July Meeting

Holy Smokes!  Our LA Modern Quilt Guild Meetings are always soooo dang GOOD!  I really hope those of you hosting your own MQG meetings  have as much fun, inspiration, & support flowing as we do!

To kick things off Latifah and Lori passed around a few pieces of LA MQG merch they already picked up from our new Cafe Press Store!  Fabulous!  I am still trying to make up my mind about what I want to get!

This was our last meeting we will be having in Jenny’s cozy & welcoming Home Ec. space. :(  BUT we are not loosing Jenny, that is the important thing!  She will be closing her brick and mortar store but still keeping her online presence.  More about her decision, here.

In honor of her being the hostess with the mostest since The Guild’s inception, we presented her with a gift certificate to a local spa & 30 or so blankets made by Guild Members to donate to the Pasadena Humane society where she volunteers!  Oh, and we also celebrated with champagne and sparkling cider, because after all we are the modern quilt guild! ;)

She was pretty darn excited about it!

And LOOK!  The second of our charity quilt tops is finished, thanks to Leslie.

And the back is equally as fabulous, I LOVE it!

Lori, our super fab Secretary, gave a great talk/rundown on her experience learning how to use a long arm quilting machine at The Sewing Arts Center! I have to say after listening to her talk in detail about the process, how the machine works, and how simple it is to mount your quilt I am DIEING to try! But as I told Mr. K… there really isn’t any place to do it locally… that I know of… and I am intentionally not going to make an effort to seek it out. Dangerous I tell you, DANGEROUS!

Aaaaand while in Austin visiting her family a couple weeks ago, Leslie got together with the wonderful Laurie Wisburn over coffee and she sent along some journals and fat quarter stacks of her yet to be released Urban Circus line to giveaway! How great is that!? Here are the randomly chosen winners (minus one who did not want to have her picture shared).

THANK YOU LAURIE for your thoughtfulness and generosity! The winners were SO EXCITED!

And what would a meeting be without a fabulous show and tell??

Leslie swiped a few quilt tops from her mom’s house when she visited Austin a couple weeks ago that her Great Grandmother made!  How cool, right??

I’m even in here this time around, with some Wonderland goodness!  But you’ll have to hunt for me…

ummm, could we be any cooler?

Hot off the press thanks to our fabulous in house graphic artist, we now have our OWN official LA MQG logo– complete with a Cafe Press Store filled with more shirts, sweatshirts, and odds and ends than you can shake a stick at!  Check it out, and support us!

for Leila!

In the same week that I made Peyton’s bag I also made this one for Ms. Leila Ann, another sweet little girl who just turned one!

This time I cut into my fat quarter stack of Joel Dewberry’s Modern meadow, and I went a bit more pink than I usually do becuase I knew that Ms. L’s mamma would like it best.  I also interfaced the outside just as the last bag, and I STILL love how it helps with the linen wrinkles!

And the inside… still no label… but I do like the pink magnetic clasp!

Aaaaaaand I just so happened to have a couple sweet pics of my kids with Leila when they were over last just after they all woke up from their naps drinking their milk in bed.  Leila didn’t quiet know what to think of her new bed buddies!

for Peyton!

I haven’t made a bag in a suuuuuper long time, and STILL my kids don’t have one.  I really DO need to get on that!  But in the mean time a couple of my friend’s little girls turned one in May, so I just HAD to make a couple.  It seems to be a pattern of mine… at least for baby girls. (see Carly’s and Haislea’s)

Anyway, this was for Ms. Peyton!  Her momma reeeeally LOVED the Alexander Henry (“lola”)  print that I used in the drag along blakie I made for Corinn’s baby shower.  So getting started was easy, no analysis paralysis this time!

I used the same measurements I posted for Haislea’s bag a couple years ago, it really does seem to be the perfect size.  Maybe I should just name this The Haislea Bag!  Whatdaya thing? Also, for the first time on a tote bag, I used pellon interfacing on the entire outer part of the bag just like I did with the buttercup bags since I LOVED the way they turned out!  This will definitely be what I do from now on if I am using linen!  I love linen, but OH HOW I HATE how quickly is wrinkles!

And here is the inside complete with a sweet white magnetic clasp I found someplace.  I really do need to start labeling my stuff better.  Any suggestions for labels out there!?

June Meeting

Our June meeting was ACTION packed, and since I know most of you are here to catch a glimpse of all the mini quilt goodness from our swap, lets kick it off with that!

Jake Finch, managing editor of Quilter’s Home, the one that wrote the article on the Modern Quilting movement in this month’s issue, and the one that featured Alissa’s quilt on the cover… YEA, THAT one!  She came to our meeting!  How exciting, right!?

And if that were not enough of a treat, Kaari Meng from the WONDERFUL French General came to talk to us about her passion for French textiles, her line of fabric with MODA!, how her shop came to be, aaaaaand her adventures & travels in the south of France!

It was fascinating to learn about her journey into creating fabric, how the process works, and more about MODA’s philosophy.  Thank you Kaari for joining us, it was a treat!

AND LOOK!  The first of the two quilt tops for our charity/raffle quilt! Thank you Nicole for so skillfully putting this together for us!

There were a few newbies as always, I hope they all come back!

And last but certainly not the least exciting, SHOW AND TELL!

… and just a few more actions shots for good measure!

categories LA MQG, feature | 1 comment, YEA, be #2!

mini quilt swap!!

Last night was our June LA MQG meeting and we had a mini quilt swap.  I have been itching to do a modern dresden, and this was just the excuse to get it out of my system with minimal commitment and time!  Those fab Heather Ross Gnomes were a lucky acquisition from Chris at one of our weekend sews!

I thought it fitting to pass on the fabric goodness to another MQG member, and THE PERFECT person got it!  Terri (and Chris) were my inspiration in the first place!  I fell in love with Terri’s mini quilt at the first meeting that I attended, and Chris’s @ that same meeting made me look at the traditional dresden in a whole different way!

Oh, and thank you Nicole for loaning me your dresden ruler!  It was THE BEST, I have GOT to get one now!

Alissa’s got a great mini quilt blog post and book review over on her blog today too, check it out!

Tomorrow I’ll post all the June meeting pictures including all the other mini quilts that were swapped!!

Hey, remember that trim….

Remember that trim that I used on my last baby shower gift? I got a lot of oooohs & ahhhhs over it and today good ‘ol Strawberry Patches has it for sale on their website in white & natural.  So go and snatch some, but just leave a few yards for me please, I can’t wait to get my hands on some more!

Just thought you would like to know!

New design wall!

Around here laying out anything on the floor is no longer an option with little ‘a’ running around, so I finally bit the bullet and put a couple of nails in my wall to hang some batting as a removable design wall!  This is until I cash in on next years planned Mother’s Day gift and a get a real one like Ashley’s!   Until then, Ms. E and I are going to get some good miles out of this solution.

Please excuse her end-of-the-day-wild-hair and flash photography… but I’m usein’ what I’ve got!

LA MQG charity/raffle quilt blocks

Remember when Cate and Rebecca came to talk to us about the Kivu Sewing workshop in the Eastern Congo at our April meeting?  And remember I mentioned that we were in the process of making blocks to make a quilt to support them and get out non profit status?

well, here are mine…

We were just given the polka dot fabric and told to do a log cabin block, or improv piecing and to keep the green dot block in cool colors, and the orange-red dots in warm colors.

There will be TWO quilt auctioned off!  And you can bet your lunch money that I will let ya know when it all goes down and how you can get in on the action!

May meeting…. eeek, sorry for the delay!

umm, I went from diligently posting pics and highlight of our LA MQG meetings the day after to… ugh, hummm, a delay of almost three week!  Sorry about that, I’ll blame it on the usual I have two kids, sickness, and the general “I’ve got other stuff going on!” K?

If that weren’t bad enough I feel like I didn’t take enough pictures, I was in La La Land!  I’ll stay more focused next time for ya though!

on to the fun stuff…

Latifah shared the much talked about Dale Fleming 6 minute Circle Technique that she has made famous at out meetings and “sews!”  We have all admired her circles she has been using in her projects lately and she was so kind to share the magic with us all first hand!

…and look what can be done with our new knowledge– completely pieced!

And of course there were some newbies that I hope we didn’t scare off…

… and our usual thrilling, inspirational, and drool worthy show and tell!

The start of something great…

In celebration of keeping two children alive, well, fed, and clothed for 3 years!– and for mother’s day, I present to you the start of something great!

Herbs!

Chamomile, parsley, apple mint, chives, stevia, thyme, & basil, to be exact!  There are also some peony seeds in the naked looking one too.  Rosemary Lorraine (a trailing rosemary) is above along with a butterfly wild flower mix in the other one that is already starting to sprout!

This is just the beginning!! This weekend Mr. K will also be building me some mega boxes on our back patio for a complete container vegetable garden!  I can hardly contain myself!  The thoughts of soil, compost, and worm castings have been keeping me up at night!

Technically these are not sitting on our balcony edge, they are hanging, but they are also covertly anchored so they won’t sway too much in the wind!  Our HOA is suuuuuper strict about ANYTHING sitting on the edge.  I am hoping we found enough of a loophole and will not be getting a nasty letter come next week!  I am really enjoying seeing these from my dining room table, and sewing table, PLUS I don’t have to worry about Mr. A eating dirt when I am not looking… yet.

Just in case…

Just in case a few of you may still think I am a little nuts with this “Modern quilting thing,” let me just state for the record there are plenty of other nutty people out there too!  Today Sew, Mama, Sew has a great summary of our crack pot fun and how it all started, check it out! There are 59 chapters now, and it has gone international!  Wowzers!

Triple B Bee March blocks

Here are Latifah’s March blocks for our Bricolage & Butter bee!

She requested 14.5” pieced blocks any way we fancied, BUT no Log Cabin Blocks!

She was inspired by the blacktop and colors at a playground/park (the dark gray is Kona Charcoal).  Latifah is the queen of solids, if it isn’t obvious enough!  I can’t wait to see how all of our different blocks come together for this one!

While piecing the first improve block I almost went nuts, so there was NO way I was going to do it again. A little more planning the second time around with crayons & graph paper restored my sanity and view of the world as it should be– measured and precise.

for corinn

SO yesterday I had a surprise baby shower to attend for a friend of mine, and true to my nature I didn’t start on the gift until just hours before!  WHY do I do such foolish things, you may ask?!  Well, in my defense I have been working on all kinds of other things for Ms. E and her birthday TOMORROW, AND I really wasn’t inspired until the last minute.  Does anybody else operate like this?  I have such a difficult time sometimes all-the-time making decisions about how to put things together until I am paralyzed!  So if I wait until the last minute it FORCES me to make decisions, and in this case, also use a bit of horded trim that I had been “saving”… for what… I. have. no. idea… this was most certainly a worthy occasion.

Lets reminisce about the positive side of my “method” before we address the glaringly obvious negatives, shall we?  Yes, lets!  It puts me on a deadline so I work unusually fast and more efficiently, I finish what I started in the same day, and 100% of the time I LOVE what I create.  I haven’t made any bad last minute decisions, YET… I think it forces me to go with my gut and not enter into analysis-paralysis, as Lori would put it.  And, ummm, the negatives are… that it leaves NO room for error, mistakes, machine hiccups, temper tantrums, feeding your kids, keeping the house straight, feeding your kids, effectively parenting, or feeding your kids. :)  Crackers?  We’ll that’s all I’ve got right now.  Take it or leave it.  Awful. I know.  Oh, before your get undies in a knot, most of it was done during their long afternoon nap, but it never fails that there is about an hour and a half of overflow.  And my kids do not like when Nina has my attention and not them.  Just eat your crackers!

The final dimensions are 30×30, which is a bit over sized for a drag-along blankie, but I find that it is more useful for a longer period of baby-hood.  The brown is minky with textured dots, the great dusty lavender is a corduroy I found at Joann’s a LONG time ago, the dots are Kei Dots of course from Sewdeerlyloved, and the trim was (as I said before) a horded find ages ago from Stawberry Patches!  Oh, and the back is a premium creamy minky I got from SP, too.  I just LOVE the trim, and also how the Hope Valley Thistle Leaf (from fabricworm) coordinates with it all!

P.S. Does anybody know what that Alexander Henry floral print is called??  I had a request to make something else out of it, but I don’t know where to begin to track down more.   Thanks!

Triple B Bee February blocks

… well we had more like two sets of blocks to do in March, so I am not really THAT behind in posting.

This week I handed these lovelies over to the amazing Jenny, I hope she likes my fabric additions, and I can’t wait to see all of them together!  We were instructed to do the Blind Paper Bag piecing just like January,  it was super fun to do again!  I still really want to do one of my own someday!

This one is my favorite b/c of the converging different shades of linen, I always try to keep my linen colors consistent with my projects, since it is a natural fiber it tends to vary a lot.  But after doing this, I actually really like them all mixed up!

oh, aaaaaaand…

… here are some pics from our weekend sew a couple weeks ago if you missed them on flickr.  Just like last time it was a blast!  I worked on some gifts for Mr. A’s birthday that was last week, I’ll post pics of all those adventures soon, too.

*I think if the LA MQG had a poster, this would be on it!  Thanks Alison!

That is Lori working on the fabulous Stacking the Odds quilt that I will probably be doing next for Mr. A!  And you will NOT believe it, she brought me all her templates to have for my very own last night.  So now I REEEEALLY don’t have any excuse not to get started!  Thank you SOOOO much Lori!

A Whoooole New generation, UPDATE.

There were more than a few of you that voiced your disappointment that the previously posted video on ms. e’s hands free skills only showed a minute and a half instead of her full six minute schpeal. Well, have no fear, YouTube heard your cry.  Visit the post again to get a good dose of the world according to ms. e.

April meeting

Our meetings never disappoint and of course last night was no different!  Cate (nope, that’s not Alissa… but her twin sister) & Rebecca came to talk to us about Kivu Sewing Workshop, a new-er organization created to provide some of the Eastern Congo’s victims of sexual-based violence with the opportunity to rebuild their lives.

“In an eight-month program, students, all victims of the Congo’s years of devastating conflict, learn to sew, knit and embroider and eventually acquire the skills and capacity to work on their own as seamstresses who can provide for themselves and their families.” more…

I’d say that is a pretty darn good fit for our LA MQG to support, wouldn’t you?  We are currently working on blocks for two quilts that will be auctioned off later this year to raise money to acquire our official non profit status and to begin making donations to Kivu!  Please visit the Kivu Sewing Workshop site to find out how you can help women and their families in the Congo through sewing, too!

We also brought along our first quilts to share in their not-so-modern glory!  We all got a kick out of the stories and explanations that accompanied each of our beginnings.  It was amazing to see the variety of difficulty that each of us attempted right from the start, and how far we have come in developing our personal modern style.

Not everything shared were firsts, though, as always my mouth and mind were salivating with inspiration!

Just look at this FANTASTIC take on a giant log cabin by Latifah!

WOW!

And oh my gosh!!  LOOK at this original design by liz!  Those are pieced, people, NOT appliqued.

And guess what internet?  YOU are in luck!  Liz is currently working on a pattern to share with the rest of us!  So stay tuned to her blog!  I for one, am SUPER excited!

A whooooooole new generation…

… my girl doesn’t like to pretend talk on phones or cell phones anymore.  She prefers to be hands free!  If I let her get her fingers on my jawbone she would be all over that too, trust me.  At least I am being a good example, right!?  Don’t answer that!

Here is a video of her making some very important calls over lunch (It’s long, you don’t need to watch the entire thing to get the point).  There is nobody on the other end of that pretend cell phone, and this is just a sliver of how her mouth runs all day.  I tell you it never stops!  I am not complaining– just telling it like it is.

What I can learn from this… apparently I call my mother too much while on the road hands free (hence her permanent connection with the hands free beep on the iphone with “Call first last Mobile”), I guess I help my sister push buttons a lot, and evidently i clear my throat more than i should.  And I think maaaaaybe I talk on the phone too much at lunch.  But come on moms!  They are sitting.  Contained. And more quiet than any other time.  Perhaps I have taken advantage of this one too many times.  Thanks Ms. E.  Duly noted.

The holy grail…

… of cupcake wrappers!

AND THEY’RE ALL MINE!

We are celebrating Mr. A’s birthday next weekend, which of course is all the excuse I need to try out some new cupcake recipes THIS weekend. I am NOT going to have a repeat of Ms. E’s Birthday!  While the actual cupcakes were to. die. for. I was a bit bummed with the presentation.  There I was thinking that BROWN cupcake wrappers were a NORMAL thing to find.  I mean come on, BROWN was the rage! Man was I WRONG!  Not this time, I am a week ahead of the game.  Amazing! I found these and a couple other goodies I’ll show later over at Bake It Pretty.  Let just say… there may or may not be candy buttons involved!  And owls. Lots of owls!