Total Color Tuesday Returns! Woot! One Color and 3 Opposites

After something like a five or six month hiatus, Total Color Tuesday is back! We're getting close to the end of the book so I really wanted to finish this project. Since it's been so long, you might want to review past Total Color Tuesday posts.

This time we're looking at one color with three opposite colors.

So, for this one, you choose what your main fabric color is going to be. This might be your focus fabric, or just the color you start with. "I want to make a blue quilt," you might say, "But I want it to have some zip!"

Zip there is when you go directly across the color wheel to find its complement. (Remember that term from a few months back?) In this case, the complement to blue, using our traditional 12-point color wheel, is orange.

For this scheme, then, you also pull in the two colors on either side of that complementary color. In our example, you'd also be including yellow-orange and red-orange.

I dug into my stash. We've already established in previous Total Color Tuesday posts that I'm lacking in the orange department of my stash. That hasn't improved over the last several months that TCT has been on hiatus. However, I do have a fabric that's got both orange and yellow-orange in it, and then another that's got orange and red-orange in it. So in my example, I decided to use three fabrics to cover four colors. Probably not quite kosher, but it works for me. I could see doing a funky star quilt with this combo.

Again, if you recall, part of my challenge to myself on the TCT posts is also to look at the Joen Wolfrom 24-point CMYK color wheel to see if it would be different.

In this case, it didn't feel very different.

So now it's your play time! 

Put your linky here with a blog post of your own playing with color!

Found Time--and Some Quilt Progress (WIP)

So my eponymous (sigh) hurricane downed our offices server-wise (we're based in Valley Forge, PA), so I ended up with today off. I could've spent the day working on another closet, but I'm a firm believer in "Found Time." When you end up with time you didn't expect to have, you should enjoy it! Thus, off to my sewing machine I went.

If you've been able to listen to the podcast episode I posted right before the storm hit on Monday evening, you'll know I'm working on a challenge project for my guild. If you haven't been able to listen to it yet, you might need to wait a bit. The podcast host servers also seem to be down now so if you didn't download it the night I posted it, you might not be able to for a few days. Sorry about that!

So, to recap for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about--this is the Untouchables Challenge, in which the challenge is to use that fabric that's been on your shelf for a long time and you (1) haven't wanted to cut into it because it's too pretty and you're sure you'll ruin it; (2) it's a tricky fabric and you're just not entirely sure how to use it; or, (3) it's butt-ugly and you can't imagine what you were thinking when you bought it.

Fortunately, my fabric for the challenge falls into categories (1) and (2). It's a McKenna Ryan collection. In my podcast episode, I talk about how I ended up landing on the technique I'm using so I won't go into that here. The nutshell version: It's the 9-Patch Pizzazz technique by Judy Sisneros.

Right now the blocks are all just hanging out on my design wall--I haven't actually figured out my final layout yet. This layout was simply me seeing whether I had enough blocks to work with.

I'll eventually have it in a layout that helps your eye travel more and blends better. It's very low contrast intentionally--sort of a spa feel. I may do something with the border to give it more definition. Or not. Haven't decided yet. I need to let it brew for a bit.

I think the colors blend in person better than they seem to in this picture. Lighting issues.

I made a 9-Patch Pizzazz a few years back. This one is named "Roman Pizzazz." It hangs in my dining room most of the year until I switch it out with a flag quilt that hangs from Memorial Day to Labor Day (or, like this year, until tonight when I realized, "Yeesh--the flag is still up!").

It's named "Roman" because the focus fabric felt very romanesque to me. Other than the border quilting which you can see pretty clearly in this picture, I quilted the rest of it with climbing leaf vines to give it an ancient ruins-kind-of-feel.

Whenever you do listen to my episode, you can probably see what I mean when I referred to some of the fabrics blending *too* well in this quilt--you can't even tell that most of those blocks are 9-patches. But still, I like the colors!

Boy, does it feel good to be making progress on projects again!

Alice the Spider (Banned Book Challenge)

Alice the Spider
Originally uploaded by sandyquiltz

The only quilt project I can lay claim to for the last two-plus months, sigh.

This is my project for the Banned Book Challenge that Tanesha of CraftyGardenMom and I are co-hosting this month. I decided to do something that would do double-duty: It's both inspired by a banned book and it's a Hallowe'en decoration! (The yo-yos from a previous post are the head and body--I wanted my spider to be a little dimensional and appliqueing yo-yos upside down seemed a heck of a lot faster than messing with trapunto.)

My inspiration book is Go Ask Alice by Anonymous (edited by Beatrice Sparks). This book is a diary-style story of a teenage girl who, after being given a drink laced with LCD at a party, descends into addiction and eventually (spoiler alert) dies of an overdose. It was put forth as a real diary but has since been pretty much debunked in that regard. But still, I was the target audience at the time I read it and it certainly worked on me.  Although it's somewhat unlikely I'd have ever tried drugs anyway, I read this book when I was 12 or 13 (it was in my school library--thank God they didn't believe in banning books!), and I still give it partial credit to this day for the fact that I never even experimented. There are a few scenes from this book that stick with me--one in which she was hallucinating about spiders crawling all over her. So here it is, my spider, in honor of Go Ask Alice.

I imagine it's on the banned book list because I recall it being fairly graphic. It's hard to imagine it's been about 35 years since I read the book. If I read it again today, I'd probably think, "Yeesh. This impressed me THAT much?" Funny, since I was about the same age that I tackled The Hobbit. I pretty much read anything and everything that I could find.

So, have you done your Banned Book Challenge yet? You've got a few days left!

Banned Book Challenge Giveaway

Woohoo! Another giveaway! Tanesha of CraftyGardenMom podcast and I are co-hosting a challenge in October, inspired by Banned Book Week. Tanesha's living is based on books, and I'm just a book-a-phile in general, so neither of us is particularly keen on the whole idea of banning books. I fully support your right to read what you want and to make decisions for your own children, but in return I'd like to make decisions for myself and my kids. (Or, at least, I did when they were still young enough that my opinion mattered!)

So Tanesha and I have created a challenge for you. Create a quilty project of any type that's inspired by a book that you've read and loved that appears on the list of banned books. Haven't checked out the list? You may be surprised by some of the books that appear on it! This is the list for banned books in the last decade; this one is the list of classics that have been banned. Thanks to Tanesha for providing those links.

Your project can be big or small--it can be a wallhanging, a totebag, a mugrug...whatever you're inspired to do. The only guideline is that it needs to be "quilty" and be inspired by a book on the banned book list.

When you've done your project, post a picture of it in the Flickr group that Tanesha created just for this challenge.

On November 1st, Tanesha and I will go into the group and each draw one winner from the people who have posted pictures there. Tanesha has already announced what her giveaway will be. I'm still trying to figure mine out. (Give me another few days...I'll post an update here.)

I'm already working on my Banned Book Project. Go ahead--just try to guess what it is and what book it's based on. Go ahead. Dare ya.

Upcoming Quilt Show for Your Calendars

Just a quick note to let you know...if you live within driving distance of Rochester, New York, be sure to put the quilt show of the Genesee Valley Quilt Club on your calendars. It's a great one!

The 2013 show theme is "Magical Threads--Inspired Stitches," and it's May 31-June 2, 2013, at the Gordon Field House of Rochester Institute of Technology. Beautiful quilts, vendors, the works!

For more information, visit http://www.geneseequiltfest.com/.