Quilted art bags - for kids, and encounters with handmade fabric

Last weekend my 5 yr old son went to the birthday party of his twin girl schoolmates.

I heard that their favorite things included art supplies, so I jumped at the chance to make some cute art pouches for them.

When I make bags or things that need to hold shape, I bring out my super heavy interfacing: Timtex. I used a couple of different linen fabrics, with the Timtex inside.

It was fun to whip these up. I used Velcro to create a closure mechanism on the inside of the flap. The size of the pouch was designed to house the contents I knew I was putting inside.

Superfun and adorable for two very cute little girls. I hope they enjoy them. I did my usual calligraphy on the front with their names and I had my son sign his name on the back using a pigma pen.

On a different note, I discovered the most amazing fabric printing artist the other day. The very talented Gina Pericini started selling her hand printed fabrics up in the fabric/yarn shop that I teach in.

Her etsy shop is called Flock Home and includes the most adorable fat quarter packs. I find it rare to encounter fabric that is hand made, and even more rare to find it so clean and with such beautiful designs.

I'll take some photos of the fabric I got to show off in a future post. I am thinking of making a protective pocket/holder/bag for my Japanese quilting magazines using her fabrics.

Thimble Cage and more fabric I 'need'

Finding the perfect thimble cage is not easy, as it turns out.

Thimble cages are used to hold your thimble in a beautiful cage, as a necklace when you need to pause your quilting, so you don't lose track of them. There is a small ring on top that slides off towards your neck on the string and the cage opens right up.

I wanted to get just the perfect one to hold my favorite antique Simons thimble.

After looking at some pretty ornate ones, I settled on this very minimal version that is available from The Colonial Needle Company.

It is called the thimble teardrop cage by Roxanne, which is a brand that makes various kinds of quilting supplies including needles.

I will warn you that it isn't quite large enough to fit my serious workhorse thimble, though. It's huge so I guess it makes sense, but just so you know...when I go to do a large amount of quilting...my thimble of choice is the Raised Edge Thimble by the Original Needleart Guild

It looks like there is now a new model out that even includes dimples on the top sides of the thimble. That looks like it would be interesting to try. It would probably give you some additional options in how you use your hand.

I was looking around at Superbuzzy (awesome online fabric shop, lots of Japanese fabric, awesome service too)....and ran into some Lego fabric. If you know me, and how I love to spend time with my sons, you know how much we all love Legos. When I saw this I said, "Wow, I NEED that fabric!" Seriously, does somebody like me ever 'need' any more fabric?

In this case - of course!

Finished at last! Table top quilt, hand quilted

I cannot even remember how long ago it was when my mom showed me her beautiful antique quilt top, and I said, "Oh, just give it to me so I can quickly quilt it up for you, Mom!" I think she bought it through a quilt dealer.

Well, "quickly"...doesn't exactly describe the rate at which I get things done sometimes, but I will say that finishing this small quilt was extremely enjoyable and I am thrilled with the end result.

The quilt top itself was pieced out of indigo and white fabrics by an unknown maker circa 1890. Whoever she was, I hope that she's looking down on it thinking - awesome - it's finally turned into a quilt after 120+ years.

My mom's kitchen is an amazing place with more light coming in the windows than any other kitchen I have ever been in. I can only dream of having this much beautiful light in my house anywhere, let alone in the kitchen.

She has it decorated mostly in blue and white, so if she puts this quilt on top of the center of her dining room table, I think it will look pretty smart.

I was trying to finish it for Mother's Day, so I guess it's sort of a belated gift, but anyway I think she'll like it.

Using Pigma Pens, I inked the names of her grandchildren on one of the plain white blocks. This will remain there as a permanent part of the quilt, and will not wash out.

I just love the look of inking words on fabric, and think this turned out pretty cool. She is expecting another grandchild VERY soon, so I left a spot to add the baby's name there too.

I used YLI's hand quilting thread in light brown color (to show off the stitches a bit, how flashy of me!) I have been tending to this use lately, and find that it gets fewer knots than other options.

My next post really should discuss the incredible quilted gift she gave me for Mother's Day (it's another WOW), but I'll need to photograph it for you so you can understand how spoiled I am.

Quilt Blocks of Modern Houses: Block 4

I'm getting all excited that our next Block Of the Month is coming up at Verb in a couple of weeks.

The house we are doing this time is very simple, but turned out oh so pretty. I literally cannot wait to see how other people are coming along with their amazing and beautiful blocks.

In case you are in the California Bay area, it's in about a week on Sunday May 22nd, at 2:30 pm.

This weekend is a busy one for us. There is an awesome event at the Children's Museum of Natural History that is all about Wooly Mammoths - in Fremont. We are hoping to find the time to check this out.

It got me thinking about "Wooly" Mammoths. Like "wooly"? Really? Do you think I could knit something out of them if they were still around? Maybe they would be adverse to the idea of a haircut from me?

Anyhow, I mostly never post more than one photo per blog post, but I cannot resist ending this on a funny note. It's the weekend after all. The below is a photo of my youngest son having a conversation with a sheep last weekend at Happy Hollow.

Mother's Day Bliss

Yesterday my family took very good care of me for Mother's Day.

My husband really spoiled me by making the boys write out personalized cards to me (including pictures they drew).

We had an awesome brunch, but there were gifts too, so I am sort of feeling like it was my birthday, not Mother's Day.

Anyhow, there was an antique quilt I had my eye on that was floating around on eBay, so he bought that for me. I've always wanted a double wedding ring quilt, so now I have a very classic 1930's example to add to my collection.

He also gave me a vintage sock yarn ball holder made out of bakeware (pre-dates plastic) from Katrina's Wool World. It's adorable and fits my small balls of handspun yarn perfectly too.

If you are a mother, I hope you had a wonderful day. Goodness knows it isn't the easiest job you'll ever have, but at least you can probably say it's the best one.

Patchwork Quilt Tsushin #161

The April 2011 issue of Patchwork Quilt Tsushin is packed with goodies.

On the cover, they feature a redwork alphabet block, which is covered in flowers and adoring little girls. It's a pretty cute alphabet, and the insert includes all the letters (of course).

My favorite page is actually page 41 where Yoko Saito has an article on how to make a bird block and a beautiful flower block out of taupe fabrics. Really pretty.

There is also a beautiful taupe bag on p. 29 that features a swallow bird. Swallows are really famous near the town where I grew up in Southern California. I should probably try putting some on a quilt. Their shape is very unique.

I just heard that another issue of Quilts Japan arrived in the San Jose Kinokuniya shop so part of me wants to run over there and pick it up before they close tonight.

Hope your week is going well. I am finally feeling healthy so I'm back at it with my hand quilting.

Spring Fever

Our Easter was so much fun. My boys found many candy filled eggs left by the Easter Bunny.

Since then, I have been under the weather though - complete with fever and cough that is certainly not helping me rest.

When I get run down, my creative work goes south first, so quilting and other fun endeavors have been more or less on hold around here.

I have been catching up on blog reading though, and found:

• How to make Peeps into S'mores - that's my kind of left-over!
  
  
• Spoiler Alert: Next year's Star Wars themed Lego Advent Calendar contents revealed - wow cool.
  
  
• Yoko Saito has finally published a book in English (and French too!) called Past and Present My Quilting Life. I see a copy of this coming my way eventually...
  
  
• And last but not least, you know I have spent too much time reading random blogs when I start to wonder if a toilet that opens its own lid for you and heats your feet as well would not be a fun addition to our home. Wait a sec, this toilet is worth more than my car!
  
  Gosh, I hope this cold leaves me soon!
  

Happy Easter! Basket Quilts anyone?

If you are celebrating Easter this weekend, I wish you the happiest Easter ever.

For this holiday, we decided the dessert featured will be a cream cheese pound cake, topped with strawberries and home made whipped cream. Yummy!

On the healthy side, we are also trying to recreate a salad recipe that we love - it's from a big chain restaurant - California Pizza Kitchen - (do these exist outside of the U.S.? I am not sure I have ever seen one). The salad is their Cobb salad, and we are going to try to make the ranch dressing from scratch too.

A while back, I picked up bunch of antique quilt blocks, one of which you see above, that are all the same, and have these chocolate brown and aqua green baskets on them. They are all on point, and are so very adorable.

I hope to find just the right sashing fabric for these blocks eventually so I can finish up a very spring-ish looking quilt.

Class cancelled this month...but have a cake pop!

Looks like not enough folks to hold applique class this month at "Verb", but looking forward to resuming in May.

When we were at a birthday party last week, my friend made these cake pops for everybody. She got the instructions on Bakerella. I thought, wow, these are pretty darn adorable. I think they will show up at our next birthday party.

Japanese Taupe Applique and modern quilting

Tomorrow is our April class where we applique modern house blocks over at A Verb for Keeping Warm in Oakland.

This house is a beautiful one, and another in the BOM series that our class is working on. If you have the time and live locally, come and join us...this block will be a piece of cake.

I spent this week in Austin, Texas. If you haven't had the chance to visit there, I would highly recommend it. I could really see myself living there. It is quite hip.

One of my Texan girlfriends turned me on to these beaded wrap bracelets that are popular there. I broke down and bought one, and after realizing how expensive they are online I guess I should have bought 2 when I had the chance. Oh well...Chan Luu makes a bunch of them that are beautiful but on the pricey side.

Another beautiful link for you is over on "oh, hello friend" - check out this post on twinkle lights. So pretty. Not only would I love to do a photo study like this to take amazing pictures of them, but I would also like to think about how to get some of them up in my back yard!

It's raining, it's hailing....

It was so strange to experience a brief hail storm today. I love it when the weather surprises me. Especially when I have an umbrella in my trunk.

There is a cowl in the Last Minute Knitted Gifts book that I would like to make someday.

I picked up some Jade Sapphire lace weight yarn in colorway "You Say Tomato". It's bright alright. Same color as my teapot! I wound it up on my little yarn swift that I have, but someday I plan to get a yarn swift like this one from Bluster Bay Umbrella Swifts.

I will need a good studio to keep it in first though. It looks huge. I will eventually make something with it ah, but for now I just love the way it feels.

Liberty of London fabrics fall into that category for me. So soft, almost too good to cut up and quilt with them! Hope your week ends up well.

Oh, and if you have ever been to a cool yarn store or quilt store in Austin Texas, let me know. I might end up visiting there.

Out like a lamb

My son came home from school and was amazed that I knew the 2nd half of the phrase describing how March weather comes "In like a lion" and goes "Out like a lamb".

It's true though, now it finally feels like spring to me. Time to take the camera outside!

As you may know, I love photography and am always trying to improve my own photos. I spent the weekend taking a photo workshop with this photographer named Eddie Soloway.

It gave me some fresh ideas on making photos, and perhaps it will get me out with my camera a bit more. Eddie is very inspirational and quite known as an excellent teacher.

When I was in San Francisco about a week ago, I ran into another photographer named Jeff Chih.

He had a really interesting photography equipment set up and was creating a stop motion video. We walked in front of his lens at some point so perhaps my family is in one of his 'movie' images. He was very happy to chat about his work and a super friendly person.

Anyhow, if you have a spare 2.5 minutes to watch something beautiful, check him out on youtube as Vista Point Studios or see the 'video' he created when I ran into him by clicking here. Pretty cool.

Special Quilt Exhibit: Infinite Variety

As a general rule, I take all the photos for my blog, but today I am making a special exception.

My friend, Janneken Smucker, emailed me the above photo of the quilt installation she visited.

The quilts are red, but I am green with envy that I didn't see them in person.

This amazing exhibit, Infinite Variety: Three Centuries of Red and White Quilts, runs through today 3/30/2011, and is located at the American Quilt Museum in New York City (Park Avenue Armory).

If you don't happen to live around the corner from there, I noticed there is a flickr set of over 500 photos that visitors have posted here. Probably not as good as actually being there, but worth a look all the same.

If you do live in NYC, I would think that you are already putting on your coat to head on over to this.

Thank you Janneken for tipping us off to this awesome show and for sharing your photo. For those of you who don't know Janneken yet, she is an amazing young woman who is perhaps one of the worlds leading experts on Amish Quilt history. Check out her book here on Amish Crib Quilts.

Liberty of London - in Japanese!

I could not resist this book when I was at Kinokuniya the other day.

ISBN978-4-7966-7826-1: It came with a little plastic bag with handles. I think it would be good for small projects. It was a bit on the plastic stinky side though, so I am going to air it out first!

Photos include swatches of current fabrics, photos of models wearing garments made of their fabrics, and stories about the fabric designers.

Brian Wildsmith designed a fabric for Liberty that includes old airplanes. Oh, I need to figure out how to get some of that. If you have seen it around, let me know.

My love of Liberty of London Fabrics has lead me to collect them over the years. I have lots of little bits and pieces now and I am almost to take a deep breath and introduce them to my scissors.

Have you ever made a quilt out of their fabric, or sewn up something? I would love to see your photos!

Corned Beef & Green Mac-n-Cheese

On St. Paddy's day we usually try to do something festive.

This year, I was frankly....just tired.

My husband ended up cooking the entire very traditional corned beef and cabbage meal complete with un-traditional mac-n-cheese dyed green.

Kids loved it.

I also learned that corned beef is usually pink due to the preservatives in the meat. Who knew. I also learned that 'corned' is actually from the English reference to kernels of salt used to brine the beef.

Who Knew!

Hope the wind was at your back today - here's a big Slainte! (Cheers!) from me to you.

Butterflies in my head

I have been fitting in some spinning and quilting here and there, and managed to cast on a new knit scarf as well (and promptly frogged it both times). Eeek.

I was surfing around and saw a few blog posts entries that started with "My favorite thing to do at home is..." and that got me thinking about what my favorite thing would be. There are so many it would be hard to narrow it down to one. I might be tempted to answer ..."assemble Lego sets" but maybe I should think on it a bit more.

In other news, some people get butterflies in their stomach but I seem to have them on my brain.

Have you seen this awesome butterfly quilt tutorial by Mrs. Schmenkman? Sooo cool.


I am not sure if I am allowed to blog about the person who I am thinking of making some sort of a butterfly quilt for....but she is due to arrive this summer. She isn't mine of course, well...not directly at least.

More on that later. I must flutter off and help with homework.

Japanese taupe fabrics & wishes for Japan

Showing a photo of some fabrics that I recently got from Verb.

They are all imports from Japan.

Reading many headlines about their recent earthquake and the loss left behind.

When you live in California, like I do, you understand the impact they can have. Cannot help feel for families touched by this horrible natural disaster.

Thinking thoughts of recovery and comfort for those in need.

I went to our local yarn shop this afternoon with my friend Sharon of Knits are for Kids. She picked out yarn to start a new sweater.

She will have it knit up in no time, while I still lack the courage to start an adult sized sweater. Maybe it's because I have so much quilting to do!

Japanese Quilting Blogs - in search of

My mom's antique 1890's indigo and white mini-quilt is getting quilted little by little.

I spent some time with my monthly weekend quilting friends last weekend and progress was certainly made.

Recently I have been trying to look for Japanese quilting blogs out there.

I know there have to be tons (zillions?) of Japanese quilters who work in taupe fabrics, love Yoko Saito, love Chuck Nohara, love Suziko Koseki.

Where oh where do I find links to these sorts of blogs?

I even resorted to translating "Taupe Quilts" into Japanese, copying that into search engines...I must be doing something wrong here. Oh, bother.

Anyhow, my knitting/quilting club is about to come over tonight so off to feverishly scoop some toys up off the floor.

Husband Scarf & Antique Quilts

I am knitting away on a scarf for my husband.

I will come clean here and state that I LOVE to knit for kids because they are so tiny, and I kinda don't love to knit for adults. Those projects take forever.

When I met my husband, I thought - wow, what a tall and handsome man.

While I knit this scarf, I am wondering if it would not be just a little faster to finish this if he were not so tall! ;)

I am making all sorts of mistakes in this project, but I press on without taking stitches out. If you want to see the 'real' version of this scarf, I recommend you stop over at my friend Sharon's blog - Knits are for Kids. Her project really looks great. It almost inspires me to rip out my mistakes. Only almost though.

She found this cool scarf pattern and I started it because I wanted to be just like her.

The quilt in the background is a recent antique that I picked up from Etsy. The seller has a couple other cute quilts for sale right now - check them out.

Modern House Applique BOM

This Sunday, I'm teaching the Applique Block of the Month at A Verb for Keeping Warm.

Come on and join us if you live in Northern California, it is going to be so super fun.

The theme for our class is modern homes and the block this month is based on a home designed by Joseph Eichler, a well known modern architect.

A few of my quilt group friends live in his homes and they are beautiful and filled with light inside. Hopefully I'm doing this one justice by the quilt block.

A couple of notes for you on goodies I picked up at Stitches West last weekend (in case you ever knit):

Imagiknit: Very interesting yarn booth that was there at the yarn show. I could not help but get a little bit of their Madeline Tosh yarn (lace weight) and also some Malibrigo yarn (again in lace weight).

Sincere Sheep: My friend owns this shop and dyes some beautiful yarns and fibers with natural dyes. I got some goodies to try and make socks.

Feeling Ewe: (link is email address only) What a cute name! I could not resist their superfine Merino and cashmere blend. I got some to play around with that was a natural white color.

Becoming Art: The fiber that I got in this booth was wildly beautiful and is part cashmere again. I am a sucker for it right now.


Finally, and nothing to do with Stitches West...

Have you seen this fabric with Unicorn Meat chart on it? Odd, right? I am attracted to it somehow, don't ask me why.