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…

I won a wonderful surprise gift certificate from collage (thank you!!) and picked out some amazing art supplies for the kids’ Easter baskets,

got to interview the fascinating Lizzy House for the PMQG blog,

finally got the chance to bring my Oceanside quilt to life (it was inspired by a photo I took at the beach in 2009… and now it’s pieced, backed, and at Nancy’s for longarm quilting!),

got to see four dozen beautiful quilt blocks on the wall for the PMQG Cotton Couture challenge,

and collected my most mysterious craft projects to bring to the Criminal Crafts-World of Geekcraft book party at Murder By The Book!

It’s this Sunday, April 29, at 4:00. Shawn (author of the stellar Criminal Crafts) and I would love to see you there for making ransom notes and comics magnets, plus drinks, snacks, and mysterious surprises! Barbara of MBTB has kindly ordered copies of Modern Log Cabin Quilting and Button It Up, too, so if you ever wanted to get one of my books signed (while learning how to make invisible ink, courtesy of Shawn), here’s your chance!

If you go:

Criminal Crafts + World of Geekcraft Book Party
Sunday, April 29 at 4pm
Murder By The Book, 3210 SE Hawthorne Blvd. in Portland
Drinks, snacks, craft projects and book signing
Free!

As Diane noted in her recent review, Mend It Better is arranged like a textbook, with her suggested techniques neatly organized by chapter. There are tons of photos and tips for undertaking a new mending project, which is also a nice touch.

I am very happy to have contributed one* of the 22 mending projects to the book, and along with my contributor copy, Storey Publishing sent me an extra book to give away at our Portland Modern Quilt Guild meeting this week. I asked Kristin a few questions about mending, especially patchwork projects, and here are her thoughts…

Do you have any favorite decorative stitches for covering a seam or line in a mended patchwork project?

I know it’s so bland, but I really love the whip stitch or overcast stitch. Just going to town and completely covering it, kind of sloppy, in a bright color!

What’s your favorite mending or embellishment use for binding tape?

I love using it as straps, or sometimes a little accent in a seam, like small piping. So cute!

Have you ever mended a larger quilt or patchwork project? Any general tips for that?

I’ve done some light mending on a quilt I made – one of my first sewing projects – just some basic patchwork. I’m really excited to be embarking on a huge mending adventure this year: restoring a quilt my husband’s grandma made. She passed away a long time ago and it’s in tatters. He doesn’t remember her, so it’s his only connection to her. It’s going to be one of those “for the love of it” projects because mending it will probably take more time than completely making a new one!

Here are a few tips for mending quilts:
1. DO NOT wash it before you mend it. It will just make the damage worse.
2. Unlike darning where you want to stretch the fabric taut, if you stretch the quilt in a hoop before making the basic structural repair, it will actually cause the fabric to ripple when you take it off, or stretch the tear even further. You’ll want to mend it while it’s flat, then repair any quilting stitches in the hoop only after the structure is sound.
3. If you can, work on a large smooth surface with the quilt completely flat. The kitchen floor works great!
4. Sometimes you won’t be able to match the pattern exactly when patching, if that’s the case, think accent vs “sloppy”. One of my teachers used to always say “do it or don’t do it”. So if you can’t match, make it look intentional. Bold contrasting colors can be really fun!

- – - – - –

I think quilters, sewists, lovers of vintage, upcyclers, and wardrobe-refashioners will all love this book. This pieced-vintage-fabric skirt hem idea Kristin included is my favorite project… so adorable!

I’ll be giving away a copy of Mend It Better at our PMQG meeting at 7 pm this Thursday, April 19 at PNCA. We’ll be meeting in room S1 upstairs in the Stagecraft Building right across the street from the main PNCA building (where we’ve met the last two months as well). Hope to see you there!

*Here’s my little project! Thanks so much again, Kristin!

We were so lucky to have Kathy Miller speak at our February meeting, and she brought Cotton Couture cards for each of us with swatches of all 80+ colors in their new solids line. (Fabric Depot is now carrying every single Cotton Couture color, if you are local!)

So Heather, Nancy, Petra, Ale and I met up and chose 8 colors we loved from the collection for a PMQG challenge, and Michael Miller generously sent us a bolt of each one. We had an all-evening cutting party at Nancy’s studio, and ended up with this beautiful box full of fat eighths to share with everyone at the March meeting…

I stitched up a little pennant of the eight challenge colors – Fog, Meadow, Clementine, Luna, Charcoal, Kryptonite, Tangerine, and Aqua.

Heather and Petra each sewed improv blocks in the challenge colors in honor of Michelle‘s wonderful presentation.

So, the challenge details are all on the blog, and I was so excited to work with these colors, but the specific block size requirements (15.5″ x 18.5″) threw me a bit at first. I usually piece square blocks, and rarely anywhere near 18 inches across. But doing a little math, I realized that if I pieced five 8″ square blocks and cut one into 2″ x 8″ strips to sew on both the horizontal sides (using a 1/4″ seam allowance throughout), it would magically translate into the correct finished size!

I started by cutting five eight-inch fabric squares for foundation piecing, using an extra piece of Luna (the pale blue solid in the range), and then cut two varied-width strips from each of the 8 colors the length of the fat eighths (22″). I cut each strip randomly between 1 and 3 inches wide, without thinking about it too much. I made and photographed this block very quickly during one naptime, so I didn’t take step-by-step photos of my piecing – for the basics of string quilting, I’ll send you to this excellent film in the fridge tutorial. The differences with mine are that I pieced on fabric instead of paper (so don’t adjust the stitch length at all, you won’t be tearing the back away), and instead of using a glue stick, I just pinned my first diagonal strip in place and stitched the second one on to it, removing the pin afterward, and continuing the same way to fill the square. You’ll press and trim the same way as on paper, but you’ll have a nice sturdy fabric foundation layer underneath. I loved how much calmness the double layer gave a larger block – Cotton Couture is silky and wonderful to sew with, so it is not heavy or bulky at all.

After I made five 8-inch blocks, I stitched four together to form a big, colorful diamond pattern. Then I sliced the 5th block into four 8″ tall, 2″ wide strips, thinking they would be perfect for adding to the sides to yield that magical 15.5″ x 18.5″ dimension!

…but I figured out that while they are exactly right size-wise, to continue the diamond pattern, you need two strips with the diagonal going one way, and two with it going the opposite way. Whoops! So I stitched up one more 8″ x 4″ opposite-diagonal section with the scraps (the one on the left – I had just enough time and fabric left, yay) and cut that one into two strips to use instead. And ended up with this!

If you don’t want to try string piecing, maybe imagining four 8-inch blocks of any style, with an extra one sliced and diced for the sides, will help you plan something fun to build out to 15.5″ x 18.5″. I think that it would be fabulous to use log cabin, improvisational patchwork, paper piecing, or any other block style you’re into this way…

If you are a PMQG member and haven’t gotten your challenge fabric yet, you can pick it up from Nancy at her Just Quilting studio, Monday through Friday. Just give her a call first (503.234.0403). And if you’re working on your challenge block, please share photos in the PMQG flickr pool, we’d love to see them! You can bring your challenge blocks to our April meeting (Thursday the 19th at 7 pm, PNCA) or email us at portlandmodernquiltguild at gmail.com so we can collect them and take photos. Kathy Miller will choose 16 of our blocks to create a special Cotton Couture quilt for the Michael Miller booth at Spring Quilt Market! We’ll make a PMQG-collective quilt with the others plus any improv blocks using your scraps you’d like to bring in May, and hope to show it in Sisters.

Yay!

Alissa’s 20 designs are wonderfully simple and driven by line, shape and color (nearly all solids – I spotted one Katie Jump Rope print, one Lizzy House print, and a dots pattern in the entire collection). The book includes quilts of all sizes, from throws (like Mustard, the cover quilt, an instant favorite) to everything from baby to king-sized bed quilts as well. The scale of the piecing and colorwork varies considerably, so whether you’re drawn to huge, bold lines or a more delicate or intricate design, you’re sure to find a pattern that appeals to you.

The book is very nicely styled, including colorful shots of each of the quilts within a room as well as full flat images. I loved this one, Oddballs – probably my favorite of the whole collection.

The quilt above, Basket Weave, measures 90″ x 95″ and inspired me to imagine a smaller-scale take on Alissa’s pattern. I didn’t have time to work on anything before the meeting (unlike Nancy’s gorgeous throw and pillow from Sweetwater Simple Home – !) but I hope to try my hand at this one soon and will report back.

Alissa’s book is neatly organized into several chapters: White Negative Space (chapter opener above), Colorful Negative Space, Improvisational Piecing, Monochromatic Quilts, and Baby Quilts. I particularly loved the simplicity of Boxes, one of the baby quilts in the book. As the mama of both a boy and a girl, I really love those kinds of striking gorgeous designs that work for any baby, and will be treasured well into childhood and beyond.

So, if you want to win a copy of the book, I’ll be giving one away at our PMQG meeting tomorrow night – 7pm at PNCA in downtown Portland. We have a lot of fun stuff planned like a special presentation and a fabric giveaway (check out this post for all the details), and we would love to see you there!

Speaking of Portland stuff coming up, this Saturday (March 17, St. Patrick’s Day) is also National Quilting Day. I got to write a little post about it for CrafterNews, and I’m so excited that the PMQG is organizing a little celebration here in town! We’re meeting at Bolt at 3:00 for fabric shopping, and then Modern Domestic is offering a sew-in from 4-7 ($10, register here or just show up). Hope to see you a couple times this week!

You can find Modern Minimal at the Stash website, Powell’s, or your favorite local or online shop. Congratulations, Alissa!!

It took me awhile to finish my name tag (you can see a couple dozen awesome ones from February’s meeting over here btw!), because I couldn’t figure out how I wanted to write/print/embroider West Coast Crafty. I was dreaming of Gocco, but finally went super-simple with a lovely turquoise Sharpie from Collage.

Loving my 2012 craft project journal from Ex Libris Anonymous…

Finished name tag! I used blue Pearl Bracelet from Lizzy House for my main section and binding-tape lanyard, and yellow Peacock Lane from Violet Craft for my pennants, and the back. I embroidered my name, stitched down my bias tape, pinned the pennants in place, and then used Pellon 71F heavy interfacing for it instead of batting, stitched around 3 sides, trimmed and carefully turned it, fully fused it on the back, and then turned the raw edges in on the bottom and top-stitched the perimeter.

I’m confident there’s a prettier way to add the pinback than invisible thread, but oh well. I like the back and that cheery yellow!

At the February meeting (which was completely awesome and included a stellar talk by Kathy Miller and a Cotton Couture color card for each of us!),

I got to wear my finished Lisette market skirt. Hooray! I bought the Denyse Schmidt fabric at JoAnn at the end of January, started cutting and sewing it at the Fabric Depot All Day Sew and stitched the buttons on the day before the meeting. I really like this pattern.

Here are my thoughts:

1. I made View B which I think is super cute, but it’s short. Really, really short by my late-thirties’ standards (I think 18″) so I “hemmed” it with folded twill tape right over the raw edge, instead of losing any more length. When I sew it again, I’m adding a couple inches to its length for sure!

2. The six pieces (front center + sides, back center + sides), look REALLY similar on your sewing table. I notched them all (thank goodness) and was still struggling to figure out which were front, back, side, center, anything. Don’t unpin them all at once (oops).

3. Choose big, striking buttons for the plackets. I really loved how that defined the skirt style along with the neatly top-stitched panel seams. It’s really cool how the plackets also create an avenue for a belt, tie or scarf, like stylish belt loops.

4. This is a nice efficient pattern that will give you good-sized scraps for patchwork – yay – or… a headband! I sewed a headband to match and I really love it, on days where my messy hair is kind of driving me crazy it is a nice polished feeling. If you’d like to make one too, I love Caitlin’s tutorial, I just adapt it a bit for my love of vintage and excessive amount of long, thick hair.

Ok, last sewing thing! I’m really excited for our PMQG field trip to the Sew Expo in Puyallup, Washington this weekend! Nancy, Brittany, Rachel, Kaci, Cherri, Michelle, and I are all heading up to check out the show, the first time I’ve been in 10 years. If you are going too, I’m doing a book signing for both Modern Log Cabin Quilting and World of Geekcraft at the Pendleton Woolen Mills booth on Saturday from 10am-12noon, please come by and say hi and get a free quilt block or magnet kit. I’d love to meet you!

Last night after work and school, we had a mini-marathon family Valentine-making party, with some secret projects in different rooms, and a lot of construction paper action. Pearl and I worked on decorating one for Andrew (which I bought at Hammer Press in Kansas City last fall, one of my favorite cards I’ve ever snapped up), shortly after the two of them made me a pretty killer all-handmade one with lots of hearts and a super-sweet message inside. It wasn’t hard to distract Everett away from Pearl working on one with a vivid portrait of him on the front, and after she went to bed I pinked a heart from my favorite Denyse Schmidt dots and sewed it on a card for her. Whew! This was our breakfast table this morning with grandparent Valentines waiting to be opened too. It was fun!

Pearl also made a whole family of Valentines for her grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, which I just loved. Andrew cut out hearts and she proudly drew each member of the family. They each got emailed photos today and hopefully the real thing will roll into their mailboxes shortly too!

But if you are over the age of three and a half and after some truly gorgeous last-minute Valentines, please stop by the Hello!Lucky blog and download any or all of their free (!) vintage-inspired Valentine cards! My favorite is the cuckoo clock but they’re all awesome. Thank you, Hello!Lucky!

I stopped by Collage this morning and picked up some treasures, including some good Easter presents for Miss Pearl (I never seem to be following some cool blog schedule of sharing my Valentine’s stuff early enough to do anyone else any good, then Easter stuff when anyone else might also actually be thinking about it too… oh well). The markers, one Moleskine, and the sun print paper are all for her. The other Moleskines might find a home with me, I have an idea I’ve been wanting to try to customize a plain journal. Maria was so awesome and helped me find just what I was looking for – including markers that don’t dry out when the lid vanishes into playroom chaos. Who knew?!

I’ve been working on my PMQG name tag this week and was so happy to track down the exact Sharpie I needed there in that perfect turquoise color, so I can write west coast crafty on my white bias tape before I stitch it down. Here it is in progress, looking a little worse for wear after a tote-bag trip for matching purposes. I’m so excited to finish mine, and see everyone’s name tags at our February meeting! If you want to make one too, here are lots of inspiration photos, courtesy of Heather, and Petra’s original post with photos from her presentation at our January meeting.

Last, here’s some more info about the Collage party. It sounds so fun… hoping to go for sure!

If you go:
Collage’s Sellwood Grand Opening!
Saturday, February 18 from 10-6
Special discounts and 60+ raffles, all day!
7907 SE 13th Ave. in Sellwood’s Historic Antique Row, Portland
503-777-2189

Okay, I’m off to make a red wine chocolate cake. Have a wonderful V-day!

For my first SIASL project, I decided to make a set of Brett’s beautiful Folded Flower Bowls in the small and medium sizes. (Update: Brett has a video showing how to make these, too!) I loved the wholecloth versions in the book, but thought it would be really fun to try them with a simple quilt block instead of a plain fabric square. I’ve been saving the jelly roll that Monica Solario-Snow kindly gave me of her lovely, colorful Happy Mochi Yum Yum fabric collection for something special… and this turned out to be the perfect (little) project for them.

I stitched a few strips together and pressed and top-stitched them, then paired them with a solid color for the other side of the bowl. Using Brett’s clear, nicely illustrated instructions, I backed the two sides with interfacing, sewed and turned them, and transformed them from flat squares to smoothly shaped three-dimensional rounds with a few well-placed seams!

I used Decor Bond for my heavy-weight interfacing, which gives the bowls a nice body and definition, but I had a hard time keeping the fabric from showing ripples and crinkles once it had been turned and folded a few times. A tiny iron (I borrowed this one from Amy after misplacing the cord of mine!) and steaming the inside of the bowl worked really well for shaping and smoothing the fabrics. I definitely recommend this trick!

I really like the small size (which starts with a 6.5″ square). Here it is in patchwork and plain versions.

These are the two bowls I made to keep – cross-hatches in a small-scale Heath red and a bolder navy print by Lotta Jansdotter.

What about the other two bowls? Well, I’ll be giving them away, along with a copy of Brett’s book, at the February PMQG meeting! Heather, Petra, Nancy, Ale and I are going to be posting new sewing and quilting book reviews on our blogs every month, and then giving away copies of the books at the monthly meetings. I’m up first, so here is mine!

February’s meeting is going to be fantastic! We’re lucky to have Kathy Miller of Michael Miller Fabrics coming to speak to our guild (thanks to Violet Craft).

And our own Michelle Freedman will be doing an improvisational patchwork demo for our 10-minute tutorial (these 2 photos are from her super fun improv demo/game at our All Day Sew on Saturday).

Thank you to Potter Craft for the book, and to Monica for the beautiful fabric. I’m excited to share them! Along with the book and patchwork bowls, we have some very special prizes to give away… hope to see you there, Thursday, February 16 from 7-9 at PNCA!

So, I made Jaime this… well, not a potholder. She was my wonderful hostess in KC and happened to mention that she has tons of potholders already. I was thinking about what else to make her in that same realm, and totally loved Megan’s presentation at our October PMQG meeting on quilted fabric buckets.

So I made this small standing bucket/bag with little binding-tape handles, and filled it with the rest of the blue and green fabrics I pieced with (she said blue and greens were her favorites on the swap card). This small, deep bag was made with a 7″ x 12″ block, joined at the sides and finished with box corners. I lined it with one of the solid greens.

In return, I got this charming potholder from Nancy – her first piece with free-motion quilting! Wow! She stitched in a sun, moon and stars, it’s gorgeous.

I just love it and it’s such an honor to have her very first free-motion quilting project as a gift. Thank you, Nancy! The back is so cute too…

Meanwhile, here in Portland, we did a holiday swap within our guild. Everyone filled a small ziploc bag with pieces of their favorite fabrics any any requests, and we chose someone else’s to sew with. I drew Rachel, who asked for a potholders or a placemat. I have a pretty placemat I love that Adaiha made and sent me, which I use on my sewing table every day, so I thought I’d make Rachel something similar.

I let the fabric piece sizes dictate the size of the placemat – three joined together, with a thin patchwork strip, made a nice-sized back so that was my template. I cut the rest of Rachel’s fabrics into 2″ wide strips and pieced them all randomly, then joined them vertically and top-stitched each seam. There were a lot of spectacular larger swap gifts on the table, but Rachel said that she really liked my humble little placemat, so I was happy!

I had the great good fortune for Anne to draw my name and assorted orange, yellow, and woodgrain fabrics. I said on my tag that anything would be great, and she made me a darling potholder and dishmat set – so cheerful!

I’ve been using the dishmat since I got home from the meeting. Here it is in its natural habitat, with a bowl and pan – it fits perfectly next to the (usually overflowing) dish drainer, in front of the toaster oven, and next to the coffeemaker. It looks so happy in my 1950 yellow and orange kitchen, I just love it. Thank you, Anne!

I’m also doing my first ever online quilt block bee, Michelle‘s Design Camp [think outside the block], and it’s been super fun. I just finished month #3 (for Michelle, but she hasn’t seen it in person so I’ll wait to post a photo). The first month, October, was a block with red Xs for Dustin:

Then, November, Coastal Dreams, was for Krystina:

I’m August, so I have a long time to think about my block fabrics + ideas. I’m considering sending out yellow, brown, and blue fabrics like the ones I used in the Denyse Schmidt class last summer, and getting everyone to improvisationally piece them as they’d like so I can mix them in with the ones I made. Hmm.

One last quilting note: I just posted a new correction for the Market Tote (page 141) from Modern Log Cabin Quilting. The seam allowance is incorrect on the first page (says 3/8″, should be 1/4″) – lots more details here. I’m so sorry about the error, but you can make a beautiful, sturdy, slightly smaller bag with the 3/8″ seam allowance, like Mary‘s here on the right (approximately 14″ blocks instead of 16″).