Another Baby Shower -- Boy

A lot has been happening!  This post is about another baby shower that I had 2 week notice on making stuff for her baby boy too.  Good news is that JoAnn's was having an awesome sale on flannel of $2/yd. and I happened to be in Idaho and visited the Hobby Lobby for more variety on the owl theme.

1. Baby Blanket
6" patchwork squares one side using terry, cuddle, flannel, and cotton, with cuddle fabric on back, with owl and red ribbon trimmings.


2. Burp cloths
Flannel or Cotton that is backed with bright green terry cloth, rounded corners, measuring approximately 12"x24".


3. Taggie item


4. Receiving Blanket
40"x24", cotton & flannel, trimmed with rickrack of different colors.


5. Pillowcase
All cotton and trimmed with rickrack.



A look at all the items together for T.

Baby Shower Gifts -- Boy

I have another friend who is expecting a baby boy.  I am super excited to try to make some more cute items, this time, I am using trim!  I found brown and red rickrack, two types of owl ribbons, and a variety of smaller ribbons for the taggie items.

1. Baby blanket

Finished size: 24" x 27"

I could not find the patchwork flannel/cuddle fabric at JoAnns this time, so I had to make my own.  I cut 4" squares from flannel and cuddle fabric, randomly put together to make my own patchwork.  I used one strip of aqua, tan harlequin, grey cuddle, beige cuddle, red cuddle, brown flannel, and dot flannel.  I wanted an owl theme so I cut 2 strips of the owl flannel.  The entire blanket is backed with the grey cuddle fabric.

Finish work: owl ribbon on one side, red rickrack, and I used an owl patch from JoAnns to make it extra cute.

2. Taggie Burp Cloth

Finished size: 10" x 14"

I did some research on ideas of different things to make and stumbled across "taggie" items, ranging with toys, blankets, clothes, etc.  I realized that this is a grand idea since kids like to chew on everything, touch everything, and loops could help to keep track of variety of toys with rings.  The dual use is backing the patchwork with terry cloth, can be used as a burp cloth and/or teething item (soak it in water and freeze it).

3. Patchwork Cloth

Finished size: 14" x 17"

Multi-purpose ways to use this item since it's just 2 layers of flannel in a manageable size.









4. Swaddle/Receiving Blankets

Finished size: 17" x 41"

Finished size: 18" x 25"

This is a new item for me to make, but super easy.  Essentially a large piece of flannel backed with beige knit, trimmed with owl ribbon or the rickrack.  During my research, apparently swaddle blankets tend to be too small, so I thought these should be big enough to use as a blanket in the summer time later on.



5. 2 Large Burp Cloth

Finished size: 13" x 25"

Finished size: 13" x 24"

These I got a little fancy!  I used two different flannel prints, used ribbon trim and rickrack to make it cute.  One has a "hoot" patch at JoAnns that is perfect for this item to match the aqua flannel while the other is trimmed in ribbon and rickrack.  Both are backed with a beige towel.  I haven't seen chenille so terry cloth works just as well.








6. Kidney-shaped Large Burp Cloth

Finished size: 14" x 24"

This is also a large burp cloth with the sides rounded to accommodate the neck area.  It is trimmed in ribbon and rickrack, backed with terry cloth.

7. Owl Cloth Toy

I saw a really cute picture on etsy of this item, I changed the shape but same idea.  It is flannel front and back with cuddle "wings", taggies around the owl's head.  A cute and simple toy type of item.  Goes with the theme, why not.

Finished Pile 'O Stuff!

Stripper Project: French Rose Inspired

Current Project: Stripper Quilt

Excited for my new project that will take a year to participate in.  It is similar to a round robin, but instead of adding rows to a base block/center block, you add a strip of row blocks.

To start, I must figure out what I want my quilt to be, or somewhat what I would prefer to be since other people will be making the blocks for the rest of the quilt.  Nothing like TEAMWORK!

Step 3: Leaves and 1st layer sewn down

My Strip has the parameters of using black & white prints (can be used anywhere) with bright colors (one, two, in combination, etc.).  Why have restrictions?  :-)  My base strip is using the "french rose" pattern concept with a little slicing/sewing to make them a little more interesting.  If you are interested in making these, here are the steps:

Step 1: Determine your background block size.  I went with 9" because I wanted to use a daisy pre-print fabric my mom gave me years ago with enough space around to decide if it needs sashing or not.  So I will have a variety of black/white prints for the background.

Step 4: Layer 2

Step 2: Cutting shapes for each layer.  I free-formed my leaves from lime/bright green prints.  To know the placement of the leaves, I had to cut my first large daisy.  I pinned the leaves in place, some have 3, or 2, or none.  I'm not picky since they will be rearranged in the end.

Step 5: Layer 3, sliced

Step 3: Sew around the edges with a shorter stitch length since this will be a raw-edge applique block.  Some people use fusible webbing on the back to attach to the backing too.  I did not.  It's up to you depending on a variety of factors.  Trim the back as needed (helps with bulk and heaviness).

Step 6: Sliced block

Step 4: Cut random shape for layer 2.  I want the colors to be complimentary to the original flower color scheme, so I went with pink for this lovely purple.  I found a project to use valentine's fabric for!  Sew edges, trim back as needed.

 Step 5: Cut random shape for layer 3.  Sew edges and trim back as needed.


Step 6: Slice your quilt block in half (4.5" for my blocks) going both directions.

Step 7: Mix up your quarters how you want, sew back together.

Step 7: Scrambled & Sewn Back Together

With my blocks, I wanted to mix up the backgrounds to create a 4-patch kind of look, PLUS mix up the layer 1 color.  I soon realized that I have to make a lot more blocks to make the backgrounds mix up more.  I was not paying attention to the size of the flower quarters.  Each block will be uniquely different.  :-)  The 3 colors of layer 1 will help keep it cohesive, there is a light/dark of each of the 3 colors creates a nice variation.

2 blocks

This would be a lot of fun to mix all kinds of prints and colors.

Tula Pink Visits Walla Walla

Tula Pink visited Walla Walla on July 27 & 28 for a meet-n-greet, workshop, and lecture.  I elected to do only the "lecture" since I had a lovely mentoring symposium in Portland the day before, but I did go with Shanna!  One of our lovely quilt stores hosted the event: Stash.

Here are some pictures from the "lecture," which is more like Q & A with some hilarious stories and lessons learned from Tula herself!

Design process

2 colorways

Who knew that designing fabric would  be so complicated?!

Tula with her 1st "quilt"

Workshop: Stacks

Tula's alphabet pattern

"Birds & the Bees" label

"Parisville" label

"Tula of the Sea" label

Tula's experience with cornstalks

Cornstalks quilt

Things I did not know:

• fabric in the store was designed 18 months ago
• 4 stages to the design process: creating -- printing -- editing -- production
• there are grades assigned to designers depending on how much they are able to sell.  Apparently you want to have a following that can sell around 3,000 yards.  I am not sure if that is per print or per line.
• Tula gets only 1 yard of fabric of each fabric in each colorway in advance to make her samples 6 weeks before the International Quilt Market . . . which is what she uses to sell herself/image for quilt shops.
• a line of fabric can be 18 different prints . . . that has to be narrowed down to 6 (for what she is able to sell via fabric company)
• Tula sketches one half of a design to be reflected and mirrored for production.  She is an amazing artist!
• Moda pre-sells . . . so if you see a Moda fabric and you love it, you better buy it because it is NOT coming back.
• Tula is with Free Spirit, they will keep making the fabric as long as it is selling.  *whew!*
• Interested?  Apparently fabric companies get over 500 submissions a month from artists too who want to design fabric.  Tula's suggestion: present in your own unique way, how are you different than the next person???
• Inspiration: Tula starts with a story, designs emerge from that story; intriguing how artists "work"
• Licensing is a fascinating concept.  Tula sells her designs for 2 years to the company to use specifically for 44/45" cotton fabric.  She can also sell the same design to a different company to make canvas.  Very specific and detail oriented.

Spacedust quilt

Spacedust upclose

Prince Charming pencil sketch

Tree of Life pencil sketch

Jargon: 

Line = collection of fabric
Colorway = colors or group of colors in one line of fabric.  Tula's bare minimum is 6 prints in one colorway.  You can't have just ONE amazing fabric, you have to do accompanying prints . . . in the quilting world.  :-)
Samples = If you make it, people will buy it.  Quilt stores have to show people how to use fabric to inspire others to make it as well.  Stores also sell kits.  It is all about how much fabric you can sell.  Tula loves quilts so she makes quilts.  Amy Butler likes making bags and clothing.  Etc.
Yard = fabric is measured in yards (3 ft. = 1 yd.).  You can buy smaller lengths (1/2 yard, 1/4 yard, etc.)
44/45" = quilting fabric is usually sold 44/45" widths.  If you have 1 yard, the piece of fabric will be 36" x 44/45".  Some companies have 44" some have 45", so they are generally grouped together on a bolt 44/45".
Bolt = fabric is usually sold to stores by the bolt, can vary 15 yards to 25 yards per bolt.  Every company is different.

Summer

Yes, summer has gotten away from me!  I swear I did some stuff!

Here is what I have been working on for the SewBeeIt projects:

April: 

May: 

June: 

July-August: 

Joining the "My Precious QAL"

I was randomly looking at twitter, still kind of new at it, and found a link about a quilt-a-long.  And it seems like a great motivation to get some things done with fabric that I've been hoarding or the excuse, "it's too pretty!"  Ha ha!  This will a nice transition from {Sew Bee It} ending to do something during the summer with simple rules:

 1. 15th of each month (May, June, July, & August) a finished project must be posted for the linky party at kelbysews blog. There will be prizes donated by Jeni from In Color Order, Kaelin from The Plaid Scottie, Brenda from Pink Castle Fabrics, and Tula Pink.

2.  Must use fabric that I've been hoarding or too afraid to cut into . . . each month . . . finished.

There is even a flickr group to help hold our hands while we have panic attacks of cutting fabric that we've been petting. 

Fabric Show 'N Tell

Since I mentioned the shopping in my previous post, I thought it would be nice to see what I did get.

L to R -- 1 and 2: Studio 8; 3: Reunion by Sweetwater; 4: Half Moon by Moda;  5: Dear Stella; 6: Good Fortune by Kate Spain; 7: Terrain by Kate Spain

 

L to R -- 1: Edith Ellen; 2 and 3: Mary Engelbreit; 4: Kitty Yoshida; 5: Amy Butler; 6 and 7: Deco Delight by Fabric Freedom; 8: Timeless Treasures 

Tri-Cities 2012 Quilt Show

It's that time of year again where quilt shows become a road trip excursion I venture to around the region.  Tri-Cities is 42 miles away from Walla Walla, WA, consists of three separate cities, Kennewick, Pasco, and Richland, that the Columbia, Yakima, and Snake Rivers flows through the middle.  There is about 300,000 people that live in the Tri-Cities area.

Tri-Cities is best known for the Hanford site, aka Manhattan Project, bordering Richland, which is where the nuclear bomb were made for Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  A little regional history.

Back the the quilts!

Black abstract log cabin

Tiny log cabin detail

Abstract wall hanging

These mini log cabin blocks were very interesting to see up close.  I love the white version best.






There were a couple of quilts that I really enjoyed at the Tri-Cities Quilt Show this year.  The theme of the show was "Stitching Stars" which some of the quilts are shown below for this challenge.

Love the colors!

Love the trees and colors

The Tri-Cities Quilt Show generally has the Hoffman Challenge and the 2011 challenge fabric was not that inspiring to me this year.  I'm not sure why, could be the more muted palette?  So I didn't take any pictures from this year's traveling exhibits.

The National Featured Artist was Sally Schneider.  I didn't take pictures of the quilts because they were a little too old fashioned for me. I encourage you to google her name and see some of the patterns and quilts she's made.

Sue White's Landscape

 

Sue White's wall hanging

Sky Detail

quilting detail

 Sue White is the Featured Tri-Cities member and I enjoyed some of her great wall hangings.  Some had great quilting detail, such as the goldfish with the ripples.  The diamond background was very creative, the 3D effect with the foliage, and the great quilting.

Mountain detail

Her landscapes were great too!  There are different layers to create the shading, the netting for texture, and quilting for more movement through the different layers in the picture.

Sue White's 3D tree

Three Sheets to the Wind

She had an amazing tree trunk that was 3D (the lighter trunk) and creates shadows behind, creating a realistic looking tree in addition to the shading and quilting.

I had to take a picture of the Inuit ladies with this wall hanging titled "Three Sheets to the Wind."  I would tell you who made this quilt if I could find it in the quilt program.

COLOR CHALLENGE

Color Challenge -- Yellow and Black

The color challenge was an interesting concept for the show.  A group of quilters picked a color card and the challenge was to design a monotonic wall hanging following the color card.  About 4 colors were duplicated by two different members, while others had one person (for example, one white, one black, etc.)

Color Challenge -- Yellow Greens

You can see the subtle differences in the pink/orange range as well as the green range.  These covered one side of the exhibit hall and was my favorite part of the entire quilt show.  Each of the wall hangings also had size restrictions, creating a uniform appearance to the panels.

I hope you enjoyed these as much as I did in person.  It is hard to see the great details of these pieces of art with a varying degree of experiences of the quilters.

The quilting group meet regularly to teach and learn from each other how to do quilting techniques, which is more creative than the business of a quilting guild.

Color Challenge -- Green/Chartreuse

 Quilting Guilds

I've been a member of two different guilds and attended another guild meeting.  Guilds are a great way to learn from other quilters, build a social circle, etc.  However, the guilds are there to conduct business during the meetings and the workshops they provide for their members help teach new quilting techniques (paid by the dues).  Not all guilds host a quilt show either.  It depends on what the group wants to do as their yearly project or activities.

Color Challenge -- Aquas

One guild I was part of in Bishop, CA, we did a monthly block exchange, we worked on a quilt show that is scheduled during Memorial Day weekend, and we also worked on some group projects, like round robins.  Bishop is a town of 4,000 and there was not a lot of excitement or entertainment.  The guild had some great ladies and talent, helped spark my creativity.

So there are some pros and cons to guilds.  I am not too jazzed about my local guild, but it's been about 9 years since I attended a meeting here, so maybe I'll give it a whirl again.

Color Challenge -- Aqua/Blue/Turquoise range

My friend and I enjoy meeting once a month to do a "sew-in" to visit, eat, sew, discuss, etc.  She roped me into doing an online bee this year, SewBeeIt, that I really enjoy.  It's been awhile since I did monthly homework assignments.

 The Shopping

Color Challenge -- Pink/Salmon range

The best part about the quilt show was seeing the increased number of vendors, which there were more selling bolted fabric than previous year.  I rarely bought anything last year because all they had were kits, pre-cuts, patterns, which I generally do not buy.  However, my hobby is getting a little too expensive for me when prices have jumped to $12/yard.  For cotton.  The batiks used to be the most expensive thing to sew with, but not anymore.

Color Challenge -- Orange range

I checked out online if there were any sales that I could go to instead.  Craft Warehouse had all their bolted fabric 30% off, so I spent my allotted budget there, plus, if you showed them your quilt program, you get a free $5 gift card.  Even better!

Craft Warehouse has really good quality of fabric than JoAnns and great prices when it's on sale.  They have the new Kate Spain "Good Fortune" line, not all the prints and colors, but I snagged the magenta bamboo print.  You can still find some of the "Terrain" and "Central Park" fabrics.

Color Challenge -- Terra Cotta range

There was a nice collection of Moda's Modern Half Moon fabric, which I got the grey modern leaves.  There was some Mary Engelbreit fabrics for the "Kitchen Kapers" line with aprons, panels, etc. and I splurged on this too.  I have plenty of the black background with cherries, so I resisted.  Mary Engelbreit is about as "cute" as I go with my novelty fabric.

I got 15 different fabrics, about 20 yards of fabric for about $120, that includes sales tax.  Yes, I am the type of person to buy random one yard cuts of fabric.

Color Challenge -- White/Beige range

They also have a huge table full of flat folds for $6/yard but those weren't on sale this time.  Sometimes you can snag some Patty Young 2009 fabrics, so it's usually a good idea to check it out once in awhile when you have the time.  You never know what you will find.