Work in Progress Wednesday!

I'm still getting my sewing room back together after a weekend at the Northern New Mexico Quilt Guild retreat. It was an amazing weekend with 50 quilters in one room! I never had so much fun sewing with other quilters. Of course the encouragement, teachings, and inspiration was amazing.

For our community service sewing we made 100 pillow cases. I loved learning the simple "hot dog" pattern and how to do french seams!

I brought with me to the retreat a basket of scraps that I had put together to make stars and feathers. Here are a few of the lone stars and feathers I made.

I did a peace crane (#44!)  also for my pizza box. Here is one the I made for our teenage son. Magic mushrooms. Not far from the tree.

I am also making a beautiful Guatalupana bag for one of our Board Members.

And the most amazing WIP this week is Steffi's Dresses which I pieced all but the border. I am thinking of using something like this dark blue floral print.

It's just going to be pics today because I'm not in the mood to be on the computer. I have crazily decided that I want to do blankets for the kid's teachers and also that I want to talk to the Fiber Arts Center about doing a baby quilt class there. Anyway- That's all I got for the internet today. Going to sew, clean, and work in the yard on this beautiful morning.

WIP Wed - Getting Ready for the Guild Retreat Weekend!

Wednesday again already! Well I usually get to spend everyday sewing but this week we are submitting a Federal grant proposal so those always take a bunch of my time. But it will be submitted by friday and then my reward is that it's the Northern New Mexico Quilt Guild Retreat is this weekend so from 8am Friday to 4pm Sunday, the ladies will be sewing! I reserved myself a table for the whole weekend and plan to take lots of pics too. Its my first time. Fun.

So last week I ended up spending the rest of Wednesday digging around my sewing room. Lots of projects going on around here. 

This pic is of the next Morning Star blanket that I'm doing for Kayt and Victor. Kayt came over and chose batiks for her star and brought me lavender solid for the background.  Not what I would have chosen but she's sure it will look great so I'm trusting her and its her blanket. It's looking so beautiful so far and I haven't worked with modern batiks in awhile so its nice to be immersed in them for a bit.

Last week I talked about the blanket that I'm making with all my Mother's batik dresses. Here is a close-up of two of the stars and the new fabrics I chose for the blanket. A very special blanket for me.

These are the next feathers that I will put together. I am always making feathers for blankets and pillows and bags so I bundle my scraps every once in awhile to make feathers. The next pic is of some of the scrap bundles I made to become feathers or stars.

What I did this weekend was a couple bags. I was working on Malaya's mustache pillow but it wasn't coming together. Then I got this GREAT book called the Bag Making Bible by Lisa Lam which is an amazing tutorial! Here's what Malaya's fabric became instead of a pillow.

 The original pattern called for fusible fleece and interfacing so I did a second bag for myself but this time I quilted both layers and added four pockets. I also did the binding a little differently and double-layered the handles. Love.

Close-up of bag bottom

Of course I did a few Peace Cranes also. Here's a pillow with the 42nd Peace Crane. I added a little tag detail to this one with a piece of ribbon. 

And last share today is the beloved Naruto headband. So easy to please.

I'm packed and ready to go to the sewing retreat. Now off to get that grant done first. Peace to you and all you love... 

My first WIP Wednesday

Okay so I have never really took an inventory of my works-in-progress before. It's actually a  little bit scary. It probably will take me all morning to get good pics so I will just start with a couple projects. This is only my first week blogging so I am still learning. I found a great tutorial for how to add the button back to Freshly Pieced! I LOVE to look at all the great projects you all are working on and am so inspired all the time. So thank you.

1. First thing I wanted to step back and look at are these napping blankets I started. For my birthday this year I asked for the book Transparency Quilts by Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr and I also got a shopping trip at the LQS for fabrics to make one. Well I ended making four. They were so fun to put together that I couldn't stop. I will say for sure that it is much harder than it looks and I could use another try but now I will have tops ready to finish this year for the cousins birthdays. I also am taking a Craftsy class taught by Weeks Ringle on Design. She's great fun to listen to and learn good stuff. I am definitely not done with Transparencies.

 2. The second project I want to share is the Peace Cranes.

Well. call me crazy but I keep thinking I am going to make 1000 of them. The story behind the Peace cranes is so profound to me and the thing is that my community is located at the foot of the Los Alamos National Laboratory which is where the bomb was built that was dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Anyway. I pray about that a lot and I feel like I could lay down a prayer like Sadako's. Yeah. Call me crazy but this is my blog and my sewing room so I think Imma do it. Stay tuned...

The paper piece peace crane pattern comes form Margaret Rolfe who has a great blanket pattern from the The Patchwork Place. I found two other blogs with quilters that did some peace cranes too- Aussie Kilted Quilter and Fairyland Fiber Arts. Please post Peace cranes if you have them. I'd love to see them.

I am going to link up now and then go through my sewing room today and check out all that I have going on so next week be ready cause I'm going to dig it all out! This is going to feel good. Thanks ladies and gents for the WIP check in. Now to throw a blogsphere cruise. See you there...

Scraps of My Life

Wow. Look at this beautiful gift that Aimee gave me yesterday for me to make more cushions. It was a humble trip to Oklahoma and what special material to remember it by. It turns out that Aimee is a sewist and that Sean's mom is a quilter. She showed me the kid's blankets and it's so nice when someone can really appreciate the work that goes into homemade things cause they know. I'm so reminded of the red dirt and now I know why Victor likes his moon that way. Anyway- Good people. Good trip.

These scraps were bought in Oregon on their way down here to NM before they had kids even. I love it that we all have those scraps from our life that we always mean to sew or weave in there. It made me think about the things I have collected that tell my story.

I think the greatest scrap reconciliation that I am attempting is to express the story of my mother's dresses through a quilt. I have over 20 batik and other south-east asian fabrics that she had made into outfits and after she passed away ten years ago, I decided to save them all and her large collection of fabric. So I am making a blanket with scraps from my mothers dresses. I see other people do this but never realized the significance of working with this kind of material. Literally the fabric of my childhood.

Sorry for the pic quality but I just wanted to share an idea of what it will look like. The pattern is from Material Obsession Two. This is on the design wall. Each star is one of her fabrics. I'll get the light right and get some nice pics once its pieced. I next have to square them to 12 inch blocks and I have to be in the mood to spend that much time with my rotary cutter. She really would love what I'm doing with her fabric though.


My current scrap situation is fat. Kaycee made these great bags for folks for the holiday time and I've got mine filled with my snippets. It also keeps my foot pedal from sliding. Then I have these little drawers of scraps under my table.

Yeah. I like to sew barefoot.

Boom! Success.

If I don't get the blue and red morning star cushion done tonight for Harry, I'll give him this sweet 12x16 feather pillow I made last week. I really love this one. Not really a good cushion but still sweet pillow. I've been carrying Ze's around for days. Thanks to Anna Marie Horner for the feather design idea from her feather quilt pattern. I love making them.

Boom! The center points are much better! It really pays to take the time to cut and pin the best you can. I kept this one 16x16. Not perfect but already way better and only my second one!

Blessed Holy Week folks. Peace.

Uncle Harry's pillow

Well here's Harry's pillow that I finished today. Finally got the kids down and had a few hours to catch up for myself. Spent the evening leaning about blogging... and doing dishes... and reading Ninjago.

I didn't have a pattern for this pillow so I just logically reduced from the two larger Lonestars that I have made. They were cut at 2 3/4" and there were 11 colors. This one I cut at 1 1/2" and there are five colors.

What you can't see is that my points suck. Well only in the center. I'm going to try to pull together a another star before we leave for Oklahoma. Even if I don't finish the pillow I'm just determined to figure out how to get points on all my stars. I wish they had a class on it at the Española Fiber Arts Center, which is an amazing resource for all things textile. I think I'll request it.

Off to read and doze.

Welcome to my sewing room

Well. This is it. I am officially blogging. Welcome to my little world in Northern New Mexico. I decided to start with a few pics of my beloved sewing room.

My sweet new machine

Diamond's daily naptime on the ironing board

After so many things knocking me back the past few years, I decided to take some time for me this year. I am off-call for the first time in years. I work only ten hours a week now so that I can spend time everyday in my sewing room. I am so happy here. No one can hurt me here. And I am always right. It's so sweet after so many years of fighting the good fight everyday, I am so blessed to be a 100% mom more often and enjoy my family and our home. I feel like I am putting myself back together right now just like patchwork and I feel like if I just sit here and keep sewing fabric pieces together that everything is going to be alright. Yup. It's my therapy.

I am a woman of color, a midwife, and a mother of four. I am an Executive Director and a Graduate student. I am a beader, knitter, and singer, a dancer and a quilter. I am a 19-year survivor of childhood sexual trauma and incest and an inter-generational survivor of cultural genocide. My cultural identity is important to me and central to who I am as a lover of the Earth. I have walked across the country, traveled on a circus bus playing a tap-dancing bird, recorded a CD, and started a doula program. I have given birth at home four times and first-held hundreds of wet babies in my humble hands. I am a proud Filipina-American. I am a proud queer. I am also a proud wife to a beautiful man named Mateo. 

I am excited that I finally got this started and I look forward to being able to be part of the great blog community of creative folks out here. I hope some of you follow along on my blog about my Quilting and healing journey.
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