kuna-licious!

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Summer and IQA Long Beach go hand in hand for a terrific time. And this year’s Festival of Quilts did not disappoint. More on the fabulous quilts later. First, the shopping: mola shoes from Kuna Prints. These vibrant, one-of-a-kind shoes are hand made by the Kuna Indians using recycled mola fabrics.

Comfortable and stylish enough for a hike through the largest of quilt exhibits, they’re fair trade and vegan too. The only problem is … which pair to choose?

Find out more about mola shoes, sign up for a newsletter, or order your own fab pair of mola shoes on the Kuna Prints website. Or follow Kuna Prints on Facebook and Twitter.

What’s your favorite pair?
More about molas

button joy!

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Quilter's Home June-July 2011Seen the new June/July 2011 Quilters Home magazine? I just love that cover quilt, Drunkard’s Flower Path, don’t you? Looks like a perfect summer quilting project.

If quick quilty crafts are more your thing during the lazy days of summer, check out the article, Hot Buttons for the latest on whimsical buttons you can buy and fun button crafts you can make. And the instructions for all three projects can be found in the web-exclusive feature, Button Joy (click here to download or view pdf). Learn to make my embroidered button hair jewelry (below), Virginia Robertson’s one-of-a-kind stacked button pins and a decorative button jar.

What’s your summer sewing project?

Share your comments or summer sewing projects!

More Button Projects:
Cover Button Blossoms!
Bloomin’ Button Brooches
Fabric Ribbon Rosettes
Pocket Full of Posies (scroll down for Kurumi button tutorial)
Find Creativity in Everyday Life

crayon fun!

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Spring by Laura West Kong

A quilt for Earth Day! Spring was made using the Waxmelter Batik Pen, a fun and green way to use up broken crayon bits. (You wouldn’t want those broken crayons to go to waste, now would you?)

Broken crayons go in the top …

(This is the Waxmelter Batik Pen)

…melted wax comes out the bottom.

(The art comes from YOU!)

Color inside the wax-outlined shapes with thin, flowing paints such as watered-down acrylics, silk fabric paint, etc. or dip it into some cold-water fabric dye. The crayon wax acts like a resist to keep the paint where it belongs.

After the fabric dries you can remove the wax by ironing the fabric between sheets of newsprint or paper towels. The heat of the iron melts the wax and the paper soaks it up. The colored lines stay behind! Or if you’re not going to wash it, you can leave the wax right where it is. The wax lines give a neat dimensional element for an art quilt. You can melt regular batik wax, too. I’ve also decorated Easter eggs with my batik pen. Find out more about the Waxmelter Batik Pen and other wax melting tools at the Wax Melting Tools by Twisteez Wire website.

About Crayons
You probably don’t want to use those free restaurant crayons in your batik pen. Some of them got mixed up in my broken crayon box. See the difference below:

Notice the blue and green lines on the left. See the clear areas in the lines and lack of complete color coverage? That because cheap crayons don’t have as much pigment as better quality crayons do. Good crayons have more pigment and will give you bright, clear colors on paper as well as on fabric. The batik pen is easier to use with good crayons too. Sometimes the cheap crayon wax is really thin when melted and can flood out of the tip. The red and blue lines on the right probably didn’t come from children’s menu crayons. If I were to remove the wax off the samples above, the one on the left would certainly leave a greasy stain behind.

If you want some really fabulous crayons, try Prang Soy Crayons. The paraffin wax in regular crayons comes from petroleum, these are made from soy. They’re environmentally friendly, that’s why I’m telling you about them on Earth Day. But that’s not why I LOVE them … I love them because they are smooth, rich, and vibrant. They’re creamy and blend-able without a waxy buildup. I use mine for those cute vintage-y picture quilts that are hand embroidered with a stem stitch and then colored in the lines with crayons.

My Crayon Kitty. I should really finish up the rest of these blocks. Maybe I’ll make that my Earth Day project!

Share your comments or Earth Day projects!

More Eco-Posts!
Tip Tuesday: Give Blood … Get Thimbles
Muse Monday: Quilt A Memory
Bottle Cap Pincushion
Quilt Green 2009
Quilt-Cycle

cover button blossoms!

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Here’s a fun spring project: Cover Button Blossoms.  Use them with push pins as shown above to brighten a bulletin board, or try a magnet, jewelry pin back or bobby pin finding, or even scrapbooking brads.

Join me Wednesday, April 20, 2011 at 6 pm PT ( 7:00pm MT; 8:00pm CT;  9:00pm ET) at Wednesday Night Live in C&T Publishing’s Digital Lounge for a tutorial and more creative fun. Lynn Koolish will also be showing her fabulous fabric clocks. Hope to see you there! :)

sending hugs to japan

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Quilters are reaching out to comfort disaster victims in Japan. It might feel like spring, or even summer in sunny southern California or where you live, but it’s still icy cold in many parts of Japan. A hand-made quilt can bring warmth in more ways than one. Sending a quilt is like giving a cozy hug from across the ocean.

Maybe you would like to help but are wondering how. After all, it’s a long way from your sewing room to a Japanese evacuee center. Here are four groups that have the logistics all worked out and are collecting quilts for Japan.

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1000 Quilts for Japan | eQuilter and Mission of Love

eQuilter is partnering with Mission of Love to deliver one or more shipments of disaster relief supplies (medical, educational and basic needs) and donated comfort quilts, to the people of Japan. Quilts will be collected at Mission of Love in Ohio, then sent to California. The quilts and supplies will be shipped from California to Japan with the Air Force.

eQuilter suggests small personal-sized quilts for a child or small adult, such as 46″ x 60″, to 60″ x 68″, or 65″ x 85″. Visit the eQuilter website for information on kinds of fabric to use, backing, batting, labels and more.

Deadline: Quilts need to reach Mission of Love Foundation (2054 Hemlock Court, Youngstown, Ohio 44515) by May 7
For more info: eQuilter website
Support Mission of Love by donating money for disaster relief supplies.
For updates: subscribe to the eQuilter newsletter or read the newsletters on the eQuilter website.

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Surfside Quilters Guild and The Calico House
Surfside Quilters Guild and The Calico House are collecting quilts to send to Japan. The quilts will be taken to Vacaville and flown to Japan with Air Force personnel. The quilts will be distributed to disaster victims by a Binky Patrol coordinator in Japan.

Deadline: Quilts need to reach The Calico House Quilt Shop (1243 E. Imperial Hwy, Placentia, California 92870) by April 25.

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Quilts 4 Japan
Gail Hynes Shea and Eve Kushner of Berkeley, California created Quilts 4 Japan to help the disaster victims in Japan. They encourage quilt donors to pin an envelope with a personal note to the recipient. If you send them an email, Quilts 4 Japan will translate your letters into Japanese for you.Collecting: Quilts of any kind for disaster survivors in Japan

Drop-Off Locations: New Pieces Quilts, Berkeley, California;  Shiisha Quilts, Bloomington, Indiana; The Quilters Garden, Fenton, Michigan, Thimble Pleasures, Chapel Hill, North Carolina.
For more info: Quilts 4 Japan website

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Project Linus and Soldiers’ Angels
Collecting: Blankets for children in Japan and US families who have been evacuated from Japan to military bases in the United States.
Deadline: Blankets need to reach the Texas Soldiers’ Angels warehouse by April 25.
For more info: Contact your local Project Linus chapter.

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If you are participating in or know of another group that’s sending their love to Japan through quilts, please share it with us!

easy-peazy pet beds

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Got scraps? If you quilt or sew the answer is probably yes. Some of them you might save, and others may be too small for you to use … or can you use them?

I have just the project for you, an easy-peazy pet bed. You know you can’t resist those eyes!

After all, your faithful animal companion is right there, helping you through your every quilt-making journey. When you finish your next quilt, why not pick up all the fabric scraps off the floor and use them to fill a cozy pet bed or two?

Don’t have any pets? No problem.

Pet beds make a great community service project. In fact, at your next community service quilting day, you can save everybody’s scraps and make pet beds as well. Since I don’t have any pets (yet) these two pet beds are on their way to the local animal shelter.

(This is the part that Eleanor Burns never told you about: what to do with all those pieces of fabric that you so enthusiastically flung over your shoulder in your quest to make a quilt in a day.)

Here’s a pile of fabric and batting scraps that I’ve collected from the past month or so of quilt-making. This was enough to make two beds: one for a dog and one for a cat. A tip from my friend Jessica: If you’re making a cat bed, use soft fabric on the outside because kitties like soft. :)

Easy-Peasy Pet Bed

1.Decide what size you want your pet bed to be and add 1″ all around for seam allowance.

2. Cut two pieces of fabric for the outside of the bed (or use a single piece folded in half).

3. Sew the outer pieces right sides together all the way around the edges with a 1/2″ seam allowance. Leave a space large enough to fit your hand through.

4. Turn the pet bed right side out and stuff loosely with scraps.

5. Fold the open part of the seam allowance under and machine stitch near the edge to close the opening.

(If you make the pet bed cover ahead of time you can keep it by your cutting table or sewing machine and drop the scraps in as you go, keeping your sewing area nice and neat all the time. Although I have to agree with Eleanor, it is really fun to toss the scraps over your shoulder.)

Voilà! Now didn’t I tell you that was easy? Sweet dreams, furry friends.

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breezy

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Here’s a quilt I started in 2006, Breezy. It was a challenge quilt for FFFC and was supposed to take a week to finish. This was one of those “my eyes are bigger than my stomach” situations. It actually took more like 4 years to complete, mostly because I was hand appliqueing the wool felt petals with a few too many strands of rayon embroidery floss … if 1 strand is good, 4 strands are better, right? ;-)

Breezy
by Laura West Kong

So last fall I took it out of the UFO hangar, finished up the remaining hand applique and proceeded on to a much more enjoyable step: hand sashiko quilting with topstitching thread. Now I’m sharing the photos with you. Hope that it brightens your day!

Breezy, detail

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wip wednesday: dear diary update

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Happy belated new year! I have no lofty resolutions to share with you this year, but I have decided to simply quilt every day. Could be a decade-old UFO or a brand new project, … something, anything.

So far in 2011 I’ve finished a quilt that I started in 2004, made progress on a new quilt pattern (scheduled to be released in Spring 2011), and started stitching together my Dear Diary 2010 blocks.

This wasn’t the layout I was envisioning last year … I mistakenly thought I only made a handful of blocks and intended the open spaces to not only add visual interest, but increase the quilt dimensions as well.

After I started sewing the blocks together potholder-quilt style, I discovered this stack of blocks in varying stages of completion. Guess I needn’t have worried about the finished quilt being too small. I’m still glad I’m doing it this way, not only will there be less sewing in the assembly, I think it’s going to look better.

Stay tuned this year for further Dear Diary 2010 updates, breaking news on my new quilt patterns, and more quilting adventures! Although I’m not going to be blogging every day, I will be quilting every day and therefore should have no problem figuring out what to blog about. I promise to periodically set down my needle and thread to post a blog entry or two from time to time. :)

a sunny quilt for a rainy day

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Here’s a sunny vintage quilt to brighten a rainy day (actually around Southern California, a rainy week).

It’s a hand quilted, pieced and appliqued 1920′s quilt. I don’t really leave it out on the bed like that all the time. It’s too fragile for that. Still everybody can use a little sunshine every now and then, especially when it rains.

And here’s a detail for you…

Have a very quilt-y Christmas and a piece-full new year! :)