Logcabinitis

I've got it bad. I've always loved log cabins (and vow to live in one before I die), and log cabin quilt blocks, too. Why I have never made a log cabin quilt is beyond me. I've made variations, but never a traditional style one. It's on the list....the very LONG list!

So, when I set out to make my slabs for Cheryl and her Recover Southern Alberta relief effort, no matter how hard I tried to make slabs (or crumb blocks as they are sometimes known), I just kept coming up log cabins!

One problem is that most of my scraps are larger in size, or already cut into strips. It seems counter-productive to cut them smaller, but that's what I had to do.

I started to get the hang of it and was posting my blocks to Instagram when Cheryl commented to try and make smaller slabs, then join them together. This was very helpful, because I was always thinking about the block as a whole 15.5" hunk as I built it.

Finally, my pink scraps lead me to success:

These blocks took about 30 minutes each and are completely addictive to make. I have to really tear myself away from making more because my TO DO list prior to leaving for the Fat Quarterly Retreat in London is still rather long. I know there are many who are busily making slab blocks to send on to Calgary, are you? Cheryl is hoping to distribute quilts in early September so she needs blocks in August.  Mine went in the mail yesterday.

I've heard many families might be out of their homes for 6 months or more which is heartbreaking news. I know these quilts will bring comfort to people living out of hotel rooms and trying to rebuild their lives. Thanks to Cheryl for facilitating this project so we can help from far away.

Taking Flight

Do you guys know Flight of the Conchords? My son introduced me to this wacky duo a couple of years ago when he asked for their DVD for his birthday. Jemaine and Bret are two Kiwi folk musicians trying to make it in New York (the show is mockumentory-style), but they are fantastically funny and talented musicians in real life as well. In fact, in real life, Bret won an oscar for writing the Muppet Movie theme song (this tidbit will make a scene in the video a little funnier).

Anyway, a friend asked me today if I'd seen Feel Inside (and other stuff) yet. I just watched it twice and I think you should, too. It's a real life fundraiser for sick children in New Zealand and even though I am not familiar with the other Kiwi artists featured, I know I'll watch this over and over. It's that entertaining!

I've actually been doing a bit of sewing in the midst of massive upheaval in our house, so I'll be back with fabric stuff soon. We are preparing for my parents visit that begins on Monday - yikes!! I'm emptying my sewing room. Literally emptying it. They are staying for a long time and they need a room with a bed and a door (not their usual pull-out couch in our family room). It's a slow process but I work best under pressure. Sunday may be an extremely long day. And night.

In other news we are having an utterly glorious September here in Vancouver. It has been 25 C or warmer every day this month. But don't worry, the minute my parents land from Toronto it'll start raining and won't stop until the day they leave.  That's just what happens and I can't do anything about it...so if you're local, enjoy it while you can!

A Meeting of Modern Minds...and hearts and hands

Last weekend I was thrilled to participate in a meet-up of the Portland, Seattle and Vancouver Modern Quilt Guilds. Oh my gosh, it was so much fun!

Sew-in action at Island Quilter

We ate, drank, stitched, sweat, SHOPPED, laughed, instagrammed, tweeted and then laughed some more (did you notice I said sweat? It was super sunny and hot at the sew-in, like gals were stripping down, me included!). I wish there would have been time to get to know more people but when fabric is only $10/yd a (Canadian) girl's gotta spend some quality time making choices. Of course I went with the intent of looking and maybe touching, but not buying. Yeah, that lasted about 10 minutes.

The Westminster Fibres rainbow at Island Quilter on Vachon Island, WA

Members of the executive boards from all three guilds made arrangements for a hotel block in Seattle, a social on Friday night (with goodie bags), a charity sew-in all day Saturday with door prizes, then shop-hopping after the sew-in that continued on Sunday morning. All of the shop owners were lovely and offered us snacks, drinks and discounts.

Modern Cross blocks for charity quilts. Susan Beal, author of Modern Log Cabin and Katie Pederson, author of Quilting Modern were both on hand to take us through making blocks from their respective books

Our sew-in took place in the gallery at Island Quilter surrounded by a beautiful exhibit of modern quilts from Portland and Seattle MQG's. This is Katie Pederson's stunning Seeing Value quilt.

A great deal of shopping took place. I wasn't the only one, I swear. Just look:

Here's Berene holding a spot in the cutting line at Drygoods Design

Here's Violet Craft throwing all logic aside and doing what every amazing quilter mama does: they make a quilt out of whatever fabric their cat and purple-lovin' daughter wants.

Coming clean: here's my haul. At least what I'm willing to show you. I'm so BAD!!!!

Friendships fostered online were cemented in person. I was super happy to finally meet Kelli, the owner of Drygoods Design. If you are ever in the Ballard neighbourhood of Seattle, do check out her small, but mighty, beautifully curated fabric collections. Every bolt's a winner!

And of course the weekend in Seattle meant some quality time with my BQF namesake, the adorable K2 (on the left) and I got to meet Katie Pederson (R) who is absolutely charming, kind and so talented.

I also got to be a cookie in this delicious Poppyprint/Happy Zombie/Violet Craft sandwich!

There is a flickr group dedicated to the meet up, so if you want to check out more photos of sewing, quilts, shopping and modern quilters, look here.  And if you are lucky enough to live within a 4 hour drive of another Modern Quilting Guild, I encourage you to meet up - it doesn't have to be full blown conference, just have fun together! It really was a blast.

Big hugs to Heather, Petra, Season, Katie and Holly who secured venues, fabric donations, machines, prizes, discounts, made nametags and info sheets and most impressively, smiled the entire weekend.

Saved from the Closet!

There's a whole lotta love going 'round in quilting blogosphere at the moment. Katie has started up her annual 100 Quilts for Kids blog hop and quilt drive and Lynne has just blogged about the amazing success of her Siblings Together initiative. Please click on the links in this post to learn more about these wonderful projects, both aimed at getting cozy quilts wrapped around deserving children.

Locally, my traditional guild makes hundreds of charity quilts annually from preemie up to full size. There are other local guilds doing the same thing, so I think right here, needs are being well met at the moment. I was very moved by the appeal for Siblings Together and thought that this year I'd send my charity quilt over to the UK (last year's went to Japan). After reading this recent post, I am very happy to share this quilt (as yet to actually be quilted) with a child in care.

I made this Jacob's Ladder variation in a guild mystery workshop maaaany years ago...possibly nine?   Oh boy, I cannot even say this is a WIP, more like an AP (Abandoned Project) that has been folded over a hanger in my closet. Each 12 1/2" block has 50 pieces. It was a major challenge for me to piece this back then, with barely two years of quilting experience and I think after all of that piecing, I was done in. Can you spot my Amish moment in the photo above? I'm actually surprised there aren't more! (if not, click through to the flickr image where I've noted it)

1 block = 50 pieces

In fact, it's been so long since I made this, I'm fairly sure the double wide white backing I bought for it has been worn to more than one toga party.

At 48" x 72" it's plenty large enough to cuddle a child. I'll be quilting it up with an all-over meander and to keep the weight down for international shipping, I'm going to try a poly batting for the first time. Any tips?

I'm just so happy to have a purpose for this cute quilt top that my own children have long outgrown. There will be even more charity quilting in my near future - in August I'm heading to Seattle for a Pacific Northwest modern quilt guild meet up and I understand members from Portland, Seattle and Vancouver MQG's will be sewing charity quilts together all day on Saturday, August 11th. Can't wait!

Craft Hope for Haiti - Aprons!

I read about Craft Hope's latest initiative over at Maureen's lovely blog the other day.  When Craft Hope ran their first fundraiser on Etsy for Haiti, I donated a small art quilt. Turns out the purchaser was also a blogger. We exchanged emails and Duff became a lovely and HI-larious friend.  Since that time, I hadn't really kept up with Craft Hope (I understand their website is under reconstruction so they are operating on Facebook these days - probably why I'm out of the loop. I'm useless on fb).  I'm rambling.

The gist of this latest project is supply pretty aprons for women who are rebuilding their lives and homes in Haiti. Easy. Especially when Maureen has written a fantastic tutorial so that you can  make an apron in about an hour out of 4 fat quarters. Seriously! I made this one yesterday afternoon right after she posted the tute.

In her post, Maureen suggested the over skirt pieces would be perfect for drying hands, so I ran with that and used linen for those pieces. A repurposed linen shirt of B's, actually. You can see I left the shirt tail hems in tact along the bottom.

modeled by the lovely D

I had two pretty Amy Butler fat quarters for the centre panel and ties and used a pink/green print, who's origins completely escape me now, for the waistband.  Anybody recognize it? (eta - of course, it's from Heather Bailey's Freshcut. Thanks Katie!)

Think you could whip up an apron and ship it to Tennessee by May 31st? If so, all the info you need is in this post.  While you're at it, why not make up a second one for your mom?  Mother's Day is next Sunday here in North America!

Round and Round (Full Circle Full Frontal).

It's done! My Robert Kaufman Kona Solids quilt challenge for the VMQG is complete. You've seen the pieced top, then the beginning of my concentric circle quilting. Now, I present Full Circle to you....

Thank you to everyone who 'voted' for charcoal and celery binding. The results were about even, and as you can see, I decided on celery because I liked the look of the colour blocks floating on a sea of green.

Why Full Circle? Well, first of all this quilt was always intended as a relief quilt for someone who has suffered loss from the earthquake and tsunami in Japan; my hope is that this will bring them warmth and comfort as they work through their grief and regain their home, work and community (hopefully, one day, coming full circle in recovery). Secondly, after piecing the quilt top, I really thought of the west coast sunset. My mind then wandered to the Ring of Fire...the chain of volcanoes that geologically connects our west coast with Japan, and how it forms a circle around the Pacific nations. Finally, the quilt just seemed to be calling out for concentric circle quilting. I changed thread colours as I moved outwards from the golden squares into the rusty reds, dark brown/black, blue/purple and finally green. I kept the bobbin thread dark grey.

After the kids were off to school yesterday and I walked into the dining room to begin darning in my thread ends (yes, I tie the top and bobbin threads with a double knot, then bury them into the quilt batting using a Fons and Porter gold-eye self-threading needle. I don't like the look of backstitching on the front of a quilt) and lo and behold the sun was shining through the window for the first time in DAYS. I moved the quilt around to line up the sun and the shadow of a glass star that hangs in our window over the 'sun' in the quilt. Pretty.

The back of the quilt is made up of a few 1/2 yard cuts I won at a retreat a few years back. They are not my really my colours, so they've been curing in my stash since the retreat. I was very happy to use them in this quilt because they are from a Japanese-inspired Alexander Henry collection and Kona charcoal goes great with them!

After my last post, there were several questions about my process for the quilting. I took some photos and have used flickr descriptions to describe it all for anyone who is interested. Just so this doesn't become The Longest Post Ever, you can click here to take you to the Seam Guide Quilting Tutorial set on my flickr page. Click on each photo in the set for a description that explains how to quilt an entire quilt with parallel lines. You only have to mark the first line!

To all of you Canucks fans out there - enjoy tonight's game!! Go Canucks Go!!! And to all you Commonwealth readers, have a wonderful long weekend. I wonder if Queen Victoria had any idea we'd all celebrate her birthday by opening cottages, grilling steak and downing beer. Hmm.

Since I don't have a cottage, or drink beer, I'll be in the garden, pulling weeds to give the perennials some real estate for the summer....

Solidly Challenged

Avid blog readers will already be familiar with the Kaufman Solids Challenge issued to Modern Quilt Guilds across North America (Europe, too? I'm not sure). Every member of the Vancouver MQG was given a 'dark' charm pack and asked to create a quilt that included at least a bit of every single 5" square in the pack. There were 43 squares in total.

Photo by Sonjaartisania

This dark charm pack was a challenge for me because it is not a palette I would typically work with. I asked my design-ie buddy Berene if she would like to combine her pack with mine and make a relief quilt that we could send to Japan. Many, many inspiration photos were then emailed back and forth. We discussed suitable symbols of hope and resurrection, as well as superstitions or colours to avoid. Initially we considered trying to incorporate a spiral into the design, but ultimately we decided that in the interest of time, we would keep things simple. We've only got 16 more days to get our quilt to Calgary in time for the massive shipment to Japan. Take a look at the Quilts for Japan website and be amazed at the generosity of quilters!! I'm so proud of my other guild - you'll see that as a group, the Lions Gate Quilters Guild along with our LQS donated NINETY-FIVE quilts!

Using Malka's sewing machine cover from her book Fresh Sewing as inspiration, we bordered all 86 charm squares with 1 1/2" of Kona Celery on two adjacent sides. Six squares were left out of our final 8 x 10 layout, but there is at least one square of all 43 colours included - I promise! Berene and I shared the piecing work yesterday at my Mom's Crafting Day retreat. I got the 2 1/2" borders on today and I really like how the dark-coloured squares float off the background. There is an interesting optical illusion of the squares being set askew, but actually everything is squared and at right angles! I'm really happy with the west-coasty sunset vibe this layout has. Thank you Marsha for the use of your portable design wall!

The quilt will finish up about 48" x 60".

Now, to piece the back and decide on some quilting! Do you think we should bind it in the celery, or charcoal for a frame?

Stuff you need to know....

There's this sweet person who has become an even sweeter cyber-friend to me over the past year. Her name is Tracey and she blogs over at TraceyJay Quilts. If you are a peruser of blogs off my sidebar, then you may have visited her at some point. We are in the midst of a private doll quilt swap, Tracey and I. If truth be told, it's mostly Tracey in it at the moment. She got all inspired and finished my quilt already! I can't wait to see it in real life.

photo by Traceyjay

Tracey has had several gorgeous projects featured on the Moda Bake Shop and is a supremely thoughtful swap partner. She makes the prettiest things! I plan to make her something pretty in return once Christmas and my two kids' birthdays are past (who has 2 kids in the week after new year's? Crazy people, that's who).

OKAAAAAY!

What you need to know is this:

(1) Tracey is giving away an Accuquilt GO! cutter on her blog RIGHT NOW. I don't really want you to enter and potentially win my GO! cutter, but in the event you really want one too, I suppose you could enter the give away here.

(2) Tracey founded an online charity initiative called Quilt Hope In (and, in this sense, the word quilt is a verb. I know that because I asked. I wasn't getting it!). If you are a quilter and would like to do something to help orphans in Haiti, you can donate a quilt to this Etsy charity shop. If you are an admirer of quilts, then soon you will be able to visit the shop and buy a quilt! 100% of proceeds go to Heartline Ministries , who are working tirelessly in Haiti.

Congratulations Tracey, on your inspiration and commitment to do something about it! Thanks for giving all of us the opportunity to help.