Various & Sundry #1 2014

What I am Reading

  • I plowed through, via audiobook, a number of the Jo Beckett series of mystery novels by Meg Gardiner while I was home over the holidays. They novels are a little formulaic, but I like the characters and the relationship of the characters to one another. The latest one, The Nightmare Thief, is the best, I think, though I liked the character development in the others as well.
  • Quilty as Charged by Spike Gillespie

Want some free audio books, so you can listen and sew? Try openculture.com. They have a lot of public domain stuff.

Housekeeping

We moved the blog to a new hosting site. This will alleviate, with any luck, the 500 Internal Server errors that were recurring with some regularity. If you are reading this, you have gotten through the worst of it. If you commented before the move, but not since, your comment will not show up until I confirm you are not a spammer. I try to be very quick about it, but if you are on the East Coast and commenting at 6am, you’ll have to wait until I get up a few hours later. 😉

We have noticed a few missing posts. If you commented on one of the missing posts, we will have to restore it and then I can respond to the comment on the blog. I’ll try to send you an email sooner, though. Polly, you leave such fabulous comments and  you are one of the ones in this bucket. So sorry! Data conversion is a *itch!

Projects, Patterns & Tutorials

Quiet Play blog has a very appealing BOM called Sew Kitschy. It is appealing for me because of the turquoise and red. The imagery consists of 1950s looking kitchen accessories. I am not sure how the artist will create some of the patterns, but I look forward to seeing what you all make.

I found a pillowcase pattern that might be more my speed. I haven’t tried it, but there is nothing about selvedges, which might be a blessing. Thanks to Pam for pointing me to it.

There is an interesting Blog Hop going on called Dreaming of Stars. I saw it on the Magnolia Bay Quilts blog.

Scrapitude Step 4, Part 1, the Block has been posted on Sandy’s blog.

Now I know what crumb blocks are. Daisy mentioned it on her podcast and I had a minute to go look up the explanation on Bonnie Hunter’s site. I know it as mosaic quilting! I do it all the time and make new fabric from like colors.

I really like the Super Size Castle block from Sew Mama Sew. After the Swoon and Round and Round, I am thinking that blowing up some of these blocks with 85 pieces is a good idea and a lot of bang for my buck.

Joyce, over at Quilting Adventures, has a blog post up about making Hearts. It came about because of the upcoming Valentine’s Day. She acknowledges that many do not celebrate VDay and this project transcends those people to be all inclusive. It is a really sweet idea and an easy project – really good for TV time, or doctor waiting room time.

Helpful Hints, Tips, Traps & Tricks

If you need to know how much yardage a layer cake has in it, take a look at this page of quilt terms. I didn’t check the math, but it is a start.

Robin has a great, temporary, but not lame, tip for preventing your rotary ruler from shifting while you cut. You can find it and a brief overview of other more permanent methods on her blog.

The Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Guggenheim has 474 free art books available online. There is excellent access to catalogs, bulletins and other hard to find art materials. thanks to Timi for pointing that out to me.

From ResearchBuzz “Wellcome Images is releasing over 100,000 high resolution images under a Creative Commons license (CC-BY). “The earliest item is an Egyptian prescription on papyrus, and treasures include exquisite medieval illuminated manuscripts and anatomical drawings, from delicate 16th century fugitive sheets, whose hinged paper flaps reveal hidden viscera to Paolo Mascagni’s vibrantly coloured etching of an ‘exploded’ torso.” Good morning, Internet…” I am sure you’ll find some inspiration for your quilts there.

I heard a recent lament from a quiltmaker friend who hadn’t followed her own advice and put the kind of information on her label that she really needed. Yes, she put name and year, but not whether the quilt was from a guild challenge or made especially because of some specific inspiration. What if we all put QR codes on the backs of our quilts? Then, we could tweak the related page infinitely. I saw an article recently about prettifying QR Codes. There are Android & iOS versions to play with for free.

Fabric, Supplies, Tools & Jewels

I popped by the CraftSanity blog and was thrilled to see a feast for the eyes. The fabrics shown are gorgeous and I feel the first stirrings of interest in buying some fabric that I have felt in awhile.

Timeless Treasures has a hilarious vampire fabric. You don’t often see hilarious and vampire in the same sentence, I know, but this fabric made me laugh.

Exhibits

Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr will have an exhibit of Modern Quilts at the Wisconsin Quilt Museum from now until the beginning of April. If you are a reader from Wisconsin, I would love to hear what you think.

The California State Parks are celebrating the 150th (WOW!) anniversary of the system with a quilt contest. Make a quilt, make history. The contest will include an online show of quilts created by quilters throughout the state to honor our state parks. The theme of the quilts is any aspect of California State Parks that inspires you. There are no restrictions as to quilting style, fabric, technique, size, etc!!!

Other Artists

Friend Julie has a new website and her own domain. Check it out at JulieZacconeStiller.com. I am jealous. I really need to work on Artquiltmaker.com, but haven’t done it. Yes, I am putting it on the list.

Have you seen Pam’s English Paper Piecing Project? It is stunning. I love the fabrics she chose.

You can still read Libby Lehman’s CaringBridge site. She went home last week, which is great news. You have to log in to leave a comment.

Frank's Lovey
Frank’s Lovey

I am in an online quilt group and periodically a member will have a really terrible year. this happened to a member recently. We all made blocks and one of the members put them together into a ‘lovey’. I no longer remember which block I made, though I suspect it is the Sawtooth Star with the black on white background to the right of the center. I think I made it during my Star Sampler craze last year.

I was interested in the way the author of the With Strings Attached blog calls quilt tops ‘flimsies.’ I have never heard that before. She has a page with all of her flimsies listed (no links, though) so you can take a look.

Quilty Fun

Most Interesting Man
Most Interesting Man

I do think that quiltmakers, for the most part, are funny people. Recently I saw this posted to Instagram by MissouriMel and retweeted by Alex Veronelli of Aurifil fame. I wonder if the most interesting man knows?

Not Quilt Related

Check out some interesting youth art on a site called DeviantArt.

Some of you read of my computer woes last summer. After reading a brief article about Windows 8, I feel a bit vindicated in my frantic search for a Windows 7 machine when Windows 8 was taking over the world.

Are you interested in cheesecake (@HQSuz??). I met a librarian at a recent conference who bakes cheesecakes in his spare time. Then he writes about them in a blog. He is a librarian, after all, and that is what we do. You can see the regular blog as well, which has interesting bits of information, things about life, books, etc.