You know what a shoe hound I am. Guess what? I went to a Wearable Art Connection lecture by Margot Silk Forrest, and learned that you can PAINT your shoes. Oh my, I am in heaven!

I started with a pair of pale lilac Tevas. Comfy, but blah. Got hold of some bright metallic purple paint and looky what I did:

I’ve worn them several times, and there’s no evidence of scuffing or wear. I ventured off to another pair of Simple slip on’s, painted metallic aqua, with accents of royal blue:

Last, I had a pair of high heeled slip ons in a wonderful shape. After much deliberation, I decided to paint them an oxblood color, with deep purple heels which you can’t see unless your nose to heel with them:

Up next on the shoe painting roster is a pair of lace up work boots. I’m planning to do some fancy brush-work with those. For almost 15 years, I have regretted not buying a pair of black workboots with flowers painted on them. Now, I can make my own!

If you are interested in painting shoes or handbags, Margot has a book out called Sassy Feet, in which she generously shares all her tips and techniques. I really appreciate the fact that she also talks about the brands of products she prefers, because I could buy the right paint without having to do all the experimenting myself! Thanks for a great read, Margot!

Happy Thanksgiving! Gobble gobble!!

It’s a slow news day…

look what I saw as I was rinsing the shampoo out of my hair:

yup– a lizard somehow crawled into the ceiling light in my bathroom.  I quickly turned off the light so the bulb didn’t burn him, and DH came and removed the lizard to the outside.  Alive and well, he scooted back to his friends, with tales to tell of living on the edge.

Check in sometime during your Thanksgiving day preparations.  I have some fun shoes to show off, providing you with a nice break from cooking!

I recently returned from Quilting with Machines, a quilting conference in Ohio. I taught 5 art technique classes (well, 4, plus one fashion show featuring my Wild Onion Jackets). This was the first time I taught nationally, and the first time I had to fly all my “stuff” to the location.

Most of the time, when you read about teacher’s classes, you get eye candy with samples, or blurbs about the class itself. Have you ever wondered what goes on behind the scenes? Read on, intrepid blog-reader, read on….

I go overboard. I admit that. My kids admit that. My husband admits that. I even got a phone call about a month prior to the show from my friend Jamie Wallen, telling me that I was going overboard… and he lives halfway across the country! (how did he know???!!) But listen– do you want a teacher who is really super-prepared with lots of samples or do you want a teacher who just rolled out of bed? hah!

Side note on the rolling out of bed comment… due to early morning classes in Ohio (Eastern Time) and my home in California (Pacific Time), I also prepared by rolling myself out of bed every morning at 4:30am for a month prior to the show… so I would be bright and chipper at what was, for me, a 5am class!!

So, back to the preparations chez Wild Onion Studio:

hand dyed fabric anyone? Here’s what it takes to dye 30 yards of fabric:

Here are 30 yards of fabric, washed, ironed, ready for labels:

And because I am a list-maker of the first order, here is the back wall of my studio, with what my kids were calling the “War map”. The War Map? It’s a paper graph of the 2 weeks prior to my “box shipping day”, listing everything I had to do and what day I had to do it.

Obsessive? Or super duper prepared. You be the judge!

I was juried into the current fiber art show at the Elverhoj Museum in Solvang, CA called “Redefining a Material World”.  It runs from now through January 24, 2010, and it’s gorgeous!  The Fibervision artists have really outdone themselves, and with all the beautiful and inspiring work to choose from, I am honored to have a piece in the show.

Esther Jacobson Bates, the museum’s artistic director, did a marvelous job hanging the show, and I really appreciate the fact that she went out of her way to arrange for my wearable art piece to be displayed, along with the wall art.

Here’s the invitation, along with all pertinent facts.  If you’re in the area, do stop by for some eye candy:

It’s time to reveal the finished memory quilt!  It took me months of standing and staring, calculations, deep breaths, and actual sewing time to create this special quilt.  This isn’t a show-stopper, or a ribbon winner. Initially, I rolled my eyes in despair at the mix of fabric prints I had to work with.  I admit to saying some not nice words when I had to completely re-make those Basket blocks.

However, in the end, I believe that I created the best quilt that these fabrics–unrelated by color,theme,scale,print– could be.  The lesson I learned?  The fabrics might not have been pulled from a quilt shop, they might not have been designed as a fancy collection to be shown off in a glossy magazine.  But they were chosen with love by a grandmother for her beloved granddaughters.  The dresses were kept and cared for by a mother, and entrusted to me to create a gift that would bring the fabrics full circle back to the grandmother, as a special gift of the heart on her special day:

Thanks for sticking with me!  The quilt parts are all finished, and now it’s time to put it all up on the design wall and start sewing it all together.  Cross your fingers that all the blocks play together nicely!

See how adding the floating dark green corners helped create an easier-to-use sized block?  The on-point Baskets fit beautifully (and without lots of hard math and icky fractions) with the conventionally sized flying geese blocks.  The extra bit of dark green gets absorbed into the background of the flying geese blocks.

Once all the Irish Chain and Square in a Square blocks are sewn together, it’s time to start thinking about final borders.  My feeling is that the interior of the quilt is busy enough to call for simpler borders.  But since I have limited dress fabric remaining, I will cut lengths from whatever dress fabric I have left, and sew these lengths together to create a simple but colorful border.  I think I want to give the blocks some breathing room from the colorful border, so I audition the border with some dark green strips:

I have most of the components finished for the quilt, but I need one more:  sashing to separate the Basket blocks.  I decide on  flying geese blocks, to tie in with the points from the baskets.

Flying Geese blocks call for a special Flying Geese ruler in the Wild Onion Studio!  I love this ruler because it simplifies the math for me.  Yes, you could figure it all out yourself.  Go ahead, grab your calculator.  Meanwhile, I’m zipping away with my Flying Geese ruler!  Zip!

This ruler is made by another piecing genius, Lazy Girl Joan Hawley.  I also highly recommend her other ruler, the Lazy Angle.  But that’s a whole ‘nother post.

You can see the ruler, the dark green background fabric, the soapstone pencil I bought at my very first big quilt show, Quilt America, in Indianapolis, and my groovy new eyeglasses which make me look like a sexy librarian that’s my story and I’m sticking to it I am not old.

A few cuts, and I have my flying geese blocks.  One tip I learned from a Sharyn Craig, is to cut small notches in the corners of the squares before you cut apart said square to create 2 half square triangles.  This eliminates a lot of bulk in the seam when you open up the half square triangle.   If you squint (or put on your sexy librarian glasses), you can see the notch I made on the square to the right of the Flying Geese instructions.

Or you could just look at the photo below, with the casually placed pink scissors pointing jauntily at the notched corner:

I am home from teaching at Quilting with Machines, tired but exilerated! What a terrific experience; the show is packed with wonderful classes, terrific teachers (ahem!) and lots of interesting vendors. I overheard that next year, there will be quilts on exhibit, too.

I did not even take my camera out, I was so busy teaching, chatting, and laughing, so this is a text post only!

The best part of the show: hanging out with online buddies and catching up with in-person friends that I don’t get to see nearly often enough!

like: meeting Gayle McKay in person, after years of online chatting! We spent all afternoon and evening chatting about our lives and our twin brains!

Ditto Judy Whitehead (sodypop!) and her friends, Sherry and Kim. We spent a hilarious dinner together, and I got to hear Judy giggling throughout two of my classes. Good thing she was giggling, since I was using her as an example in class. A good example, of course. I am the only bad example. Well, and Suzanne.

I got to spend an evening sharing a table with Renae Haddadin, who I haven’t seen in person in a while. Keeping in touch via e-mail is good, but it’s better to hug in person. She scooted out of town while I was in class– bye Renae! See you soon, I hope!

There was another best part, too! I got to spend lots of time with Jamie Whallen and his sister Sandy, and my other bad example buddy, Suzanne Earley. I miss you already! Come to California, it’s cold over by you and I fear that the snow reports are gonna start up again from Iowa….

I met a lot of other wonderful new friends, and had an absolute ball teaching my techniques. It is thrilling to watch other quilters as the lightbulbs in their heads start popping on, and then the wheels start spinning faster and faster. I can’t wait to see what interesting things come out of my classes– I know I came away with some new ideas of my own! If you were in any of my classes, please please please can I see what you’re doing? It’s just so much fun to share!

Anyway, laundry duty calls. I hope to get the opportunity to go back to Quilting with Machines again, and I will certainly start sending out proposals to other shows, as well. If you have an opportunity to visit a quilt show, please do. Ideas are all around, and you never know who you’ll meet!

Put on your big girl panties, ’cause it’s time to make some basket blocks!  I chose a fairly simple basket to make, as basket blocks go.

My original background fabric was a cream colored floral that the customer had pulled from my stash.  She loved that fabric, and I made  all 4 basket blocks using it as the background.

I chose some of the more graphic dress fabric to serve as the basket itself, and some floral dress fabric to serve as the “flowers” in the basket.

I decided to float the baskets in the dark green background, in order to make this center portion the right size for the rest of the quilts.  Blocks on point are odd sizes, and I needed some way to make these 4 blocks fit into the center of the quilt.  This is an elegant solution to size control, akin to “coping strips” in a scrap quilt.

I got all four baskets finished and sewn into their outer green corners…

When I put them up on the design wall, the cream tone wreaked havoc with the white of the gauze dresses.  Since it was all about the gauze, I gnashed my teeth, and remade the baskets, substituting the very last bits of gauze for the background.  In the end, I knew it was the right decision.

But it was a lot of extra work!!

Now that the Irish Chain blocks are ready to go, I turn my attention to the alternate block for the Irish Chain blocks, which would be a Square in a Square block (SNS).

For these blocks, I used the lighter colored dresses, and in case you were wondering, the gauze dresses with the fusible stabilizer worked like a dream!  I was really happy with them, and so glad I could feature them so prominently as the customer had asked for them specifically.

One of my most favorite piecing tools is Jodi Barrows’ Square in a Square ruler, and out it came to make short and precise order of all these blocks:

Here you see all the components– the gauze dress fabric, the strips of dark green which will become the outer corners of the SNS blocks, the ruler, and the instruction book.

At the bottom of the photo, you see the ladder-like piecing, which is how you chain piece SNS blocks, the Jodi Barrows-way!  With a few twists of the ruler and some judicious and simple cutting, you end up with perfect SNS blocks.  Love love love this ruler!