I had a terrific time with my blogging buddies in Long Beach, California!
The picture below is dark, sorry....but there are
Barbara, me,
Debra, and
Rian, about to be served our lunch after a long morning at the show for them, and in class for me. We cleaned our plates, let me assure you....
Our time together was everything I knew it would be...so full of easy and stimulating friendship, lots of stitching talk, and late night storytelling in our pajamas, all of us sharing one big hotel room. What a great gift, for us bloggers to get to spend time together...
I only had one class with
Paula Scaffidi, a mere three hours, but it would have been worth the entire trip to Long Beach just for that.
Entitled "Luscious Fruit", the workshop taught how to create three-dimensionally shaded felted fruits, for applique or needlefelting onto textile projects (could be wearables, too, as these items were constructed to be washable).
I am an ethical blogger, so will not post step by step pictures of how I made my fruit...Paula worked hard to put together a class that was just aces....and she deserves to be paid for her great information.
Visit her website to see pictures of the incredible work she does.
I will say that one of the reasons her presentation was so strong was that she made optimal use of her PowerPoint capabilities. As we went through the steps of creating our fruits, she would tell her helper, "Lights down!" and present clear sequential pictures on a big screen of the technique she wanted us to learn next. She even had videos embedded in the Powerpoint that showed her
doing what we were supposed to do...again, these were perfectly in sequence so that the class just flowed.
I truly think the efficiency this gave us all allowed her to present much more content than a normal 3 hour class.
Here is a sample screen shot I took from my seat. This shows how to lay out our roving to make a more rounded looking shape.
When a question came up, she had her flipboard all ready to illustrate her answers.
And here is my class project, after 3 hours....
The piece of inner brocade background is 9" X 12", to give you an idea of the scale and size. My little cherries don't have their stems yet, and I need some more velvet leaves.....
I can't wait to finish this!
Paula says she has a book coming out next year, and she intends to include a DVD with it that will illustrate her techniques the way she used videos in class. This is so innovative, don't you think? Her book will set the standard for needlefelting, of this I have no doubt.
Thank you, Paula!
Speaking of standard-setting books, on the flights down and then back home, I had the enjoyment of reading
Cindy Brick's new one,
Crazy Quilts: History, Techniques, Embroidery Motifs. (It is available on Amazon, but the first printing is almost sold out. A second printing is due to ship by mid-August. You can order it from her website, of course, which is actually better because I think she gets more profit that way!)
I found it to be a very classy production. It is informative, written in an engaging style, and with lots of pictures of wonderful quilts. The printing and production of the book itself is of very high quality. Cindy includes some new techniques to try when making your own crazy quilt, as well as the tried and true traditional methods.
There will be more about this book in an upcoming review in
CQMagOnline.
From my reading I felt much more informed about what I was looking at when Debra, Rian and I happened upon a very fine pile of crazy quilts from the 1880's at a vendor's booth. I was allowed to take some pictures of my favorite CQ element...fans!
I love how narrow these fan blades are. These are the exact same colors I used for the fans in my "H" quilt....I was going for this look, as you can see:
Pretty cool that I actually got that right!
Here are some more of the fans from that quilt in the booth....
So nice....
And here is a detail shot....
I include this because it shows how the stitcher very cleverly solved a big problem with these narrow-bladed fans. The seam treatments get really smashed into each other in the little round corner, because of course the seams are so close together there.
Look what this lady did: she provides stitching detail on the seams, but it is not continuous. The eye reads it as such, but really there are just dots and singly spaced Turkey Track stitches that
suggest lines of stitching.
I'm going to remember that one...
But what of the quilts hanging in the show?
Alas, what was there was pretty much a retread of what won in Chicago and Houston, with a TON of journal quilt pages on display. The same art quilt exhibit from Studio Art Quilt Associates, the same Tactile Architecture quilts, the same almost everything. Not that there wasn't some outstanding work there, but overall I found this rehash quite disappointing.
But between hanging with my good buddies, studying with Paula, reading Cindy's book and also getting some quality time with my father-in-law while staying with him in Manhattan Beach last night....it was a terrific trip.
Always good to be home, though!
Let's hope they do better next year and include a competition.
Here is a detail shot of the edge of the center block.
And here is the whole block in place.
It is called "Dove"...and I am going to see if I can make something inspired by it for the center. Isn't it beautiful?
...and here are me and Matt regressing at Multnomah Falls....
Our time together was everything I knew it would be...so full of easy and stimulating friendship, lots of stitching talk, and late night storytelling in our pajamas, all of us sharing one big hotel room. What a great gift, for us bloggers to get to spend time together...
Here is a sample screen shot I took from my seat. This shows how to lay out our roving to make a more rounded looking shape.
When a question came up, she had her flipboard all ready to illustrate her answers.
The piece of inner brocade background is 9" X 12", to give you an idea of the scale and size. My little cherries don't have their stems yet, and I need some more velvet leaves.....
Speaking of standard-setting books, on the flights down and then back home, I had the enjoyment of reading Cindy Brick's new one, Crazy Quilts: History, Techniques, Embroidery Motifs. (It is available on Amazon, but the first printing is almost sold out. A second printing is due to ship by mid-August. You can order it from her website, of course, which is actually better because I think she gets more profit that way!)
I love how narrow these fan blades are. These are the exact same colors I used for the fans in my "H" quilt....I was going for this look, as you can see:
Pretty cool that I actually got that right!
So nice....
And here is a detail shot....
I include this because it shows how the stitcher very cleverly solved a big problem with these narrow-bladed fans. The seam treatments get really smashed into each other in the little round corner, because of course the seams are so close together there.
This is the drawing of the block, on freezer paper. I wanted the lines to suggest plant growth.
I traced the design onto muslin using a light box. I should add that I redid this using water soluable ink on a different piece of fabric....as I didn't want any permanent pencil lines that might show through all the white fancy fabrics I planned to use.
I traced each patch with Golden Threads quilting paper. The line marked is the sewing line.
Can you see how I was able to center the motif on the fabric within the patch, by seeing through the tracing paper?
All the patches are cut out. Notice I leave a huge amount of extra fabric around the edges. This is because I am not counting on 100% accuracy when I start sewing, and I need some wiggle room.
To mark my seam lines, I machine basted right on the seam line, through the paper and the fabric patch.
Then I tore the paper away.
I decided which order to sew my patches onto the foundation muslin and began my usual flip and sew method. I lined up the lines of the basting stitches to get my seam lines, sewed along them, and then pulled them out after my seam was completed.
After I checked to make sure the seam was o.k., I trimmed off the excess before flipping and ironing it flat.
The edges of these patches look sloppy, but the basted (or marked) seam lines enabled me to line everything up just fine.
Sometimes I would have to join two patches before joining that unit onto the block, sewing it down as one piece.
Like this!
More seam trimming....
See how that seam in the center reads as one continuous curve arching up and to the right?
And here is the whole block.
And here it is in place.
The upper left arc....
...and the upper right.
The lower right arc....
...and the lower left.
Lavender and "Super Wave" petunias, about to dive over the wall..
Hydrangea, stock, miniature roses, chives, digitalis, Russian sage, tea rose, nicotiana, marigold, day lily..
The brassica corner! Broccoli and kale here, with New Zealand spinach below the kale. I read that brassica flowers attract beneficial insects to the garden, so I have let some of the broccoli go (those yellow flowers on the left). I must say, I have had zero aphids or white flies this year.
This is probably the glam shot of the whole series. You can see how the California poppies have taken over almost the whole path here. (They haven't opened up yet because it is early in the morning.) It is hard to see, but I have celery, dill, and coriander growing amidst the calendula, roses, borage, and lavender. Again, the herb flowers are bringing the good guys to the garden.
See those snapdragons on the left? Not blooming yet. I started those from seed last MARCH, and have been waiting and waiting and WAITING for them to get going already. The variety is "Heavenly White" (from Thompson and Morgan Seeds); they are supposed to smell great. I want them in the center of my Spring CQ, along with the other white flowers I have, some of which have also not bloomed yet, especially the phlox and michaelmas daisies. White cosmos, roses, and nicotiana will also go in the quilt's center.
My trusty bench, under the purple buddlea bush, which I have to keep whacking back.
I love these santolina "shrubs" (when I bought them years ago they were in 4 inch pots). They look like yellow polka dots to me. Nice how they are growing through the deer fence.
This is the border right in front of my house. (That's the garage in the background.)In the lower left is a wonderful hyssop plant..I have it right by the entryway because its pink flowers attract dive-bombing hummingbirds. Look, there's one now, in the upper right corner of the picture!
Come back, little guy!
This is the tape lace being attached with a cretan stitch...I got a lot of detail for very little work here.
This is how I got the tape lace to the back of the quilt...with a big honking needle...
...which I pulled through with pliers.
This is in the upper right corner of the inner section, and I'll be showing them going clockwise...
I just had to sneak that line of blue in there...
This is the lower right corner.
Center bottom....
Lower left corner....
There is a tiny bit of green stitching along two of the edge seams along the left. Several of the blocks have this. It is the only green seamwork in the whole quilt, outside of the four corners. It felt so good to use that green!
The upper left corner....
...and the middle top.
I really want this project to "read" as a crazy quilt, and that is why I tried to almost exaggerate the stitching on the seams between the patches here in the inner section, by making them big and simple. The way the quilt is laid out, really like a sane quilt with its color block type areas and nine patch center, and also the way the flowers go all over the place is not very crazy quilt-like. It is certainly not random. So I had to "make the point" here that it is very much a crazy quilt even so!