Unscripted Bee Blocks

gosh, i'm awfully behind with posting!

the majority of these blocks were made or completed in august, after the map was finished. i'd gotten a bit behind for july blocks, but in addition to that, several folks from the Unscripted Bee sent out their fabric at the same time, so i had a nice little stack of projects waiting for me.



Cynthia's block was finished it earlier in the summer, but of course, i haven't blogged it yet.

Cynthia's a huge fan of Paris (she's even designed fabric inspired by it!), so she asked us to use Elizabeth Hartman's Mod Mosaic tutorial to make blocks that looked like a map of Paris, with the white strips standing in as "streets", jutting out in all directions. She'd been collecting Paris themed fabric for awhile, so she sent us all some scraps of it, along with coordinating prints.



aren't the fabrics she chose fun? i LOVE the buttons piece on the upper right! my block ended up fairly straight, without many angles in it - so i guess it doesn't look that much like a map of Paris, the streets there look like a nightmare! unsurprisingly, i was worried about running out of fabric, and i didn't want to waste fabric by cutting it wonky.

Cynthia also asked us to make a small improv block for the back of her quilt, so i used my last little pieces for the following -



see that eensy bit of white in the top right corner? that was ALL i had left!



Jody's block was a fairly simple improv block, perfect for getting back into the swing of things after the map quilt! Jody sent out a selection of solids in blues, greens, greys and white, and asked us to make a block using Bumble Beans Inc (Victoria Findlay Wolfe)'s "Waverunner Quilt" tutorial.



as usual, i ran out of fabric. i was supposed to make a block 10"x20", and i ALMOST made it! i think it ended up being 19" long or so. i really really love how the block turned out, and i think it's going to be a stunning quilt, but i totally didn't find it as easy as the tutorial led me to believe!

the tutorial tells you to cut your strips with wavy edges, then line them up to sew them regardless of matching curves. you're supposed to be able to press them flat if you use steam. i don't know if my curves weren't slight enough or what, but there were several spots where it didn't matter how much i steamed the block, it just wasn't going to flatten. i worked it out by going back in and sewing along the fold line, where the fabric wanted the seam to be, so it wasn't a big deal, but it was interesting. i also really love the little bits of scraps that i used to bring the block closer to size, similar to what the original quilt uses.



and finally, Nicole's blocks! i started these so long ago... i ran out of background fabric for these, and then i totally lost steam while waiting for more to arrive. i eventually finished up the words, but i was so stalled on the additional improv blocks to go along with them, it took me forever to get everything finished up and sent out.

Nicole asked everyone to make a block with their favourite word in it. she sent us all different bundles of fabric, but we all had the same background fabric, and a small piece of the Kaffe Fassett fabric that inspired her overall colour scheme for the quilt. she told us to make the blocks any size we wanted, but to please include the Kaffe Fassett fabric in our word somewhere.

i was super excited about her blocks, because i'd been doing a lot of pieced lettering at the time (no, of course i haven't blogged that yet...). i gave Nicole a list of favourite words, including some 20s slang that i adore, and she chose the word kerfuffle.

i started working on the block, but fairly early on i realized that a) i didn't like the K that i'd made, especially with the other letters, and b) the orange fabrics weren't melding with the pinks and creams very well, and since i was using one print per letter, it was VERY obvious!

so then that led to me making two word blocks....






(final size of the block - 38" x 10.5")


and then in the orange fabrics,


(final size of the block - 21" x 9")

it actually worked out perfectly, because we've been using the word "keen" a lot in the bee - some members of the bee are total keeners, getting their blocks done super quick!

and as for the improv blocks that messed me up - i made three, one of which i turned into a signature block. i love the fabric combination on the largest block, but i like the technique i used on the orange one, it was fun to do. i also had the improv block that Lysa made, because she didn't like how it turned out, but i wasn't inspired by it either. i ended up sending it to Nicole as-is, i'm sorry Lysa!




and that is the end of the Unscripted Bee blocks!


except, of course, my blocks.... which is a whole other post!

Grey Grey Grey.

i've been obsessed with grey lately, which is killing me, really, because i can't use the term "shades of grey" without thinking of craptastic mommy porn.


it's funny because i've never been a big fan of grey, i actually refused to use kona medium grey for ages because i felt like it was sooo overdone within modern quilting.


but then i worked with grey fabric for Lysa's scrappy circle bee blocks, and then again for Cynthia's heart bee blocks, and i fell in love.


in the late spring i picked up a bunch of grey prints to use for my map quilt. i ended up not using them, but it was a great start to my grey stash. meanwhile, i went out and got a bunch of grey solids, which i did use for my map, and also used for the Age Not Attitude tote, for a pouch, for my Barb Mortell class, and for at least two other projects that i haven't gotten around to blogging yet. it's gotten to the point that everytime i go to the fabric store, i get made fun of for my constant grey search.


i've been dreaming about grey linen, which i haven't been able to find in the shade that i'm picturing... and i've been obsessing over the sad fact that i'd used every single scrap of Sherbet Pips in my strip quilts, and hadn't left myself any of the grey with white square/dots for my stash. i was seriously considering ripping some out of the baby strip quilt that i haven't quilted yet, i wanted some so bad! luckily, i found some on etsy, so now i'm just waiting impatiently for it to arrive.


random note - i think different spellings of grey signify different colours. is that weird? when i see the spelling "gray", i picture a warm gray, with a bit of a brown undertone, and when i see the spelling "grey", i picture a cool grey, sometimes with a bit of a silverish or blue undertone. can you guess which shade i prefer? i've never been a big brown fan!


so, given my new-found love of grey, i was super excited when i opened up my package for Cheryl's Unscripted Bee Block and found grey! Cheryl sent out bundles of fabric and a large paper hexagon and asked us to piece together the scraps to make a block the size of the template. she left it up to us how we wanted to sew the block, and i got it in my head to try something i'd been thinking of for ages, a hexagon made up of triangular log cabins. i folded her template up and made myself a pattern for the triangles, and they actually went together much easier than i'd expected.



as usual, i ran out of fabric. it's happened pretty much every month! apparently i use up more fabric with my propensity for complicated blocks. i messaged Cheryl and got her go-ahead to add my own fabric, since i had some grey in my stash already. of course, i still needed to go shopping for more....



within the package Cheryl sent, there were a few different shades of grey (and gray!). i really loved the stripes, but i was having a hard time pulling the warm shades in with all the other cooler greys. luckily i found this herringbone fabric when i went shopping, along with a few others, and that really fit them together. this block made me appreciate the warmer grays more, though i'm still loyal to the grey-grey that i love!



for my signature block, i wanted to echo the hexagons that will make up the front of the quilt, so i started with a hexie and added strips around it. i embroidered my name, again using the FriXion pen to write my name first. the white marks will wash out, but they're still annoying.


in addition to all of the bee blocks that i've been working on, i really wanted to sew up a few blocks for the VMQG july challenge, because i was too busy to do some of the challenges in may and june. and since the challenge was to make improv blocks with grey and black solids, it wasn't particularly a hardship!



i just used scraps for these, because as usual, i couldn't find my yardage of black kona (there's a black pit in my house that eats it, i think), so they ended up with more grey than black, but i think that's cool. the inspiration quilt has a good variety of darker and lighter blocks, so it works.




i have yet more bee blocks to post, but i'll do those another day. i told you i had a backlog of things to post!



in other news, cross your fingers for me that i'll get into the classes i want for QuiltCon!

due to a giant clusterf*ck (aka some sort of system error), their website refused my registration at least 4 or 5 times, but told me that it was my credit card's fault, and by the time i finally got off the phone with my bank and realized that the problem was the site, not my credit card, i was practically hysterical. (i was also super sleep deprived because i got up HELLA EARLY to register, and i'd been up late stressing about registering, so i was a bit over-emotional!) through my tears i discovered that two of the three workshops i wanted were waitlisted - though they'd still been available when i tried to register at 7:03am.

i e-mailed quiltcon, there were some tweets back and forth, and then i got an e-mail that they're looking into it, but of course, we just had the long weekend, so i won't hear anything more until tomorrow at the latest. i saw other folks tweeting about problems as well, so i'm not sure what they're gonna do!

it would really suck to have registered for a class, and then be told that they're removing you because of a system glitch, but it also really sucks to not get the classes you wanted, even though they were available when you tried to register! i'm hoping that they'll put the people who got the system errors at the top of the waitlists or something, that seems like the fairest option.

are you going to Quiltcon? did you get the workshops you were hoping for?

Fab Bee Blocks

thanks for all the love for my map quilt guys!


i'm really happy that i finally blogged it, cause i got to show you all the awesome photos, but also because i have SO MANY THINGS to blog, i need to start getting caught up!


such as bee blocks! i have so many to blog about!


first up, the Fab Bee, which is mostly made up of local people that i knew before the bee started, but also includes a few further away who i've gotten to know since.


Holly was the queen bee for May, and she stuck with neutrals for her block, which i surprised myself by loving! she sent us each a bundle of seven neutral fabrics, along with a teensy bit of solid coloured fabric, one colour for each of us. she also made a pinterest board of neutral quilts that inspired her - i'm sure they'll inspire you too!

remember the "It's Not About Age, It's About Attitude" tote that i made awhile ago? i made it right after i made Holly's block, you can totally see the similarities.





Holly even sent along embroidery floss that matched the accent colour in each of her blocks! she's so amazingly organized! i am less organized though, and didn't manage to get a picture of my signature block after i finished the embroidery...


Barb and Holly were apparently thinking alike, because she planned to do neutrals in June as well! for her block she wanted us to work with stripes, and asked us not to use a ruler for cutting, to just use our scissors. i think some of us were scared!



though most of the fabric that Barb sent were dyed solids, one of them was a neutral print, and i reversed some pieces of it to add a little bit more visual interest to my blocks.



after i finished the one big block, i sewed together all of my leftovers to make her a few littler blocks as well.


Darlene went back and forth, but eventually decided to have us make Stacked Book Blocks, cause they're her favourite. she made a pinterest board full of blocks that she loved (along with a few of her other options), and sent us a big bundle of fabrics that just screamed DARLENE as soon as you opened them!



can you guess which fabrics i added? there were two!

her block felt so simple compared to the others i've done for this bee (such as Cynthia's heart blocks!), so i decided to add a little bit of embroidery as a secret little message for her. i put it on the very top piece of the block, so that she could remove it and put it somewhere else if she liked.



it's very tiny! i used two strands of 50wt(ish) sewing thread to embroider it.



i used a Pilot FriXion pen to draw on my letters, so you can kind of see the white marks it left under my embroidery, hopefully that'll wash out after Darlene finishes the quilt.



Ellen (who doesn't have a blog, amazingly) left her month super open, just asking us to make blocks with an owl, however we wanted. she sent us a bundle of prints along with a navy blue solid for the background, and let us do our own thing. i was originally thinking that i'd paperpiece an owl, perhaps using Sonja's Easy Peeping Owl pattern that i sewed a long time ago, but then Sonja went and did a talk at the August FVMQG meeting, along with her patterns, and a few other people dibsed her owls first!

after i learned that, i thought about drafting my owl paperpiecing pattern, but i let it mull around in my brain for a little bit. then i had a brainstorm! i made up a sample to test my idea (which i'll blog separately, cause i LOVE it!) and then went full force into owl-mania.



after i made the first one, i couldn't stop, and i still had fabric that i hadn't used, so i made two smaller owls as well.


(i used a ton of starch on the eyes, but that'll wash out! that's why they look like they have marks on them, etc)

the owls use a whole list of techniques, which makes me super happy for some reason. they've got half square triangles (HSTs), 3D flying geese, improv curves, a prairie point (also known as a burr or a pinecone), and applique circles. i'm already planning more!



i'm all caught up with this bee, thank goodness, and i received the fabric for the September block from Berene last week. i'm very excited to get going on it!

WIP Wednesday - Maker Faire, Improv Patchwork and Queer Art

hello blogland!

can you believe that it's JULY already? i totally can't believe it. if it weren't for the fact that we're finally, finally, getting some summer-like weather, i'd be convinced that it was only march or april.

but i know it's not march or april, because march and april weren't nearly as busy as june and july have turned out to be.

i last posted the night of the VMQG 2nd anniversary party, but the busyness didn't end there. the weekend directly after our anniversary, the VMQG had a booth at Vancouver's Mini Maker Faire. it was awesome!

in my oh-so-humble opinion, we totally had the best booth there. it was much bigger than last year, so we had two areas, one on the left for our hands-on project, and one on the right for demonstrations. in the centre we had a rack with quilts in varying stages of completion, and hung our oh-so-awesome banner above it. (Arita fixed the banner, and ohmygoodness it looks so much better now!)








i talked to SO MANY people! it was wonderful. i talked to folks about quilting, about the MQG movement, my opinions on things like the Go! Baby, different sewing machine feet, rotary cutters, where to buy fabric and where to get your machine serviced, all sorts of things. i also taught lots of people, including lots of little kids, how to embroider, and demonstrated churndash blocks on both days. i had the chance to chat with guild members during the slow times, and just overall had a pretty fabulous weekend.



after Maker Faire, i was basically a zombie for a few weeks. i was just DONE, you know? i puttered around, went to things that i had to go to, but really just went through the motions. i went to a class on free-motion quilting a few weeks ago, which Lysa blogged about, and then last weekend i went to a wonderful workshop by Barb Mortell about improv patchwork.

it was a fairly large class, so there were so many different projects being made! it was really neat to see people's personalities come out in their fabric and design choices.


by Carol

by Kat

by Sherri

by Vera

(i don't remember whose this was, but i love it so much!)

i didn't get a decent pic of Cynthia's project, but she's blogged about the class, including her WIP, so you should go see!


this is my project. i LOVE the fabrics that i'm using, i picked them up a few days before the class because i didn't have the energy to dig through my stash and find stuff to take. i'd bought the blue cotton earlier in the week for a different project, and i'd really loved the visual texture of it, so i took it back with me and found fabrics to match. i ignored the fabric weights, and just concentrated on the colours i wanted and choosing natural fibres that could be pressed at the same temp, so i ended up with a bit of a variety. the medium weight blue cotton, a lightweight grey cotton twill, a quilting weight pink cotton, and a garment weight green linen.



this is as far as i got, and i pinned the pieces onto the design wall and folded it all up to bring home.

i'm DYING to work on this project! i think it's going to be amazing when it's finished, and i might even do some hand quilting on it.



but i'm being a responsible grown up, and sticking with the project that's been occupying my brain and sewing time for the past few weeks, my large piece for this year's Queer Arts Festival Curated Art Exhibition. last year's piece is HERE, and my 2010 pieces are linked HERE (2010 pieces are totally NSFW!) (also, check out the page about me on the QAF website!

i think my projects are getting more and more complex as time goes on. last year's was definitely more complex than 2010, and this year's piece is completely ridiculous. every single person that i've explained this project to has basically said "wtf amy, you're out of your mind"

but it's going to be AWESOME! i'm so excited about it.



i have about 2 weeks left to get it finished. cross your fingers for me!



in other news.... in addition to regular fibro stuff, i occasionally get pain in a specific joint due to an injury when i was a kid. it usually only happens with very cold weather, but oddly, i've been feeling it a lot lately. and one day i randomly found myself saying to someone, "oh, it's just from a snowmobile accident when i was a kid". seriously, a snowmobile accident? i am so bloody canadian!



i'm linking up to WIP Wednesday at The Needle And Thread Network, but not Freshly Pieced, cause i missed the deadline. whoops!

Happy Birthday VMQG!

tonight was VMQG's 2nd anniversary meeting.

it's really hard to believe that it's been 2 years. i feel like i've grown so much creatively since the guild started. when i went to the first meeting in june of 2010, i hadn't made a quilt in YEARS. now it's all i can think about, my wardrobe is severaly lacking because i can't stop with the patchwork and quilting long enough to sew up the tights that i cut out in the spring of 2010, or alter a few skirts. i haven't really done any mixed media in that time frame either, and while i miss it, i obviously don't miss it enough to take time away from my current passion!


i'm not going to start gushing about how awesome my guilds are again, don't worry. i'm too tired for that anyway!


but i thought i'd share a few pictures before i take myself off to bed.




Heather baked and iced almost 50 cupcakes in colours that related to our logo. how amazing is that? (there were green ones too, that didn't fit in the picture.)



and i made cupcake toppers this afternoon, some with our logo, some with the number 2 in our colours. they turned out so cute!

(Carol took a much better picture!)


we had a more social meeting than usual, with an icebreaker, an extra long break and lots of chatting afterwards. it was so nice to talk to so many people. there was much laughter, as is usual for our meetings, along with lots of inspirational show and tell, and awesome prizes.


folks were so amazingly generous with door prizes! at our first anniversary, we decided that we wanted to send everyone at the meeting home with a door prize, kind of a "birthday present" for everyone who helped us celebrate. we did that again this year, and it was fabulous. we had at least 40 people at the meeting, and we still had extra prizes!









i brought the red button pouch that i posted a few weeks ago, and finished up this grey one as well, using leftovers from the UT tote. we're all pouch crazy these days!







all in all, it was an awesome evening. and i'm definitely sleeping in tomorrow!

Urban Threads Love - the one where amy can't follow instructions

i'm really bad about blogging machine embroidery projects, mostly because i usually do pretty simple ones. take a towel and embroider a design on it? boring! usually i only bother to blog if it's a design i digitized myself, or if it's part of a larger project. and let's be honest - there are so many projects that i haven't gotten around to blogging, embroidery or not!


so you may not have heard me rave about an embroidery design company that i'm a big fan of, Urban Threads. they just had their 4th anniversary, and i'm pretty proud to say that i've been a big fan for almost that long. they make high quality machine embroidery, hand embroidery and digital stock art designs that cover a huge spectrum, but generally tend to be things that you won't find from most machine embroidery companies. skulls, roller derby, geeky, trendy, steampunk, etc, etc.


a little while ago, UT announced a new contest, using a free design that they're offering on their site. they always have at least one free design, and they have contests all the time, but i especially liked the thought behind this one. people tend to think that their customers are all young people, because they make really funky designs, but their customers actually range in age quite dramatically. they have a huge following among funky grandmas! so this design states "It's not about Age, it's about Attitude", and they've asked people to embroider it, take a picture of themselves holding it, and submit it, along with their age.



i've been thinking about modern quilting a lot lately, and about how awesome my guilds are, so i naturally started thinking about how the design was perfect for modern quilters. i think one thing modern quilters have in common is that they don't always feel welcome in more traditional guilds, and that really boils down to different perspective, or attitudes. i really love how both of my guilds have such a great variety of ages and experience levels!


i decided to take the design and make a totebag out of it. i was originally thinking that it would be a fabulous door prize, but my mom has already claimed the bag - sorry guys!


for one side, i stitched out the design onto grey twill in three shades of grey thread. then i added a slightly wonky log cabin around it, in different grey solids (all kona, fyi).



for the other side, i wanted to make a modern block, so i improv pieced a rectangle.



i pieced both sides until they were 13.5" wide, then joined them together into a long strip about 31" long. i folded that strip in half, sewed up the sides and boxed the corners. the bag ended up being about 13" tall, 9.5" wide and 3" deep.



i decided to add a pocket, because apparently all tote bags need pockets. i had this strip of pieced scraps that i'd trimmed from the outside, so i incorporated it into the pocket as well.



the straps are quite long, because i thought the straps were too short on the last tote that i made. i generally carry totes in addition to my purse, so i prefer it if they hang a bit lower. you can see here the difference in length between the two totes.




i had the bag finished in plenty of time for the contest. i even had my mom take a picture of me with the bag, in plenty of time.



but then i realized that i was supposed to be doing the rocker hand or a thumbs up in picture. so i asked the fabulous Carol to take a picture of me and the bag at the last FVMQG meeting. except that i somehow thought that i was supposed to make a peace sign in the photo.

urgh! and the ridiculous thing is that as she was taking the picture, i was thinking "god, i feel like a tourist. i wish i could just do a thumbs up or something" gah!



now i have this awesome picture that Carol took, but i still didn't have a picture for the contest.



so here's a less exciting picture that i took this afternoon, complete with the dirty railing of my patio. i probably should've washed that......




in other news, the goal for tonight was to get caught up on e-mails, blog comments, etc, but i've just been informed that someone is coming first thing in the morning to tear up my kitchen floor (remember how it flooded back in november? i hate my strata), so i'll be clearing out the kitchen tonight instead.

so that goal has been moved to tomorrow, since i'm assuming i'll be stuck at home supervising anyway. if i owe you a reply, and you haven't gotten one by tomorrow evening, please nag me about it! i'm not ignoring you, i promise, i just get distracted and/or overwhelmed and then it get buried in my inbox.