a mountain (elevation 3,996 ft.)...

To spend five glorious days doing this.

Can you figure out where I was set up?

When we ventured outside, we were escorted by this (plus two more - full time vigilance, I tellya).

Occasionally we'd wake up to this.

Though to be honest, not a lot of sleeping occurred.

And what a lovely bunch of sewing happened! (The retreat mystery pattern was Cat's Meow by Debbie Caffrey)

Labels: quilting

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Doodling

June 13, 2014

Works for me. "Undead and Unemployed" by MaryJanice Davidson ♦♦♦♦◊

First off, let me remind you that I finally joined and submitted blocks to Block Lotto - I told you about it in my last post, which was way 'back in February. I was so fired up about these blocks and I was so determined that I would win (random draw - so I had SO much say in the matter!). But whaddaya know - I won!

I won! I won! Thirty-six quilters worldwide made 224 Bead on a String blocks; five were picked as winners and I was one of the winners!! I don't quite remember how many blocks I got, but it was in the neighborhood of 45... I think the block(s) that came from farthest away were from South Africa.

All (or almost all) of the blocks were great and I am thrilled with the different fabrics everyone used. Everyone included some sort of congratulatory note (which was fun in itself) and many wrote their notes on postcards - some indicating where they were from, some 'just' artsy-fartsy.

The blocks are in their own corn dog box now. Just this morning I saw this blog post where Jane has come up with a great Flying Geese medallion block for a regional bee in Australia and New Zealand - neat block/medallion, for sure, but what got me was the possibilities it opens up for using my lovely Bead on a String blocks. I'm sharing it with you, but mostly so I can find it again when I grab this corn dog box!

So what does that have to do with doodling?

This.

I chose to keep a couple of the Bead on a String blocks that I made and send some to other winners. I don't have cool postcards to share (I didn't know that's what was done), but I doodled on the mailing envelopes.

It's pretty fun. I use an extra-fine point Sharpie pen; each one of these envelopes took an evening. I found that my hand got a bit crampy or stiff after doing an entire envelope, so there's no production line happening here.

Yes, I was inspired by Zentangles though I guess there are 'official' Zentangle patterns and everything else is just doodling. I'm okay with that.

I've done a few more envelopes for other people, too. Just this week I picked up a new book from the library, The Art of Whimsical Lettering (Amazon link), and have been inspired even further in the ink-to-paper (or fabric) department. I hope that I'll have more to share with you as I experiment more!

Labels: craft, quilting