He Likes It!

This is the youngest of my "fairy nephews" on the quilt I made for him (his mother refers to him on her blog as the "caboose" meaning he's the last one).

The quilt is a red white and blue version of "Sliced" from this book.

I think he likes it.

Blogger's Quilt Festival, Spring 2014

 This is my quilt, "The Black Box." It's 55" x 81" and it is completely original, designed by me, Lynne Tyler. It is completely "free pieced," which means it was made without patterns, templates and it is NOT paper-pieced.

I wanted the brightest areas of the quilt to emanate from the box, so the only pure white in the quilt is the opening in the box and, the white and silver rays and the fallouts of the letters O, E, and B. The words OUT OF THE BOX are presented in a rainbow of colors, to emphasize the concept of creative potential.

 The idea was the box was magical, so I wanted the box to make you think of a magician's hat, but still look like an open box.

 BEFORE ideas came out of the box, the world was bland and boring, so BEFORE is dull and gray.

 Magical explosions are always accompanied by confetti, so just beyond the cloud of "OUT OF THE BOX" there is confetti blasting around. The wavy line quilting coming from the center of the quilt also gives the effect of shock waves.

I had to find a way to make the black box show up against the brown background, and tell you it was a magical box at the same time, so the box is surrounded by rays of white and metallic gold.
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 Explosions, even magical ones, produce chaos and shock waves. My way of communicating that was to make "made fabric" from the background striped batik fabric.

 

 The narrow parts of the letters are 5/8" finished and the lower case letters are 4-1/4" tall. They are NOT paper-pieced. I kept the background fabric of these letters running vertical to emphasize the staid, traditional world "before" out of the box thinking.

I work for a living, and hear this phrase "think out of the box" often, and I can't stand it. I made this quilt to thumb my nose at those who are always asking for "out of the box" ideas. Ideas don't come out of the blue, they come from somewhere, usually when things get juxtaposed against something unexpected.

You can see more quilts from the online festival here:
Quilt Blogger's Festival: http://amyscreativeside.com/2014/05/16/bloggers-quilt-festival-spring-2014/

The Black Box is in the Original Design category, which can be found here:
http://amyscreativeside.com/2014/05/16/bloggers-quilt-festival-original-design-quilts/

Don't forget to vote for your favorite.

I'm a Bag Lady

I'm a bag lady, I'll admit it. I love tote bags.  I admired a bag like this that belonged to my son's MIL, "A," while I was in California. Yesterday I got home from work to find a box from her with this wonderful tote bag!  The tote bag I had been using for years to carry my lunch and other stuff back and forth to work every day was showing it's age. Now it has been replaced with this beauty.

Thank you, A!

Rainbow Baby

I always like to have pictures of the quilts I make with their people. This is the Rainbow Baby girl with her quilt, enjoying the warm weather we had over the weekend. 



I can't believe it, but this is my 1,400th post. This blog got started six years ago in 2008.

Cream

This is the cream block. It is fabrics with all cream backgrounds.

These are the nine blocks I have made so far this year.

Yes, this will be a large quilt, though it won't be a bed quilt, it will be a quilt for a couch, and I expect it to be about 60 x 75 inches or so.

Black & White block

This is the black and white block. When I was sewing it up I wasn't quite sure, but seeing it from a distance I am very happy with it. It will join the other color blocks in the quilt I am making from the scraps in the little bins.

Musical Fabric Challenge

Last month I attended a New Hampshire Modern Quilt Guild meeting at Twill in Nashua NH (the next meeting is Tuesday May 13th.

We played a game called the Musical Fabric Challenge, and these are the fabrics I ended up with. I might not have bought the peachy paisley (too wimpy); would never have bought the pink with white dots (too much high contrast); I love the paper clips, and the grey fabric with the light green rows of dots and triangles. The pink I like, the mini flowers, not so much. The blue is good.

Even so, I knew right away what I would make with them.

Birds. Here I added the wing fabric from my stash.

Again I used fabric from my stash for the wing and the beak.

The wing and beak fabric came from my stash.

The bird breast and beak came from my stash for this bird.

I always use a fabric that has some type of swirl or curve in the wings of my birds, and as you can tell from the last bird, I sometimes piece the fabric to get the effect I want.

Sunny Yellow

It's easy to sew up a lot of scraps to make one of these blocks. It's a bit harder to sew up ONLY what's needed and not have a lot of of "chunks" left over.  In other words, these blocks (which are about 17" square or so) take a lot less fabric than you think they will.

I am happy with this sunny yellow block.

LAX Kinetic Light Sculpture

I'm home from Los Angeles and my son's wedding. Everything about the trip (Except my Mom's black eye) was perfect.  The night before we flew home, my Mom and I stayed at the Radisson hotel which overlooks the entry to LAX. (LAX is the abbreviation for Los Angeles Airport.)

These are the large towers or "pylons" outside the airport, as seen from our hotel room.

I've flown out of LAX before, and arrived there when it was still dark, so I knew the large towers were lit up at night

What I did not know was that they changed colors.

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all night long.

It was totally and completely cool. I actually moved a chair over to the window so I could watch the towers change colors. They are "active" every night from dusk till dawn.

What a treat! I enjoyed it so much. My Mom said she hadn't seen  me so giddy in a long time.

You can read more about them here.

Orange!

The other night when I was sorting scraps, the orange bin was the fullest, (especially after making the Chicken quilt, with all the oranges in that) so I made this orange block.  Love, love love!

The Wedding!

It was a beautiful day for a wonderful couple.

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I took this selfie of the happy couple with my niece and nephew.

There was much smiling and joy.

Twelve!

Woo Hoo! I like these a lot. This is going to be a fun quilt.

*Sorry for the minimal posts lately, I've been really busy. More details later!

Red One

I love red.

Let's Celebrate!

My son and I at Duke's Malibu in Malibu Califorina.

My future DIL and my Mom. We had a spectacular celebration dinner last night. We watched the pelicans fly by in formation, and we watched the waves crash on the rocks outside.


(Note, You are not seeing things. My Mom fell at the start of our trip, has a black eye, and the side of her face is swollen. No need to worry. She is fine.)