Polar Bear, Polar Bear What Do You Hear? I Hear Climate Change Messing With Julie's Head!

I really need to get on my seasonal game. I promise this is my last winter-themed project this spring, unless we get another 40 degree day and then all bets are off.  This quilt is up for auction at the Youth Advocacy Department fundraiser on Thursday night at the Children's Museum, if you're interested!

YAD is my old employer, and they do some great work as the juvenile public defenders in this state. A YAD attorney isn't just trying to get successful outcomes in court - they work with social workers and education lawyers (and often in place of social workers and ed attorneys) to try to change some of the circumstances that resulted in a court appearance in the first place.  I'm talking everything from getting a kid into summer camp, to finding him a mentor or a job, hooking up therapy, or making sure that a client is getting the educational services they need.  So feel free to overpay, it's going to a good place!

OK, off the soapbox and onto (or should I say under?) the quilt.  We're super into Polar Bear, Polar Bear, What Do You Hear? in this house, and my auction items are always book related!  So that's where the idea originated.  I hand appliqued the bear and did a little bit of embroidery, inspired by Follow The White Bunny - as far as I'm concerned she's the queen of embroidered animals and I love her style. This was my second attempt; the first I had to trash because I used a dark gray floss and he looked like he'd been attacked by a porcupine.  The soft gray interspersed with the white worked a lot better:

I also wanted to give paper piecing another try, and made five stars in all, though I only used the best ones!

Here's the whole thing:

And the back - still working on my free motion.  I almost didn't include this picture, but I think it's important to record this stuff when you're an amateur so you can see progress as the years go by!

It's 50"x50", a good size for that friend who's about to have a baby

Or for your favorite young reader to cuddle up under as they sound out "Po-lar Be-ar."  The quilt even comes with a copy of the book!

It's pretty snuggly:

Here's hoping it finds a good home!

Bubbles and Bubblettes

Doesn't it seem like I should like champagne? I'm the kind of person that's into celebrating and bubbles and funny, heartfelt toasts.  I won't drink it though. I hate the glasses - they tip over too easily, they're awkward for those of us with more substantial noses, and the flute is my least favorite instrument. Also, I'm prone to migraines, which follow a glass of champagne within the hour. I always admire those pretty yellow bubbles from afar, though.

Maybe I'll just have a sip of yours and we can toast to this quilt that I *almost* finished last summer.  I had it all tied but had not sewn up the bottom, and nothing goes on the blog until it's really finished! The last couple of weeks have been really productive for me, even if it feels like the creativity peaked a couple of weeks/months ago and now I'm just doing the menial work.  I've completed my last three niece and nephew quilts and this is one of them.  The champagne connection is that I wanted to use all these fabrics that I love from my scraps to make circles that would look like bubbles, and champagne bubbles seem more fun than the sodastream variety. I arranged the big bubbles on the bottom and the bubblettes on top.  For the circles I just traced lots of round stuff I found around the house - mugs, salad bowls, lamp shades.  This has ended up being one of my favorite quilts.  If I ever felt like doing the same thing twice I'd make myself one right now.

This is the back - the flower fabric was what I started with and worked around:

I tied it with embroidery floss in the center of each flower, how cute is that?

This niece has a birthday in April - hopefully she'll like this as much as I do!

Turtle Time

I just got back from Quilt Camp.  It was like if you were in a really nice sewing room working on a quilt and forty ladies with wine and dessert joined you to chat and sew, but didn't crowd you, and you didn't have to leave the room for 72 hours. Oh, and someone had replaced your crappy rotary cutter and slippery rulers with really good ones!

Best things about quilt camp:
1. My room was so unattractive I wasn't even tempted to lie in bed reading past 7:00a.m.

2. People change into their PJs after dinner and bring their own wine glasses ("Once you start drinking, no more cutting.  Sewing can be undone, but what's cut is cut," was a good piece of advice).

3. This table that totally demolished any self-control I came with  (I was halfway through a brownie when I realized I was actually eating a whole candy bar that had been BAKED INTO A BROWNIE).

4. But by far the best part, was the input from people who are just good at this stuff.  I managed to finish two quilt tops - one of which I'll share now because I FINISHED it today!  This is for my nephew who is really into turtles and garbage trucks.  You'll never guess which obsession I'm supporting.  Anyway, I found some turtle quilts around the internets that used a drunkard's path pattern, and I was especially enjoying this configuration where it looks like they're doing Ring Around the Rosie. I just added appliqued heads and tails to make them more obviously turtles.

I was more or less satisfied with the end result, but I wouldn't say I was excited about it until a couple of people suggested a fun border.  With a little input, the quilt changed to this, which I think is so much better:

After I sent a picture to my nephew his only question was whether the turtles had eyes, so I added a variety of those:

This is the back - I had to join two panels of fabric together.  Don't bother looking for the seam, it's so perfectly matched you won't find it.  Learned that at quilt camp too. (The trick, not the lack of modesty!)

No, seriously, can you find it?

It really makes me wonder how much better my quilts would be if I had this kind of input all the time.  It was a totally inspirational weekend.  I feel like the things that most impressed/inspired me were the color and pattern combos people were putting together (developing an eye for color and contrast is a skill I'd like to work on) and just how fast some people can quilt.  No wonder I tie everything, I'm so slow and it's impossible to mess up!  But it also inspired me to get practicing.  I'm sure it's much more enjoyable when you can whip through stuff and it looks good.

With all that productivity I'm hoping to have a couple more quilts to post about in the next couple of weeks. Until then, you can find me back in front of the sewing machine.  I missed her!

Quiltspiration

Not much achieved this week, just a shirt that no one loved (it's too small and the cat yuked on it, so I guess she didn't like it either).  And I made some zucchini bread from the 2 lb zucchini we got from CSA (I'm starting to hate CSA) but forgot to add the sugar. So I'm starting to think this is just a month where I sit back and admire other peoples' projects instead of trying to work on my own.

Missy J was sick last week and I figured in her weakened state she wouldn't be able to protest a long car ride, so we headed up to the World Quilt Show in NH.  There was some truly inspiring stuff, so I thought I'd share the photos that I keep looking at, over and over.

I had two favorites: this was from Alison Laurence of New Zealand, called Off the Wall.  I love the graffiti look, I love the shoes, I love the too-big winter coat, I love it that if I squint I can pretend it's me.:

I was also really taken with the negative space design on this set of minis done by quilters/artists from the UK who call themselves the Fusion Quilt Group - they were inspired by The Secret Garden, one of my favorite books as a kid. And for the record, did that book involve a love triangle or was that all in my nine-year-old imagination?

I also liked these mini-quilts from a challenge by members of The Surface Design Association.  The theme was Blind Eye: The Result of Doing Nothing.  I haven't done, nor have I seen a lot of political quilts, and I found these really moving.  The themes ranged from child abuse:

To gun violence:

To the challenges facing teachers today:

And I liked this one by a grandmother who said her quilt was about how she sometimes avoids young men that she finds intimidating when she's walking down the street.  Now that her own grandson is a teenager, she wonders if other people make assumptions about / avoid him in the same way.  Her quilt questions how we change that.  I'm paraphrasing, she said it much more articulately in the note, but I liked the sentiment and the way she did the figure on the quilt.

These were incredible too:
From a South African quilter - but I didn't catch the name because someone was starting to get fussy- maybe because we were standing in front of it for like, twenty minutes.

Just look at the forehead alone:

This was a mini, part of a Women, Peace and Security challenge by Quilt for Change.

The Basket Makers of Axoum, Ethiopia by Meri Henriques Vahl (U.S.) also stopped me for longer than J was comfortable with.  The detail was incredible.

Around the corner was Green Tara by Allison Wilbur (U.S.) My phone doesn't do the colors justice.  The quilting was mind-blowing.

This was the "pervy" quilt with a black screen surrounding it, and a warning sign that parental discretion was advised - like anyone is going to take a pass on that!  I think J was a little disappointed by how tame it was. No idea who the artist was:

My favorite group if I had to pick by nationality were the Japanese quilts - I didn't get all the names/artists as these were the last we saw.

Let's Go Party by Keiko Ike

Cherry Blossoms In Full Bloom by Noriko Matsutou

My Favorite Town, New York by Natsumi Ohara

I actually can't be sure this one was Japanese, but I think it was:

Finally, while J did a little whining through most of the show, there were a couple of quilts that made her scream "meow" in the loudest most high-pitched voice ever - it was so disturbing I actually saw someone adjust their hearing aid.  So I think of these as the quilts that could break glass:

This was only my second quilt show, so I can't say with any authority how it stacks up, but it was a really inspirational morning!

Winter Is Coming

Sorry, this isn't really about Game of Thrones, but I had to come up with a name for this mini quilt and "Winter is Coming" was all I could think of. I'm not the biggest GoT fan, although I love the girls' names:  Arya, Daenarys, Cersei, Sansa, Shae.  If J.K. Rowling had only named Hermione 'Arya,' I'd be constantly referring to Baby A instead of Baby J these days.

But back to the quilt.  The Lowell Quilt Festival is next weekend and the Boston Modern Quilt Guild was invited to display our quilts in the Appleton Mills Gallery.  And you were just wondering what you were going to do next weekend, right? My Orange Peel quilt ("Orange You Glad You Married Me") will be on display along with the mini, so come see them in person!

The Guild hosted a challenge - make a mini-quilt using this color palette:

I love these colors, though there's something a little gloomy (or North-of-the-Wallish) about them.  OK, I'll quit with Game of Throne references.  Anyway,  at the Cambridge Quilt Shop they had these really lovely ombre fabrics in exactly the right blue and gray.  In case you haven't noticed, ombre (the shading from light to dark) is a thing these days, and I'm not sure how I feel about it.  

I think it started with Drew Barrymore's hair:

 Then the trend went on to color fingernails:

aubreyhannah1.blogspot.com

Cakes:

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And even Jodi Arias's glasses during her trial:

Although I like them better on Michelle Chamuel.

And though I feel ambivalent about the trend,  it is pretty on these Moda fabrics:

Having just gotten back from Vermont, I still couldn't get that lake out of my head and decided to do a lake landscape, but more spare/modern than what you normally see.  Also, I've been avoiding free-motion quilting for so long I was ready to give it a shot and I figured keeping it simple would help with that (if you mess up on a simple top, it's not so tragic to start over). I started with my hill and windy sky:

The water I did freehand based on a piece I saw in a Japanese quilting book.  Not sharing that picture for copyright reasons.  Just kidding, not showing it because mine looks better when you don't compare it to perfection.

For the wind, I couldn't get this right freehand, so I chalk traced it and then followed the lines as carefully as I could.  Pretty inexact but I'm OK with it.

And here it is altogether:

I don't know how I feel about the red canoe; I like the splash of color but it seemed like I should embroider a person in it so people would know what it was. Mr. Responsibly's response to that was "Of course it's a canoe.  What are people going to think, there's a red banana in the lake?  And if you add a guy in the canoe then the whole thing becomes about the guy." Is that true?  And why is it floating untethered out there? I'm still undecided, maybe I'll add a person later - I'd be interested to know what people think about leaving it empty.

Here come the second wave of cousins - get ready for some baking!