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I have an Etsy shop now and it's open for business. I only have a few of my dolls posted so far but over this week and next I'll get the rest of my dolls and all of my quilts up there too.

I spent all day today on a conference call that would not end. Ugh. I finally got to hang up and guess what I found in my mail? My contributor copy of Simple Contemporary Quilts!!! I have two quilts in this book. Check them out! First is the super-simple-to-make Wild Zebra.I know this is totally gratuitous, but I had to take a closer picture of where it says "Wendi Gratz - Designer." :-)And here's the spread for Dancing Squares. Isn't the photography gorgeous?Finally, so you don't think I'm completely self-absorbed, here's my favorite not-made-by-me quilt in the book.It's called Two Trees and it's designed by Christina Romeo. Isn't it fun?

Now it's my turn to be home alone, so no dots today. Instead I'm posting a picture of the Dot Gallery so far.Don't they look fun all hanging together? I'm going to start cross-posting to a very cool new blog created by artist Holli Conger. It's called Big and Little Art and it features art created together by kids and grown-ups. Thanks to Elizabeth Dulemba for telling me about it!
And here are the results of what I was so busy with last weekend.
These are items inspired by the book The Year of the Perfect Christmas Tree. Gloria Houston, the author, gave the rights to her book to Mitchell County Development Foundation and named Spruce Pine, NC "the Home of the Perfect Christmas Tree." Now there's a website, catalog, and retail store selling craft items made my local artists, with the proceeds funding scholarships for local high-schoolers. Cool, no? So the jury deadline for items for this year's catalog was on Monday and this is what I turned in. I wanted to make something inspired by the fabulous Barbara Cooney illustrations, but that still looked like my work. Thanks, Mom, for helping me come up with this idea. One is a wall-hanging, one is a pillow, and one is a quilt stretched on a wooden frame. The pillow is my favorite. I love that picture of the cabin and I think it looks great "framed" by my brown quilt. Speaking of brown quilts, I finished my quilt for Grovewood Gallery. I just need to de-lint it, take some pictures, and turn it in. Yay!

Okay, I really went to Home Depot, but just around the back of Home Depot is a Michael's Craft Store. So, on a lark, I decided to drop in to their quilting section. Michael's had a whole array of stuff that JoAnn's did not. Please note my fist of rage as a result of realizing how much time I wasted hand stitching all kinds of crap on my quilt square. And don't give me any crap about the hand sewn stuff being more quilt-worthy than the iron-on stuff. Holly Hobby I am not:



Then, my street flooded. We had a torrential downpour and all the storm drains swelled. The street was filled with water and I spenty quite a bit of time trying to convince my neighbor to ride his wave runner up and down the block. He adamantly declined:



The last time my block flooded like this (around 6 years ago) my Nissan Altima was parked over there and got swamped by 4 feet of water. Please note the doggie with the demon eyes above...it is a pooping-on-my-lawn demon disguised as a dog.

Anyhow, it was time to get back to the task at hand. My acquisitions from Michael's ended up being mostly of the iron-on variety. I found a royal flush iron-on, a stacks of chips iron-on, iron-on letters that look embroidered, and a fabric marker I liked better that the first one.

So, it was back to my good old friend, Mr. Iron. And I went hog wild. After trying out several configurations, I decided to iron over some of my hard-sewn work in order to give me more room at the bottom. Then, I signed the sucker (it's really hard to sign fabric and it came out sort of sloppy) and here is the final product:



I would be proud to have a quilt with this lovely square on it. Of course, my taste is certainly in question. But here is the proud parent of the quilt square displaying his hard work:



The goal of this task was to not be the creator of the suckiest quilt square. What do you think?

For those of you who have said of me, "Eric Luper? Sure he's a nice guy, but a quilter he is not," I beg to differ. Recently, I was asked to participate in a fundraiser for the New York State Reading Association. I was to design a quilt square, which will be assembled with other quilt squares of other children's authors. The resulting quilt will be auctioned off to the highest bidder at the NYSRA fall conference and the proceeds will go to support children's libraries around the world.

Nowhere, in any guide about careers that I've ever seen, did anyone ever mention that quilting skills are important if you want a to be a writer. But I always love a new challenge!

Here is the quilt square they sent to me (please note the Hot Wheels car in the background to provide scale--I should stress that this is not a real Cadillac Escalade):



Oh, how plain and boring this quilt square be. So, I went to the local JoAnn's and got my first bagful of supplies. Included below are needles, metallic sparkly thread (red and black), fabric (black and red), some kind of iron-on adhesive paper, and fabric pens:



The women with short sensible haircuts at JoAnn's schooled me in quilting (as well as convincing me that the iron is my friend) and off I went. Here is the iron and me weilding it in all its steamy glory:



Then I moved on to the hard part. The sticky paper had to be ironed on to the "rough" side of the fabric. I have no idea how to determine the rough side of fabric, so I guessed. With two pieces of fabric (red and black) and a 50/50 chance of getting each right, I had a 25% chance of getting this part of the project entirely right. I liked those odds!

After ironing the gluey stuff onto the fabric, I made my shapes: a heart, a diamond, a club, and a spade. Do you see a pattern emerging?



Then I had to peel off the sticky paper backing and "moist towel steam" the shapes onto my quilt square. Here I took a leap of faith and used a damp baby diaper in between my shapes and the iron:



Can you just hear the steamy sizzle of the iron on the moist cloth? Then came my favorite part of this project:



And onward I went. I'm not content with simply ironing shapes to cloth, so I sewed a little border around the shapes with sparkly thread. The red shapes got black sparkly thread and the black shapes got red sparkly thread. This step took me most of America's Got Talent and some of Rear Window to complete:



Stay tuned to this blog for the rest of the exciting quilting adventure, which will include my block flooding, a betrayal by the ladies at JoAnn's and some wondrous things I found at Michael's Craft Store.

Quilting, cooler than you'd think...

Quilting, cooler than you'd think...

Remember the Ten Quilt Project? I showed pictures of the stack here but I finally took some pictures of them hanging.
Here's the thinking behind Build a Quilt Squares. Each square is its own quilt, but you can combine squares to make larger compositions. So here's an example.
Start with a Checkmate block.
Add another block and you get something different. You could hang them so the blocks are touching in order to really play up the way new shapes are created where the blocks touch.
Add a third and you get something nice and tall and skinny.

Or a long horizontal row.
Or make a block of four squares.
Or as many squares as you want. Fun, eh?
These aren't nicely cropped yet - and you really have to ignore the ugly trim in our temporary house. Hopefully we'll get official (and prettier) pics on my website soon.

It's been a great week. I took a couple of days off work to do some serious sewing while Jo was visiting her grandparents - and I finished a new quilt top! This is one that was requested by Grovewood Gallery - I love saying that. I still need to layer, baste, quilt, bind, etc. but I love finishing a top.
This one was a bit of a departure for me, color-wise. I usually go for brighter, high-contrast colors like this, but the good folks at Grovewood asked me to be inspired by the mountains around me now. So I was. There's a beautiful spot by our post office (I love our post office - they still use scales with metal weights and the postmistress has worked there since she was nineteen and she knows EVERYONE in town). Anyway, the post office is right on the bank of a river and when all the trees were starting to leaf out it was just beautiful. It was still mostly brown with the trunks and the leaf litter, but there were some patches of dark green pine and mountain laurel, occasional clouds of pale green buds on the deciduous trees, and one lone dogwood in full snowy bloom. It was a challenge to work with such muted colors (and I ended up tossing out some yellow-green blocks that just didn't fit in) but I ended up really happy with the result.
Please excuse the deck detritus surrounding the quilt. I was losing light fast and I wanted to get a picture tonight so I just scooted everything to the sides. It's still pretty dark. I'll get a better picture when I lay it out again to baste.
Now I'm off to finish a bit of hand sewing to finish a couple of projects for Lark Books. Crisp black and white with bright lime green!

I've been busy, busy, busy. I can't show half of what I've been working on because they're projects for an upcoming book, but I HAVE been making progress on the Ten Quilt Project (here and here). In fact, I'm just about done. What you see here is a big stack o' quilts. All I need to do is add the picture hangers and hang them up. But I'm not going to get to it today. I have to go out and buy more picture hangers and today I am not leaving the house. Jo is staying with her grandparents and I am going to sew all day long. That's right - I'm starting a new quilt - the one Grovewood Gallery requested. I've got my fabric bought, washed, pressed and folded - all ready for me to start cutting and sewing. Yee haw!

The subject of this month's Whiplash is miniature quilts and I really wanted to make one, but I've been on the road for work for three weeks this month and there's no way I can get even a mini quilt finished. So I decided instead to post a tutorial about how to bind a quilt - something I've been meaning to do forever. So here it is. . . How to Bind a Quilt.

First you need to cut your binding strip. Cut it 2 1/4" wide and long enough to go all the way around the quilt plus several inches to a foot. I usually go for an extra foot - you don't want to get all the way around and come up an inch short. Really. I've been there and done that and I never want to go there again. You'll probably need to join shorter strips together to get a strip that's long enough. Here's how.

Lay your strips at right angles to each other and stitch across the diagonal so that when you open it up it runs straight. Press the seam open and trim off the excess seam allowance. Your goal here is to minimize bulk. I used two different fabrics here so you could see the seams, but it's fun to use a variety of fabrics sometimes.

After you have constructed one long strip, fold it in half so that the pretty side is showing on both sides of the strip. Press it that way. Fold down one corner and press that too. You're making the starting point here.Now trim the excess seam allowance off the folded point so you have a clean, folded edge and not too much extra fabric.
Fold your binding strip back in half and press it all really well.
Lay it along the edge of your quilt so that all of the raw edges (edge of quilt and both raw edges of the binding strips) are lined up. Start stitching a few inches in from the leading point of your binding strip - using a 1/4" seam allowance - and stop when you get exactly 1/4" from the edge.Backstitch and take the quilt out of the machine. Fold your binding straight back so you have a diagonal fold.
Hold that diagonal fold in place and fold your strip back down so that the back fold lines up with the back edge of your quilt.
Line your raw edges back up again and start stitching from the back edge of the quilt.
Stitch until you are 1/4" from the next edge and repeat for all the corners.
When you get back to your starting place, tuck the end of your binding strip into the "finished" starting edge of your binding strip. This is why you didn't start stitching that binding down right from the start - you need that first few inches free for tucking and folding. Trim away as much excess fabric as you can and continue stitching down the binding strip until you meet your starting stitches. Backstitch and you're almost done.I like to wait until I get my binding on before I trim away the excess batting and backing. Do that now using a straight edge and rotary cutter. Trim it right to your raw edges but be careful not to cut through the folded parts of your binding at the corners.
Now you have some hand-sewing to do. Put in a movie and enjoy it. Start in the middle of a side - not at a corner. Turn the folded edge of your binding strip to the back and stitch it down with small stitches. Don't take your needle all the way through the front - you don't want stitches showing on the front side. Just take it through the backing and batting.

When you turn those corners right-side-out they will make perfect mitered corners. If those corners are loose at all you can tack in a couple of stitches, but it's usually not necessary. I do usually take a few stitches into the bit where the start and end of the binding overlap.

Sign the back and you're done.

Alan's certainly been a busy blogger lately - I know it looks like I haven't done anything, but that's just because I've been on the road for work almost nonstop and it doesn't really work to take my sewing machine with me (yes - I have tried it but hotel rooms are not laid out for sewing). Anyway - I have been working and I do have news.
Drum roll please. . .
Grovewood Gallery - only the BEST gallery in Asheville, NC - is carrying my work! That's right folks. They took the red Wonky Squares that will appear in Simple Contemporary Quilts (coming soon from Lark Books), Sprinkles (to show a customer who may want it in a larger size), and they want one more - so that's one more wonderful thing on my to do list. I'm auditioning some of the colors we talked about here.



Speaking of my to do list - I have finished two of the Ten-Quilt-Project. I call them Build a Quilt squares. These are small (17" x 17") quilts stretched on wooden frames and designed to stand alone or play well with others. Please ignore the incredibly ugly trim in the picture - this is just a temporary house. We keep repeating that over and over. . .

Finally, I've sold a couple more small projects to Lark Books that have to stay secret because they want them to be new when the book comes out. So no pictures but they will be very cute. I promise.
See? I've been working. Just not very good about sharing.

I love starting a new project - and today I started ten. That's right - ten new projects. I'm working on some small projects that will coordinate. It's a new thing I've been wanting to try for quite a while and I think my first project in our new home is the perfect time to finally try that something new. I love red and aqua together so I'm going with it again. For now - it's all strips. . .

Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria by Kyra E. Hicks, illustrated by Lee Edward Födi, 2007

The huge International Quilt Festival held each year in Houston, Texas is the Olympic Games and Super Bowl of quilting. The works on display there approach the realm of the gods. Fine arts majors and fiber artists create works of such rarity and splendor; I can only bow to their mastery and talent. It is a feast.

I attended the West Houston Quilt Guild's show on yonder weekend. It was a wonderful display of talent, color and love. These were the kind of quilts I might achieve myself. There was a quilt that was created as a fundraiser for a local high school band. I recognized the uniforms and enjoyed the music motif fabrics. I might do something like that for our high school choir. What a good idea!

Another quilt incorporated blocks I am making myself. I admired and pondered the setting and the framing borders. Should I do that? Do I like the way the blocks were set? I might try putting them on point. That would be an interesting variation.

This all put me in mind of the true story of Martha Ann who was born into slavery in 1817 and whose freedom was purchased by her father when she was twelve years old. He moved the family to Liberia in 1830 to begin a new and free life. Martha Ann watched the British Navy protect the Liberian coastline from slavers. Her personal gratitude to the British extended to Queen Victoria and it became her lifelong dream to thank the queen in person. The idea of presenting a gift to the queen grew in her mind and she began work on a coffee tree design quilt.

Finally at the age of seventy six, she traveled to England, met Queen Victoria and presented her with the quilt. Her dream was realized.

This story rings so true to me as a quilter. There is no more personal or love filled gift than a quilt. I have blocks, fabric and ideas for quilts in progress and quilts yet to come that already have the name of a dear one attached to them. I can absolutely understand Martha Ann's gift.


Quilter and author Kyra E. Hicks blogs at Black Threads

More reviews at:
A Chair, A Fireplace & A Tea Cozy with additional links about the story

Devas T. Rants and Raves!

Book Buds

SistahCraft

I'm a huge Ed Emberley fan and we got Jo a couple of his Picture Pie books for Solstice. We made lots of pictures from construction paper - but the whole time I was thinking that these would make great applique patterns. We've been pretty busy lately getting the house on the market, but I did get this bit of crafting done.





















I made the mistake of using some fusible batting scraps and quilting the pieces before I did the satin stitching on the applique. My machine didn't like satin stitching through so many layers (especially since one of the fabrics I used was a thick upholstery fabric) but we survived and now this is my new favorite purse. I think these birds are from Ed Emberley's Picture Pie 2, but those books just got packed up so now I can't check to be sure.

I love starting a new quilt. This one I'm calling Sprinkles because I think it looks like hot fudge with sprinkles on it. Jo calls it the donut quilt - for the same reason. She especially likes that the sprinkles are HUGE. I've got all my blocks pieced and ready to assemble - and I hope to have the whole thing finished by the end of next week. It's twin-sized, so I think I can do it.

I've learned one very important lesson already with this quilt - new rotary cutting blades are good! I don't think I've EVER (and I've been quilting for a few years now) put in a new blade. It gets dull so gradually that you don't really notice. Did I always have to push this hard to get a clean cut? It wasn't until I actually nicked the blade (and had to cut everything twice to catch the part that the nick missed) that I finally got a new one. What a difference!