What Are Quilters Blogging About Today?

Welcome to the world, Declan! (FYI, your name is pronounced DECK-lan, which I didn't know until your grandma, my friend Lynn, told me about you!) 

I made you one of my "Everything in the World" quilts, though sadly some of this stuff is no longer in this world (like Freddy Mercury, RBG and dinosaurs), and some stuff  has never been in the world, depending how you define reality (Mighty Mouse, unicorns, the Golden Snitch.) 

(Below, a brand-new human on a recently finished quilt. Eyes are covered to protect anonymity.) 

Is romance in the air? For whatever reason, in my world, babies are a-poppin! Fortunately, I am prepared! Here's my neonatal kit: An oversized shoebox full of maybe 200 4" squares, some of them sewn into 9-patch blocks.

Unpacked, below, you'll find stacks of squares, many tourniqueted with torn white fabric strips, and the category name scribbled in pencil on torn-paper labels, in handwriting so terrible (mine) that I can barely read them. 

In the photo above, the categories, starting on the top ...

Let's give scrap baskets a double meaning! Made from scraps, especially thread scraps, this basket is also a good place to throw them! It's about 4.5" high and 3.5" across. I used silk, so it's extra fancy, but you can use any fabric and threads you like. 

Contents include:

-- An old freemotion quilting practice sandwich, 

--  Long scrap fabric strips, as background,

-- Ravelled threads on top. Most are threads ...

BEFORE: In my last blog post, I showed this potential valentine, which my friend Jane pointed out, looks more like the Valentine's Day Massacre. 

I certainly couldn't give this to anyone I don't wish to maim. But then it occurred to me that my daughter's cat, Cleocatra, routinely combines love with blood. She doesn't allow claw-clipping, so when she plays with us, scratches can ensue. She's also an unrepentant lizard-tormentor and sewing-machine occupier.

AFTER: So I turned my violent background into this! The perfect Valentine for my daughter!

This technique has been around a ...

 I was minding my own business, making a whole lot of improv triangle kaleidoscopes, like this.

I'm only using solids for this quilt. The smallest scraps were filling my "toss" bin.

But then the Create Whimsy newsletter arrived in my email. Lynn Woll, its curator extraordinare, had an article titled "Scrap Happy Confetti Quilts," with  Valentine's Day projects. Oooooo! It looked like so much fun...and I knew I had loads of fresh scraps. 

I plucked the solids from my "discard" bin and sent them into plastic bags, organized by color. 

Then I cut out a 4" square ...

I've been playing with wrapping quilt fabric around batting scraps, and weaving them into baskets. Just in time for the holidays, I made a couple of black holes this way, including one for this guy:

I was inspired by a talk at Cal Tech last month by Kip Thorne, who won a Nobel Prize in 2017 for creating LIGO, the project that detected gravitational waves emanating from colliding black holes. (My DH works on this project.) 

Instead of resting on his laurels, Kip has been having a blast producing black hole art, including movies (Interstellar, and soon, a sequel ...

Last year on May, I organised a month-long workshop on scrap management and scrappy quilt projects. The workshop included two different scrap patterns to make:

1. Scrappy Jacob’s Ladder quilt
2. Harvest Moon (a tutorial by Megan Collins)

I chose to make the scrappy Jacob’s Ladder quilt, as it was on my bucket list for millions of years. I really love the work Blue Elephant Stitches is doing, and back in the day of the blogging season a Value Quiltalong was organised and this quilt was her project. I will write more details on that part later on when the ...

Fresh from the photographer! My newest quilt - it's about 70" high. I should have blocked it, look at that top edge, curved like an archery bow, oy!

This was made in the early 2000's, when my kids, my fabric stash, and I were so young! Also, I was obsessed with Marilyn Doheney's wedge rulers. Despite the frenetic color, and, lordy, the gold lame in the center (what was I thinking?)....

...I still sort of love it. Flamingos and zebras and tigers, oh my! 

 Day 21: Magic Door

Help!

I'm going nuts making masks! 

If you are one of the thousands of quilters giving time and fabric to make lifesaving masks, thank you. For me, making masks is not only a good deed, but a powerful way to reduce anxiety in a tragic  time.