Radio Silence Broken

Gosh, where has the time gone?  It seems that the weeks are flying by with outside activities, holidays, gardening, canning and some sewing.  And lots of work to fill out the days.  Are you finding summer has taken over your schedule?

I finished the back for the two Avengers/Spiderman quilts and got them to the long arm quilter along with Screaming Green and an orange and grey Wonky 9 Patch.  Don't know yet when she will be able to turn around the 4 tops that I gave her to work on.  Hope she is more successful at utilizing her time than I am right now!

I've made some wonky star blocks, first to learn the technique and second to do something with them.  Don't know what yet, but I'm sure it will come to me.  Here they are:

I've also added to my improvisational blocks with another 2 blocks.  I have come up with a design concept.  I need a few more blocks and then I can put the top together.  It will be a surprise for you (and possibly for me!)  Soon, very soon, I will have something to show. 

I am enjoying making these improvisational blocks.  It is so much fun to paw through scraps and strips and create lively, happy blocks.  Plus, for the first time, I am able to use small scraps of fabric in creative ways.  Little strips, wedges and chunks are finding their way out of my scrap "throwaways" and becoming part of this lively grouping.

Last but not least, I have been working on my Round Boo Bee center medallion.  A very small group of us are having a "little" bee where we exchange our quilt tops, starting with a center medallion/block and then every 2 months the top will be passed on to the next person, who will add more rounds.    My choice was to use the fabric line Cosmos and a lot of solids:

I decided to use one of Faith's from www.freshlemons.com Summer Sampler paper pieced blocks as my center block.  Her block patterns come together so beautifully, that I have lost all trepidation about paper piecing.  I started out making 1/4 of the center block:

Then I made the next 3 and put them all together:

Next, I'll add some "jewelry" to create my center medallion.  On July 7, I'll hand off my medallion and my fabrics to the first person in this bee to add her rounds.  Mallory, I'm looking forward to seeing what you will do with this start!

Aaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.

Blame It On The Sunshine

I've had a slow if not sluggish week of sewing.  I blame it on the sunshine.  I get up hours earlier than during the winter so I ought to have more time to sew.  Instead, I sip coffee and look around my garden and take Boo for walks or to the dog park to play and generally seem to avoid going into my sewing room for any length of time. 

How about you?  Is "almost summer" wreaking havoc with your sewing?

What did I get done this week?  I managed to complete another block for the QuiltCon Challenge:

QuiltCon Block Challenge - 2 blocks complete;

I already completed my block for the BAMQG Block Challenge so I don't guess I can call that this week's work...but I did photograph it outside, in the sun this week! 

I pulled fabric for the round robbin that 4 of us are participating in and starts the beginning of July.  Our little group are all members of the BAMQG and after spending a mini-retreat long weekend at my house in Gold Country, we decided not to let the fun end there.  In July we bring in our central motifs and our fabric.  Then every 2 months we will have completed a round on someone's quilt.  Have to get my central motif selected and made by July 7th.  Here's my fabric pull:

I just love Cosmos!  Of course, I had to order more fabric to round out my options so that took time.  And I had to search the web for medallion quilts to give me some ideas for my central motif - man there are alot of traditional medallion quilts out there!  Since I want this to be a thoroughly modern quilt, I turned to my favorite bloggers to see what they are doing.  I am torn between one of Faith's http://www.freshlemonsquilts.com/  Summer Sampler blocks and an idea I found while wasting time surfing....er, I mean researching this morning.  Sew Katie Did  http://sewkatiedid.wordpress.com/ had a great idea that I might just copy, er use as a resource in creating my amazing one of a kind central motif!  More to follow next week on this topic.

Thank goodness for creative, talented women who  post their wonderful ideas on the internet! 

After writing this week's blog, I see I really did make some progress.  Sometimes getting ready to sew or memorializing what you have done has to take over actual sewing.  If only for a little while! 

I hope you are enjoying beautiful weather where ever you are and that you have had a productive week whether sewing or thinking about sewing!

Aaaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household this bright and sun filled day.

Projects, projects, projects!

Happy Thursday.  The weather is absolutely gorgeous here in Los Altos.  Still breezy but lots of sun to make a person smile!

I have been working on improvisational blocks, including some blocks that I may submit to QuiltCon or BAMQG (our modern guild is also running a block challenge in the same QuiltCon colors).  QuiltCon is a modern quilt convention that is scheduled for February in Austin, Tx.  The QuiltCon block challenge is to create blocks from the QuiltCon color palette and one dimension of the block must be 12.5".  The palette is:

So far, I have come up with:

And this:

And this:

I like 1 and 3 more than 2.

Meanwhile, I've been working on smaller improvisational log cabin blocks that will be used in as yet an unknown way.  I haven't done much improvisational work and I haven't worked much in mainly solids or completely solids.  Here is what I've come up with so far:

I am having a little trouble working solely in solids, so every block has some print in it.  I have a pretty good stash of solids now, so it seems to be mostly a matter of my mind shift to solids. 

I have been referring to and learning from Gwen Marston's Liberated Quiltmaking II.  So, the blocks are not all the same size which will ultimately add to the "liberated" nature of the finished project.

And just to add a little food to the post, I have started making jam (or sauce depending on the result) again this year.  First up was strawberry jam.  My friend Bonnie, who lives in Visalia, Ca brought me an entire flat of freshly picked unfumigated organic berries when we got together for Memorial Day Weekend.  These berries are so different from the ones that I purchase in the markets here - the berries are red all the way through and (unfortunately) they go bad very, very quickly.  So we all ate berries until we turned pink and I still had a large amount available for jam.  The results are:

I must have been lazy that day, because these are huge jars of jam.  They look small, but they are not - 4 jars of jam from a huge pot of cooked down berries. 

I make refrigerator jam, so these jars are not "canned".  The taste is amazing - the freshness of the berries is not compromised by the canning process. And you can freeze the jars for longer storage, if you wish. 

Now I'm on to blueberries.  Organic blueberries have just become available and I look forward to making my traditional blueberry jam.

And last but not least, Connor and sippy cup with his Angry Birds hat (3xs too big for his head!):

 

Aaaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.  

Thursday and Project Updates

Back from a family get-together for Memorial Day Weekend and happy to report I have some finished quilts to show you.  But first the weekend update:

Basketball:  did you know that they make little bitty basketballs for little bitty kids?  I found this out when I went online to buy a basketball hoop for the boys.  I didn't want to buy Nerf type basketballs since the hoop would be outside.  Who knew that you can get small and smaller basketballs just right for little hands!?  They practiced dribbling and shooting baskets for hours.

Garage sale swingset:  I found a swingset for $25 at my neighbors garage sale and it was mostly assembled (that's even better than the low, low price).   The great gals who attended the mini-retreat helped me carry it home and my son put it back together.  A great deal of swinging occurred and I am quite sure that we got the entire $25 back in use over the weekend.  Don't you just love bargains at garage sales?

Now on to the quilting news.  I picked up my Stacked Block quilt and my Teal We Meet Again Wonky Plus Sign quilt from my long-arm quilter.  She had marked the Stacked Block quilt with blue washable marker, so I washed it after getting it home.  It's so big, I haven't been able to take a good photo yet - hopefully in next post.
Here is the Wonky Plus Sign quilt:

 Here's the back:

 Here's a close up of the quilting:

I also made my ABC blocks for the June BAMQG meeting (the letters are "Q" and "R") and here they are:

First is the "Q" block - Quilt In Light and Dark:

 It was difficult to find many choices for the "Q" block.  I think that I will use this block as a signature block for the quilt. 

And this is the "R" block - Right Hand of Friendship

And finally, I worked on Step 4 of the Liberated Round Robin 2 project.  Step 4 is the last step of this online improvisational bee.  The theme for Step 4 was "Serendipity".  My serendipity was to take a little block that I had made that was a wonky tree, which just happened to have the same purple fabric I used in the center of the project and added it to the upper left hand corner.  There could be more added but here is Step 4 right now:  

After I decide about adding any other elements to this round, I envision black binding to finish it.

Aaaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.

A Road Trip to Gold Country with Lots of Food and Fabric

This past weekend was the mini-retreat with some of my Bay Area Modern Quilt friends at my house in Gold Country.  Five of us drove up on Friday afternoon (six if you count Boo) for a long weekend of sewing, eating, shopping, chatting and laughing.  This is Friday night's dinner:

We got up Saturday morning, went to a garage sale, took a long walk, ate yummie French toast and then went shopping.  Some people decided to sew rather than walk, but everyone went shopping!  First we went to downtown Sonora and the knit shop.  Then on to the new Joann's.  Everyone is so nice there.  They had all kinds of Denyse Schmidt fabric and we had piles of coupons, plus the sales people were so nice they gave us extra coupons.  Ruth and Sheetal created a complicated system of shared purchasing of fabric so as to maximize coupon usage.  By the end of that shopping experience, we had to stop for sustenance before we could go on.

Then we went to Bearly Quilting (the LQS) to see what they had and what was on sale.  I also was able to pick-up 2 quilts that my long arm quilter friend Dee Small had finished for me (more about that in another post).  More shopping was accomplished at Bearly Quilting and then we went "up the hill" to Twain Harte to shop at the Twain Harte Pharmacy.  Here's a photo of the group before they went in.

I wish I would have thought to take photos in the store, but I was too busy rooting through fabric to remember to do so.  You'll just have to come up and visit the Pharmacy yourself sometime to know what fabric goodies are there.  Lots of older modern fabric for $3.99 yard and newer modern fabric for $7.49 to $8.99.

After hours of shopping, we rolled down the hill and back to my house for snacks, looking at all our purchases and discussing what we should have bought that we left behind.  Amanda made wonderful fresh guacamole, which allowed us to put dinner off until about 8:30.  We had steaks and baked potatoes and salad and fresh strawberries and whipped cream.  Yum!  I'm pretty sure there was some ice cream eaten along the way with homemade blueberry sauce.

   

 I did not stay up late - opting to go to bed early-ish as I was making so many mistakes assembling my quilt back that it was clear I needed to stop.  Others continued to work and make progress:

On Sunday we got up and sewed as long as we could before the group had to start going home.  Amanda and I had to run to Joann's for emergency items.  Ruth and I stayed the longest, leaving about 2 for the Bay Area.  It was a fun filled weekend even if I didn't get as much sewing done as I had hoped - sometimes you have to trade off sewing time for fabric shopping time. 

Aaaanyway, that's it from the Robertson household.

Happy Mother's Day to You!

I don't have much quilting news.  Did want to wish everyone a Happy Mother's Day.  I went off to Reno, Nevada to visit my grandkids.

That's Connor with the tongue about to stick out and Mason saying "cheese"!  We're at the boys' school for Mother's Day lunch (Mommy is taking the picture) and then we went off for more adventures.

Amazing how much energy a 2.5 and 4.5 year old can have!  We crammed alot into a few short days.  Connor got his big boy 2 wheel bike.  Mason is working on his tricycle skills.  We took walks and set up the new swimming pool.  Planted flowers and a new tree and set up the new lawn furniture...whew!

The ride up was beautiful.  Still snow in the high country (sorry for the photo through the window - I didn't want to stop!)

Here's Boo in the backseat wishing he were anywhere but in the truck:

So, again, I wish you a Happy Mother's Day.  Hope you enjoyed your time with your family and also enjoyed your special day.

Aaaanyway, that is it from the Robertson household.

WIP Wednesday - COLOR

I have been working on my Liberated Round Robin2 block, adding step 3 - COLOR.  You can find the blog at:  http://liberatedroundrobin.blogspot.com/
Go have a look when you have a minute.  This is not a traditional round robin where you send your block to the next person and receive a block from someone else to add a round - you keep your own block and add rounds based on the focus of individual "steps", culminating in a finished design after 4 steps.

Well, I took that COLOR concept literally and after adding a narrow band of black, I added the biggest orange chevrons I could get my hands on.  Actually, I first made some wonky log cabins for the round, but I made the first one too big and decided to stop and reconsider and well, honestly, the deadline was upon me and I didn't want to be late, so I'd rather do something than nothing (have you ever had that decision making experience?).  Hence the orange chevrons.

So here was my block at the end of step 2:

And here it is after the chevron addition (yeeeeha!):

Not really happy with it, so I'm thinking I'll take off the chevrons and add some wonky trees and then the chevrons.  I'm not giving up on them - I just think the trees need to be inside them and not outside them.  If I haven't confused you enough, I'll stop talking about this and show you a photo after the "chevronectomy", if I actually take off the chevrons and add the trees...because I didn't have enough chevron material and I had to piece them and it took a really long time to match everything up at the seams.  Hmmmm, maybe those trees are gonna look just fine outside the chevrons! 

What do you think - should I rippppp out the chevrons and add the trees, or just keep moving on?  Or do you need to see the trees first to make the decision?

P.S.  I am following the directions for the wonky trees from Gwen Marston and Freddie Moran's book, Collaborative Quilting (here's the link)http://www.amazon.com/Collaborative-Quilting-Freddy-Moran/dp/1402730438/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336585832&sr=8-1

                      

Great book full of wonderful ideas for improvisational quilting using bright, bright colors!

That is my work in progress for Wednesday.  Very laid back. 

Aaaaanyway, that's it for May 9th from the Robertson household.