This Little Pouch Went to Portland

Last night the VMQG celebrated our two year anniversary!  There were yummy treats, fruity punch, lots of laughs and some seriously fabulous pouches.  (Almost) Everyone who is participating in the pouch swap with the PMQG brought their pouches to the meeting to show and also to pack them up and send them down in one shipment to our secret partners care of the PMQG.

Here's the little flex frame pouch I made for my partner who gave me a great idea as to what she needed a pouch for, as well as specifying she likes bright, cheerful colours. Just so happens I won a mini charm pack of all the new Kona solid colours from Pink Chalk Fabrics recently - perfect!

side 1

I paired up the bright colours, drew a line diagonally and sewed 1/4" to each side, creating two triangle squares (seams pressed to one side).  Then, I paired two of those right sides together (butting the seams) and drew a diagonal line perpendicular to the seams.  Sewing 1/4" each side of that gives you two tiny little hourglass blocks. Cute!

side 2

I framed everything up with some black linen, inserted a flex frame and there you have it. If you would like to read a full tutorial on making a flex frame pouch, check out Leila's here or Ayumi's here. Both are excellent.  

Wanna see the inside?

Seems my partner and I have something in common.....I wonder if hers barks as much as mine?

A Little Modesty....puh leeze!

Home from our ultimate chillax on Hornby Island. For the first time in 8 years we stayed a full two weeks and can I just say: I could have stayed on for a third with no questions asked!

Considering the dismal weather lead-up to our vacation, we completely lucked out and had 13 out of 14 beach days. We are all golden and smiling. On that one windy, grey day my family took the kites out to take advantage of low tide (maximum beach for running around) and I stayed home with Agatha. We had a nice time together.

Agatha (gifted to me last year by my SIL, this machine was bought new by my MIL with some of her wedding money in the 50's)

I managed to piece the top of a sewing machine cover I'm making for my secret partner in the For The Love of Solids Swap on flickr. I thought I'd take a few fun photos in the orchard of our rented holiday house. The homeowner is a sculptor and this reclining nude luxuriates in the dappled shade of the apple trees.

Her outstretched arm was just crying out for a quilt to drape over, don't you think?

My fellow swappers thought the photos were quite fun. With the carefully draped quilt top, the flickr censors didn't come after me, either. Phew. Some of you will recognize the layout as the machine cover pattern in Malka's book Fresh Sewing. Berene and I used this same design for our Kona Solids challenge quilt for the VMQG in the spring. I used about 2/3 of a Kona solids charm pack and navy sashing for this one. Although I'm not really into obvious rainbows, my partner likes them and I am really happy with the transition of colours diagonally across the piece. Darnitall if I'm not out of navy for binding. I'm thinking it's really the only colour that will work here....what are your thoughts?

I'm off to the shop to retrieve my Pfaff so I can get this all quilted up for my partner. I've totally missed the international deadline (tomorrow) so will have to drive over the border next week and get my package into the USPS for 'domestic' delivery!

Poppyprint in Print Take 2 + a giveaway!

Phew! I'm back. Sorry to keep you hanging for a couple of extra days, but the weather was just too gorgeous to come home and our lovely hosts welcomed us to stay on at their little piece of paradise (photos soon). If we had come home as scheduled, we wouldn't have sighted a juvenile grey whale 20m from the boat!!

Ok, here's my news. Remember back here, when I was all excited to have my first ever magazine article published? Well, now I've had my first ever original PATTERN published!! I wasn't sure when the Fall 2010 issue of Quilter's Connection Magazine would be out...apparently subscribers (like me) all got theirs last week. Mine arrived just moments before we were leaving for our last summer hurrah, so I haven't even had a chance to read the whole thing yet. There was no way I was taking it with me to get sunscreen, sand and wineglass rings all over it!

D kindly snapped this totally staged shot of me 'reading' my pattern this morning.

I have to thank Heather, the wonderful publisher of Quilter's Connection (Canada's very own quilting magazine) for the opportunity to share my work. I love this wall hanging pattern that is a breeze to sew up for your wall, a door, or for a coffeetable runner. The leaves are woolfelt applique's (I love mixing cotton and wool). It could be done with any type of leaf outline (oak? ginko?) and even green/blue colours in the 25-patches for a spring look. If you've been perusing Poppyprint for a while, you may remember that I initially designed this quilt for last year's Autumn Swap on the Quilting Gallery blog.

I have a spare copy of the magazine that I'd love to share with you! It's full of fantastic patterns and articles by Canadian quilters - I know you'll love it!

Leave me a comment and tell me your favourite thing about autumn for an entry. I'll close the comments on Monday, September 6th at 10:00 p.m. Pacific Time and then use the RNG to find the winner and let you know on Tuesday. If you are an anonymous lurker or a no-reply blogger, make sure that you leave an email address in your comment so I can notify you!

**comments are now closed, thanks for entering!**

Sidelined

Gasp. Gasp.

That's me, coming up for air. What a month June has been so far and we still have a week and a half to go! The quilt show was a biggie in terms of time, energy and excitement. As soon as it was over, I parked myself in front of the monitor to finish design and layout of the Grade 7 grad yearbook for T's class. That is now all safely at the printer's. Then, there was my fall magazine pattern and sample to complete for Heather, a two-day field hockey tournament, teacher gifts to buy on behalf of the class, the first meeting of the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild, school Sports Day, D's year end Cirkids performance and a rather feeble attempt at Father's Day yesterday. I don't often lose my mojo, but I'm getting pretty close here! I even took a nap on Saturday!

I know I still owe you a photo of my blooming 9-patch from the show. The weather has either been brilliant sunshine, or rain, so I still don't have a decent one to put up here.

Instead, I'm going to show you this amazing dress that I spied on the sidelines of D's final field hockey game of the season on Saturday. Meet Kirsten:

Her niece plays on D's team. She is a video game producer and is about to launch a new venture: a gaming company run by women, that creates apps and games just for women! Gaming is not my thing though, so we stuck to embroidery and crewelwork. Kirsten created this masterpiece during many plane trips for work....

I was sure to let her know about the next local Swap-o-rama-rama happening this Saturday at the Vancouver Museum. She's gotta wear this dress!

This may be my favourite part...a mini dress-on-a-dress complete with peace medallion.

Oh, and the field hockey game was the BEST!! D scored a blistering goal on a sweep shot from the right wing and assisted on a couple of others. It was smokin' hot for those girls out on the turf, but they all played their best game ever and won 5-0.

The rest of this week is full of driving for end-of-year field trips, T's band concert, T's graduation party, teacher present presentations....all culminating in a family trip up the coast on Friday for a couple of nights of R&R in a beach cottage. Phew.

I may try to squeeze in a nap or two. Is June this insane for everyone?

...and a few more things

Last night was May's Friday Night Sew-In (thanks Heidi and Bobbi for this regularly scheduled pyjama party where we hang out and participate in this virtual stitch group with our fellow bloggy peeps!). We started off this Canadian long weekend (thanks Queen V!) with a family dinner out followed by yummy Gelato & coffee here.

I still managed to pull off some finishes when we got home. Namely, my swap commitment for Potholder Pass 3. I went with some wonky piecing (which my partner likes), some modern prints (also likes) and some wee embroidery. The binding went on and the grommets went in last night after we got home.

Notice Ayumi's silkscreened fabric in there, too? Love it. It was hard to start cutting into my precious sheets of her fun words, but a swap partner deserves a little somethin' special, right?

For this next one, Sandi kindly donated her little cake stitchery....I started these on retreat last week and she happened to have it along in her stash. It goes perfectly with the theme!

Friday was a double-stitch-whammy because the Gathered Threads gathered in the morning and I was able to finish these off (more items for my guild's quilt show boutique).

I've admired these flower pin cushions on Flickr and on various blogs and figured I could probably figure them out. I just sewed a bunch of circles RST on the last night of retreat. Then on the way home in the van, I turned them. Employing a Starbucks straw, I stuffed as much polyfil in there as humanly possible, then stuffed some more! I used 8 wt perle cotton or 6 strands of DMC (depending on the colour) to wrap around and pull taught, creating the petal shapes. I'm sure there several ways to accomplish this...I just sort of wung it and it seemed to work!

Finally, I have BIG news!!! Remember my little feeling sorry for myself moment yesterday? Well, I didn't have to pout for long, because Trish commented on that post to let me know that I WON HER GIVEAWAY!!!! Yippee! Trish has several sweet patterns, visit her lovely Two Peas in a Pod blog and check them out!

I hope you have a fantastic weekend...the sun is trying to come out...there are faint shadows out there for sure. Tomorrow is supposed to be a beaut!

Chinese Coin Swap - Success!

Another successful swap! Mary received the one I made for her (rather quickly, I might add. She lives in the Portland area, so our mini's didn't have too far to travel....just a quick jaunt up and down the I-5).

Here is the selvage mini I sent south:

It is all selvage strips that have been topstitched onto a 3" strip of muslin. I sew a line through the white edge of the selvage, which catches the coloured part of the overlapped selvage and attaches both to the muslin foundation. I purposely cut generous strips of selvage when I take them off my FQ's and yardage. I want to retain some of the fabric print so that any selvage projects are not merely white strips of words, but also a fun record of the prints I've been using. For these coins, I tried to include as many colour dot sections as well as some fun words....like "Wild Thyme". The blue sashing and binding is a Kaffe Fassett shot cotton and I simply quilted it with running stitches in a hand-dyed perle cotton.

It was so much fun and really quick to put together (after all, it's only 13" by 9") that I made myself one, too! You only need a 3 1/2" long piece of selvage, so they go a long way.

And now, here's the mini that Mary sent to me. The coins are only 1/2" high!

I love that it's so scrappy. It's beautifully pieced and she attached the binding to the front with a machine blanket stitch. She also sent along some really fun scraps (including some selvages!!) Thank you so much for this sweet swap, Mary!

Quilting retreat tomorrow, so I must get into the kitchen and prepare. I hope you find time to do something you love this weekend, too.

Grommets aren't that scary

See?

You've just got to hit the hammer like you mean it. And watch out for your thumb. It just goes against all we do as quilters to actually carve a hole out of the middle of your work! I love the look, though. Of course my favourite Grommet of all time is the one that comes with Wallace.

Go ahead.

Install some grommets.

I know you want to!

Hot pots

will be no match for these babies. Here are the pot holders I've made for Potholder Pass II (look for red/white pear in my sidebar for more info). My partner left it all up to me by writing "quilter's choice" for her colour preferences. Sometimes this can stress people out, but I think wahoo! I'll make something I like, too! These will have grommets put in the top left corners as soon as I can find the instructions for the grommet-installing-gizmo that I bought. Jacquie has a great tutorial on installing grommets here.

It was a dull, gray day yesterday so they're not looking as lovely and bright as the fabrics really are. You'll just have to trust me that they are bright, happy and ready for pot holding duty! (one layer of cotton batting and one layer of insul-bright insulated batting inside).

I look forward to the fore-casted sun this afternoon. Have a happy day!

Super-Swapelicious-Saturday!

Last weekend I attended my first ever Swap-o-rama-rama. What an incredible day of recycling, re-using, creative ingenuity (I guess that's why people coined the term "upcycling", to cut down on adjectives). Organizer Jillian and her team did an amazing job setting up a fashion factory in the Douglas College main atrium. Aside from the clothing tables where participants first donated, then chose, garments to work with there were many inspiration stations to work at: surface design, serger, sewing machines, hand embroidery (where your's truly parked herself), silk-screening, button-making, fabric painting/stenciling and notion/trim/embellishment.

Before After

The 12 sewing machines were busy all day long.

Some of the amazing creations included a gorgeous messenger bag made out of a leather car coat, a summer dress from a shirt/hat/skirt (really!), a pleated and tucked fitted blouse from a men's dress shirt, some high fashion shorty shorts from wool pants and several tops embellished with frilly collars, organza roses and silk-screened images.

At one point, I had 5 young Katimavik participants all embroidering designs onto t-shirts. Look at Tim, he's 19 and embroidering for the first time (a boy after my own heart, he even picked out his first stitches to re-do them because he wasn't happy with the way they looked!).

I had my Sublime Stitching craft pad of embroidery transfers so I let people chose a design if they wanted to stitch along a line. Other's opted for their own design.

My friend Els scored a brand new t-shirt from the pile and added a pink flamingo embroidery!

I think the most popular station, for young and old alike, was the button-making table. Jillian's Mother-in-Law had sent her a pile of New Yorker mag covers from the 60's. Can you imagine the incredible artwork images that were in that pile? Perfect button-making fodder.

Before

...about 2 minutes later

I brought these ones home for the kids.

What did I find? A beautiful, like new, size 0 (just how can they call '0' a 'size' anyway?) brown stretch-corduroy jean jacket for D which I am embellishing with embroidery. It's not done yet, but when it is I'll show you the results.

Are you inspired to recreate a tired old jacket? Looking to put some life into your faded jeans? Then...

mannequin created by Susi Bainard

75th Blogpost give away update

I still don't know how to see who has subscribed to my blog with Google Reader, and I really wanted to have a special give away for all the folks who come to visit regularly, so I will just have to rely on you to leave a comment and let me know if you subscribe or follow along. What's a world without trust, right? Hang in there, I do have a plan, but I just need until next week to make something - I feel like I'm in the middle of a local tornado at the moment....spin, spin, spin!

The sky is falling...

Chicken Little would be so lucky to have this beauty drop on her head!! Look at the amazing quilt that Hazel made for me in the Quilting Bloggers Mini-Fall-Inspired Quilt Swap.

She has done an incredible job...including the perfectly machine appliqued acorn and leaves, gorgeous woven borders, impressive free-motion quilting and topstitching with variegated thread.

Perhaps it was due to my just having read several heart-wrenching newspaper articles about Haitian orphans, or maybe an overwhelming feeling of gratitude for such a lovely gift, but I was most verklempt when I saw the quilt in real life today. Thank you so much Hazel. Your work is greatly appreciated!!!

I have done some sewing on my DQS8 doll quilt today. It is so much fun (now that my design has come to life - before that I was a wee bit stressed about making just the right thing!). It's exciting too, to secretly design something especially for someone you've never met. More peeks soon!

DQS8 - I'm in!

For more than a year I've been watching the evolution of the Doll Quilt Swap, and now the eighth round has begun. I lucked IN! It pays to check your fav blogs regularly - while visiting Yukon Viv Sunday night, I saw that she had signed up. I know that there are over 500 members of the DQS Flickr group and that the swap was going to be limited to 160 quilters. Without passing GO, I immediately found the sign-up instructions, blasted an email off to Susan and within 6 minutes, received a confirmation that I got in. Phew. The panic. The stress (well, only 6 minutes of it, really). Now I just have to wait patiently while they sort out the swap partners. Once I receive my partner's details, I will stealthily stalk his or her blog and (hopefully) come up with some inspiration.

Making small quilts is so much fun; it is a great way to try out ideas and take on the role of designer without feeling overwhelmed by trying to cover an entire bed. Plus, if your small design works out well, you're free to expand and make a bigger one some day. When I first started quilting about 8 years ago, I made several doll sized quilts for my daughter and niece's dollies and teddies. In addition to trying new designs/blocks, it was also a great way to improve binding skills and try maching quilting without a lot of bulk to cram through my domestic machine.

My most recent small quilt is this one, coming in at 12" X 24":

It is my Fall-Inspired Mini Swap Quilt that I already posted (unfinished) here. When I worked in a quilt shop, a common request from customers was "how can I use batiks with other quilting cottons?" At the time, batiks were quite a bit more expensive than non-batik prints so people bought sparingly and coveted their batik stash. This is one way to blend the two fabrics together...let the batiks shine on a background that reads as a solid (light or dark). Avoid trying to equal the saturated glow of batiks with non-batik bright colours because there are few up to the task. I find the non-batiks inevitably stand out for their dullness, but make great backgrounds.

I will pop this little honey in the mail later this week to my secret swap partner. I can't say who it is, but as one of my all time favourite Canadian bands sings: "There's none more Scot than the Scots abroad." I hope she likes it - it's my first swap and I'm very excited to see what will arrive in my mailbox!

More Joy Coming Right Up

Today has been incredibly productive. I made a pledge to myself last night that I would get up, get dressed and get busy by 9:00 a.m. this morning. I almost made it...it's just that I discovered the Fall-Inspired Mini Quilt Swap Flickr group at 11:30 p.m. and stayed up until 1:30 a.m. perusing quilts and blogs and websites. This happens to me a lot. Easily distracted by colourful images.

So, I only missed my self-imposed deadline by half an hour. Not bad for the holidays. My Fall Mini Quilt needs to be in the mail by January 18th. Not a major panic, but it is the second UFO on my list for Jacquie's Joy in the New Year challenge and that deadline is January 1st (hours away!).

Remember, it started with this:

There have been several design ideas floating around up there. I like to keep my options open. It's my first swap, so I want to do a good job. I did some spying on my partner. Seems like she is a fairly traditional quilter and she kept the options open too, by not specifying any likes or dislikes in her swap profile. Fall for me here in Canada obviously involves maple leaves. That goes without saying, really. So that was one design element decided.

At first, I imagined pieced maple leaves, but when I started cutting and piecing the batiks, this happened instead:

1" strips pieced to make 25 patches. Sweet. As in 'sweet hook-up', not cute (watch Napoleon Dynamite for superb contextual example). I digress....that lead to this:

Which immediately lead me to this book, my bible of all things quilty, for setting triangle and corner triangle calculations for a 5" finished block. Once I had those all pieced in, I got to thinking that a skinny little tuck border might frame everything nicely and *GASP* I happened to have a perfect piece of Thimbleberries fabric in my stash. Shhh, don't tell anyone. Don't ask me how it got on my shelf. Even though I'm technically allergic to it, I managed to sew it into my quilt before any hives could break out.

Not bad! Finally, as you can see, the maple leaves. I downloaded a free template, traced it onto some Lite-Steam-a-Seam II and cut out wool leaf outlines to fuse onto the 25 patches. I'm very happy with the results of my day, considering I didn't have a plan when I started.

Tomorrow, the 'quilt as desired' part happens. Then, I will have 2, count 'em, TWO finishes!! Mwah ha ha.
What I haven't yet told you is this: Robert Downey Jr. kicks some serious butt (and leaves me somewhat weak in the knees) in Sherlock Holmes. I saw it with my QFF Andrea and T last night. Guy Ritchie has a winner with this one. The sets, costumes, acting, dialogue, lighting, score...all brilliant. Go see it!

Eenie, Meenie, Mienie, Moe

Proper spelling of mienie notwithstanding, I'm having trouble choosing today. Retreat is only 2 sleeps away and I should be gathering projects and supplies to FINISH projects, but I cannot seem to avoid pulling fabric from my stash that I could use to START projects. A couple of days ago, I signed up for Jacquie's Joy in the New Year UFO challenge (see button on my sidebar), pledging to complete 2 of my unquilted tops. I even donated a thread catcher to the prize pool hoping it will help keep me accountable. Does anyone else seem to stall at the quilting phase? I have so many unquilted tops!

One project I will need to start soon is my Fall Quilt Swap. So, with something leafy in mind, I pulled these:

This will be my first online swap, so I want to do a good job! I've been spying on my partner and it's hard to get a read on her quilting tastes...I do have a plan for a little surprise based on her blog and heritage, though. Supplies for that are en route from far away. For now, I've got these to ponder, and possibly cut into, over the weekend.

Don't forget to leave a comment here by Sunday night if you'd like a chance to win my Thread Management give away!