Crystal

This week marked my husband’s and my fifteenth anniversary!

Fifteen mostly wonderful years and I can honestly say that I am more in love with him now than when I married him.

According to various sources, the present for fifteen years should be crystal….

Our lovely daughter, Ana, obliged tradition…..

Quilting

Today was a “Sewing Saturday” for my quilt group.  Ana, my friend Michelle and I all attended.  I will say though, I got a little harassed by a couple members of the group for spending too much time on glass versus quilting.  I just want to snipe back in here that it is ALL ART!  Quilting will always be my truest love when it comes to art forms, but I am having fun with the glass as well right now…..

Rest assured, I left the sewing session today with a variety of ideas in my head, and several things that I want to start on….  I must, however, catch up on what I have going already and empty the dang “overflow” box that was supposed to get emptied a YEAR ago, but seems to have become permanent…..

I love spending time with the quilting group.  It is an open sew – no set program – and everyone does their own thing.  The best part is the conversations.  It is a group chat, therapy session, venting exercise, information session, and everything else in between! 

I especially love that my 25-year-old daughter – Ana – also loves to quilt and comes with me to most weekend events for the group.  Poor thing though…. Being the youngest there most of the time, we press her into service.  Today, we gave her the kitty and sent her to fetch pizza for dinner.  In my defense though - I paid for her share!

Anna’s Quilt

In my last blog post, I talked about and showed a picture of a quilt done for my friend’s daughter.  It has now been given to her.  Anna, her mother – my friend Cathy – several other friends of ours and I were at a session of one of our monthly groups the day after I wrote that post.  I enlisted the help of the group presenter (using the Show and Tell portion), and had her show the quilt and then surprised Anna with it!  I really hope she liked it….

Twin City Quilting 2012 Block of the Month

2012 was the second time that I have done TCQ’s block of the month program.  I actually declined to do it this year since I have so many things going on.  As of the date of this post, the page for the 2012 BOM is still up on their website; click here to have a look see at the way it was supposed to be done. 

There were three color ways.  If I recall correctly, I signed up for the brown.  I declined to buy her finishing kit (including the stripe that one was supposed to use for the quilt), and ventured on my own for several design “opportunities.”

I finished piecing the top of the quilt a week or so ago, and brought it with to the sewing Saturday event.  It has been too cold and there is too much snow around yet to hang quilts on my fence for picture taking.  I figured that the floor – and lighting – at the church where we have the events would be a far better choice for immortalizing.

Here is my Block of the Month quilt top:

And, true to form, here is the second quilt (smaller) made from left over bits and pieces….

The center block is end pieces from some strip assembly put together, some mis-sized flying geese were combined with other made from leftovers, and even the little scraps were pressed into service in some 25-patch blocks.

I have also got a couple smaller pieces in progress from the very last of the scraps… small pieces… table topper/runner/etc….

I have a problem…

I just cannot throw out usable pieces!

Glad Creations Scrap Tamers/Marti Mitchell Club

This program has two components:  first, there is a new technique by Marti Mitchell presented each month.  We receive a pattern, a tutorial, and the opportunity to buy specialty rulers and templates that correspond to the patterns.  Note:  all her patterns can be done with printed “templates” from the pattern; it is not necessary to buy every one of her rulers and/or templates but they can be useful tools.

The second component is that each year there is a mystery quilt that runs the length of the program.  I always do the mystery; I find them to be quite fun.  I also always stick to the nature of the program and ONLY use “scraps” from my stash.  In the four years that I have done the program, I have NEVER bought fabric for the mystery!

Next month’s session is the reveal of the final layout of the quilt.  I can’t quite recall (I need to look at the calendar), but I think there’s one session after that, and I really want to have at least the top – if not the whole quilt – done for that session.  I had fallen behind on the monthly “clues,” so my primary goal today was to get caught up. 

I did so!

I completed December, January, February, and March’s steps.

Yes, I was a little behind….

<Hangs head in shame…..>

December:   The piece for this month was a “standalone” block, unrelated to tasks from other months.  I completed twelve 4½ windmill blocks.

The directions called for using half square triangle (HST) paper and fabric pieces that we had cut in the first month of the program (the first month was cutting ALL the fabric pieces for subsequent months).

Oh oh… problem…..

I did not realize that the pattern called for HST paper…. I was at the church where we sew… not at home by my supplies, or my computer (can print it).

My 90-degree triangle ruler and a marking pen came in handy!  Experience counts for something…. Necessity is the mother of invention….!

January:  In a previous months, the directions called for making 72 (yes, 72!) small 4-patch blocks, and at another time, some strip pieces matching in size.  The base components of these pieces from two months measured a mere 1½ inches – giving me four patches that only measured 2½ inches!  Ana commented on how tiny the pieces were, and Michelle (who is also doing the mystery), used some colorful words to complain about how small things were and how difficult to piece.

The January task was to assemble four patches, the side strips, and some cuts of complementary fabric into 4½ blocks…..

72 – 4½ blocks made with SMALL pieces….

February:  More assembly!  And, thankfully, it took far less effort than the 72 blocks!

Those 72 – 4½ blocks, and 72 – 4½ squares of complementary fabric were then assembled into 36 larger blocks.

March:  this step was a little bit of combining the already assembled pieces and a little bit of new construction.  I made 11 strip sets of 4 pieces of 1½ wide fabric, cut them into 4½ squares and assembled the below two larger blocks – one using the windmill blocks from Decembers steps.

Wire Wrapping

As written about in previous blog posts – I have discovered that I can actually wire wrap and have been getting quite prolific at it!  After taking a class two or three weeks ago at the Studio, I have been wrapping glass pieces that I have created.  I have been using the cheap round wire from Joann’s.

Tomorrow, I “graduate” to a higher level….

I will be taking a more advanced wire wrapping class – using square wire, precious metal (silver) and actual gemstones (my own) – at the Studio.

I will post more about this later, but meanwhile, here are some of the gems that I have had for a long time and am anxious to wrap up into pieces that I can wear.

Glass

Although I was accused of neglecting my true love (quilting) for my OTHER hobby today…. I am going to throw out a few words and pictures about my latest in glass….

Opinion Needed

I bought some pieces of millefiori that are called “complex.”  They are multiple canes of millefiori combined together to create a larger design.  The following pieces are the SAME millefiori, but done with different fusings.  I am interested to hear which people like better.  My husband has a different opinion than I do…

This is a “relief” fuse – not hot enough to fully fuse the glass together; just enough to smooth all the edges.  I used only a single layer of glass and the millefiori cross cut.  (Ignore the wire; just look at the glass).

This is fully fused.  Glass wants to be ¼ inch thick with the full heat setting so it is important to use the “rule of two” (two full layers of glass).  I used the SAME purple glass, covered it with clear and then the millefiori cross cut.

Mondrian 

I spoke last post about my “tribute” to Mondrian.  Well, as often happens with me, that tribute has turned into a little bit of an obsession…

I liked the first green plate that I made in this Mondrian-ish style so much that I made a second one the next week.  Here is a picture of it – post fusing and pre slumping:

The first green Mondrian plate was made mostly to use up some nice green 90 COE glass I had.  I also had some left over black that was quite thin.  I cut that up for the sashing of the pieces.  This second green plate was more of a “my style” (that mosaic type putting together I do) of design and I used noodles (pre-cut, packed glass that looks like fettuccine) for the sashing. 

And then I noticed I had a lot of purples in my glass stash….

Imagine that…. Me having purples…

So, I stopped at the glass supply store and got another package of noodles (white) and created this:    

And, when at the glass store, I also got a package of blue noodles… it is a really pretty blue…. And felt obligated to use up some blues in my stash as well….

Crackle

I have posted pictures of plates using the crackle (with powdered glass) technique here before.  I created a 12 inch square in the same technique, but instead of putting a backing piece of glass on and fusing to a plate, I cut up the crackle piece and made jewelry bits:

Most of the above pieces are from the same crackle – it is just that since they are jewelry sized, some got more of one color, and others another.  Some of them look very “giraffe.”  As Elinor loves giraffes, she will be getting gifts!

I can never stop with just one!  Here is a pre-kilned crackle piece I just did.  Its purples, white and black, but the full colors will not show until after fusing:

Miscellaneous

Brandie came with last week and made a “coral” bowl.  Here is its post fuse, but pre slump:

Matt came too, and made a circular wall hanging/window decoration of Cuthulu.  It is a little hard to see in this cell phone picture, but when I held it up to the light, it was pretty cool!

I’m upset over this one… the glass did NOT cut well, and then did NOT fuse back together well in the kiln… oh well, it will get used at home, and when there’s something on it, you wont see the cracks!

And, lastly, a few small pieces:

Comments on them: 

• The yellow pieces are 96 COE millefiori that I found on eBay
• The maple leaf, snowflake and hearts are copper cut from copper foil using cheap little paper punches
• The “indented” piece was done with a technique called “carving” using the same fiber paper that I use for crackle and for making channels in two pieces of glass.  Brandie did this one as a test, but we will be doing more now that we tested the concept