Spring Bada-Bing

I applied to be a vendor at an indie craft show in Richmond, Virginia next month and am now wondering if I have the goods to do it! It's the sixth annual Spring Bada-Bing put on by the Richmond Craft Mafia. From the past pics it looks like a lot of fun with cool vendors selling awesome handmade stuff. Sponsors provide each vendor with a 6 ft table and that's your selling space which is perfect for me since I definitely wouldn't be able to fill a walk-in space with my quilts. So...I'm wondering how may quilts I need to fill that space and trying to budget my time accordingly to reach that goal.




I made progress on the modified crazy quilt I started last week. I finished the center block and decided to cut it into a trapezoid shape--for better or worse. I wanted it to add to the wonkiness of the center block.

I also started another quilt with some fuscia Echino Bird Song I've been wanting to use. That fabric is so beautiful I just paired it with some Essex Linen on the back and quilted it in a freemotion meandering quilt with natural colored thread. All I need to finish is the binding. I think I'll use some sort of hot pink.

Did you catch the Super Full Moon show Saturday night? 'Twas beautiful here--clear skies and low light pollution where I live.

Hoarding: buried alive!

Must.make.quilts. I am determined to reduce my growing fabric stash and finish more quilts and not just so I can buy more fabric (I'm not gonna lie; that's a good incentive too). Have you seen the Hoarders show on TLC?? The fear of becoming like that is enough to kick the laziest of butts into gear. I suggest watching it if perhaps you're out of coffee and you need that little extra push to get you going. I guess the first thing I need to do is stop watching t.v. and finish that crazy quilt I'm working on!

In process

I started a couple projects this weekend. One of them is yet another one based on the method Joelle Hoverson outlines in her book I yakked about in an earlier post. I just can't get enough of that modified crazy quilt piecing technique. You start out with a bunch of fabrics in a couple of different colors, cut em up, throw em in a bag, sew em together, take em out of the bag, cut em up, put em back in the bag and sew em together. What I like most is the surprise of all the unique color combinations you get. For this one I'm using a variety of shot cottons, a voile, and a silk. I'll post some pics of the finished product and the other project on the burner soon!

Personal question

I know this is gonna seem very forward of me but -- What do you do with your leftover scraps? Do you use them in small projects, use them as stuffing, throw them out? In addition to serving as possibly the best cat toys ever, I've been filling a vase with mine lately but as you can see, the vase runneth over. It makes for an interesting room decor and also serves as a fond (hopefully) reminder of the various projects the scraps come from. BUT I ought to be able to actually use them to create something considering all the supercute quilts and such I've been seeing that folks have made from just selvedge (and I mean stinkin cute).

Speaking of seeing lots of cool inspiring stuff, I recently started actually using my Flickr account (why didn't I do this sooner??) and joined the group "Fresh Modern Quilts". Talk about inspiration, I could spend all day looking at all that eye candy (which I mostly did, considering I'm pretty much down-and-out with a cold at the moment). Always nice to see what others are working on.


With that, I'm off to sip some honey tea in hopes it gets me feeling human again. If only it were that easy to repair the damage done in Japan. My thoughts are with all those who are affected.

Thread trance

When in doubt, stare at the pretty thread. I'm so glad I got this thead holder recently. Not sure what took me so long as it was darn near dirt cheap. It makes post-project cleanup so much easier while serving up some nice eye candy to boot. My sewing nook is in the corner of my dining room so I've gotta keep it under control as much as possible and can use any little organizational tool to assist me.

Well, the UPS delivery came and I finally got my Essex linen! I can't wait to make stuff with it. I'm hoping that having a lot of backing yardage on-hand will make it a lot easier to finish projects. As it is I spend way too much time contemplating over what to back my quilts with so it will be nice to have a staple neutral to speed up the process.

Okay, I'm gonna go stare at my thread to hopefully inspire my next project...

Patience is a virtue?

Don't you hate waiting for fabric to arrive?? I ordered some Essex linen at the beginning of the week that I plan on backing my next quilt with and apparently it has to like, physically travel to my house or something. Geez. I confess, I do most of my fabric shopping online. I do try and buy at local quilt shops when possible but most of the time I'm looking for something specific and am much more likely to be successful finding it online. But then, it's the waiting game... Well, at least it forces me to be a more well-rounded healthy person and persue other interests in the meantime, right?



Like gardening. Okay, I know it doesn't look like much now, but picture this bleak, barren field alive with color and overflowing with gigantic specimens of fruits of all sorts...that's at least what we hope it looks like come midsummer. The main squeeze and I spent a large portion of the day tending to our garden plot. We're prepping for what will be our first full season! It's a community garden and this year will be the first full spring and summer we've had for growing. We've already planted potatoes and onions but we'll have to wait until after the last frost to get the tomatoes and other good stuff in.

Morbid inspiration

What inspires you? Sometimes I find it in unexpected places. This design is an image I created based on the central design on the carved gravestone of a woman who lived during the nineteenth century. Sound morbid? I fell in love with it because of its simple, symmetrical and folksy qualities. I made a rubbing of the image and digitized it. My experience with the process began in a beautiful historic cemetery in Florida many years ago. I have this cool friend that has introduced me to many crafty endeavors over the years and one time she and I explored a cemetery in Pensacola. It was such an adventure looking at all the tombstones dating to the eighteenth century. Ever the prepared crafter, she had with her a kit that consisted of thin translucent paper and a large hockey puck-like crayon... for making gravestone rubbings.

To make a rubbing, you place the paper over the area of relief you're interested in and solidly color the entire area with the crayon. The result is an image of the "negative space" on the gravestone. Pretty cool. (Some cemeteries don't allow you to do this because it can be potentially destructive to very old stones.) I highly recommend perusing old cemeteries if you've never done so, even if it's just to look at gravestones or photograph them. It's so interesting to see temporal trends in terms of design -- and even epitaph trends, through time. Like most material things, gravestones are products of fashion too.

Flash forward to recently in Virginia when I found this beautiful gravestone, hidden away in the corner of the cemetery, a weathered hidden treasure. I made a rubbing and came home and scanned it. I used Photoshop to trace over the scanned outline and ended up using it as a template for a lenoleum block for printing. These are fun to make and you can print on various surfaces. I've printed them on fabric and card stock, to use as greeting cards. Here's the print block (the rubber block is pink and the ink color I used is blue).

Wanna make one of your own using any design of your choice (morbid or not)?

• Trace or pencil your design onto the rubber or linoleum surface (find these at Michael's and other arts and craft supply stores). In my case, I printed out my photoshopped image and put a piece of graphite paper in between it and the rubber and then traced over my design, transferring it to the rubber.
• Use wood and lino cutting tools (also at Michael's) to scrape out the design.
• Now, ink it up and print!
  
  I need to figure out how to incorporate this design into a quilt somehow.