A Quilt Bee Grumble/Top

Back in October of 2012, I sent out fabric for my first ever quilt bee. I picked what I thought was a very simple yet striking paper-pieced pattern and cut a huge chunk of my fat quarter solids stash to send off to my Bee-mates.

If I was going to sum up the experience of being queen bee in one word, it would be sigh. Blocks that were never made (and the fabric not returned), seams that weren't even close to 1/4", blocks that were smaller than the template... I don't want to sound ungrateful but knowing the effort I put into other people's blocks I was disappointed. Not disappointed enough to stop joining Bees, but my masochistic sewing tendencies aren't the point of this post.

I eventually got back about 9 of the original 13 packets and was so disillusioned by the whole process that I ignored the stack of blocks until a couple of months ago. While I was in the process of tidying my scraps I decided to finally take a close look at the blocks I had received and make a decision what to do with them.

And you know what? Once I laid them all out, it was kind of pretty. A few blocks were unusable, a few I had to rip and re-sew and a few most definitely were pieced together with the scantest of seams but in the end, I'm happy with what came of it.

 

(Picture by Nellie - from the NYC Metro Mod Quilt Guild Page)

The top came out pretty small (because there is a whole row missing) but for now I'm going to leave it this size. I may add a border or I may not. I know, THRILLING DETAILS OF MY THOUGHT PROCESS. All my best stories are ones where I thought about doing something and then didn't.

Scrappy Quilt Top

Back in January I decided to tackle my unwieldy fabric scrap "collection" - basically three gallon sized ziplocs of randomly sized pieces, squished and crammed together in a crumpled mess. I'm a sucker for the swap table at Guild meetings and routinely take home the unwanted crumbs at the end of meetings to add to my scrap stash.

For a few nights I pressed, squared and cut making tidy stacks of squares ranging from 2"x2" to 8"x8".

Once I had a decent number of uniform pieces I had to find somewhere to put them neatly aside, so I bought a couple of Art Bins (I already have one each for thread and sewing doodads) and stacked the pieces neatly with a label on each divider with the size of the square. Then for good measure I tidied up my fat quarter stash, too.

Yes, that's the entirety of my fat quarter collection. Apparently I like green? Who knew.

So once I had all these OCD squares, of course I immediately started sewing them up. I made two larger squares each from 2.5"x 2.5" and 4.5"x4.5" squares, cut some purple sashing and boom! Quilt top.

 I'm not sure how I'm going to quilt this and since I've got no immediate plans for it, I'm happy to let it sit on a shelf unbasted for a while until inspiration strikes! I may finish it up before I head to the UK in mid-June. A cousin had a baby (almost a year ago!) and I never sent anything and well, family politics dictates that since I gave a quilt to my other procreating cousin... Oh the complicated life of an ex-pat with a disjointed family.

"They Live" DIY Mask Making - Part 2!

When I left off last time we'd just sculpted the facial features from Crayola Model Magic, and unfortunately the stuff cracked horribly as it dried. So maybe don't follow our advice on using that and maybe stick with good old-fashioned papier-mâché. Anyway - onwards!

Step 4: Painting!
I made use of what I had at home for this, three small bottles of red, black and white pearlized fabric paint which worked out really well. The paint dries into a latex-like finish and was very slightly sparkly which made the muscle tissue look gruesomely wet.

Once the muscle tissue was dry I used diluted paint to add shadows and highlights to the blue clay. This is a subtle touch but I think it really brought the who mask to life. I also painted over the chin section in light gray to make it look more bone like, and because I'm a perfectionist, painted over the teeth to make them look a little more three dimensional and irregular.

Step 5: The Eyes!
For the eyes I cut cut two ping-pong balls in half across their equators then cut asterisk shapes out using small sharp scissors. Incidentally, the inside of ping-pong balss smells like Vick's Vaporub which I find slightly disturbing. Again using what we had, A painted the eye balls with metallic radiator paint (thrifty!)

The eyes were then glued in place using a glue gun and the ribbons that came with the masks replaced with elastic. I also added padding to the inside of my mask, strips of batting, to cushion the bridge of my nose some.

Step 6: Wear in Public and Freak People Out.

We also made a few small props, a magazine and money printed with choice phrases from the movie. Someone somewhere on the train screamed. Mission accomplished.