Our Christmas gift! More art by Ryan Graeff (The Restitution Press)

For Christmas, J and I decided what we wanted most of all was to give each other a commissioned painting by Ryan Graeff - an artist we discovered while furniture shopping for our new house. We saw his artwork in a furniture gallery at Helms Bakery and the color, love of place, graphic nature, true LA vibe and street art influences really grabbed us. We tracked the artist down and bought a fantastic painting of his in the fall and we saved the huge spot over our fireplace for a larger commissioned piece.
Ryan is not only a fantastic artist, he's a great person to work with. He's warm and generous and insanely talented. He's also getting some really big breaks and when we picked up this painting last week, he told us that he's now signed contracts with more galleries and even a design firm to do work for their clients.
We didn't know if it would be too much to ask for him to include many of our family's personal landmarks in the piece, but he was happy to oblige and the end result is an amazing painting where every single element of it has memories attached for our family. We are beyond excited about this piece. He even made two copies of it and let us pick our favorite. (The price of his work is rising so quickly that the second piece is already worth 3x what we paid for it, he told us -- AS IF we would ever sell this treasure!)
Anyhow, I had to share.

Sketching in 2013

So far this year, I've been able to fit in lots of time for art in all forms. I have quilted, I have knitted, I have taken a painting class, and spent many mornings drawing.
I haven't blogged much simply because I have so much to say that it's been hard to start. Plus it has felt weird to not address how affected I was by everything that happened at Sandy Hook elementary last month.
I may try to address that later but for now I'll fill you in on a few small things I'm doing.
So for this year I have had a lot of chances to have my morning drawing times both with and without the kids. Z I
is really the one that gets into this with me. I have found it very meditative and healing. It's often hard to come up with something to draw at 6:45 in the morning but I have decided that what I will do is just focus on the first thought that comes to mind. And sometimes I'm actually just writing down words and doodling around them. When it comes to things like spending a few minutes reading scriptures or deep thoughts it helps me to focus my mind in a way that's different than when I used to just journal furiously.
There's always a cup of tea nearby too.
Here are just a few of the sketches that I have done this year already.

The quilt of generations

I can finally post about this quilt which took me all fall to make. About 3-4 years ago, I was given a stack of antique quilt blocks by my mother in law from her side of the family. We think they were assembled by her mother and possibly her grandmother too. There's really no telling how old these squares are. They were hand pieced and made from old flour sacks and work clothes. (They're fabulous).

The squares were amazing. But they'd also sat neglected for decades. This year I decided to assemble them into something my inlaws could appreciate. Their Christmas gift was a California King sized quilt made from 16 of the 30+ squares I have. Though the squares themselves weren't really in colors that suited my husband's parents' taste, I decided to make do and work with fabrics that drew the quilt into their color palette.
I traded fabric with friends and was able to shove all this fabric through my tiny machine's throat to make the top and back. Then to make sure these delicate squares would be forever preserved, I had my friend Lisa Alexakis quilt it on a longarm machine. She did a beautiful job and I was able to bind it and give it as a gift this Christmas.
I'm very excited about these squares being used finally. I'm also thrilled to be the one woman who finally finished this project after decades of women touching it and passing it down. It feels like I'm a part of a wonderful legacy. And now it finally gets to be used.

Nice gifts for nieces

My sister has three great girls. (And a cute baby boy!)
Making original gifts for three different sisters can be tough. But I had a lot of fun with these. For the oldest, a Star Wars fan and reading enthusiast, I got this amazing Spoonflower fabric and had fun making every random bag I could for her from them. Perfect for going to the library and loading up.
The second, "the artsy one" got a patchwork tote and pouch embroidered with her name. (Along with art supplies!)
The littlest one is in preschool and I loved using this Robert Kaufman fabric "dollhouse" line to make dolls and matching bags for her.
Baby brother will also be getting a tote/book bag, some beanbags to throw and an awesome ball...
And other cousins get other gifts... Pics to come.

Christmas Quilt #3

Here it is.
I love this quilt. It's backed in the softest flannel sheet (from The Company Store) and its so happy to wake up under it every day. The layout was stumping me until a fellow guildie suggested the tree layout (LOVE!)

I could not be happier with this quilt.
I'm so happy I made it to enjoy this year.

Christmas Quilt #2

Here's Z's quilt. He loves it. The layout is so simple, and perhaps would have been different if I weren't trying to make EQUAL quilts, but we are all happy with them and there are no complaints.

In all honesty, I've been sewing nonstop all month - trying to get these gifts cranked out. But my priority was these quilts. I wanted to finish them by Dec 9. And I did!

I'll have to wait to do the big reveal of all the other sewing I did for gifts after they're given. I know, lame, and not very inspiring, but secrets are secrets!

Christmas Quilt #1 (what I've been doing)

As long as I can remember, I have been wanting to make a Christmas quilt. I began collecting fabrics for it before I ever knew how to quilt.
Last year with my Bee Happy girls, when it was my turn, I asked them to make Christmas blocks. I send the fabrics to them asking for one block each. They sent back THREE each. Which were amazing and beautiful and utterly overwhelming! What was I going to do with so many blocks? (Ahem: make Christmas bed quilts for all the beds in the family)

I set aside all of the Christmas tree blocks to make a tree themed quilt for my bed, and divided up the rest into two EQUALLY awesome piles for my two very competitive kids (who would notice if one person's quilt was cuter than the others')

Then on the LAMQG retreat, I cranked out the three quilt tops. My goal was to maybe finish the quilts in time for Christmas 2013. But my friends encouraged me that with my new machine (still need to post about it) that it would be a lot easier than I thought to finis these up. So by the end of the weekend, both of the kids' twin size quilts were quilted up and my king size quilt was basted.

The first to be completed was Mimi's quilt. She was thrilled and cuddled under it the first time she was sick this month while watching movies. It's been on her bed ever since.

I just have this amazing happiness when I walk into their rooms and see my little people sleeping under their Christmas quilts. How amazing to be a little kid and wake up every day in December, knowing its Christmas before you are even out of bed? The very thought makes me happy.
(Them too, they're already talking about how sad they will be to put them away)

Sew a Square a Day & Architextures

You know I already posted about my Dad's healing quilt and how I had made it out of Robert Kaufman's AMAZING new line, ARCHITEXTURES (by Carolyn Friedlander). I seriously love this fabric. It's probably one of the most usable lines that I have ever gotten my hands on. It's clean, modern and even masculine in a way that's not cheesy or trying too hard.


This past weekend one of the first projects that I completed was the quilt top from my "sew a square a day" project with Ramona. She'd challenged me to use up some scraps that I had by sewing one simple square a day and I decided to make it really attainable by using my tiny 4.5" square ruler.


So for a few months I made sure to have at least one square per day... then I got off track (of course) and to make up, I spent a night sewing a big sheet of fabric from the scraps and then cutting it up into squares with the little ruler. I have never made a postage stamp-esque quilt, so I decided now was the time to showcase my new squares in a checkerboard with Essex Linen.

You can see some great glimpses here at some of the squares. There's a lot of Architextures mixed in with some truly old and weird fabrics - I just love the pattern that has the ledger and numbers on it.

The top is now done and I've got a new machine to enjoy quilting it with.

Rosanna's baby bee quilt

I never did post about the beautiful baby quilt that the Bee Happy girls made for Rosanna when she had a baby.... She'd liked the quilt I made for Iris - who I called Little Princess when she lived with us - this one.... and asked for a similar quilt for her baby.

So we bees hooked her up with a bright sunburst of a quilt for her baby...


It was quilted by our very own Blossom... and bound by Katie.... and it was so incredibly pretty!
(these are Blossom's pics below)

Quilt Guild retreat

Just a little glimpse into my weekend retreat with my quilty guild friends this weekend. My family was amazing and made it possible for me to get away for 4 days of sewing with my friends at a beautiful retreat center in Temecula. I didn't take a lot of pics myself, but my friends did, so I'm showing you their pics. (Turns out I was a little bit obsessive-compulsive about using my time to sew as much as I possibly could in that time. I made a lot of projects, but that's another post)
It was a beautiful weekend with lots of laughter and hugs, sewing and snacks, cooing at babies (since there were three cuties there!) and generous friends giving gifts and helping each other out. We made another speed pieced charity quilt top (the orange and gray squares - all made by us in 1/2 hour) and we even had a scavenger hunt. We met another guild across the yard from us who were a group of older ladies (and one man) who had over 500 years of quilting experience in their group and we made friends.

I stayed up ridiculously and guiltlessly late and sewed as much as I wanted to all weekend.
A huge thanks to my in-laws and Jay who made my weekend possible by juggling the kids until I got home, and allowed me to be irresponsible and a little selfish for the weekend.

Oh, and see that cute little munchie I'm playing with? That's Crockett... Ramona's adorable guy and he's my godson!!!! (Why does every single baby seem to have this exact pic with me holding them this way? So funny... I love babies. It was good to get some baby love on a weekend where I was really missing a very special baby).

I also had a "fabric fairy" - who turned out to be my friend, Jennifer, who made me a beautiful sewing machine cover for my new machine. I love it. I felt surrounded by sweet friends this weekend. Sweet friends and fabric and free time to sew... For me, that's a pretty awesome weekend.