Yearly Archives: 2014

Crazy Smokey Days

I don’t know how much this makes the news across the country but Northern California is basically on fire. It is horrendous. We had a local fire about a mile from my house two weeks ago. It burned 350 acres and caused a lot of local damage. Before this we had a fire up at Yosemite. It burned 4,700 acres and is just about contained. Along with this fire is the Happy Camp fire (the name is sort of ironic.) Burning still, it has consumed 132,000 acres. It is in a wilderness area so it hasn’t burned many structures. Closer to my home, we are dealing with the King Fire. It is burning near the town of Placerville which is about an hour from my house. But as the crow flies, it is much closer. This fire is now burning just over 92,000 acres. There are over 7,000 firefighters working it and it is only 35% contained as I write this. The fire started over a week ago and has consumed 65 structures so far. It is a horrific fire. The worst part? It was started by an arsonist. The suspect has been arrested. Just unimaginable. Crazy, smokey, frustrating times.

Here is a picture of the smoke we are dealing with. This was taken this morning by my hub.

Luckily this afternoon a breeze came through and cleared the smoke for a while. I am sure it will settle back in by morning. They closed a number of schools on Monday. For today and tomorrow they decided to keep the kids indoors and cancel after school activities. It is completely unhealthy to be outside. The good news is that we have a 60% chance for rain on Thursday. We are so excited! Doing a rain dance for sure. Keep your fingers crossed for us. We need to get the fires contained and we desperately need some (a lot, a lot, a lot!) of rain.

Since I was inside all weekend with the exception of one trip to the grocery store, I spent a great deal of time at the sewing machine. It was a good opportunity to work off my stash because there was no going to the fabric store. Here are a few things I worked on.

I used more of the upcycled burlap that I love creating with. This pennant is hanging up above my (very fancy!!) design wall, inspiring me. On the design wall is a strip that I created with some holiday fabric scraps. I will add some lengthwise strips to the long edges to create a Christmas table runner but I need to find something at the LQS because none of my fabric worked. Love the banner though.

After making the “CREATE” banner I decided to make one for the holidays. First I made this one:

I put up a few odds and ends on the mantle to give it a holiday feel. I like the pennant with the exception of the E on the end. It needs to be a darker color so I will replace that flag.

This is the other one that I made.

I like this one but it needs some embellishment. I think I will add some buttons to the ends of the twine for weight and maybe that will dress it up a bit.

Finally, I made progress on a holiday lattice quilt that I am making. It will be set on point and needs sashing. I am thinking of using a fabric that is a deep cream color, tone on tone, for the sashing. Again, I didn’t have anything for this. I need to get the sashing as well as a fabric to use for the corner and setting triangles. But this is coming along nicely and will sew together quickly.

Not bad for a few days stuck inside! Hoping for clear skies tomorrow and a trip to the fabric store. Simple pleasures, right?

Linking to Stitch by Stitch, Freemotion by the River, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday and Let’s Bee Social as well as Needle and Thread Thursday. Links to these wonderful sites are found at the top of my page under Link Ups.

Family Time and Quilting Time

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This has been a great week. My son was home for a few days. He had a long weekend at work and came home for some family time. He is a production engineer in the Central Valley and works all sorts of shifts. His “weekend” depends on what shift he works that week. This week his weekend was Tuesday/Wednesday. As always, it is was so nice to have him home. One day he called my dad and asked Papa if he wanted to spend the afternoon together and go on a tour of the Sierra Nevada Brewery. Dad was up for it so the three of us went. Sierra Nevada Brewery is located in Chico which is just over an hour’s drive from us. They have a yummy pub on site so lunch was first on the agenda. The food at this pub is excellent. Lunch alone was worth the drive!

Sierra Nevada’s brewery is gorgeous. The whole facility shines. We spent about an hour touring it. They produce around 900,000 bottles per day and it is completely mechanized. It was almost eerie how few humans were seen working in the plant!

One of my favorite stops on the tour was the refrigerated room where they store the hops. It smelled so good in there! They had us rub the hops between our hands and inhale the fragrance. Each variety had such a distinctly different smell.

Ian and I both loved this part of the tour.

As you’d expect, they save the best for the end! Beer tasting finished off the afternoon. Dad and Ian compared the tastings, deciding which were their favorites. I was the designated driver for the trip home. It was such a fun day with my dad and my all-of-a-sudden-all-grown-up-kiddo.

Lest you think I completely strayed from the sewing machine this week, I did work on a couple of projects. My finish for the week was a tablerunner that is reminiscent of a sunset.

I used batiks for this runner and arranged the colors to look like a sunset. I love the color combination. The yellows, oranges, pinks and purples are so rich.

My goal for this project was to try something more complicated when I quilted the outside borders. I am really working on my FMQ skills and quilting this was satisfying. Some time ago, a friend of mine gave me a roll of printed FMQ pattern paper. I haven’t done much FMQ using a paper guide before. The paper patterns are made sold at Quilting Made Easy and have adhesive strips along the edges of the pattern. Once they are laid down on the fabric, you just FMQ right through the paper. This works well but picking the paper off after quilting is a bit of a pain. It was worth it for the good practice it allowed. I liked being able to focus on the speed and rhythm of my stitching without having to plan “where” I was going to move to next. Following the pattern removed one element of focus, allowing me to concentrate on the quality of the stitching. I think it turned out well.

The pattern is a double cable border. It is still a bit herky-jerky in places but much improved over my past efforts.

I decided to leave the center strips alone and only stitched in the ditch between colors. I didn’t want to detract from the gorgeous colors of the batiks. The backing is a purple and orange batik that I had in my stash.

I also had on hand the purple batik that I used for the binding. When I came across that piece I was surprised to realize that I have absolutely no idea where that fabric came from. Usually I can remember buying it or owning it or receiving it from someone. This piece just magically appeared while I looked for something to use for binding. It works well with the colors of this piece.

Hope you have all had a blend of good family time and good stitching time this week. Really what more does a quilter need?

Linking to: Freemotion by the River, Let’s Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, TGIFF, and – of course – Amanda Jean’s Finish it Up Friday. There are links to each of these sites listed at the top of my page under Link Ups. Check out of few of the projects on these pages. So much inspiration to be enjoyed!

Cowboy Small

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Big news! I sold my first baby quilt on Etsy! I was so excited to see that order come across. My quilt, Snips and Snails, featuring the ‘Here Boy’ fabric ,was purchased. I wrote a post about it earlier. After recovering from the excitement of selling a quilt, I decided I needed to make another baby boy quilt to list in my Etsy shop.

So… What to make?? I love reading and/or hearing about the process that an individual quilter uses to develop the design, choose the right fabrics, auditioning different prints and then coming up with the quilt they want to create. It is interesting to hear about those that choose and buy fabric first and then go forward from there vs those that develop the design and then purchase fabric. I fall into the camp of buying the fabric first. I love to pick up pieces that strike me for whatever reason. Once I have a few that go together or even one that will be a good focus fabric, I start to think about what I want to make with it.

This week I made a darling baby quilt for a boy. I developed the project around a piece of fabric with a vintage design featuring horses. About two weeks ago I found a great deal on some fabric at a garage sale. I don’t tend to pay much attention to garage sales but my husband happened to notice an ad for a garage sale that listed fabric for sale. My interest was piqued and I went to it. I scored an assortment of awesome fabric!

Back to the retro fabric that I found. It is adorable. I became sort of nostalgic as it reminded me of a book I read to my boys when they were little. This book, Cowboy Small, was written in 1949 by Lois Lenski. We read this book constantly and it was especially favored by my eIdest, Andrew (now 29 years). At some point in the story the cowboys are shown sitting around their campfire (eating beans out of a can) singing “Home on the Range.” At this point, Andrew would belt out his rendition of Home, Home on the Range. Look at the picture below from the book.

On the fabric there is a bucking horse that is so similar to this. Look to the left side.

Such a good memory for me. Needless to say, I was pretty excited to use the horse print for a baby quilt for a little guy. I selected a simple pattern alternating whole 8″ blocks with 8″ four-patch blocks. The pattern was inspired by a quilt made by Amy Smart on Diary of a Quilter. Making the quilt five blocks wide and five blocks tall would give me a baby quilt that measured 40″ x 40″. Ok, focal fabric selected and pattern decided upon, I just needed the scrappy fabrics for the four patch blocks. I pulled a stack of fat quarters and played around with those. Fortunately my sister was visiting for the weekend so I had her take a look. As only a sister is allowed, she looked at a number of them and scratched them from the list right away. She vetoed them saying they were too modern, wrong color, or too contemporary. Looking through my shelves, she pulled a black and white houndstooth pattern and the black, white and red paisley. Perfect additions! She has such good taste. Cutting and piecing such a simple design took no time at all.

I backed it with this sweet Moda fabric called Honky Tonk. This was the perfect piece to use as backing. It features cactus, guitars and musical notes – just like Cowboy Small!

I quilted it with a large meandering pattern. I really enjoyed quilting this project. The stippling is a little herky-jerky in spots but overall it looks good (especially after washing and drying the quilt.) The binding is a bias stripe of light tan and red. Adorable! I machine stitched the binding on both the front and back of the quilt. (If you need a good tutorial on quilt binding, check out this one at Crazy Mom Quilts.)

Overall, this project was a blast. It was a trip down memory lane which is always a fun thing! I will list this quilt in my Etsy shop for some lucky little cowboy.

Linking to: Freemotion by the River, Needle and Thread Thursday, Finish it Up Friday, and TGIFF. Links to each of these sites are available at the top of my page under Link Ups. There are some great projects featured at these linky sites. Take a minute and check them out!

RSC14 Win!

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Orange Block for September

What a fun surprise! When I got up this morning and checked email I found a note from Angela over at So Scrappy. Each month she has a giveaway for the participants working on RSC14, the Rainbow Scrap Challenge for 2014. This month I won! The sponsor for the giveaway is Vicki Welsh over at Field Trips in Fiber. Vicki hand dyes fabrics and they are gorgeous. After just doing my first project with batiks and loving it, I am so excited to receive such a treasure from Vicki. Her fabric appears to glow. Check out her Etsy shop here. Thank you to both Vicki and Angela! Actually, thanks also to Mari at Academic Quilter since that is how I first heard of this fun challenge in the first place!

For RSC14 I have been working on 25 patch blocks in all of the colors of the rainbow. I am almost caught up to September. Two months more (green and yellow) and I will be current. Hopefully I will get those done by the end of this month. I plan to sash the blocks with white and add bright corner blocks with the sashing.

Here is what I have thus far:

Linking to Angela over at So Scrappy.

Honeymoon Quilt-16 years late!

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I was fortunate enough to meet my husband back in 1997. We were set up on a blind date by a good friend that we both worked with at the time. It was just a lunch and as blind dates go, it wasn’t bad! I was a single mom with three small children under the age of 11 years and it was a busy time. My blind date called me a couple of times and I didn’t return the calls. Mostly because dating as a single mom was just a pain. Somehow we did go out again about a month later. And that was it. We were engaged six weeks after that, married six months after becoming engaged. A whirlwind romance, to be sure.

I can’t say that I heartily recommend becoming engaged after six weeks of dating but it worked well for us. Both of us joke about it often. We have decided that the universe somehow knew that if we spent any length of time dating and/or deliberating marriage, we would both chicken out. It was his first marriage and he hadn’t any children. He was inheriting my three boys with no kid experience at all (he did however have a huge dog, which was a big score for my dog-less children.) It was my second marriage, after having been widowed four years earlier. Things were still rough as the boys and I continued to grieve the loss of their dad. Step-parenting is an absolute challenge, as I am sure many of you know. Both for the step-parent and for the natural ~~parent~~ overly-possessive-mama of the kids being step-parented. However, we worked through all of it and life is grand.

On to the quilty part of the story. After the wedding we honeymooned on the island of St. John in the Virgin Islands. It was blissful. Heavenly! One of the many things I learned about my new husband on that trip is that he takes millions of sunset pictures and they are really good. This just looks heavenly, doesn’t it? (This was before digital was available so scanning this photo doesn’t really do it justice.)

While we were on our trip I picked up a piece of batik fabric, maybe 1 and 1/2 yards. It was so pretty. It sat on the shelf with my other fabrics and waited patiently for me to figure out what to do with it. Sat there for sixteen years! I looked at it now and then but didn’t want to cut into it. I couldn’t figure out the best way to use it.

Last week I finally decided what to do with it! About a year ago I purchased three charm packs of Moda’s Dancing In the Rain batiks. I bought them for a great price from Judy Madsen’s on-line shop, Green Fairy Quilts. Quick, unsponsored, plug here – This shop is awesome. She has good prices and often has great sales. There is no shop (that I have used) that ships as fast as Green Fairy Quilts. I swear they must ship the order the day it is received. She ships out of Utah and it hits my California address within a matter of a couple of days. Wonderful! Anyway, I purchased these charm packs and added them to the proverbial shelf. When I was looking for a project last week, I pulled these out. I chose to make a nine patch quilt. Something simple, mainly for the satisfaction of sewing and finishing something without any fuss. As I was laying out the charm squares and deciding how to use them, I remembered that batik from St. John. Perfect for the border!! I was so excited. I knew it was the right place for that fabric.

I sashed the nine patch blocks with a bit of black to set off the colors. I think it lends a look of stained glass to the quilt.

I decided to use the blue batik charm squares as the center of each block. It lends continuity to the colors. After I sashed the blocks, I made four cornerstone blocks. I just diced four extra charm squares into four squares and made small patchwork blocks with them. I cut my precious honeymoon fabric into strips for the border and added the cornerstone blocks. Hurray, my quilt top is finished!!

The sun was shining hard through the quilt top which makes it even more reminiscent of stained glass. Love the pink square at the upper right corner.

I keep looking through my fabric trying to come up with something that works for the back. Alas, I have not found anything I like which necessitates a trip to my LQS. How unfortunate for me. 😉

I am so happy with this quilt top. I love the batiks. I haven’t ever made anything with batik before and it is really pretty. I plan to add a black piping or flange to the top and then bind it with the honeymoon batik against that black flange. I will post a picture of the finished quilt when it is actually that, finished!

Happy weekend all!

Linking to: Freemotion by the River, Sew Cute Tuesday, Let’s Bee Social, NeedleandThread Thursday, TGIFF, Finish It Up Friday. All of these wonderful sites have a link listed in the Link-Up tab at the top of my page.

Tutorial for Embellished Onesie and Burp Cloth

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This weekend my sister asked me if I would make something for her to give as a baby gift. Her yoga teacher is expecting a little girl in October and she wanted to bring something to her before she goes on maternity leave from the yoga studio. I had made some burp cloths and embellished some onesie tshirts for little boys (which are in my Etsy shop) but had not yet made anything for baby girls. After talking a bit and looking at ideas on Pinterest, Tina decided she wanted something simple and soft. Here is a photo of the end result. I think it is just adorable.

I thought I would take some pictures as I made the items and create a tutorial. These are such cute gifts and sew up in no time at all. They are great ways to use scraps if you have any flannel scraps accumulated.

Ok. Here we go! My apologies in advance for the pictures. They aren’t the greatest.

Here is a shopping list for you:

Onesie (they come in a package of five so you will have plenty to make for gifts.) For the onesie, I used size 0-3 months. The newborn size was sooo tiny (5-8 pounds) so I chose these which are just a tad larger so the baby could wear it for more than three days before outgrowing it!
White flannel rectangle, cut to 21 1/2″ x 13 1/2″
Accent flannel rectangle, cut to 21 1/2″ x 7 1/4″
Ribbon trim, 1 1/3 yards
Lace trim, just a scrap if you have it. You will need about 9 inches.
Water soluble glue stick.

I prewashed everything and dried it in the dryer. Both the flannel and the onesie did shrink quite a bit. Before prewashing the flannel I ran a stitch the length of the raw edges. This prevents it from fraying too much. Otherwise, flannel has a tendency to fray quite a bit when washed and that is just annoying. All those threads to deal with plus you lose a bit of fabric that way. Once all is prewashed, press your fabric and the onesie.

Let’s start with the onesie.

The lace that I used was ruffled on one side. I took two pieces that were 4 1/2 inches long and put them side by side.

Overlap the straight edges and fasten them with a pin and/or a bit of glue from a washable glue stick.

Run a stitch down the center to hold them together. I used a small zig zag stitch. Fold over one end of the lace and hand stitch it to finish the raw edge. I just did a running stitch along the end. It was nicely camouflaged by the lace. Repeat with the other end.

Center the lace on the front of the onesie. Tack it down with the washable glue stick.

Cut a piece of ribbon that is 1/2 inch longer than the finished lace. Turn under each end 1/4″ so it matches the length of the lace. Tack this down the center of the lace with the glue stick. Set this aside and let the glue dry for about 20 minutes or so. By the way, I use the glue stick instead of pins because when I am working with such a tiny pieces, the pins are just too big. They can make the ribbon and/or lace buckle up. The glue stick allows it to lay nice and flat when you are stitching and it doesn’t move around like it would when removing the pins. (The picture below was taken before I turned under the ends of the ribbon.)

Once the glue is dry, stitch a straight stitch down either side of the ribbon and across each end. That’s it! All done. Let’s work on the burp cloth now.

Lay the white flannel on your work table. There was not a right side or wrong side to the flannel that I used. If yours has a right side, lay it right side up. Make sure that your accent piece is the same length as the white flannel.

Turn the accent piece over so that the right side is down, against the white flannel. Line up one of the edges of the accent piece with one of the edges of the white flannel. (We are going to sew both sides together, creating a tube made of the white piece and the accent piece.)

Stitch a 1/4″ seam, joining both pieces of fabric. Press your seams, open or to the side, whichever you prefer. Then line up the other two edges in the same way and stitch a seam, joining them.

Again, press your seam. To do this, I just moved the seam to the center of the “tube” so I could lay it down and press it. The next step is to center the accent fabric on the white fabric. Do this while the pieces are still right sides together (seams are still showing). To be honest, I just eyeballed this but if you wanted, you could measure the amount of white fabric that shows on each side of the accent fabric and make sure it is equal.

Once you have the fabric centered to your liking, you need to pin the end together. Stitch that end closed with a 1/4″ seam.

Then you will sew the other end. However for this end, leave an opening of about 3 or 4 inches in the center.

Use this opening to turn the burp cloth right side out. Once you turn it right side out, press the whole cloth. Turn in the open ends and pin shut. You can hand stitch this opening or top stitch the whole perimeter of the burp cloth, catching the open section at that time. I chose to top stich the perimeter. Unfortunately, I didn’t choose to take a picture at this point. 😉

The next step is to cut two pieces of ribbon that are 1/2″ longer than the burp cloth. Turn under the ends and, again, use a swipe of your glue stick to tack the ribbon down to the burp cloth. Center the ribbon over the seam that joins the white flannel and the accent fabric. Let the glue dry for a bit and then stitch down both sides of each piece of ribbon, as well as across the top and bottom edges of the ribbon.

Finally I always stitch down the center of the burp cloth. This will help the burp cloth keep its shape after being laundered. I run a seam from top to bottom, beginning just below the top stitching that runs around the perimeter of the cloth. Hoping you can see the seam in the picture below.

Hoping this tutorial makes sense to you. If you have any questions, leave them in the comments and I will get back to you. If you make these items, let me know. I would love to see a picture.

Linking up to Freemotion By the River, Sew Cute Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday, Let’s Bee Social, Anything Goes Thursday, Finish It Up Friday, TGIFF and finally Confessions of a Fabric Addict. These are all wonderful link-ups. Take a peek to see what others have been working on this week. The links are all listed at the top of my page, under Link Ups.

10 Quilty Secrets

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I have had a lot of fun reading through the posts that are cropping up in the quilty blog world titled 10 Quilty Secrets. It is so funny to read everyone’s true confessions. Here are my deepest, darkest quilty secrets. 1. I have absolutely no interest in hand quilting any of my projects. Or hand piecing for that matter.

2. I am not a fan of hexagons and don’t see myself using them in any quilts.

3. I am afraid of paper piecing. My brain just doesn’t really get it. I read the directions and think, “what??” (I need to force myself to work on this because I like so many of the paper pieced projects that I see out there.)

4. Quilt math scares me. Like I wouldn’t want to rely on my math to actually buy yardage for a project. Isn’t that why there are computer programs to do that though??

5. I have pinned more than a lifetime’s worth of quilting projects on Pinterest and I cannot stop. CANNOT.

6. What is the deal with Liberty Fabrics? Am I missing something because I just don’t love them like the rest of the world does.

7. My stash is predominantly shades of green. Lots and lots of green.

8. I always thought I would only work on one project at a time. (I secretly scoffed those who have 29 million WIPS in their sewing room.) I no longer scoff.

9. A year ago I had no idea what low volume and high volume fabrics were.

10. I try to like wonky piecing but honest and truly, I just don’t like it. I think I am supposed to but it isn’t working for me.

11. Bonus confession: I am my own worst critic (that isn’t unusual though.) I always find fault with my work so I never enter it in any sort of competition. Cannot stand the idea of some judge picking it apart. It is bad enough that I pick it apart!!

And now you know it all! I feel so relieved to have gotten this out into the open. Linking to 13 Spools as she is the start of all of this!

Lil’s Quilt

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This is the tale of my niece and her tshirt quilt.

Long ago and far away (like last April and about 175 miles away….) a very sweet girl contacted her adoring aunt and asked for a favor. She had recently graduated from high school and was getting ready to go to the Culinary Institute in Napa Valley, California. While in high school this lovely girl, let’s call her Lil, had been on the Dance Team all four years. She loves dance and competed while on the team. She is the first cutie on the left.

Dance is Lil’s thing and she hated to see it end – it puts her in her happy place. (Though it looks torturous to me. Ouch.)

Apparently being on dance team for four years means you will amass a collection of dance tshirts. Lil became very attached to these tshirts as they held such fond memories for her. She didn’t really want to wear them anymore but didn’t want them to just sit in a drawer. She texted me one day…. “Aunt Bernie, I saw something on Pinterest, it’s a tshirt quilt. (It all starts with Pinterest, right?) I wondered if you would make one for me.” (She had asked her mom but, let’s be honest, her mom would only be able to do this if she could figure out how to make it with duct tape and a stapler. She may be the best mom ever, but not a sewist, that mom.) I had never made a quilt with knit fabric before so I saw it as a potential learning experience for me and a way to win points as super-aunt at the same time. Sure, I told her, love to. I immediately received text after text telling me how wonderful I was for doing this. Immediate gratification for me, that’s for sure.

Within a few weeks I received these (sorry, lousy quality on this photo). It was a bit daunting to look at these and try to figure out where to start. Luckily, there is an excellent tutorial (yay Pinterest) from Cindi at Seamstobeyouandme.com. It is really detailed and the process is pretty much foolproof.

After washing the shirts and lightly pressing them, I used the method described in the tutorial and cut them into equal squares. Two of the shirts were tiny and I couldn’t get a big enough square (without using the sleeve, which would have left a big seam across the square) so I did have to piece them a tiny bit. It wasn’t difficult though. The squares then had to be reinforced with fusible interfacing or the knit would stretch too much while sewing, and then quilting this project. Really, the pressing, squaring, cutting and fusing took the most time.

She had given me thirteen shirts and two of them had a back side that I thought she would want to preserve. So I did 15 squares and made 5 rows of three squares each. I found a black fabric with tiny polka dots in pink, green, blue and purple and thought that would be a good match for the tshirts she had given me. I created a sashing around the blocks to set each one apart from the other.

I had quite a bit of scrap that I used for a pieced border. I needed to add some width since the layout was 3 x 5 squares.

When quilting this I decided to do it as a sampler. I FMQ’d each square with a different pattern so that I would get in a lot of practice. (In retrospect, if doing this over again, I would quilt this with less density. I think I quilted it a bit too tightly and it gave it a stiffness that I was not all too happy with.) Because some of the logos were so big, I felt like I needed to really quilt it up around the logo. Looking back, I could do a lot less and get a good result. I also quilted a wavy line through the sashing.

Lil asked for a flannel backing (“to make it snuggly”) in either black or blue. So I came up with this:

For me the absolute best part of making this quilt was GIVING this quilt to Lil. She was so grateful and left a voicemail on my phone that will never be deleted. Soooo sweet. Isn’t she?

By the way, dance team may be over but the dancing continues. Now, aerial style. Yikes!!!

Love this girl!

Linking to the following: Linky Tuesday, Sew Cute Tuesday, Fabric Tuesday,WIP Wednesday, Let’s Bee Social, Needle and Thread Thursday, TGIFF, and finally, Finish It Up Friday. All of these links can be found at the tab at the top of my page, under Link Ups. Check them out and see all of the amazing projects people are working on!

Cigar Ribbon Quilt

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Recently I took a day trip with my wonderful friend, Sophia. We went to the Crocker Museum in Sacramento to see a quilt exhibit that they have (runs through September 1st so if you are a local you can still catch it). The exhibit was amazing. Most all of the quilts were created in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The handwork left me in awe. Such beautiful and precise stitching on some of these pieces.

While I was there I learned that some quilts were actually made of silk cigar ribbons. These are silk ribbons that were used to tie a bundle of 25-50 cigars together for sale. (They are not the little wrappers on the individual cigars). The ribbons were considered advertisement as they had the brand printed on them. As was common back in these days, women saved everything that might be useful in some way. These ribbons were usually made in gold and yellow tones but sometimes printed on red or green. The women would save them and might trade with each other to get a good collection going. Then they were stitched into something. The silk was very thin and the quality was mediocre at best so the quilts often wore quickly. I happened to get a quick picture of one at the exhibit, before the docent told me no picture taking. (Why can’t we take pictures of these gorgeous quilts??? No flash was being used so I don’t think it would disturb others that were looking at the quilts. Certainly can’t reproduce these beauties. I didn’t understand it and the docent had no good reason, other than “that’s the policy”. I am not too fond of those kinds of rules. That docent was all over me after that and there was no further picture taking!!) Anyway, I did get this one picture. Not great photographic quality but it shows what I am talking about. This quilt looked as though it would crumble if handled. So light and thin but really beautiful.

I love the history to be learned about all of these quilts. I was also thrilled to see a quilt by Anna Williams. You probably know, but she was an African American quilter from Baton Rouge, LA. She learned to quilt as a child and made the most amazing crazy quilts. She saved her scraps in a refrigerator box (that could be quite a stash). When she began a quilt she would take the larger scraps and cut them down as needed. These pieces were tiny! While she did start out hand stitching her quilts, she switched to machine quilting later on to increase her productivity. Truly amazing work! She died in 2010 and her quilts have been shown in many exhibits. I so wish I had a picture of the one (small) quilt that was on exhibit but I don’t. Just sweet memories of it! Here is an example of one of her quilts that is on display at the Brooklyn Museum:

Quilting has such a rich history. I kind of want to go back to the Sacramento exhibit one more time. (Maybe that docent won’t be there and I can another get a picture or two!) Also on the list for exhibits is the San Jose Museum of Quilts and Textiles. That is only about 175 miles from me and would be a fun road trip. Up for this Sophia???

Such a fun weekend and a giveaway!

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First of all, you might remember that a couple of weeks ago I went to see my son in the Central Valley. He is all set up in a nice apartment and I left feeling like I wanted to make something for him. He recently bought some furniture and I thought a new pillow for the couch would be a good project. I used scraps that I had and a pillow form that was sitting there waiting to be used. After piecing the strips, I did some quick straight line quilting that is maybe 1/2″ apart. I didn’t mark anything, just eyeballed it. The back is an envelope style backing. It came together so quickly and I bet I have enough fabric left to make another for him.

Last post I mentioned that I was leaving for our annual sisters’ weekend. As always we had such a great time. We don’t see each other often enough, especially considering I don’t live all that far away from three of my sisters. Life just gets in the way. Anyway, the weekend was mostly comprised of visiting, eating, visiting and then eating again. (Really, what more do we need??) One of my sisters lives in Colorado and brought each of us a pair of crazy socks.

On Saturday afternoon we took a trip to a quilt shop in Sunnyvale, CA. It was called Eddie’s Quilting Bee. This was really indulgent of my sisters since I was the only one that really wanted to check the place out. (They’re so good to me!) Eddie’s shop was fairly well stocked. I wasn’t crazy about the way it was organized, or laid out, but I found a few treasures nevertheless.

The really bright piece with the butterfly showing in the center is from a line of Alexander Henry fabrics called ‘Querida’. It has a Latin flair and the colors are amazing. I don’t have a true plan for it but wanted to have it anyway. The piece with the text will be used as the backing for a table runner. Love the wine themed words. Finally there was a little fat eighth in a basket for a buck and I love the colors. Just another addition to the stash.

I have a really challenging game for you. 😉 This is where the giveaway comes in!

My sisters and I took a selfie (and being that all of us are way too old to be taking selfies, the quality is less than perfect) in front of Eddie’s Quilting Bee. Can you figure out which one is me?

Here is a version of the picture with numbers. To enter the giveaway, leave a comment with the number that corresponds to the picture that you think is me. If you want to have another entry, you can follow me on Bloglovin and leave a comment that you did so (or if you already do, just let me know that).

The giveaway stays open until Saturday, August 16th. At that point,I will use some sort of really scientific method to pick the winner. 🙂 I have three really pretty fat quarters for the winner. They are watercolor inspired, muted florals from Kathy Davis’ line called Enchantment that was designed for Free Spirit. Take a look.

Remember to make sure I have a way to contact you if you are selected! Leave an email address in the comment if you are a no-reply blogger. Giveaway is closed (I’m number 4). Lucky winner is Judy V.!!

Linking up with Anything Goes Monday, Sew Cute Tuesday, Freemotion by the River, Fabric Tuesday, WIP Wednesday and Let’s Bee Social. Also with Needle and Foot Thursday, TGIFF, and Finish it up Friday. All of these wonderful link-ups are listed in the tab at the top of the blog.