The History Quilter: Anna Maria Horner

Showing posts with label Anna Maria Horner. Show all posts

Thursday, April 23, 2015

Catching Up: Various Things I've Been Working On

First up, I am a member of the Long Beach Modern Quilt Guild! We began last year but didn't formally become a guild until January. As I live roughly half way between the Los Angeles and Orange County Modern Quilt Guild locations, neither one was particularly easy to get to.

I'm so happy to be a part of this great group of creative people.

We participated in the Quilt Con Charity Quilt Challenge and our quilt was sent to QuiltCon in Austin, TX. One of those circles is mine!

Long Beach Modern Quilt Guild Charity Challenge Quilt

The long term substitute assignment I recently completed was for a gal whom had a beautiful baby girl in January. I had to make something for the baby so I decided to make two receiving blankets which were inspired by the kits sold by Anna Maria Horner. I followed the tutorial by Rachel at Stitched Together as it was excellent. I used Anna Maria Horner voile and Robert Kaufman flannel. These two fabrics together are a light and luxurious combination!

Voile/Flannel Receiving Blankets

I used two different binding methods: the bottom I created my own bias binding and used a blanket stitch to sew - and it took forever. (hence, the two different biding methods) The top blanket is done in an easier machine binding style (can't remember what the formal name is!) that I would normally use on a mug rug.

Voile/Flannel Receiving Blankets

So happy with my front yard! Love the bulbine and autumn moor grass.

Eggs...such perfect food. Especially with vegetables and goat cheese.

Baby quilt in progress:

Enjoy your Thursday,

:)Susan

Monday, June 30, 2014

Blueberry Pie and Little Pants

Things I completed, pondered, and puzzled over this past weekend....

Quick Change Trousers from Anna Maria Horner's Handmade Beginnings

So Cute!

They're reversible....fun eh?

Since the remodel has been completed, I have increased my flower purchasing 1,000%.

Trader Joe's is thanking me.

I made pie. Blueberry. Delicious.

Isn't pie perfect for summer?

This is the light next to my front door. Found these lights (there are 5 more around the front) at Lamps Plus, thought they were perfect and bought them. See the light bulb? It's an Edison Style Light Bulb which I adore. Problem though - the bulbs are $8.00 each!

I need a job to afford the bulb.

My tomato garden is coming along nicely.

Thankfully I have enough sun to grow these babies.

Puzzling though is my Lemon Tree - it's not doing very well and the two flowering plum (do not produce fruit) next to it have both died.

Sick lemon tree = trip to the nursery

My north side neighbors have this cool cactus which I see outside my kitchen window and right now it is blooming.

Yum - cactus pear coming soon.

Kinda ugly, right? Yea that's the north side of my house just outside the kitchen window and door. A new block wall went in about six weeks ago and new wood/iron gates are on order to finish the project.

Gate guy is MIA!

So now the joke is the "ghetto gate"(there is graffiti that was scratched out on the other side) is here to stay.

Time to hunt down the gate guy.

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Ciao~

Susan

Monday, May 14, 2012

Weekend Wrap Up

Here are a few of the things I did this past weekend:

Tested my backyard soil. Used a basic $3.00 kit from Lowe's. Followed the directions and took my results to my favorite nursery.

Purchased the amendments that I needed and got to work with the tiller. Honestly, it was fun.

Attended the CSULB Department of History Awards Banquet to receive the scholarship I won. Had a great time and was very pleased to visit with the instructor who insisted that I apply. She is a gem.

Worked on a cake for a guest blogpost coming up this Wednesday at Sew Bittersweet Designs.

Planted my new "babies" as I like to call them. Three different tomatoes, four different peppers, zucchini, eggplant and a Big Max pumpkin. I'll explain it all on the next podcast.

Got the younger son out in the front yard with me to add a bit more color. He added the muscle to work on tree roots growing from the big tree to the right.

Saw this and absolutely loved it: There is a point in the movie where one of the characters describes India as a an "assault on all of the senses" at which point I nodded (to whom?) as I knew exactly what she was talking about. Someday soon I'll post about my experiences in India.

And I sewed....worked for hours on the bodice for the Evening Empire Dress. The seam ripper and I had some serious discussions on Sunday as it took me three times to get the bodice sewed together correctly. All that's left is the zipper and hemming.

What did you do over the weekend?
Susan

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

WIP Wednesday: As fast as I can

Another finish for the week :

Anna Maria Horner's Sidewalk Satchel

Seriously just finished this up about 10 minutes ago and now working as fast as I can to post this so I can get to Yoga class at 2pm! Just as with AMH's Multi-Tasker Tote I made in January, the pattern directions were very clear and fairly easy to follow. As with food recipes, I just read them over and over again to make sure I understood what was instructed before I proceeded.

Here's a photo to give you some perspective on how big it is.

Does the state of this room look familiar to any of you? I'm not embarrassed...it's not my room!

Quilts still working on:

Italian Sorbetto

School Yard

Sliced Coins

Please visit Lee at Freshly Pieced to see what other's are working in this week.

One more thing.......

For those food lovers out there...

Have a great rest of your Wednesday....I know I will.

Ciao,

Susan

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

First Finish for 2011

I have wanted to make the Multi-Tasker Tote from Anna Maria Horner for almost a year now. With Holiday gifts done, I was able to make some great headway just after Christmas and then finally finished the bag today.

First thing I learned - this bag is BIG! I have to learn to look at finished measurements to get an idea of how big what I am intending to make really is. This sounds dumb but I have no idea if I will actually use this bag as I hardly carry anything around. Cell phone, sunglasses, wallet and a pen - that is all I carry in my purse. Cutting this pattern in half would have worked better for me, but I do love the bag. I used Anna Maria Horner's new Innocent Crush fabric for both the exterior and interior fabrics and they were (of course) lovely to work with. I enjoyed working with the pattern (first time use of a AMH pattern) and found it relatively easy to understand - I stopped a few times and had to read and read again to truly understand what was instructed.

Anna Maria Horner Multi-Tasker Tote

I am linking to Fabric Tuesday at QuiltStory for the first time to show off my first finish of 2011!

Friday, October 8, 2010

Happiness Quilt

Happiness Quilt - Front

Happiness Quilt - Back

Here is my third quilt. Front and back is all Anna Maria Horner fabric from her Good Folks line in which I fell in love with when I first discovered quilting and fabric. Although I now have about 10 different quilt patterns, I instead just kind of created this one organically. I didn't really know what I was doing but just started cutting into the front fabric making different sized rectangles. On the back I just cut up the fabric pieces I had left and tried to lay them out in a fairly symmetrical way.

The name of the quilt stems from a quilt block I made for a lovely friend who recently moved to Canada. While I was cutting out the rectangles for the front, I made her a block out of the scraps that remained. I called it "The Happiness Block" for her and it was the back of my memory page that I submitted into the memory book we made for my friend. So the name of the block translated to the quilt. I should have taken a picture of that block because it was really cool!

My favorite part of the quilt - the binding. This quilt is very soft and now that the weather is getting a bit cooler here, I have been using at night while watching TV. Yes, I made this one for me.

I'm travelling to MN this morning with my father to attend the funeral of one of my aunts. Looking forward to seeing family, not making meals for two days, fall colors and my own hotel room.

Tuesday, September 14, 2010

New curtains for the kitchen

I kind of complained to the husband back in January that our house was looking a bit shabby. He misunderstood and thought I meant the outside painting of the house and offered the paint the house...no, no I said, I meant the inside.

Especially the rooms we spend the majority of our time - the cave like kitchen that I inhabit for hours a day and the tiny 1950's cookie cutter tract home living/family room.

So then then husband offers to paint the kitchen. He was serious and I was practically jumping up and down like a 10 year old girl. My kitchen has been stark white for the fourteen years we have lived in this house. When we bought this home my oldest child was six months old and I was not "allowed" to be a part of a decision making process regarding painting. Let me explain....mother-n-law was involved. Do I need to say more?

So this is what we had:

So, fourteen years later + nine months I now have a half painted kitchen. Love the husband very much but he is so SLOW.

But now I have this:

Valence made from Anna Maria Horner Voile fabric

Roman Shade also made from Anna Maria Horner Voile fabric

Just Added: Forgot to mention the curtains in my post that I referred to in the title! I made these a few weeks ago and the husband finally put up this past weekend. The Valence was not a pattern, just a 1/2 yard of the fabric sewn together so the white lines match up. The roman shade was a tutorial I found online here which I thought was very good. The voile fabric I used is so thin that it doesn't bunch up as much as regular cotton or thicker fabrics would, but I do not care. I love the look and every morning since this was put up, I draw up the roman shade a different way.

Yellow cabinets/Paprika walls

I was going for a Tuscan look as the husband and I enjoy the Old World style of decorating (have to clarify that as we are not much into decorating). When I sent this photo to a cousin of mine she remarked that it looked like Paprika and she is right. I love it though. This room is quite small and because it is practically unseen from any other room in the house I knew that I could go bold.

The husband still has two more doors to put up on the upper cabinets and oh, don't get me started on the lower cabinets. I'll be lucky if it is done by Christmas....in 2011.

Now going to go clean my half painted kitchen and start making Bolognese sauce for dinner. YUM!

Ciao!