Yearly Archives: 2019

Quilty Things to Read • 2 Comments

sarah • December 28, 2019

Here are a few of my favorite quilty things to read lately.

Books

My newest quilt book is The Quilter's Field Guide to Color by Rachel Hauser. Not only is it a colorful feast for the eyes, but it is an interactive workbook with a large color swatch library and 14 experiments.

In addition to books about quilting and fabric and color, I read the entire Quilting Cozy series by Carol Dean Jones this year. The books follow the lives of a group of retirees (and various other characters) who live in a quaint, retirement village. Sarah Miller, main character and new quilter, and her friends solve a variety of mysteries. It was nice to follow the lives of the characters through ten books, starting with Tie Died.

And I recently got my hands on the Feed Sacks book from The Uppercase Encyclopedia of Inspiration series which is so interesting to peruse. (I haven't yet gotten a copy of Quilted from the series. Ephemera and Print Maker are on my wishlist, too.)

Magazines

I am loving QuiltFolk. This morning I dove into the latest issue, Minnesota, while I had my tea. I love the slice of life feel as we get a tour around each state.

I've also really enjoyed issues of What Women Create and Where Women Create, introduced to me by Timna Tarr who was featured in an issue of each magazine in 2019. These are great publications for meeting artists working in a wide variety of mediums.

Make Modern (PDF) is another favorite. I love the vibrant color and modern designs. And it's a bonus that it's digital and I can load it onto my phone for on the go reading.

What are your favorite quilty reads?

I'm participating in the 31 Day Blog Writing Challenge with Cheryl of muppin.com.

My Five Favorite Finishes of 2019 • 12 Comments

sarah • December 27, 2019

For the past two years I've shared my five favorite finishes of the year. Here are my favorites from 2019. In no particular order...

Modern Antique Tiles

I enjoyed designing this piece for my Island Batik challenge for the Vintage Reimagined prompt. I used the extending lines concept from Sylvia Schaefer's book, The Quilter's Negative Space Handbook. Read more.

Enjoy Mini Mini

This mini mini quilt ties my smallest quilt ever made, measuring just 2 1/4" x 9". It was created in response to the Project QUILTING 10.5 challenge: Abecedarius. I enjoyed (ha, see what I did there?) making the improv letters for my project. I haven't gotten back to this technique, but will use it again in future projects. Read more.

Wholecloth

In this Aurifil Artisan challenge we were asked to use at least three different weights of thread in a whole cloth mini quilt. I used a variety of free motion motifs on this piece. Monochromatic quilting on a solid wholecloth quilt is all about texture! Read more.

Two Red, White, & Blue Minis in One Week

This is a bit of a cheat since it's two quilts (and I didn't make one of them), but looking back over the year, one of my favorite quilting projects was the week both my daughter and I finished a quilt for the Project QUILTING Red, White & Blue challenge. I love that my kids enjoy sewing and quilting. Read more about mine. Read more about hers.

Tula Pink Dress

I really enjoyed making clothes for my kids when they were younger... for some reason that came to an end (or a pause). But we pass along the clothes they outgrow to my sister for her kids (who are 3 1/2 and 1). I've really enjoyed seeing my nephew J wear the clothes I made for G when he was that age. And J loves them! And it has inspired me to sew up some new clothes. I have some new pants in the works for J, but I couldn't resist pulling together some of my favorite Tula Pink fabrics to make a dress for my niece who has just started walking. Read more.

FYI, Project QUILTING challenges for the 2020 season start on January 5th with Kim Lapacek at Persimon Dreams. There are a series of six one-week quilt challenges running January through March. (We get a week off between challenges.) Check it out. Join us. It's a great community of makers creating a wide variety of work from each prompt. And there are prizes.

I'm linking up to Cheryl's Best of 2019 Linky Party. And you can see my Five Favorite Finishes from 2018 and 2017. Stay up to date with what I make in 2019 by subscribing to my newsletter.

Year of Colour 2019 • 2 Comments

sarah • December 26, 2019

On Tuesday I shared my Top Nine from Instagram. Another fun IG activity this time of year is Year of Colour. It's a web app for creating a graphic representation of the colors using throughout all IG posts in 2019. You can also get a report of the last month, last year, or custom period of your choice. The controls have changed this year, but there are a variety of options, including organizing your year by date, hue, size, and brightness. You can also remove your dullest and/or darkest colors. Here are a few views of my year on IG, starting with the default view. Then I changed to show more colors, focus on vibrancy, and to group colors into smaller sections (for more circles). Size (largest in center) Size (smallest in center) Hue Hue (alternate) I feel like I have the most balanced rainbow this year compared to previous years, though orange is clearly the underutilized color in my work. To compare this year's "hue" view to rainbow mode from 2018 and 2017, I've included the two following images.