Catherine Wheel Scarf and Zauberball

After looking at Alex of Moonstitches' rhubarb scarf a billion zillion times, and after some of my knit night friends gave me a little nudge (yarn from Sharon and crochet lessons from Dorothy) I created a Catherine Wheel scarf.

Elle of Ellemeno P Blog put a really nice pattern together inspired by the scarf that Alex made, and was generous enough to share it with all.

I used Zauberball yarn which is out of this world beautiful.

I'm thinking of putting up a flickr set with more photos of it. Interested in seeing more?

I was also thinking that if you are looking through the horizontal arm of your sewing machine in order to see your computer monitor in order to do a blog post about quilting, perhaps you are in need of a 12 step program for quilt addicts or something.

Anybody else out there done that before? Am I alone? Have a gone too far?

Dear Hannah Quilt Block in Japanese Taupe Fabric

Another little Dear Hannah taupe block is complete and my collection of them continues to grow.

I used Japanese taupe fabric and the freezer paper applique method. It came together pretty quickly. It takes me longer to cut out the fabric and iron it than to actually applique the pieces down. This block is B-2.

Behind my block is the new book my darling sister got me for Christmas. "I Heart Patchwork" by Rashida Coleman-Hale.

Rashida's blog I Heart Linen is of course very famous, and her work is so very Japanese and perfect in every way. I'm sure you read her blog already, but if you don't perhaps you want to start.

Twins' Garden Style Blog is another place to stop if you're looking for a fresh blog with some beautiful photos and inspiration.

One question for you - Has anybody out there used MagCloud to self publish a magazine? I'm thinking it sounds like a really interesting way to get a collection of your photos out there.

Oh, and finally, the baby is at last feeling better so thank you all for your words of encouragement. He is finally back to his bouncy giggling self. Whew!

Send a healthy thought our way

This week has been so very less than stellar.

Our little one has a bad cold with high fever. We got our flu shots with hopes to avoid all of this, but sigh...not so.

Send a healthy thought our way, hopefully this germ will leave our house soon.

My mom will probably tell me that this too shall pass. Are you listening to her germs??!!

To cheer up sometimes I make my family tell me one good thing that happened to them that day.

Maybe you have one you can share with me...for now, I'm so thankful to have Tylenol.

A Verb for Keeping Warm

Today I took a yarn making class at this super cool shop in Berkeley, California called A Verb for Keeping Warm.

Owner Kristine Vejar (show above) was there dying away, making more one of a kind yarn for folks to make into beautiful knitted items. I was so very tempted to buy tons of yarn, but I resisted. Ok ok, I bought a bunch of roving instead.

My class was taught by this really awesome teacher who goes by WonderMike on ravelry, and even has his own podcast (I think that makes him famous!) called Fiber Beat. He's super passionate about fiber, spinning, and knitting, so I'm already looking forward to next week and thinking I'd better start downloading his podcast.

We learned all about how to use a drop spindle, and I even made a really tiny amount of seriously funky looking yarn.

A drop spindle is tiny and according to some, all you really need in order to make yarn.

I decided to try a really basic drop spindle - the Hi-Low version by Schacht.

So what's next? Well, a bit of homework, to spin some yarn so we can make a 2 ply next time.

Oh yeah, and squeeze some quilting in too. Guess it will be another busy week.

Have any short term project goals in plan for your coming week?

Christmas in January

Christmas in July is so expected. That is when folks start their big projects for the upcoming holiday.

Christmas in January...now that's thinking outside of the box!

Truth be told, I made this above Christmas ornament for my darling niece back in December and forgot to show it off then. Cannot resist posting a picture of it for you to enjoy.

I used Jinny Beyer's book on patchwork puzzle balls and it was super easy.

Does anybody out there have Jinny's new book yet - Quilter's Album of Patchwork Patterns? I really REALLY want this book BAD.

And speaking of new books....Yoko Saito has just released a new book on basket quilt blocks. It is called Basket Made From Cloth.

Meanwhile, I'm still feverishly working on the crochet scarf that I mentioned in my last post. I will confess to you that I'm secretly really looking forward to wearing it.

Zauberball Yarn with inspiration from Moonstitches

A very long time ago, the lovely and talented Alex of Moonstitches made a scarf she called the rhubarb scarf.

I decided to do something similar, but am using this German yarn called the Zauberball.
Check out these socks made from it over at Simply Fabulous Cari
.
Translated it means the "magic ball".

It has every color in the rainbow and is quite the traffic stopping scarf.

For my taste, it certainly has a lot of color, but I think I'm getting used to it and if worn with something simple, I think it will look pretty cool.

Do you think it's OK, or too wild?

Well, over lunch, or if you have some spare cycles tomorrow if you have the day off for MLK, enjoy the first flickr set of the Tokyo Dome show 2010 that I have seen - graciously posted by Jennifer of Moving Hands.

Well worth a look - as is all her work! Thank you so much for sharing so quickly! Someday I will be there, and will post my photos for you.

Tokyo International Great Quilt Festival 2010

Raise your hand if you're going to the Tokyo Dome quilt show this year!

Ok, so I'm not raising my hand.

Not for lack of interest, but with a baby in the house, travel to Japan is not in the cards for me this year. (tear rolls down cheek)

What is one to do with no ticket to Tokyo?

Sit around the house and cry all weekend? Dream of all those awesome taupe quilts and handmade quilts that I won't get to see in person? Start eating boxes of chocolate in a fit of sorrow while contemplating missing a chance to meet Yoko Saito in person? Invite all my quilting friends over to feel bad for me?

No, no no no no! We shall have none of that.

Lucky for me (and you, if you aren't going either) there are a small handful of extremely generous quilters who visit the show and post their photos online.

Both Jennifer of Moving Hands blog and Alex of Moonstitches have posted some of the best photo collections I could find in past years.

Looks like Jennifer is going this year. Please check out her amazing blog Moving Hands, it is really one of the most beautiful out there. I have said it before, but her hand quilting is amazing and her color pallet is beautiful.

If you plan to go to the Tokyo Dome and share photos with us, pls do leave a comment so I can pass along links to the rest of the folks.

Oh, and the book in the last post that I did is Quilt Party - Yoko Saito's catalog of student work from 2008. It contains 81 pages of full color, full length photos of her student's taupe quilts. Some would call this sort of publication 'quilt porn'. I call it a little slice of heaven.

Shakin' it up

In case you don't live in California, and didn't feel all the earthquakes we've had in the last 24 hours, I'll just say that they keep us on our toes here.

No damage thank goodness, but sheesh! Enough already!

I am always falling in love again and again with incredible toy companies, and Rubbabu is no exception. Their products are not only super fun and functional, but beautiful as well.

I gave them to my boys for Little Christmas, which was yesterday. I always try to give my boys a little something to close out the season each year on Little Christmas.

I have been making more Dear Hannah blocks as you can tell from the above.

What may you ask is the awesome book laying underneath this beautiful block?

Any guesses?

Is it so pretty that it's distracting you from looking at my block?! Better not be!

2010 WOTY

WOTY, or Word of the Year as some call it, is the single word that you hope to live by in the new year.

Happy New Year, by the way.

Some of my friends have chosen their word of the year for 2010 already.

Family. Perseverance. Growth. Genuine. Simplify.

My husband and I decided to be cutesy and match each other. He's taking Rest and I'm taking Relaxation.

What's your WOTY for 2010?

The above photo is from our afternoon visit to the De Young Museum. We could not help but visit the Amish Abstraction quilt exhibit again. It was even better the 2nd time around.

Wow what a holiday

I remember being younger and playing all day on Christmas.

Now that my husband and I are the hosts...it's hardly a day of rest for us. The prime rib was excellent this year, so it was definitely worth the elbow grease.

What was your favorite gift this year?

Mine was this.

It actually was not for me, it was from me for my husband.

We discovered padron peppers in our CSA this past year, and we are hooked. You fry them up in a bit of oil, throw some salt on them, and eat them like potato chips. If you have not had these, maybe you'll want to start growing them in your garden next year too.

Hope your holiday was filled with family and joy, as mine was.

Sometimes you feel like a nut, SOMETIMES YOU DON'T

To shake things up this holiday, we discovered quite by accident that our little one is highly allergic to nuts.

You can imagine how much fun we had in the ER with him and what a huge scare that was.

Come to find out that nuts are pretty much everywhere. So now what? Learning about how to find food that doesn't contain nuts, nut products, or food produced on equipment also used to process nuts.

Good times. Never a dull moment.

Ah, but so much to be thankful for this holiday season.

Having some time off work with my family is my #1 thing to be thankful this year, but having the kind of friends that will meet you in the emergency room, rescue your 4 yr old from having to hang out with the crazy folks in there so both you and your husband can stay there with the sick baby, and having those same friends bring you dinner later makes me realize how good we have it.

In other news, my friend Sharon gave me this totally insane and beautiful yarn ball for Christmas. I'm feeling a scarf coming on in the new year.

Christmas: Are you feelin' it yet?

Looks like it's only 1 week until Christmas. Are your stockings hung? Anybody out there besides me got some last minute projects still to wrap up?

Raise your hand if you are still working on making Christmas gifts?

Ok, whew, glad I'm not alone here.

I love to make Christmas ornaments every year and this year they are still laying around in pieces. I think they are waiting for my vacation to start so I can give them the attention they deserve.

My sister's family (including the worlds cutest baby girl) visited earlier this week for an early Christmas, so that was one of the big highlights for me this year. I made my sis a funky knit beanie out of this AWESOME Japanese yarn by Make Make. It looks so cute on her.

And if you need some Christmas cheer yourself, I recommend you visit this Snow Carving sculpture post. Wow, these are serious snow artists.

Dear Yoko Saito

I made block "F6" from the Dear Hannah quilt pattern using Japanese taupe fabrics.

Maybe I should call this quilt Dear Yoko instead of Dear Hannah. Do you think that Ms. Saito would approve of my use of taupe colors? I sure do hope so. I'm in love with little taupe applique blocks.

I'll be making another similar block for my sister's wedding quilt (which she will be lucky to receive on her 10th wedding anniversary at this rate! sorry sis - eek!).

It's starting to look very Christmas-y around here, and the kids can smell the closeness of Santa's arrival. We are still counting days instead of hours which is perhaps the only blessing there.

Mona, a friend from Singapore, visited the Yokohama quilt show and mailed me the catalog. Thank you so much Mona. Those quilts just blew my socks off. I'll have to photograph my favorite page for you or something.

She sent me Yoko Saito's business card with her email address on there. I sent her some fan email, but she has yet to invite me to lunch with her. I'm sure that will happen eventually.

Amish Quilts and Amish Abstraction

Oh so busy busy, almost too busy to keep up the blog posts.

Trust me, I've been out there quilting, and running all over the bay area on behalf of quilts.

On Saturday I attended a symposium that included discussion of the Amish quilt exhibit (on display now) at the De Young Museum, Amish Abstractions.

During the symposium, we heard the point of view of Steven and Faith Brown (owners of the collection) who told us all about their love of the quilts and how they started collecting. They were so generous and amazing, if you can find your way to see this exhibit, you will be in for a rare treat.

Also included in the discussion were Jonathan Holstein, Robert Shaw, Joe Cunningham, and (I will confess the last one was my favorite) Janneken Smucker.

They all had lots to say about quilts, quilt making, and Amish culture. I'll try to share some of my notes with you as I work my way through them.

As I already mentioned, the quilts are DROP DEAD GORGEOUS, so run...don't walk...to see this exhibit.

No photography allowed in the exhibit itself, so visit them in person for perhaps the most stunning quilt experience of your life (I mean it, I really do) or pick up a copy of the book which is very nice but really doesn't compare to the real deal.

The Stink Eye

Our little 4 yr old has perfected what I like to call The Stink Eye.

When he doesn't get exactly what he wants, he give us this look that we are starting to get very used to seeing. Since we don't give in to the demands I guess we should start to embrace it. I'm wondering if I should take more pictures of it. In certain ways it's really adorable.

Thanksgiving was huge for us this year. We drove to see my family, and I gave my mom the Chevron Scarf that I was working on for the last year. She really loved it. We also visited the happiest place on Earth, so that was a giant thrill.

On the way there I started working on some little Dear Hannah applique blocks again. Gee, it's been a while, but they sure are fun to make. Will post some pictures of them soon for you. Should be quick to square them up.

Above is a photo of a wedding signature quilt block. I'll confess that I have been trying to make some progress on that project too.

Looking forward to so many things - shopping for a Christmas tree, visiting a sick friend who recently moved to a hospital closer to me, buying an electronic portable drum set kid toy that has some serious volume control, seeing my sister again in only 2 weeks.

2010 Quilt Otaku Wall Calendar

In the spirit of getting ready for Black Friday (the most popular shopping day of the year in the US), I created a little wall calendar for 2010.

Lulu's printing service helped me make it available to the general public.

They added a preview function this year so you can see each of the monthly pages which is nice.

Time to order one for your favorite quilter, kick off that holiday shopping, and scratch folks off your list.

Happy shopping!

Oh, and if you HAVE to have that map wall sticker...(my 4-yr-old said, "Where's Antartica?") head over to Firm Living. They will hook you up.

How to hang a quilt on the wall - tutorial for hanging Doll Quilts

There are many ways to hang a quilt up on your wall.

Thirty years ago, it was popular to put Velcro on the back of your quilt and also to the wall in order to hang a full sized bed quilt.

That seems to have evolved to people putting cotton sleeves on the back and running a wooden dowel or curtain rod through.

All of the above involve putting holes in your wall, and that is a level of commitment that I'm not always sure I'm ready to make.

Because I love small quilts, or doll quilts really, I put together the below tutorial on how I like to hang these little quilts on the wall.

You are not making any holes in the wall.

Using the method as described puts a minimal amount of stress on the back of your doll quilt which I also like since keeping my quilts in good shape is another one of my goals.

Hanging quilts like this will work best for small quilts, small wall hangings, and doll quilts. Full sized bed quilts will need to be hung by other methods.

So here goes...let me know if the info is helpful and if you like my humble little tutorial video!


How to Hang a Doll Quilt

The method requires the following supplies:

- Picture Hanging Strips, by 3M Command (2 'sets' per each doll quilt if you want to attach upper corners only; 4 'sets' per doll quilt if you want to anchor the bottom corners as well)

- Sewing machine

- Scissors

- Applique needle

- Thread

- Cotton twill tape (2 pieces that are 7" long and 1/2" wide if anchoring at top only; 4 pieces if anchoring bottom also)

Video Tutorial HERE. Note that the video itself is just less than 10 minutes long and will take a couple of minutes to load and start playing after you click the link.

Compliments to my amazing husband for his awesome camera work! Thanks honey.

What is this amazing thing? (brain teaser)

If you're smart enough to read blogs on the weekend, I figured I'd give you a real special treat here.

Can you tell me what the above is?

Is it...

a) a bow tie for a very large hamster

b) a rare specie of butterfly usually found in the Tambopata Candamo nature preserve in Peru

c) a deadly weapon usually thrown by ninja warriors, similar to shuriken used in the Edo period

d) the best new quilting invention since sliced bread, perhaps Marisa should post a tutorial on what this thing is all about

Hm....any smarty pants out there wanna take a guess?

That's what you get for not finishing

This weekend was a productive one.

We got a bunch of chores done and I managed to carve out some time to work on my creative projects.

I put most of the wild and crazy binding on the feathered arrows quilt. Since the blocks are antiques I asked my quilting buddies if it was disrespectful to spice up the quilt and put a funky outrageous binding it.

My friend Pamela said, "Well, that's what she gets for not finishing the quilt!"

I agree. Maybe I'm here to punish those who have come before me by taking their half baked projects and making crazy things with them.

If that doesn't motivate you to just finish your work in progress quilts, I don't know what will.

I got the above necklace from Nonchalant Mom, this very cool web site with super modern and hip clothes/accessories for kids and moms. The necklace itself was designed by Verre. It's just a bit of blown glass, but I'm a sucker for good color. The natural colored one is on my wish list.

And the Tiny Shall Inherit the Earth

In my 'knitting' group (where I usually quilt instead of knit) the girls have all sorts of projects going on.

My friend Sharon of Knits are for Kids made a hoodie for her son, but he grew faster than she could knit.

Having the smallest kid around does have it's benefits, as in this case....my little guy can still squeeze into the projects that her little dude is too big for now.

Check out her skull caps that she made for the boys. Both of mine got them. Will post some photos of them together in them.

Meanwhile, I started a little beanie of my own with some Make Make Yarn (made in Japan, of course).

I also picked up the binding for my recently finished quilt from SuperBuzzy - it's going to be a polka dot pattern.