Lighting

It's a tricky time of year. Not only is the sun a rare commodity from November to March in Vancouver, but when it does appear, that warm and glowing orb is very low in the sky. I've got plenty of recent work to share, but my photography is being foiled by harsh lighting or no lighting and a pretty huge intimidation factor with my new camera.

The sun made an unscheduled appearance today after the weekend's torrential rains (rumour has it the clouds are gone for the next few days as well), so I had a little photo shoot on the kitchen table in the morning light.

You've seen these before in a pretty average progress picture. I attempted to photograph my house tape measures again, this time using my new Nikon on auto setting without flash and a 50mm 1:1.4 lens (as recommended by Sonja and seconded by the dude at the camera shop).

In full, but shaded, natural light

In full natural sunlight - look at those shadows!

I think shadows can be fun in some circumstances (especially when you're walking in late afternoon and the sun is low in the sky behind you, and your shadow is cast in front of you as you stroll up the road, rendering your body about 8 feet tall and skinny as a super model. That's when I admire my shadow and think smugly: girl, you look gooooood!). hehe.

Like in these pictures, where my stout little houses are casting shadows worthy of a four-story Manhatten walk up!

I've got SO far to go, learning how to use my new camera. Interesting that I should receive a note from Interweave about the release of this new book just yesterday. I immediately added it to my Christmas list!

If you've got a savvy sewist on your Christmas list why not whip up a house tape measure? You can purchase Laurraine's pattern here.

Embroidery - You Can Do It Giveaway!

Time and time again I receive comments and lovely compliments on the embroidery projects that I show here on Poppyprint. Many avid quilters and sewists tell me they would love to learn how to embroider.

I learned how to embroider in Girl Guides many, many years ago. It is a pastime that I find very relaxing and endlessly creative. Plus, I love floss. And all things considered (in our chosen hobby/work/art/craft) it is super cheap.

Embroidery can be simple, or complicated, but either way it is not difficult. Earlier this fall I took a wonderful 2-day course to hone my skills and learn some new stitches. The excellent (and extremely patient) teacher, Bonnie Adie, recommended a reference book called The A-Z of Embroidery Stitches by Country Bumpkin Publications. Unfortunately the book was very hard for me to find locally, so I contacted the publishers and guess what? They sent a copy all the way from Australia for me to share! Now you can learn, too!

This guide comes with a brave claim on the front cover that it is "One of the great reference books of all time". I don't know about that, but I do know everyone capable of holding a needle can learn every stitch contained in this book. Beginning with the Algerian Eye Stitch, and ending with the ZigZag Stitch, every page is stocked with full-colour photos to guide you through each stitching step required.

Look, you can do Shisha!

Helpful tips are inserted along the way in text boxes, including tips for lefties, needles, using hoops, knotting your thread and finishing you work. I love it when publishers are clever enough to bind crafting books with a spiral so they will stay open and flat on your work table - makes following step by step instructions so much easier.

After learning a basic stitch, you'll be ready to combine techniques for beautiful effects like this loopy blanket stitch rose, above. This book doesn't have a lot of fluff - it's full on useful information from page 1 and I know I will refer to it often. There are no project ideas, it's strictly technique for over 150 stitches.

I love the two-colour chain stitch!

I had never heard of Country Bumpkin before (not surprising they are in Oz, land of beautiful stitchery!) and have learned that they publish beautiful magazines and many other reference titles. So, how'd you like to add A-Z of Embroidery Stitches to your crafting library? Just leave one comment for your first entry and then sign up for Country Bumpkin's e-newsletter and comment that you've done so for a second one. Please, please make sure there is an email link in your comment so I can contact you.

Happy Stitching!

(random winner will be chosen Saturday, December 3rd)

Comments are now closed, thanks for visiting!

Half a weekend

A LOT went on today.

First I woke up.

Then we went downtown to drop D & her unicycle off at the marshalling spot in the Grey Cup Parade.

Drank delicious latte here.

Then I got a one-armed hug from Cory Monteith as he left the Hotel Vancouver en route to getting into the Honorary Parade Grande Marshall pick up truck.

arent' we cute in our matching toques? So Canadian.

Saw Gene Simmons and Shannon Tweed (and their kids!) drive by in the parade. What the?

Took some blurry shots of D riding by on her uni - soaked to the skin and still smiling.

this is the best I could do on my iphone - it was raining so hard! D is the blondie.

Ran into Cory again at the end of the Parade. He was also soaked to the skin and still smiling.

Came home. Chowed down some crackers, cheese and yummy wine jelly.

Hammered some grommets into my Happiness Potholders for my secret partner in the VMQG-FVMQG potholder swap. Grommets make me happy.

Fondled my new rig.

more on this later - I just got it yesterday!

Quilted two pillow covers (Christmas gifts)

AND, now I get to go back downtown for a lovely dinner with my husband and some of his colleagues. It's only Saturday evening! I wonder what will happen tomorrow?

I mean, besides rain.

Smack Friday

Yup. Fabric is my drug. No matter how long I lecture myself on the need to show restraint and just use what I have already, I am powerless against the DEAL. And I know that you are, too. Which is why I'm giving you the opportunity to forego lining up at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. this Friday morning, and instead shop in your jammies with a latte in your hand (like I just did. It's noon and I'm not afraid to admit it).

My sweet friend Tammy has some killer goods listed in her specials section at big discounts. I may have picked up some yardage of this for some zippy pouch action:

RSR transistors cotton/linen blend perfect for bags & pouches - yum!

and these for stash building:

Joel Dewberry's Aviary 2 wood grain in vintage yellow and dill. Sublime. Sorry, I cleaned Tammy out of the brown woodgrain.

But don't worry, I left some of this for you:

Smack Friday pricing all 'round. Have fun!

Fuzzy Snow

No such thing. It's cold, it's wet, it's white. I love it.

Once in a while, I like to celebrate the snowflake's sublime symmetry. Yesterday, when I realized my guild's ornament swap was happening tonight, it was panic stations around here for a few minutes before I clued into my new GO!Baby die: the hexagons! A 6-armed snowflake would fit perfectly onto a hexagon background. You know, sometimes that university degree comes in so handy.

I googled "snowflake template" and perused many a flake before deciding on this one (chosen for supposed ease of negotiating small spaces with a machine blanket stitch). Please do not examine all those points too closely, my blanket stitch did run amok in spots. I fused the flakes (using Transweb) onto the hand dyed wool 4" hexagons that were beautifully cut on my GO!Baby. I put one layer of wool at a time through the cutter and the hexagons were cut accurately and cleanly.

Both sides are identical and the ornament hangs from a 1/8" satin ribbon loop. I hand stitched the two hexies together with perle cotton and lightly stuffed with fiberfill. Then I secured matching buttons to each other through the middle to gently squeeze the snowflakes, giving them some added roundness. Swap-ready in one hour! Love that.

Bonjour!

To all my far away readers, especially those of you who make up the 1% wedges, I say thank you for visiting Poppyprint! Merci beaucoup, G'day, Hej, Tack, σας ευχαριστώ!!

And to the 25.3% of you that don't know where you live, I just want to know, who's wifi are you scamming?

Thanks to my I.T. department for snipping this graphic for me after I found him perusing my blog stats in his pj's on Sunday morning.

Fantasy Becomes Reality

You know when you really love someone else's work and you sort of make a little wish that one day, if you were really, really lucky a little morsel of their talent would make it's way into your life?

Well, I got extra really lucky at retreat when Krista (aka K2) brought along this sweet little fantasy quilt just for me!

Krista's a huge fan of Heather Ross and she uses Heather's motif-driven fabrics to great effect in her collage quilts. Every quilt feels like an image from a beautiful dream. It doesn't get much sweeter than two unicorn friends hanging out under a fantasy fruit tree.

Birch bark is one of my favourite things in nature. Ever since Girl Guides, when I learned that fallen birch bark is nature's most efficient fire-starter (and also makes fun notepaper for letters home!). I also learned that you are never, ever, to peel it off a living tree, right kids? It's okay to cut birch fabric though, especially for friends. Isn't that one birch tree strip on the right edge genius?

Completing everything is the lovely, swirly quilting over all the special fabric scraps that make up the background of this mini quilt. I've got it hanging directly across from my sewing room chair, so that whenever I look up I can admire my special gift.

Thank you, Krista. I just love it!!!

For those of you that have asked, Krista doesn't currently have a blog; she's a flickr swapper-extraordinaire under flickr id lolablueocean. Rumour has it that a blog may be in the works. I will be sure to let you know when she gets it up and running!

Lucky x 2 (Potholders)

Look what came to my house on Thursday - two gorgeous potholders designed and made just for me by none other than the talented Cynthia Frenette! Cynthia is a member of the Fraser Valley Modern Quilt Guild and my secret partner in the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild's inaugural swap with the valley girls.

I feel so spoiled. Cynthia is an award-winning designer of fabric on Spoonflower, a cover artist on the current gifts issue of Quilting Arts magazine AND was recently awarded top mixed media artisan 2012 by Cloth Paper Scissors! Cynthia's stunning "quaintings" are incredibly inspiring and beautifully executed - check them out here! On top of all that, she's a total sweetheart. It won't be long before you'll be able to buy her fabric in quilt stores; I can't wait!!!

I helped organize the swap with Eryn and we made up a fun questionnaire for everyone to fill out so our partners could have an idea of our tastes. Instead of the boring old "favourite colour, likes and dislikes" type list, we instead asked people to choose between sets of words like:

Stainless steel, white or avocado?

IKEA, farmhouse or industrial?

martini or lemonade?

cat, dog or goldfish?

Gees Bend or Ginny Beyer?

...............you get the idea.

I have a plan for my partner that I hope to make this weekend. We've got until Nov. 30th to mail, but Cynthia is neck deep in craft fair making, so she got way ahead of the game (what a considerate swapper!). Felicity is finished her potholders, too. I've gotta get sewing.

Me and my kitchen are so happy. Thank you Cynthia!!!!

And then there were 3

...Krista's, that is. Here we are! It really happened!

Now I know what it's like when bloggy friends get to meet in person, laugh over shared online experiences, see each other's work firsthand and just realize that friendships made over the internet are every bit as real and fun as those you make in person. I still can't believe these girls made the trip to Vancouver for retreat, but I certainly am glad they did. Felicity is a local Vancouver girl but it was her first time on this retreat. We had a ball and it was really fun for many of my local friends to meet them, too!

As always, retreat was a blast. This time I think I may have been socializing a wee bit too much, so productivity was down, but that's perfectly okay by me because I had a ball. Lots of laughs, a bit of wine, copious quantities of junk food (an apple just doesn't cut it at midnight when you want to sew for 2 more hours!), a bit more wine. Heaps of inspiration. Everyone else got tons done! Check out this conference room - Bena's One Block Wonder is at the back on the design wall, our Christmas block raffle blocks are next to it stuck to the white board, Rossie's French General X table topper is in the foreground. There are no quilters in sight because this photo was taken at 2:30 a.m. Only the fittest sewists can survive until 2:30 (or maybe it's those with the best chocolate supply)!

Here are Krista and Felicity, holding a 2:30 a.m. design charrette on Krista's gorgeous bee blocks.

As predicted, it snowed! It really came down all of Saturday afternoon. Wet and miserable and cold. I held off on the snowball fight. I'm pretty sure there wasn't one other person I could convince to leave the building. In fact, we had to move our (covered outdoor) basting tables inside to the lodge foyer because frostbite was setting in for those poor people trying to pin their quilts. I also heard the 505 was coming out of the can like chunky snowflakes!

Here's our motley crew in the rowdy corner of the work room.

K2-Krista, Sindy, Felicity and K3-Krista

K3 was busy running her one-woman craft fair sweat shop for three days. It's a wonder she went home with any stock, everything was so beautiful we wanted to buy it all! I managed to convince her to sell me a gorgeous Echino and flannel scarf (see first photo) and all was going so well until I discovered there was a rat on my scarf. Eek!

Here she is turning a zippy pouch

K2 kept us in stitches (which is better to say than she was killing us - because she could have!) with her 5 lb Gingher hedge trimmers. Look at those things (below)!

I was busy with some gift-making and did manage to get binding on a queen sized quilt that K2 beautifully quilted on her long arm for me. It's the first time I've had a homemade quilt to sleep under at retreat (even though it's really intended for my son T for Christmas...every quilt needs a test drive). No photos of that yet though.

The beginnings of a robot tumbler pillow cover for my nephew - I brought my GO! Baby for people to try out and used it myself to cut out 3 sets of tumblers

Here are my house tape measures in progress. I was testing Laurraine's pattern. It is now available in her pattern shop - a fantastic gift idea for any sewist!

I'm still catching up on sleep and unpacking my large tote. I'm excited about the progress on my Christmas gifts and hope to resume stitching this weekend. As always, parting is such sweet sorrow (so I'm not sure why they look so darn happy). They were crying on the inside, I bet.

The Kristamobile departs for Seattle. Sniff, sniff. Thanks for coming, girls.

You're both the adorablest.

And there you have it. Retreat Report 2011. I can't wait until next year. Stay tuned for a reveal of the sweetest mini that K2 made for me!! I just need some light to take a decent photo.

Variegated Thread Selvage Quilts

I'm at retreat. Well, not yet, but by the time you read this I will be yucking it up with my pals, sewing up a storm and sampling everyone's chocolate stash when they're not looking. Because my Krista Sista's have traveled so far to come (K2 from Seattle, K3 all the way from Anchorage via Seattle), I really wanted to show them how much I appreciate their friendship. So I made them each a 14" x 20" quilt in their respective colours.

This one will head home to Alaska on Monday with K3

Give me one good reason why I shouldn't bind every future quilt in this Joel Dewberry Heirloom print? It absolutely rocks for binding!!

I've made several Chinese coin quilts with my selvage collection, but ages ago I 'favorited' this quilt on flickr and asked permission to use it for inspiration. I made my spools slightly less wonky, but free-cut the angles on each side of the spool top and bottom. Those strips for the wooden spool were made using selvages from French General fabric (which I think has the most beautiful selvage that is totally worthy of using as a design feature!). I just love the idea of these 'variegated thread' spools functioning as fabric memory quilts - a sweet reminder of all my favourite fabrics. I will definitely make one for myself!

Here is K2's quilt, which I hope will reside in her Seattle studio.

I wanted to keep the quilts a surprise, so I've scheduled this post to go live after I've gifted the quilts. I'm so excited. Isn't it a great feeling to give someone a hand-made present? Even more so in this case because I am pretty sure they'll really like them!

I also have another teeny item for the three of us. I'll post a photo once we're all together with those ones, though. They have to do with identification. You see, with three Krista's in one room, there is bound to be trouble. When K2 visited me last year, my husband started the numerical reference (I think I got K1 only because he knew me first - NOT because I'm the, ahem, oldest). K3 is clearly the youngest by a longshot though, so in her case I'm sure being #3 is just fine with her!

I hope you're enjoying your weekend as much as weeeeeeee aaaaaare (gloat, gloat). I'm only doing that because your virtual smacking is having no effect on me whatsoever.

Agatha's Road Trip

Just a quick hello today friends. I've got a lot of organizing, packing and pre-cutting to do today. Tomorrow is Day 1 of my annual November retreat. Agatha and I are going on a road trip!

Photo by Berene

This year is extra super duper exciting for many reasons. The big one is that I will be joined by two of my Krista Sista's!! Krista (Lolablueocean) and Krista (Spottedstonestudio) are coming on retreat. They'll be road-trippin' together from Seattle. It's going to be hilarious to have three people with the same name together - that never happens to me, and I can't wait. Rounding out my 'new friends from blogland who I get to hang out with in real life' gang will be Felicity - yep, she's coming, too! Plus all my fabulous regulars, without whom this retreat wouldn't happen, year after year.

I've got lots of projects lined up that include Christmas gifts for family, ongoing work on a quilt for our bed and a new little pattern test (thanks to Laurraine) that I'm very excited about.

I will most definitely NOT be making another one of these (I mention this because people keep asking!).

Tune in next week for a full report, and what I hope will be lots of fun pictures. Rumour has it there may be snow in them thar mountains this year, but it's warmed up a bit today so I'm worried my planned snowball fight might not happen.

Why didn't I think of that?

Today I received a Groupon offer that could change my life. It was for 50% off a pair a Hot Pants. Now, don't get me wrong, I love a great pair of pink stretchy pants from the 60's, but high-waisted, skin tight black lycra? Not so much.

The selling feature? Apparently these attractive shorts actually make you sweat 80% more during exercise, in order to get rid of cellulite-causing toxins. Yippee! Just want I've always wanted: my (80% more) sweaty ass encased in black toxin-soaked lycra! You know, that almost makes me want to go to the gym right now.

Alas, I don't have any Hot Pants. And never will. It's shocking the things that women will spend their hard-earned cash on in an effort to slim down, smooth out and youth-ify. If we all just say no, maybe the brainiac marketers could turn their attention to things that really matter? Like doors that are too heavy to hold open and push a stroller through at the same time, or ziploc baggies that don't zip worth a damn? The fact that someone, somewhere, is making money on crap like Hot Pants is enough to make me fall right off the back of a treadmill (that is, if ever I was to set foot ON one).

Where's the Groupon for two for one chocolate mousse cake?

This blog will return to it's regularly scheduled crafty business very soon. Just couldn't let this one go by without a mini-rant.

Dresden Pillow part deux

Early in the year I made this pillow/mini quilt for a private swap with my friend Tracey (who, by the way, has just given birth to the most adorable little girl, so if you have a sec, stop by and wish her well!). Before mailing it to California, I shared the project at my traditional guild's show and tell. The response was lovely and the workshop coordinator asked if I would give a workshop on how to piece and applique a dresden by machine. Why yes, of course I would! I love teaching workshops. It helps when all of your students are friends from guild!

So, due to the fact that my sample is a couple thousand km south of our meeting hall, I made up another one.

It is a slightly simplified version in the hopes that people will be able to complete the top and back during the one-day workshop. I nixed the narrow inner selvage border and went with a covered zip closure instead of a buttonhole placket on the back. I couldn't resist duplicating the fabric, though. I just love this French General red for fall decor and the hand of this fabric is luscious....just buttery soft.

Everything is done by machine, except for the hand-tacking of the binding to the back. The alphabet print is my favourite from the La Petite Ecole line. The binding is a striped print from the line, but I cut it on the bias (bias stripes on a binding are just happy-making, don't you think?).

The double centre wasn't intended. It became a necessity when the original larger circle fabric turned out to be rather transparent after it was fused on with steam-a-seam. The seam allowances of the dresden blades showed through and I didn't like the way that looked, so I slapped on the smaller red circle: problem solved! I love the machine blanket stitch around the circle edges. It was a major selling feature of my Pfaff Quilt Expression 4.0 because it's got a 9mm throat plate which means you can do a HUGE blanket stitch if you want to.

I have to write up detailed instructions for the workshop, so I'm considering making this my first official .pdf pattern for download. I'd love your feedback on what you like (or could do without) in .pdf patterns. Lots of photos? Detailed explanations? Quilting instructions? Do you follow those patterns via laptop beside your sewing machine, or do you prefer less pages so you can print them out? Bring it on people, I'd appreciate your thoughts!

Since this pillow is ideal for sprucing up your armchair for autumn, I'm linking up to Rachel's Celebrate Color event. Stop in and see some of the other gorgeous projects there!