Heather Ross News Updates

Heather Ross has announced a new collaboration with Spoonflower to reproduce some of her fabrics in different colors and they are on sale now!!! I looked at them and the colors seem way off to what she was showing on her website (above photo). I'll still probably get some. How about you?




In other HR news, it turns out, the new Far Far Away fabrics are NOT double gauze as I had previously reported when I showed the initial snippets. They are "a lovely linen cotton blend, a bit on the heavier side" which is fine with me, I'm going to use them as feature fabrics anyway, to highlight small things, so the majority of the quilt will be regular weight and no one will notice. I can't wait to make some Heather Ross wonky squares again!

You HAVE to click the photo above to see the fabrics larger!

I am sooooo in love with these fabrics, the photo above shows different pieces than I showed before. All I'm sayin' is do you SEE the owl and the pussycat??? Do you SEE those roses in the upper left??? OMG. How could any collection of fabrics be more perfect for a little girl?

Last Homes for Now

Okay, these are the last copies of the Bee Imaginative blocks for now! The one on the left below was made by Ashley from Film in the Fridge and the one on the right was made by me! Looks pretty good, but her photography is way better.

The tiny colony on the left below was made by Rita from Red Pepper Quilts, and the one on the right was made by me. Hmmm...I chopped off a few roof points, didn't I? And I really need to get some of that American Jane Peas and Carrots that Rita used in the window. All in all, not too shabby!


Oh, and I thought you might like to see what they look like all together on the design wall! Here they are.


That's all for now, I'm going to quilt on the giant quilt for my bed for a while. Have a good one!

More Flattery - Gnome Homes

More copies of the blocks from Bee Imaginative. Today's blocks are by one of my favorite bloggers in the whole blogosphere, Elizabeth at Oh Fransson. Love them! They are bigger houses than the others.

And here are my attempts at copying them with no directions! I actually think they turned out great! The colors are right.

Here's another Bee Imaginative block from my other favorite blogger in the world, Alissa from Handmade by Alissa. She reports that the gnome is bringing mushrooms back to the deer and bird.

And here's my copy below. I like how it looks like the gnome put a flower on top for a chimney!

More gnome homes tomorrow!

The Sincerest Form of Flattery

Ever since I saw the red and aqua gnome houses coming out of the Bee Imaginative bee, I've been dying to make some! I just decided, since this is my year of trying things that scare me, that I would just go ahead and try to make them with no patterns or measurements. I'm not imaginative enough to think up my own designs right off the bat, so I just copied the ones the bee members were producing as best I could.

Here's the first one I made. The one on the left below was made by John at QuiltDad and the one on the right was made by me. Hmmm...it appears that not all whites read as white! Oh well, let's try another block.


The block on the left this time is by Jacquie of Tallgrassprairie Studio and the block on the right is by me. Not bad! But my overhang leaves a little to be desired. This block also taught me that to make a red and aqua quilt you have to use the exact right fabrics. They have to be bright saturated reds and super bright aquas. If you vary from those, it just doesn't have the right look. See how hers is very crisp and mine is little less crisp?

I'll post a few more tomorrow, tune in then!

Food for Thought

"The morning kicked off with Daniel Kahneman, Nobelist in behavioural economics, who argued that we need to give up the word "happiness". It's too vague to be useful, he said, and fails to make a fundamental distinction between being happy in your life and being happy with your life. The experiencing self - the you that lives in the moment - is a very different entity than your remembering self - the storyteller who lives to make memories. We are living under the "tyranny of the remembering self", Kahneman said. "We don't choose experiences, we choose memories." I guiltily put down my note-taking pen and tried to experience the moment."

I totally do that! I'm usually so busy trying to capture the moment on film or video that the capturing of it becomes more important than actually experiencing it. Do you do that too? I think that's part of why I hand piece, I'm trying to slow down and enjoy the moment.

There is an amazing group of intellectuals called TED which stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. These really smart and thoughtful people present cutting edge ideas and experiments from all areas of science, giving us regular people a lot of food for thought! The quote above is from the TED conference and the video is the author of Eat Pray Love speaking on creativity.

I double dog dare you to click on this link to see the list of TED Talks and NOT find something that interests you! Leave a comment here telling me which video sounded the most interesting to you.

Thoughts?

Insight into Heather Ross' Creative Process

Featuring the Owl and the Pussycat now coming out in her new line!

She posted it last year but I just found it. Read the whole post and see her original sketches here.

This Thing is Enormous! Questions I'm Pondering

Why, one asks oneself rhetorically, would an all-by-hand quilter keep making such freaking huge quilts??? It just doesn't make good sense.


This is the half and half quilt I am making for my and my husband's bed that I started back in November. It was on hold waiting for backing while I made the Japanese wonky squares quilt. Here is my 25 year old daughter for scale. It's 10 feet by 11 feet! What the heck was I thinking? I must have just gotten carried away.


I planned to use a king size sheet for the backing (yeah, I know you're not supposed to use sheets but I like 'em). The one I had was too small so I measured the quilt carefully and bought a different king size sheet set that the measurements said would fit. Well, if you'll look carefully at the photo above, you'll see the corner of the sheet taped to the floor. What do you notice?

I just decided to take a row of blocks off the bottom and have it be 9 blocks by 9 blocks. I felt like the quilt was telling me that if it was 8 inches bigger than a king sized sheet (that gets tucked in!) then it just plain did not NEED to be that big. King sized beds are kind of square anyway. Another question: If one king size sheet did not fit my quilt, why did I think a new one would???

A final question: who wants nine 12-inch blocks? As an extra bonus, they are already sashed together! If you'd like to see which ones they are, click on the above photos to enlarge, they are the bottom row across. I will send them to the person with the best use for them in the comments by tomorrow lunch. Ok, Go!