One Million Pillowcase Challenge

One of my quilting friends organized a Pillowcase Sew-in in support of American Patchwork and Quilting's 1 Million Pillowcase Challenge. With about 10 people cutting, sewing and pressing, 53 pillowcases were completed in an afternoon. Some sewers even took additional pre-cut pieces for homework. Two local charities in Chattanooga will receive the pillowcases.

The pillowcases were fun and easy to make. Free patterns can be found at allpeoplequilt.com. Take the challenge!

House-warming quick knits

A friend of ours moved into his new home in our neighborhood this last weekend. After I got a peak at the color scheme of his kitchen, I was able to knit up some quick dish cloths in a 100% cotton yarn (i.e. Lily's Sugar 'N' Cream). It's fun to whip up a project "a la instant  gratification."

These are easy, fast knits: seed stitch (k1, p1 over an odd number of stitches), basket weave (k5, p5, k5, p5, k5), and garter stitch (knit all rows). Cast on 30-35 sts. with size 7 needle. Garter stitch was used on the row ends to prevent any curling and some cloths were trimmed with a row or two of single crochet in a contrasting color (an easy way to introduce an accent color).

I've made several of these dishcloths with left-over bits of cotton yarn for my own kitchen. They seem to last longer than the traditional kitchen cloths and are machine washable. You can coordinate yarn color with your kithen's color scheme and there's something comforting about doing the dishes by hand with a hand-knit dish cloth.

Garage inspired ATCs

Think the garage is just a place to park the car and store the melange of lawn maintenance, car care and home repair items? Think again. ATC (artist trading card) artists found both inspiration and unique materials for their artist trading cards "From the Garage" at this month's ATC swap.

Remember the first Apple computers? They were built by Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs in the garage, and since then, the computer world was forever changed. The garage's recycle bin and workbench was a good source for art materials including washers, nails, sandpaper, line for the weed eater, and of course the end-all and be-all garage staple: duct tape.

An interpretation of reality show,  Monster Garage, incited the saying on the back of one card: "You can take him out of the garage, but you can't take the garage out of him."

Whether you have trash or ATC treasures in the garage, when all is said and done, you can "Burn rubber from the garage!" on your way out.

Lark Books "Quilt It" contest winner

My quilt, Break Free, Take Flight, recently won the "Best Use of Hand-dyed/Altered Fabric" award in a contest sponsored by Lark Books. (view all winners here)
Original entries submitted to the "Quilt It!" contest were required to incorporate three of the following five elements: 1) bird/s; 2) mountains; 3) sliver fabric, thread or item; 4) recyled/repurposed material; 5) beads. My entry included a bird, silver thread used in the free-motion machine quilting, and over 95% of the fabrics were hand-dyed or over-dyed using shibori techniques.

Here is a detail view of the metallic thread used in the machine quilting. I'm awaiting delivery of the prize: a library of Lark's quilting books. You can't have too may books—especially when the subject is art quilts, quiltmaking, and textiles. Yipee!