Birthday Quilt for Dad

My dad celebrated his 80th birthday on the 12th of April. Many conflicting schedules prevented us from celebrating the event on the actual day so we planned a party for him a month later. 

Aside from throwing the party, we couldn't decide upon an appropriate gift until Mom, my sister Dana and I thought it would be nice for me to piece together a quilt top using fabrics that were reminiscences of many of his favorite things. 

I used my signature triangle black and chose fabrics mostly of my own design, or some that I had worked on as a production manager or were the precise image we were seeking. They include puppy portraits of three of the family dogs, goldfish, wickerwork and dragonflies for his koi pond, tropical drinks, roses and veggies for his garden, and of course BBQ!

Included too are blocks of pieced and tie dyed GRAPHYX prints, BEADWORK, strike offs from my new collection CHROMA, DISCO DOT from the TANGRAM collection, SIREN SONG and up cycled shirts. The colors are warm and rich, accented by light and dark grounds, and the pointed corners of the triangles are softened by the linear blockiness of the grid-like quilting.

Most of the quilt framed in a shot taken in the back garden.

Koi, drinks, roses and Kali.

Tasha, BBQ, veggies and more koi.

Suki

 Kali

Tasha (and a woven strip shirt block) and a good example of the quilting.

I use the simple shape of the 12" x 13" triangle so I can concentrate on color and moving it around the surface of the quilt.

How the blues move and the brown and reds jump diagonally 

Cold, Damp and Raining

When a Saturday is nothing by a long day of cold, damp and rain, I think about warm, yummy meals. Yesterday was no exception.

We're all joking here about building an ark. The rains come in waves. You can hear them as they approach because the thunderous drumming of the heavy rain drops beat loudly on the leaves and it sounds like something frying on the stove. The burgeoning rainfall creates rivulets of brown water flowing rapidly, displacing anything in its way. The strong winds don't help much either, as they blow the wetness under the eaves on the overhanging roof and onto the floor, making it slick underfoot and this is where I work, outside on the lanai. And a telltale sign that it's miserable out is that I am wearing my black Ugg slippers...

If you think I am exaggerating, then come and visit. Welcome to Paradise.

I've been cleaning my studio by producing. After filling orders over the past weeks, and preparing for an event the day before Mother's Day the numerous hats and especially the large blankets that are cut and sewn leave smaller bits and pieces that can be utilized in other hat pieces and bibs. After spending the day fussy cutting and manipulating fabric to eke out every last usable - cuttable - sewable item that could be made it was my reward to play in the kitchen. 

I daren't run out in this mess - there are cautionary advisories on the radio about flash flooding and deep puddles, so I just stayed put and cleaned out the freezer. What follows is what I managed to put together for dinner - with leftovers for Sunday, of course!

So what I found was a duo of steaks: NY Strip steaks (you know, from the humgo pack from Costco), and a calamari steak. For myself I only need a couple or three potatoes, and steamed then sauteed spinach (again from the jumbo bag from Costco) and a gastronomical feast was slapped together.

 Oven roasted Yukon Gold and Red Bliss Potatoes. Nothing exceptionally fancy: Organic Virgin olive oil and Hawaiian Sea Salt

 Remember "Call Me Mr. Pickles blog?" here is the grilled calamari steak with a dressing of the Bread-and-Butter pickles, capers, garlic, olive oil, a shake of red pepper flakes and backyard lemon juice. I was skeptical of this brain-fart idea but it turned out salty-sweet-sour and a perfect compliment to the delicate flesh of the squid.

 New York Strip Steaks with a Kona Coffee-Spice rub, buttermilk bleu cheese and a web of garden chives. 

Steamed and sauteed spinach. Simple preparation again: garlic toasted in olive oil, kosher salt and a grind of black pepper.

The fabric in the background is Siren Song in color Earth.

I always neglect dessert. That being said, today I have decided to make a blackberry-lilikoi sorbet (hey, it's got to get warm and sunny sometime next week!) ;)

My Sister's Quilt or I've Drunk the Kool-Aid and I Feel Fine

When my sister, Dana, was here to visit last year for Thanksgiving, I told her I was going to make her a quilt as her Christmas gift. I also added the clause that I would not have it done on time to wrap and place under the tree, and she was okay with the stipulation.

During her stay we went through most of the fabrics I have in my stash and picked out contenders. As we travelled around the island like we always do, we popped into every fabric shop on the island to buy fabrics that could supplement what we already had chosen. (And please don't think this was an extensive undertaking; I can count the number of shops on one hand, and that is 5 if you include Walmart as a fabric store!) We both gravitated like moths to a flame to these two new fabrics from Michele D'Amore's Tropical Sun-Kissed collection. This pattern was one that I admired so much it had me wishing I had designed it myself and the one print, in two sizes, became the basis of the quilt.

 

So I now have to admit that I have drunk the Kool-Aid and I feel fine. It was so refreshing to work with fabrics with a white ground and having dived into the whiteness of the Modern Quilt Guild mentality, I can truly see the excitement in the concept. I was so taken with the idea that the backing is of Michael Miller's Cotton Couture in soft white with a small pieced stripe strategically placed down the center. I also bound the quilt in snow Rock Candy. (Oh, and I also discovered that I need to take some classes and learn how to shoot white objects in a white room with full late-afternoon Maui sunshine. I had to readjust these images to get the colors to pop the way they should but they are not over-exaggerated - the colors are all wonderfully saturated pastels.)

I find it more fun to take on the challenge of working with triangles, to match the pieces to get the points dead on perfect, so I use very large triangles (12" wide at the base x 13" high from the bottom to the apex of the point) in my bed quilts.

From the scraps I made two standard-sized pillow cases - soft white with Tropical Sun-Kissed trim and this pieced decorative pillow. The other fabric that seemed to be part of the backbone of the quilt is my Siren Song. You'll notice it mixed in regularly and I love the way it just seems to be a natural color bridge to pull all of the other fun prints together!

Siren Song

Noun

1.

siren song - the enticing appeal of something alluring but potentially dangerous; "she succumbed to the siren song of the luscious new colors of fabric " Sunset, Citrus, Caribbean, Wave and Twilight. Reminiscent of nature. Juicy with saturated color. Creativity beyond your wildest imagination. Give in to the temptation. Siren Song. Discover the sumptuous new colors at Michael Miller Fabrics.

Not Sure What It Is... Yet

The following was a result of having finished piecing together the top for a quilt I am making for my sister as a belated Christmas and house warming gift. I used the 5 new colors of Siren Song in the design of her quilt. As usual, as I work things are tossed quickly aside and the fabrics were haphazardly layered upon themselves to reveal an ombred rainbow that had been created.

The 5 colors are fussy cut to get the placement where I wanted them to be. I sewed them in this rotation (bottom to top: Wave, Grass, Citrus, Sunset and Twilight)  because what I immediately saw was a Hawaiian sunset... Since the Siren Song stripe runs across or horizontal on the fabric, it can only end up being a maximum 42"- 43" wide, so it's rather small. I'm not sure how this is going to end up being finished but I thought this was a wonderfully simple way of using the new colors.

After I receive fabric for these 5 colors, I'll put together a tutorial on how to construct a small Rainbow Throw similar to the pieced fabric shown. Until then Aloha No Ka Oi!