summer + urban craft uprising
July 6, 2012 at 9:02 am | Posted in cooking is crafty too, crafty events, crafty to buy, washington | 1 CommentHappy summer! After two giant deadlines, two sick kids, two trips to FedEx, and tying up about two thousand loose ends, I feel like summer has finally started around here. We had a sweet little Fourth of July, got to pick seven pounds of raspberries the other day, and my garden is going crazy… now that I’m not hunched over my laptop eight or ten hours a day I can actually go outside now and then!
I’m in town for the weekend this time, but I sure wish I could make it to Seattle for the Urban Craft Uprising show! Kristen has organized another awesome line-up with tons of vendors, author signings, and craft demos.
Two of my favorite crafty ladies will be up there sharing a booth with their lovely jewelry, accessories and clothes! Cathy Pitters of BossaNova Baby and Crafty Wonderland has making gorgeous embroidered jewelry… bracelets and locket-style pendants. She is still screenprinting hoodies and skirts (you can see lots more of her stuff in her Etsy shop and at Crafty downtown).
And Torie (aka Totinette and the other half of Crafty) has these striking wooden necklaces for sale, along with filigree metal earrings and other charming bijoux. She also has a newly updated Etsy shop if you’re not local…
I’m looking forward to the PMQG exhibit at Sisters and the new Denyse Schmidt class at PNCA (oh, can’t wait for that one), but in the meantime Pearl and I are planning to make raspberry freezer jam and try our hand at some potato printing during Everett’s nap. Have a great weekend!
food in jars – the cookbook
June 14, 2012 at 3:16 pm | Posted in cooking is crafty too, crafting with kids, oregon, reviews and interviews, world of geekcraft | 3 CommentsI am a big fan of Marisa McClellan’s Food in Jars blog, and was lucky to take her pear-vanilla jam class here in Portland last year. She’s coming back this week to teach a strawberry-lemon jam class again, plus she’s having a book party at Powell’s on Hawthorne/Pastaworks to celebrate her new cookbook – also called Food in Jars!
I got a review copy from Running Press last week, and have loved hanging out with it and planning some summer projects… Marisa not only clearly explains the techniques behind water-bath canning and preserving, she really engages the reader to show how fun it can be to choose your favorite fresh ingredients, make something amazing with them, and save your work for six months out, when you’re thoroughly bored with the contents of your pantry and could use a summery treat. My grandmother canned a household’s worth of vegetables every summer and fall – I know I can’t pull that off, no matter how industrious I am. But I can make homemade jam for a year’s worth of my daughter’s favorite PB&J roll-ups, and maybe half a year’s tomato sauce for the four of us (if I’m ambitious).
First up will hopefully be the jam. I am so excited to take my kids to pick berries… raspberries, marionberries, and blueberries are our favorites. That’s what feels like summer in Oregon to me – I have high hopes for July.
I’ve also been wanting to make more homemade drinks, and the syrup recipes Marisa shares (to mix with seltzer, or make cocktails) are super inspiring.
She also offers a nice selection of food-safe, shelf-stable tomato sauce recipes to try. Last summer I froze all my homemade sauces, but I want to try my hand at some shelf-stable recipes this time around… I have six tomato plants in my garden, a case of quart jars downstairs, and my fingers crossed.
I didn’t take any photos of her recipe pages, but some of the ones I’ve bookmarked and I’m super excited to try are lime curd, roasted corn salsa, cranberry syrup, blueberry-lemon syrup, vanilla salt, pear-ginger jam, and slow-cooker pear butter. We have a Bartlett pear tree in its third summer and two dozen tiny pears growing this year!
In addition to all the water-bath canning tips, techniques and recipes, Marisa offers some alternate ideas – helpful details on freezing and preserving all kinds of other things (including both a favorite chocolate cake and beer bread dry mix to give as gifts!), and pressure canning. I really appreciate her focus on avoiding BPA and other leaching toxins, and practical, real-life advice on food safety.
The book ends with a few pages you can write your own notes in, a really nice touch. During her class I added two pages of notes to my family cookbook – I love keeping track of things like that.
If you can make it to her Portland book party, here are all the details!
Food in Jars signing + party
Powell’s on Hawthorne
3723 SE Hawthorne Blvd, Portland
Saturday, June 16, 2-4 pm
(and if you can’t make it, you can pre-order a signed copy!)
PS: Also on Saturday, I’m super excited to be a judge at the Second Annual Captain Picard Day!!! at 6 pm at Floating World Comics (400 NW Couch St. downtown). Please make a TNG craft or art piece, bring it on by, and hang out with us… or just enjoy everyone else’s Picard awesomeness. I’ll be adding some World of Geekcraft comics magnet kits to the prizes and would love to say hello. Thank you to Zachary for asking me to be part of the evening!
chive (+ sage) blossom vinegar
May 22, 2012 at 11:03 am | Posted in chatty, cooking is crafty too, I love to make things..., oregon | 6 CommentsI love Marisa McClellan’s blog Food In Jars (and was so lucky to take her pear-vanilla jam class last fall – especially since we have pears on our tree for the first time this spring!!)… but I’m still waiting for the first round of spring and summer things to preserve. I’m definitely doubling my jam production from last year – Pearl and her love for PB+Js cleaned me out of my 2011 supply about two weeks ago – and I am so excited to make homemade tomato sauce again.
But both those summery things seem pretty far away on a rainy May afternoon – I’ve been cooking and freezing plenty of things when I have time, but I’m getting impatient to try making something new that feels like spring. So I was super excited to find Marisa’s post on chive blossom vinegar this week! I just dug all my herbs into the ground on Sunday and getting acquainted with them again and cooking with them has been fun. And luckily I had a bottle of white vinegar sitting around, so I could try my hand at a half-half-pint of her recipe!
I also had lots of sage blossoms so I thought I’d go renegade and try a version with those, too. I rinsed them in two small separate bowls, dried them off,
and added the chive blossoms to a half-pint and the sage blossoms to a pint jar and covered them with vinegar. This is what they looked like right after I closed the lids.
And here they are just 24 hours later – the sage especially is a brilliant infused violet color already, very cool!
The chive blossom one has turned a more subtle, softer lavender.
Thirteen days to go and I’ll see how they turn out fully finished… and this weekend I’m heading to the farmer’s market for the first time this year, so I hope this is just the first of lots of chances to can good things in jars, and add new things to my family cookbook!
Speaking of… Marisa has a brand-new FIJ cookbook out I just can’t wait to get, and in addition to a lot of East Coast events, she’ll be teaching a strawberry-lemon jam class at KitchenCru (super recommended) and doing a signing at Powell’s/Pastaworks next month. I have it on my calendar and I’m looking forward to reviewing her book here in the next couple of weeks, too!
may (so far)
May 21, 2012 at 12:23 pm | Posted in chatty, cooking is crafty too, crafting with kids, house crafty, oregon, outside, portland modern quilt guild, quilting, sewing, terrariums, vintage crafty | 2 CommentsThis spring has kind of brought a bit of everything at once – rainy, then sunny, then rainy again… crazy busy, then blissed out on vacation, then back to the laptop… sewing, cooking, gardening, a long-awaited new fence, birthdays, and bagels! I have a lot of catching up to do, so I wanted to share some of my May favorites (so far).
The first Friday of the month, I took an amazing class from my friend Heather and learned how to make homemade bagels – such a great morning. I wasn’t sure I could duplicate her magic and skill at home, but sure enough, my first two dozen bagels (half sesame, half plain) following her recipe and tips turned out pretty perfect. I’m in love. Thank you, Heather!!
Then, my sweet Pearl turned four (!) so I just had to drop everything else and make her a birthday skirt. I fell in love with an apron at a vintage store in Silverton last month, and cut it up to make the cutest little skirt for her. She’s a big girl now who won’t wear anything except exactly what she wants to, so I kind of held my breath while she opened the new tote bag I sewed her to see what was inside…
but she loved it and put it right on for her birthday party and beyond. Happiness! I also got to make my favorite cupcakes (with purple frosting, by request) and a “triple berry cake” (aka blueberry boy bait + raspberries + marionberries). The girl loves her sweets, and you only turn four once.
I forgot to get a first-day shot of planting my garden this spring, but this is about three or four weeks in (I started later than usual, after an epically rainy March). Everything is loving it so far – from left to right, it’s spinach, mustard greens, dinosaur kale, white russian kale, and chard. I have beets and leeks in a smaller bed and I’m hoping to put in my tomatoes soon too, then summer squash a little later on. Tucked behind all the greens, which you can’t really see, I finally took my herbs out of all their random-sized containers and dug them into a real garden bed. I also rescued my little blueberry bushes and pomegranate from the relentless grass invasion all that rain brought, and we have about two dozen tiny Bartlett pears nestled in on our tree! I’m pretty excited… almost five years into living in our house, I feel like my yard is finally becoming what I hoped for, after a lot of baby steps forward (most recently, a birthday sandbox and a new fence!). We have flowers, native plants, and succulents planted on one side of the house, and herbs, berries, and the vegetable garden on the other.
We went away with the kids for a very needed long weekend to Mt. Hood on Wednesday and stayed at the sweetest cabin. Such a beautiful place, right on a creek, with a hammock and a hot tub and green everywhere you looked.
Along with lots of easy 18-month-old-friendly hikes, splashing in the Columbia River, skipping stones in the creek, and getting an ice cream cone in Hood River, we headed up to Timberline Lodge for a grilled cheese (Pearl and Everett) and a glass of wine (me and Andrew) and spent half an hour gazing out the window at this view. The photo above is just a regular old iPhone snapshot, no editing or anything.
This second one is a Hipstamatic from the same spot. (I find it totally impossible to stop taking photos of Mt. Hood.) Bonus – I just learned from Merritt that those amazing cloud formations we were admiring, gracefully skirting the summit, are called lenticular!
I bought this dreamy little succulent dish garden with two teeny cairns and a few seashells mixed in at the Saturday Market in Hood River. So beautiful! I wish the vendor (Rose) had a card so I could credit her, but she said she was just getting started and this was her first event ever…
Midway through our idyllic getaway was a really awesome May PMQG meeting I drove back for. I am so excited that Nancy finished quilting my Oceanside quilt and I got to share it at show and tell! She did a really cool all-over quilting pattern of waves with three whales here and there – a small, medium, and big one. I love whales so much and this was just perfect.
If anyone is interested in the process, I’m hoping to write up a longer post about how I made Oceanside… and it will be at Sisters so I’m very excited about that!
Hopefully I’ll have a side-by-side photo of the quilt with the Oceanside sign that inspired it to share soon too…
the BUST DIY guide to life
November 3, 2011 at 1:04 pm | Posted in books and mags, cooking is crafty too, house crafty, I love to make things..., new writing!, oregon, projects to do, reviews and interviews | 1 CommentI recently got my contributor copy of the fabulous BUST DIY Guide to Life and I love it! Flipping through all 350 pages has been a treat – it’s basically 15 years’ worth of the magazine‘s awesomeness in one gorgeous place.
Debbie Stoller (whose birthday is today – happy birthday Debbie!) and Laurie Henzel have rounded up hundreds of how-tos from contributors and editors alike and organized them into hefty chapters like “BUST-ier Homes and Gardens” and “Your Style, Your Way.” Along with craft projects of just about every kind, there are dozens (hundreds?) of recipes to try, plus tutorials on tuning up a bike, buying a house, polishing a resume, and just about anything else you might want to to figure out how to do. Here are a few of my favorites…
terrariums, by Lindsay Stetson Thompson
embroidered shopping bag, by Jennifer Reichert
living room string lights, by Heidi Andrea Rhodes
cassette coin purse, by Rachel Benefiel
I’m so happy that two of my articles for BUST made it into the book, too! I wrote “Chains of Love” in 2005, I remember making those three necklaces in our apartment in LA. I was so excited to see it on the page!
And I wrote “Get it Together,” a quick organizing guide, within a year or so of that one too. I could do worse than take my own advice when it comes to my craft room these days…
This Saturday afternoon, Debbie and Laurie will be at Powell’s here in downtown Portland for a signing and party – I would love to see you over there! Powell’s has a nice display of the book (sorry, the photo is blurry – Everett was in the carrier and really wanted to help) if you want to flip through and see some of the awesomeness for yourself.
The BUST DIY Guide to Life signing with Debbie Stoller and Laurie Henzel!
Powell’s, 1005 W. Burnside St. in Portland
Saturday, November 5 at 2:00
Free!
food in jars
October 6, 2011 at 1:07 pm | Posted in books and mags, chatty, cooking is crafty too, I love to make things... | 10 CommentsI was very lucky to take Marisa McClellan’s Food in Jars class while she was here in Portland this week. I registered the day I saw her post about it, and I’m so glad I did! We made a truly amazing batch of pear-vanilla jam – the recipe is on her blog, with what sounds like a few little tweaks for this version. It was really fun and the jam is so good. I’ve had some every day since Tuesday, though I’m trying to make that little half-pint jar stretch as far as it can…
After two nice summers and falls of preserving everything I could resulting in a constantly full freezer (two actually!), I wanted to learn real hot-water bath canning and master the art of shelf-stable food. But I felt very hesitant to teach myself – picturing the Ball Complete Book of Home Preserving open on the counter, with a huge pot of water boiling on the stove and two little kids running around and a timer ticking away while I tried for a perfect seal on my jars and a completely food-safe result solo sounded… stressful. But hanging out with Michelle and Katie (yay for PMQG!), and a dozen other nice canners in a big, bright commercial kitchen while Marisa answered all our questions on USDA regulations, ingredient substitutions, acidification levels, separation in jams, jar seals, and BPA-free options (gee, guess who was asking about that??) was really fun!
We started out with Bartlett pears from the farmers market. We chopped them up (no need to peel them) and measured out 10 cups per batch.
Then Marisa showed us how to combine the sugar with the chopped pears
and the jam mixture simmered on the stove (in a gorgeous 14-quart enameled Le Creuset pot that probably cost more than my sewing machine – !!!) with two vanilla beans until it was super beautiful. Marisa uses liquid pectin, and I had only ever used powdered in my recipes, so that was interesting to check out, too.
I got to fill some of the jars – that’s my favorite part of canning. Kind of like the happy top-stitching feeling of a cool sewing project (if that makes any sense). Yay!
Then we took a short break to try some of the jam with sliced baguette! OMG, it’s awesome.
Processed the jars (half-pint wide-mouth BTW) for 10 minutes and then we each got to take one home!
KitchenCru even surprised us all with a very deluxe dinner, left from an event earlier in the evening. Perfect timing at 9 pm after being around delicious pears and vanilla all night!
Here are all the notes I took – jam on the left, general questions and tips on the right. I’m so glad I got to learn so much about canning from Marisa. I love to read craft books and try things myself, but food safety is not somewhere I want to bend the rules or misinterpret the directions.
I wrote my canning class notes right into the next pages of my family cookbook! I’m so happy to have them right with my favorite recipes.
Speaking of cookbooks, Marisa has one coming out next May! I can’t wait for that. Hopefully she’ll come back out to Portland for another event. In the meantime, I went to Fred Meyer and Powell’s on Hawthorne and bought a 22-quart canning pot and a canning kit for when we pick apples next weekend – no more grabbing jars with regular tongs! (FM has all their canning stuff marked down 30% right now if you need anything too…)
I wanted to share some more photos and talk about other things but I think I will wait til tomorrow. It’s nice to stick to just one thing for once, I am usually trying to cram writing up a week’s worth of stuff into one nap… so I will be back soon to talk sewing + craftivism!
quilts and mai tais
September 28, 2011 at 3:45 pm | Posted in chatty, cooking is crafty too, crafting with kids, geek crafts, I love to make things..., oregon, quilting, world of geekcraft | Leave a commentThe last week has been a busy one and I just finally had the chance to sit down and write about a few things I’ve been up to lately…
First, a super thrilling Quilts for Quake Survivors update! After beautiful contributions from many, many generous quilters jumping in to quilt and bind as the last leg of our collective bee, Daniela has been tirelessly taking photos of the gorgeous finished quilts.
Check the QfQ blog every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday for new quilts for sale. All you have to do is make a $150 donation to Mercy Corps (for their work in Japan or designated for any other disaster relief that speaks to you),
email us at quiltsforquakesurvivors@gmail.com with a copy of your receipt, and the number of the quilt you want to buy! We will ship it to you via USPS with our deep gratitude. Special thanks to Nancy, who not only donated the lovely quilt top for Pretty in Aqua (below) but also bought it AND Lawn Chair (above), generously supporting Mercy Corps’ crucial work in Somalia.
Thank you Nancy!!! And thank you Daniela for the luminous quilt photographs.
Back to my house, I slow-roasted another 10 pounds of tomatoes from our garden and really wished I had one more oven rack. Wow, those are amazing (and so easy – I followed the recipe I linked, but with herbs of provence instead of coriander, which I don’t like).
Then I taught my wool baby quilt class at the Expo on Saturday (and visited Renee’s lovely Dressing the Part quilt again!). Thanks to Michelle who helped from start to finish, and the lovely folks at the Woolen Mill Store who had made the best kits ever, it went great. My version of the quilt pattern I designed is above,
there’s my class (a sell-out of 20 very nice people!),
and here are just a few of the quilt tops people made with the beautiful wool colors and patterns. I loved how individual everyone’s projects were – whether they were meant for a grandchild, a wall hanging, or a car quilt for chilly months.
It was super fun and I am excited to teach the class again at the Woolen Mill Store on Saturday (October 1 from 1-3:30, $40 includes all fabrics you need, and 2.5 hours means you should walk out the door with a finished quilt!). Speaking of the WMS, their amazing 30-80% off sale goes through Friday and I am so excited to buy some good things there tomorrow.
Then we drove down to Oregon City with Pearl and Everett for a (half) day trip. It was beautiful, a perfect late-summer-early-fall day on the river, and I took a bunch of photos. I think Oregon City deserves its own post but for now I’ll just share this one of the Willamette River from the bluff over the old Blue Heron mill, and this Western shirt pattern I bought at the library used-book sale for Everett. Can’t wait to sew this one.
On Sunday Andrew and I got a babysitter and I wore my favorite vintage Lilly Pulitzer dress out to the new Trader Vic’s! I can highly recommend the 1944 mai tai (they also make a virgin version if you don’t drink) – it’s divine. We also got crab rangoon and fried shrimp and it was pretty killer all the way around.
Then we went over to the Driftwood Room in the Hotel DeLuxe (Sunset‘s pick for best hotel in Portland!) and that was otherworldly. They’re running happy hour from 2 pm to close right now so all the delicious food and cocktails are on special. Really hoping to make it back soon…
I spotted this truly amazing Yoda-dinosaur terrarium at Powell’s for Cooks and Gardeners on Hawthorne (I was buying The Complete Book of Small-Batch Preserving for my Food In Jars class coming up, I can’t wait!) and got to talk to Megan and her co-workers about it. It’s so awesome! I wrote it up for Geekcrafts today, if you are also fascinated by this convergence of so many good things at once.
And to come full circle right back to quilts, here is my Habitat challenge quilt block. I’m not completely happy with it, to be honest, but I think it will look really cool in our PMQG collective quilt pieced in with everyone else’s blocks (which I liked better!). I wanted to take the “challenge” part seriously and push myself to use just the prints given. Solids were allowed, but that’s so my default that I thought I’d make myself do something different, even if it kind of overwhelmed my eyes.
I used Christina’s excellent double disappearing 9-patch tutorial for the four mini-blocks at the corners, and then added the necessary width and height to bring it to 12.5″ with an impromptu 2.5″ cross in the center. Then I turned off the sewing machine, unplugged the iron, and ran out the door to the meeting!
See you next week (or hopefully even sooner!)
saturday afternoon and a couple other things
August 18, 2011 at 3:11 pm | Posted in books and mags, chatty, cooking is crafty too, crafty events, free crafty, modern log cabin quilting, quilting, world of geekcraft | 6 CommentsI mentioned the book party last week, but wanted to share some new peeks at the cool things we’re planning for the Pendleton Woolen Mill Store this Saturday afternoon – I would love to see you over there! The reception is for both Modern Log Cabin Quilting and World of Geekcraft, which I’m really excited about. It’s been fun making up some special craft kits for both books! I’m teaching a new Woolen Cross Pillow class from 12-2 ($45), and then from 2-4 you can stop the (free!) party to sew MLCQ-style quilt blocks in their gorgeous wool fabrics
that look like this,
make comics magnets from WOGC,
and have snacks and lemonade. I was planning to make cupcakes (my favorite book party treat) but changed my mind – now it will be cheesecake brownies, which seem a little more summery! I love those too.
(so picture brownies here instead…)
You can also work on your own crafts, check out lots of projects from both books, and find all kinds of good treasures in the by-the-pound bins and on the tables there. I snapped up all the wool squares to make this patchwork throw from one of those bins, and it’s one of my favorite things I’ve ever made.
Pendleton has also graciously put together a tote bag of prizes for someone at the party to win! My MLCQ publisher, Potter Craft, sent me this handy canvas satchel for the gift bag. I put copies of both my books and both of the craft kits into it, and handed it over to Pendleton to see what they might want to contribute. So far they’ve added a bunch of colorful carded wool, a spindle, fat quarters of lots of different plaid wool fabrics, buttons and zippers, and it sounds like there’s more on the way!
Also – Aimee of the Woolen Mill Store was nice enough to do a little interview with me about my new craft room, my favorite designers and artists, and how NOT to baste a quilt. Thank you, Aimee!
Book Party!
Saturday, August 20 from 2-4 pm
Pendleton Woolen Mill Store, 8500 SE McLoughlin Blvd, Portland
(free!)
A few other things…
-Speaking of Pendleton, they just posted this lovely short film by Chris Hornbecker about the making of the Portland Collection, which I love. I got to preview the clothes last month – they’re amazing, and all made in the US from fabric woven in mills right here in Oregon and Washington, which I also very much appreciate. I’ve got my eye on the vintage-inspired shift dress in Neskowin plaid, and plan to snap it up as soon as it’s out in the shops this fall!
-Speaking of sewing, my super-talented friend Christine Haynes (famous for her wonderful book, Chic and Simple Sewing), has a new Kickstarter campaign to help publish two of her sewing patterns – the Derby and the Chelsea. Please check it out, watch the video, and consider pledging to support her work! Here’s a peek at the Retro Shift Dress I made from her C&SS book… an all-time summer favorite for sure.
-Still on the topic of sewing, I’m working on a post for Quilts for Quake Survivors on our lovely party last weekend (HUGE thank-you to everyone who came to sew with us) and our next steps and final donations. I’ll post a link here when that’s up (we’ll see how long Everett naps) but here’s just one photo for now… Teresa‘s amazing 1954 Pfaff!
-and last – see you at the Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting tonight?? They’re also hosting a fabulous all-day sew at Fabric Depot on Saturday. I highly recommend sewing over there, zipping over to the book party mid-afternoon for a quick wool-quilt-block and treat break, and heading back to sew some more. Sounds like the perfect day to me!
summer round-up (so far)
August 4, 2011 at 12:01 pm | Posted in chatty, cooking is crafty too, craftivism, crafty events, house crafty, I love to make things..., modern log cabin quilting, quilting | 4 CommentsIt’s been a busy few weeks now that summer has finally (finally!) come to the PNW and I wanted to post some photos of my July + August whirlwind – all the things I’ve really wanted to post about and didn’t ever find the magic hour for. I’m deep in the middle of a new project (more on that in a second) so I will just jump in and share a few things I’m excited about…
Sisters was awesome. I wrote more about this at my MLCQ blog if you’d like to see, and there are some great PMQG exhibit photos + details here too. Special thanks to everyone who came to my book signing at the Stitchin’ Post, and to Heather for this shot of my Modern Crosses quilt in our display!
My Log Cabin Quilting class at PNCA was wonderful thanks to my amazing students. Here’s the design wall at the end of class with a couple of blocks from each person (L to R – Michelle, Robin, Melanie, Amy, Lizzy, + Rachel). I’ll write more on that over at MLCQ soon too.
Made jam with Daniela to celebrate our Quilts for Quake Survivors project winding down – one batch of strawberry-marionberry and one batch of raspberry (in the snapshot). I really love to make freezer jam. It’s something I always wanted to do and last summer I loved finally doing it. One day, when I don’t have kids this little to wrangle, I want to learn how to do real canning – but for now, this easy, fun take on jam (and salsa, tomato sauce, and pesto) is exactly my speed.
Speaking of QfQ, we are hosting a thank-you party for everyone who helped – a couple final hours of sewing on the last quilts and then a barbecue with drinks, food and music! We’d love to see you over there – it’s August 14 from 4-8pm, all the details above. Huge thanks to our gracious host, Amy of PMQG.
And the Fat Quarterly Block Pocket Apron-along just finished up this week! Thank you so much to John and everyone at FQ for hosting. You can get the free (corrected) pattern for the apron project, and visit the posts for week 1, week 2, week 3, and week 4 at their blog – they are evergreen so you can jump in and sew whenever you have time (or the pressing need for a cute apron for cooking and cocktails).
LOVED our Denyse Schmidt improvisational patchwork + design class. I will definitely write more about that soon. For now I’d love to point you to Blair’s posts here and here (yay, got to meet Blair!) and share just one photo of about 2/3 of our class design wall. My blocks are the yellow, blue, gray and brown ones in the upper center. Several people in the class said that they thought they looked like me – which I think too. I loved doing two days’ worth of inspiring piecing towards what I hope is a bed quilt – no pressure to finish it by a deadline or explain how to make it to anyone else, and using colors I love, in a simple pattern I can break up with extra scrap piecing whenever I want to…
Now, I’m jumping into a solo game of house tetris – switching the kids’ bedrooms around so that Pearl has a big-girl room and Everett gets the nursery, and my tiny, adorable, and chronically overstuffed craft room is heading down two flights of stairs to the basement. I have put in about a day and a half of hard labor so far and I am completely loving it. I have a big, beautiful desk to sew on, my favorite fabrics are folded on a shelf, I’ve ruthlessly sorted out a decade’s worth of craft + beyond magazines, and packed away my beloved but under-used supplies for now. I haven’t had time to make jewelry or use my Gocco printer in the last long while, but the things for them have been right smack in the heart of my workspace. So I’m a little sad to box so many things up and store them (nearby), but it’s so liberating to be able to see what I have and use it. I just don’t have all the open-ended craft time I used to (and my work has changed so much in the last few years, as magazines and publishing shifts) so my workspace needs to reflect that. And to be honest, my room had been so messy since finishing up 23 quilts and patchwork projects on deadline + having a baby overloaded the already precarious balance that I didn’t take any before photos. I just don’t want to see it like that again, it had been stressing me out, and a fresh start is really inspiring me.
One other new thing is that I am switching my card catalog from holding my vast collection of jewelry findings to all the sewing essentials that ended up around the room – bias tape, zippers, rick-rack (an essential to me anyway!) and hand-sewing bits. I love it already. I always loved Tricia’s sewing catalog so I’m following in her footsteps!
One last craft-room switch thing that I’m super excited about is painting a section of the basement wall. Most of my space has wood walls, but there’s a stretch of it painted with a dull, flat tannish color (similar to some of what we put chalkboard paint over on Pearl’s side of things). I went through a lot of my little treasures I want to put up on the wall, and found this one from around 2003 – I used to sell my jewelry at Alicia‘s shop (her beautiful half of Ella + Posie) and did a craft fair there for the holidays with Torie. Alicia made each vendor a name decoration for the tables, and I still have mine. I took it to the hardware store with Everett this morning, played with paint chips for a little while, and settled on Tropicana Cabana (on the right). I thought about the lighter version (on the left) – but this is a basement, in Oregon, and I want some color! So I hope to have an after photo soon, as soon as I hit publish I will be taping the edges…
Happy summer and happy crafting! I am so excited to do some new things and sew some things that have been on my list for a long time. Hope to see you soon.
meetings, catalogs, datebooks + whales
February 22, 2011 at 1:48 pm | Posted in button it up, chatty, cooking is crafty too, crafty events, quilting | 12 CommentsI had such an awesome time at the Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting last week! It had been way too long since I’d gotten to go to a meeting, after a few hopeful third-Thursdays-of-the-month got upended by some combination of work, late pregnancy, migraines, and the intricate, essential handoff of our two-year-old by 7:00 pm. I wish I had some great colorful photos to share but I only took two, during the super interesting color presentation, and my camera didn’t pick up any of the projected images from the back of the room… and then between holding Everett, a bag of his stuff, and a bag of my stuff, I didn’t get to take any more photos. I am keeping an eye on the PMQG blog and Facebook page for other people’s pictures and the full write-up, I’m sure there are some great ones from people who had the use of both hands all evening!
I did get to pick up my name badge (a perk of membership, along with great discounts at local and online stores) so I’ll just show that for now. It was such a fun evening and thanks to an ingenious icebreaker held on a giant map of Portland drawn in electrical tape, I even met some neighborhood quilters! We’re talking about getting together in between the official meetings for fabric shopping or sewing, too. Anyway, the next meeting is March 17 at PNCA, and I am bringing snacks.
I didn’t get any photos at Boomshakalaka, which was also awesome, for some of the same reasons (Everett sleeping soundly on my shoulder in his Rasheed Wallace jersey, plus an amazing, thick crowd). You can check out Pat’s photos over here, though, and they are great. I am looking forward to going back during the day and hanging out with everything – this is my favorite piece.
Finally, something I do have photos of: I got the PNCA Summer of Making catalog this week, and I am so thrilled that I am teaching a class again this summer, Log Cabin Quilting! It will be a two-day workshop with tons of hands-on designing, piecing and quilting time, so students can focus on what they want to make most. I’ll bring in antique, vintage and new log cabin quilts for inspiration, too. I think this will be an awesome class – I have loved teaching and taking classes at PNCA.
And I can’t believe my class is listed next to the one taught by my hero, Denyse Schmidt! I am already signed up for her Walking the Line: Working with Improvisation and Structure in Patchwork workshop and I just can’t wait.
I’m also looking forward to this spring and summer! My quilt book comes out a month from today which I can hardly believe. I was especially excited to fill in my July in my new datebook. Hooray for four different quilting events in the same month, and nothing boring yet! Thanks to the Portland Modern Quilt Guild, I am one of a dozen of us showing our quilts in a special exhibition of modern quilts at the Sisters Outdoor Quilt Show. Then I am teaching the next weekend, going to the regular monthly meeting the next week, and finishing the month with the improvisational patchwork class. Sounds good to me!
Also, I love my new datebook, which I got on our trip to Uwajimaya on Friday. I always feel way more organized with a paper calendar I can write everything in, especially a cute one with a bear + button cover. (Plus all the datebooks and calendars there are 30-40% off now.)
Okay! Last thing in the round-up is that we’ve made it to eight weeks of whale chalkboard menu planning – 40 successfully planned + cooked dinners (as of this Friday, anyway). To celebrate, I made a little photo collage.
We have had one failure, according to the photos it was Thursday, February 10 – I made grilled tuna just as the chalkboard said to, but it ended up being so fishy and gnarly we couldn’t really eat it and ordered pizza instead. But I think it still counts as an officially planned and cooked dinner, although a disappointing one! All the whales are in a set over here. I had been trying a new recipe each week, but that fell by the wayside early on. I am definitely up for trying new recipes, just can’t seem to do it every single week. But I’m looking forward to planting the garden and having more awesome stuff to cook with this summer… I’ll try the weekly thing again then.
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