Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative Quilts

I've been admiring the work of Andrea Balosky for sometime now - seeing mentions of her on the blog Wonkyworld and elsewhere. Andrea made a series of small doll quilts, with hand quilting. I love them and even bought the Small Wonders catalog, even though I wasn't lucky enough to see the show.

So when I found out that Andrea had six quilts available at the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative, I dithered a bit (almost too long) and then sprang into action and purchased Confetti Sandwich:

It's a win-win situation buying from AAQI. I donate to a worthy charity AND get a fabulous quilt in return. Woohoo. Okay, and the real reason I just had to get it? The Bart Simpson in me loves the name Mungpoo, which is where Andrea lives in India. Mungpoo, Mungpoo, Mungpoo. There is a wonderful article on the AAQI blog about what Andrea had to go through to send her donations.

Having it inspired me to make a quilt for the AAQI myself. I started with UnRuly 9-Patches but I ended up making it too big. So I added a border and I'm going to keep it for myself. Although now I'm wondering if that border is strong enough. That's my quilt on the right. I made my friend Kathy try one too and look at the fabulous job she did. This was all without rulers or measuring.

Kathy surprised herself by enjoying making this quilt. And wheee, look at the red she added - makes her quilt so much more dynamic than mine. That fabric is auditioning as the binding.

So since the 9-Patch was too big, I made a One Patch. What do you think? I've even got it quilted already.

It was all made ruler-free. It's a mix of Cherrywood, hand-dyes, and regular solids. looks very art quilty to me, so I wanted to see what a similar quilt would look like made with repros. I wanted it to look like a child's first quilt, made for her doll from many many years ago.

Whaddaya think of this one? Did I succeed in making it look antiquey? Would you ever have guessed I made this? Think it's worthy of donating to AAQI?

Would anyone be interested in doing something similar? I'll do a Playing with Scissors UnRuly Challenge for AAQI and give ya'all some guidelines etc (over on the UnRuly blog) if you are.

Ugh, I've run out of time to add anything more to this post. I'll try to get the next one done sooner!

 

Ya'all take care!

P.S. I've somehow turned into a crazed Doctor Who-phile (Whovian???) this year after forcing myself to watch episodes during the BBC America Who Year's marathon. I once read that you had to try a food nine times before you could say you hated it. I'm not willing to go that far (tuna casserole? anchovies? liver?) with food, but I know so many folks whose opinion I respect and have great geek creds that I just had to force myself with this show. I had it on in the background while I sewed and when I was really bored I didn't finish the episode (daleks, zzzzzzzz). Fell in love when I saw the episode "Voyage of the Damned," then "42" and "Blink" nailed it. It might just be my favorite ep ever.

Can't stand the first season of the reboot (except for the WWII creepy face mask children eps). I hate Rose, her mother and Mickey, really like Martha Jones but wish she weren't so mopey about the Doctor. Donna was great but I love love love the current Doctor and Amy and Rory. Anyone want to come and discuss the show with me, become my friend on Facebook! I don't want to give anything away here about the AWESOME latest episodes, The Impossible Astronaut and Day of the Moon. The Silence? So darn creepy.

okay, that's really it this time. cheers!

My Love Affair With Solids

Hedgehog Jen may be having an affair with knitting, but I'm having one with solid fabrics. I'll get back to patterned fabrics one of these days, but not yet. Usually it's Lily mashing down the strips and crumbs on my sewing table, but Howler and Habibi occasionally help out:

I just ordered more solids and near solids.

Cherrywood Fabric, I do love you. They're selling Cherry Rolls now, a great way to get a variety of fabrics. Not that I went that way, I bought quarter yards and even some halves. woohoo. They came in the mail yesterday and oh my....

Also, I can recommend a great place to buy Kona Solid fabric. My order hasn't come in yet, but I've ordered from Fabric Shack before - they're great. They let you order small amounts of yardage and only charge you for the exact cost of shipping. Fabric Shack has the best price for Kona and Moda solids too. Only $3.99 a yard. And since they let you order quarter or eighth yards, you can really get a variety of them.

Check out my previous post. You get more of a glowing effect when you use colors that are almost the same, but not quite. I used five different fabrics for the letters in the HOPE quilts and it does make a difference.

In addition to Kona solids I also ordered some fabric from the new line by Marcus Brothers called Sahara Cloth. It looks like it's going to be a hand-dyed looking suede fabric but at a better price than for real hand-dyes. I'll let you know how those look when I get them. Anyone seen them already?

Oh and for you reproduction fabric fans out there, have you seen the Windham Colonies Cheddar and Poison Green collection? I even love them. Didn't order them, but I love them. Gotta put some brakes on my fabric buying habits somewhere.

I was thinking it would be fun to have a class next year where we use Gwen Marston's Ideas and Inspirations as OUR inspiration and work with solids or near solids (there are lots of things that fall into that category, such as hand-dyes (not the wildly multi-colored ones), hand-dyed batiks, moda marbles...). I'm definitely wanting to do that, so put the book and fabric on your wishlists if you're interested in joining me.

Speaking of Gwen and solids, I figure someone who reads this blog must have just come back from the most recent session of the Beaver Island Retreat. How did it go? Do you have photos to share?

Quilt Granny Sharon went to the previous week and posted her marvelous photos here. Doesn't everyone look like they're having fun?

The quilt Kristin is working on looks like it could have been made at Gwen's retreat - all liberated and solidy, but I know she came up with that all on her own. Ryan's quilt is just incredible and I love it. Plus you can see a pic of cutie Scrabble puppy and two other projects.

I've finished the quilting on the little Hope quilt I'm making for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. I've challenged ya'all to come and make one with me. I need to clarify something though. It's only for MY challenge that the priority quilts have be to sent in by November 20th. And only for the challenge that they have to contain the word hope or a bird.

The AAQI gratefully always accepts the little quilts year round and gratefully. All the profits go to fund Alzheimer's research. [ooh, good thing I just caught a typo. That said "fun Alzheimer's research" - eek, I bet that's not much fun at all.]

Complete change of topic. Anyone with U.S. mail interested in trying Netflix for the first time ever? I can offer you a month-long trial period instead of the usual two weeks, plus I get one free rental woohoo. I love my Netflix and I continue to get them even though the mail here is soooo slow. (Yes, we do get U.S. mail through my husband's job.) When I was in the states living near major cities I was getting the discs the day after they shipped and it was marvelous. Send me an email if you're interested.

The first thing you should try renting? Pushing Daisies. I just finished the first season and I love love love love it. So much that I'm going to do a separate post on it one of these days.

That's all for me, gotta go get some work done. cheers, ya'all.

Orphan Train Has Left the Station

I mentioned that I started hand quilting on Orphan Train. (Looking back at that post with the completed top I realized it has been sitting around since June waiting for me to get to work. D'oh.)

I basted the quilt last Sunday and didn't have nearly enough pins to do a proper job of it. I ended up thread basting in this corner. It's about every 3", which is just right for me. It's so much nicer to quilt when I've used thread basting, I just hate how much longer it takes for me to do. For those who are interested, this is Quilter's Dream 100% Cotton Request Batting.

This is the lower right corner. I'm doing freehand fans--no surprise there-- with black quilting thread. I like how the fans unify a work and are just so easy to do. Very low stress. I would definitely be happy with fewer seams to go through, but isn't that always the case.


This Amish looking orphan is from a Hovering Hawks wall hanging I attempted to make in 1989. I was using a book that had you start by sewing bias cut strips together and make them into a checkerboard before slicing them apart and resewing to end up with four Hovering Hawk blocks. Can you imagine me working like that? I actually did pretty well, all things considered.

This was the first and only time I've ever used starch to stiffen the fabric. I hated it. I ended up with shiny places on the fabric and I don't know if that's because of the starch, but it's certainly what I'm blaming.

After I got the wallhanging together my friend noticed that I'd put one of the parts in wrong, so all my hawks weren't hovering properly. I got out the seam ripper and took it apart. And of course never put it back together again. I like to think that I'd just leave it as I'd sewn it if I were making this now, but who knows. I love how these Hawk orphans look in this top, so I'm just as happy to have them here.

Just to clarify the picture - that is one complete Hovering Hawks block, plus an extra couple of triangles from the next block. That's why it's a bit confusing.

One of the things I love about hand quilting is that it really gives you time to look at your fabric choices, color combinations and the blocks themselves. For instance, I love the black and deep blue/purple color combination. I know it's dark and there's not much contrast, but still gorgeous. This black fabric is certainly cheap and too loosely woven - glad I don't use that anymore.

[If you're looking for black fabric, go with Michael Miller's Jet Black Fabric. Absolutely incredible fabric - with a deep rich color. Beats all the other black I've found in recent years by a mile.]

Hand quilting feels like really slow going, but I took these photos on the 12th and just four days later I'm further along.

Lily came out for her photo op on top of the quilt:

And Christmas in the background:

My sweetie and I headed over to Montmartre yesterday for a celebratory lunch at our favorite restaurant. We've been married 15 years this week - pretty amazing. My poor darling has a wisdom tooth coming in which is making his face ache, so that's put a damper on his holiday spirit. Bout time he finally got some wisdom though. heh heh heh.

We've watched a couple more of our Christmas movies. Catch Me If You Can, which isn't particularly Christmasy but key events do take place on that date, and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, which is most definitely Christmasy. We also watched The Incredibles, which has nothing to do with the holiday season other than the fact I gave my sweetie the DVD for Christmas 2005. Like Catch Me, it has awesome credits and I love the music.

Kimberly asked the other day if I had a stash of fabrics that I've bought in cool places that I've lived. Nope, unfortunately not. Egypt exports its cotton and there's little there in the way of quilters' cotton fabric. Loosely-woven solids are available for the tentmaker applique artists, but that's about it. I'd have had a much better time if I were looking for linen, which I wasn't then but might now. I have other great textiles from that country though.

And buying quilters' cotton in Paris. Ha! I don't think so. With the current exchange rate, that would be about $26 dollars for a meter of fabric (a bit more than a yard). They don't have anything I want to pay that much for and most of it is the same fabric that's already available in the states. I have however bought silk, which I have yet to wash. Another thing on my to-do list.

Have you all seen Quilt Diva Julie's vowel quilt And Sometimes Y? I'd like to buy a vowel please. Hee hee hee. She made the quilt in my first online class. Here is her post about the quilt (and a hint to go and check out the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative project) and you can see a lot more pics over here.

We're having fun in the Winter Class. Wonderful projects have already been completed and there's still plenty of time to join up. Winter hasn't even begun yet - you've got time (next year). Go check out the blog here.

Other folks have been making quilted gift bags. Check out Kimberly's, Lynda's, and KOQT Kristin's here and here (where the bag is the gift, at least in part).

Finally, art quilter Susie Monday asked me to let you know about the workshop she's teaching in Tuscany, Italy, in March 2008. A quilt retreat in Italy, doesn't that sound heavenly?

Mail In, Mail Out

Woohoo, my manuscript is off to the publisher!!! What a relief. Of course that was just the manuscript, the illustrations, photos, and samples. I still have plenty more to send them by the end of the month, including a quilt I'm currently hand-quilting and two that need binding.

Still I'm done with some of the horrible monotonous stuff, like creating a number for every illustration and photo and placing those consecutively in the manuscript. What a lot of work that I never knew had to be done. Luckily I got a one week extension, otherwise I think I might have lost my mind.

One stumbling block was iPhoto losing nine months worth of photos. (I'm blaming that on you, Snow Leopard. How could you embarrass me this way, especially after all the grief I gave my dad over his 2-weeek upgrade to Windows 7?). Thank goodness I recovered those, even if they are incorrectly dated and scattered around. Fingers crossed, I think I'm set now, although I have something like eight copies of every photo and no idea how to get rid of them.

Next month, I'm hoping to be a much more relaxed camper and more frequent blogger. After I got home from the post office, I discovered a reward for my hard work. A belated Christmas present: gorgeous fabric from Chris Daly of Dye Candy. It's overcast (not to mention cold) here so I didn't take great photos, but I wanted to share these incredible colors:

And here's the whole bunch:

Chris kindly sent me some samples last year so that I could find out how well these fabrics hand-quilted. The answer was marvelously - the fabric has a tight weave but wonderful to work with. I didn't stick with ordering one of her already packaged groups, but instead picked a bit of this and that so I could fill in some of the gaps in my hand-dyes/solids collection. My shelf is looking much brighter and lighter now:

Remember how I bought myself some future prezzies at the big quilt show in November? Mmm, yummy handwovens from India. The solids are shot cottons with two colors running through them. They don't appear to be flimsy, which is marvelous. Just wish there'd been more to choose from.
Especially now that both Jackie and Wanda are playing with older Kaffe Fassett prints that I didn't buy back when I had the chance. I'm kicking myself now.

I know, I know... like I need any more fabric...

Clare and Michele are challenging liberated quilters to make a quilt for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Please, check it out and participate!

Meanwhile, I have to stop goofing off and get back to work. Happily for me, that means lots of hand-quilting right now. I can finally get caught up on my tv watching. Ya'all take care.

Hope Quilt

I finished my Hope quilt for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. A bit later than I'd have liked, but at least I stopped my procrastination long enough to get it finished.

Yesterday I sewed the binding on Rumspringa too, even though I haven't finished quilting it yet. Figured I might as well since I was in the mood and All the outer bits were already quilted. This way the batting won't keep oozing out either - this is the quilt I that I didn't have quite enough batting and had to tuck in a bit extra around the edges.

Rain, rain, horrible rain. sigh.


I finished the first disc of Wonderfalls. I'd never caught the show before (I was out of the country when it was broadcast in 2004) but since it was by Bryan Fuller, the creater of Dead Like Me and my beloved but now unfortunately cancelled Pushing Daisies, it was worth a try. I'm enjoying it although the lead character is annoying me and Lee Pace isn't in it nearly enough.

Gargoyles Again

Okay, I should be working on the tutorial for making wonky jars and bottles. I've at least gotten some made.

This is for the new Quilt Together House, Home, or Pantry. Thank you for your response, I love that so many of you have already joined up to play with me. There's still space, just send me an email if you want to participate. I've sent out all the invitations for everyone who's already asked so if you haven't heard back from me, uh oh, please email me again.

I spent yesterday with with some dear friends who were in town for just a short while. We climbed to the top of Notre Dame Cathedral and now I'm paying for it. Ow. I do love the gargoyles that live up there.


The weather was lousy most of the day and this break in the clouds was most welcome.
We also hit Montmartre for the Sacre Couer and Croque Monseiur sandwiches, the Louvre for the ever small Mona Lisa and a quick walkthrough of history, Angelina's for hot chocolate (I was even good and just had iced coffee - that hurt!), a walk down the Champs Elysees and a ride on a Bateau Mouche on the Seine. Whew, that was all tiring but wonderful.

I've got some links for you.

First, some funglies: Here are Cheri's and Brenda's.

True Blue Nancy is working on a wonderful HOPEful quilt. I love how it's got both Lazy Gal and Gwen Marston inspiration.

Speaking of HOPE, I hope you've been checking out the wonderful Priority Hope Challenge quilts folks are generously making for the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Still plenty of time for you to participate too if you're interested.

This is a hoot. What happens when Jack O'Lanterns drink too much beer?

Announcing the Priority Hope Challenge

Instead of holding my usual kind of class this fall, I decided instead to challenge you all to make a small quilt to donate to Ami Simm's Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative. Go take a look at my blog for the Priority Hope Challenge to find out more.

These are small quilts (no bigger than 9" x 12") and don't take much time to make. Here's a top I sewed this morning:

Yeah, it still needs quilting, and that will definitely take longer.

This is a very worthy cause and I hope you'll take part in this challenge. The deadline to have the quilts in the mail is Thanksgiving, November 20th. See, plenty of time for such a bity treasure.

Let me know if you have any questions. Take care.