My solid swap challenge

I received my beautiful solid quilt yesterday from my 15 Minutes Play swap partner, BeeBee...

Isn't it gorgeous?  For inspiration, she used the painting Starry Night, by Vincent Van Gogh.

I'm glad I had a chance to do this solids challenge, it stretched my horizons in a whole new way.  Soon as I finish the Kandinsky I'm doing with Yetunde I'll look for another project for solids; I love the process.

I haven't been doing much sewing or blog-hopping lately, my attention has been focused in other directions.  But I have pieced some scraps to cut up for quilt blocks (it's called "made fabric"). 

On this one I started with the little leftover triangular section, added the B&W and pink pieces...

then I just kept adding pieces around it in a clockwise fashion...

there's no rhyme or reason for how its done; you can go clockwise, counter-clockwise, left-side right-side, it doesn't matter.  Just keep adding pieces to make it bigger.

On this one I show how I added to an uneven edge: I took a straight piece and laid it on so that I had a straight sewing line...

Then I trimmed off the hang-overs and pressed...

Now I have a straight edge to attach more scraps to! 

You can use odd shaped pieces of scraps, strips, what-have-you.  You can also take two or more big pieces and sew them together to make ever bigger pieces.  The object is to use up your scraps to make large sheets of fabric. 

It's a really good recycling option, with the bonus of not having to think too hard about what you're doing.  When you want to get your hands into some fabric but don't want to do anything specific, you can easily make fabric sheets!

Stay tuned for some blocks I pieced using my "made" fabric!

Art quilt using solids

Three things to be happy about:
(1) first day of summer
(2) perfect beach weather
(3) vibrant oil paintings

Happy Summer, everybody!  And thanks, Sue, for the suggestions on my Motown wannabe... I think it just might be after all!

I've been thinking about how to approach my solids segmented quilt swap, over on the 15 Minutes site, then I thought I'd just dive right in and see what I could do... I have more fabric after all.  The finished quilt is to be 15 x 15 and we're swapping with a partner.  Here's the Matisse I'm using for my inspiration:

I always forget to document the process!  I had gotten into it when I remembered to take this picture:

Here's the final quilt:

That green on the right is actually a dark green, not aqua. 

To me it looks sort of blah... any suggestions???  Do the colors need to be bumped up a notch??  Or do I just quilt it and call it done??

My Motown wannabe

Remember the block I sliced and diced for my 15 minutes play last week?  I sliced it again for another round of play...

This time I used the pieces for the starting point of a crazy pieced block...

In my opinion, now it just looks ordinary.  Oh well, that's how you play!

As you know, I completed a Motown quilt challenge for my Bee which will be unveiled today at the Michigan Park Rec Center's community day.  Our challenge was to choose a Motown song and make a quilt that portrayed that song.  You might remember that I kept changing my mind about which song I wanted to do; tomorrow I'll show you my entry, plus the viewer's choice, but for now I'd like to show you the one that I did NOT do:

Dancing in the Street by Martha & the Vandellas!  It would have been a nice quilt but for some reason I could NOT decide what to do for the sides of the quilt.  I made the silhouette and fused it to black fabric, then I used needle and thread to draw the brick street they're dancing on - time consuming, but that was the easy part. 

But I was blocked when it came to doing the sides... would there be cars parked there?  would there be shrubbery?  flower carts, a dog , an orchestra? a store front?  I think if I had made the street wider I'd have had more options because it has to narrow as it goes up; that perspective thing, you know. 

I put too much work into this one to just toss it aside, so I intend to figure this out.  But since my time was running out and I had to do SOMETHING, I switched to another song. 

Tomorrow I'll show you the one I did; sew forth and sew on...

Progress and moving on

The heat wave is over, yaaaay!   The weatherman says it's a front coming down from Canada, so to all our Canadian friends, thanks for the push  :o)

I meant to comment about the edible paper on my retirement cake - it's actually tinted rice paper; doesn't really have a taste though.

This is my latest progress on my wickedly easy quilt:

See all those lovely scrappy strips I trimmed off?  I tossed the first one in the trash, then I thought to myself ...hmmm...  can they be used???

Yes they can, I paired one with two regular strips and it looks great!  I can use these for my 15 minute playtime.  For comparison, the pink strip on the right is 2-1/2" wide.

This begins the second full week of my retirement, and I'm pleased to say that NOT ONCE did I have the urge to jump up and dash to the office.  It's all good, I tell ya.  I'm about to fix my breffus (or brekky) and I really love using this cheese on one of those thin-sliced bagels...

anybody tried it?  It's delicious - a bowl of strawberries and maybe a little yogurt and you're all set!

Cooler air, wicked trimmings, laughing cow on a bagel - it can't get much better than this!  Sew forth and sew on til later...

A good, solid find

Three things to be happy about:
(1) taking pleasure in simple things
(2) trying anything once
(3) body surfing

Or "stash surfing" in this case! 

Getting ready for my SOLID SEGMENTS challenge, I shopped my stash for solids, convinced I wouldn't find many.  I found a double-armload! 

True, I had to pull out tubs and dig through cupboards but the final result was more than I could have wished for! 

And the good news is, I won't have to make a fabric run.

Sew forth and sew on til later...

Just playing around...

Hi everybody, especially my followers - I'm glad to see you   *big grin*

Here's the pot of coleus I planted on my front porch, I think it's so pretty!

The pot is 16" wide and rather shallow; in the photo on the left you can see the little leafy whatnots (I don't know the name!) that I planted around the side.  It's really grown since I planted it a week ago; so far my neighbor Michelle's cat has left it alone.  I have another pot identical to this one, I'll place it on the steps when I get more plants.

I joined the 15 minutes play group this past weekend, and I think it's an interesting group.  As quilters we're all busy with not as much time as we'd like to be creative, so Victoria's concept for the group is to take just 15 minutes here and there to play with your fabrics and scraps, just to see what happens.  No preconceived notions, no strict rules ... just play for 15 minutes to see where the fabric leads you. 

Here's what happened during my first 15-minute playtime...

I took an old orphan block I didn't like but didn't want to toss out and made two random slashes through it, then I sewed fabric strips in the slashes [what other kind of strips would I have used???] and trimmed the block.  I was so busy playing I forgot to take pictures after I sewed on the first two strips!

Then I cut the block horizontally and added a third strip...

Before I sewed the right half on I flipped it vertically just to see what it would look like.  hmmm...

In my next 15-minute playtime, who knows which way it will go?  I certainly don't!  Sew forth and sew on til later...