75th Birthday Gratitude and What Makes Me Happy

Today I am 75.  This morning’s 4 mile walk was great. The weather is gorgeous - we’re heading into my favorite time of the year.  Next week we’re taking a river cruise out of NYC up the Hudson River.  And I live in a neighborhood where people have money to decorate in style!  Note:  These things that make me happy are listed below but not necessarily in order of importance.  

Newish guild member Janette wound up with a lot of cork fabric and has shared it. Cork is expensive.  I like it but don't often buy it.  When we were in Portugal (home of cork) I asked our tour operator and also our driver if we could stop at a cork factory.  They both said no.  But here comes Janette with these lovely bolts!  She came over and we played cork one day.  But there is so much left. We have a guild retreat in early November - I'm planning on taking cork, perhaps even already cut out for pencil cases, like the one in navy to the left.

Below is a picture of my beloved working away at the dining room table.  Not only does John make me happy, this whole room does too!  

Making purses for Sew Powerful and their menstrual hygiene education program makes me incredibly happy.  I love using quilt leftovers for these purses as well as some terrific feature fabrics.  I have 19 here that I'm about to ship.  I have three more started on my design wall and hope to add those to this shipment.

Sometimes I am happiest when I am planning quilts.  Look at this pile below.  Lots of greens and teals and perhaps some blues.  The current plan is to cut out shells for a glam clam design.  I say current plan because it is a lot of fiddly work.  I find it hard to use a rotary cutter for these pieces, and also hand piecing works best for me for these kinds of curves.  I made one once before and loved it.  One of my Quilty friends has it in her house.  

Of course I love my studio - that's a given.  But what I really love are my work tables.  They are on casters so I can reconfigure the room at whim.  And the storage under the tables helps me keep things organized and within reach.  Each table is 35" x 60".  I paid a small fortune to have them deconstructed from the LaGrange studio where they were built and then rebuilt here - worth every penny.  

I am fully aware of how geeky what I'm about to say next is:  new purse/bag patterns make me very happy.  VERY HAPPY.  This pattern is Bohemian Carpet Bag by Sew Liberated.  There is a metal frame that allows the bag to open completely.  See the second picture.  While I love the grey one, I especially love the other two, both made with fabrics by Seth Apter.  With the grey and the greenish one, I used cork for the corner parts.  With the grey one, I used a suede-ish sort of fabric for the straps.  The beauty of the pattern is that it's simple.  The hardest part of all these of these projects was taking apart the metal frame and then reinserting the pins that hold the frame together.  A pair of pliers and a hammer were needed.  And I love the results!

I could go on and on about what's making me happy.  What I have here is not the entirety.  But its a start.  This quilt below has made me very happy and it still does every night as I hand-quilt it.  I've been at this one for about a month and will happily spend another month of 6 weeks to finish it.  Who is it for? I don't know.  Someone at some point will claim it.

Life is a mystery.  My brother Doug didn't make his 60th birthday.  And here I am 75, and John 85.  Today, right now, I am happy and healthy and productive.  And so thankful. 

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

 

                  Scraps! Outliving my stash! What was I thinking? A color shift!

I do have so many scraps.  And they get to me.  I’ve got to use them.  The above quilt?  All leftovers from some precut charm packs   The sashing is leftover from a quilt backing.  There’s greys and beiges.  The on point setting makes it kind of interesting.  It’s 60” x 72.”  Pin basted and reading for quilting.  The back is all leftover neutral odd bits.

This is a scrap quilt from leftover Seth Apter fabrics.  I’m about to finish hand quilting it.  And I feel good about using all these leftover small bits.  

This cartoon has nothing to do with anything,  except it by my favorite cartoonist, Roz Chast.  And it does sum up how I feel about summer.  Heading into the fall makes me so happy.  

As evidenced by my gravitation to Seth Apter fabrics and teals and blues and moody greens, there’s a shift in my preferred colors happening. Which definitely excites me.  Except I have so much black and black and white fabrics.  What was I thinking when I bought so much of these?  A quilt at the end of this post partially answers that question.  Like with the scrap quilt at the beginning of this post, this one is also from scraps of 5”charm packs.  Leftover blacks provide all the sashing.  If you look closely, you’ll see the variations.   

And in true spirit of my scraps, the back is from various black and white fabrics that I haven’t used so far and definitely won’t.  

Does all this mean I’m not buying fabric?  Ha!  Don’t be silly.  Below is a collection of fabrics for my next quilt.  I think I’m going to do a big glam clam - not sure.  But meanwhile I pet this pile of fabrics and continue to ponder…

And last, my bed currenty sports a quilt I made during my love affair with black and white.  It wasn’t a favorite when I made it.  I even had it long-armed.  And over the years it’s grown on me.  But still, I’m done with black and white. For now. 

What’s amusing me…

Is this gorgeous or what? 

 

The quilt top above was such a fun one to put together.  And it was a free pattern from Art Gallery Studios - Pacifica.  I used my current fabric line crush from Seth Apter along with some other fabrics from my stash.  And I am in love with how it turned out.  Since I love touching these fabrics so much, I used up as much as I could from the leftovers for Sew Powerful purses.  And I think these purses are gorgeous.  

My little scrap horizontal blues took on a whole different look with the wavy quilting, and I really like how this turned out, too. 

And getting these 22 purses mailed off also pleased me greatly.  Sew Powerful has partnered with the Give Back Box program, making shipping a flat $20 rate regardless of weight.  I bet I’ve saved over $200 in postage!  

An Ending and a Beginning - with some purses and some meanwhiles

 

Sometimes the backs of my quilts are as pretty as the fronts.  As I put the last of the hand quilting stitches into my Seth Apter quilt,  I marveled at how much I enjoyed working on this quilt, both the construction of the top and the hand quilting. This pattern was a fun one to do.  I bought a roll of Seth Apter scraps, which was perfect for this project. 

But as I finished the above top, I still had more scraps.  And this improv quilt top made the most of the scraps,  it is pin basted and waiting for quilting,  I think I know what I want to do….   Meanwhile I do have purses on design wall (see last photo) I will soon have a mailing of 20 and need to get those off so I can focus on the September sew-a-thom for Sew Powerful.  Soon I’ll put the following on my FB page.

  

Meanwhile, I’ve been waiting to dive into this scrappy horizontal blue and white quilt top.  Because it’s so linear, I a, trying to quilt waves.  So far I like where this is headed. 

Last, I have an idea for my next quilt.  The pattern is a good one, but so much depends on fabric placement,  I have my pull, sort of.  And I will now puzzle order and placement.  

A New Fika Tote

Is this bag sweet or what?  It is a Fika Tote by Noodlehead.  It's 18' wide and 15' deep.  One side has two patch pockets.  The other side has a large zippered pocket, perfect for a notebook or papers. The inside has a series of pockets as well.  

The biggest success of this bag are the two double-headed zippers, aka purse zippers.  Despite having yards of zipper tape and various zipper pulls, I always buy these zippers.  But this time I figured out how to do the double headed thing!  It involves offsetting the two sides of the zipper tape.  

The design wall holds all the leftover bits from the quilt I've been working on as well as from the Fika Tote.  I've started playing with these scraps.  To what end?  I'm not sure.  I'm just sort of goofing around and improving.  Here's what I have so far:

To be continued...

Scraps, Purses, New/Old Projects

So much sewing.  But space has been limited.  The studio has been housing some overnight guests, one for two weeks, but all is back to normal again.  Because space was limited I worked with what I could get to:  scraps.  

These four purses for Sew Powerful are from great niece Cassidy's shower quilt.  And the one in the left corner is from Sam's quilt.

The two below?  again, favorite scraps.  That's the last of the Periodic Table fabric.  I used a lot of that for masks.

 These four dotty sisters have some of my favorite fabric for the flaps.  And this fabric allows me to use almost anything for the body, lining, and straps.

In the previous blog post I mentioned my new favorite fabric designer Seth Apter.  The picture above is leftover from a quilt I'm working on. That quilt is at the bottom of this post, and I am halfway through hand-quilting it.  These leftovers are going to be something.  I just don't know what.  And I keep adding additional scraps to the design wall.  For me?  This is great fun!

My SIL in Florida was wanting a baby quilt.  The above is what I came up with using blue scraps and low volume scraps (are you sensing a theme about scraps?). She decided on a different quilt, so this one - its 48' x 60" has been languishing.  Well, no more.  I frankenbatted a batting and found a bed sheet that is the perfect shade of blue for the back.  Now it is all pin-basted and will be my next hand project.  I think I'll use a dark thread and try for something wavy.  We'll see...

But the urge to make purses and bags is so strong.  Using my favorite fabrics I am making this Fika Tote.  Its a great pattern.  I've made maybe five of them so far.  And I may actually keep this one!

As I was working on my stepdaughter's bed quilt I commented to her that I loved her quilt.  And she said I say that about all of my quilts.  Well, not quite.  This one above?  I thought I was going to love it, but as it came together, my eye told me something was wrong. Is it that green-ish limey yellow?  are those grays throwing it off?  I thought of my grandson Sam as I was making this.  While I do love Sam, I don't love this quilt.  However, perhaps this is my saving grace:  Sam is colorblind.  

Fabric Crushes

 I have had four distinct fabric crushes, and I’m always surprised when I find something I love so much.  The first was from a Bonnie .Christine AGF line, “Hello, Bear.”  

The second was fabrics from Marcia Derse.

And then I discovered Janet Clare and her Wordsmith line.  Like the other two so far, these fabrics are now out of print.  

And now I’ve discovered Seth Apter and his line Storyteller.  His fabrics have a collage-ish look with muted colors.  (Note:  I almost included e bond  in this post.  Her first line was Glyphs with the most interesting mostly black and white prints.  But now she’s gone waaay too colorful). Let’s see how long this crush lasts! 

Houston, we have a problem…

 These are all recently-finished quilt tops.  And I want to hand quilt each of them.  But it’s getting warm - not the time of the year to be sitting under quilts as I stitch.  

This old yellow and black top is odd.  I like it, but I’m not sure who else will.  I’m thinking grandson Sam is ready for a new quilt.  Maybe he’ll like it.

This quilt features a lot of Seth Apter fabrics.  And i love this pattern.  There’s enough of the background fabric to back it with.  But I’m not sure.  Tbd…

I’m actually thinking of machine-quilting this one - it lends itself to straight-line quilting,  With the imminent arrival of the double brood of cicadas combined with where we live - in the middle of an established tree haven - I think it’s going to be an indoor summer.    Maybe I can quilt these after all!