Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog

First off I'm going to completely geek out over Joss Whedon's latest project and after that I'll get to quilty action. You do know of Joss Whedon right? Creator of my beloved Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel.

Have you heard of Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog? I just found out this morning. Check out the trailer:


Teaser from Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog on Vimeo.

Joss Whedon was busy during the writers' strike. In his words:

"...I finally decided to do something very ambitious, very exciting, very mid-life-crisisy. Aided only by everyone I had worked with, was related to or had ever met, I single-handedly created this unique little epic. A supervillain musical, of which, as we all know, there are far too few. The idea was to make it on the fly, on the cheap – but to make it. To turn out a really thrilling, professionalish piece of entertainment specifically for the internet. To show how much could be done with very little. To show the world there is another way. To give the public (and in particular you guys) something for all your support and patience. And to make a lot of silly jokes. Actually, that sentence probably should have come first."

Dr Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is going to be available on the internet in three parts, beginning on the 15th of July. It stars Doogie Howser (Neil Patrick Harris) and beloved Serenity Captain Mal Reynolds (Nathan Fillion) - wheeeeee. I love how wonderfully goofy the musical episode of Buffy is - I'm hoping this is also grandiose, silly and marvelous. Not to mention highly entertaining.

There is already a great fansite for the show, which has no publicity budget. They are completely relying on the fans and word of mouth to get the news of the show around. If you're a fan of Joss, spread the word.

I love to see someone so incredibly talented take matters into his own hands. No chance of studio interference or premature cancellation (I still mourn Firefly). I rather hope Gwen Marston does something similar if she can't find the right publisher for a book she wants to do. or reprint. Speaking of reprints, this is your last day to vote for publication of Liberated Quiltmaking. So to speak. See this post for more info.

Speaking of Gwen Marston, holy cow, she and Freddy Moran are selling the quilts from Collaborative Quilting, including some of their individual pieces. For more information see Gwen's website.

I don't know if ya'all saw Lucy's comment in my last post about the Westfallenstoffe fabric. The German company bought out a Dutch fabric company, so that seems to resolve the question of are those fabrics Dutch or German. They're sort of both.

I got some quilts and links for you.

Let's start with Brenda's wonderful Life is a Field Trip. very very fun.

Woolywoman has really been making some fun projects lately, but in particular check out her houses.

Scraphappy finished a fun sea urchins quilt.

Sassenach at Force Majeure Farm gave directions on mounting a vintage quilt top so that it's strong enough to display (even though it's not strong enough to quilt) - check out here and the follow-up here.

Maureen (aka Moe) is a blast. She's got loads of pics posted from her classes with Gwen Marston - take a look in her June archive. I convinced her to try making free-pieced letters for the quilts she made in Gwen's classes and now she can't stop! Woohoo. Pics will sooon appear in her blog, I'm sure. This is what she had to say:

"You know when I saw your letters last year, I thought it was so cool but I never thought I'd be able to do it, I thought it was too complicated, too much measuring, etc. I'm so happy you've shown me the way! This is totally addicting. Looking forward to much more lettering in my future."

See, the letters might look intimidating, but they really aren't. You just have to practise to get them to look exactly like you want them to. For instance, if you took a drawing class you wouldn't expect to do lifelike portraits right off the bat. You'd have to work at it. Not that letters are nearly that hard. More like stick figure people and the tutorials just teach you how to sharpen your crayon..."

My computer connection is soooo slow at the moment, I'm going to bail out now. I actually machine attached two bindings this morning on small patriotic quilts that have been sitting around since last August. I just need to hand stitch the bindings down and I'll have them ready to display. woohoo.

Fabric and Fans

Whee, look at the gorgeous fabric that arrived in the mail. My favorite is the stripe on the right, but they're all wonderful.

Kristin LaFlamme read my post about how much I love Westfallenstoffe fabric and she sent me these. So sweet of her, especially while she's busy with her move from Germany to Hawaii - talk about a change.

I'm making great progress on Orphan Train quilting. I started my freehand fans at the lower right and upper left corners and worked my way in (the third pattern shown, diagonal fans, in my tutorial). The fans have finally met up in the middle of the quilt:

This is the back, so you can see it even better:

I'm using Mettler 100% quilting thread and it's making me NUTS. I keep getting little loops and knots. I don't know if it's just this spool, but think I'm going back to Gutterman.

Commenters asked what size my Plaid One Patch with Strings turned out. I started with 4" blocks of fabric. Sort of. I left some of them rectangular and longer than that, so that I had more opportunity to mismatch seams and make it deliberately "off." The top ended up 34" by 34.5" which is really close considering there is a whole extra row of half blocks.

We're nearing the deadline of the campaign to get Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking reprinted. This is the post that explains it all. And have you told everyone you thought might be interested? Keep spreading the word, the more "votes" the better.

One thing that has really struck me is how many folks are still using just their first name as their identifier on blogs. Please, I beg you, add something more. A placename, your blog title, something completely unexpected. Mocha MonsterPants you have the distinction of being the most unusual blogger name yet - it's unforgettable.

Thanks for the encouraging comments on the last post. It's been great to hear from you. I spent yesterday frustrated out of my mind trying to find a simple drawing program that wasn't too simple. Finally found it in a completely unexpected spot: Microsoft Word. So that's what I've been working on, writing instructions.

Sweetie and I finally got a chance to see Burn Notice. Woohoo, I loved it. Three different people told me they thought I'd like it and boy were they right. I told my husband he had to just go with it, just like you do watching Alias, which is completely unbelieveable but a lot of fun.

Burn Notice is about a spy who gets fired (burned) and ends up "stuck" in Miami with no money. There's some Alias, A-Team, McGuyver in there as he helps people with his spy skills AND tries to figure out who got him burned. Great casting all the way around, I just wish the fantastic Bruce Campbell was in it more.

I need to get some work done before I go out to play this afternoon. Ya'all take care and I leave you with this photo of little Pokey on the fabric I "stole" from Siobhan :

Lazy Days in Quiltville - the Proposal

I'm finally ready to tell you about the book I'm working on. It's going to be about letters, strings, crumbs and orphans. The title is Lazy Days in Quiltville. I bet you can guess who my co-author is.


Yup, Bonnie and I are doing this book together. I'm really excited about it, although so far it hasn't gone beyond putting a rough outline together. This is the fun part, before the drudgery of the actual writing kicks in and before compromises have to be made with what the publisher wants. (Assuming we get one - but we're a long way off from worrying about that yet.)

Poor Bonnie has been working herself to the bone to get her own book complete (Scraps and Shirttails, due out in September from Kansas City Star Quilts - check out their homepage here) and I've been pestering her about this other one.

So letters are going to be in the book, with an emphasis on the basics. Nothing fancy, just learning how to make them and practising with them. Oh and using words in the border. Plus, Crumbs, Strings, orphans, Lazy 9-Patches, Maverick Stars and Hearts. Not to forget the freehand fans quilting.

So there won't be any free-piecing or houses. Just an emphasis on playing, casual piecing (mismatched seams on purpose!) and making personalized quilts. The strings are going to be basic as well - rows or squares. The string stars will be in the theoretical next book.

I'm really hoping that ya'all will get involved in making quilts for the book. If you're interested, please send me an email and I'll give you some guidelines and throw out ideas. Do be warned though that financial considerations will probably mean using quilts with U.S. (including APO and FPO) or maybe Canadian addresses in the book. Practicality sucks.

By the way, those L-O-V-E letters I showed you at the top of the blog? That's a project I'm working on with Bonnie. I actually thought of it more than a year ago and Bonnie sent me some additional solids to help round out the Amish color scheme but I've been sooo slow to finish. I made us duplicate blocks so that we can each make a quilt. Will be interesting to see what we each come up with.

I didn't just make duplicate blocks for the two of us. No, I sewed more and it made me nuts. I have three more sets to offer to anyone who wants to play with Bonnie and I. The goal is to use the set of blocks however you chose to. You can add more letters as well as strings, crumbs, stars, and hearts.

You can add other blocks or applique so long as they are your own design or in the public domain. Or from Quiltville - I'm sure Bonnie will give you copyright approval. Do think mismatched and casual though - nothing fancy.

These quilts might just go in the book. And no they don't have to be big quilts. The top has to be finished by the end of the year - no showing it on your blog (if you have one) - it has be kept a secret until we've all finished our tops.

If you're interested, send me an email: tartbr47 at hotmail dot com. I'm completely open to bribery and extra credit will go to those who will hand quilt it cuz I'm a sucker for that. If you have an idea of how you might use the blocks, tell me - I'd love to hear. The "drawing" (I warn you now it may just be rigged and completely unfair) will be held on the 4th of July - a nice, easy to remember date.

Part of me is tempted to show you examples of how L-O-V-E blocks have already been used, but I don't want to influence anyone's choice.

If you're interested in playing along, albeit with blocks you've constructed yourself, then hop on in. Four sets of L-O-V-E blocks. Use solid fabrics if you want to (I excluded yellow, white, bright orange and lime green) or go a different route.

Plaid One Patch with Strings - Top

I finished my Plaid One Patch with Strings quilt top. But instead of looking like this:

It looks like this (the colors are better in this photo as well):

I was unhappy with how the bottom of the quilt looked. Too boring. And that THinK hadn't worked out all that well and drew too much attention away from the strings. So I lopped off the bottom 2 1/3 rows. I was thinking of adding part of it back on, but nah. The focus should be on the fabrics. This is going to get big stitch freehand fans to give it that utility elbow quilting look.

I got caught up in using every bit of fabric instead of concentrating on a quilt that really worked. Hopefully I remedied that. Working with all those stretchy fabrics wasn't so bad - I added an extra bit of fabric in one spot where I needed it, but otherwise I worked on the "whack any extra off" plan. I also staystitched around the outer edges of the top so they don't pull out of shape.

Sweet Habibi making himself at home on the blocks in progress:

A pillow for naptime:

Sweetie and I are now watching Season 5 of Monk. I do wish they'd focus more on the mysteries and less on getting Monk into situations designed to make his OCD freak out, but the show is enjoyable all the same. And Stanley Tucci (Secondo to Tony Shaloub's Primo and if you don't know what I'm talking about I highly recommend you rent this movie)? Sheer heaven.

We're also rewatching The Closer - this will be my third time through the first season. I love this show. We're getting ready for season 3 which can't be here soon enough. It is fun to watch Brenda do all the jobs herself and then watch CSI where the criminalists do every job at the police department as well as arson investigation, etc.

We finished Medium - whichever season that just came out on DVD. I shouldn't say "we" since my sweetie doesn't so much watch it as endure it in the background while he reads. The show's okay. I like the actors but don't really find any of it compelling.

Think in Plaid

I'm really happy how my One Patch with Strings is coming along. I've got all my blocks made up now, which is pretty easy since so many of them were one patches. There are a few more blocks than this and I think I'm going to just keep piecing until I run out of the fabric.

I added some letters: THinK. They're hard to read - I didn't intend that, I just started piecing without paying attention. So some letters are dark, some are light. That's okay, I know what it says. I didn't like my first i so it got thrown in with the rest of the blocks.

I stopped piecing yesterday because Pokey commandeered my box of strips. She scampered as soon as I put the ironing board up - all my cats hate that noise with a passion.

She moved to a patch of sunlight on my cutting table and just zonked out. She didn't flinch as I cut blocks and made noise right beside her.

This morning I had Breakfast in America. I just love saying that. I had blueberry pancakes with real maple syrup - mmmmm - while visiting with fellow American expats, one of whom is a quilter.

I got a wonderful email from Moe who attended a lecture by Gwen Marston last night. Lucky girl. Plus she's taking two classes - woohoo. Lucky, lucky girl. I'm hoping Moe will post pics in her blog for us.

Indigo Threads Sharon found a great interview with Gwen Marston done in 2007 for Save Our Stories. Excellent reading.

Speaking of Gwen Marston, we are now up to 200 copies of Liberated Quiltmaking requested through comments and email. That's in just one week. Thank you all so very much for participating and spreading the word. Mary Jo had a great suggestion which was for folks to go in to their local quilt shops and ask them to contact AQS and let them know that the store would order copies.

If you haven't already done so and want to put your name down on the list of quilters asking for a reprint of Liberated Quiltmaking, you can do that in my post here. I'm figuring that even if AQS won't reprint the book, maybe Gwen will do so. Fingers crossed!