Tiny Pink Penguin Quilt in the Bloggers Quilt Festival

This is my second quilt entry for Amy's Bloggers Quilt Festival. The first is here.

I am beyond tickled to be able to share this quilt in the Blogger's Quilt Festival Group Category.

This special quilt was made by 30 women. Most of us have never met in person. All of us love Ayumi Takahashi, the generous creator of Pink Penguin blog and most recently Patchwork Please! a must-have Zakka project book.  When my suspicions were confirmed and Ayumi publicly announced her pregnancy last fall, I got straight to work on a Flickr group of people I knew would want to help make a special quilt for her and Joe's baby.  Many more names of helpers were suggested by members of her online quilting bees and swap friends. A very happy discussion thread allowed us to settle on an alphabet quilt design using Kumiko Fujita's Patchwork 318 book for many of the blocks. Ayumi loves Kumiko and her style of quilting! Since the book is out of print, impossible to find and only 6 people in the group own a copy, Ms. Fujita graciously gave us her permission to share her alphabet and motif designs with each other. Several of the motif blocks were designed by members of the group 'specially for this quilt.

Ayumi is Japanese and speaks English. Joe is American and speaks Japanese. We know this baby will learn both languages and hope this sweet quilt will provide many hours of happy learning and eye-spy fun.

quilt photo by Ayumi

 
Here are the two blocks I made - the kite is my first attempt at designing a foundation pattern.

Over the course of five months and on a few continents, 56 quilt blocks were constructed. 54 of them were successfully mailed to me....IN CANADA...this is quite a shocker considering our super slow postal system.  Participants also provided scraps for setting squares so that I could sash and assemble the blocks with an assortment of fabrics in Ayumi's style. Lori Holt provided her bias gingham for the backing (a print Ayumi loves). Berene provided the sashing and binding.

I considered several quilting options, but in the end just went with straight diagonal lines with white thread to accentuate the layout and let the sweet blocks shine.  Initially, one member of the group had planned a trip to Japan and the quilt was to be hand-delivered, but when that didn't work out we held our breath and went with good old mail (I did drive across the border and leave it, nervously, in the hands of the USPS). Within a week, the quilt was in Ayumi and Joe's hands!

You can read all about Ayumi and Joe's receipt of the quilt, see more photos and read Ayumi's unbelievably sweet thank you messages that identifies all of the quilters and the blocks they contributed, here. Please do!

Sweet label embroidered by Jesse in England

For me, this quilt epitomizes the concept of a "group" project. It is not something I could have completed by myself before the baby started elementary school, but more than that, it's got the love and best wishes of a caring community stitched right in. The perfect gift for a Tiny Pink Penguin coming soon. The added bonus is that I got to meet a lot of new friends in the process and feel a tremendous amount of support from everyone.

Check out the rest of the festival entries, nominate your favs and vote!

Blogger's Quilt Festival Spring 2013

Hello! Welcome to Poppyprint and the Blogger's Quilt Festival sponsored by Amy's Creative side twice a year to coincide with Fall and Spring Quilt Markets.

There haven't been many quilt finishes here since the last festival - I seem to have become a bag lady and have enjoyed making smaller projects that I can finish in an afternoon or two. I do have many quilts on the go in my brain, many sets of bee blocks awaiting assembly, two Scrap Vomit quilts (one basted for quilting, one a set of blocks) and a strong desire to start new projects. I know many of you are with me on this!

For the festival I'd like to share a small quilt with a rather big story. Three of my good blogging friends were a part of it's making and finishing, in addition to my small piecing effort.  The whole story is here for you to peruse if you feel like knowing more, but since there are hundreds of quilts to see in the festival, I'll keep it brief(er) here.

Cosmic Lipari

The fabrics are all luminescent Oakshott Lipari cottons sent to me from Michael Oakshott via Lynne . The pattern is an incredibly complicated-looking but easy to piece huge star block designed by Tracey (pattern and acrylic templates available on her blog! There isn't one single Y-seam, I promise) and finally, the completely mind-blowing quilting was done in trade by my local VMQG friend Janet. She's so talented and does this detailed work on her domestic machine. I knew the Lipari's deserved special treatment and she nailed it!

You've gotta see the back to really appreciate all of Janet's work!

I love the luxury, sheen and rich colours of the Lipari cotton so much (it's coloured thread shot with black thread) but man, it's really hard to do it justice in photos.

Just look at those perfectly plump feathers!

Check out the rest of the amazing festival, nominate your favs and then head back later this week to vote!

Circus in Wonderland - a photo essay

What a whirlwind couple of weeks! I've been thoroughly entrenched in a tiny, windowless, airless sewing lair at the circus school sewing my little heart out for 43 incredible teenage performers. There were four wonderful moms working on the over 100 costumes required for the show and we had a great time supporting CircusWest  in A Circus in Wonderland. After spending almost 40 hours at the gym over the last four days, repairing popped seams, washing make up and blood out of costumes (a cut toe!), attaching D's unicorn horn part way though each performance, mopping dirty floors, bobby-pinning buns and braids into place, I am really looking forward to getting back to working with cotton in the peace and quiet of my sewing room tomorrow.

It takes a small army of dedicated volunteer moms, former CirKids and make up artist students from the Blanche MacDonald School to prep the kids and get them into character.

The morning starts with an airbrush machine,

 then lots of braiding/backcombing/pinning and hairspray, then to detailed makeup, finally ending with this:

The unicorn is my D, the lion is one of her circus BFFs. They did a fun acrobatic act representing the unicorn and lion's duel for the crown.

The show was even better than last year's and the Alice theme brought in hundreds of audience members (30 members of the Vancouver Lolita cosplay group came in elaborate costumes!) that might not otherwise have been exposed to this amazing youth circus. I think 5 out of 8 shows were oversold, which is amazing since 400 seats was considered a sell-out.

Here are just a few photos so you can get a sense of it.

Alice first goes through the looking glass

A whirlwind of Alice imposters dance inside the looking glass

The Red Queen on her trapeze

The card queens enjoy a cuppa on the double trapeze before getting down to business

Alice and the Mad Hatter enjoy a flower poi act

A backstage silhouette of the tissu (aerial silks) performance

Super cool tightwire trick!

A stack of Blind Mice

Stacking cards handstand act final style (D in lower right)

The amazing cast of Circus in Wonderland!

There you go! It was really a pleasure to spend so much time around positive, supportive, motivated and hard-working kids. They are total slobs, but hey, you can't have it all.

I completely missed out on participating in SewMamaSew's giveaway day and I feel rather disconnected from blogland, but I'll try my best to get back in the swing. I'm eager to get sewing for myself again. Hope you are all well and working on fun projects!


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Peace: Liberty edition

Prior to making my Peace, Boston flag, I had basted my teeny 1/2" Liberty hexies together into a peace sign for my new spring jacket. After buying the jacket on impulse from a shop window display, I was surprised to see that every second woman in Vancouver is wearing a similar one - jeez.

Now mine is a little different.

These tiny hexies are the last of my Liberty scraps from last year's challenge by The Organic Stitch Co when I made this and these. Jo's got a 20% off sale on her ENTIRE shop, so I've re-stocked charm squares in the hopes of making the sweet spool quilt from Alexia's book Liberty Love.  Yardage purchases will have to wait until I hit Old Blighty in person in July. I want to have a proper fondle before I plunk down big coin on that tana lawn! Jo's got a new mini charm package - fifty different 2 1/2" squares for under $12. It's the perfect snack pack for someone looking to dabble in Liberty and her shipping to Canada is super reasonable.

 To Boston with Love UPDATE: An exciting event/venue opportunity in Boston means our flags have to be there earlier:  if you want your flag(s) to hang in the opening, they need to be in Boston by May 21st.  Flags arriving after that date can still be added. See VMQG site for details. Take an hour this evening and make a flag to be a part of this super exciting modern quilt guild movement!

Jigsaw Love

In February, the VMQG block challenge theme was hearts, hot pink, orange and linen. Members were to make blocks and challenge themselves with a new technique in their block construction. There were lots of people who have never worked with linen before (hello, swishy fabric!). We got some amazing blocks back for our group quilt!

I volunteered for first crack at jigsawing the blocks together. My idea was to put a bit of structure around some of the hearts with an improv log-cabin feeling...more like little borders really. I didn't want to go all crazy wonky since this will be passed on to other guild members and it's no fun getting an un-square, totally insane partly finished quilt top to work on!

My block contribution is the bias appliqued string of hearts. I've always wanted to try applying a folded (wrong sides together) bias strip by sewing along the cut edges, then folding the strip over the seam (concealing the raw edges) and appliqueing the folded edge down.  No bias bars or bias tape making gizmo necessary. It took some planning to get the heart shape right, though. This is a great way to apply stems and vines by machine, too. I first saw this method used by my pal Double N Dianne on a sweet 1930's repro quilt she made.

I can't seem to find any photo tutorials for this in a google search. If anyone knows of one, please share a link in the comments and if not, I could take a few pictures to show anyone who is interested!

Sewing is taking place here, but it mostly involves circus costumes these days (not very exciting since all I make is the basic bodysuits). The big show is in a couple of weeks and we've got lots of work to do! I've also finished a very special quilt but I can't share it quite yet. Hopefully in a couple of weeks.  

In the meantime, the sun is shining and Vancouver gardens have exploded into spring bloom. It's just gorgeous here now! I hope spring has sprung in your town, too.

Peace, Boston

To find out how you can send your love to Boston, please visit the Vancouver Modern Quilt Guild blog.

It's the little things....

....that you need to keep your ipod/iphone earbuds from tangling.

Made in the hours before our vacation flight, for my daughter and nieces. I used this free tute and some of my fav accessory fabric, Michael Miller's Mirror Ball Dots. Yum. Like candy.