Various & Sundry 2013 #6

Can you believe I am back already with another episode of Various & Sundry? I can’t, truly, but I had so much stuff, I couldn’t not post it. Besides the lack of sewing is catching up with me. Get ready for some book reviews, chicklets*!

Products and Services

Aurifil May Club
Aurifil May Club

The Quilt Bear came through again. My monthly does of Aurifil came through again today with a little bit of fabric as well.

This month I received a spool of the 50 wt. Plum Purple and a second spool of Aqua Blue. The Aqua Blue looks similar to colors I have, but I don’t know if it is the same. I can always use more aqua and turquoise of everything!

Again, these colors are a bit duller than what I would call bright , but I think I will be able to use them.

The Quilt Bear included a fat quarter of fabric, as I mentioned. I think I will give it away when I send off the Art Quilt Portfolio books.

There are a lot of fun palettes on Pinterest and I always wondered where they came from – not enough to actually look it up, of course! The answer (or one answer) fell into my lap the other day when I read the Intrepid Threads blog about the Play Crafts Palette Builder. There are a couple of palettes I have been wanting to make and this might just be the impetus I need!

And of course, buy fabric while you are at the Intrepid Thread. Have you seen Hipster Pop yet?

I was amazed, thrilled and a little frightened to see a pop-up from The Electric Quilt saying that there was a new downloadable update. I went to open and a window opened saying there was an update. The box had a button to click that immediately started the download. If you haven’t updated your copy of EQ7, try it out.

Creative Prompts

The Creative Prompts came to the rescue a few weeks ago at an event AJ Dub attended. It went on for longer than anticipated and she whipped out her phone to amuse some children. She writes “By they way, the creative prompts saved our sanity in church today. We had an unusual 2 hour meeting and the kids were pretty bored and restless towards the end. I got on my phone and looked up your creative prompts posts (thanks for tagging them! NICE!) and set them to drawing. They kept at it for about half an hour and between the 3 of them we went through about 20 words.” I am so thrilled that Amy used the creative prompts in such a creative way and that I was able to assist! Thanks for sharing, Amy.

Here are some thoughts and questions for you to ponder on living a creative life.

In my mind, the CPP is about inspiration. Look at the prompt and get inspired. Even if the prompt makes you think about something else and that something else forces you to go make something, I have succeeded (are you in with my plan for creative world domination?). Sometimes, though, we are unbelievably successful and people hate us and call us names. Delilah Dawson, a writer, writes about this on her blog. The post is about writing, sort of, but mostly about behavior. She encourages us to WRITE HARDER. I say SEW HARDER!

Follow-up

California Adventure Mosaic
California Adventure Mosaic

After my post about Roxanne’s, there was some discussion about the mosaic on their cutting table.

The first time I saw this type of mosaic, that I remember was in California Adventure in 2005. I wanted this type of backsplash when we remodeled our kitchen, but the timeframe was too tight and the amount of work involved makes these things very expensive.

There will be a sequel/follow-up to the Primal Green exhibit of which I was a part. Stay tuned for more details.

Technique

I get my quilts photographed professionally. Not all of them, but the ones I consider important. The Modern Quilt Blog has a post from last year about photographing your quilts. There is a lot of information about photographing quilts out on the web. Read it and figure out what works for you. As long as you get a decent photo of your quilt, you don’t need to do it the way others do it.

If you are still thinking about Bonnie Hunter’s Easy Street, take a look at the post that Kati did for Part 3, shaded 4 Patch blocks. there was a reason she couldn’t make the blocks the way Bonnie Hunter did it, so she went out and searched YouTube, then did a tutorial for you. Take a look.

BTW, you have only about a month left to download all the parts of Easy Street, if you want to do it. She will take it down soon.

On the Web

Have you heard of the 31 quilts in 31 Days project? No? Me either. I found it through Adrianne and I have to say that the contributions of the South Bay Modern Quilt Guild are really GREAT. These are simple quilts that don’t look simple. They are simple quilts that are interesting. Great job SBMQG! Here are some Flickr photos of their quilts.

I like this blog, I Want to Cut You, though i am not sure how I feel about the name. I like her post on QuiltCon. Sadly I found it as she is packing to move somewhere overseas and will not be back to blogland for 2 months. Oh well, perhaps in two months I will remember to go back.

NQR

My dad is now on FB. It is a good and bad thing. I can’t say that I have a terrible dad (I didn’t and wouldn’t say that; this is an example), but I get to post things to his wall to get his attention. He found this post about Dads and Daughters somewhere and posted it asking us how he did. This is a great post about dads and daughters. It really evoked imagery of my childhood when I read it.

I really liked the interview with Sally Melville on Creative Mojo on the week of April 3, 2013. She talks about knitting, but some of her comments relate to quiltmaking. One of the comments [paraphrasing] was that we have gotten away from knitting for our wardrobe and we just like to knit for the meditative qualities, etc, but as soon as you learn how to fit in knitting you can knit for your wardrobe successfully. I thought that this was true for me with quiltmaking. Of course, I like the quilts I make, but I don’t need 12 new quilts every year for my bed. I make quilts to keep myself sane and because of the crazy compulsion I have to create. Can I get back, without losing my stress reliever, to making quilts that are useful? Do I want to?

 

*I promise not to call you chicklets anymore, but I need something to call you all. Deanna Raybourn calls her readers ‘chickens’. I don’t want to copy her despite the fact that she is totally awesome and I want to be her when I grow up. ‘Dear readers,’ which you totally are, is just a bit too formal sometimes. What could I call you?