Summer Reading

Some of you may be reading Moby Dick this summer, or perhaps works of Jane Austin. Meanwhile, I'm digging into more Japanese quilting books.

This book (ISBN4-529-04120-4) by Kuroha Shizuko covers many quilted works using indigo fabrics. Indigos are very traditional Japanese fabrics that these days are more and more hard to come by. Historically, they were created by indigo dye masters.

Back when I lived in Los Angeles, I used to visit a shop (Azabu-Ya) that sold many beautiful indigo fabrics from Japan so I have a little collection that I've been meaning to use.

Jude Hill of Spirit Cloth blog also loves to work in indigo. If you have yet to check out her blog, it is a visual feast for the eyes and I highly recommend it.

Whatcha reading this summer? Got any recommendations for me? and PLEASE don't recommend the Twilight series. It's way too addicting, I am not allowed!

Opening Pandora's Box

As a general rule, I don't do a lot of food photography, but I could not resist taking a quick shot of the wanna-be-french macarons that I made for my husband on Father's Day. And no, I did not wisk them with the ugly stick, thank you very much.

Not sure if I'm happy or cursed for trying to make them since they were a disaster.

I followed most of the recipe that I found on this online version of Desserts Magazine.

Did my cookies have feet? Ahem, no.
Did my cookies have puffy round dome shapes? Um, no again.
Did they become a huge sticky mess which my husband claimed tasted good anyhow? Yes!

So, do I resign myself to NEVER, EVER making them again, or should I give it another go and see if I can do a bit better?

Any tips you got for me you psycho baker genius-types? (you know who you are...yes this at least includes Rebecca from my quilt group)

And speaking of opening up another Pandora's box, have you visited Pandora yet for your listening pleasure? I think I'm hooked. Music to quilt by.

Mini Star Quilt

I just finished putting the binding on this mini star quilt.

The pieces of fabric were went to me by Kathie of Inspired by Antique Quilts Blog (check out her version of the quilt here).

Thanks again Kathie for sending the fabric, I had a blast putting this little quilt together. I hand quilted it too which was a huge blast. More about that in a future post.

I also put together a mini-teenie-flickr set slide show of my sister's baby quilt for you to enjoy.

Handmade Quilt Label: broderie perse (part 2)

Here's the 2nd part of the Broderie Perse labels - this label is on the back of our baby son's quilt.

Again I took some fabric from Anna Maria Horner's design and cut out some white leaves. I wrote on the leaves in my funky calligraphy style. Oh, and it was so nice of my friend Carol to applique most of it on there for me. That was perhaps the best part.

Makes me want to finish more quilts just so I can put labels on them!

Don't forget to put the name of who the quilt is for, who made it, date, washing instructions if you are going to give it away (wash cold, gentle, hang dry...wash as infrequently as possible), location of where it was made.

On that note...perhaps I HAVE finished another quilt. Maybe Kathie knows which quilt it might be....Is the suspense killing you?

Echino Oilcloth and baby goodies

My mother's day gift from my parents included a piece of Echino Oilcloth (from Purl Soho) big enough for my breakfast nook table. It's spill-proof, kid-proof, and almost bullet-proof. I can think of a zillion things I could do with it besides eat on top of it, but it looks like that is it's destiny.

In a moment of weakness I picked up some matching fabric to make napkins from http://www.ayarnoutlet.com/.

I also wanted to pick up some cute new toys for my newest baby-girl-friend that I was having lunch with today, so I headed over to Baby Buzz, which is the cutest baby shop around (you must visit in person - such an adorable/happy/friendly place).

They have oh so many wonderful things for kids. If you live in the California bay area, you really need to check it out. Tons of chewy toys by Haba (my favorite German toy company), as well as this awesome teething ring by a company called ZoLi .

I picked up one for my little friend, but made sure that our 9 month old tested it on his 2 new teeth and I'll say that he totally approves.

Another attractive display had cars from Automoblox - a company that makes modular cars for kids to play with and mix and match.

I literally could not avoid picking up an adorable hair clip for my baby niece. It's hard to restrain myself from wearing it. If you see a grown woman running around with one of these in her hair, it might just be me.

Handmade Quilt Label: broderie perse (part 1)

To spice up my niece's quilt, I used a broderie perse applique method to create the label.

Anna Maria Horner (her blog) is a super cool fabric designer that makes all sorts of large prints in wild colors. Her color usage is quite bold and unique actually.

I bought some fabric that she designed for Freestyle from her Drawing Room collection. It has all these great birds and flowers all over it.

The birds had a lot of blank white space, so I wrote the quilt label inside of that, and cut around it carefully to applique on as the label.

I will confess that I also used this method for the other quilt label I just made for our baby son. That label is even better because my dear friend Carol actually ended up doing the applique to put it on there for me! (hee hee...it was a complex pattern, and a very heavy fabric as well!)

Quilt Delivery Service

Last weekend our family drove from Northern California to Southern California to visit the grandparents and Aunt/Uncle/baby-niece.

Her quilt was complete, so I had no more excuses to keep it hanging around my house.

I made a super cool label - more details on that soon - and wrapped up my beautiful adorable niece in her new little quilt. I think she appreciated all the wild colors.

Not having the quilt in my house is a bit sad, but giving it to it's rightful owner...priceless.

Having taken a lot of photos of it before I gave it to her, I am thinking of putting a little flickr set together for you to see more of it.

The name of the quilt is Rising Diamonds - kinda like the Japanese rising sun, but with diamonds instead.

I'm also in love with the NPR challenge, "How Low Can You Go" where people write in with their recipe ideas that feed a family of 4 for under $10. Some very cool and interesting ideas in there.

Excess Fabric

Is there such a thing as "Excess Fabric"?

I was searching for a topic for my blog post tonight, since I wanted to show you a photo of the blocks I made for the Sarah Johnson quilt but thought I should have something more intelligent to say than just - hey check out my awesome signature blocks.

So I asked my dear husband what topics I have yet to cover in my blog.

He said, "How about asking people how they use their excess fabric?"

I said "EXCESS FABRIC?!!!! - NO SUCH THING!"

Or maybe not - if you check out the May 2009 give away from Sew Mama Sew, you may find that lots of folks have excess fabric and are more than happy to give it away to you as long as you leave them a comment.

Patchwork Quilt Tsushin #150

I'm a huge fan of Patchwork Quilt Tsushin, and their issue #150 just came out.

It included a little insert that was sort of a little marketing flier, but was called Patchwork Quilt Glossary. It discusses vocabulary terms, techniques, and methodologies used in quilting. Kinda cute.

The magazine itself has several pin cushion photos and patterns as it looks like they asked a bunch of folks to make different patterns for them to commemerate their issue #150.

There is an article starting on P.64 that discusses work of the beautiful and talented Yoko Saito and probably mentions her new book. I'm going to put this into my bucket of "If that doesn't make you want to learn to read Japanese, I don't know what will."

And since it's Memorial Day weekend here in the states, and my dad does love to watch the Indy 500, I thought I'd throw a quick racing link out there for you to check out a classic 1976 video of a drive through Paris at 140 MPH.

Background on the film here.

Ladies and Gentlemen...start your engines.

Kid's Pencil Roll - complete with twig pencils

I had a kid birthday party come up recently and needed to whip up a couple of gifts.

Instead of putting together a full pencil roll that would hold 24 pencils (as the pattern recommends in Joelle Hoverson's book, Last Minute Patchwork + Quilted Gifts) I decided to do a much smaller version.

It actually went together much faster than the full version I did before and I was able to finish it inside of a couple of hours.

Twig pencils are the cutest thing on earth, magical really. They just barely fit into the pencil roll. I think I would make the pieces slightly larger next time in order to account for their increased diameter.

And not to whine, but why oh why doesn't my local Kinokuniya book store have a copy of Yoko Saito's new Taupe Patchwork Bag book? I could really use some good long weekend reading!

The Sarah Johnson Quilt

I started a Wedding Signature Quilt ages ago, based on the Sarah Johnson Quilt.

It's a historic quilt from 1826, with the pattern created by Froncie Quinn of Hoopla Quilts.

For some reason I'm re-interested in this quilt again, and starting to get pieces together to make more blocks.

Let's see how far I get.

I also counted up how many 'in progress' quilts I have, and I think it's about 15.

What's your magic number? Is 15 a lot? It sounds to me like hardly a good start at all.

If the sock fits, wear it!

The sock fits!

Unfortunately (?) my friend Sharon will have to make it's mate. Good thing she's such a fast knitter. She will be racing the clock vs. the awesome growth path of our baby son.

Things to enjoy this beautiful Friday:

- Adorable cable sweater from Purl Bee
- Poison Green quilt from Lea at Simple Pleasures
- Incredible quilt show photos from Jan at Be* Mused

The Glass Slipper

Once upon a time, my girlfriend Sharon of Knits are for Kids knitted this sock for her son, and it was too small.

Boo...hoo...what a horrible shame that is. I wonder if it would fit on our baby son instead?

Did she give the the sock? Of course.

Does it fit our baby?

bup bup BAAAHHH.....stay tuned for the next riveting installment of this amazing tale.......

Will he fit the knitted sock, and will she be begged by her dear friend to knit up a mate for it?

I feel like there should be a fairy Godmother involved here or something.

Japanese Waffle Fabric and whoa, 400!

Can you believe this is my 400th post?

I think in dog years, that makes my blog very very old. Or at least an excellent reference and amazing wealth of information. Or maybe just a lot of keystrokes.

I am in love with the green Japanese waffle fabric that I picked up as Goodness was having a fire sale, closing their Etsy doors.

This fabric really looks super 3D, just like a waffle that would come out of your waffle iron.

If you do a search on Etsy for Japanese waffle fabric you will see more of what I'm talking about.

I will confess to having bought a very tiny bit of it in off white from CottonBlue. CottonBlue has a lot of the 'cute' Japanese fabric that is really appealing to me especially for kids quilts.

While I was hanging around Etsy, I found this adorable lamp made out of wool. If I had a little girl I would have to get it. Good thing it's all boys for me.

Cheers to the 400th post! I've come a long way, baby.

Blah blah blah

Finally, the Keep Calm quilt is finished and up on the wall.

Speaking of putting words out there, check out this pillow that has one of my all time fav sayings on it: blah blah blah.... So awesome! Were it not $100, I would have to have one.

And of course I was reading Kathie's blog, Inspired by Antique Quilts, and saw her posted link to getting a copy of Barbara Brackman's used to be out of print now available via download as an ebook Clues in the Calico. It tells you how to date antique quilts.

You know the little quilt appraiser in me has got to have this book.

Hand Quilting and Steel String Guitar Practice

After hand quilting way more than my usual amount, and having not developed calluses yet, my son asked me to play a little guitar for him.

Ouch!! Sheesh, boo boo fingers did not like those steel strings.

The wall hanging quilting is finally done and I have an awesome binding picked out. Now to have some time to just put it on there.

We had a nice weekend here. All healthy for once, that's a new one around here. Maybe the dry weather is doing us some good.

Meanwhile, I'm loving:

the fashion of Rick Owens, such cool designs....
these roses photographed by Quaint Handmade...
this kitchen (beautiful) as photographed by Lara Cameron of Kirin Notebook

Keeping Calm

The Keep Calm and Carry On quilt top is done, and I'm in process of quilting it.

I decided to use black thread to quilt it, which is a little funky, but after all it's an odd little project.

In a desperate effort to polish off the veggies that we get from our CSA, a place called Two Small Farms, my husband discovered this cool site called RecipePuppy.

Enter items in your frig, and the puppy comes up with recipes for you.

I tried snails and chocolate just to test its limits, and it didn't find anything. But, what it found for coffee and chocolate was definitely worth some thought.

And what is with this knitting site called KnittingHelp.com? Why are knitters so very cool? Where is the quilting equivalent of this site?

Continental Knitting blows my mind. I might have to invent "Continental Quilting".

Continental Quilting: Twice as fast as regular quilting with less movement of your fingers! Now...how to implement that...hmmm...

Mother's Day project: Silhouette Necklaces

Yesterday my friend Sharon, of Knits are for Kids blog, and I worked on our Mother's Day silhouette necklace project.

She turned me on to a cool web site: http://www.photojewelrymaking.com/ where we got a lot of our supplies.

Overall, the final results are ok. I would NOT recommend doing this project on a hot day, and I would also recommend that you use some kind of sealer like modge podge perhaps, on your photos. We didn't do that and some of the papers took in resin.

Anyhow, think moms and grandmothers will not notice small imperfections, they will probably just love the fact that we made them something personal.

Fabric from Singapore

In my post office box I got the most lovely package.

Mona, from Singapore, sent me the most amazing Victorian inspired fabric complete with silhouettes as part of the print!

It was such a sweet gesture and it really warmed my heart so very much.

Thanks a million Mona.

The fabric is designed by Micci for Yuwa fabric company. I am not too familiar w/ this designer, but I am off to read more about it.

I'll be working more on the silhouette project tomorrow so stay tuned for updates! My first adventure with resin.

Happy Easter!

Hope that this Easter finds your family together, happy, healthy and relaxed.

I made this bunny ages ago from Hilary's pattern, found on the beautiful and famous Wee Wonderfuls blog. Her patterns are adorable and very easy to follow.

If you don't have a copy of this bunny pattern yet, you might want to pick one up. I loved making it and I'm usually not a huge fan of stuffed dolls.

We will be hunting eggs and eating our usual Easter breakfast treat. Best wishes to you.