Recognize this?

The sweater gift tag image in its new incarnation....or at least the beginning of it. About 30 inches x 30 inches. The chocolate brown heart is stitched down with that lovely green rayon thread. Grandma Coco's experimenting with Lite Steam-a-Seam fusible web. So far, so good!

Grandma Coco has all kinds of projects going on right now. Not long now to wait until some of them can be revealed. How cryptic!! How mysterious!

Here's another teaser:

Her name is Nelly.

If this is Sunday, it must be Friday

Illustration Friday, that is! This week's theme is "Warning"

Copyright © Cheryl Coville 2011

Though the years, too, were speeding by 

she still hoped to get away 

with just a warning.

Odd Ball Mittens

Is it surprising that we're still in a mitten state of mind? We've been thinking about mittens all winter. We like to make mittens for Afghans for Afghans and, being frugal, we like to use up every little bit of wool. In truth some of the sweetest little mittens are hodge-podges of many different leftover yarns but sometimes those old stripes get a little monotonous. The Odd Ball Mitten is just what the doctor ordered.

This mitten pattern is great for using up those odd balls of leftover yarn to make beautiful mittens without resorting to plain, old stripes.  However, these mittens are not just odd. They are special. And they are special (as in, my mother says I’m “special”) for another reason. They are created in a very unique way. They are modular mittens. Simple, really….just different. Best of all? No grafting. No Kitchener stitch. No, really!!

Rounded mitten tip

The modular approach results in a lovely curving mitten tip that surrounds the palm and when you use 2 different colours for the palm and the edging, you’ll end up with a beautiful decorative detail where the 2 colours meet. But why stop at 2 colours? These are great for using up leftovers. All the palm/back-of-hand inserts can be different. The edging can be a different yarn and then the cuffs can be striped. Or, you can make them all from one ball of yarn. It’s your choice.

Adult Size with Cabled Edging for a dressy look

The pattern includes 2 sizes....Adult and Child. It includes several variations so you won't get bored....garter stitch palms, seed stitch palms, stockinette edging and a cabled edging.

 

Odd Ball Mittens are made from worsted weight wool like Cascade 220, or Patons Classic Wool or Elann Highland Wool or you can even use up leftover sock yarn by knitting with 2 strands at a time.

Because we know it's a long drive for most of you to come to us in the Kingdom of Coco, we've opened a Ravelry store. Through one  click of the "Buy Now" button in the side bar, you can be transported to our store....Beam me up, Scottie!..... where you can buy the pattern with Paypal and then get immediate download of the .PDF at any hour of the day or night.

We hope you're not yet tired of mittens because we're not! But that, as they say, is a story for another day.
 

¡Quilt Fiesta! winner and some surprising findings

Copyright © Cheryl Coville 2011

Don't you hate that artificial suspense they put you through on some of those TV shows? We sure do. So, here in the Kingdom of Coco, we're cutting right to the chase......We're pleased to announce the winner of  ¡Quilt Fiesta! – Surprising Designs From Mexican Tiles signed by the author, Cheryl Lynch herself is

Marcia W 

We've already emailed Marcia so as soon as we have her mailing info we'll be sending her the book. It's not too late to win a book. Head on over to Cheryl's blog to find out which blogs are still offering a chance to win a copy.

We were thrilled to have so many visitors to the Kingdom this week. So many new friends. We were happy to find that a substantial number are humble quilters who toil away on old and trusty machines. We must form a club or maybe a support group.

March is definitely coming in like a lamb this morning. Full sun and around the freezing point. Not like yesterday. We had freezing rain and ice and more rain and then some snow for good measure. Usually we fill some containers with drinking water when ice is in the forecast because our water pump runs on electricity but yesterday we got caught napping. Literally. The power went off around 5 am and didn't come back on until noon.

We were toasty and warm with our woodstove for heat and Grandma Coco had a number of projects she could work on that didn't require electricity but Mr. Coco had other ideas. He decided it was the perfect day to sort through some of Grandma Coco's stash of non-quilting fabrics. They've sort of clogged up the closet for a while now. So we dragged the boxes out to the living room where it was warm and set to it.

What a treasure trove! A veritable archeological dig! Old curtains. Upholstery fabrics. Old dressmaking fabrics...some from our grandmother (the original Grandma Coco). Felt. Hems cut off ready-made cotton skirts from the '80's! Metres of polyester that nobody sews with anymore. Burlap - in 3 colours! Silks. Satins. He was right. There was a ton of stuff that we didn't need to store.

....or DID we? Grandma Coco suddenly heard a little voice. A voice she tried to resist. But it was too insistent and too seductive. And what it whispered was this:

Fabric Postcards! 

Clearly Grandma Coco is a weak woman and she has persuasive friends. Monika and Sue and Elaine and Heather and lots more Maple Leaf Quilt Guild members, look what you've done.

Illustration Friday - Swarm

Copyright © Cheryl Coville 2011

When we finally made the move from wage-slave city dwellers to impoverished owners of the Kingdom of Coco,  Mr. Coco was able to fulfill a long-time dream. He got himself some bees and hives and one of those cute little beekeeper suits. He dibbled and he dabbled and he was thrilled to get a great crop of honey that first year. And then, Grandma Coco got stung. On the face. Her head swelled up like something out of a monster movie. It was scary.

About this same time, there was trouble brewing for the entire bee keeping community. The varroa mite was attacking honey bees and the future looked dim. Lots of people were losing their hives to the mite and there weren't too many options for treatment.

So, Mr. Coco sadly sold his bees. The fellow who bought them was an about-to-be-released prisoner at a nearby minimum security prison. He was in some program which allowed inmates to learn a trade in preparation for their release. Great idea! He came one day on a supervised excursion and carted the bees off. Now, you have to know bees. When Mr. Coco bought his bees, they were transported under cover of darkness because the bees were in their hive then and supposedly more docile. However, we guess that if you're on day leave from your prison, then a day-time run is the best you can hope for. Miraculously, we don't recall having too much drama the day of the move. What we do recall is that a while later we heard back that it wasn't so much the honey that the fellow was after. Turns out he had a green thumb and he was using the bees to guard a certain 'crop' he had planted at their base! Genius!

This IF drawing is dedicated to Karen who, along with her husband, keeps bees in Nova Scotia (imagine blueberry honey!) and who was, herself, stung this week. But not by a bee because a bee will only hurt you if he feels threatened. People, on the other hand...

Saturday morning for grown-ups

Remember when you were a kid? Getting up and watching the Saturday morning cartoons? Grandma Coco does. She remembers George Jetson and The Underdog and Yogi Bear and Booboo.  And she remembers that her dad used to watch them, too. It's nice when your dad remembers how to be a kid.

Nowadays, cartoons don't really interest her so you'd think that she'd sleep in, right? Well, due to the outright cruelty of her TV provider (Starchoice de Sade Satellite......which may be Rogers, now that we think about it) Grandma Coco is prodded from her warm bed by the lure of Saturday morning crafting shows on PBS Detroit.... the only station that we know of that carries these "wimmin's" shows. So, at 5:30 AM....yes, you read that right....5:30 AM! on a Saturday!....we get our only chance to see Quilting Daily TV, followed by Fons & Porter`s Love of Quilting and then, usually (but not today, oh, no, not today), Sewing With Nancy. Today we got Martha's Sewing Studio. Some Saturdays we get Beads, Baubles and Jewels, but not today. Only 3 shows, back to back. There's something magical about seeing other humans doing stuff we like to do. Often, we learn things. So, week after week, we get up and tune in. And then we go back to bed!!

When we did decide to start our day, we turned our attentions to something different....fabric postcards!!! We're suddenly quite interested in fusing fabric and machine embroidery. We blame that on Cheryl Lynch and ¡Quilt Fiesta! although there seem to be other, equally infectious influences going on. Fons & Porter did an episode where they trimmed the Wonder-Under so the appliqué was a little more supple so we're keen to try that. As well, we figured that a little postcard might be just the place to try out our nonexistent  fledgling machine embroidery skills.

Here's our first effort:

We had hoped to send it to a very good cause. We heard through our friend and fellow member of The Maple Leaf Quilt (online) Guild, Sue at http://cottonartsboutique.com, about an International Fabric Postcard Exhibition in Ireland. There will also be a sale that will benefit the Marie Keating Foundation which is a Breast Cancer Charity in Ireland. When Grandma Coco went back to check, she found out there was a theme (which you can read on Sue's post). We suppose dogs are part of nature but otherwise, our card doesn't really fit. No matter, we tried again with flowers and we think this one's the one. We added French knots for Monika  :)  who is feeling the cold right now, poor thing.

..... off to Ireland in memory of our mother, Grace

Maybe you've got time to make a postcard for such a worthy cause. The due date is the end of May 2011.

A Book to Give Away!

Last week, the mailman braved the ice and snow to bring Grandma Coco a big puffy envelope.  Ooohhh, we love puffy envelopes! Inside there was a shiny new book hot off the presses from That Patchwork Place.

¡Quilt Fiesta! – Surprising Designs From Mexican Tiles by Cheryl Lynch is just the thing for a mid-winter picker-upper. It’s a little bit travelogue, a little bit history and a whole lot of great quilting.

Cheryl Lynch went on vacation to La Puebla, Mexico and was inspired by the tiles that the local artisans have been making there for the past 400 years. And no wonder she was inspired! Those tiles were just begging to be translated into quilts. And that’s just what Cheryl’s done.

But first, she reminds us that perfection is highly overrated. She says it’s better to finish a job than to abandon it because we can’t make it perfectly. How true. The Mexican tile painters don’t aim for perfection. What’s important to them is “the joy of creation”.  “Enjoy the process”, says Cheryl Lynch.  That’s something Grandma Coco is trying to learn.

 

You see, Grandma Coco has always enjoyed doing things in a methodical and meticulous manner. She’s kind of a control freak. But Mr. Coco…well, he isn’t really a detail-oriented person. Close enough and pretty near are good enough for him. And you know, most of the time, in the end, his projects turn out just fine. As much as she loves her Mr. Coco, sometimes this just makes her crazy.

So, when Cheryl Lynch says you can make beautiful quilts like the ones in her book without worrying about perfection, Grandma Coco wanted to know how.  What she’s discovered is one of the things that sets this book apart … Cheryl Lynch offers actual techniques and tricks that bridge the gap between Mr. Coco’s slap-dash-ness and Grandma Coco’s OCD (Obsessively, Compulsively Disordered) approach. Cheryl Lynch has a background in science (she was a graduate student in chemistry at MIT when she made her first quilt) and maybe that’s why she has developed some seriously clever techniques to insure perfect-looking results. Grandma Coco has observed that people who use their left brains a lot, don’t leave things to chance.  So, when Cheryl Lynch encourages us to forget about perfection, we can do that because in her book she’s given us the tools to stack the deck in our favour.

The designs in this book are based on fusing fabric and on foundation piecing. You all know that Grandma Coco has been a bit of a technophobe in the past and that she is trying now as an old(-ish) dog to learn new tricks. Fusing fabric blocks was just the kick-start she needed. She decided to tackle the Black Bean Mole quilt.

There are 4 things that Cheryl says are good to have to accomplish the quilts in ¡Quilt Fiesta! :

1. An open-toe presser foot………Check.
2. Blanket stitch option……………Nope.
3. Needle-down option…………… Nope.
4. Knee-lift………………………... Nope.

Oh, well. There are always work-arounds. Cheryl says you can use a narrow zig-zag in place of the blanket stitch so that’s what we tried. And, you know what? It worked just fine. There are 2 versions of the Black Bean Mole quilt shown in the book….a luscious brown and rust one and a summery blue and white one. Such different looks from the same pattern! We decided to try blues and celery green. 

Grandma Coco's version of the Black Bean Mole quilt from ¡Quilt Fiesta!

We've only made 4 blocks so far but here, by the magic of photo manipulation, is what a larger quilt might look like. Pretty, right? 

If Grandma Coco can do this with her bottom-of-the-line 40-year-old Singer, then, really, anyone can do it.

We changed the corner beans to hearts because Cheryl said we could. Well, OK, not us personally. But she wrote a whole chapter on design and switching things up. Grandma Coco has trouble colouring inside the lines. She’s really not too keen on books that are merely recipes….you know, follow these steps and you’ll get this. Exactly. She likes books that give you the basics but then go on to offer options and ideas to set you free to explore your own vision. This is her kind of book.

¡Quilt Fiesta! offers patterns for 10 projects, including quilts, place mats and a bed runner. Each project was inspired by an actual tile (which is pictured) so you can see how the design evolved. All in all, Grandma Coco gives this book an enthusiastic 2 thumbs up!

And the best news is this: We have one copy signed by Cheryl Lynch herself to give away! And you don’t have to live in the Kingdom of Coco to win. We’ll mail it anywhere in the world, so don’t be shy. Leave a comment here on this blog post to have a chance to win it (…but don’t comment anonymously because then Grandma Coco won’t be able to contact you to say you’ve won and that would just be a shame). You have until March 1^st . ¡Buena suerte!

Grandma Coco’s Designs is pleased to be part of the blog tour for this book.

Be sure to visit http://quiltville.blogspot.com tomorrow for the next stop on the tour and another chance to win a copy of  ¡Quilt Fiesta!  

And, of course, to learn more about Cheryl Lynch, and see the actual ¡Quilt Fiesta! quilts hanging at her official book launch, you’ll want to visit her blog: http://www.cheryllynchquilts.blogspot.com/

This contest is now closed and a winner has been announced.