Not Just Another Pretty Face

The key is not to prioritize what's on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.
                                                            --- Stephen Covey

From the Vault - Autumn Kimono Quilt

We already looked at my Spring Kimono Quilt and Summer Kimono Quilt, both made in 2008.  I don't know why there was a seventeen-month gap in those posts.  Time sure does fly.

 

Here's my final one, Autumn Kimono Quilt.   All three of them were made from the Bargello Kimono quilt pattern by Castilleja Cotton.  

Autumn can be all red and orange and yellow and purple, but it can also be the subdued oranges and greys of a rainy day.  At any rate, I took my color palette from the border fabric.

The blacks in here make for a dramatic look.  A little color keeps it from being too dreary.

More color in the bottom, and a closer look at the background fabric.  For quilting, I stitched in the ditch on some of the columns, then did echo diagonal quilting on the background.  I did different quilting on each of the quilts.

Closer look at the focus fabric in the border.   For the binding, I used black fabric with tiny gold metallic dots.  You can sort of see it in the upper right and lower left.

 

The back.

 

The label.

Now I'm in the mood to make another one, after all.  Not winter, though.  I think it will be modern fabrics.  I have a friend that is going to make one of these kimono quilts some day.  I will if she will.  Maybe we should go fabric shopping together.

Monday is Fun Day - Oriental Lamp

Monday is the day we look at fun things I've collected from antique stores, flea markets, garage sales, or new items from good, old regular stores.  I decided I had way too many things that used to be fun when I first bought them, and now I'm ready to let them go.  This weekend I started bagging them up to donate to a small, local charity.

I bought this lamp at an antique mall several years ago.  There was always something I liked, yet didn't like about it.  I think part of the "didn't like" was the underside of the hat reminding me of a mushroom.   Nowadays when I shop, if there's any aspect at all that falls in the not-sure-how-much-I-like-it bucket, I don't buy it.

I've only used this lamp for a few months in the years since I bought it, so it's time to move it on out.  I hope the next person gives it a good, permanent home.

Another Chair Cover - Part One

This summer I made a cover for my office chair.  It's a slip-on piece for the back of the chair, and a mini-quilt for the seat.  I used a single piece of home dec fabric for the back and a complementary one for the seat.  Nice and durable, not much sewing.

Now I'm making a cover for the "office chair" in my sewing room.  This time I made life a little more difficult.

More difficult because I wanted to use fabric I already had.  The only home dec fabric I had was the poppy fabric.  That's going on the seat, which needs to be durable.

That means that the chair back will be made of regular cotton and needs to be pieced.  I used the poppies as the focus fabric when pulling from my stash.  Here everything is, all freshly laundered.

I wanted something nice looking for the chair back, so I'm using a pattern instead of just sewing a bunch of hunks of fabric together like I do sometimes.   I bought Pillow Pop in January, not with the intention of making pillows, but with the idea of sourcing them as quilt blocks.  I'm using the one on the left, Chevrons, by Brooke Biette, comprised of half-square triangles.  I like those things.

The only new fabric for this project is the neutral Nature Elements from Art Gallery.  I brought all my fabrics, including the poppy, to The Sewcial Lounge looking for a good neutral.  Sara had several options that would have worked, but this was the winner.

I did a little sketch of the pattern, then rearranged the fabric until I came up with an order I liked.  Brooke's version is scrappy - lots of variety in her HST.  I wanted something simpler, since the block is large enough to cover one side of the chair back.  Too much variety and you wouldn't see the pattern.

So I'm using just the one neutral, and each of the Vs will be just one fabric.  The top V will be lime, the next V is orange, etc.  My little cheat sheet also has the number of squares I need to cut from each fabric.

Lots of chain stitching.  I cut the lime ones apart with scissors, but the rest of them went much faster just zipping a rotary cutter between the two lines of stitching.  No need to use a ruler, since a straight stitching line is what matters.

After I cut them all apart, I thought the next step would be to arrange the squares according to the pattern, then sew.  Nope.  The next step said to trim to 3" so they'd be nice and square.  Ugh.

Ugh until I remembered my rotating cutting mat.  I lined the diagonal up with the 45-degree mark, and made sure the outer edges overlapped the 3" grid.

Then I trimmed one edge, rotated the mat 90 degrees and trimmed the next edge.  Round and round until it was perfectly square.  So as not to misalign the square when moving your ruler, it helps to hold the fabric on the left and slide the ruler off to the right.  If you lift the ruler up, the fabric wants to come up, too. 

For my cutting tool, I used my 6" long paper piecing ruler with the 1/4" beveled edge, only because it was the skinniest straight edge I could think of.  If you don't have one of those, you can use a plain old narrow school ruler.

One down, thirty five to go.  Maybe another day.

From the Vault - Summer Kimono Quilt

In the "From the Vault" series, I show a quilt I made in the past.  

In 2008, I made three quilts from the Bargello Kimono quilt pattern by Castilleja Cotton.  I planned on making one with colors representative of each season, but after making Spring, Summer, and Autumn, I lost interest in making a Winter one.  Even after a six-year rest, I still don't feel like it.

Last year I showed you my Spring Kimono.  Today, quick before summer ends, we'll look at the Summer Kimono.

I had two jumping off points for the color - one was the border, and the other was the very pretty Oriental fabric in the flared bottom portion.

I used lots of floral prints, and free-motioned various flowers in the background.

Close-up of the bottom of the kimono.  You can see the Oriental fabric on each side.

I'm surprised that the corners all lined up so nicely.  I have trouble doing that nowadays.  I must have used up that skill.

I think this border fabric is a Philip Jacobs print.  You can see a little more free motion stitching in the border.  

The back - not very summery.  Oh well.

The label.

I never showed you the back of the Spring Kimono last year, so here it is.

And here's the label.

I might show the Autumn Kimono sometime this fall, but we might just wait another year, too.

Monday is Fun Day - Rubber Bands

Last year at my local library, I noticed a sign that said rubber band looms were available for loan.  I didn't know what they were, and didn't think much about them after that.  

Then this summer I went to an elementary school craft fair, where I bought duck tape pens and an elephant fabric basket.  One of the many booths was staffed by two charming and poised entrepreneurs who were selling a variety of items made out of rubber bands. Now I know what rubber band looms can do, with the right operator.

They can make bracelets.

 

Numerous companies make these looms, but the Rainbow Loom seems to be a leader in the field, with lots of instructional videos.  This pattern is called Star Burst.

Same pattern; different color palette.

And the looms can also make "sweaters".  One of the girls told me she was going to make a rubber band person.  Maybe it will be ready next year.

Patchwork Elephant

I made this elephant a couple of months ago, using a pattern from Last-Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts, by Joelle Hoverson.  Joelle and her sister are the owners of Purl Soho.

I used just three fabrics - one for most of the body, then contrasting ones for the ears and belly.  The focus fabric has a patchwork feel to it with the faux stitching lines.  I made the eyes from tiny pieces of leather.

Elephant meets tiny pig on chair, and wants to wag his elephant tail.

This elephant has a disproportionately large head, but that's OK because elephants are one of the smartest animals in existence.

Anecdotes about the elephant's extraordinary intelligence are supported by science.  MRI scans of an elephant's brain (how did they do that?!?!) show a large hippocampus which in humans is linked to memory and emotions.  Their brain also has a lot of spindle cells, associated with self-awareness, empathy, and social awareness in humans.  Elephants are one of the few living beings (along with humans, dolphins, and some great apes) that recognize themselves in a mirror.

Elephants in Amboseli National Park in Kenya are sometimes speared and/or killed by Maasi and Kamba men in disputes over scarce water.  The Maasi are more aggressive than the Kamba, and according to a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, elephants are able to distinguish between the two languages.  Hearing recordings of the Maasi men, the elephants are twice as likely to retreat and gather together.  Voices of women and young boys (neither of whom do the attacking) do not have the same effect.