WIP - project modern challenge. Almost done!

So between juggling 4 kids, a new school schedule, 3 birthday parties a weekend and one of our own to plan this coming weekend... I'm dealing with lots of foster stuff (each new placement requires extra, weekly social worker visits and inspections, and dr appts...). That should explain a little why I haven't written much of interest this past week.
But I LOVE deadlines. And my self-imposed deadline of having an entry to submit on Sept 30 for the Project Modern Challenge "FIND YOUR VOICE" contest has been so good for me.
To be honest, this quilt has only taken me about a week of sewing at night plus one full 5-hour LAMQG "weekend sew" day. Jay has been watching it come together, saying "this has come so naturally for you. It's hardly taken any time at all". He's right. And it's also been fun.
My art professor last semester told me that you know you've got your groove when you can look at a finished project and envision making another 100 in it's wake. And I'm suddenly bursting with composition ideas... Something I've NEVER had before.
It wasn't winning that motivated me to enter this competition... But the push it would be to do something I've been trying to do all along. And i truly believe i accomplished my goal. Which thrills me to no end.
So now all that is left is the binding. Three days of hand sewing edges and I'll get to show you the final product.

Bear clothes

Princess informed me that her bear, Lisa, was cold. So all work had to stop while we made Lisa a sweater dress and scarf today. I'm amazed that a bear would be cold in 80degree weather, but maybe her fur is only decorative.

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More scrap hairbows

My niece, Lanie, modeling her scrap hairbows that she and her mom made for her soccer team friends.

WIP - quilt top done!!!

Here it is! It may end up with another few inches down the side to make it a proper twin size quilt, but for the most part... It's done.
:)
Lots to do in 10 days though. (especially with 4 kids and a number of nighttime events to deal with, which cut into my only hours to sew) Deadline is sept 30... Eeeeek!

WIP - project modern

Oh wow, after this past month, I wondered if I'd ever get this far on Project Modern. But now that I've gotten this far, I know I will finish! Today was the weekend sew for LAMQG and I arrived at 12:15 and stayed until the end 5 hours later. I arrived with 4 blocks made and left with almost an entire quilt top completed. It was so relaxing and wonderful to be with friends, doing what I love most. J was a champ at home for 5 hours with 4 kids (and a neighbor, too!)...
As I was speaking to other women there, i was relating to them how composition can really be an issue for me. I love making small blocks, but what do I do with them? How can I put them together in a fresh way?
Instead of trying to make them fit together today, I just tried to make one block bigger and bigger until it swallowed the others - and suddenly, it was a cohesive piece...
My LAMQG pals were chock full of color and quilting ideas. I love working in a group. In a way it sometimes seems like there would be a weird stage fright that might hinder creative process, but I find after 15 years of studio art classes, the opposite occurs... I relax, get talking and just let go in a way I never can do when I'm alone.
Today was great. Can't wait to show you more.

Gifted vintage quilt for Nicole

My first hand-quilted quilt. I gave it to my dear friend and neighbor, Nicole, today. A few months ago she'd given me a big bundle of scraps and vintage pieces she had bought in Montana, but had never found a use for. I wanted to find the use for her and made this quilt top in one night. Then I spent the next 4 months quilting it for her by hand.

I had hoped to give it to her in time for summer picnics with her family, but we live in SoCal... Fall is a good picnic time too, right?

Memory Lane

Today Princess asked about being a bride so I pulled out our wedding album and giggled with her about how fancy I looked and how happy "Lala" and "Uncle Jay" are in these pics. We were so happy. We still are. Nearly eleven years have given us many chances to laugh, cry, debate, struggle, move and fall more in love.
I couldn't help but to share these. We look so young and knew so little of what lay ahead, but I still feel all these photos deeply... Deeper, actually than I did then.

Scrap hairbows

I've been making these scrap bows for years now, using the tiniest (strippy) bits left from various projects. They've adorned probably 100+ gifts that have left my house in the past few years. They've even been gifts themselves, sometimes I'll fill up an organza bag of 10-20 and wrap that as a gift for a friend.
I've seen a number of folks turn them into hairbows, but I've never posted about it here, that I remember... This week, my sister in law asked for some yellow scraps to make 9 scrap bow hairbands for my niece's new soccer team. That reminded me to take a pic of Mimi in hers before school one day.
She was actually writing a card to a school friend that was including a scrap hairbow that she had made. Her comment about the bows in her pigtails: "mom, the funny thing about these is that I know exactly which quilt they're from"

Finding my voice

The Project Modern Challenge this quarter is "find your voice". Since this is something I've been wanting to do for a long time, I thought I'd give the competition a go. I'm now 2 weeks from the deadline and though I have a ton of sketched ideas for it, I hadn't actually started sewing. My friend, Latifah, came over a few weeks ago and helped me to wrap my head around how I could try to get some of my favorite curved shapes worked out in pieced fabric. She shared with me her copy of Dale Fleming's book "Pieced Curves So Simple" (liked it so much I bought my own copy).
I finally had my kitchen (kind of) unpacked enough last night that I felt able to pull out fabric and attempt a little piecing of curves.
And here's what I got! I'm pretty excited, because I held it up to one of my oversized collages and it was totally "me", it looks like all my doodles and collages... I think I'm on my way....