Happy Anniversary!

The LA Modern Quilt Guild just celebrated it's third anniversary!  I am proud to say that I have been a member since the very first meeting.  

And here we all are, three years later!

So big we had to take a panoramic shot!  iOS5 to the rescue!

Every year we do an anniversary scrap swap, where participants bring in a ziploc bag of scraps, take home someone else's scraps and make their partner something out of them, only adding one additional fabric.  Sadly, I wasn't able to make it to the meeting where we swapped baggies so I couldn't participate but...I never shared what I made for last year's anniversary!

I made this quilt for Nicole Ramirez last year.  The stripes are all made from her scraps and I added the gray background fabric.  I used the same fabric for the back, trying to play by the rules and intended to use it for the binding too.  But by the time I finished the whole thing I thought, "F*** the rules", I'd put so much time in, I didn't want to put on some stinky old gray binding.  So I cheated and added the polka dots.  I didn't get in trouble.

What to do in LA this weekend

 

Denyse Schmidt is coming to speak to the LA Modern Quilt Guild tomorrow night and everyone is welcome!  The talk is free for paid members of the guild and just five dollars for everyone else.  I am very excited.  Denyse's quilts were the first to really inspire me to try quilting and to this day her book is my favorite quilt book.  So come if you're in town!  Eight o' clock at the Art Center College of Design, Ahmanson Auditorium, 1700 Lida Street, Pasadena.

And then on Saturday night...

My good friend Trisha Gum along with artists from the crew of Robot Chicken are hosting an art show to raise funds for the production of Trish's first live-action film "Losing Ferguson", part of AFI's Directing Workshop for Women.  The show is from 6-11, Saturday night at Hold Up Art, 358 E. 2nd St, LA.
Harv donated some of his toy photography and I made a series of miniature quilts.  This was a tough show to make something for because I wanted to give something that would sell, since the whole purpose of the show is to raise money.  The series is called "Ferguson's Cabin" after the film.

As you can see, they are all simple log cabin blocks, made up in fun, modern color palettes.  The quilts will be available individually but you can get a deal if you buy more than one.

Each quilt has a label printed on the back of the binding.  The labels say "Ferguson's Cabin ##  by Liz Harvatine  June, 2011".  (Sorry I didn't get a better shot of the label.  These babies were past due when I hurriedly took photos.  It's tough sewing on a deadline with a 5 month old in your care!)

 

So if you live in LA please stop by, support the film and take home some art!

Long Time Coming

First: a huge thank you for all of your comments on the Emmy. You all are the best and It's nice to be able to share some of the non-quilting in my life.

Second: Last night I attended the first ever meeting of the LA Modern Quilt Guild. It was a great meeting full of amazing ladies and I'm so excited to meet like minded quilters in this area. If you live around here (or are willing to drive to LA) check out the guild. It looks to be a guild like no other, in a very good way!

Third: Remember this guy? Probably not because I started it two and a half years ago. The plan was to hand quilt circles all over this mother. I worked on it some, my hand-quilting sucked. It wasn't fun. So it was put away.

Well, two and a half years later I have resurrected this quilt from obscurity. I actually had to search for it when I decided to do this.

The hand-quilting was out. It's not my style and I'm just not interested. So I ripped it all out.

One of the reasons I didn't do this sooner is because I couldn't really think of a style of quilting that would work better than additional bubbles. Which is weird because once I came up with this straight lines idea, I liked it so much better! Maybe that's just my 2009 tastes compared to my 2007 tastes. Perhaps I'm less literal now.

So, if you weren't around back then and you want to read about this quilt's beginnings you can go right ahead!

Stuff.

Lots of non-crafty things have been holding my attention lately.
Taking care of this guy.

Visiting the LA county fair.

Just a little bit of sewing.

This is just a little sneaky peek. I'll share more soon!

Consider Me Bummed or The Good and Bad of LA Crafting

Well, Felt Club is a no go for me. It's a bummer. There is a list of the accepted vendors up on their website. My would be Felt Club table splitter Marianne thinks that most of the people accepted are people with fairly successful webshops/cottage industries. Double bummer! How are unexperienced littles like Marianne and I to move up in this crafty world? Boo. I'm down. LA is a place with plenty of hipsters willing to buy awesome crafts but the opportunities to get your stuff out there seem to be few and far between.
Since I was really gearing up mentally to craft my ass off for Felt Club I think that I need to redirect that energy into revitalizing my Etsy shop. Well maybe just vitalizing it. I don't think there is any "re" about it. That thing has been a sad sack since it's inception. Well no more! Robot Chicken Season 3 is coming to an end and I will have two glorious months to sew sew sew.
By the way, have you all met Marianne? She is a super talented graphic designer and crafter and she is married to a coworker of ours. I do not know of very many craft bloggers who live in LA so you can imagine how neat it is to know someone in the real world and then learn that they are all crafty and bloggy! Marianne's blog, Conejo/Coneja documents her forays into all sorts of crafts including some great video game inspired projects like this Megaman block print.

You can read this post and this post to find out a little about how she did this. It is very cool.
And speaking of craft bloggers in LA, I recently discovered Mari's blog. I was so excited to find someone in my area who makes such amazing, beautiful things! Mari's style is very clean and fresh, very Japanese inspired. She also works at the PurlSoho warehouse which makes me extremely jealous and has posted a great tutorial on the Purl Bee blog. Mari has even inspired me to do some pro cat knitting. Her pusses look so sweet in these little "kitty pies" that I feel I must go out to my local yarn shop asap (they open in one minute, better get dressed!) and knit myself some pi.
And while I'm on the subject of LA bloggers, I certainly can't leave out Mary Heather of Rainy Day Goods. Oddly enough, Mary Heather was one of the very first people (who I didn't know in real life) to ever notice my little old blog, way back when. She is an amazing knitter who has patterns published in several books including "Greetings from the Knit Cafe".
It is very strange that Mary Heather was one of the first people I connected with in the blog world and she happened to live around here. LA craft bloggers seem to be so few and far between. Or is it just me? These three ladies are the only one's I'm aware of. Am I wrong? I know you must be out there! I don't know why exactly be I really love to read about the exploits of people who I have something in common with and since I am a New England girl stuck in LA I love to read about other people experiencing this city along with me.
Oh! I just thought of another. Crazy Aunt Purl is a great LA blogger who always has lots of fun/ridiculous LA stories. Despite the name though, she is much more of a super funny self-helpy kind of blogger than a craft blogger. She does live in the San Fernando Valley though, as do I and posts beaucoup photos of her cats. I LOVE that!