Pot holder swappin'

That's some of what we did at Monday's LA Modern Quilt Guild meeting. Here's the two that I made for the swap:

And check out the one that I got:

Two sided and so cute! You all know that I love me some Lush!!

So much fun to put together really quick projects and then all swap.

We also had another show & tell of our quilts. Something everyone loves and that we'll keep doing. Here I am very seriously talking about my latest quilt.

(Photo by Latifah Saafir)

We all enjoy these meeting so much. So inspiring and fun to be surrounded by people who are equally as excited about all things quilts as I am! And everyone is so nice and warm. I'm so happy we started the guild! Really, you should start one in your town too! A sister chapter perhaps??

Scrap winners!

Wow! 872 comments!  Thanks so much for all of your kind words.  Since so many of you commented I decided to pick two winners... here goes....random number generator says:

SparklePetal Says: What a nice idea for a giveaway! I’d choose turquoise, lime and chocolate – I’ve got my eye on that nice piece of Katy Jump Rope in your photo!!

and

Dorothee Says: For this purpose it’d have to blues and greens because I love them and they have been sorely neglected when fabric buying.

Congrats to both of you!! I'll be digging through my scraps and putting together bundles for you today!

Scraps!

Today is Sew, Mama, Sew!'s Giveaway Day so I thought I'd take part!

These are some of my scraps. Some are big and some are small. Drop me a comment with your two or three favorite colors (I would advise you stay clear of purple as I have no purple scraps!) and if you're the winner I'll put together a nice big bundle of scraps in those colors!

I'll pick a winner on Monday morning. Good luck!

Rectangles & Gray.

Wish I had a more exciting name for this quilt (edit: I've named it April Retangles!) because I'm so happy with how it came out.

I improv. pieced wonky rectangular blocks like I did with the Lantern Bloom quilt, using the gray to unify all the blocks. It's a lap quilt, measuring 48" x 59".

I love this quilt. I really really do.

I used some gray Kei dots on the very simple back.

And the binding is a stripe from Red Letter Day. I think it works really well.

Thanksgiving

My mother is in town for Thanksgiving and with her she brought me something really special.

A quilt top from my family.  Though my mother had it, it is from my father's side of the family.  My great aunt didn't know who had made it (she though her grandmother or great aunt), so it's from many generations ago. Apparently there are more and I'm going to be getting them over time.  Needless to say, with the role quilting plays in my life, this is incredibly meaningful for me.

See those half blocks along one edge of it?  Anyone know exactly what those are for?  My mother was saying she thinks it had to do with how the quilt would be arranged with pillows on a bed.

It's got some really great fabrics in it.

And it needs a little bit of repair.

I think that repairing and then finishing this quilt is a project I'm going to tackle. If anyone has done anything like this before, please let me know any tips or tricks you have.  I've never quilted anything by hand before, but I think this is the project that will make me do it.  It's so wonderful to think that I'll sit and handstitch this project just like my family did before me.

Hope that you all have wonderful Thanksgivings!!  I'm so thankful for all of you and all this blog has brought me so thank you!!

Dear Chocolate Brown,

I'm leaving you for gray.  I'm sorry.  I hope it doesn't hurt your feelings too much.  I'll be back to visit a lot I'm sure.  But for now, I need to be with gray.  I hope you understand.  Look at my latest quilt top.

Clearly we're meant to be together.

Love,

Alissa

Lantern Bloom quilt is finished!

Here it is in all its super colorful glory.  I should note that the dark color is a chocolate brown, not black as it looks in the photos.

This quilt is a commission and the Lantern Bloom fabric was requested.   This flickr photo, along with the colors in the fabrics inspired the quilt.

It's such a uniquely pretty fabric collection that I didn't think it could be mixed with other lines so I turned to solids. Purple & bright yellow aren't my usual comfort zone, but I'm glad the fabric pushed me to stretch.   I think it's "me" in it's improv. wonkiness yet it doesn't look like all of my other quilts.  No white!

Here it is on a queen sized bed - so you can see how big it is!

I quilted it by stitching right next to the ditch. You can see the quilting on the back and I like how the rectangles overlap all the piecing on the back.

I found it a lot harder to stitch in the ditch than to stipple a quilt this big. Straight lines are "easier" than free motion, but when you stipple you can organize how you move through your quilt in a way that's much more manageable for me.  But I did it! I'm definitely stippling my next quilt. It's been too long!

Improv. class.

I always laugh at the idea of teaching an improv. class. Here in LA where so many people are actors, that usually means some semi funny off the cuff sketch comedy. But not for me! For me it's all about quilting! Taught the class at The Urban Craft Center these past two Sundays and it was so much fun. Forgive the lousy Iphone photos.

Lauren and Jane busy working away at blocks...

And check out their great results!

Jane's:

and Lauren's:

And J made a super cute apron using one of her blocks!

I swear I've been actually getting some sewing done between the teaching/guild meetings/Block Party-ing and so on. But not that much! Hope to have some real time this week.

Happy Monday to you all!

Quilt socializing.

Another successful meeting of the L.A. Modern Quilt Guild earlier this week!  We have so much fun. We had an amazing quilt show & tell.

Wendy & her mother made this quilt together, and started it at the Denyse Schmidt improv. piecing workshop that they took together.  Isn't it beautiful? There are a couple of other members of the guild who have also taken this workshop and I'm green with envy!

There were so many other beautiful quilts.  Click on over to the flickr group to see them all.

And there was some frenzied fabric swapping!

I tell you, there's nothing like getting together with 30 or so other people who understand the obsession!  We are just getting started but I know that big things are in store for the guild.  Workshops, speakers, more swaps, field trips... we're gonna do it all! So if you're local and haven't joined us yet, please do!  And if you're not local, we hope you'll visit us if you're in the LA area. Or start a modern guild of your own! We'd love to be a united nation organization some day. Why not think big, right?

Block Party Quilt Along tutorial

Just a quick note to say that the first tutorial is up over at Block Party. A fun and simple Friendship Star block!

Check it out!

Sewing Machine Mystery

Some very kind relatives gave me a sewing machine this weekend.  An old Kenmore.

It's heavy as all get out and clearly all metal so I suspect that it's a workhorse.  But I'm stumped.  It's got a big 4 on the front (as you can see) so I thought that might be the model. But nope.

It's in the 158 series, but somehow seems be the Kenmore missing link!  Try as I might, I can't find ANYTHING online about this specific model.  Lots about 158 10... and 158 12... but nothing about 158 11...!  Anyone know anything about this specific model?  Any help would be appreciated.

I've figured out how to thread it and wind and out in the bobbin with no problems but I'd love to find an online manual for it.  Also, it sews really slowly.  Not sure why.  I think a visit to a sewing machine doctor would fix it right up though!

Bees on the brain

With the Block Party quilt along about to get started and all of the new bees popping up over in the flickr group, I've had bees on the brain! I made two more blocks for 12 Squared:

The request was any sort of block you want. Was tough to decide but there's a lot more fabric so I might make a couple more!

And all of the blocks that I've gotten back from Sew Connected 2! I had asked for no triangles and otherwise, no limits! I'm loving the blocks I've been getting back. I'm thinking white sashing (am I ever thinking anything else really??) but we'll see once I've gotten all the blocks

Meanwhile slow and steady wins the race (I hope) with quilting the Lantern Bloom quilt. Dang stitching in the ditch (or right next to the ditch as I've found works a lot better for me) takes a long time! But I'm getting there! Just a glimpse...

A happy weekend to you all!

Block Party Quilt Along Giveaway!

Hello everyone!

Wanna win that fabric??  Over at Block Party we're getting started with our quilt along by having a giveaway.   Click on over to learn about how the quilt along will work and to enter the giveaway.

Weekend away

I'm off to San Francisco for the weekend! Anywhere other than Urban Burp, Satin Moon and Britex Fabrics that I should hit up?? Hope you all have great weekends!

Daunting.

So much quilt to baste!

Obsessed?

You know you're obsessed with fabric when you have a dream that your one yard of gray Kei Dots was exposed to the H1N1 virus and you're being required to mail it to the CDC.  Yes.  I actually had that dream. It was more of a nightmare, really!  I'm sure that you readers can understand. But I guess that the gray dots were on the brain because I've started a new quilt with them.  First I pulled all of the basics that I currently can't get enough of:

I love a rainbow!  Notice the 100% lack of purple.  That's not because I chose to leave it out.  That's because I have zero.  Absolutely none.  And you know what, I'm not sure that I mind so much. Anyhow, some editing was in order so I came up with this.

And a bad photo of the very very beginnings of the next quilt:

I'm thinking that including gray solid is in order. We'll see what it becomes...

You are all so nice.

Thank you all so much for all of your kind comments about the book!  The response makes me so happy. It just reinforces all of the ideas behind the book concept.  It's going to keep me super busy over the next few months so you'll have to forgive me if the blog mellows as a result.   I'm going to try to keep at it though! Meanwhile, I've finished the Lantern Bloom quilt top:

Putting a quilt together this way has made me want to do it all over again with my comfort zone colors.  I might just have to do that!

Hope that you all have great weekends that involve lots of sewing!

Exciting news!

Some very happy news out of my world today! I'm thrilled to announce that I will be writing a book with Kristen, my co-host of Block Party and we are so excited.

C & T Publishing will publish it and it’s going to be about YOU!  Ok, well, maybe not you specifically, but about all of us: the online modern quilting community.

It’s not going to be your usual book of quilt patterns and projects, but instead a “how to” book that will also be about all of the virtual quilting bees and the amazing sense of community that we have found online.   Quilting bees have always given women a chance to get together and quilt, but now in the age of the Internet we have virtual quilting bees that have revitalized quilting and community among modern quilters.

I’m so excited that every member of Block Party has agreed to be a contributor to the book.  There are so many talented women involved and I’m so honored to include myself among them.

And the most exciting part is that we’re going to be including all of YOU in the book too!  We are going to be switching our Block Party blog over to a quarterly quilt along and we hope that lots of you will participate.  We are including photos of some of the blocks you all make during the quilt alongs in the book, so please do join in.  Your block might end up in the book!!

There will be more details coming along very soon so please keep an eye both here and over on the Block Party blog.

And lastly, thank you!  All of you are so kind and generous and have made me feel like I’m a part of something exciting.  We are so happy to have that wonderful community and energy transfer over into a book that represents all of us and the fun modern quilts that we have been creating.

Fall?

So fall was here. And then it got replaced by summer again. LA weather is weird. Anyhow - to stay in the fall spirit I quickly whipped up this pillow sleeve.

The deer get all the props in Lush, but you can't deny the trees!   That said, I couldn't leave the deer out entirely...

I'm still working away at the Lantern Bloom quilt. Only a few more blocks and then it's time to move onto the back. It was fun to make and finish a small project since it's been two bed sized quilts in a row. Ok - I'm back at it!

A bit of bee catch up

Some blocks for two of the bees I'm in... Some wonky stars for 12 Squared.

and some houses for Sew Connected 2!  You've seen the dog before, it's just taken me forever to get to making the second little house.  Let's pretend that the wind blew the roof to one side a bit.

Happy weekend!