I have seriously accomplished almost nothing the past week while I've been dealing with this jaw pain. I"m not surprised that I'm having the problem. I seem to always have some sort of muscle/tendon pain at all time. Sometimes it's my right knee, sometimes my feet, sometimes my left hip or left wrist or, like now, left shoulder and jaw. Some of it's genetics and some of it is bad habits. I think my current problem is mostly bad habit in the form of my cell phone and tablet so I'm weaning my self off those tools. Maybe if I can get myself to spend less time on the technology tools I'll get more constructive things done!

Over the past week I've spent most of my time holding ice packs to my face and stretching my neck and shoulders but I have made a bit of progress on a couple of projects and one is Pleiades II. Here are a few more block sets that I've cut out this week.

This is, more or less, the layout that I'm going for. The finished quilt might be smaller than this one. It all depends on the number of block sets that I can get out of my current stash. I am not buying more fabric!

Here's how many block sets I have cut out so far. I think this is about half what I need. They aren't arranged in any way yet. I'm just slapping them on the design wall to see how they look so far. A few of these won't make the final cut either. It's slow, but it's coming along.

In 2015, Paula Nadelstern asked me to make a quilt for her new book and Pleiades was the result. I like this quilt a lot but I've been wanting to make a larger one with a smaller block size.

I even have a layout that's sort of a swirl effect and cut out a few blocks last year to get started and then haven't touched it since. I've decided that I need to work at it a bit as my "at home" sewing machine project. That's not to be confused with all of my recent "travel" sewing machine projects, longarm quilting projects, mosaic projects, applique project, glass projects and my new garment-making projects. What's one more project?

The block size for the new version is 2" x 4" and I love cutting a bunch of holes in my fabrics.

And I have lots of fabric to choose from! This is my collection of symmetry fabrics and most are Paula Nadelstern's. These are pretty much the only commercial fabrics in my stash.

My cutting station is right here in the floor in front of the fabric cabinet. It's easy to pull things out and put them away between sessions.

I even have this tiny diagram taped to one of the cabinet doors to remind me the direction I want my pinwheels to spin.

So with each fabric I'm looking for a curved line that will give me a spinning effect.

Here's how I cut that fabric.

Some are more successful than others. That one on the left will likely be a reject in the quilt. I don't like the weave effect . I'm happy with the others.

One of these fabrics will be the background and I will need about 55 pinwheels for the design I'm doing. The finished quilt is planned to be about 60" square. I work on it in small bits of time and will share my progress again in a couple of weeks

After I finished Beware of Lust I had some fabric left and was inspired to make something else. I wanted to use 2 backgrounds and 2 of the colorways to create a quilt with a transparency effect.

Wondering Star is simply one star block in EQ blown up to 36". I didn't have enough fabrics left to be fussy about how I cut them. That was actually a good thing because with limited options this quilt came together quickly! I cut the pieces from whatever I had with no concern to how it would look next to it's neighbor. 

In this closeup you can see the nice effect of the 2 colorways of prints. The fabrics in each section of the star are cut from the same motifs of 2 of the colorways. I loved this effect and want to do a larger quilt like this.

It's finished off with a Zentangle label and I'll admit that this one idea is totally taken from a Zentangle that I saw on the web.

Now about the names. Every year that I make one of the sample quilts for Paula I try to make some reference to the fabric line name. For Palindromes I named my quilt a palindrome: Murder For A Jar of Red Rum. For Chromazone I found a band name Chromazone and name the quilt after one of their songs: Time in Place.

Clearly, I spent way too much time thinking about names! 

For Wonderlust I decided to split the word and use part in the name of each quilt. Wondering Star came first because it was easy. That left me with Lust. The easy answer would have been "Fabric Lust" but why do easy? The I focused back on the quilt.
I had 9 moons.
Nine moons could translate to 9 months.
Nine months makes a baby. Ah ha!
The result was Beware of Lust!
Now don't try to read anything into this. I'm not pro or anti baby. It was simply a train of thought that let me get to the end of these 2 quilts. 

I really should simply number my quilts. Life would be so much easier that way!

Quilt Market has happened and Paula Nadelstern's new fabric is out so now I can share my quilts! I have one for today and one for next Friday. Paula's new fabric line is called Wonderlust and you can see all of the fabrics here. Cotton Club is taking pre-orders here.

When I make quilts using Paula's fabrics I rarely use the mandalas or the background fabrics. This year I challenged myself to focus on those specifically. 

This quilt could not have been simpler to make. The pattern is the Moon Over The Mountain block. A friend made a MOTM quilt several years ago and that block has always stuck with me. She made hers with hand dyed fabrics before I ever dyed my first piece of fabric. The moon and the mountain are fused and machine appliqued with a zig zag stitch!

Each block is 12" and I used 3 of the Marbella colors for, of course, a gradient effect Each mandala panel has 3 designs and there are 3 colorways. Each colorways is represented in a row and each mandala design is a column. I think it shows off the mandalas really well and I had this together in 2 evenings.

You can see in the first detail shot that the quilting is straight lines with metallic thread.

Of course I had to have a Zentangle label!

Now, for the name. I told you that I made 2 quilts and I like referencing the fabric line name in the quilt make. This one uses the word "lust". You've got a week to think about why I named this quilt "Beware of Lust". The first person to figure it out will win a little prize. I'll explain it next Friday when I share the second quilt.

Those of you who have followed me for more than a year know that I've been making sample quilts for Paula Nadelstern for a few years. I don't get paid. I do it because I love working with her fabrics and I love the challenge of having to create a quilt in a few weeks with a very limited fabric palette.

September is always the time that I work on this and I can't share what I do until Quilt Market is over at the end of October. You can see my previous quilts in my Symmetry Gallery. My favorite of all of the quilts so far is the Zombie Ball Quilt. This year I might be making 2 quilts for no reason other than inspiration.

She always has a fabric of printed mandalas like this one from a couple of years ago. There are also some great texture fabrics. I've never used the mandalas so this year I set a challenge to use the mandala fabric for my quilt.

I can't show you the actual block but this is one of the prototype blocks that I made using last year's fabric. I've always loved the Moon Over The Mountain block and have wanted to make a quilt with it. These mandalas are perfect for it.

I'm formulating an idea for a second quilt (and I can do that because they are only 36" square) so will be working on that the rest of this week and next week.  then I will need to get both quilted and bound. They are due mid-October but my self-imposed deadline is September 30. I'll take some breaks to do some other things but if I miss a few days posting over the next 3 weeks it's because I'm working on these quilts....and having a grand time doing it.

I think it took more hours to make this one block than to quilt the king sized Rainbow Quilt. By the way, I did finish quilting it but thought I'd spare you another photo until it's bound. 
​I worked on this block over several days and feel like I'm getting my groove back for doing these types of blocks.

As a reminder here is the block structure. I don't have any plans for these blocks. I'm jsut making them to have fun at this point.

How's that for a confusing title? Let me see if I can sort it out.

​Last year Paula Nadelstern contacted me about a book she was writing. She wanted to include the sample quilts that I had made for her and wondered if I'd like to do another. The specific direction for this quilt was "simple quilts, complex fabrics". Use a very simple pattern with complex fabrics and see what happens.

Pleiades was the result of my efforts and I've been waiting over a year to share this quilt! You can read all about it on the gallery page. I'm able to share it now because the book is finally out.

I first took a class from Paula about 10 years ago at Houston. I was immediately hooked and I was very impressed with her as a teacher. She's very thorough, calm and supportive and she makes sure to spend some individual time with every student....even in classes of 25 students. Her books are just as good and I especially love this new one, Fabricadabra.

​This isn't a pattern book. It's a technique book. It's for those who love the kaleidoscope effect but have found the previous books to be a bit overwhelming. In this book Paula shows you how to make spectacular quilts combining simple shapes with complex fabrics. She shows you how to see and buy fabric and then the basics of cutting and construction. There's a gallery of over 35 quilts with diagrams to show you the piecing structure. You can make any of the quilts in this book.

This butterfly quilt is one of my favorites in the book. Each butterfly half is only one piece of fabric.

It's very exciting to see some of my own quilts in the book!