IN WHICH WE KEEP PLUGGING AWAY
ON SWEET SURRENDER!

and
A TRIP TO INDIA!

Another border completed!  Both borders have been measured and sewn to their respective locations.  I don't sew the borders in place until the applique is finished as the tension of all those stitches reduce the length of the border.  The top and bottom strips have been laid down just to give you a sense of balance and direction.  The scrolly vines  on the top and bottom borders will twist and meet the vines of the side borders.  

I have used Kaffe Fassett fabric for the leaves and dots in the body of the quilt and plan to add some to the vines-not a lot but just enough to break up the greenness.  I have been looking at colorful stripes for the binding-I bought some of the green for that but now I think that is too much green.  I found this from Andover and am thinking of it as a possibility:

Each of the stripes are 1/2 to 3/4 inches wide and the fabric has the same bright colors.  if you imagine a narrow strip of this fabric  as an edge:

I like the colors and the fact that the bands are uneven-that is in keeping with the mood of the quilt as well as the black lines.  The green is the only problem.  Kaffe has some nice stripes but they are all in a limited color range.  Even the binding is an important design element!

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I have cataract surgery in my right eye on Wednesday.  I am slightly apprehensive but glad.  Everything is getting so dark.  It is as if all the lights are dimming.

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My blog has had visitors from two new countries:  Kazakhstan, and Columbia.  I am so happy you have stopped by to visit!  Flags have been added.  

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AND NOW....

YOUR MOMENT OF ZEN!

A festival to appeal to all quiltmakers and designers: 

HOLI:  Festival of Colors

(photos from Atlantic Monthly-see more at https://www.theatlantic.com/photo/2017/03/holi-2017-the-festival-of-colors)

Holi is a Hindu festival celebrating springtime and Krishna's "pranks". Pretty colored powders are blown on celebrants or mixed with water and sprayed.  Only India would do something as wonderful as having a festival for color!

My daughter lives in northwest India in Rishikesh which is located at the foothills of the father Himalayas and near the mouth of the mother Ganges.  She has lived abroad for about 8 years spending 4 in South Korea where she taught English and wrote stories for the children to help them learn English. She has lived in Rishikesh for about 4 years where she writes and studies yoga.  Here is a photo of her at Holi 2016.

Here are some photos of Rishikesh and a map so you can find its place in the world.

My daughter walks across this bridge everyday.

The river is the Ganges.

That is all for this week!  Happy quilting to you until we met again!

I am linking up with:

Slow Stitching Sunday, Bambi's Blog,

Patchwork Times,  Em's Scrapbag,

Esther's Wow, Let's Bee Social,

IN WHICH FOUR NEW TRIANGLES ARE FLOWERED ......

Sweet Surrender by Sue Cody

Count is up to 13 triangles-5 more to make.  The quilt is going to fasssssst!  I have decided that is because I am not doing any original designing on these blocks but rather just following the pattern.  The only choices are the fabrics which are incredibly fun to play with and hard to stop. They just make themselves.  Here are the 4 new blocks:

Did I tell you that I have adopted the use of silk 100 wt thread for applique stitching?  I love it.  It is so cooperative to work with.  It blends so well and drops out of sight after the stitch is made.  You don't really need very many colors but, like all sewers (seamtresses, sewists, sewinas, sewistas, stitchers, choose your favorite), I like to collect as many as I can and they sit in their box like colorful, shiny jewels in a jewel case.  Silk thread is, in any case, almost as expensive as jewels.

I have gotten so much helpful advice from my friend bloggers about how to do foundation piecing.  I am using this method instead of the more grueling epp.  This week I am going to prep the diamonds and little triangles for these big triangles.  Since my Juki is wending its way to San Diego for an overhaul, there is no machine sewing in my future.

This is hard because I have a vague schedule on fmq training and wanted to keep up.  I brought out the Pfaff which is a lovely machine but requires a different skill set for fmq.  Since I don't want to confuse my muscle memory, I ceased and desisted with that idea.  I cannot sew the big triangles together either because it is the Juki which has the miracle piecing foot.  AArrrggghh!

Sewingmachinesplus.com has been very good so far with the return.  I thought i was going to be required to pay the almost $100 to ship and insure the Juki but they paid for that as the machine was less than one year old.  It will arrive in San Diego Tuesday 11-1 and the turnaround is 3 to 7 days.  They will pay to ship my Juki back to me.  So my report on Sewingmachinesplus.com is A+ so far.

I have had several people ask the name of my Salty Sardines quilt shown above.  Its actual name is Sweet Surrender by Sue Cody. What a name-maybe she is a Sarah McLachlan fan. I had to order mine from Material Obsession in Australia (shipping was very reasonable).  I am not sure if the pattern in sold in the US yet.  Here is a photo of the original quilt:

Lots of people have asked me the name of the background fabric I have been using.  It is a Robert Kaufman fabric called Valentina and designed by Valentina Ramos.  If you google it, you can find some online sellers.

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The fall is migratory season and we have a lot of (for us) unusual birds-that is birds not usually seen at our feeders.

This week we had a red breasted nuthatch (too fast to catch on camera) and a black capped chickadee.  Here are a couple photos of the chickadee:

Our usual chickadee is the Carolina which is very similar except does not have the rustier breast.  In the past we has lots more birds.  However, once the dog and now the orange cat Yoshi have taken up residence, the population has declined.

I am linking up with the usual suspects and thank them for their platforms!

Happy quilting!

I MISS MY JUKI!

 OFF TO A GOOD START!

Pretty wild colors!  So far I have been having a good time with this.  The fabrics are Day Dreams and Cuzco by Kate Spain.  I dug into my stash of Kaffe Fasset fabrics thinking maybe there were some additions there. But suprisingly no. All the fabrics seemed off kilter a bit except for some with leaf like prints which are perfect.  At first I made leaves in a coordinating aqua-green print but that was kind of boring so you can imagine how excited I was when I realized it was Kaffe to the rescue.  The leaves are orange, pink, turquoise, purple and so on.  It adds so much life to the applique.

One drawback for me in making this quilt is the English Paper Piecing.  This method of work is hard for me though I am acquiring some skill as I go along.  There are 18 of these large 11 inch triangles to make and they try my patience.  Also I did not realize how much fabric they use and hope I will have enough.  There are about 15 epp flowers to make but they are easier to make.

Here is a photo of the pattern:

You see on the original that Sue Cody uses a rose color at the base of her triangles.  I am using the aqua in a lighter version of the stems.  I am designing my version as I go along.These 2 fabric lines have some lovely colorful prints on white which are not really good for either the flowers or the epp triangles.  You really cannot see on the pattern photo but the borders are triangles (2 form a rectangle).  My current thinking is to use these white background prints alternating with the black and white background fabric accented by scrolling stems and Kaffe leaves-no flowers as the prints will provide lots of action.  Early days though!

I made 5 appliqued triangles but am having to rethink one as it is not right.  Here are the 4 that are finished.

All four of these have the epp flower and you can see that was fun to make.  You can also see the effect of the Kaffe leaves.  I am using 2 shades of the dark aqua for the stems.  The appliqued blocks make up quickly.  In order to be sure I have enough fabric choices for the applique, I will hold off on making the epp triangles for a while and just focus on the appliques.

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 I began my blog last May and one of the first posts was to express my terror of machine quilting.  I quilted Mountmellick which did not turn out to badly.  Since then I have come to actually come to like the process after having taken a sampler class and working on my own to build my skills (a lot of this is in preparation for quilting Caswell-be still my heart!)

As part of the skill building, I ordered a quilting book which arrived this week and looks interesting.  It is Fill Harmonics By Sue Heinz.  It is a beautifully made book with lovely paper, printing, layout and with a spiral binding.  She has excellent instructions and some unique fills.  Here is what the book looks like:

You can see some interesting fills on the cover.  I am working on a big circular sampler (only mentally at this point) partly based on one by Margaret Gunn Solomon who also has a book coming out this month.  She is a great quilter.  

                         (Someone asked me if I get a kickback or anything 

                         if I mention a product etc on my blog. Wish I did!

                         Unfortunately, I don't. If I mention something it

                         is because I find it useful or interesting.)

                         

I ordered something else interesting and that is Martelli quilting rings.  They look well make, easy to use with sufficient weight to keep the fabric in place and with spinning handles to aid in movement. I suffer from shoulder problems and have read that these help.  I will let you know more next week.

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The new visitor this week is from Malta.  Malta, as you probably know, is a small archipelago in the Mediterranean Sea about 50 miles south of Sicily.  It has a long history of strategic importance as a naval base and has been ruled by a succession of different countries. With its temperate climate, lovely vistas, beautiful water, and interesting historical sites, Malta is a popular tourist destination.  I want to go there.  Flag proudly added.

Well, that is all the news that fit to print.  I'll chat with you next week and in the meantime, I hope you have a lovely October week, get some stuff done if you want to and otherwise enjoy life!

LINKING UP WITH MY FAVORITES LADIES WHOSE BUTTONS YOU CAN CLICK ON TO SEE SOME GREAT QUILTS!

THIS WEEK HAS BEEN LONG AND UNPRODUCTIVE BUT I GOT THROUGH IT!
I assigned myself several objectives which gave some definition to my time but still a lot of time was spent wandering lost among the fabric so to speak. Everyone who tries to create expects to spend some down time in the land of the lost.  This happened to me also about three months ago just after i finished quilting Mountmellick when  I developed a painful quilter's block-not the square kind-the empty kind.  I got over it-one always does but it does not seem you will while in this blue funk.

Let me tell you what I did accomplish this week.  The empty nester bedroom was cleaned and tidied-no mean feat- so I could lay out Chuck Susan and Me.  I divided the blocks into several parts-those derived from Chuck, those derived from Susan Smith Stonefields quilt, those I thought up, those which are so generic no one can claim them, and a couple from other designers.

Here are Chucks:

Here are the blocks derived from Susan's quilt pattern:

You can see the difference between Chuck's very imaginative and stimulating designs and Susan's simpler, softer designs which repeat several times.  The repeats are one of the main reasons I looked for another design source:  if I was going to go to the trouble of 143 blocks I want them interesting and different.  Nothing against Susan's quilt.  If you google Stonefields, you will see lots of beautiful quilts made from this pattern.  It was just not me.

Here are my designs which I hope have a lot in common with Chuck's outlook on design.

Generic blocks-we have all seen these blocks many times before in many different quilts:

What can I say-all are pretty simple and a lot use motif from a bit of fabric as the center.  

These last three are from 2 designers: first Dear Jane pattern and the second 2 are by Faye Anderson in her book published in 1990.

I believe in giving credit to my sources.  I have studied lots of quilts as I am sure you have also-we can all recognize when a design has a backstory.  

All the blocks have some deviation from the original be it shaping, color mood, little additions etc.  Next week i hope to be over my funk and able to arrange these blocks in their final order-maybe even stitch them together.  I am still working on the center block.  

On to new things.  I have begun Sweet Surrender (hate that name).  The pattern calls for 18 full triangles and 4 half triangles.  The four background strips are cut and marked,  and applique has begun on the first triangle..

How is that for a complete switch in color moods from C,S, and Me with its pastels to this wild coloration from Kate Spain.  I dug through my Kaffe Fassett collection but could only find some brilliant turquoise/green for leaves to add to my fabric mix.

That's all for now-I hope you all have a good week and enjoy what you are doing.

I will be linking up with Kathy's Quilts, Mondays with Bambi, Patchwork times, Em's Scrapbag, Esther's blog (she finished the wedding dress just in time), Lets Bee Social, Whoop, Whoop and Off the Wall Fridays.  Good Hostesses!

HAPPY QUILTING!!!!