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TTTT Thursdays – Crochet Clearinghouse & Pillowcases

January 14, 2010 1:13 pm by Ebony in LESS, TTTT

I was thinking about this exercise all day yesterday, and wondering what part of the house I should focus on for my weekly purge. An email from a close friend of mine answered that question: “Do you have any crochet books that you want to sell? I only ask b/c I know crocheting is not your #1 hobby anymore and thought I’d check with you before I shop for patterns.” How perfect is her timing? In a further discussion, she’s also looking for crochet hooks and yarn, so it gave me an opportunity to purge pretty much everything. In all, I counted 6 hooks, 24 books, about 40 skeins of yarn, 11 skeins of crochet cotton, and even one project she is going to finish for me. I’m also giving her the giant plastic tub that everything is stored in. I ended up keeping some hooks (one in each size so I have a complete set), 4 projects that I want to finish myself, and the 4 books that have the projects I’m working on. The remainder of the crochet books I am going to sell. I was on a doll kick at one time, so I have about 20 of them that need to take a hike! Here’s the tally so far – I’m getting rid of another 128 items! I sent off the prize for my TTTT giveaway – I can’t tell you what it is since it is a surprise box, but I’ll give you a hint: my current Dash total is how much I sent off to her. The box weighed over 2 pounds! I also happened across the perfect project to help me whittle down my stash. AllPeopleQuilt.com is sponsoring a 1 Million Pillowcase project. Each pillowcase can eat up about 2.5 yards of fabric. So if I make 10 of them, I am a quarter of my way through the goal! I think I will target making a couple this weekend. I have to work on Saturday so this may be a little bit of a challenge, but it will be really great to kill some of my stash & help someone who needs something cheerful in their hospital room. They post free patterns every quarter, so I think I will commit to making 10 pillowcases each quarter. That should be doable – that’s about 3 per month. I’d better get started now, I’m already behind!Happy quilting!

Word "LESS" Wednesdays – IRREGARDLESS

January 13, 2010 11:57 am by Ebony in LESS, Wordless Wednesday

Irregardless is not a word. Rather, I should say, it’s not a standard word that should be used – it is not grammatically correct. It’s a double negative. A word like “irregular” – the ir- prefix means “not.” The suffix -less means “without”. So “regardless” means “without regard.” And “irregardless” is “not without regard,” which means, “with regard.” So people who use it mean the opposite of what they are saying. Confused? Just because Merriam-Webster decided to add a word to the dictionary, does not give people free reign to use it. “Ain’t” is also listed in the dictionary, but “ain’t” still is not an acceptable word. The dictionaries list these words so they can tell you not to use them. “Not” and “without” are used to negate. So if you use them together, you are creating a double negative. Why am I railing so against “irregardless”? Because I read it in a quilt book I recently acquired, which should have been edited properly for nonsense. Or should I say, nonsenselessness. On the other hand, language is fluid – new words are created all the time. Look at the word “google”. This is now a noun and a verb. “I googled myself” – sounds like an odd thing to do, but if you say it to someone they will know exactly what you mean, and probably will have tried it themselves. So is the word “google” acceptable as new language because everyone uses it and is happy with it, whereas “irregardless” and “ain’t” still evoke ire because to so many it sounds wrong and seems to imply a lack of education? What does this have to do with quilting? Probably not much, but it got me thinking. When you start out with something new, like learning a language, logic would say that you need to become fluent in the “language” so you know when to break the rules. Some people become so fluent that they find it difficult to make adjustments and allow themselves the freedom to break them. Some people will always find “google” distasteful. Some people never bother to become fluent, and just jump right in to figure things out as they go along. These are the folks who don’t mind traveling to a foreign country where they don’t know anything about the language and just make do. When it comes to quilting, which one are you? Are you the fluent master who sticks to the rules set out by others; fluent, yet break the rules when it suits you, or do you ignore the rules completely and chart your own path? Happy quilting!

TTTT Tuesdays?

January 13, 2010 5:18 am by Ebony in LESS, TTTT

So initially, I thought TTTT Thursdays made sense, but I think actually that TTTT Tuesdays makes more sense. Why? Because the garbage is picked up on Wednesdays. If I do TTTT on Tuesday, the “Toss” goes right away, if I wait until Thursday the stuff has to hang around for a week. It’s too late for me to change it now because I already took out the garbage and it is too cold to go out and add more. That’s my story and I am sticking to it! Happy quilting!

Raggedy Doll – Finished Quilt

January 13, 2010 3:12 am by Ebony in Finished Quilts, UFOs

This is my second UFO finish of the year. I got the label on and took a couple of pictures of the finished quilt. It was made from scraps of red, white, and blue fabric, stitched to a single piece of fabric with a zig zag stitch, and finished off with a cool stripe. The back is a red print & there’s a huge label on the back, but I got lazy with the photographs and don’t have one of the back. Yes, the squares are wonky… and rightfully so. I only pulled square-ish pieces from the scrap bin; if the color was good and the size was okay, it got added to the quilt. This quilt is a gift and will be accompanied by reproduction Raggedy Ann & Andy dolls, so the colors and the look are well matched! Happy quilting!

Peace Be Still – A Day in the Life of an Art Quilt, Part 2

January 12, 2010 5:02 pm by Ebony in Art

Eye of the Storm

This post is a continuation of where I left off yesterday, taking you through my process to create an art quilt using Raymond Houston’s “Beyond Symmetry” method. Having selected the fabrics and printed a plan for the blocks, it was time to start cutting fabrics! One of the documents I created is a color chart, which tells me how many of each unit needs which color fabric. With this information in hand, I am able to cut fabrics en masse. Now, Raymond’s method is to cut pieces to the exact size needed, and I’m more of a “rough cutter” when foundation piecing. I prefer to cut fabric to the size of a standard rectangle so that I can use my shape cut rulers to quickly cut out the pieces. I measured each template to determine the size I would need, and then I laid out all the pieces according to their positions in the unit: I then laid out the blocks according to the numbers I assigned them. What you can’t see in the picture is that the drawing is also numbered, to show the position of each block. So if I have a block colorization that I named “S”, it is located & numbered on the drawing as “S” wherever it appears. This allows me to quickly locate and assemble the pairs later! From here, it was just a matter of sewing the units onto the foundation (align, stitch, finger press, trim.) I didn’t take pictures of this process, but it is pretty mundane. I was too excited to see a panel finished to wait until I sewed every unit, so I did the main panel with the “Eye” first: I love it when a plan comes together! I’ll unveil the finished piece on Friday when the show opens. Tomorrow, in addition to my Word “LESS” Wednesday, I’ll give you some insight into the other three pieces I made. Happy quilting!

Peace Be Still – A Day in the Life of an Art Quilt, Part 1

January 11, 2010 1:21 pm by Ebony in Bloggin'

Eye of the Storm

My gallery exhibit at Flourish Studios opens in 5 days, so I thought it would be fun to give some insight into my process for developing the 6 pieces for the show. There were 12 artists invited to participate in the show; all of us have different viewpoints and media in which we work. I am one of the few fiber artists and the only quilter; the other fiber artists work with paper or mixed media. The six pieces were divided into two sets of 3; one set was to be 10″ x 10″, and the other set 5″ x 5″. You would think that with such small pieces, they would be relatively simple to make, and fast since they are so small, but you would be surprised at how much time & energy goes into making small pieces. They took overall about as much time as a regular quilt! It took me months of deep meditation to come up with the designs (ok not really, but it’s scary sometimes how there’s nothing for months, and then BAM! an idea.) For the 10″ x 10″, I decided to do a series called “Eye of the Storm” which is based on Raymond Houston’s Beyond Symmetry book. I was playing around with the design and thinking about how orderly and calm repeating patterns can be, and that if life were like that, it would be peaceful – but life is never like that. There is always some small change. Sometimes there are big changes, and it takes a while to get back into the rhythm. I introduced you to the first panel in this piece in my Symmetry Saturday series. It takes a lot to go from sketching to actual execution; once I had the design, I had to select just the right fabrics. I was committed to using fabrics that I already own. Since the pieces are small, I probably could have used scraps, but I wanted every piece to be the same except where I planned changes. Because of all the small pieces and the angles, I decided to use a paper foundation for the blocks. When you are paper piecing, you have to remember to print the foundations as a mirror image; this was a little complex because I had some blocks which actually were a mirror image, so I had to print the mirror of a mirror. In total, there were 48 blocks (2.5″ square finished). Some blocks had the same colors in each position, but there were a lot of blocks that had individual color schemes. I tried to solve this complexity first by printing out a full color copy of the quilt, labeling each position of the block on the reverse, then cutting apart each block, and matching like blocks together. I then came up with an Excel spreadsheet to define each block color scheme, the location & position of each, and match the blocks together. That plan you can see on the far left; in the center you can see the colored squares clipped to their paper foundations. Down front, you can see the paper templates. getting organized for this project was one of the most time-consuming aspects of this project. Tomorrow, I’ll show you what I did next! Happy quilting!

Sunday Spotlight – Zentangles January 10, 2010

January 10, 2010 2:53 pm by Ebony in Spotlight

I happened across this concept while reading a random blog. It seems there is a method to doodling of which I was completely unaware! These are called “Zentangles”, and some of them are so cool I thought they were worthy of a feature. Happy quilting!

Symmetry Saturday – My First

January 9, 2010 4:21 pm by Ebony in Symmetry Saturday

I’m sure you all will think I have gone absolutely bonkers. I’m just not content to have a Sunday Spotlight, or a Word “LESS” Wednesday, or a TTTT Thursday. It seems I have a need to fill every day of the week with something alliterative. Last summer, I came across this male quilter, Raymond Houston, and his “Nacho Grandma’s Quilts” site & method of block construction using a single template or “tile.” As an engineer, this particular method speaks to my fundamental desire for symmetry, order, and straight lines. (To this day, I still have not done any curved piecing. You might find this strange if you saw my collection of circular rulers, templates, scalloped stencils, and even a curvy ruler…) Anyway, I found the concept intriguing, given that there is a nearly infinite number of potential patterns, but didn’t really take it too far until more recently when I was brainstorming ideas for an art piece. By happy (non)coincidence, Raymond commented on a blog post of mine, which drew me back to his blog, which then inspired one of my newest pieces. With Raymond’s method and his single unit tile, you can make quilts which have a common foundation, but which will never be exactly the same as what someone else comes up with. in some cases, it’s even hard to tell whether they are in fact based on the same unit! I recognize that this is also an inherent part of quilting, even with the thousands of blocks which are available, but I would have to say that no other quilt block has inspired so much play and interest in me. It’s even inspired a new direction for my art. With that said, I am doing a lot of playing & discovering, and so I thought I would share some of those play sessions with you. That is what is inspiring my series “Symmetry Saturdays”, in which I will share with you a new pattern or concept or idea that I’ve gotten through play using Raymond’s tiles. I may not ever turn these sketches into quilts, but for now, it seems cool enough to just show you what I am coming up with! For this first SS, I want to share with you the block that inspired my latest work, Eye of the Storm: I guess you could call this a double 4-patch, or an 8-patch, but whatever it is, it’s pretty cool, especially when colored in. To learn more about Raymond’s system, visit his blog! Happy quilting!

Just When I Thought the Day Couldn’t Get Worse…

January 9, 2010 3:53 am by Ebony in Bloggin'

I have just discovered that a very expensive piece of jewelry, my favorite signature ladybug pin which was handmade (and purchased) in Switzerland just last month, which I wear every single day, is gone. Did I lose it crossing the street to the studio? Did I lose it inside the studio while hanging art? Did I lose it while shoveling the 3′ wall of snow after arriving home? There’s no way of knowing, it could be anywhere, and if it fell into the snow, I will never find it. I really could just absolutely cry right now. (Not So) Happy quilting!

A Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

January 8, 2010 11:59 pm by Ebony in Bloggin'

Have you ever just had “one of those days”? Well mine has been so terrible that it sparked a memory of a line from an old children’s book. This morning started with my alarm not being set. My eyes popped open to pretty full daylight at 7:45. I was supposed to already be on my way to the office & plopped down for an 8AM meeting. Although I had gone to bed with a fairly clear driveway, overnight it continued to snow, plus the plows came by… LOTS. So in addition to the 6 or so inches in the driveway itself, there was a wall of snow 3 feet high at the end of it. I didn’t get to shovel at first. I had to be in morning meetings, and then a few last minute touches that I was supposed to do on my artwork very, very early this morning (which I slept through) had to be done. Today is the day that I was supposed to deliver 6 pieces to hang in a gallery show that starts next Friday. My office is about midway between my home and the gallery. The original plan (and the time I blocked in my schedule) was to go there from the office and come back – a couple of hours tops. Since I now had to come from home, the trip was twice as long. Needless to say, there are some hours this weekend that now belong to my 925er. Speaking of the 925er, I am working on a project that is supposed to finish by the end of this month, but we had some issues & have about a 3-4 week delay to make up for. I found out this morning that we are not going to get leeway to adjust our project timeline… so somehow we have to fit in twice the amount of work in half the time with the same set of resources. I will really be glad to see the other side of January. Anyway, back to the THNGVBD. Since I still had to shovel the drive and make a longer trip, I had to call the gallery & see if anyone would be willing to wait for me to arrive (diva, I know!) Thankfully, yes… so on to the driveway. A couple of seasons ago, I bought an electric snow thrower and a 100′ outdoor cord. All was going pretty well for the first 30 minutes, but on one of my laps back toward the house, I ran over the cord with the snow thrower. It got wedged in there pretty good! I unplugged it and used a rubber mallet to back out the blades… but I think the cord is a goner. It got smooshed a fair bit, and there is a tear in the insulation around the wires. Can I repair it with electrical tape? Maybe, but I have no time because I still have to drive into the city. I get to the gallery, and realize 2 things: 1) one of the display areas is for a vertical format, which I designed a horizontal format, and 2) I had promised to make my other set of pieces 1.5″ thick, and it was half that. So I had to take extra time to jury-rig a solution and get those pieces to the right thickness, and then get used to the idea that my larger pieces would just be vertical. All that taken care of, I drive back home, glad to be there… only to find another 3 foot wall at the end of the driveway…. which I now have to shovel by hand because the snow thrower is iffy & my car can’t drive over it. Oh, and did I mention I recently got diagnosed with tendonitis in my right hand with a microtear? I think you will agree that my day was pretty bad. But even though I had a THNGVBD, there were a couple of bright spots to sort of make up for it: The gallery space is BEAUTIFUL. I am really happy to have been included in this exhibit. The front part of the gallery is a store, in which I found a really cool stapler that staples pages without a staple!! It is so cool & clever I had to bring it home with me. (So the order of the LESS universe isn’t upset, I will find a new home for one of my existing staplers. Why do I have a plurality of staplers? I’m lazy. One in each room where I might be inclined to staple something… but I digress.) I FINISHED 6 quilts! it only counts as one UFO, but I finished! I sold one of my cross-stitch kits that I listed yesterday & got it off in the mail. Yay! Well, it is Friday, after all. Happy quilting!