Barn Quilts in Iowa

While I was in Iowa (and Minnesota) visiting family last week, my parents and I drove from northwest Iowa, where they live, to Ames, home of Iowa State University. That is where my NephewStitches received his diploma. We had a good day for the drive: clear roads and sunny skies.

Eventually we came to Sac County, and were greeted by this sign.

Barn Quilts!! Awesome!!! It being winter, with the trees bare of leaves, and all the white countryside, it was easy to spot the barn quilts.

It was almost like a game to us.

We'd see who could catch sight of the next barn quilt.

It was such a treat to see them. Little random spots of unexpected beauty. They are so pretty.

It made the drive more interesting. I previously posted about BrotherStitches's barn quilt here.

All of the above quilts were taken from the website http://www.barnquilts.com/

It's Cold Outside!

Dear Bloggie Friends,

Sorry it's been so long since I've posted anything. (I think it's a record for me for longest time between posts!) I have been busy working on things, but either they are secrets, or I haven't had any good photos to show you.

I spent most of last week in Iowa and Minnesota. Man, was it ever cold! Yes, I grew up there, but now I've lived more than half my life in California, and I'm just not used to cold weather and walking/driving on ice. I was able to sneak in between snow storms, though, and had good roads for driving. I went to see my NephewStitches graduate from Iowa State University. We're all so proud of him. His degree is actually a double major in environmental science and agronomy. I think he feels a big relief now that all the tests are over. We had a good time celebrating with him.

It's Only Been a Year!

Way back in November of 2009, I showed you this photo of blocks I had cut to make a quilt. (Blog entry here) I got them all arranged on my design wall and sewn together into the quilt shown in the next photo.

Yes, I am embarrassed that it has been so long since I started it. The top itself actually went together quite quickly, but for some reason I just didn't get around to finishing it. From the photo above it looks like it is a lot of crosses or x's sewn together, but it's really much simpler than that.

From the photo above you can see that I sewed two rectangles together, made four sets of those, then joined the four together. It's a very simple process; it just takes a bit of planning and laying out of rectangles.

I didn't have a pattern, but followed a photo I had seen on someone's blog, and now I can't even remember which blog it was! But rest assured that I didn't come up with the design. And thank you to whomever posted this quilt on her blog!

I had to take a little care not to stretch the quilt top, as all of the edges were on the bias. Gentle handling seemed to do the trick. I pre-measured the borders, and made them fit the quilt.

I had chosen fabric for the borders and binding quite a while ago, and this week set about to finish it. The blue border strips can be seen above. Unfortunately, they were not long enough for the sides, so I had to piece them. Because the pieced blocks were placed en pointe, I decided to use diagonal seams to join the strips, hoping that the joins might be less noticeable. The photo below shows a close-up of the diagonal seam.

And here it is again, all finished. Now on to the quilting part of the project. I may just use straight-line quilting along the diagonal lines.

Crazy Quilt

I have finally finished my crazy quilt! I have to admit that I'm embarrassed because I started on it in 2008. That was the first time I went to Empty Spools Seminars in Asilomar, California. I took a crazy quilting class that year from Judith Baker Montano. She is an awesome crazy quilter, and a lot of fun as a teacher; check out her website and see some of her beautiful work.

Here are some close-ups of some of the stitching and trims I added to the surface. It was a lot of fun deciding what stitch or piece of lace I would add where.

Making a crazy quilt is almost like sewing two quilts. First you piece all of the background together, which is in itself a big project of deciding which fabrics to use and how to arrange them.

When that is all done, comes the work of going all over the surface of the quilt again, adding embroidery, lace, trims, beads, buttons, etc.

The above photo shows the "'08" that I embroidered at the beginning of this quilt.

And in this photo you see where I had to add "2009" because I wasn't finished yet. Little did I know...

The tough thing about a crazy quilt is knowing when to stop! Traditionally, each seam is covered with stitching or trim. But you don't have to stop there. There are so many possibilities. At some point you just have to say, "That's enough."

What really made me get my rear in gear was when I realized I would need to add a "2010" to the quilt. And I sure didn't want to add a "2011!"

In the above photo you can see the small "TEN" stitched where I hoped it wouldn't be very noticeable. And I can say it's done.

I finished it by adding some black fabric triangles to the sides so I would have an en pointe square. I fused some interfacing to the black fabric, so it would be closer in "hand" to the actual sewn part of the quilt. Then I added some very thin batting, and a backing fabric. I sewed the front to the back with nymo beading thread on the back with a few small invisible stitches.

It really was a pleasure to work on this quilt. And I can't wait to start on some more "fancy work." It is a lot of fun.

New York, New York

I went to New York last week! It was a wonderful trip, a theatre tour sponsored by Oregon Shakespeare Festival. There were about 40 of us, and we had a wonderful time, going to restaurants, seeing some NY sights, and of course, going to theatre.

Now, I would not call myself a Project Runway expert, but I do enjoy watching the shows and seeing the cool designs that the students make. So you can imagine my glee when I looked up Mood Fabrics and found the store is not

very far from where we stayed. I easily walked there one afternoon, and along my way I passed Parsons The New School for Design, where Project Runway takes place.

So there I was, right in the middle of the garment district. What fun!

Mood was actually a little hard to find, as the address I had turned out to be a service elevator loading sort of place. After some incorrect directions, I finally found it. There was no sign; I had to go into a small lobby and take the elevator up to the store.

Mood is just packed to the gills with fabric. All kinds, all colors.

I've sometimes wondered, while watching the Runway show, how in the earth do the "students" manage to find just the fabric they want?

There are three different floors, and as you can see, fabric is stacked everywhere!

It sure was fun to stroll around and look at

all the cool fabrics. They had some quilting fabric, but not much, and it was hard to look at because it was all on rolls, not bolts, and stacked on racks.

I hadn't exactly come to New York to buy fabric. I can get plenty of that at home!

But I did come home with one little swatch of fabric. And that made me happy.

Finished with Fabric Shopping Bags

I finished sewing the fabric shopping bags, which I posted about here. And now you see them all lined up in the photo above. These bags will go in the Project Santa boxes that are delivered to people in our community. Thanks to the great idea of Harmony, and the consultation with Teresa of The Green Bag Lady, they all went together quite easily.

I actually had quite a lot of fun sewing these. They go together quite easily, and I'm sure I'll be making more of my own now.

I think I was channeling the Green Bag Lady while I was sewing! I used her pattern, which can be found on her website, with just a little bit of tweaking for my purposes. It's a very simple, straightforward pattern. You should definitely check it out.

It feels great to have a big project like this (26 bags sewn) all completed and delivered.

Bling for Your Knitting

My great blogging friend Gail, over at Quilt, Knit, Run, Sew, did a lot of work to make stitch markers, which knitters to use for marking their rows. While I am only a fledgling knitter, and don't really do much with it, I really admire Gail for doing this project.

Gail made all these nice little markers and donated the proceeds of their sale to Run For The Cure. Aren't they pretty?

Some of the markers had pink beads, and some had pearls. I just had to ask her to send me a couple sets, so I can give them to some of my knitting friends.

And it's all for such a good cause. Thank you, Gail, for doing this.

May we find a cure.

Soon.