Pantone Color of the Year 2014

This year I am way late (surprise, surprise) in sharing the color of the year. So this is not so much “news”, but just sharing my thoughts and the colors in case you missed the announcements.

Pantone is a world-renowned authority on color. They are the “go-to” people who set color definitions and standards that span across all industries.  By studying designers throughout the world in various industries, they discover trending colors that are emerging as new favorites.

Pantone is a fascinating site if you are interested in color.  You can visit them here, but beware; you could spend lots of time there, LOL!!

Here is the 2014 Color of the Year, Radiant Orchid:

These are the colors from the Spring 2014 Pantone Fashion Color Report:

For spring, Pantone describes the colors as “a modern twist on the traditional” because they "pair soft pastels with vivid brights to create a colorful equilibrium."

The fall color report was just unveiled last week during the New York Fashion Week.  

The Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute, Leatrice Eiseman says, “This is a season of untypical colors - more reflective of the imagination and ingenuity, which makes for an artful collection of colors and combinations by the usual hues for fall”.

I think the spring colors are gorgeous, and just love Radiant Orchid.  When I was in Arizona  last week on vacation, I bought a paperweight for my collection that has the orchid, cayenne and orange in it.  And I see some of these colors in my sewing for summer!

You can download both color reports and read about the influencers (designers) who played parts in the color selections for this year.  And you can also vote for your favorite color in each palette.  

So, which colors do you like?

Another Lace & Pearls Block

Oh what fun it is to stitch!  It seems I have been so busy with other things that I forgot how much I enjoy sitting in my new stitching room and just embroidering and beading! The last  four weeks I took Saturday Bernina Owners classes for my new sewing machine, and then the rest of the weekend seemed to be catch-up.  This morning I got to spend my morning adding the finishing touches to Connie’s beautiful Lace and Pearls block.

My work on Connie’s lovely hankie Lace and Pearls Block 

The beading (above) of the tiny white flowers took a lot of time, but I enjoyed every minute. And I think it added to the whole feminine look to the block.  I also added some pearls and stitching along the outside of the hankie to define it better and give it a more finished look.

One of my favorite charms has always been this Victorian hand. I attached it with a “pearl bracelet” and “pearl ring” (tiny white beads). As well (and this is something I always point out), I stitched over the ring at the very right of the charm, using white thread to match the background fabric. This helps it blend into the background and “disappear”.   And see - the hand is holding a hankie!  :-)

This is how the blocks look so far together. They were stitched by:  Upper Left Purple, Elizabeth R; Upper Right, me; Lower Left Roses, Gayle S; and Lower Right Blue, Barbara W. Connie I bet you are soooo excited about these!  If not, I can always keep them!  (wink)

So, one of the two remaining blocks will go to Andrea in India to finish and the other 5 (the four finished blocks and one remaining unfinished) will return home to Connie.

We are also doing a Hankie/Linens Challenge on CQI (Crazy Quilting International) this year. I think I will upload this picture to the Challenge Album, too.  And watch for some interesting information on making crazy quilts with hankies (I’m doing an article) coming out in the next issue of Pat Winter’s Crazy Quilt Gatherings, due later this month on MagCloud.  Also, my friend Gerry is constructing a CQ piece of hankies and linens; you can check out her process on either (or both) of her blogs: Olderrose or Block Talk With Gerry

I hope you are all thawing out in the eastern US, and that my friends down in the southern hemisphere are not roasting away.  We are all due for some reasonable weather (she said as she looked out the window and saw it snowing. . . )

Hugs,

Back in the Saddle (Yet Again)

It has been a loooooong, eventful Holiday season, and I think I am finally recovered. Just so much to do.  I have learned that being the owner/moderator of Crazy Quilting International, a Yahoo group - very active - with over 800 members in almost 3 dozen countries -  takes time. That rather surprised me (duh!), but I had been a moderator (not the owner/“Momma”) of the group for years.  Sure, if I set myself out special tasks, they are going to take time, but I didn’t anticipate all the emails (which I love, BTW)  and other mini-crises that happen and need attending to. I have four other great moderators - Berta Partridge, Sharon Boggon, Gerry Hookstra and Wilma Van Wagensveld.  But sometimes the buck stops with me. And then we had our 2014 Retreat Registrations, which filled up in 2 days (I was handling those deposits).  I will post more info about that here later because we are also going to have a Visitors Day where others can come for a single day.  In a nutshell: Kansas City, September 2014.  I will also be sharing some other CQI stuff here as well as on the CQI Blog.

Anyway, I have been blogging and writing to all of you ‘in my head’ for weeks, with full intentions of keeping my blog going and up to date. Eventually, that is.  :-)  I think I am ready to finally show some of the pictures of my son’s wedding last June, plus pictures of our cruise to the Bahamas and my visit with my dear friends Carol and Woody K in Florida.  But that will be in a post or two.


First, I want to show you a quilt finish (a sane quilt, not a crazy quilt) that I did in December.  I had pieced this easy strippy mile-a-minute quilt top last year after Christmas and then put it away. The fabric is Kate Spain’s Joy for Moda, with a few other strips added in here and there.

I had the backing fabric (red Minkee), batting and binding,  so all I had to do after Thanksgiving was whip it out, baste it together and quilt it.  The quilting process was a freemotion nightmare with my old Husqvarna machine (about 15 years old). It has  been an OK machine most of the time for basic sewing and CQ piecing, but has always had tension issues.

Let me tell you, I was soooooo ready to pick up my new Bernina out of Layaway in December.  This was the last quilt  I was ever going to quilt on a less than stellar machine!!  And since it was going to be just for me to cuddle up in during the winter, I played around and experimented with the quilting on this quilt.

So, I am going to show a close-up of some of my crappy quilting. I tried to mimic the cording in the Christmas lights prints that meanders and circles, etc.  And then I thought “what the heck” and practiced anything I felt like.

So the quilting varies here and there to include stippling, pebbling, waves and a holly leaf.  See?  Even in sane quilting I am good at breaking the ROOLS.    :-)

remember, this is just PRACTICE!!

 But that’s OK. I love it, and so does Alfie!

And, in the interests of Equal Opportunity, here is a cute picture of Darla, taken a couple weeks ago:

So, I finally got my long-anticipated Bernina 550QE (Quilters Edition) out of layaway!!  I paid for most of it with proceeds from my Etsy shop, which I am proud of.  Financially speaking, going on the cruise and vacation was a higher priority than the machine sincethe layaway was 12 months interest-free.  Here is my new baby, which I have named Bernadette:

I have been taking the 4-week Owners Course and have completed 3 out of 4 weeks. Next week we will focus on quilting, and I'll learn how to use the walking foot and the Stitch Regulator (makes all stitches equal length when you are quilting!  YAY!).  The last week was a review of a lot of the heirloom stitching techniques that I used to do quite a bit of (pintucks and rolled hems being my favorites). I even bought a special gathering (ruffling) foot for it, so I am looking forward to sewing some cute clothes for DGD London this year!

My next goal is to save for a nice sewing table/cabinet with storage and lots of space for quilting and cutting out garments.

Well, my tummy is grumbling for dinner. Oh, and I am still on Weight Watchers and doing well.  Down 19 pounds so far, and going strong.

I will be back later in the week to begin catching up with CQ to show, wedding and cruise pix (I just want to see them again for the warm weather scenes!!), and a whole list of things. If I can find that list under this pile of paperwork for taxes. . .

Hugs,

More (and Better) Thanksgiving Images

I took some time to go through my myriad files and consolidate my Thanksgiving images.  So here are some more, and I think they're the best!!

Some Vintage Thanksgiving Images

Some vintage Thanksgiving images for you from my collection!  To save with the best resolution, right click, open in a new window and save from there.  Enjoy!

Lace, Pearls and a Magazine

For all you Crazy Quilters or embroiderers or art quilters out there, the new issue of Crazy Quilt Gatherings from Pat Winter is now available at Mag Cloud here.   I’ve ordered mine and  am excited to get it because my friend Susie Wolfe is featured. Her lovely Christmas Tree skirt, which she started almost two years ago (and I mentioned in the post about our visit to her home here) is on the cover.  It looks like the feature is a few pages long and has lots of pictures.  Believe me, Susie’s stitching is beyond beautiful.  It is meticulous and creative and a real inspiration. An eye candy overload, I promise!!  This issue is worth the cover price for Susie’s stitching alone!!

And I have been doing some stitching myself.  This time it was for Elizabeth, my friend in Kansas. We are participating in the Lace & Pearls round robin at Crazy Quilting International.   For some reason, her blocks really spoke to me, blue notwithstanding!

There were two stitchers previous to me who had each completed their own 6” block for Elizabeth.  One of them, Gayle, had used a piece of vintage beaded lace that she had purchased from me at the CQI Retreat in September.  To coordinate with her block, and since I had more of that lace, I also used it. It is the lace in the upper right corner. Barbara, who had done the other block for Liz, had made blue flowers out of Mokuba ribbon, so I did the same (although I reversed the light and dark) to further coordinate the blocks with one another.  Finally, Liz had given us the Irish crocheted lace to each include on the blocks, and I used that in the upper left.

The light brown gathered ribbon in the upper left was raided from a thrift store find and given to me by my friend Bev. The other laces are all vintage. This was so much fun for me to do. I am just loving the Lace and Pearls theme!!

My Weight Watchers weigh-in was this morning, and I maintained my current weight - no loss or gain. But that is just fine, as I have lost 16 pounds even to date.  I had my Thanksgiving day all planned out nutritionally, and now we have been invited to Cousin Carrie`s.  Some of the family is Jewish, so we will be celebrating not only Thanksgiving, but Hanukkah, which some are calling Thanksgivukkah.  (Does that mean that Adam Sandler needs to write another Thanksgiving song?)

Hugs,

Bumblebees, CQ and Treasure

When I get really busy, I tend to hyper-focus and forget about other things.  When I was a book-aholic (and had better eyes), I could read for hours on end and forget dinner, bedtime, etc.  I do that now with stitching and being on the computer; working on my Etsy shop, playing games, reading blogs or surfing Pinterest.  And CQI (Crazy Quilting International) takes a good chunk of my time (and heart). So, that is my excuse - and I`m sticking to it - for not blogging even when I have lots to share.  :-)

I am still doing catch-up posts in addition to sharing current projects and happenings.  So, jumping back to last August, here are some pictures from granddaughter London`s 4th birthday party.

She wanted a bumblebee theme, and we even had a cute bumblebee costume that she wore, with antennas, but that came off rather quickly because it was “too itchy”. I think it was a former dance costume (courtesy of the thrift store) that was meant to have a blouse under it.  So the bumblebee morphed into a princess.

London, Age 4

Bumblebee cake made by Grammy (me)

Eating fruit before the cake was cut

Grandpa Bruce and I gave her a great art station (desk and chair behind London in picture below) that I found at Costco. It is made of durable plastic and has room to store her markers, paint, etc.  Her daddy (my son Shane) is an artist and London definitely has artsy genes. Last year we gave her an easel/white board combo, so now she and Daddy have their art spaces set up together in their apartment.

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I  am still waiting for DH to download all the cruise wedding pictures (from June - my son Ryan and DIL Kim) from his spare hard drive (that he calls “Spock”) onto my hard drive. He was supposed to do that on his last days off as one of his “honey-do’s”, but he forgot. Ahem. Well, at least I got the legs to the kitchen table tightened up.  :-)

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Let`s move on to some stitching-related things.

I have finished my work on two blocks in our Lace and Pearls round robin at Crazy Quilting International.  These are 6” blocks.

The first block belongs to Gayle.  I really enjoyed working on this and did most of the work at our CQI Retreat in September.  The gray thing on the left is a Margaret Rose, one that Sharon Boggon teaches in her workshops.  Elizabeth Rudder refreshed our memories (with permission from Sharon) on how to do those.  They are time consuming but fun (and my example is rather lacking).

The block below belongs to Barbara W.  She asked us to add touches of black.  Her six blocks in this round robin will go into a wall hanging featuring a vintage silkie of a spider`s silk wedding dress shop.  It is so cute!

And over on CQI, we have started a program that runs through the end of the year - featuring the Etsy shops of CQI members twice weekly.  We do this in the form of Treasuries, curated collection of items.  One is a “supplies” treasury (think threads, ribbons, needles, lace, buttons, fabrics, beads, charms, etc) for needleworkers of all types. The other is a “gift” or finished product treasury.

If you fancy a browse, here are some of the Treasuries that we have posted so far:

Crazy Needlewoman’s Necessities

Sewing Southpaw’s Favorite Treasures

A Crazy Quilt Journey Red and Green Christmas Sewing Treasures:

Crazy Crafty Christmas Gifts

LES Designs Inspiration

That ought to keep you busy and out of trouble!  hehehe

Hugs,