Bumble Beans & me

In her studio in ny!

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was just pulling out our Thanksgiving leaves from years past because we read them aloud every year. When the kids were little, we'd each write something we were thankful for on a leaf to put on a tree, or sometimes we'd put feathers on a turkey. We wanted them to realize that they had a lot to be thankful for.
And what were they thankful for? Well, one leaf says:

"I'm thankful for scotch tape. It's sticky and it sticks to my fingers."

And there's a feather that says

"I'm thankful for no more world wars ... yet anyway."

They're a little more sophisticated now (!!), but they are still appreciative of things, and I am very thankful for them!
Ah, these nicely stacked boxes belie all the work -- and the huge mess!-- that went into filling them. I sorted and cut about 1 bazillion squares the last few days. They're from the Linus stash and we need to turn them into quilts.
Someone donated a pile of pre-cut solids that are just gorgeous, but there aren't enough for a quilt. So I pulled some other solids and sketched a layout. This one will be beautiful!
I got a little of my own stuff done, too -- cut my blue strata into squares (so hard to do -- I loved the big blue strata). They are much less impressive now, but they should look good again when reassembled with some other stuff. I hope so!
And what's this? At my guild's quilt show, I won a raffle! Twelve quilted placemats, one for each month of the year. Wow! They're just terrific, I love having them.

Some exciting news for the next few days -- tomorrow I get to meet another quilt blogger, and this week I see my grown-up kids!

A very
Happy Thanksgiving
to each and every one of you!

Stripping

Thanks for the helpful comments on yesterday's post! I'll check my stash of blacks and reds and get back to it.
In the meantime, I did some more strip sets for the "Statavarious" (love that name!) quilt I'm making for the family room. These will get cut into much smaller pieces and be interspersed with some contrasting fabrics, so the order here doesn't matter.
And I finally took this block I made ages ago off the design wall! I love it, so I quilted and bound it to make a hot pad worthy of my best culinary triumphs. I tried a 2" strip for binding and it worked pretty well, but the corners were more difficult. There's no room for error, so I think I might do 2-1/4" (maybe 2-1/8?) on a bigger quilt, but this skinny strip finished nice and tight and it's exactly the same width on both sides.

Think ahead

The living room floor is there when the design wall gets too small, but next time I'll think ahead before I lay out the blocks and try to avoid the table!
It was still dark when I came downstairs this morning so the quilt was essentially in grey scale -- like looking at a black and white photo. Sounds crazy that this would help when looking at a black and white quilt, but it did! (Maybe it was just being away for a few hours that had the effect.) So I've rearranged a few blocks since I took this photo last night, but you get the idea.

Here's the plan -- a narrow border in color, then a wider border in tone-on-tone black (the one used in those little black cornerstones), and then a big zag zag all around. I'm thinking ahead and welcome your suggestions before I start cutting and stitching. Here's a drawing of my layout so you'll know what I'm talking about.


1) Inner border. Should the inner border be one fabric? If so, I'll probably do some shade of red. I was thinking of doing lots of colors, but I'm not sure whether that will just look sloppy here. I think the eye may need a place to rest. There will be a black border next to it, but multiple colors may be too chaotic on what is already a pretty chaotic quilt.

2) Zig Zag background. I plan to do the zig zag in brights and the question is whether for the background I want to do mixed blacks and whites (like in the center of the quilt) or choose only fabrics that are more black than white. I'm leaning towards that now, and will be sure that the brights stand out against it. Thoughts?

And I loved my word of the day -- acnestis. It means "the part of the body where one cannot reach to scratch." Who knew there was such a word?

Night and Day

This Project Linus quilt, put together by my friend Diane whose co-workers colored the blocks...
...turns into this at night...
...because it was quilted by Joe with glow-in-the-dark thread! Wow! The kids will love his snazzy touch.

I didn't think the photo had come out, but I "enhanced" it on iPhoto and you can actually see the quilting.

And speaking of day and night, I heard on the radio that (at least here in North America) Jupiter will be shining brightly by the gibbous moon tonight. Take a look!

Sticks and Stones

I was a little under the weather last week, nothing bad, just enough to keep me from getting things done. But by yesterday I was much better and did some easy stitching.
I participated in a swap for blacks, whites and brights at my guild and stitched up a few more blocks for that. (This is Bonnie Hunter's Sticks and Stones quilt.) I think the real fun of this quilt will be designing a border. I'm thinking piano keys with brights, or maybe offset bricks in brights, or maybe even some triangles or a zig zag. Suggestions? Ohhhh....and maybe I could interrupt the center with something more interesting, too, that gets picked up in the borders! A block or two with a design of some sort, or a zig zag that borders an inner section, or ... ??? The design part is just so much fun.
I like wonky, but only when it adds to the overall design. When I have cornerstones and small strips I press them on a grid so I discover problems before I stitch. Look at the strip on the left!

Wonky Houses?

Edit -- Sorry, the text didn't come through when I posted this. I had forgotten about this photo and just ran across it on my phone. I took it in NYC last summer, I think near the Lower East Side Tenement Museum. I love the wonky houses! It's not a mat, it's metal and built right into the sidewalk. Such a fun discovery on the pavement.