Category Archives: Fabric

It’s Been One of Those Weeks

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This week my website was hacked (again!) and my car was damaged in a hit and run.  The hacking details are tedious and boring, but I am now blogging on a wordpress.com interface (instead of my own hosted site) so that I don’t have to worry about security anymore. Blogging is supposed to be fun, and dealing with a hack is not fun. Google had my URL blacklisted for most of the week, but now everything is up and running and okay. Many links are broken and photos are missing, but I should have all of that fixed in a week or two. If you visited my site in the last week, please run a virus and spyware check on your computer. You can download a free one from Microsoft.

So after dealing with that mess for 5 days, I was awakened at 5:00 am Friday morning by the police knocking on our door. Apparently someone hit our car and abandoned their car a few houses up the block. One of our neighbors called the police when they saw the abandoned car and the police were conscientious enough to check all cars parked on the street for damage. Police often get a bad rap but I have to say that my experience with them (though minimal) has always been positive. They had an accident investigator at our house making a report before they even woke us up. Sadly, my car is not drivable and had to be towed to the dealer for repairs. I am driving a rental for a couple of weeks, and my wonderful husband is dealing with all of the insurance and car repair issues. He literally spent all day Friday on the phone. The people that hit our car did end up coming by the house and giving us their info. They were a couple of college kids who were driving down to the lake near our house and got lost. They were genuinely shaken up by the accident, but thankfully not hurt. Everything will be fine in the end and I am not a superstitious person that believes bad things happen in threes so I am expecting only good things for a while. :)

I’ve been mired down in purging and organizing my sewing room because in a few short months it will be a sewing + baby room. I’ve gotta make some room for our little guy so a bit of de-stash is in order. Hopefully I can get some things listed in my Etsy shop this week. Meanwhile, I’ve started a new just-for-fun project because I needed some cheering up.

I am taking some of my Moda mini charm packs (charmlets?) and pairing them with a vivid pink to make 9-patch blocks. Then I’m going to quarter them and sew it all back together for a super scrappy quilt. (this one was my inspiration) I’ve got a combination of It’s a Hoot, Hullabaloo, Summer in the City, Central Park, and Buttercup. All of the colors are so happy together and it’s definitely cheering me up.

Baltimore Album Quilt

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I signed up for a year-long Baltimore Album quilt class at a local shop called Happiness is Quilting. This is actually the first quilting class I’ve ever taken, and I’m very excited about it. Our first class was a couple of weeks ago and I’m already feeling very inspired and full of ideas. If you’re not familiar with the style, this is a Baltimore Album Quilt:

It’s all needle-turn applique and each block has a lot of symbolism for the woman who made the quilt. I think traditional Baltimore Album quilts are lovely, but I was really inspired to make one after seeing the wide variety of traditional and contemporary ones on display at Quilt Festival in Houston last November. I really like the idea of personalizing the traditional blocks to tell the history of my family.

Our homework from week one was to choose our background fabric and our focus fabric, and to create a papercut block.  I’m still stuck on the fabric choosing part. Background fabric is traditionally white or cream on BAQs, but for a truly modern quilt, a colored background would be gorgeous and unexpected. The focus fabric sets the color palette for the whole quilt so it’s important to choose a fabric that you truly love. Here are the options I’m considering:

BAQ - option 1

Option 1 is a Jo Morton 1850s reproduction print that is very traditional, with that rich poison green color I love so, so much. My background options are Kona Ice Frappe and Sage. I think the Sage is probably the one I’d choose. I can imagine myself always loving this fabric and the colors really are timeless so this option is very tempting.

BAQ - option 3

Option 2 is an Anna Griffin print from her Darcey collection paired with Kona’s Nightfall solid. The colors in that floral print are pretty timeless as well and not that different from the Jo Morton print above. The print is a whole different story, though. It’s not a traditional floral, but it reminds me of a 1950s dress. The dark blue background fabric would make for a pretty dramatic quilt.

BAQ - option 2

Option 3 is one of the wallpaper prints from Amy Butler’s Belle collection paired with Kona Bone. I’m already working on a quilt featuring Belle, and this fabric is impossible to find so that’s a vote against it. The colors in this fabric are just divine, though. Kona Bone looks really good with the rusty orange color in the Belle fabric. The whole palette is just spot on. On the other hand, the fabric is a large scale so most of the pattern would be lost on a 12″ to 14″ block.

It’s going to be hard to choose!

spring sewing

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A few weeks ago my friend Jamie lent me her copy of Amy Butler’s new book, Style Stitches. This book is full of cute bag patterns, and I’ve been dying to make one since I saw them in Amy’s booth at  Quilt Market in the fall.  Several of the bags resemble her awesome but pricey Sweet Life bags (my favorite was the Hampton bag) but the patterns are simpler with fewer pockets and zippers.

Since one of my goals for this year was to do more non-quilting sewing, I decided to make the Cosmo bag:

Don’t ask me why  I didn’t pick fabrics from my ridiculously large fabric stash. I saw these prints from Dwell Studio on fabric.com and they just made me buy them:

spring sewing

The yellow bird print will be the main body fabric and the maze print will be the straps. The prints (especially the yellow) are large scale so I’m crossing my fingers that the bag will be large enough to do them justice. I can’t wait for the mailman to deliver this fabric!

If you are making or want to make any of the projects from this book, there is a sew-along  on Flickr.

fabric overload

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I’ve spent many hours over the last couple of weeks organizing my fabric stash.

stash (mini bolts)

I’ve put my one yard plus pieces on mini bolts (really just pieces of acid free cardboard).  They look better and it’s definitely easier to see what I have (before pics here). But the mini bolts are flimsy and I find it hard to make the fabric stay straight and neat without using pins. It also takes up A LOT more space. All in all, I’m not sure I would recommend organizing your fabric like this. It definitely doesn’t work well for pieces that are under 3/4 of a yard. If I hadn’t invested so much time into all of this folding and color coding, I might just put it back the way it was.

There is an upside to all of this reorganizing, though.  I’ve finally started to see that I’m mere yards away from true hoarder** status. My husband was right!

pre-cuts

[pre-cuts]

fat quarters

[fat quarters]

I gave up fabric buying for Lent, but I think I could easily give it up for the next couple of years.  And probably should. The pressure of all of that unused fabric is kind of cramping my creative mojo.

**I know some of you are rolling your eyes about the hoarders reference. True, there are no mountains of garbage here, but it’s not all hospital corners.

hoarders

Excuse my dog’s…ummm, grooming. He didn’t realize he was being photographed. ;)

Even though I’m not thrilled with the results, I am glad to be finished with that time-consuming project so I can get back to actual sewing. I predict lots of pre-cut friendly quilts in my near future.

katie jump what?!?!

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Last Friday I went to the Dallas Quilt Show with several good girlfriends. We met for a delicious diner breakfast and made it to the show just after it opened. I had a short wish list of goodies that I wanted to buy: a market tote basket and a curve master presser foot. I’m really trying to take a break from fabric buying but five booths into the show, I bought a fat quarter bundle of Amy Butler solids. Those pretty colors weakened my resolve. I was pretty proud of resisting the vintage quilty stuff at the next booth. Several of my girlfriends took home some really amazing stuff (Melanie’s quilt scraps, Monica’s vintage quilts) but I tried not to even look at the booth, knowing that I have four unfinished vintage quilt tops awaiting some TLC at my house already.

I did find my market basket, which was very exciting. These handmade baskets are from Ghana and a portion of the profits goes back to the community of weavers that makes them. They’re called bolga baskets and you can find them easily online (most of them are dyed bright colors). They’re ideal for your sewing room – I bought my first bolga basket at another quilt show in the fall and I use it to store pre-cuts and fabric stacks for future quilts. It holds a lot of stuff and looks pretty.

And it’s a good thing I bought that big old basket because there were even more fat quarter bundles that I could not resist.

quilt show goodies

Denyse Schmidt’s Katie Jump Rope and American Jane’s Peas and Carrots! Both of these bundles were priced at normal retail, not Etsy-OMG-are-you-for-real prices. If you’re searching for some hard to find fabrics, you must check out your local quilt shows. A lot of small shops don’t turn over inventory very fast and if they don’t have an online shop, the odds are very good that you’ll find some out of print goodies. (This quilt shop does have an online store with some Katie Jump Rope in stock.)

I was feeling so pleased with myself that I even did some sewing this weekend (I’ve lost my mojo recently so like Ron Burgundy it was kind of a big deal.). It’s a Union Jack block for Erica in the Ringo Pie bee.

union jack - Ringo Pie (Feb)

Can you tell that the blue fabric is 1930s bunnies? And the white fabric has tiny strawberries on it? I just wanted to point that out. ;)

sunday stash {2.20.11}

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sunday stash {2.20.11}

Aqua, teal, and pink = pretty, pretty, pretty!

I’ve sewn a lot this week, but I don’t have much to show for it (literally – no photos!). I finished the Popsicles Posies quilt that I thought I’d never finish because of the hand quilting. This quilt is so sweet and I can’t wait to show it you guys. I’ll definitely get some photos this week.

Here’s a sneak peek:

binding

(really, it’s just a gratuitous dog photo)

sunday stash {1.31.11}

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I’ve decided to challenge myself a bit and start sharing a fabric stack every week.  Picking out fabrics is one of my favorite things to do, but I often pick out stacks and put them aside because I have so many projects going on. I think this will help me remember some of the combinations I love and also get out a bit of that creativity even if I’m not really ready to start a new project.

So here is my inaugural Sunday stash:

sunday stash {01}

It’s a simple but lovely combo of Parisville by Tula Pink and some dobby dots from Anna Maria Horner’s Pastry line. The colors go together like they were MFEO (made for each other).  That dobby is such a pretty fabric. I’d love to have bolts and bolts of it and make myself an entire wardrobe of swing dresses, shirt dresses, and dainty blouses. *sigh*

fabric to stash away

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I taught a modern quilting class the other night at my friend Julie’s shop – Make. We were talking about fabric obsessions and lo and behold, she has been hoarding some yardage of one of my most favorite prints EVER.

That’s right! The elusive Paint by Number Birds from Erin Michael’s Uptown collection. I don’t know how Julie can bear to part with it, but she is selling most of her yardage on Etsy. She kindly gave me a generous piece to have for my very own! I’m thrilled to have some of this fabric. It deserves to star in a super special quilt, and I can’t wait to come up with something creative to show it off. What a score. I did tell Julie that I’d break into her store and steal it if she didn’t give me some. Maybe that’s why she was so generous. ;)

color palettes

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I’ve been doing so well on my New Year’s fabric diet resolution. In less than one hour at the Quilt Asylum, I totally blew it.  The Quilt Asylum is one of my LQSs (local quilt shops). Of course, only in Texas would a place that is 30 miles from my house be considered a local quilt shop…but let me tell you, it is worth the drive.  We’re really spoiled for quilt shops here in north Texas – there are two amazing ones just in the small town of McKinney (Happiness is Quilting is the other one). I recently posted a map of area quilt shops on the Dallas Modern Quilt Guild blog if you’re in the area and you have some fabric money burning a hole in your pocket. ;)

I almost never buy fabric with a purpose. Typically I grab fat quarters that catch my eye, always keeping a lookout for yellows and purples because I have so few in my stash. But I’ve noticed that I usually end up with at least one nicely coordinated bundle at the end of my shopping spree.

spring around the corner

I’m calling this color palette “Spring Around the Corner.”  There is a bit of Sugar Pop, Modern Meadow, Moda’s new Regent Street Lawns, City Weekend, some Civil War repros, and several polka dots.  This set of fabrics really captures my aesthetic. It’s a mix of old and new, a bit modern, sort of vintage, with lots of color in a relatively tight palette. I love putting together fabric combinations, but I know many quilters find it to be one of the most difficult parts of the process. I often hear women in quilt shops and at DMQG events talk about their fear of combining fabrics and saying that they rarely stray from using just one fabric collection. Many quilting books and quilting teachers talk about color theory, and I wonder sometimes if it’s really something you can teach. People see color differently so isn’t it all subjective anyway? Whatever the answer is, I am truly fascinated by color.

While writing this post, I’ve been thinking about a Lizzy House blog post I read earlier about choosing one word to define the way you’d like to live this year. I was trying to think of my word because I’m feeling very deep and introspective writing about color theory. The one word that keeps popping into my head? Cupcake.  I have 9/10 ingredients in my kitchen for making banana cupcakes with chocolate frosting, but I’m missing the only ingredient that can’t be substituted – flour. So my word of 2011 will have to wait until I can get the banana cupcakes out of my head (and into my belly).