Fiber Babble: May 2010

Sticky Subject

May 26, 2010

"Oh, Patrick, I have much to tell you!" "Death in Lacquer Red: A Hilda Johansson Novel" by Jeanne M. Dams ♦♦♦◊◊

Before I start the next scintillating blog post that you've all been eagerly awaiting (are you new here? that was sarcasm. don't mind me.), I just have to tell you about a giveaway from one of my favorite people - Jenny of ELEFANTZ!

Happy Birthday, Blossom!

Jenny is the author of the first stitchery pattern I ever bought (and haven't started yet - but I have the fabric!). This pattern was also my first Etsy purchase. So, even though she's got loads of followers and people who love her, I feel like we have some sort of special bond. :snort:

So, click on over and say "hi" to my dear friend... (but if you don't want to enter the giveaway, that's fine because I really want to get my hands on the latest Christmas pattern she's published). Grab a cuppa, fire up your Etsy account and wander around her blog - it's a wonderful way to spend a relaxed morning!

I suppose you've all pretty much figured out that I'm not a fan of handwork, at least when it comes to quilting. But I like the flexibility and 'picture-ness' of appliqué. So enter appliqué using paper-backed fusible web.

In some part of my self I consider this cheating. After all, I'm sticking the fabric down with an adhesive instead of hand-stitching each little piece. Well, yes, kinda. I know I don't have the patience like my blog friends Ann or Carrie or even Edna (who seems attracted to handwork as strongly as I am repelled by it).

Now, wait a minute. Hand-appliqué doesn't repel me. MY hand-applique repels me. And, just like machine quilting or knitting or embroidery/stitchery, it's just a matter of practice, practice, practice. I just choose to practice, practice, practice my machine quilting and knitting and stitchery rather than applique.

So, back to the "cheating" feeling. Maybe so. But I console myself with the realization that usually I'm not cutting out big ol' squares and circles and glueing them to a quilt top. More often than not, the appliqué I do involves pieces so tiny that I can't hold them in my fingers but need to use long-nosed tweezers to cut and place them. The projects I do frequently have no fewer than 60 pieces in each block. This in itself is an exercise in patience and focus. It's not the traditional handwork, but it's not kindergarten cut and paste, either, yanno?

As promised, then, I'll shed some light on my very first experience with my new (to me) Holly Hobbie Light Up Drawing Desk from my last post. (I crack me up sometimes) It took me HOURS, but I traced the first block from the Four Seasons BOM by Mark Hordyszysnki (you can see a picture at The Cotton Club Quilt Blog here). One hundred twenty something pieces in a 13" block.

Then, while I was feeling the love from my Holly Hobbie Light Up Drawing Desk, I traced all 176 pieces for Step One of Beth Ferrier's newest BOM, Flutterby Fancies. (As an aside? In the last week I've gotten 30+ visits from Beth's blog to check out my finished Be Still My Heart quilt, according to my stat counter. But not ONE comment. I'm trying not to feel like the quilt sucks because I know damned well it doesn't, but the lack of comment - good or bad - is pretty hard to take.)

THEN I traced the relatively simple Yammy Cat, a pattern by Helene Knott (scroll down a bit to see the original). Yammy Cat is a cousin to the one you see here, Walla Walla Kitty, my first Garden Patch Cat.

Another aside? Helene's patterns are pretty darned cool. She goes to the trouble of labelling the pieces so that you know pretty much exactly the order in which you need to attach them to the background. Very relaxing and refreshing (and beginner friendly!).

Both of the Garden Patch Cats are for shop samples, by the way. I'm teaching a "How I Use Paper-Backed Fusible Web" class at the shop this month and the participants will be making Walla Walla Kitty along with me.

After all the tracing was done, then I spent a couple of evenings cutting out the centers of the fusible - I call it 'windowpaning' - so that there is a less than ¼" 'ring' of fusible along the edges of the pattern.

What, you might ask, is my fusible web of choice? It's Heat 'N Bond Lite. Originally recommended by Sindy of Fat Cat Patterns, I buy it by the bolt. And guess what? Here's a little more to add on to my "Shopping" post. When Mom was here we went to IKEA (uhhh... more than once), where I found this lovely in the children's art supplies:

A roller-jobby-doohickey for my fusible web! Of course, I had to create the roll from the bolted stuff (yay for not throwing away Christmas wrap tubes!) but now I am like, totally set, fusible-wise.

Labels: babble, quilting

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Shopping

May 24, 2010

On the new ground the Pagan Stone stood, silent in the streaming sun. "The Pagan Stone" by Nora Roberts ♦♦♦♦◊

So. 'way back on the 17th I started this post. I titled it. I inserted the Last Line. I put in the code for the pictures (but no pictures). Then I saved & closed & planned to come back.

Ahem.

I seem to have forgotten what I was going to say.

So let's wander through my camera and see if I can come up with some photos related to "Shopping", shall we?

On the 3rd Saturday of the month, we noticed that our usual early morning attendance of quilters at the shop was a quite a bit sparser than is normal. Around noon, they started trickling in, all with the same story: "I would have been here earlier but there's a huge 'garage' sale over at the high school. Some lady passed away and all of her craft and sewing stuff is up for sale."

The boss immediately hot-footed it over to the high school to see what she could see. Then she calls me from there: "Get your shoes on [does she think I work barefooted normally?] and be ready. I'm on my way back and you need to get over here right away!"

So, at about 2:00 in the afternoon I'm calling Mr. W. telling him that the boss says I have to go to a garage sale so I was gonna get some cash from the machine. Uh huh, he says.

Here's what I was met with when I found the high school auditorium (inexpertly stitched picture):

What you're not seeing is the wall of sewing machines on the left, the wall of fabrics on the right and the wall of books & patterns behind me. What you are seeing is dollmaking, bread-baking, knitting, macrame, weaving, painting, and, well, you name it. If there was a creative endeavour to be done, this lady apparently did it. And did it in a BIG way.

We're talking CASES of pre-wound bobbins (.25 per box!). TWO tables' worth of doll/craft/sewing patterns. Zippers. Beads. Nearly an entire table just full of SCISSORS of all shapes and sizes.

And don't forget, I got there after the sale had been going for at least 6 hours. This is what was LEFT.

I looked at everything. I shopped. I put whatever-the-heck-I-wanted into my shopping bag. Willy, meet Nilly.

I have always wanted a light box, but never wanted to store one. But, hey! There was a perfectly good Holly Hobbie Light Up Drawing Desk right there with a $1 price sticker on it. How could I pass that up??

And here is said Holly Hobbie Light Up Drawing Desk in action, fewer than 12 hours later! The original-looking bulb was still in it and it still worked!! (There's a story to go with what's being traced on my Holly Hobbie Light Up Drawing Desk, but that will have to wait, okay?)

I got some patterns, I got a little bit of fabric, I got some DPN's that are thinner than toothpicks but 8" long. I got a couple of small kitchen-y things that I can never have too many of (bowl scrapers, for the curious).

But here is something that was a total no-brainer:

Big Woo, you say? Yes, indeed, I say. You see, I used to be a dollmaker. Velvet, brocade, silk, maribou, satin foo-foo fancy dancy dolls. And I used to be a bear maker. Handmade, original stuffed bears - some to be dragged around and slept with (usually for children, but not always!) and some to be displayed and kept out of the reach of little hands. And I also used to make "rag" dolls to be loved to pieces or displayed on Gramma's bed.

There was a time when I was neither a quilter or a knitter.

But then one day I made the little blondie doll using this pattern. (Actually I remember very clearly that it was in the evening and I was working on the dining room table and the TV was on in the living room and 'Dracula' with Gary Oldman was on. Not that it stuck with me or anything.) And I thought to myself, "It would be cute to make that matching quilt from the leftover fabric in the dolly's jumper." (It was a Southwest-flavored flannel and she was wearing denim slippers, BTW) So I walked to the condo next door, where I knew my neighbor was a quilter. I later found out she was A Quilter, but at first I didn't know the difference.

I said, "I'd like to make this little quilt. Can you help me?"

She said, "Yes, but before we begin I need to warn you: Quilting is addictive."

I said, "Hahahah. Err, okay."

And the rest is history.

Labels: babble

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Be Still My Heart

May 03, 2010

The rest was just details. "The Hollow" by Nora Roberts ♦♦♦◊◊

(Click all pics to biggify)

Be Still My Heart, indeed! I've finally gotten this lovely all quilted and bound (I did the handwork all by myself!) and hung up at the shop. Of course, I forgot to take pictures before I hung it at the shop, so you'll have to pretend that the lighting's better.

My vision for quilting didn't change when it actually came time to do the work, except that the brilliant idea of quilting on poly instead of cotton/blend was snuffed even after going to town to buy some... I got the wrong size poly so it was Warm 'N White after all - no trips thru the washer for this baby!