First Quilt in a Long While

Fresh out of the wash, Oh Fransson!'s Mod Sampler quilt-along quilt.

It's a gift for the daughter of an old friend.

There's a WHOLE lot of pink in this baby. Much more than I would normally go for but when someone looks this great in pink, come on! I'm pretty sure I had no choice.

The blocks were made entirely from fabric I already had. That was great. These are all fabrics that I really like but I just don't find a lot of opportunities to use them.
I bought the backing and sashing fabrics. The sashing is linen which I've never used in a quilt before. It was a little trickier than cotton. It can be pretty wily. I do really like how it turned out though.
The label is a piece of the linen I used for the sashing. It's stamped with Jacquard textile ink.
Gracie's mom is allergic to cats so I tried really hard to keep this quilt cat free. Stabone is sulking because I won't let him lie on it.

Back to Bubbles

I recently played major catch up (though I'm still not quite caught up) on my Common Threads bee blocks. You can see the whole lot here.
This is the last one I finished.

It's for Jacquie who is making a quilt for her teenage son. The instructions were "minimal, modern and masculine." The inspiration for this design came partly from reading about Dale Fleming's technique for sewing pieced curves which I found here at Dioramarama.com. If you want to learn this technique you can visit either of these sites for thorough instructions but I thought I'd walk you through the basics of this block. It was a little different because of the multiple overlapping circles. If this all seems confusing you should visit one of the above links. Then it'll all make sense, I swear!

To cut out my circles from the freezer paper, I used this handy dandy tool. It works ok. Better on smaller circles than large ones. You could use scissors as well as long as you draw a perfect circle on the paper to cut out.
I started with the circle in the corner since it was on the "bottom" of all of the overlapping circles. I cut out the size of circle I wanted from freezer paper and ironed the shiny side to the wrong side of my background fabric like so, positioning the hole where I want the pieced circle to be.

The piece of colored dot fabric is what I'm going to piece to the background. It's about 1/2 in bigger all around than the fabric you see inside the circle.
Next, I cut away the BG fabric inside of the circle, leaving a roughly 1/2 in seam allowance.
Then I clipped the curve right up to the paper, all the way around.

Next, I took a glue stick and glued the clipped edge to the back of the freezer paper. This should make a nice smooth curve if you look from the other side.
When that glue was dry (which only takes a few seconds) I applied more glue to the back of the clipped fabric which I pressed the colored dot fabric to, thus allowing me to remove the freezer paper all together.

Tada. Unfortunately I have no photo of the actual sewing. You press and sew along the nice little crease you've got there, all the way around your circle, or semi-circle in my case. Flip it over and voila.

To make an overlapping circle I just placed my next freezer paper stencil over the seam, doing everything the same, treating the pieced er, piece as a solid background.
This only got tricky when it came to gluing the seams down. Because there were multiple layers of fabric I had to do some creative trimming. Also, this background fabric was some thick-ass linen! Things got a little bulky which is why some of my circles aren't exactly perfect. I would not do this again with fabric like this. Cotton on cotton though would be much less of a hassle.
I did the last three circles all at once since they weren't overlapping each other at all. The smaller circles were harder to sew than the large ones.
And that's it! Again, this is no where near a comprehensive tutorial so if you really want to try this technique visit the links above.

A Little Giftie

A belated birthday gift for a friend:

A pot holder and matching coasters/cocktail napkins. The pot holder has two layers of Insul-Brite on the inside. Aside from the piecing on the front, it all came together in one step. I layered like so: 1 piece Insul-Brite, backing fabric right side up, rick rack around the edge, top fabric right side down, second piece of Insul-Brite. Pin, sew leaving gap, turn and quilt. Done!

Harva-Contest Mania

First, a big big big huge thank you to anyone who voted for Harv's Packers/Penske commercial. You are awesomer than awesome. Sadly, he didn't win. A big bummer. If you ask me, it was a very poorly run contest, with little to no promotion and a three month window in which you could vote. It seems fairly certain that the prize went to not the best spot but to the person who could get the most friends to vote everyday. Harv's pretty modest and not the type to shamelessly self-promote to the extent that was probably necessary to win.
Oh well. He's already got big plans for next year.
One contest does not a mania make and so I will now share with you what prevented me from making a single handmade gift this year.


The Bushman World Ukulele Video Contest!
I found out about this contest about three weeks before I had to leave town for Christmas, decided to enter 2 weeks before and only started animating 1 week before. Yipes. It was tight. But I designed the video in a way so that I could probably (I hoped) get it done. It's all cutout paper and fabric shot on a down shooter (a multiplaned table with the camera suspended above). I started animating on a Saturday, finished the following Friday night (while working full time, bear in mind), took a red-eye to Connecticut the next night and finished all of the compositing/editing (computer stuff) once we were there. It was nuts.
Of course I had some super helpers all along the way. Buddy Systems (Harv's studio) was very awesome to let me shoot there and use their resources. Linnea and Kelsey, two Buddy interns, helped a ton. Among other things, Linnea drew the puppet and Kelsey cut out all of the hills and trees. Jenny Towner did the track reading and lip synch, Eric Towner advised me on post production matters and Harv did all of the lighting and camera work. Nick Mariana sacrificed some of his band's rehearsal time to help me record the song and Alex Kamer lent his baritone uke skills to the mix. Ethan Marak saved my deadline with some last minute advice. Plus, he gave me "permission to not be amazing". And last but not least, Tennessee Reid Norton got me hooked on the ukulele two months ago and I've been obsessed ever since.
Thank you all so much, you're all the best best best!

So, wish me luck! Thankfully, this contest is not determined by internet voting. The winners are announced on Monday.
Here's a handful of behind the scenes pictures.

Free-Motion Quilting Strikes Back

I bought myself a darning foot a darn long time ago. I tried free-motion quilting. It didn't work out so well. I abandoned the idea.
Then last summer a friend asked if I could turn her boyfriend's childhood Star Wars sheet into a quilt for his birthday in November. I said "Sure! I've got plenty of time!" Well, after freaking out a little in October and considering sending it to a shop to be quilted on a long arm machine I gave the free-motion thing another try. It was so simple. Here's a tip that I found especially helpful: lower the presser foot. Duh. That was my problem. I don't think you can blame me though, if the needles up the presser foot looks like it's up, even if it's down! Ack. Such a stupid mistake.
So, long story long, I figured it out in the nick of time and hauled ass on this baby over the course of an evening and a half. It was nuts. A crazy, wine-fueled, free-motion party for one.

It was really a lot of fun. I totally dig free-motion quilting. I will do it again soon.

Quilting a solid cloth quilt like this was also quite enjoyable. It allowed me to focus on the quilting. Plus, I think it's pretty bad-ass. And bonus, the birthday boy dug it too.

Tip of the Week

A little while ago (yipes, two months!) Kathy Mack of Pink Chalk Studio extolled the virtues of a marvelous product called Fabri-Tac. I would like to second that. It dries fast, it holds really well and it's clear and flexible. The only problem I have with it is that it is more of a gel and can be hard to manuever straight out of the bottle, especially on small details. And that's where my tip comes in. Many many puppet makers I know use this stuff all the time for gluing foam on puppets or making teeny tiny costumes but instead of using it out of the bottle they put it in one of these babies:

This little guy will change your life. Or at least your gluing life. For real. You may be able to buy similar syringes at the drug store but a google search for Monoject 412 comes up with a lot of online sources.
I used this guy a lot recently when I made the costume for this bad-ass. Hopefully I will be able to show you more pictures soon.

C'est L'Halloween!

Well, it was two and a half weeks ago anyway. What? I'm busy!
I've gone from zero to sixty this year in the costume production department. Buddy Systems hosted what may be the first annual Halloween Buddy Ball so there was no way my Kroquasian costume could make a repeat performance. So...I'd like to introduce you to....Squirrelly Temple!

A bit high-concept? Perhaps. Eerily close to a furry outfit? Most definitely. But the costume was a ton of fun to make and even more fun to wear.

The dress was from an actual pattern (I'm sorry I don't know what!) that I shortened A LOT and widened the boob ties. I whipped up a matching pair of puffy underpants/diaper cover (no, there was no diaper). The tail has some big ass heavy duty armature wire inside along with some fiber-fil. The wire is JB Quiked into a piece of 2x4 which is screwed to a nylon work belt from the hardware store. It was surprisingly not uncomfortable yet not surprisingly awesome to wear. And of course, the icing on the cake was a pair of tap shoes, ordered off Ebay, originally sent as two left shoes, I kid you not.

Some other notables:

Harv (as a Green Bay Packer) and I.

Imposter Harv (our friend Ethan) and genuine Harv.

And last but so far from least, the masterpiece known as Sexy Stay Puft.

More Buddy Ball pictures here.

Make a young boy's dreams come true!

Okay, not so young but you can help him just the same! My husband Harv is a finalist in a commercial contest for Penske Trucks and the Green Bay Packers. The winner gets to watch the last home game of the year from a box suite with 17 of their favorite Packer fans. Now, I should mention that at least 40% of Harv's brain is devoted to the Packers at any given time, much more so the closer it is to Sunday. With this contest going on, it's probably up to more like 80 or 85.

So if you're ever in the mood for some cute stop-motion, hop on over and cast your vote. The voting lasts for a loooooo-oooonnnnnggg time and you can vote everyday so don't be shy!
The contest is here, Harv is commercial number 5. Thanks for listening, you all are the sweetest!

Here she be.

I here by vow to try my very derndest to get these babies out on time from now on. This is June's (oops) Common Threads quilt block for Melissa.

I used this stuff for the first time when pressing this.

It's a starch alternative that I got at JoAnn. I dig it. I think I'll be using it frequently. I don't know what you more experienced quilters think about this sort of thing but my seams need all the help they can get. They're not always what you call "straight."
So July was my month and I've received two awesome blocks so far. I can't wait for the rest to roll in!

You look thirsty.

Let me get you a drink.

Oh, I'm so sorry, you're glass is sweating! It is horribly hot today. Here, have a cocktail napkin.

What's that? Why yes, I did make them, thank you for noticing!

Oh, it was quite easy. I could show you if you wanted.

Really? Okay then, let's!

For each napkin you will need

• two 4.5" squares of fabric, either the same print or two complimentary patterns
• 20" of rick rack
• a good stiff cocktail (I find a vodka tonic works well)

1. Cut the rick rack into four 5" pieces and lay them out on each side of one of your fabric squares, right side up. How close it is to the edge depends on how wide your rick rack is. Mine was the regular size and I lined it up with the raw edge of the fabric. If your's is jumbo it may have to overlap the edge.
2. Lay your other square on top, right side down and pin together, making sure to catch the rick rack with your pin. I only pinned the corners but you can do more if you like.
3. Sew a 1/4" seam around all four sides, leaving a 3" gap on one for turning.
4. Trim the corners and turn right side out. Poke out the corners and press. Sew a seam close to the edge of the fabric all the way around the napkin, closing the gap.
5. Have a drink and admire your work.
6. Optional: Make a drink for a friend and ask him/her to admire your work.