In these dark days of ICE (and others) descending on Minneapolis and murdering two American citizens, it is good to read of possibilities of change, tactics that include fun. Such is Blueprint for Revolution:How to Use Rice Pudding, Lego Men, and Other Nonviolent Techniques to Galvanize Communities, Overthrow Dictators, or Simply Change the World.
This time I have a picture to go with the book review and a story.
On the No Kings 2 Protest day I was riding the bus with about ten other people who had posters and were heading to the same event. So of course we got talking. One admitted to having snapped a photo of me on an earlier bus ride on the same line and shared it with me.
I recently reread the book because it was the topic for a book discussion group I attend.
Well I finished before midnight, but I guess the Link Party closed at midnight somewhere else. I’ll have to remember that or not be so last minute the next round. At any rate, you can look at the directions and link party at Songbird Designs if you are interested.
The prompt was to use the hourglass block. My goal was to blend with the aqua of my starting block and add color since I didn’t want to be limited to brown and aqua. The blending didn’t work as well as I had thought it would in the store, but it’s not awful. I put a coping half inch so I could make 20 3 1/2-inxh hourglass blocks instead of the 28 2 1/2-inch blocks it would have taken to add them immediately as I had planned. Seemed it saved a little trimming.
I had planned to post December’s letters along with Christmas Socks, but I had to wait till after Christmas. So of course it fell through the cracks. Time to catch up. And the Stay At Home Round Robin (SAHRR) has begun.
Easiest project. Select center block for the STHRR. Of course I went to my stack of orphan blocks.
The block is 14″ X 14.” You can find information about the SAHRR at Quilting Gail’s blog, here.
On to Rippin Robins
For December Nancy asked for letters mostly 1-inch by 1-inch (2-inch okay for those with overhang). She has 60+ of her own to make after getting 5 each from 8 of us. Hers will have the longest text. She said any style of letter and any method, so of course I did pieced and improv. Luckily before I started cutting tiny squares for triangles I remembered stitch and flip and made larger rectangles to accommodate. She also requested batiks and brights.
In spite of the colors you see, the background is a grayish blue and the letters are purple. The quarter is for scale.
Moving on to January. Doris provided all fabric, an assortment of yellows and oranges along with a black print for the letters; four squares of Steam-A-Seam2; and patterns for her letters. Her letters will be appliquéd. We make the 9-patch background and fuse the letter. She will do the stitching with the same stitch on all.
Since I had never used Steam-A-Seam before and there were no directions, I searched for YouTube videos, of which there are plenty. Not having a light box, I had to postpone tracing the letters till daylight when I could do it the old fashioned way on the window. Luckily the woman before me had made the mistake of tracing the finished letters instead of the reverse that would be fused to the wrong side of the fabric, and she reported on that fact. Otherwise I would have made the same error. I really like the alphabet Doris has chosen.
On to socks. There were two pair I had intended to show, but the ones with the stripes in the cuff got giftwrapped without their photo, and I was too lazy to redo the package. But I have one to show. I was shopping at a store I don’t use a lot (because I had a gift certificate) and most of their sport weight yarn was plain. I did find a nice blue/brown/beige mix that was appealing and bought it, What I didn’t realize until I finished the first sock was that there was no exact repeat.
I have a friend who knits a pair, one sock from each end of a patterned ball of yarn; she calls them fraternal twins. So shall these be named. At least the cuffs don’t look as different as that which will be in the shoe and not seen.
Imagine my surprise to walk into the Benson Hotel Lobby and see not white but green. It’s the palace at the Emerald City, yellow brick road and all. The road is more cream colored, but you get the idea. First a front view and a side view.
A close up of the tree in the center of the yellow brick road.
Chatting with a staff person, I learned that the construction is started in September and the chef likes to hide scarves with the colors of his favorite sports teams and snowmen here and there.
And the text that accompanies the display with the ingredients of this creation.
I got the easiest assignment this month. Laurie asked for only one letter. She also asked for appliqué, any style we choose. I’m limited to hand appliqué because my Featherweight doesn’t do the fancy appliqué stitches. Someday I might try top stitch, but meanwhile the only technique I know is needle-turn. And unfortunately it has been long enough since I have done that that I’ve forgotten some of the tips, like how to keep curves round.
Laurie told us to use any color or print as she wanted a scrappy look. And we could make any letter style we chose. She wanted 3-4-inch capital letters and assigned me ‘H.’
I remember several people wanting appliqué, several wanting paper piecing letters, and others sending patterns for pieced blocks. So there will be some variety. Can’t wait to see what we are all saying.
I just realized I hadn’t shown my letters.
All of mine will be the same color. I used Tonya Ricucci’s book about Improv Letters (can’t think of the exact title. Word Play, maybe.) I asked each member to make 4. I needed one more than that would come to, so I made it. I made the ‘w’ which looked like the hardest. I sent the book along with the fabric. By the time one follows directions for letters, it’s hard to call it improv. Oh well . . . It’s probably good to have one style of letter. Most of mine are 5-inches high; a couple are 8.
The quilt show has come and gone, and I got photos of all of our finished pieces. All nine of us managed to get out quilts finished in time. Three were hung so high that I couldn’t get individual photos, so here is a group shot.
Upper left is Nancy’s; she trimmed her blocks to 5 inch squares. Here are the parts when it was my turn along with my turn on Sharon’s (upper right). Lower left is Donna’s; she requested quarter circles. It seems clear that some members had a goal for their improv as it started. Here are my blocks for her along with a description of the project and the starting three blocks of my quilt. And you probably recognize my quilt at the lower right–the first photo not at a weird angle because of lack of space. Upper center is Myra’s. She had asked for hearts, stars, or whatever. No one made stars, and my ‘whatever’ didn’t make the final cut. Guess I misread her frequent mentions of not having to make hearts. At any rate, here is my block for her and the parts finished at that time. That post also includes Laurie’s elephant fabric, so here is the finish of it.
I don’t know if this was Laurie’s plan all along or if she got the idea after seeing all the parts, but to use our blocks as made fabric for the appliqué elephants was quite creative. And the fabric clearly lent itself to that theme. The treasure hunt is something added to the show to keep younger visitors involved. They get a small prize for finding all the clues.
Leanne had the cute bathing suit print and had asked for no black, so I’m guessing black sashing was in her original plan. I like the way it turned out. Here are my blocks for her. And her finish.
Liz enjoyed making the blocks but struggled over her finish. She claims she took it all apart and started over. I’m not sure if she used blocks as made fabric or if she took them apart yet more than that. Here are my blocks for her, and her finish is here.
I think Mary was the most creative and improvy of us all. She watched a YouTube on improv and applied a lot of what she saw. My blocks for her are here.
rIt is always fun to see variety from similar starting points, but I think this set has been the most fun for me to see develop.
Four days early I got all four quilted, bound or facd, labeled, and delivered. I even had time to read a book for the mystery book discussion group in the middle. It is good I abandoned the fifth quilt. My assembly line approach made for a lot of finishes this week,
First, Night and Day in the Neighborhood.
I think everyone in the group got theirs finished and entered in the show. I can’t wait to see the various results. I hear one trimmed her blocks to 5 inches. Another to 4. Here is a brief description of the project.
Next, Whirligig
This one is the Stay-At-Home-Round-Robin (SAHRR) from 2023 prompts. The project is hosted by https://quiltinggail.com in January. I haven’t had time to participate since that one year, but I hope it continues and if so, intend to play again. Here is the first post on this project.
And here’s a corner of the back. I didn’t do anything fancy with the back, so am showing only a corner.
I did the best corners in binding this quilt. Maybe I have finally learned. I was fussier than usual about the mitered joins being precise, and that might have made the difference. Also this quilt was more square than I usually end up with. It’s a good thing because the border would have shown if parts were trimmed off. I applied this binding by machine on both seams. The Featherweight got cranky at one point and stopped feeding–this on the first side. I finally realized that uneven thickness was keeping the feedings from touching where they needed to. So a little adjustment saved the day.
The next two are faced, so there was hand stitching at the end.
Orcas, the one with Nancy’s counted cross stitch piece for a center. Here is the first post on this project.
I enjoyed pondering different quilting for each border. I think the various ones hang together.
And finally Dreamline Study, the piece made mostly from Brenda Gael Smith’s Dreamline instructions throughout the year. I definitely intend to play with these more in the future. This is the only other post on this project that I can find.
Again I enjoyed planning the quilting. I had started out thinking pencil quilting, but I couldn’t think of any color that would work across the whole.
So until the show when I can show the pieces by the other Rippin Robins, Good Night folks!
Linking with TGIFF (see sidebar); have a look at other people’s finishes.
Instead of doing something simple like finishing one at a time, I got into assembly line mode. I made backs and binding or facing strips, dug into my batting stash for all four (found ready cut pieces for 3), and sandwiched them. Boring, but these are parts of the process I forget to allow time for when planning. Plus I’ll be glad to have the binding already made later. Then I quilted everything that took one color of thread before changing threads. So all are in progress.
The Rippin Robins Improv now has a name: Night and Day in the Neighborhood, and it measures 45″ x 62″. I did a simple meander as the quilting isn’t going to show much.You can see the top, unquilted, here. Here is the back, quilted.
I had those oddball leftovers from cutting the squares, and it seemed necessary to make the back a little less boring.
The other three.
The second Rippin Robins quilt with counted cross stitch center by Nancy. It measures 24″ x 24″. Gray and gold thread portions completed, black and blue in waiting.
Dreamline Study, started a year or two ago, designed mostly from Dreamline prompts given monthly by Brenda Gael Smith, but it includes one row from one of her shape classes. It too is waiting for blue thread.
And the Stay-At-Home-Round-Robin from three years ago. It was intended for last year’s show but got set aside when I decided to enter the purple and gold challenge at the last minute. Cream thread is in progress.
I had started with the idea of meander plus a star here and there then browsed one of my favorite books, Christina Cameli’s Free-Motion Combinations, and found Firecracker, a design using allover spirals with occasional points. I tend to forget to stop making spirals and make points, but there are a couple.
To be continued. Drop dead deadline is September 22, the show is September 26, 27.
I got all my blocks from group members and took inventory. There were about half light and half dark fabrics added to my basic two, so I decided to work on arrangements moving from light to dark. (For some reason I design from R to L instead of L to R. I think originally the way the liviing room was arranged, that was the easiest corner to get to so I marked measurements from there.) It took a day of fiddling with the arrangement, tweaking here then there. Here are two of the 5 or 6 tries>
Given the method we had used, edges were quite irregular, and directions had been not to trim. I considered three options: trim all to the smallest, trim each to its largest possible and mess with sashing to make them fit, or trim in curves to accommodate the rough edges. I would have lost too much had I done the first, and I wanted to experiment with no sashing, so that left the third.
I did the curves side to side as I made the rows. Even though I had started with a new rotary blade, it was dulling enough by the time I had finished that that I didn’t want to risk cutting long rows in curves, although I would have liked the look. So I had to decide how to make the straight lines.
We had started with 13″ squares. and I wanted to end up at 40″ x 60″ so first I straightened the bottom edges of the rows and laid it out to see how it measured. Close. When I approached the top edge I looked to see how much cutting away would shrink it. If too much I added a bit of pattern fabric to fill in a gap. (I forget which of the early “liberated quilters” said, “If it’s too long cut it off; if it’s too short add something.”)
So the top is finished. The sewing machine oiled and ready for quilting. Today I’ll make the binding and back and pin the quilt sandwich. The show is coming up at the end of September and I have four tops ready. Suddenly I no longer have “plenty of time.”
And the quilt has a name: Night and Day in the Neighborhood.
I’m not always a fan of the CIA, especially after having read about its roles in destabilizing new countries as they came to be. But this book, Book and Dagger, looks at a different aspect, the OSS (later the CIA) role in gathering and making sense of information that is public. It is certainly different from the usual picture of spy craft.
I don’t know why StoryGraph doesn’t show the whole of my last sentence, but here it is.
“I do not always praise the CIA as much as this book does, but there is a difference between the roles of making sense of information through analysis and that of attempting assassinations and other nefarious interventions.”
knitNkwilt 
