Stylin’ Set for a Stylin’ Stylist

My hair stylist recently moved into a new salon, one of those places where each individual stylist has their own suite. One of the benefits of this set up is she gets to decorate her salon, her way – in this case, minimalist, with a touch of bohemian flair.

As a “salon warming” gift, I offered to make her a lumbar pillow for her washing station chair. She chose teal and orange for the colors and asked that it include hummingbirds. There was actually a fabric called “Bohemian Hummingbird” available in that color scheme – felt like kismet, so I ordered a bit more than I needed and made a matching table runner, too.

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Of course, when I gave these to her, she said they were too pretty to use**. So instead, she has the pillow displayed on a nearby shelf… where it still provides a pop of personalized color to her space, but it’s away from the hair dye, too! 😀

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**No, really, it’s OK if you sit on my quilts, says the ghost of Mary Ellen Hopkins. It’s a losing battle, Mary Ellen, I reply; a losing battle.

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Quilt Bait

Occasionally, I’ll read a Where are They Now? or a 10 Things You Never Knew About… article, but I tend not to click through on a lot of Internet headlines. And I think I’ve finally figured out why — those “click bait” headlines aren’t really geared toward my quilty interests!

So, Internet scam artists, with that in mind, here are some stories I’d be willing to risk my computer’s security for —

 

paidpromotedstories

 

When I’m Not Quilting… I’m Biking? Yeah, I Never Thought That’d Happen Either

My husband has been a cyclist for years and recently he got me to try an electric bike. Turns out, road biking a lot more fun than I expected it to be and now we go out for joint rides a couple of times a week.

All summer, I was able to wear just my regular workout tees, but as the weather is turning cooler, I need some warmer layers. So I made a couple of long-sleeved shirts at Vistaprint that combine my old hobbies – quilting and crafting – and my new one – biking.

Can’t wait to zip around the bike path in these!

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Not a Fez, But Just as Cool

tardishat1

You know the saying “More Ideas than Time“? Yeah, that’s my life. I’ve had the idea to add a Doctor Who / Police Box ribbon to this blue wool hat since November 2015.

I finally finished it this weekend, 2 years and 8 months later.

My embroidery machine is wonderful, but what I really need is a time machine to get all my crafty projects done…

tardishat3

 

Getting LIT with the Grinch this Holiday Season

I can’t wait for the new animated Grinch movie coming from Universal this November!!!

The promotional movie poster was ridiculously inexpensive on eBay, which is a good thing, since making the marquee frame to display it was NOT cheap (or easy.)

grinchmarquee

But it was totally worth all the time and effort because I’m getting LIT with the Grinch this holiday season. 😀

grinchmarqueelit

Should you be interested in doing something similar, here’s some links for the various parts of this DIY project –

The Grinch Movie Poster on eBay

SnapeZo Movie Poster Frame on Amazon

20ct String Lights at Target

It’s Grinchmas in July!

I keep kidding my husband that I want to leave our Grinch-themed holiday decorations up all year long – well, he thinks I’m kidding. I’m actually dead serious.

Until I get him on board, though, I’m going to have to sneak my Grinch fix in during the other 11 months of the year, like I’ve done with this newly finished quilt –

grinchmasquilt

That Grinch panel has been in my stash for years because I couldn’t come up with a quilt design I liked enough to use it. Finally, I decided I’d had enough and spent an entire weekend back in February creating potential panel designs***

After narrowing those choices down to 3, I ended up picking a pattern of wide borders made with scrappy crooked blocks. With all the fun angles and bright holiday colors, the final design turned out appropriately Seuss-ian. At the same time, the big blocks don’t overwhelm the panel – it’s still the focus.

Side note, I think I’ve come to a better understanding what my customers go thru! When you request a custom quilt design at Whimzie Quiltz I typically respond with 3-4 designs to choose from. I’ve been told – repeatedly! – how hard it is to pick a favorite when there are so many options. After this, yeah, I get it now 😀

I chose a red and white dot Minky fabric for the back. But to keep the soft Minky pile from getting too squished down, I had to keep the quilting simple. So there are lots of straight lines in the green areas and oversized asterisks in the red areas. My hope was that they would call back to mid-century design elements popular when Dr. Seuss wrote the original Grinch story while still letting the quilt drape and cuddle.

The Minky backing makes this quilt SO soft and snuggly (which is why, ironically, it is named “Cuddly as a Cactus” 😀 ) I’m still not good enough at quilting Minky to offer it as an option to customers, but perhaps with a few more Minky-fied quilts under my belt, I soon will.

My Grinch fix for July is now taken care of – Whew! But there are still 161 days until Grinchmas 2018, so I’m off to start another Grinch-y project to hold me over ’til then…

 

***

As an added bonus to my weekend of “panel productivity”, I figured out a design for a leg lamp quilt panel I’ve also had for years (Hubs is a huge fan of A Christmas Story.) And I now have LOTS of quilt panel designs to suggest to customers who want a custom quilt featuring a large central image, too!

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4 Fun Facts About These Zia Sun Pillow Shams

ziapillows

The traditional Zia sun motif was created by the indigenous Zia peoples of New Mexico to symbolize the importance of both the sun and the number 4 in their culture. In keeping with that cultural tradition, here are 4 fast facts about these quilted Zia pillow shams I made for customer Barry L. –

One

They were a free gift with his purchase of a custom Whimzie quilt… yes, free! (You can find out more about his original quilt in my blog post Big-Hearted Zia Quilt for a Big-Hearted Customer.)

Two

When you request a custom Whimzie quilt, I typically provide 3-4 designs to choose from. Barry had such a hard time picking between his favorite and second favorite designs that the runner up became these pillow shams.

Three

So that they’d coordinate well, all the fabrics for these pillow shams were fabrics also used in the making of his quilt – except one. In addition to two Adobe reds and two turquoise fabrics, the pillow design called for two ocher yellow fabrics instead of the single ocher I used in the quilt so I had to purchase another.

Four

anasaziBarry’s was the first request I’ve had for a Zia sun symbol, though not my first Southwest-influenced quilt design. The very, very, VERY first full-sized custom quilt I ever made featured a Southwest pottery fabric and ombre greens. I called it Anasazi Fair because the quilt block is known as a World’s Fair.

This is a photo of a photo of that quilt because it’s been so long that I don’t even have the computer hard drive the image was stored on anymore!