WIP- quilting the beast

Okay I am not going to name this quilt "the beast", but it's big enough to earn the nickname for sure.
I was so ambitious tonight. Got my machine out and everything. Then I realized that spray baste doesn't hold awesomely when the quilt is kept folded and shoved in a box for a few months. So tonight I pinned and taped. Maybe I quilt tomorrow night?
(my friend Melissa calls herself the sewing vampire - only sewing after her kids are asleep. I'm the same way. Only I don't know about the blood-sucking part. Maybe a vegetarian vampire quilter?)
Okay quilt. See you tomorrow night. You. Me. Here.

Mimi presents her quilts at the LAMQG

In February, I took Mimi to Sew Modern and as we bought fabrics for my birthday, she picked out a bunch that she wanted to make a bag with. I told her that if she made the bag that she'd get to present it at a guild meeting and that I would let her stay up really late to attend.
Well, you saw the bag. Now you get to see the awesome pics that my guild pal, Nichole, took of the Design Director showing off her work. (THANKS,  NICHOLE!)


Here she is saying, "This one I designed but I didn't sew it, because I was only 4"


"This quilt I did everything except for the owl and the binding. My mom helped me with those"


"Here is my bag. I did everything on it except I didn't do the snap or the button on the pocket and my mom attached the ribbon to the straps for me before I sewed them on"

Everyone was freaking out. She was pretty cute, even if she was my own kid. That little 6 year old got up in front of everyone and said exactly what she wanted to say in front of 60 adult strangers. Talk about proud moments. I was so high on that kid that night. She rocked it.
Then after the meeting she showed me the fabrics she wanted to make a dress out of and asked for a lollipop.

Dog beds

What's that you say? You don't like these fabrics? Me either anymore. But if it makes a soft dog bed, I know someone (or some canine) will appreciate it.
I've been taking unloved yards of fabric, folding them in half and sewing up two sides to make a pillowcase. Then I leave it open and use it as a receptacle for all thread and unusable fabric scraps. I've also been known to throw in used dryer sheets, torn undershirts from my husband and socks who've lost their mates. When they are full, I sew them up an donate them to dog shelters. These are dog beds #2 and #3.
Yay for recycling!
Yay for doggies!
Yay for the people who take care of and rescue dogs!
(both of our dogs that we've had in the past 10 years, Scout and Zuma, were rescued...)
If you're local and want to contribute to my doggie beds, just let me know...

Bee Blocks- catching up

I haven't been posting here because we've been on vacation, but now I am back and the kids are back in camp, which means hopefully that while baby naps, I'll be able to share some of my fun projects recently.
I've got about 2-3 secret projects that I can't post yet, but I am indeed keeping my fingers busy.
And LOTS LOTS LOTS of hand sewing and even hand quilting, if you believe it!
(works great when in the camper or at a campsite!)

In the meantime, here are some pics of bee blocks I have made recently for my two bees.

(before their borders were put on... cool, huh?)

Cruz wanted these fabulous hexagon squares. They were made from a pattern by Freshly Pieced. They're not easy to get perfect, and picking the fabrics was WAY trickier than it looks. But I love the finished look so much that I am going to have to do something special with these....

Katie asked for trees... Once Christmas tree in her turquoise fabrics and one other tree in the reds. Oh did I have fun with these... so fast, so easy! Must do more!

I always like to send a little bag or pouch with my bee squares, one that reminds the gal of her squares from me, so here is Cruz's squares and bag and Katie's wanted to have a tree on it (other side, not shown), so I had to make hers a bit bigger than normal. That's okay, I like Katie a lot... and I loved making her bag.

Denyse Schmidt workshop

I feel so lucky to be a part of the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild! Do I say that all the time? I think I do. Anyhow - this past month was really special for us - we were able to bring Denyse Schmidt - who is basically the pioneer of modern quilting to LA to teach us and do workshops for us!
I bought Denyse's book years before I ever started quilting and have looked and have looked at it over and over. (highly recommend) The difference about Denyse is that she's an artist first. She graduated from RISD and has the art knowhow and design aesthetic that make her really stand out among quilters.

The weekend started with a lecture out at Art Center in Pasadena and we spent about 2 hours learning about Denyse's processes and her journey and what inspires her. I came home even more excited to spend Sunday day with her in a 5 hour class that had only 10 other people with me.

(alissa haight carlton took these 2 pics of our class)

We spent the first half of the day working on improvisational piecing - where you pick pieces out of a paper bag without looking and work with what you've got - it's a great exercise in letting go and broadening your horizons.  As I kept drawing out pieces, they were nearly all solids and that was a real stretch for me... here's one of the squares I ended up with. (I love them).  I plan on using them to make something that I can really enjoy. Still thinking about what that might be, though.

The afternoon was spent with us sharing some design issues we had with her on current projects and getting her insight. I brought in my collages and talked about how I can't seem to bridge the gap between my art and my quilting quite yet... She helped me to get started and I love what I made from these!

I'm inspired to keep working on this - it's so far out from my current color scheme and comfort zone.... I really have some new ideas as to how I can move forward on this journey.  I already have 3 more "squares" (they're not square) to add to these and I'm buzzing with ideas.

(me and Denyse with my squares and inspiration collage - you can tell how super nice she is...)

Generation Q Magazine

There's a new quilting magazine in town, and though it's not print (yet!), it is being headed by the gals who were editing Quilter's Home magazine (whose last edition is out now...) and a few of their friends.

Generation Q!



It's starting as a blogzine  TODAY and then plans are to take it through digital zine phase to print within a year. Ambitious! I heard about all of this at the Los Angeles Modern Quilt Guild meeting last week where editor Jake Finch is a member and shared with us the great news of this new magazine and also the need they have for people plugging their endeavor with publicity. Find them on FB, tweet about it, but definitely start checking in with them. They promise all sorts of contemporary inspiration for the modern sewist and quilter.

Quick Fix for the cords

Baby is a complete trouble magnet. He will bypass the coolest toys in order to attempt to stick his finger to a light socket or play with electrical cords. In a high-tech family and a small house like ours, he's always got something he is headed for. (as I write this, he just reached up onto the breakfast table and tried to throw a bowl of eggs). He can't be out of sight for more than 10 seconds or there is big trouble.
One of the biggest problem areas in our house is daddy's power strip by his desk.... I've spent money on different childproof boxes for the strip, but they are ugly, enormous and they are almost impossible to access the plugs with.
Finally I decided that we needed just a simple sack over the strip. As he gets bigger, we can get those locking beads for the ends, but for now, this works perfectly. Easy access, pretty, small, flexible, and it's also made of laminated cotton so that dog hair doesn't stick to it. ;)

Project bags

Since I have so many various projects I'm working on, I needn't have something to carry them in, right?
A few months ago at the LAMQG swap, I received from my partner, Jamie, a most adorable project bag for carrying around portable projects. I use it all the time and love it so much that I figured I needed a few more.
That same meeting I also won a door prize... A scrap box from Robert Kaufman.. Strips of scraps mostly in black and whites.
None of the patterns (other than the obvious polka dots) really fired my creative engine, but I liked them as a whole. So the other night, I strip pieced them together and made these two bags. The gradient bag has a zipper at the top and is big enough to hold my huge paper piecing quilt top. The other drawstring bag was perfect for carting my supplies yesterday to and from the Denyse Schmidt quilting workshop I took. More on that adventure later!

Mimi finishes her bag

The design director and I went shopping on my birthday for some fabric and had a blast. We went to Sew Modern, a fellow LAMQG pal's store in West LA and she had the women there in stitches (no pun intended) as she picked out her fabrics.

They were blown away by her sense of color and asked her to bring in her finished project. We have plans and clearance to bring it to the next guild meeting, along with her quilt she made a while back, and she will get to be a part of the group's show-and-tell time.

The bag is a design we worked on together, but other than the hand sewn snap and attaching ribbon to the webbing fabric for the straps - she sewed every single stitch, een attaching the straps and label.
(I'm so proud of her!)

Ze Artiste decided he wanted to do one too now and we made him a great pouch with basketball fabric that he also sewed completely by himself on my machine. (post to come)

Work in Progress - paper piecing

Oh haha, if I posted every work I had in progress right now, you would think your friend Libby was certifiable. But the one I'm showing you here is really special...
This is a hand-sewn proect... Made by a process called "English paper piecing" where you baste scrap fabric to little shapes of paper and sew them together before popping out the paper. (no need for am iron to get perfect shapes)
It's been a WIP for probably 6-9 months now. I work on it in the car as I wait outside DCFS 2-4 times a week while baby has his visits with mom and other various family members. I do a few pieces at a time and stick them back into a project bag. I had about a hundred little squares going on and was stumped for a while as to how I could do some modern type of setting for them... So I decided since this is all scrappy anyways that I was going to use about 8 different whites to make brick shapes to offset the bright squares. This summer, I've been bringing it out at night and cranking on it... Now it's about 60"x20" and I'm hoping it gets to 60"x60". That's just the quilt top. I'm thinking though, that since the whole top will be hand-pieced that I'll have to quilt it by hand, so I'm currently practicing my hand quilting on another project (I'll show it later).
The other thing is that since it works in the car, i can actually get some sewing done during the day. The kids don't really let me get anything done during the day, let alone sewing. The big kids are starting summer camp this week, so soon I'm just going to be a baby mama for 8 hours a day (playdates, anyone?) -at least until Baby moves out, which, sadly, is likely to be soon. ...In the meantime, this has been a great way to channel my stress. And boy have I needed a channel.