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.

Getting to know Yoko Saito, in English!

I finally finished quilting the funky quilt that I made using antique blocks. The blocks were made around 1890. I set them with some modern repro-ish looking fabrics, and quilted away. The blocks look like they have arrows in them and with the feathered quilting inside I'm thinking of calling the quilt "Feathered Arrows".

My thoughts on binding are that maybe a cute and funky print would really spice it up even further. Susan agrees it's a good idea.

Susan, one on the knit nite girls, has an incredible sewing bag that she created completely from Japanese taupe fabrics. Drop over and check her blog out if you have time, her work is 100% perfect and beautiful.

And speaking of Japanese taupes, Yoko Saito just launched her Japanese quilting web site in English. WOW is really all I can say about it. It's so great to learn about her, her quilting, and all of her new fabrics and books (finally without some funky babelfish translator). Thanks Mona for passing the link along!

My favorite page of this web site is the Catalog of Student Work publications that comes out every year. It's an awesome collection of photos of all the quilts her students made that year. I have a couple of these, but not all of them. If shipping were not so expensive, I think I would order the couple I'm missing.

Halloween - a global holiday!

I've been many places on this amazing planet, but I've always been right here at home in the good old USA during Halloween.

Maybe that's why I assumed (wrongly!) that it's a global holiday where kids all over the world put on their scary costumes that mom made...or was too busy to make and just ordered online this year.

My German friend reminded me that it's pretty much an American thing. That made me feel sad for all the rest of the kids, and so lucky to live here.

Our 4 yr old is really looking forward to it, and our pumpkins are carved and ready to go.

We visited Uesugi Farms and came home with around 8 pumpkins. Wow. Pony ride was a big hit.


So I finished quilting the mini quilt I was working on, and I also finished my Mom's birthday gift knitted scarf (I still don't really know how to knit) so pictures of those coming soon.

Meanwhile, re-falling in love with the funky Everybody's Free (to wear sunscreen) remix on the Romeo and Juliet 10th anniversary remix album.

Totally in love with the art of Leah Giberson - groovy. Her work will some day grace my walls.

Knit Nite

I started a weekly knitting night with some girlfriends, but I don't knit!

What in the world was I thinking? Well...that I could use the time to quilt of course.

Perhaps I should confess that I do think about knitting a lot, even though I basically just buy yarn and put it in a basket.

The quilt that I'm quilting is only about 30 min shy of being fully quilted so perhaps my next post will include a picture of it 'done' before the binding gets on at least.

I found some more PIQF quilt show pix posted here. Oh, and in my last post, that cathedral windows quilt was designed as a giant picture of a tree frog. Seriously! It's a frog! Is that not the coolest ever?

Pacific International Quilt Festival 2009

PIQF 2009 has come and gone and I am a little sad that it's over.

The show was pretty good this year and I had a huge amount of fun.

I had the extreme pleasure of assisting Cindy Brick as the quilt appraiser for the show, so I got to see a lot of awesome quilts and learned a huge ton from her. She is really an incredible appraiser as well as quilt judge and quilt restorer. If you ever have the chance to meet her and have an appraisal done, I would highly recommend it.

After my day of appraisal assisting, I spent the next day running around with my camera and doing a little shopping. I didn't get a lot of things, but I did pick up a few cool items.

The quilts at the show were of course the real fun. I took tons of pictures for you (of course) but since there were so many quilts I only photographed the ones that I loved and the ones that I had time to run around and see. There were so many more awesome quilts that I wish I could have taken pictures of all of them.

That being said, if you did not get to go, please enjoy my flickr slide show:

PIQF 2009

Oh, and if you are new around here, I've been posting these quilt show photos for a while. Check out 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2008 if you like. (that ought to keep you busy!)

I have found 1 other set posted so far this year by GoDutchBaby here.

The above photo of the cathedral windows quilt has a very special twist to it - do you get it? The quilt is so beautiful in person and was made by Leigh Cabell from Denver Colorado.

Are you ready for PIQF 2009?

Pacific International Quilt Festival (PIQF) 2009 is well underway and started already yesterday.

I'll be there all day tomorrow assisting the conference official appraiser, Cindy Brick. I'm so excited to meet her as she is such an expert in crazy quilts, and historic quilts in general. It is very kind of her to take me as her assistant and I cannot wait to get more appraisal experience under my belt.

I used to HAVE to visit PIQF in order to see my friend Mariko at the Azabu-Ya booth, but she is no longer doing shows. I will miss her dearly, but will be on the look out for other cool shops this time around.

Pinwheels should be there, and there is always something good and taupe-y to see in their booth.

Oh, and my friend Rebecca has a quilt in the show this year (#1111) so be sure to check it out if you have the pleasure to attend.

Clues in the Stitches

Have you ever looked for clues in the quilting stitches?

Can you decipher this deep and meaningful clue?

Ok, well...I wanted to post just a little something light on this rainy Wednesday.

Oh, and check out the tutorial/giveaway over at Mairuru - how to use up some tiny scraps and making something very cool and cute.

Brain Teaser: Who is this superwoman?

Ok, the above photo is of somebody you probably know. Got any guesses you brainy folks? Could it be Madonna? Lucinda Williams? Patricia Clarkson? or.....maybe somebody I ran into at AQSG?

And the 2nd part of the brain teaser is an acronym that I recently became aware of: "WAF"

Any guesses on what that one means? If you have no idea, ask your husband, he probably knows.

Meanwhile, I am hand quilting up a storm on that quilt top I mentioned back in August. Out of 9 blocks I have 6 quilted and hope to have them all done this weekend. Lofty goal, I know.

I'm also thanking my friend in Singapore for emailing me DVD's with Yoko Saito videos. Working on viewing them as they have a different country code on them than the US and will require a bit of fancy work to view. Thank you Mona, I'll let you know as soon as I figure out how to watch them.

Also, to drool over, is the incredible dress that Karyn made over at Make Something blog. She used Nani Iro fabrics (to die for, seriously beautiful).

American Quilt Study Group Seminar 2009

I had the extreme pleasure of spending some time at the American Quilt Study Group (AQSG) seminar last week.

I sat in on a really incredible lecture on Amish quilts by Julie Silber and Janneken Smucker. They are both so expert the field that I was wishing their session was twice as long.

Another highlight was a lecture by Sandi Fox. If you don't have her books yet, Small Endearments is probably my favorite.

I'm already wondering how I can get to the seminar next year.

The vendors they had were awesome. I bought the quilt top above and plan to quilt it.

If you have any interest at all in antique quilts, AQSG membership is something you might want to check out.

Bite your tongue

Our little 1 yr old was running and bit his tongue yesterday. I hope it recovers soon as it is making him one grumpy little guy. He's not digging the nursing sessions as a result so I will confess to also being one unhappy camper.

I was reading some back posts over at Hand Quilting Stitches blog by Sara. Her bag in the style of Yoko Saito is in progress and oh so beautiful.

In order to cheer up a bit, a stopped over at superbuzzy and picked up some cute fabric to possibly whip up some curtains for my kitchen. I will come clean and also admit that I got some yarn too.

Oh, and a quick question for you - does anybody out there have this book: Patchwork Style by Suzuko Koseki? It seems like it's in English from the cover. I'm very intrigued.