Recapping a bit

You can't ever get the full effect of a roaring fire with a regular camera, sadly. If the room is dark and you don't use flash, then you just get a yellowish blob. (Ask me how I know!) But using flash wipes out the ambience.

Oh well, you get the idea. This is the fireplace in our room at Asilomar. The elves come in every day to lay a new fire so all we have to do is strike a match and light the papers under the bag. Presto, heat and light and warmth.

 After a long day of toiling over the sewing machine, a fire and a glass of wine in the room is the perfect unwinder. We took full advantage of it!

Just a few samples of what  was going on in our classroom. Both the Feathered Star and the Feathered Geese quilts are completed tops!

No, they weren't just started in this class, but they are proof that it really is possible to do one of these quilts!

The Feathered Star is the pattern Louise has been working on, except that she's making the queen size version which has an undulating border to make it larger.

 Colleen was sitting at our foursquare of tables so we got to spend lots of time watching the pink and grey one come together. Such a pretty combo! She said she never works in red or pink, so this was a way of using up some of her collection of sad neglected red and pink fabrics. The reds and pinks are all batiks, but the greys are prints. Some Stonehenge, but all soft tone on tones.

The patterns, by the way, are all available at www.quiltworx.com if you're interested!

 This one is called Stepping Stones and was the fourth "corner" of our table set. It's all Kaffe Fassett fabrics--prints mixed with soft tones of shot cottons.

This one is done with strips, so not nearly as complicated to make as it appears at first glance. The white strips are the backboard showing through, by the way, not a part of the quilt.

I love the explosion of exuberant colors on the next quilt. Perfect for using those bright batiks that we love to collect!

I did take pictures of most of the quilts that were on display in our room. They're on my Flickr pages if you'd like to see them!

One of the things they do at Empty Spools is have a tour of the classrooms on Thursday afternoon. It's a great opportunity to see what everyone else has been doing and maybe pick out your next class.

Our room was an explosion of color and pattern. Most of the people had completed enough blocks to be able to put something up for show n' tell at open house.

 And then there was me... still plugging away at my second set of pieces!

This is from the bag that had me making 96 pieces, each with 9 fabtics.

Well, I did get 7 of the fabrics on the pieces. I guess I have some honework, and without Judy there to cheer me on.

 Sew. Sew. Sew.

 On Sunday I had a couple of visitors. My daughter and her family were on their way to Costco but stopped by for a visit since it's pretty close to me.

Also, the big field in the corner of the complex is a perfect place for a couple of active boys to work off some energy playing with their spinners. Such fun to watch them. G sent his flying and ran to catch it, while N8 was much more interested in figuring out how to make it go and how it worked.

At least I have a place where they can run and play!

 While they were over, I was able to give G his new hat. My lonely FO for the month, apparently (I don't think I'll get anything else much done in the next day!)

So that's Hat #2 of the group that I'm making to match their sweaters.

(Apologies for hitting publish instead of save-as-draft. I was in a hurry to leave for a doctor appt. and decided to let it stand till I got home!)


On Monday, a long-time friend, Amy of Have Projects, Will Travel, was in town briefly and wanted to go to The Hnntington. I'm always up for a visit to this beautiful place, so off we went.

Yes, I took more than two pictures--my total for the day was 95! Again, you can see them on Flickr here.

It was a really bright day, so bright that the sunlight tended to wash out all the color in most of my pictures.

Well, that and it's winter, so there isn't a whole lot of color, unless you get into the camellia garden. Which I did, and there are lots of camellia pictures in that set.

Speaking of pictures, and Flickr, because I uploaded all of my Asilomar pictures via the iPad, I wasn't able to put them into sets the way I normally do. I'm going to have to go back and put each picture in individually, and you can imagine what the chances are of that happening when I have quilts to make and knitting to do. They are all on my photostream, though, and if you click on one of the pcitures above, it will take you to the section where they all are and you can move around there to your heart's delight.

One more quilt picture, this from Tuesday night's class. Anne finished the quilting on her latest Magic Tiles quilt. This one features cat fabrics so if you like cats, be sure to click on the picture to make it bigger so you can see all the fabrics!

Anne says I blog her quilts, so she doesn't have to. I really think, as productive as she is, that she should keep a record of everything she's making.

Rain is due here tonight or tomorrow, although it's very bright warm sunshine right now, so I'm a little skeptical about how much we'll get. I will say that the authorities here are not taking any chances up in the burn area, and it's now at a red alert meaning mandatory evacuations are imminent.
Better safe than sorry! I will meanwhile sit here in my snug little house and work on my quilts and my knitting. I have some DVR'd stuff to catch up on, too. Maybe I'll be able to get a few pictures if I accomplish anything!

Empty Spools

A few snapshots from Asilomar. There are some interesting flowering plants, even in the dead of winter.


I love this little ferny one. I'd love to see this as part of a quilt. Suddenly I understand the urge to print one's own fabric!


This is our classroom building. It's one of the newer ones and located across the street from the main Asilomar campus. This means a hike to and from the dining hall. Possibly a good thing, since otherwise I'd be sitting at the machine all day.


It would be a shame to do that when there's so much natural beauty to enjoy here. The sea has been a little choppy, it's been cool and windy, but really pleasant. I'll take high 40s--low 50s any time!


Some process photos. These aren't in any particular order because I'm still getting used to how Blogpress handles photos. Besides, it's late, I'm tired, I have a glass of wine and did I mention our bedroom has a fireplace and the elves build us a new fire each day?


My particular project involves lots and lots of shortish seams. Each one gets pressed and trimmed before the next piece is added. The unit you see above (light and dark blues) has 8 pieces per unit, and I'm making 96 of them.


The one here (oranges and dark blues) has only 6 pieces and there are only 48 of these.


...which get pieced into 12 stars. This is just a layout, as there are other pieces attached before they get sewn together, but I wanted to see how it would look.


And, back to more sewing.


Meals are served in the dining hall, and the chef is really excellent. They use as much local produce and locally-sourced ingredients as they can, there are usually at least three choices per meal, and the desserts are wonderful. Baked on site.

And then it's back to work. The enjoyable kind of work!


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Preparation Is The Key...

 Well, at least for the class I'm taking at Asilomar! I actually managed to finish cutting all the pieces today, so I now have 8 bags filled with foundation papers and the fabrics to go with them.

I even found the directions for cutting the pieces for Bag #6 and Bag #7. Luckily (since I've cut up all of my background fabric, that turquoise over there) I was able to cut the pieces I'll need out of scraps.

Guess there is a reason I'm a scrap saver! Well, other than being a general packrat.

At least I'm an organized one...

My housekeeper got her first look at my garage today. "Oh my... you have a lot of boxes... a lot of fabric... it's like a store!"

Didn't have the heart to tell her there's lots more in storage. Some things just can't be faced all at once!

Since today was Cleaning Day--and I never, ever thought there would come a time when I would actually be able to pay someone to clean my house, but I'm very grateful that I can, what with my dodgy back and all--that meant clearing myself out of their way so they could do their thing. I had an invitation of sorts from Youngest Daughter, who works from home, to bring my cutting over and work at her place. We're quite comfortable with this arrangement--I used to babysit at her house while she worked in the other room.

At this point, I have one project all prepped, and a second one ready  to go--that's what those two little tubs up there are full of. Next comes packing up the machine, the tools, the car...oh yeah, maybe a few clothes too.

Since I got all my errands done this morning/early afternoon, and my house is clean and tidy (that famous picking up the place so the cleaners can clean), I decided to sew a few more sashings and cornerstones while the machine is still in place.

I now have something like 150 sashings with cornerstones attached to them. I think I need to do a lot more, though, because it seems that I cut the sashing strips in groups.

One of the fabrics has 49 pieces cut out of it.

 That will wind up with a very monotonous look if they all go on only 3 quilts, but if they are spread out on 6 it will allow for more variety.

I did think it would be fun to see if I could put a different fabric on each one. I'm sure you're not at all surprised that I had no trouble finding 49 different fabrics--actually there are a lot more. I realized that one of the things that's so appealing about these quilts is that the fabrics are colorful and cheery. I guess they needed all the cheer they could get back in the 30s!

 This pink fabric is the one that has 49 strips. At least it's cute and colorful!

I had to try a quick mockup to see how these are going to look.  Don't worry, I won't put a red sash that close to a big red point!

Well, at least not until/unless I run out of options. Which isn't going to happen.

I'm prepared. There are a LOT of extra sashings. I even know what I'm going to do with them once these 6 quilts are done.

Did I happen to mention that there's a small bin out in the garage that appears to be full of 30s fabrics?

I'm going to be sewing for a long time to use up all this fabric. It's really too bad I don't live in snow country--I could be snowed in quite happily. Also, my house would be very well insulated with all this fabric and yarn.

Onward, I think!

 On Monday I got started on cutting out the pieces using the templates I made last week. Yes, this part is tedious.

I am really looking forward to doing a newer pattern, where the templates are printed out on newsprint and all you have to do is clip them to the strips of fabric and cut on the lines.

Doesn't help that for a 12-block quilt there are insane numbers of pieces. This bag (#1) has 48 of each template.

Tuesday night was quilt class, so here's a couple of shares from there. Hey, it makes a change from itty bitty pieces...

Gail did this one. She started it last week and brought it, completely done, to class this week.

It's a kit she got at The Sew and Sew, which is  a local-to-me-now quilt shop. No, I haven't been in yet. I will, no worries. It's just that right now I am dealing with my own stash and don't need any more temptation!

This is why I haven't visited the local knit shop, either.

 
I was taught to "avoid the occasions of sin" which is just a fancy way of saying temptation. That's also why I am not going to Stitches West this year. Well, at least I don't plan to.

It's going to be bad enough being at Asilomar and in the vicinity of the Cotton Patch's conference store and Back Porch Fabrics. Besides, my heart belongs to New Moon!

Back to show n' tell. The Log Cabin is Anne's. She seems to think it's ugly, but we all liked it, and once she saw the picture, she agreed. This lap quilt will join her charity basket.

Another of Gail's completed projects, a wall quilt that came from a class with Jill Shumacher. It's done in a pale gold silk and you can really see the details if you clilck on the picture to make it bigger.

Today was a bit of a busy day--lots to do around here because it's the biweekly Invasion of the Cleaning Crew, which means I have to pick up and put away all the clutter that has accumulated since they were here two weeks ago. It's gotten pretty bad since I've been concentrating more on prepping my project than keeping the house tidy.  

However I did get it into a state where a quick round up tomorrow morning should be all I need to get it ready.

So back to the cutting and trimming and whttnot.

Help was freely offered. I guess someone didn't think I had pressed the strips well enough, because he offered to do it for me.

Really, cat? 

 Really.

I'm not one of those people (though I know a certain number of them) who feel as though The Cat Must Have His Autonomy Respected. These people will not move a cat that's in their way--seriously. I'm not talking about being cozy in bed or on the couch with a good book or a good TV show and a warm cat, and oh I can't get up because I don't want to disturb the cat, ha ha.

Too bad, cat, you didn't land in that kind of a house. You can move your fur!

 So he moved.
A little bit.

And a little bit more.

But I have to cut 96 pieces out of each of these 7 fabrics, and that's just for this second bag.

Ooh, too tired to move any further...

Well, let's just say, I am the person here, and as such I am in control of the pop-tops on the cat food.

 That means my needs take priority. So I cut.

And cut.

And cut.

And finished cutting and bagging up the 96 x 7 pieces for Bag #2. Yes, I can do that math. No, I don't want to. It what pictuill make my head hurt.

Logic would dictate that I would then move on to Bag #3, but oh no. Bag #8 is next on the list.

Bag #8 takes 160 of the lighter star fabric and 160 of the darker star fabric.

The strips I cut weren't enough to make that many pieces. Luckily I had some extra strips in colors that would work. Sort of.

I cut them anyway. I had planned that the two sets of stars on this quilt would have totally different fabrics, but unless I --shhh! shop!--for more there will just have to be duplication.

You can probably just make out the indignant cat in that picture--look way in the back at the dark blob.

That's a cat who's giving me his best camera angle. You could just read indignation in every bit of fur.

I had to go take a picture from the front view... This cat is sulking. Well, he was. Then he went to sleep.

He's now curled up on top of my phone, which is charging, and holding down the book I was planning to read. He likes to be near me when I'm on the computer.
I even had a visit tonight from the shy grey one, who came out for some petting and loving. I guess she's forgiven me for taking away her hiding place. Just because I need to put my sewing machine in it...how inconsiderate of me! Hmm, maybe I should just pack the machine in the car loose?

Nah. She'll adjust! And tomorrow, there will be lots more cutting. Lots and lots more!

Twirly Whirly

 Managed to get some quilting done this weekend. Got out the cutting board and mat and ruler and cut a whole lot of strips getting ready for my Asilomar project.

Next step is to cut the strips into the right size pieces, using the templates I made. I guess this is what I get for using an old pattern--the new ones now have newsprint layouts of all the templates, so all you have to do is lay them on top of the fabric, clip it in place, and cut on the marked cutting lines.
Oh well. Next project I'll have that!

 Even managed to get down to the Pinwheel Pile!

Now all 150 of the squares that are here (as in, here in my sewing room, not hidden in depths of the garage or the bowels of the storage unit) have their first sashing strips attached.

Voila!!

Then it was on to sewing cornerstones to more sashing strips. Once these are done, I will sew them to the pinwheel blocks and then they'll have two sides done.

I'm hoping that these will go together pretty easily. I think I can sew them into rows of the right number of blocks, but I won't be able to finish assembling the tops until I find the box with the white squares for the setting triangles.

Sigh.  Always something!

Probably won't have much time to work on these anyway, till I get back from the seminar. Maybe there will be time to do some rearranging and spelunking to find the rest of the pieces for the Pinwheel Project. Hey, a girl can hope!

Speaking of girls, look who's been coming out for more and more petting time! She gets a little assertive about wanting to be petted, too--no typing allowed when Miss Shyla is out and about!

This picture was taken with her on the desk, and HiHi less than 6 feet away, on the floor. I won't even call it a staring contest--it was as if they were actually acknowledging each other and making sure that I pet both of them.

Oh, I found Little Miss's latest hiding place. Yes, she has managed to make a nest in my sewing machine rolly-case. Won't she be surprised when I load up the Bernina and take the case away with me!

That can't be very comfortable--there's a handle in there and some velcro closures. She looked out of the top of it and was very cute, but by the time I got the camera fired up she had decided to ignore me.

But it looks as if I finally have another "pet" cat!

A Finish, and A Good Beginning

 Wow, I can't believe this is finally done! (Well, except for running in the ends. That's another day's work!)

I started this throw, the Absolutely Fabulous Throw using Colinette yarns, back around 2005. It's been in and out of rotation being worked on over the years. There are 9 different yarns in it, 3 colors of variegated mohair, a tape yarn, a chenille, a wool, a couple of boucles.

It was the project I brought with me when I did a Relay for Life event with a group called Stitchers for Life. The booth had a couple of rocking chairs and featured people sitting and knitting.
So, instead of walking laps overnight, another knitter and I rocked and knitted from 10 pm till 8 am.

Yes, that was a 10-hour stint of knitting. You can see why this was the perfect project--kept the lap warm, and there wasn't a chance I'd get even close to done overnight!

I did manage to give myself a good charley horse in my shoulder though.

And now, it's finally an FO, ready to be put to use, and one BIG project bag emptied. Yay!

Now on to the next project!

Shyla. I do too have a second cat!

 Still prepping for the Jumping Jax Flash quilt I'll be working on at Asilomar. The foundation papers are cut out and sorted into their bags, the templates have been glued to plastic and cut out and sorted into their bags as well.

I went through several boxes of fabric--there's been an influx of project boxes coming "home" from storage--and pulled some oranges and orangey yellows and golds and browns for the stars.

 Of course Mother's Fluffy had to help out in his own way. You never can tell if that pesky fabric might decide to fly off into the sunset if it wasn't weighted down.

Luckily he gets bored easily so I was able to finish cutting the strips for the different star sections,

There was a small error in the math department, but after a second (or was it third?) cup of coffee, I was able to resolve it.

There will not be six of this quilt. It wasn't that kind of math error.

Thankfully!

I had also pulled some dark blues for the first background pieces. These blues are the background to the central stars, and then become spiky rays around each star. The spikes are set against a second background, and there are secondary star patterns that show up when the 12 blocks are finally pieced together.

That's where I am now. The main background is a turquoisey blue with purple streaks--prettier than it sounds--but it's a 7 yard piece, so it's going to take a little more handling. I've got the ironing board set up (another storage run to retrieve it) and if all goes well tomorrow I'll be pressing that giant piece and cutting it into strips.

Then the strips have to be cut into the separate template shapes, tucked into their own little baggies that will go into the big bags. It can all be done with a rotary cutter, thank goodness, and it all has to be done before I settle into my class on the 16th. You can expect a few more posts featuring all this cutting! In spite of the tedium, it really is rather fun, especially if a fellow sufferer classmate can make it over to work on hers!

Inspirations

 Cooler weather and a little bit of rain seem to have worked some magic with my uninspired quilting mojo. Or maybe just the realization that I'm leaving for Asilomar in less than two weeks, and I'd better get that project prepped.

I'd already started on it--had all the foundation papers cut and distributed into their bags, and last week I printed off the templates and glued them to template plastic. I also had all of that, and the fabrics I wanted to use, set aside in a plastic tub.

Yes, that one over there. The one that's full of cat. As usual, my little furry friend had to be right there with me.

He did want to explore and check out what I was doing.

Kind of hard to cut out templates when they are being anchored down by a large cat.

Even though he has awfully cute feet.

He's sniffing at the napkin I used to hold my buttered toast while I sorted these pieces. Yeah, he loves butter. I had to get up to dispose of the paper before he ate it.

 Once the templates were all trimmed and put in the right bags, I had to figure out some fabric colors and assign them to the right places.

I had brought home a few more boxes of projects and fabrics, so I had a lot more batiks to go through, looking for the right colors for the stars on the quilt. Also, this quilt, Jumping Jax Flash from Quiltworx, has two different back grounds, and it wouldn't do to mix them up. Once that was done, I started choosing star colors.

Oh, there are two different sets of stars, too. So here's my semi-final array: the dark blues are the first background, and will go behind the 8 fabrics in the lower right of the picture; the ones on the left are the second stars which will mostly be against the second background, which is that turquoisey one in the upper left edge. I also found a lighter turquoise to throw in for some sparkle--the main fabric has some purple streaks in it as well. I think it will work nicely.

Now, visualize a break in creativity here, since I had to make a quick trip over to the storage unit to retrieve  my ironing board. I did a quick visual scan to see if I could locate the other project box, the one with the project I had really wanted to do. It was a quick trip, because it was chilly out there and the wind had come up. So much for spending the day inside and being unprepared for actual "weather conditions."

 I also managed to get the sewing machine set up, cleaned and oiled, and enough space cleared around it to jump in on the pinwheels again.

Yes, THOSE pinwheels!  I finally had one box of pinwheel blocks, and one box of sashing/cornerstones, all in one spot, so I gave in to the temptation and started sewing.

I figure each block needs to have a sashing strip attached to it. The sashing strips that are left will all have a cornerstone attached, and then I'll be ready to assemble the tops.

I have a sneaky feeling that there is another box of pinwheels somewhere.

 These are all spinning in the same direction, and looking at the stack of the first 50 blocks, I don't think there are a total of 300 here.

But I didn't want to take the time to count them all!

The sashings are clipped into sets of 25 each, so that will make counting pretty easy.

I can't tell you how good it felt to sit at the machine again and just sew. I have missed this so  much!

Today marks two months that this new place has been mine, although it hasn't been that long since I moved in. My two-month anniversary of moving in will coincide with Megi's birthday on the 6th. Meg (aka D4 for you long-time blog readers) is My Favorite Engaged Daughter right now, and has us all swept up in wedding plans. We even had our own Say Yes To The Dress event last weekend. Oh, and her fiance is totally awesome and I can't wait to get him officially added to the family!

But now it's time to go sit and knit for a little bit. I am just a few rows from finishing up one of my oldest UFOs--well, I guess it's a WIP again. Every night for the last week I've sat down thinking "this is it, I'll finish this tonight" and every night it gets set aside again.  Stay tuned for my hopefully finished-object post in the next day or two!