Marge's Home Sweet Home

This is a quilt in progress by one of my students, Marge, who doesn't yet have a blog. She gave me permission to share her marvelous work with you:

Marge wrote in part: "I knew that I wanted to put monsters in the doors and windows of wonky houses, and I wanted to make just one house with the 50s’ era homemaker. Those were fun to build, and I truly followed Tonya’s advice to just sew and cut. The only pieces that were planned in the blocks were the fussy cut inhabitants for the houses. ... Even though I usually learn by reading directions, I found that I could just look at the pictures of the letters in the tutorials to figure them out. Even though I did a bit of rough calculating before each letter, my "m" and "w" certainly are bigger than the other letters. That just adds personality to the phrase. What took me so long to try this???"

Me again. Isn't Marge's work wonderful? I can only imagine what the 50's homemaker feels like moving into that neighborhood. Marge had also thought about phrases like "There goes the neighborhood" and "The new neighbor." I think those would be a hoot to include, either in pieced words (more blocks or maybe borders) or with embroidery or quilting.

See, it's easier to make the letters and the houses than you might think. You just have to try it. The students in my class are working off the same tutorials that are available on Quiltville (see my sidebar) - I'm not giving them any extra hints or helps. Using fun novelty prints makes it easier to play and experiment. How can you take monsters seriously?

Meanwhile, it's Halloween month, woohoo! I got quite a few things out, but still have several quilts that I haven't put up yet (including the two that aren't yet finished). I have quite a few more Halloween threadies than I realized. D'oh.

These are what the shelves looked like yesterday. I was attempting to dissuade little kitty jumpers with crinkly plastic on the bottom shelf of the hutch, which would still leave the Egyptian items (canopic jars are kinda Halloweeny) visible.

After three different kitten attacks, I've knuckled under and removed the ever enticing feather and maribou boas (after Lily almost knocked down the Jack'o'lantern bobber) and stacked fabric way up on the bottom shelf. Little imps.

That's Halloween Faces on the right. I think it's one of my favorite quilts and yet it was the easiest. Go figure. Witch Bob has the top of the hutch staked out and Cat Bobs are on the top shelf. The only other item I made in this display is the Web Thready.

Here are bookshelves with the copper jack'o'lanterns I bought in Cairo.

I suspect I'll rearrange quite a bit and I need to get more Halloweenyness made. I'll show more pictures throughout the month.

I still have more binding to do on Horrors - it took me more time than I thought it would to decorate yesterday.

And here are some links:

Joyce has made wonky houses and words and added liberated stars into the mix for Sweet Dreams. Lynda, the Master of Patience?, is working with letters and houses too. Take a look through her archives to see some fun liberated log cabin/MAM work.

The Halloween link for today is Grim Prim Art. D. A. Sweigart does great folk art paintings with all sorts of Halloween motifs. My favorites are Baba's Wild Ride and the Magic Halloween Platter. She paints not only fantastic black cats (aren't the grins just perfect?), but there are even Scotties as well, such as CinderScottie.

my friend Rachael

I'm always very conscious as I write my blog about other people's privacy. Just because they know me doesn't mean I can write anything and everything about them all over the web. So I had to decide whether or not to tell ya'all about my field trip yesterday. I went with a couple of friends to the island of Zamalek to visit a well-known quilter. Do I tell you about it?

Well, since Jenny Bowker has her own blog (Postcards from Cairo - it's one of my links) she's not a privacy fiend. And since I'm only going to say really wonderful things about her, that can only be good publicity for her teaching, right? So, yes, here we go. (And as for my friend, who we'll call S, who figures in the story, well that's the price she pays for knowing me. ba ha ha.)

Got a call yesterday from S, who recently returned from the states with a new Bernina sewing machine. She was having some difficulty with it and here in the wilds of Egypt, there are not many technical advisors. Jenny stepped immediately into the breach and offered help so three of us made the trip up yesterday. Jenny was sweet and wonderful and got the problem sorted in no time.

The cool thing tho was getting to see the Australian Ambassador's residence with high, high, white walls and gorgeous quilts on them. Jenny does a lot of art quilting and her machine quilting is fabulous. I'm very jealous - but I know it would take me 20 years to get that good (not to mention the fancy sewing machine that would make the task so much easier...). Her quilts all hang flat and smooth - so different from mine. I'm not feeling intimidated tho - my quilts don't HAVE to hang that well, they don't have to be so smoothly professional. I can appreciate it, without needing to do it myself.

Speaking of quilting, I've been working on Cranky Witch again. I'm now quilting on my third fan unit. Pretty soon (NOW) I'm going to have to decide how I want to make the fans go. All the same direction, round and around colliding in the middle, or maybe moving in diagonally... Decisions, decisions. I'll try to explain that better in a future post, for anyone who is trying the fans themselves.

Anyway, now we get to the fun part of the post. Pictures of my friend Rachael Thomas' work. I was telling you about her the other day - she's the one I made a Devil Bob and Monster Bag for. She is incredibly talented and I'm trying to coerce her into starting her own blog. So hopefully this will be some positive encouragement in that direction. I have her permission to do this, so here we go.

I'm not even going to begin to describe all her work (I want her to do that), we're just going to look at some of my favorites. These are quiltlets using her version of Susan Shie's techniques (which I call crusties).

First off is Happy Boo Day. I am so incredibly jealous of its recipient (who is not me, but is another October baby) for getting this wonderful guy. I often get that acquisitive urge looking at Rach's work. Mine, mine, mine (like the gulls in "Finding Nemo"), pretty shiny, mine. My favorite bit is those eyes. No need to wonder why clowns give some people nightmares.

I LOVE this devil. I'm amazed at how similarly Rach's and my minds work - devils just gotta have that evil whispy mustache and spikey beard. The ears are perfectly pointed and I love how she did the nose. Doesn't this look incredibly firey?

And Rachael's recent entry into her quilt guild's "Charm and Grace" competition, in which everybody had to use a piece of fabric with very old fashioned, sweet looking gloves on it. I can't even begin to tell you how much I love this quilt. I guess the end product is sweet in a way, sorta, as sweet as black magic love can be. You can tell these two are ga-ga for each other. The details: the warts, the bloodshot eyes, the beady spider. Fabulous. Well-deserving of the ribbon Rach won for Viewers' Choice.

Ya'all can tell why I'm so fond of her work, right? Definitely our senses of fun and humor match.

This is hardly the only kind of quilting that Rach does and barely touches the surface of her crafting. No, she probably isn't right for the Quilt Mavericks (altho she's certainly got an "in"), but blogs, just like people, don't all have to match. Blog and they will come. Start putting really great work out there and others who share your interest will find you. She's a great writer as well, and I enjoy every single email I get from her. Now she's gonna feel the pressure of high expectations that I'm putting on her, but its all TRUE.

And some of the rest of you out there - who aren't already blogging - you start too. Blogging is an incredible way to make contact with other people you didn't even know where out there but who you will become incredibly emotionally attached to. At least I am, to all of you.

Halloween Bobs

In the ongoing saga of Tonya being unable to let go of Halloween...

Here are some Halloween Bobs. That's just my name for these simple little folkarty creations. I just completely wing them - cut right out of fabric (well, okay sometimes I chalk an outline first). You've seen these eyes before - way back in August when Finn was wondering what kind of eyes to give her Frankenstein (hmm.. don't think we ever saw that project again, Finn). This is my Witch Bob, completed last year.

I start by cutting out the face in a vaguely face-shaped shape. Then comes the nose: this was the first time I made one with separate fabric - in a cone shape that I stuffed with batting. After the face comes together, I lay it on top of a double-layered fabric I want for the body and then roughly cut out the body shape. For the witch that included the pointy hat. I attach the face with a straight stitch to one layer of the body, adding some batting for emphasis under the cheekbones perhaps - I like how that gives it a lumpy effect tho I figure over the years it'll slide around to some other part of the face.

Once the face is attached, I sew the body up right-sides-together on the sewing machine and stuff. I actually use all the leftover bits of batting from around the edges of my quilts as well as all the selvages and trimmings from fabric - there's all kinds of junk in there.

The hair is a piece of purple fabric that I doubled up then roughly rotary-cuttered "hair" leaving half an inch at the fold uncut. Got it wet and threw it in the dryer to fray. Then I roughly hand-stitched that down on either side of the face (too lazy to make it big enough to go all the way around the back of the head. Here's a photo of the work in progress - you can get a good look at the nose as well as how the hair went on. I almost left the witch like this, but decided to sew a hat brim on, which was a pain in the ass. The brim is another double layer of fabric, surrounding a layer of batting, that I very roughly attached around the head.

Next up is a Devil Bob. Made very similarly to the witch, but this time the face is all one fabric. I actually liked this guy so much I made another one like it for my friend Rachael.

Last up is a picture from my folks' house. I showed you this quilt before, but boy, you can actually see the quilting detail in this picture. Plus, here's a Ghost Bob I made for them this year. Actually, he's not a true bob because he has arms, but that's neither here nor there. The copper jack-o-lantern was actually made here in Cairo, a gift from last year as well.