Outstanding Blogger Award

Well, I'm flattered. A few weeks ago, Sandra at Musings of a Menopausal Melon--mmm quilts nominated me for an OBA. I laughed at first because I feel like my blog has been running on fumes the last few years. I certainly have not been as prolific as in the early years. Nevertheless, I am trying very hard to continue blogging because I do like having documentation of my quilting journey all in one place. So thank you, Sandra (and anyone else who checks in) for still reading my words and encouraging me. And if you hadn't already been nominated, I would nominate you, too. Your posts about your quilts, designs, tutorials, home reno, your Great Lake, and your sensitivity to social issues are a highlight of my blog reading.

As a recipient of an OBA, I have some questions Sandra would like me to answer. So here goes...

1. Have you made any quilts of your own design? If so, please share. Yes, I make a lot of different kinds of quilts (mostly lap sized ones), but the ones of my own design tend to be landscape art/wall quilts. I'll stick with those for this blog post because I'm too lazy to find anyone I need to credit for ideas for my other quilts. The one I'm most proud of (is that okay?) is Reminiscence--a quilt based on a photo I took at a local park on a mild winter day. I used freezer paper templates to piece it, and I hand quilted it.

2. Have you entered any quilt shows, and if so, which ones? If not, do you have plans to? As far as I can recall, I've only entered quilts in the online Blogger's Quilt Festival of October 2014 hosted by Amy of Amy's Creative Side. I'm still thrilled that my Reminiscence quilt (above) won the viewers choice in the Art category.

A couple of years ago, I entered another landscape quilt, Mi Barca, in a general art show at my church. It's a reflection on a Spanish song, "You Have Come Down to the Lakeshore," particularly the line, "En la arena he dejado mi barca" (translation: "On the sand, I've abandoned my small boat"), a call to leave our daily occupations (pre-occupations?) to serve others with love and commitment. 

And that's it. I find in-person quilt shows overwhelming. 

3.Do you have a mentor, or someone to whom you look up to or have learned a great deal from in your craft? Explain how this person or these people have influenced you. These days I'm inspired by numerous bloggers and instagrammers. I have eclectic tastes, so my social media perusal covers a pretty broad range. I would say that most of my donation quilts are influenced by the posts I read, whether it's a pattern or color or a call for blocks or quilts to distribute. So thank you, quilters!!

In terms of my own designs, I have been most influenced by the work and books of Ruth B. McDowell. Although I've never met her, she has taught me how to design and construct a quilt using freezer paper patterns/templates. I am still trying to capture the abstract nature of her work--the unexpected fabrics and colors--but I'm content to use her techniques to make my own work. Reminiscence was made using her techniques.

Another influence is Karen Eckmeier and her Accidental Landscapes (you can see that influence in the quilt above and below), which I find fascinating as a way to interpret the shores of my beloved state. And that leads me to...

4. Do you find that where you live influences your choices of colour (well, color for me) and design? Can you give examples? Oh, yes. I'm very much inspired by my beautiful Mitten state surrounded by 4 of the 5 Great Lakes. Here's my Accidental Landscape of Lake Michigan.

I've also made some miniature quilts of Michigan lighthouses, which are mostly foundation paper pieced, with some accidental landscaping thrown in.

And I'm inspired by nature, even in my own backyard. One quilt I recently designed includes traditional blocks and my own paper piecing. It's my interpretation of Bear Paw blocks as Coleus plants.

5. What do you do with your makes? (keep, decorate, use, give away, etc.) All of those. My quilts are part of my home environment on the walls and wherever we need a cozy layer, but most of my quilts are given away for celebrations (weddings, births, birthdays) or donation to some favorite organizations to give cozy hugs to people in need. I've also made the difficult quilts to help comfort and heal people after a traumatic or tragic event. Making/giving away quilts is the most satisfying and heartwarming way I know to spend free time in my retirement. It's a celebration, a meditation and a mission. 

I think I'm supposed to nominate some other quilters. Because I've been away from blogland a lot this past month, I honestly don't know who has already received this honor. So I'm going to nominate anyone reading this post. I don't have a question, but I am going to encourage you to keep it up. Keep blogging. It does still have a wonderful place in social media. You are an Outstanding Blogger.

Scrappy Grands--or Grandly Scrappy

"Gramma, can we sew something?"

It had been months since we could be together, but that's one of the first things L said when they came to spend a couple of days with us during their spring break. Music to my quilt-loving ears. She even had an idea of what she wanted to sew: a landscape (lakescape?) like one I had made that hangs in their living room. Woohoo! It was a gorgeous day, and I knew we would want to spend a lot of time outside, so it had to be a quick project--maybe 20 or 30 minutes tops.

I just happened to have lots of scraps handy--especially blue for my RSC color of the month. I quickly cut some small pieces of backing and batting, and let her have at it to choose fabrics for an Accidental Landscape mini in the style of Karen Eckmeier. To be super fast and easy for a beginning sewist, raw edge quilt-as-you-go seemed to be the technique of choice.

L found a piece of cloud fabric for sky. Then she cut wavy strips of blue for the lake. Don't you love the star fabric? Like sparkles on the water. I love how kids do art! We pulled out the bin of neutrals for sand. 

She laid them out, and I put a few pins in to hold them in place. Then she got her first opportunity to use the foot pedal to sew them down herself with some wavy lines. She mastered the pedal speed immediately and quickly figured out how to move the fabric to make wavy quilting lines.

I knew binding would be too time consuming for this project, so after stitching around the edge, I trimmed it for her with pinking shears. And done! A cute little mini for her bedroom wall. Didn't she do a great job?!

While we were working, C started sorting through the blue scraps himself. He is a major crafter, and his adhesive of choice is tape. Lots of tape. In no time, he had laid out his first quilt block. 

What a fun way to spend the first part of our weekend together! We spent most of the rest of the weekend outside. There was a little trip to meet up with cousins to hike some trails and play some baseball, more baseball and all kinds of other sports in our backyard, and a short hike in the prairie behind our neighborhood. A perfect way to end our isolation of the last year. Hurray for vaccinations!!

I'll wait until the end of the month to share my RSC blues. But I just had to share these blues today!

I'm linking up this weekend with Angela at So Scrappy for ScrapHappy Saturday and with Cynthia at Quilting is more fun than Housework for Oh Scrap. Oh, and with Sandra at mmm quilts on the last Saturday of the month because this was a perfect DrEAMi (Drop Everything and Make it) project.

If you live in my hemisphere, Happy Spring, which as far as I can tell from our trees and flowers, is about a month ahead of schedule. I hope you get to do some unexpected projects, maybe with your own little kiddies.

Life is Grand again.

Lake Michigan Finish

I'm doing a happy dance today because after two  three (!) years, I have a finish: My Lake Michigan Quilt, or as we say in all of our state's ads about things we like, MI Lake Michigan Quilt. I was under the MIstaken (get it?) impression that it took me two years until I looked up my old posts this week and found out that I started it in MId-October 2015. It's as old as one of MI grandsons. I won't put all the links in here of posts along the way, but if you'd like to read them, click on the Lake Michigan quilt label on the right side bar or at the bottom of this post.

I followed the techniques of Karen Eckmeier for making Accidental Landscapes. I've made tiny ones in the past, like this ornament for my daughter and son-in-law. It's maybe about 3 1/2 by 4 1/2 inches.

But when my daughter (MI daughter? Ok, I'll quit now) mentioned that she wanted a wall quilt for her office, I decided to supersize the technique. The new quilt is 30 by 42 inches.

Nearly all the fabrics are scraps. I did buy a piece of Grunge for the back, appropriately when I was on vacation near Lake Michigan. The batting is a leftover piece of Quilter's Dream Cotton Select. 

There's no reason that this quilt should have taken as long as it did. It wasn't difficult. Most of the delay was lack of confidence. I built the layers slowly in between other projects. I'd put some strips up on the wall and spend a few days  months letting them percolate (marinate? stew?), and then I'd sew them down. I started with the water. After doing a bit of sand, I built the sky up toward the top. Most of the sky is pieced with regular seams rather than layered.

Then I layered the foreground, slowly, slowly. 

I like the bits of embroidery that add detail and depth on Accidental Landscapes. I thought it would be a simple task. But I hadn't thought of it that a quilt this size would need larger scale embroidery to be proportionate. That stymied me. Before starting the embroidery I quilted the project with my walking foot. To plan the placement of the beach grass I laid paper strips on the quilt and took a photo to refer to as I stitched. 

I started with a few stems of grass 

and then gradually built them up until I was satisfied. I used 4 strands of floss for the longest stems, and reduced the bulk to 3 or 2 strands for smaller stems or those closer to the water. I used a modified stem stitch, bringing the needle up closer to the starting point than is common, to make the stitch as thick as possible. I took the quilt with me on several road trips. It was an easy take-along project.

A few weeks ago, when I was Gramma nesting while waiting for our new grandson, I suddenly realized that I was almost done. It was a perfect project to work on at a time when I didn't want to start a new mess. In just a couple of days, I completed the stitching, or at least stopped myself from getting carried away with it. 

After we arrived home from cuddling our little grandson (and his big brother who was born right after I started the quilt!), I chose a sandy colored fabric from my stash for the binding. 

I took it out for a photo shoot on our garage. 

I thought I was truly finished, but then I remembered that I have a wonderful supply of ceramic buttons (by artist Sandra Lance--you can find her work under images online, but I think she has suspended her business for now) that I like to use on art quilts. I found two that looked good among the dunes. (I usually try to use three, but these looked the best.)

Closer

And closer

So now it is truly done.

This quilt will be living at my daughter and son-in-law's house. As I said earlier, it was meant for my daughter's office, but by now she has found something else to fill the space there, and I know her family will enjoy it at home. (And I can visit it, too.) I was almost hoping she didn't want it anymore, but hey, now that I know I can do this, I could make another one for me in less than three years! Maybe in solids?

The best thing I learned from making this quilt is that the technique does work for large scale quilts. Really, all that is needed is a good supply of fabrics to choose from. The embroidery is fun and works very well after quilting, even with building up fairly dense stitches. 

Let's look at that finish one more time!

I'm linking up today with crazy mom quilts for Finish it up Friday and Confessions of a Fabric Addict for Can I Get a Whoop Whoop. 

Happy Quilting and Happy Finishing! And if you live anywhere within driving distance of Lake Michigan, Yea for MI Lake MI!

Vacation Mode

Not a whole lot of quilting going on here, but enough. Last spring, we planned a vacation trip "up North" during shoulder season--the time between summer and leaf peeping season. We love the time of year when the trees show just a hint of color and the morning air is crisp. It's perfect for biking on trails--no crowds and no sweat. Well this year? Ha! Temperatures were in the 90's. At the 45th parallel. At the end of September. The towns and beaches were crowded with visitors and locals soaking up bonus summer weather. We had a good time. It was just more summery than planned until the very end when the temperature plunged more than 30 degrees--ah, that was more like it.. I'll include a few pictures at the end of this post, but first I'll focus on what's been going on in my little quilting life.

I'm trying to remember where I was with projects before we left town. I think I shared a bit on Instagram about my Lake Michigan quilt. The top is all pieced now. 

My plan is to embroider some tall grass in the foreground where the crude paper patterns are and then some progressively smaller bunches to create depth. I was trying to decide whether to embroider the grass before or after quilting. I didn't want the stitches to show on the back, but I also didn't want to try to quilt around embroidery. I made a little mock-up to test embroidering after quilting, and it worked fine, so my next step is to make the sandwich and do the quilting. Here's the mock-up:

No show on the back from the embroidery:

Anybody recognize that backing fabric? Ancient! Good use for it, right? Now I can use the mock-up to practice the kinds of stitches and colors of thread I'll use on the quilt.

My other in-progress quilt is Hollyhocks. I took that quilt along for vacation hand work. I had done a bit of the flowers before I left.

This was my view on the balcony of our hotel. It was hot, hot, hot, but there was a breeze.

And under the cabana on the beach:

During our time away, we spent time at Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore. In the visitor's center there, the 2013 ArtPrize people's choice winning quilt by Ann Loveless is on display. So, of course, I had to take some pictures (not easy to do because of its size and the reflections in the protective glass).

Amazing! I'm glad I got to see it up close. There are other beautiful Sleeping Bear artworks in the gallery, but this was the one I just had to see,

I stopped in at four quilt shops Up North. One I had been to before, but the others were ones that just happened to be along our route. Here's what I bought:

The batting and powder blue Grunge are for the Lake Michigan quilt. Seems weird to use Grunge for a quilt back, but I didn't see anything else I liked as much, and it will be a nice memento. The tan Joel Dewberry is a possible binding for that quilt, and the coral, blue, and turquoise are potential parts in a donation quilt I'm contemplating. The yellow is an odd piece from a grab bag table. It's about 80 by 33 inches with some seams and a hem on one end. It's been washed so obviously had a previous life. Maybe the cuttings from a quilt back? 

I enjoyed three of the stores. Each had a distinctive personality. My favorite was in a couple of store fronts from the 1800's in a teeny, tiny town. The fourth store will not be on my list for future visits. It probably had the biggest inventory, and the woman who greeted me (the owner, I hope) was friendly as she explained where everything was, but I was treated with suspicion and rudeness by the cashier (I hope not the owner). It does take the shine off those fabrics. I probably should have walked away. I've deleted a whole paragraph about the experience. 

When we got home we had just enough time for dental appointments and laundry before taking off for a week of daycare with the Grands. Pure fun. A bit different now that our granddaughter is in all-day kindergarten. But we got to do some evening care, too, so we spent plenty of time with both kiddies. During naptime, I kept working on the Hollyhocks quilt. I finished quilting the flowers and outlined the leaves.

Then I started the veins in the leaves. I'm not happy with that quilting so I think I have some unquilting to do. I'll probably use simpler quilting and a different color thread

Now that I'm home, I've spent a little more time with puppy blocks. I'll save those for another post. 

Meanwhile, here are a few Up North photos. I've taken a lot of photos there in the past, so this year, I tried to focus on details or scenes I haven't taken before. 

Big Sable Lighthouse (Update: Oops, I meant Little Sable)

The sky at sunset on the Fall Equinox

Fall Equinox

Ludington North Pier Light

Cardinal Mountain Ash tree at one of our motels. The part of the building to the right of the door is the former lighthouse keeper's home.

Okay, I'll save a few more pictures for next time. I'm linking up today with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social. I hope your week is going well, whether or not you've been on vacation. Of course, quilting at any time is like a little vacation.

Hollyhocks and more

Summer is in full swing. We've spent time with family, done some fun daycare, gone on some outings...love it! So it's a perfect time to spend on smallish quilt projects--mostly in the evenings. I've been focusing on my Hollyhocks quilt (pattern by Ruth B. McDowell). I have all of the flowers made, and two of the leaves. I have two more leaves and a set of buds to go and then the background. It is such a fun puzzle!!

The blocks will get moved around a bit with some turned, but this is the general layout so far. I had intended to stick with stash for this quilt, but caved in to some purchases. I had a couple of Grunge fabrics and went to the store to supplement with one more. but then I couldn't decide between three. So what's a girl to do? Why, buy a bit of all three, of course. 

I'm glad I did. There are subtle differences that made it work to use all three. I wish I knew the names of the colors. I looked at the bolt ends, and all they said was something like "new color" or "new product." I should have taken pictures to check the fabric numbers to help ID them. Oh, well. Here's a close up of one flower:

I also bought some neutral/green fabrics for the background of the flowers. I'm not sure how they'll go with the overall background, but I'll worry about play with that later. 

Here's a general idea of the progression from pattern to flower in freezer paper piecing:

I love how the mess of letter codes, highlighting, grain lines, and tick marks come together to make a wonderful puzzle and precisely pieced block. Prep time takes awhile, but the sewing goes so fast!

Here's how a leaf looks in progress, back and front:

It's the bottom block in the layout at the top of the post. I did change the middle leaf after I sewed it together to get a little more contrast. It was easy to pick out a couple of seams and reuse the freezer paper pattern to fit the new piece in. That's what I love about this technique. It's easy to lay out a block to see how it will look and to redo parts. (Usually I make changes before sewing so I don't have to pick out seams, though.) Yea for me--I did use greens from my stash (except one Grunge). Some are super old!!

In the last couple of weeks, I also finished the sky on my Lake Michigan quilt. 

I was going to do the foreground of the sand first, but wasn't feeling inspired, so the sky it was. I added one new piece of fabric that I got at a sidewalk sale last week, but otherwise all of the sky is from my stash. Those clouds gave me fits! I messed around for a long time. The song "Both Sides Now" kept going through my head as I fiddled around with cloud shape and placement, especially, " It's clouds' illusion I recall. I really don't know clouds at all." All together now. Sing it with me. It's true. I see clouds every day. But I just haven't paid that much attention to how they look. I finally decided that it didn't matter and settled on shapes and an arrangement that I liked. Since then, I've been hyper-aware of clouds--and we've had a whole week of really interesting formations. What a treat! Soon I'll tackle that foreground--maybe after I finish the hollyhocks. 

A couple more things to share. The other day we were at an antique/thrift store that we like to check in with occasionally. There was a pile of stuff that had just been dropped off from what looked like someone's estate or moving sale leftovers. On top were two bags of batting.

One king size and one almost crib size (a bit cut off) I shamelessly looked them over carefully and stuck my nose in the bags to make sure they didn't have any funky smell. They were fine! So I asked how much they cost. $2.00 for both!!! Score! I will be able to make 4 throw quilts and a wall hanging or several minis. The clerk didn't know what they were, and when I said "batting," he pointed me to a vintage sewing machine that had come in. 

He said he couldn't open it because there was no key, and he didn't want to damage the case. (Good for him!) I was just curious enough that I went online that night to find out how to open the lock without a key. It turns out that all you need is a super skinny 3mm flat head screw driver. The next day I went back to the store armed with my knowledge and a screw driver, told the clerk what I had found out, and opened the case. (Actually, my husband opened the case. He had a better touch than I with the screwdriver.) Inside was a pretty 99 Singer from around 1928. 

It was electric with a solid hand wheel. Nice, but I restrained myself. If it had been a hand crank or had a spoked wheel I would have grabbed it. (I keep wondering how much it would have cost.) I left it on display with the case open. I hope someone else who will love it finds it. I think Bonnie K Hunter would be proud of me for displaying it instead of closing the top again. She always advises to free machines up for display when you find them hidden away in antique shops so someone will buy them and give them a good home. I keep thinking about it...

I'm linking up today with Sew Fresh Quilts for Let's Bee Social. I hope your summer (or winter if you're on the other side of the world from me) is giving you time for fun little projects.