Visiting

As I have mentioned around the web, I was on the East Coast last week. I don’t like to announce the fact that I am going to be gone, so I apologize if anyone was confused. I was at a conference for my job, which you might remember if you heard Creative Mojo (I promise to stop mentioning this eventually). If you didn’t hear Creative Mojo, you can listen to the podcast.

Mark & Jaye
Mark & Jaye

One of the things I did back East was co-host the Creative Mojo podcast with Mark Lipinski. I was really nervous and even more nervous when he posted on FB that he had been admitted to the hospital early that week. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen and wondered if I would find a note on the door with a key telling me how to turn on the headset and microphone so that I could fill in for him. Fortunately for me (and all of you!) Mark is a consummate professional with the motto of “the show must go on.” He was working on the script when I arrived, so Jeff entertained me. Jeff Turner has a smile that lights up the room. Toby, Mark’s friend and the owner of the Kindred Quilts, was also there to talk about creative book clubs. I thought it was funny that they were both from, or had lived in, California! Small world!

Mark came down when he was done with the script and told me what to do. I had to read or review a bit of a couple of the books whose authors would be on the show. I also had to read an article from another author and think of comments to interject. I also had to read the script and be familiar with the way the show would go.

Mark's House
Mark's House

Mark’s house is gorgeous. On Quilt Out Loud, Mark’s house looks like a mansion. In reality, there are a lot of rooms, but it seems to be well proportioned. The colors they used to paint the rooms are wonderful and bold. The hall is a bright citron green. The living room is bordering on a warm white, but has a tinge of orange or yellow. The living room, as are all the rooms, so beautifully decorated. They look like a decorator did them, but there is no feeling of not being able to sit down. The living room is very comfy as well as well put together. The guest bath is a light purple and Mark’s office is a wonderful sunshiney yellow. Mark’s office is filled with books. I kept getting distracted during the podcast looking at his books. He and I have a lot of the same books. His are not piled on the floor (note to self: get a new bookshelf!), but well organized in cube cubbies.

Mark talks a lot about his hoarding tendencies. While I did see the Pod (he wouldn’t let me in), I didn’t see any hoarding tendencies. House Beautiful could walk into his house and start a photo shoot. I felt funny taking photos of the inside, so I didn’t and I would have stayed longer except Mark really looked like he needed to go to bed.

The show went really fast and I had a lot of fun doing it. All I did to become the co-host was email Mark and I was in. It was fun.

The highlight of the trip was visiting with my SIL and the family. My BIL is a great cook and has no problem substituting to help me deal with my food intolerances. I really enjoy visiting with my SIL. We usually do a sewing or quilting project. We really work well together and it made me think of how much I like working with certain other quiltmakers on projects.

TFQ is another with whom I enjoy working. She and I work really well together, too. Remember the Cheerful Baskets? She has a great (can’t say this enough) sense of color and is good at giving me the pieces to sew in an orderly manner. I wish they both lived closer, but I also enjoy going to visit. I wish it were easier to visit.

I always learn something new when SIL and I sew together. She has a large workspace which allows two people to work together without stepping on each other. SIL has a pseudo-professional stand-alone embroidery machine. She has been having fun making Christmas ornaments, Boy Scout patches and other things with it. She had an idea for the NSGW pillows, so we played around with the software that comes with the machine and designed some motifs.

Chain piecing pillow covers
Chain piecing pillow covers

She stitched them out (well, caused them to be stitched out) while I was at the conference. When I returned, we made them into pillows. When I made the last Teacher pillows I thought that I should quilt them, but was really too lazy. SIL reminded me about the quilt-as-you-go method, so I used that to quilt and sew the tops simultaneously. The good thing about that method is that you can make the back as big as the pillow form and then you know where to stop. The other good thing is that you can use up random bits of batting.

NDGW Pillow Cover #1
NDGW Pillow Cover #1
NDGW Pillow Cover #2
NDGW Pillow Cover #2
Ruth's NDGW Pillow Cover
Ruth's NDGW Pillow Cover

We made 2 pillows for the Native Daughters’ (sister organization to the Native Sons for women) upcoming convention and one for my MIL (SIL’s mom). The one for my MIL was a bit of a mistake. We felt like we didn’t have quite enough fabric for it, so we didn’t want to make it for the grand Parlor. However, once the piece was finished we really liked the way it came it out and my adjust what we do in the future to take what we learned into consideration. We also embroidered 3 additional centers for pillows for the Native Sons raffle pillows for next year. I hope I don’t put them somewhere where I can’t find them!

Mosaic Block
Mosaic Block

We also worked a little bit with SIL’s  new Accuquilt Go Baby cutter. She had some parallelograms she had cut and we wanted to try the Jinny Beyer Perfect Piecer. In looking for a comprehensive video on using the Perfect Piecer, we found a video with an interesting block called Mosaic (I kind of doubt that is the real name, but I haven’t looked it up and I could be wrong) using parallelograms. She cut and intended to sew, but she was busy picking out greens for a green quilt, so I sewed. I am now an Accuquilt Go convert. Those patches lined up perfectly and there was only one small point matching problem.

In Lancaster County, we had bought fabric for a shirt for my BIL, so we worked on that, too. I was her assistant on that project since I am not much of a garment maker. I like it when I get to sew on my work-vacations.

Capital Quilts
Capital Quilts

SIL saw the above quilt, which is a 9 patch alternated with a snowball block. You can buy the pattern or take the class at Capital Quilts.

Sisto's Star Table Runner
Sisto's Star Table Runner

Sisto’s had a couple of nice quilts available for us to view as well. This looks paper pieced, but it could also be done, I think, with Y seams (at which you all will be experts after you work on the hexagons.

Tilted 9 Patch
Tilted 9 Patch

If you don’t mind sewing on the bias, this looks like you could make regular 9 patches and then trim them to be tilted.

Link to the 30's
Link to the 30's

This quilt is from the book, Link to the 30’s, which we saw hanging in Sisto’s Janome room. You can probably buy the book by calling Sisto’s. It is a book, along with the previous volume, that I have been thinking of buying. It is a project book, but the quilts aren’t all ‘quick & easy’. I thought it was done very well and I liked the way the blocks were not chopped off.

Link to the 30's - detail
Link to the 30's - detail

I wasn’t able to quickly discern the block so I took the detail above. I would have to look at the quilt closer to see the block and I simply wasn’t tall enough.

In case you are wondering about the conference I attended, it was great. it was a lot of work in terms of listening and understanding and bringing information back to my workplace. Not interesting in terms of quiltmaking, though.