Three girls on the Willamette

Me, my mom, sister Sarah

 

My mom just turned 80!  My brothers and sister and their families met up on the bank of the Willamette River in Eugene for lunch and cake to celebrate. I gave my mom the quilt she taught me how to make as a tribute to her.  There’s a picture of her opening it below.

That's son Blaine on the right and sister-in-law Tammie in back.

And then my new camera ran out of memory (pretty sneaky the way the card that comes with the camera has essentially no room on it!)  So I have no more illustrations…

 

But it was so awesome to celebrate the day with my mom and that she has made it to 80! She had surgery for colon cancer when she was 47, so for a while I worried that I wouldn’t have a mom left when I reached my present age.  So glad she made it!  She is not without health challenges, but she is awesome and not a day goes by without her adding stitches to another quilt. They are works of art!

Happy Birthday MOM!  And many more….

My new quilts

They’re finally ready for show and tell.  Four of them. Seriously. I have four finished quilts in my possession.  Unreal!

Here they are:

This pattern is called Attic Windows. I spent a very long time (and even more coin) collecting fabrics for this little project.  The idea is this: there are four-pane windows all across the quilt.  Each four-pane window has a view with a theme… See if you can make out where the windows are, how many there are, and what the theme of each is.

This is the One Block Wonder I described making in an earlier post, but now all quilted with binding!

I don’t know what to call this one.  It was mainly an excuse to buy a bunch of Kaffe Fassett fabric, with a little Jane Sassaman thrown in.  I do love me some bright colors!  This is one of those easy going quilts that you pretty much make up as you go along… It goes pretty fast and is a lot of fun.

And here is the Stack & Whack I made when my mom showed me the technique.  It’s finally quilted and has binding.  Ready for a new home, I think!

It felt so good to get these finished, some of them started their lives several years ago.  I’m trying not to get this far behind ever again.

Unveiling The One Block Wonder

Would you believe my one-block wonder quilt top is finished! Whew! Here’s what it looks like:

So I’m wondering if it’s bright enough?

Seriously, I’m thinking I need to show my work. I took a class at Cool Cottons, using the technique in the One Block Wonder book.

So you start by selecting a multicolored fabric with a 24 inch repeat in the pattern. Here’s my choice (yes, inspired by Toaster Moon decor!):

You use the special Kaleido-Ruler to cut triangles of a certain size out of fabric strips of a certain size.


You join 8 triangles into an octagon, like this:

Then you join smaller triangles to the octagons to form a square.

You can choose triangles that contrast with the nearby octagons, or triangles that blend with the adjacent octagons. I chose ones that blend, which gives a different effect than when you choose contrasting fabric. That’s why my quilt looks somewhat different than many one block wonder quilts, I think.

Then you join the squares so they look like what you see when you look through a kaleidoscope.

Then you choose fabrics for the borders. As usual, I went for eye-catching fabric in bright colors. When I got the outer border on, I decided it needed some embellishment, so I added curvy strips of the inner border, and random triangle shapes of the main fabric. The result:

Now I need to quilt it and and binding around the outer edge to finish it off. Then it will join its fabric kinfolk in Toaster Moon.

The Geek Gets Gorgeous!

 

We finally have something to show for our work!  Come on down and check out the storefront windows at Free Geek!!

In fact, stroll through the whole facility…you’ll see a new level of orderliness, cleanliness and appreciation for the esthetic at every turn.  What the heck is going on??

If you’ve been to Free Geek, you may have noticed that for the past few years, many of the storefront picture windows have served more or less as a storage closet for plywood, cardboard, styrofoam, etc. – basically anything and everything that was completely opaque (thereby blocking all the light) and butt-ugly.  It kinda felt to me like Free Geek was mooning visitors  ;-(

Everytime I pulled up in front, my heart sank.  So I proposed we beautify the windows by making some kind of community quilt to hang along the front.  There was an initial hesitance from some quarters because there was fear it would block the light (huh??? you mean the light you haven’t ever seen???), but we assured them we could hang it in a way that would allow ample light.

We had some great old linen napkins that had been Ric’s grandmother’s that we used to create quilt square kits, handing them out to anyone who agreed to participate.  

Deborah Hubbard and Moira stepped forward and together we joined the squares that were turned in.  We loved the variety that appeared…

Of course there were penguins:

and cleverly used computer detritus:

and words that capture the Free Geek essence:

and Free Geek weirdness:

 

On Saturday, Ric (aka Call the Fixer) spent the whole day attaching wood to concrete, designing and creating little wooden thingies to put the brackets on, and getting the rods in place so we could actually get them up.  Thank you Mr. Fixer Man!!

We have a few more to hang, so it would be well worth your while to come take a look… it sounds weird when I say it out loud, but Free Geek is getting gorgeous!!!