Third Saturday of March 2021

For "Hang Your Quilt Day" this month, the theme was March and St. Patrick's Day. Shown from left to right the quilts are The Tornado Quilt, Cheery Daisy Stars, and an untitled wall hanging with eight chickens I will refer to as "The Chicken Quilt". I interpreted the theme loosely and chose quilts with green in them or were pretty springlike.

The Tornado Quilt has this title just because I displayed it in a local quilt show and it needed a name so I made one up. I won this quilt in a raffle sponsored by The Oklahoma City Modern Quilt Guild where my daughter lives. I published background about it in my blog post dated 6/29/13. It was a fund raiser in response to the devastation caused by the May 20, 2013 Moore tornado. The Tornado Quilt measures 54" wide by 72" tall. Spirals are quilted in the light rectangles and square waves are quilted in the orange, turquoise, and green rectangles.

Cheery Daisy Stars, 2007, predates when I was blogging and also when I was quilting my own quilts. I did select the quilting pattern though and the spirals fell nicely in the triangles and the central four loop shape did not obscure the center. In fact the only way I know this quilt's name and completion date was by its label. (See? Labels are very useful!) This label was printed not embroidered and I have since learned that the lettering will wash out. Oh, dear. guess I used the wrong printer and printer ink. I machine embroider my labels now. Cheery Daisy Stars measures 48" square. The fabric was fussy cut from a LakeHouse fabrics daisy panel. 

LakeHouse was established in 1988 as a design studio devoted to licensing designs to manufacturers in the craft, home textile, gift, stationery & wallpaper industries. Twenty years after it's inception, LakeHouse has morphed into LakeHouse Dry Goods a textile design business with an emphasis on fabrics for quilting, baby bedding and children's clothing.

Because of its green center, I chose to hang "The Chicken Quilt" out for March "Hang Your Quilt Day". It was made from a 1994 Button Weeds pattern that I started in 2004 and completed in 2014. Yup... twenty years for a 34"x34" wall hanging but I was determined to make that UFO history. The birds have three dimensional wings for flapping, teeny-tiny waddles that were appliquéd, and they are backed by a fabric of baby chicks. The outer border is composed appropriately of hen and chick blocks. It was one of my initial forays into quilting the top/batting/backing sandwich and I did it all on my domestic, spending an overabundant amount of time figuring out my quilt path. For more information, in somewhat excruciating detail, refer to my blog post dated 11/12/14.

Hang Your Quilt Day Beginnings
Beginning April 2020, my quilt guild members began a tradition of hanging quilts in the front of their homes on the third Saturday of the month as a source of enjoyment for the community and as a thank you for the essential workers during the pandemic. My initial post about this practice is dated 4/22/20.

Roméo Mouse Rattle

My youngest granddaughter was born January 11. After having gotten both vaccination doses, I am finally going to get to meet her in person in four weeks. I wanted to bring her a hand made gift, appropriate for a then twelve week old so I ordered this mouse rattle kit from a French company Renaissance Ribbons. These kits are made of soft polyester velvet on a sturdy rubberized backing. The fabric is so soft the toys are awesome to the touch; but the fabric is also so sturdy, the toys are awful to turn right side out after sewing. But each is worth the effort and I sew them up it out of love (and determination) time and time again. The following posts describe the animal critters I have made in the past: two cats 4/28/2018, two rabbits 4/9/2020, three kittens 7/13/2020, and six foxes 1/14/2021. This mouse kit was slightly specialized in that it included a rattle and a long tail.

I opened the package and laid out all the contents – one long strip of velvet printed with body and ears, a white thin disk rattle, and a bright green tubular tail. I myself had some plastic squeakers so I decided I would enable this mouse to squeak as well as rattle. 

Here are closeups of the mouse both awake and asleep with the signage declaring his name Roméo and the name of his designer, odille baillouel.

I cut out all the ears and body components and displayed them beside the extras of the tube tail, disk rattle, and pliable squeaker. His lime green tail and heart-shaped cheese make me smile.

Finished Roméo measure 5" tall. Awake and asleep photos of the assembled mouse follow. On second thought since he is nibbling on his cheese with his eyes closed, perhaps that is an expression of bliss rather than napping. Or maybe he is just hugging it to his chest while he dreams. Roméo's tummy squeaks and his head rattles. This was my logical choice for noise generator placement while I was stuffing him. When you get confused don't you feel like your brain is rattled and when you are hungry doesn't your tummy make noises?

I checked the Google translator to be certain the French "souriceau" translated to "mouse" in English. Quite by accident I also released on a translation to Italian where "souriceau" is "topo". This immediately made me think back to my childhood and the Ed Sullivan variety show where a popular guest was the mouse puppet Topo Gigio.

When people talk about The Ed Sullivan Show the conversation almost always reverts back to Elvis Presley’s 1956 appearance watched by 60 million viewers, The Beatles first US live television performance on February 9, 1964 and, shockingly enough, the little Italian mouse named Topo Gigio.

I hope Roméo is at least partially as entertaining to little Irene as Topo Gigio was to many television viewers. In my opinion Roméo turned out equally cute.

Quilt by the Numbers - Solution Pending

This week I just wanted to do something fun. As a side benefit, it fit in with my 2021 goal of becoming a closet quilter. I have had two layer cakes in my closet for a semi-long while. How long is a semi-long while? Since 2015. I had flown out from California to Oklahoma for the birth of my daughter's second baby. We were in Sooner Quilts in Guthrie with him just days after his birth. I bought the two layer cakes on clearance sale in a quilt shop in Oklahoma. I published a post about our visit there dated July 27, 2015. There were no selvages on the 10" squares but I guess the fabric dates around 2014. I was attracted by the numbers and the colors.

Little Isaiah was cool with blue but red just made him mad! Tastes and preferences are formed early.

The fabric line of the layer cakes I bought is called FIGURES by Zen Chic by Moda designer Brigitte Heitland and is described on her website as:

FIGURES is full of delightful and pleasing contrasts and delivers everything you expect from a well designed collection: It has a central motif, namely stenciled numbers; it has a color theme centered around variations of blue; it has a range of hues from light to dark, and it has both large scale and small scale graphic patterns in the form of buttons, points and plus signs. Add to this some bright yellow groupings of abstract daisies and dandelions and you get a collection of graphic fabric designs that are urban chic, versatile and lots of fun.

The pattern I wanted to try out was called Kira by Gudrun Erla (GE Designs). Two layer cakes, 42 squares each would make a full size quilt that required 80 squares, 40 light and 40 dark. I opted to go with a 48 block lap size, based not only on how ambitious I wanted this project to be, but for another reason. I realize often layer cakes do not have a equal apportionment of lights and darks. I could appropriate some lights from the second layer cake to even out the imbalance from the first one. [NOTE: I make no promises that I may not change my mind and go for a larger size by adding in some solid pale squares of a different fabric line.]

I split up one layer cake and laid out the 42 squares pairing a light with a dark and adding a 6 more squares from the second layer cake to total 48, the number required for a 48 block, 63" x 80" lap size quilt. I kept the colors segregated into coral, yellow, navy/blue and turquoise columns.

I started with the coral squares, my favorite color, and was thrilled with how the first four blocks came out. Light and dark were so well-defined and those triangles peeking out from the diagonal seams made me smile. Clearly I was in the honeymoon phase of this quilt and I gleefully plunged forward, sewing up all the pre-paired squares I'd stacked up. Within two days I had whipped out all 48. Woo-hoo!

Then I displayed all 48 blocks on my design wall, ending the honeymoon phase as the first matrimonial fight hit. Although I liked each block they did not necessarily play nicely with each other. Some lacked the desired level of contrast despite my initial pairing considerations Maybe I should have scattered the block colors instead of grouping them? Maybe I should pay more attention to a consistent line of those diagonal triangles? Maybe a should toss out a few problem children and make replacements – I really enjoy the piecing part of the process. Those multicolor splats, although quite cheerful, did not seem to fit. 

My initial attraction to this layer cake was the featured figure fabric. Maybe I should make a few more blocks with it and sub out those blocks that do not suit my fancy? Perhaps group all the numbers in the center? Even that subtle white block with pale gray numbers serves a useful role. Aargh!! I merely need to leave this to marinate up on the wall for a few days. Maybe if I sleep on it the solution will eventually come to me in my dreams. I will "figure it out".

Masks for Grandkids

Last year I made masks but did not blog about them. I felt sewing them was for the good of the community and not necessarily a work of art nor a creative endeavor. When my daughter-in-law Carrie asked me to sew a few more for her kids, I found myself scratching my head trying to remember how I did them – in what styles and in what sizes. This blog post is to help me remember for the future. I surprise myself sometimes how often I refer back to a blog post to jog my memory about some detail or time frame.

Pleated Masks are more time consuming but that is the style I prefer to wear. Personally I like the pleated style because it does not cling so close to my face. I made ten of these, five each in two different sizes for my Southern California grandkids. Since this grandson is about to turn three, I made sure I picked prints that would appeal to either gender. The pink and purple ones I'd made previously for his two older sisters are hardly something a macho three-year-old boy would wear. From top to bottom there are sailboats, farm scenes, carnival ride tickets, polka dots, and scraps from the Very Hungry Caterpillar quilt called Munch, post dated 4/13/20. Here are the masks before I inserted the elastic at each end. They were based on the following URL. https://www.instructables.com/AB-Mask-for-a-Nurse-by-a-Nurse/

I left off the long ties since for the kids just slipping them over their ears is easier  – they do not have to stand still as long. At each end, instead of extending the ties, I made ½" wide casings to feed through elastic that, once adjusted, could be tied off to size. This is how my last efforts at 100% sizing fits a six year old child.

I made them in two sizes and this time was wise enough to label what it was. I printed out the pattern at 1" = ⅞" and 1" = ½" and labeled them with a dry erase marker 88% and 50%. I learned the hard way that dry erase marker does NOT come out of fabric, no way, no how. Google it and you will see I am right. It is a great choice for markings that will not fade.

Here are my notes for the pleated masks. I can get two masks out of a fat quarter, one of each size.

Round Masks are much quicker to make and I think perhaps the kids might prefer them because they are more minimal. I made twelve of these, four fabrics in each of three sizes. Sort of – I could only get two of the peach paper doll print, so the third, the smallest, is pink. The recommended size for a child size is 9" but again I think this is a bit large for a young child, especially those that are pre-school and kindergarten age. I made these based on a 7", 8" or 9" circle. I folded the corners over ¾" leaving a roomy channel for the ¼" elastic. Again I was wise enough to label the size, this time as the diameter of the starting circle. The round masks can be made from scraps and do not require a fat quarter. (Hmmm... ironic, since they are made from quarter circles...). I used this YouTube tutorial for the round masks. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OEAimq9_Lw 

Here are my notes for the plate style masks. I made them from square scraps folded in quarters rather than trying to find plates of the correct diameter.

Since I am social distancing and staying staying out of stores, I ordered elastic from Amazon for these masks. It only cost me $10 – for 100 yards! What does 100 yards of ¼" elastic look like? Not bad. Here is it compared to a spool of thread and a pencil. It also fit nicely on a cone thread holder my son-in-law Jeremy bought me one Christmas. I used a generous 20" for each mask so I already have consumed over 12 yards (22 x 20"@36"/yd = 12.22 yards). I also sent off an extra 10 yards so I have used up almost 25% of the 100 yards already. I will have it for a while, but it is far from being a lifelong commitment.

Once I'd fed the lengths of elastic through each casing, I packaged the masks up to ship off to Southern California along with two zip lock snack bags containing five yards each each white and black elastic. Yup. I stuffed all that into the smallest size priority mail flat rate shipper. They do nest very well. They are on their way to my grandkids. I will just have to imagine any smiles hidden from view behind the masks. Aah, but I can still get a hint from the twinkle in their eyes.