Sunny Day Sewing

Saturday was a sloooow day at the shop.  It's April in Oregon, the sun was out, and it was reasonably warm.  People got out to enjoy it while they could...because it's April in Oregon.  It could rain any second and not stop for days still.  So I got the pleasant surprise of a little in-store sew time.  That like, never happens.

So Market stuff is rolling in.  Man, I cannot WAIT for Market!  It's in Portland this year and boy, it is something to see. Which, you'll see some here, but I am getting ahead of myself.  

Anyhoo, distributors are starting to send all their pre-Market stuff, and occasionally there is a freebie in there.  I don't know who sent this freebie, but they gave us Nine-Patch Revolution, 20 Modern Quilt Projects by Jenifer Dick and Angela Waters. Holy shit y'all, THIS BOOK.  Even if modern isn't your thing, you will probably find something you like in here.  Seriously.  I am not easily impressed by most quilt books (I might find two or three quilts I like but the rest are meh) but this one is solid.  there are several I want to make!

But one got me.  I turned the page and said "Wow." out loud.  

It has such a vintage feel but with a modern twist.  I love it, and had to make it.  You KNOW I love the orange, but this will end up as a sample, and man there is no color more divisive than orange!  I have never known anyone to be like, "orange is okay."  It's either vocal love or vocal hate.  I liked the idea of a print in there too, but I just couldn't find a print I like to take the place of orange that wasn't just competing all over the place with the pattern.  So I opted to go green with a white-on-white background:

I am in love.  I cannot wait to see how the rest turns out! 

Willamette Valley Quilt Festival Sneak Peek

So the Willamette Valley Quilt Festival is quickly approaching (February 2-3, 2018 at the Linn County Fair and Expo) and we have a booth. Haven't heard of it?  Well, that's because this is it's very first year!  As usual, I am looking forward to it.  I really enjoy doing shows, despite the late nights, hair-pulling, and zero free time in the weeks before the show.  Wow, that sounds convincing, doesn't it?  lol.  Well, it's true.  Shows are a blast and a very welcome change to the regular grind.  

But I am late this time.  Usually I start a couple MONTHS before a show, but with the holidays, yeah friggin' right.  I am only one person and my sanity is only so strong.  So I started on January 1...which means only a month of prep.  Luckily most stuff is taken care of.  But samples?  Not so much.

So I started a few using things that weren't selling in the shop, or that I think would be neat to debut...like this lovely equine:

 And not to toot my own horn, but CHECK OUT THIS SICK MITERS. I decided to do something with a panel that wasn't selling, and hated the idea of wasting the stripe.  I haven't mitered in easily 10 years.  Because I hate it.  Not because I can't do it (clearly), but because it is a pain in my ass.  

Angles so sharp they make my rotary cutter look dull.  (Nevermind that it totally is, shh)

 I didn't mean to make the zebra look like it had a bird dick, but hey, weird stuff happens.  It was funny so I kept it. Did I mention the panel is Noah's Ark? No? Whelp, I'm almost certainly going to hell...maybe not for this specifically, but I'm sure it isn't earning me any points.  *shruuuuug*  

More to come I'm sure.  I'm also binding quilts during my lunch breaks at the office.  No rest for the wicked!

Stash Sunday a Day Late

My Stash Sunday is a day late.  Y'all know you can't expect me to be timely.

Well, the rush is finally over.  For another year, anyway!  Quiltopia was this weekend and our booth did pretty well all things considered.  Having a show the same weekend that a shop hop starts is rough for attendance, but we got it done anyway.  Every show is different, and it never ceases to amaze me what ends up being the thing no one can live without.  Last show it was a honeycomb panel with bees appliqued on top.  This show?  Fat quarters of Effervescence by Robert Kaufman.  Who knew?

So since this is a guild operated show, there was the green table in back.  The green table is where there is a ton of wicked'y inexpensive books, patterns, fabrics, and projects that the guild members bring to sell.  On the one hand, it kind of sucks for the rest of the vendors because we cannot compete with $3/yard,  but on the other hand...oh the goodies you'll find.  I found a print of flying pigs that my mom has had in her stash since the early-mid 90s.  Seriously...oh the things you can find.  For a fabri-holic this is a glorious and dangerous thing.

One of the weird things I love is heinous fabric.  Heinous. Fabric.  What do I mean?  Ugliness, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder and I have been told on more than one occasion that I need my vision checked.  I tend to really enjoy pieces that make everyone else dry heave, and this weekend was no different.  I found this white and neon (yes, neon) print of like, french drink labels.  It makes no sense.  Neon, really?  And bikinis. Found those. Oh, and a really great bright fruit/flower print with bees.  WHY ARE THE ORANGES PURPLE?! What even is that??  I don't know.  But I had to have it.  So now, I do, to the tune of three yards. 

But what I also inexplicably like are African prints.  Not prints with African themes, though, those are cool too.  I mean from-Africa prints, you know, the ones that have so much sizing on them you could stand them up on end? Those.  There were tons of fat quarters that someone was selling off for $0.50 a pop.  So I ended up with something like 16 of them.  They are GORGEOUS and I cannot wait to use them!  Right now, I have a blessed lull in samples since I rushed them all for Quiltopia, so I have a wee bit of time to myself to do something I want to do.  I have been thinking about what to do, because even though I can't wait to make something of them, part of me can hardly bear to cut them up.   

Inspiration Strikes in the Weirdest Places

Swear to God I have been up to my eyeballs in samples lately.  I mean, I always am, but with Quiltopia coming I am sewing triple time.  I feel like I am barely making a dent.  Probably because I'm not.  There is so much to do.  I wish sometimes I didn't have a regular job on top of all the shop stuff I do.  A snide comment made at a shop hop meeting reminded me that despite being 30, people still view me as that wet behind the ears college kid from 10 years ago who only had a part time job and school to fuss with.  I reminded her that in fact I do have a "real job" at the State and everything I do for the shop hop and at the shop is IN ADDITION TO my 40 hour week...not including housework and my minuscule social life.  Fight me, or whatever.  So I have been busy.  As usual.

I am super behind on the Honey Pot Bee blocks I am (supposedly) working on.  People talk about having "lots of UFOs" to the tune of a bin or two, and I want to laugh and laugh.  A bin. How cute. I have five Rubbermaid totes and counting.  Needless to say, I need to run the frig away to finish some of those.  Maybe when I am retired.  But I really want to do some me-time sewing.  I have so many scraps piling up, begging to be sewn, and I have SO MANY IDEAS.  And people know I love scraps so they send them my way.  Do you think I have the self control to say no?  Of course not.  Like I tell folks, my addiction to fabric could be to something way worse instead, I mean it could be like meth.  I;m sure there is something out there worse than meth but it's all I got.  And, I have seen the show Hoarders...apparently it's not a Hoarders level disaster until you find a dead cat in it.  I have no cats and my dogs haven't wandered into the scrap heap so I think we're good. Nothing to see here, move along.

But one of the things I want to make was inspired by something I see (almost) every day.  The bathroom at the office.  As you sit there, there's not much else to do but stare at the floor and walls.  The floor is boring tile, and the walls are boring tile too (would it kill anyone to move away from white and beige, I mean COME ON).  And they stay boring until you realize you've been staring at a maybe quilt pattern for months.    

Let me just get this out of the way, because I know someone out there is wondering where the picture of these walls are.  I did not take my phone into my office bathroom.  I have no plans whatsoever to take my phone into the office bathroom.  And I don't think I really need to explain all the different levels on which it would be weird to do so.  You're just going to have to «¬­imagine­¬«

It's so simple.  Basically staggered bricks, like where the gap between two bricks matches up in the middle of the brick in the row below it.  You know, like bricks do.  But as I have been sitting in there over the months, different patterns emerge.  Diamonds. Chains.  Variations of shapes and sizes and what if I did it on point or diagonal???? Seriously, no less than six quilt ideas have taken shape just from the amount of time it takes for me to take a leak at work.  Quilts are everywhere, y'all.

Hopefully after Quiltopia is over and after the rush of Thanksgiving and Christmas samples are done I can have a breather for a few weeks and work on some of these ideas.  I mean, the scraps keep multiplying like bunnies in the night.  they will overrun my house.  I wonder if this would then quality as housework?  Hmm.