Flowing along

My fingers are a little sore, but my mental state is optimistic after a week of sewing together microhexies:

Sunset over the river...taking shape!

Mini Neighborhood Class

It's the first Sunday of the month = time for another monthly mini class! This month's project was Neighborhood, which is a super-fast log cabin technique. We talked in class about doing this as a stitch-and-flip project; it would be a fast way to make a big quilt-as-you-go project.

Teaching this class is making me feel like a quilting midwife -- here are today's projects!

Liz used a friend's photo of a flicker as her centerpiece. Love that dotty background!

Sue's chicken coop is awesome! We learned that a fat quarter is JUST enough to do the background when you use a directional print like these eggs. Don't you just want to hang this in your kitchen and tuck into a big fluffy omelet??

Sara made this adorable little bird project. She has really gotten into the spirit of the whole
"Modern Patchwork" thing !

Tina used a terrific retro print surrounded by some sewing-motif prints; she's going to add a thought-bubble applique that says "Will the glamour never end?" Ha!

This is my class sample. A little plain but I like the sun. I'm hoping that some quilting will jazz it up a bit...

River progress (Catching up, step 1)

Have you missed me, my quilting peeps? (There must be at least five of you out there!) My teaching semester ended today, so it's time for a full-on dive into summer stitchery. I have several commission projects to finish up and share, a finished Jethro Gibbs top, a few birthday shirts (one done, one waiting for a boy-free house to be sewn), projects for the quilt classes that I'm teaching, and a few other odds and ends waiting for my attention as well. Here's the current state of my River Challenge project; I'll be stitching together the sunset hexies starting tonight!

River Challenge micro-hexies

Sexy Pixels: The Mark Harmon Quilt (Season 2, Episode 1)

After a lengthy camera-free hiatus, our series returns with the completion of the bottom two rows and the upper-right sections as well. Tune in for the continuing story, in which we make our way to those gorgeous piercing eyes...

oh yes

Micro Hex update

I haven't posted an update in a while on my teensy hexagon river project. I started by cutting one strip of 11 paper templates, then cutting one fabric snippet, basting it, and sewing it on. One. At. A. Time. This did not go quickly. My new strategy is much different -- I have decided to do only one task at a time, so I have been alternating between cutting big piles of paper templates, rough cutting stacks of fabric hexagons, and basting the fabric onto the papers until I can't stand holding the needle anymore. My thinking behind this (other than working more efficiently) is that I will be able to arrange the different colors like a jigsaw puzzle to make a scene emerge. I am concentrating mostly on natural-colored batiks, but that runs a pretty broad gamut from rocky landscape to magenta sunset. I love moving back and forth from bright corals to forest greens. I have to confess, though, that combing through the quilt shop trash cans for even the scantest scraps (even smaller than an inch square!!) is making me feel like a quilting hobo. I got my camera back yesterday so I'm finally able to share a photo of what I've got so far:

The micro-hex river landscape is starting to shape up!

Pixelated Lips: The Mark Harmon Quilt (Season 1, Episode 2)

In which the luscious lips are pixelated and stitched:

The complete bottom row of the Mark Harmon/Jethro Gibbs (NCIS) quilt.

Heartthrob Pixelation: The Mark Harmon Quilt (Season 1, Episode 1)

Craftsy has a new "Pictures to Pixels Quilts" class that teaches you to take a detail of a photo -- any photo -- and convert it to a simple pixel grid, which you can then turn into a quilt. I signed up (it's free--my magic word!) and was really impressed at Caro Sheridan's clever use of Excel. Last week at open sew, my friend Debbie was joking around (I think) and suggested that I make a Mark Harmon quilt because of her NCIS addiction.

Challenge extended.

I did a little Google image searching and found some black and white headshots of MH. (Actually, it's kind of creepy how many photos there are of him.) Here's the one I decided to start with; I liked the stark white background for contrast, and the profile (oh that jawline, eh ladies?).

Mark Harmon: 

I pulled the JPEG into Photoshop and messed around with cropping, the image size settings, and limited the color palette to only eight shades of grey. Here's what it spit out for me:

Jethro Gibbs: Photoshopped image

I dumped this into Excel and followed Caro's instructions -- which were exceptionally clear -- and ended up with the following grid:

Jethro Gibbs: Excel-generated pattern

That was the hard part. Debbie and I picked out a nice run of eight shades of grey (only forty-two to go!) on Saturday, at which point I couldn't wait to get started.

The first two segments went right together; the process now feels like a giant counted cross-stitch project. I did discover, however, that this is not a project for sleepy evenings, because some of the shadings are created by using the backs of fabrics, and a tired mind doesn't always remember to flip the fabric upside-down. (ribbit, ribbit)

Jethro Gibbs, Episode One