Wednesday, February 16, 2022

Mining for Diamonds- PQ 13.4 "You can call me Queen Bee"

The challenge this week for Project Quilting was announced the day before Valentine's Day and it was competing with the Super Bowl and the Olympics. I thought maybe one of those events would play a role in what the challenge would be, but other than diamonds being a symbol of LOVE, I was pretty wrong! 

The theme for the 4th challenge of this season is "Mining for Diamonds". We were challenged to create a quilt that was inspired by diamonds. As most quilters know the diamond shape is pretty common in many quilt patterns, so we had no excuse to come up with something, even just a simple square in a square block, which is also known as "diamond in the rough".

 It's funny that in so many of the challenges this season someone says, I just made that, or the project I made last time would have been perfect for this. I laughed when the challenge came out because a season or two ago we had a challenge called "Craving Chocolate" and I created a chocolate diamond using chocolate candy wrappers, this would have been perfect, but I was not going to have a repeat of the two of us eating chocolate candy by the bag so I could have enough foil to create another diamond! 

I spent Sunday evening looking at ideas for quilt patterns using diamonds, and other diamond ideas. I really like the diamond in the rough pattern and recently quilted a wonky block quilt that used that pattern. I thought maybe I could do a table runner or something simple and incorporate a wonky diamond block. 

But my mind works in mysterious ways, and when an idea comes to me, I just have to fly with it. While looking for patterns and thinking about diamonds, I kept thinking about the song 'Royals' by New Zealand singer-songwriter Lorde. Now the song has the word diamond in it probably 3 times, and really has nothing to do with mining for diamonds, but I couldn't get the song out of my head and decided this was it. One of the rules of the challenge is that as long as we could explain how our project was inspired by diamonds we could do anything we wanted. 

If you listen to the video a couple of times my project will make sense...or not...LOL :)

              

I decided this challenge I was going to paint my main design and then do some diamond in the rough blocks to go with it. So on Monday evening while we watched the snowboarding competition I started my little design. 

 I then dug through my stash and found some scraps that fit my color scheme and stitched together my wonky blocks. I quilted around the design and attempted to quilt my blocks to look like diamonds. 




I decided I needed something bright and flashy to represent the diamond on the crown and sceptre, so I sorted through my button tin hoping I would find a button or two with a rhinestone on it, all I could find was one lone little stone at the bottom of the tin, so I glued that to the crown and embellished it with gold beads. I knew there were some bits and pieces of a geode we had cracked open in a jar in the kitchen, so I found one that fit the top of the sceptre, glued it with rhinestone glue and then used some invisible thread to secure it. There was a planned power outage in our area for Wednesday morning so I did the binding and hand sewing during that time and was done before noon! You can call me Queen Bee :) The finished piece is 9 x 22 and was painted using Tsukineko All Purpose Ink. 




Tuesday, February 1, 2022

Kitchen Influence - PQ 13.3

 The wind is blowing today and it's cold again, so it's the perfect day to be indoors working on something quilt related, good thing I have something I am working on next door, because I already have my challenge done for the week! 

This week our Project Quilting challenge was Kitchen Influence. We were challenged to create using food and cooking as our inspiration. 

My husband is a snacker, he is rummaging around the kitchen all day long, and then still eats 3 meals a day, this bad habit is because he grew up in a house where the cookie jar was full 24/7, and his mom spent her days in the kitchen cooking. She got up and made eggs and pancakes for breakfast, baked bread, made at least a batch of cookies a week, a pie or two, a cake, then made huge meals for dinner, and supper, and everyone snacked all day long. They also lived on a ranch and worked really hard every day.  She had a husband, 4 very hungry growing boys, a brother in law, sometimes hired hands, and eventually grandkids that all ate a lot of food & cookies at her house. 

We still live on the ranch, but most of the work is done with tractors, no one is hitching up a team to feed the cows every morning, so in my opinion, snacks & 3 meals a day should go the way of the old west. I would be happy if we bought a loaf of bread every week and had a peanut butter sandwich every day until the bread ran out! We grew up in a house where my mom said, "If you're still hungry, eat an apple"...yet here I am married to the Cookie Monster.  

My mantra is "I hate cooking"  and I complain daily about it. But maybe if I am honest it's not that I hate to cook, it's that I don't like to cook every day for just the two of us. Because when it's all said and done, I actually love to make fun meals when there is company or when our family is all home, and not to brag, but I am a really good cook. One of my favorite time wasters is watching people cook delicious recipes on instagram reels, and wish I had the ingredients to recreate them. I always think I could win one of those cooking shows where they put you in a kitchen with limited ingredients and tell you to create a 5 star meal without a recipe. But cooking takes time, and you have to be able to get the ingredients you need for fun recipes, and we live in the sticks so most of those ingredients are 100 miles away, and by the time you drive to get them, you don't want to cook anymore. Or you spend 3 hours making something, and there are no leftovers so you have to do it all over again 3 hours later! Who has time to cook when there are quilts to be made? 

Needless to say when the challenge was Kitchen Influence, I just had to laugh, my most hated place in the house! LOL 

I knew I didn't want to make a pot holder, and we have more mug rugs than mugs. I thought about placemats but didn't feel that ambitious. So I googled quilted kitchen gift ideas thinking maybe there would be something inspiring I could make for a gift. There were a lot of really fun wine bags, some towel things that would be nice to give, some cool little quilted covers for casserole dishes, actually quite a few really neat things to make and give. But what caught my eye was this fun little Bubble Bag from a shop on Etsy called Love From Beth,  I decided I needed that pattern and that was what I was going to make. In my dream kitchen I would have a fun shelf with a whole row of these bright little bags holding...snacks! LOL 


The lovefrombeth Etsy shop has all sorts of really neat quilted container patterns, some really cool quilt patterns I need, and what's great about them is most of them are digital downloads, and since she is from the UK makes it really handy to order and have it right away. So I ordered the pattern Monday morning, printed it and started the stash dig. I didn't have to dig far and this fun vintage piece popped out and said pick me! It was perfect. 


I had a green thread in my longarm machine and pinned a piece of muslin to the edges beside the quilt I am working on so I could do a quick little quilting. I picked muslin for the lining fabric thinking if I used it to put any food items in I would want it to be easy cleaning. But now after I have it done and know I am not going to put food in it, I wish I had found something a little more exciting. 


I don't like to read and follow directions, so it took a couple of attempts to get things right. If I had been reading and comprehending I would have read the directions before I printed them and realized that I needed to check the box on my printer that said print in actual size. The first bag I attempted was to small and the bottom didn't fit right, and I sewed the darts on the wrong side & there were ugly threads all over. So I started over again and thankfully my printer ran out of ink AFTER the pattern was printed in the correct size. I was also thankful I had quilted a large piece of fabric with the intention of making something else with the extra. 



It is such a fun little bag and I know that I will be making more, from start to finish, leaving out the mistake parts, it probably only took a couple hours to make, there is some hand sewing so that was the most time consuming. I did make my handle differently from the pattern and attached it from the edge of the bag before I put on the binding. Now I wish I had a cute little miniature Pomeranian to stick in it! 



So that's my Project Quilting 13.3 Kitchen Influence project for this challenge. I made lasagne last night so I know I am free from the kitchen for at least 3 meals, which means more time to make more cute little bubble bags!