Finished "Sea Urchin" Quilt

My quilt is finished!

I guess I'm pretty happy with the way this turned out, although now I wish I hadn't used yarn for the knots. I read somewhere that yarn was fine, but now I'm thinking embroidery floss would have worked out better, and wouldn't have become as fuzzy in the wash. All the blue fuzzy knots remind me of sea urchins for some reason, so I will always think of this as the "Sea Urchin" quilt now. All in all I think it is an improvement from my first quilt, although there is still much progress to be made. Next time I hope for even more mastery of this textile art!

And whatever will I do with myself now that it is finished? I should probably get back to school work for a while. But I'm already thinking of what the next quilt on the horizon will be. I'm thinking…lone star!

Weekend in Santa Barbara

This past weekend I went to Santa Barbara for a mini vacation with my boyfriend. We saw one of California's old missions, built in the late eighteenth century, and spent some time at the beach and walking around downtown Santa Barbara. My favorite part was probably staying in a little studio apartment I had booked online. We did the same thing when we went to Sedona, AZ last summer. I don't know why I love staying in other people's studio apartments so much. I guess it is a little strange, but I think I just like the idea of having a little space all to yourself, with a kitchen included!

We were able to hit one thrift store on the trip. I didn't find any vintage clothes or crafting supplies, but I did find this amazing mounted print of an illustration by Kay Nielsen. I did a little research when I got this picture back to the studio and discovered that Nielsen was a Danish man who illustrated the fairy tale "East of the Sun, West of the Moon," in the early twentieth century. This illustration is one from that book. I think it is simply wonderful. I had no idea that it had this history behind it when I found it at the store, but it was such a magical image that I had to have it!

My boyfriend was caught in a "should I or shouldn't I" dilemma with a "Balco" t-shirt he found at the thrift shop. I still don't quite understand what he was talking about, but I guess Balco was at the center of some steroid scandal or controversy related to major league baseball in the nineties. I was just like, "okay, you seem to be extremely amused by this shirt, so you should just get it!" He waffled about it the whole time we were there, and finally decided not to get it. Then, the next morning, he said, "Mmmm…maybe we should go back and get that Balco shirt???" He acted like I was going to be annoyed or something, but it's not like I ever mind an extra thrifting excursion. There's always a chance I missed something the first time around. So, we went back! And he got the shirt! Dilemma solved. I still have no idea what was so special about it, but that's sports for you.

Santa Barbara had some very ritzy antique and vintage stores. We browsed in a few. There were beautiful things to see, but I just can't spend a lot of money on old things that you can find much cheaper in less tourist-run areas. There was a spectacular blue velvet dress from the 50s or 60s in one of those shops. Alas, another dress that got away! But at $75, it just wasn't worth it to me. I will have to keep an eye out for something similar.

Hopefully I will be able to post something about my **finished** quilt in the next few weeks. It's not there yet, but I have started tying it. Yes, I decided to turn it into a knot quilt, with a tiny bit of handquilting in a few areas for effect. A shameless cop-out? Perhaps. But I want this quilt to be done! I have so many other quilts I want to begin, and this one is getting in my way!

Fair Interlude: The L.A. County Fair

The "Starry Splendor" quilt top is almost finished! I have added the piano key border. I need to add one more border of cream fabric and then it will be ready for quilting. But, since it would be boring to post another set of pictures of my unfinished quilt top, I am writing instead about a far more interesting event: the L.A. County Fair in Pomona, CA.

The fair was over a month ago, but the arts and crafts building was so fun that I am still thinking about it! Below are some of the amazing things I got the chance to see:

I have to say that this was probably my favorite quilt at the fair. I realized too late that I should have written down the names of the artists of these quilts to give credit where credit is due, so my apologies. This quilt was just so vibrant and beautiful. After working with the more subdued tones for the "Starry Splendor" quilt, I am thinking that I would like to switch to bolder colors for my next quilt. I can certainly use this lonestar quilt for color inspiration!

Here's another beautiful quilt. I guess it is a cross between and nine-patch and a log cabin, with a little applique thrown in as well. It all works so well together!

I can't resist any kind of Christmas tree. So I was delighted by the Christmas tree contest! They are all winners in my eyes!

Here is a tree with only cupcake ornaments! Tasty! There was so much food at the fair, but looking at this tree still made me hungry.

And here was a Christmas tree made out of sparkly jewelry! I'll tell you what, I simply cannot get enough of this stuff. I love fairs!

Did anybody ever look more delighted to be spending the day at the fair? Can't wait until next year!

Partially Complete Quilt Top: Starry Splendor

Yes, this top isn't even finished yet. I have a lot of work to do in terms of borders, which will be in a piano key style and require lots of additional fabric cutting. But I'm so excited that the *hard* part of the top is over that I decided to post about it. All the star blocks are sewn together:

This is the "Starry Splendor" quilt top (or, partial top) from Connecting Threads that I received in kit form. I decided to stay pretty true to the original pattern configuration in terms of colors and prints. Some variation was inevitable due to errors and aesthetic choices, but I liked the look of the advertised quilt so much that I more or less followed it to the letter. So far, I think it is turning out pretty well. I can already see that I am improving from my first quilt, which I made last year (photos forthcoming in another post). But there are still a ton of inaccuracies in this top, and, while I'm not thrilled about them, I am pleased that I am making progress in my piecing skills, and that this is sure to become an eminently functional and also very pretty quilt (in my eyes, at least! The photos below are a little washed out since I turned off the flash. The colors are really not this dull, although part of the charm of the quilt is its rustic, earthy feel).

Here is an example of an inaccuracy. The cream diamond in the middle is very off. It almost looks like it was done on purpose, but it wasn't! Failing to get points to meet and inadvertently cutting off points that are already there is something I will have to work on in the future, but right now it is simply beyond me how some people can get their quilts geometrically perfect. I see it happen on all the quilt blogs I read, so I know it's possible!

But even though there are many places where the points are a mess, in other spots I think they turned out better. The cream diamonds here don't look half bad!

Well, I am excited to move on to the part of this top that doesn't involve any stars, points, or diamonds. I am already getting anxious thinking about the actual quilting phase that is right around the corner. I am toying with the idea of quilting it by hand, but I know when it comes down to it, I will just want to do it swiftly with the machine. I'm nervous because the machine quilting was a challenge with my first quilt, and I only did very simple X lines through square blocks. I suppose I could do that again, but I'd like more of a challenge. I wonder if my machine is up for it! Sometimes I fear that I expect too much from it, since it is just a regular sewing machine and not really meant for quilting.

I will post all about it as I continue making progress on this quilt. In other news, today I got caught in a Pinterest vortex of mini-quilt photos! Mini-quilts are so adorable and it seems like the perfect way to work on specific skills, although working in such small dimensions must be a nightmare. I am thinking of ordering a mini-quilt kit next since I might be burned out on big quilts for a while, but I am still on the fence about it. More internet research on mini-quilts must be done!

An AMAZING Thrift Store Find! The Flower Quilt.

Wow, so I haven't been thrift shopping in a while because I rarely have time for it when I'm in California. Most of my thrifting happens on the east coast during vacations. But today I had to ride my bike all the way to CVS to pick up a prescription (our insane health plan at school has once again decided to switch prescription providers and now the only pharmacy we can use is CVS. Is this even legal?! I mean, isn't it a problem that some people can't drive to CVS to pick up medications? Ugh, a rant for another day.), so I decided to swing by Irvine's Assistance League thrift shop. It's a tiny thrift store, but every now and then I find something cool there.

Well, today definitely did not disappoint!

I cannot BELIEVE this quilt! It is so gorgeous, and was obviously painstakingly handmade by some highly talented person in the recent or distant past. I'm curious about its age. The fabrics used in the flowers make me want to say it's vintage, but I don't know enough about it to say for sure. Perhaps they are just vintage style fabrics. The quilt is in immaculate condition.

It is full size even though I've spread it across my twin bed for photographing purposes. Perhaps the best thing about this quilt was the price I got it at: $12.50!!! The thrift store had initially marked it as $50, but it was included in their 75% off sale today so I got it at an absolute steal! Considering the amount of fabric and labor that went into this, it is worth way more than $12.50, but I am still thrilled that I was able to afford it at the sale price, and that now it has a new home where it will be appreciated.

I also love the single flowers that help make up the green and white border of this quilt. Overall, a delightful find! It was probably amusing for bystanders as I struggled to wrangle this thing into my tiny bike basket before wheeling home. I was concerned that the plastic bag would tear and I'd get some dirt on it, but in the end the quilt happily sustained no injuries!

I am not sure what I am going to do with this quilt yet. I have about four quilts that I have found at thrift stores now, but most of them are in Pennsylvania. I keep on dreaming of a time when I will have a house with beds to put them all on, but for now they are stored away, with the exception of the double wedding ring quilt I have on my twin bed. I'd hate to add this to the growing number of quilts that are slowly aging in my closets, so I am thinking of giving it to my boyfriend to use in his living room as a snuggle blanket for his couch. His living arrangement is in a time of transition between roommates and he thus lacks many creature comforts, such as a kitchen table, hand towels, cookie sheets, and a million other items. It is a very sad bachelor pad. Lately I have been complaining about the lack of a blanket in his living room, because I get chilly in there. So maybe this will be his new blanket! I have to think about it though and decide if he will actually like/want it, because, as you can see, it is rather flowery. I think he likes flowers though, so I'll see what he thinks! It will be hard to give it up, but I think he needs it more than I do right now.

New Quilting Project

After making one smallish and overly rectangular log cabin quilt last year, I thought I had satiated my curiosity about the quilting tradition. I finished this first quilt around February of 2013, and up until a month or so ago I had little interest in making another one. The first one just ended up being more labor intensive than I had expected, I guess, and I've been struggling with the time commitment that goes along with quilting. I recently read a blog where a woman wrote that she looks at a day without quilting or some other kind of productive craft as a day wasted. She even said something like, "Although I managed to read a fun book today, it felt like wasted time because I wasn't creating something tangible and lasting." I'm paraphrasing, of course, and I wish I could remember where I came across this sentiment because it was a very interesting perspective for me, since I hold just about the opposite view. This September marked the beginning of my tenth year straight of what is swiftly becoming "career studenthood," and I can't stop myself from feeling like time spent quilting or crafting is time that is being stolen from potential "reading" time. I've spent some time thinking about the possible intellectual benefits of quilting and other repetitive arts. I'm sure it does make us mentally sharper on many levels, and I like to think about it in relation to the time I used to spend practicing musical instruments, which was also rather repetitive and mechanical. I have no doubts about the intellectual benefits of practicing music, so why not quilting?!

However, it has taken me some effort to convince myself that repetitive, creative activity is actually probably very good for us as humans, and not a waste of time. And, in reality, if I weren't learning how to quilt, I would most likely not spend any more time reading or writing than I normally do on a daily basis. If I'm being honest with myself, I would almost certainly just end up watching more useless television! So, about a month ago I decided to start my second quilt! The other contributing factor to this sudden return to the textile arts was something my father said to me when my parents visited me in California, and they finally saw the first quilt I made last year. They looked at my smallish, overly rectangular quilt in wonder. They didn't know I had it in me! And then my dad said something he will live to regret.

He said, "I forbid you to make another quilt until you finish your dissertation."

Forbid?! Ha! Little did he know that those words would be the impetus I needed to begin a new project! I have always been a defiant daughter (not really, I mean, quilting is my one act of rebellion.).

Soon enough, my bedroom table was transformed into this again:

This time around, instead of choosing the fabrics myself at Joann (the only fabric store I have access to easily here), I decided to see what a "quilt kit" experience would be like. I discovered the online store Connecting Threads and then looked up some reviews of their fabric. I really don't know much about fabric, except that really low quality fabrics will get you into trouble, and I don't want to spend a lot of time on a quilt only to see it fall apart due to cheap fabric. The reviews of Connecting Threads seemed pretty positive and their kits, unlike those of some other sites, were not prohibitively expensive. So I finally settled on one called "Starry Splendor." So far the kit experience has been good. I don't think I would have ended up with such varied colors if I had bought the fabrics myself, and it has been nice to follow a pattern where all the colors have been laid out. I know this takes a lot of the creative and design element out of quilting (which is what some quilters live for, I know), but as a beginner quilter who finds too many choices overwhelming, I have appreciated the availability of the kits.

The quilt kit came with the required amount of fabric in the colors and prints that were represented in the advertised pattern. I still had to measure and cut out all of the patches (which is a work in progress; I have decided to cut the patches out for each block as I make them. I originally intended to cut all the patches at once, but this would have taken days and been pretty demoralizing. I think it's better to divide up tasks so that you can get sewing in as well as cutting in any given quilting session). Overall, I am pleased with the kit that I received and the different prints that were included. Some of the fabrics are prettier than others, but I love how multi-colored this quilt is going to be when it's finished, and as a beginner quilter with no fabric collection to speak of, this was really going to be the only way to get this amount of color and print variety.

The Starry Splendor quilt is made of small inner stars framed by larger outer stars. The small stars look like this:

And the big stars look like this!

As you can see I have made eight finished blocks already, and there are only twelve total. Overall, I am shocked by how much more smoothly this quilt is going than the first one. Even though these stars are far from perfect (I struggle to make the points right and exact and to get all the stars the same size, and to have enough room around the edges for adding border strips. Sigh, so many variables.), I am excited that I have come this far in my quilting skills already. I am also making a concerted effort to be more patient with this quilt and move at a leisurely pace, since last time I think I hurried myself too much, which ultimately affected the quilt, of course.

And, no, I did not make that quilt that is underneath the blocks (oh, that? That's nothing. Just a double-wedding ring quilt I whipped up a few weeks ago. NOT.). That is an impulse buy I made on Etsy a few months ago because I wanted a double wedding ring quilt. It's beautiful! I can only hope that some day I will have the skill and the patience to make one myself.