Industrious Blocks

Please click on the links below to view other Four In Art Quilts.

Betty Ayers https://www.flickr.com/photos/toot2

Catherine Chisholm http://www.knottedcotton.com

delayed due to house flood

Elizabeth Eastmond http://www.opquilt.com

Nancy Myers http://www.patchworkbreeze.blogspot.com

Rachel Riley http://www.rachel-thelifeofriley.blogspot.com

Susan Snooks http://patchworknplay.blogspot.com

Our Site http://fourinart.blogspot.com/

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Betsy & Ben

Were Industrious Blocks

The Front

The Back

This projects' inspiration came from a children's book called

THE BLOCK BOOK

By Susan Arkin Couture

Illustrated by Petra Mathers

I picked this book up at an overstock book sale in Ann Arbor, Michigan. 

The book has become a family favorite over the years.

We've read it so many times my husband and I have the 

entire book memorized. Here are a few photos of the book. 

For this project I wanted to make a giant letter B. 

The lead characters in the book are named Betsy & Ben, 

and they are industrious blocks. So I opened up Illustrator and scrolled

through my fonts until I found a block that I felt suited Betsy & Ben. 

I set up my document page as 13"x13" and tiled the print.

I taped it together then cut out the individual pieces for each piece of fabric. 

I then designed some fabric in Illustrator with the text from The Block Book. 

I managed to use every single word from the book. 

I decided this fabric would be used as background fabric.  

I chose to use the following fabrics for the letter B. 

Here's the metamorphosis of the letter B.

Once I completed the letter B I realized that the mini quilt 

didn't convey any of the fun quirky qualities about the book. 

So I decided to make the letter B the back of the 

quilt and illustrate one of the images from the book.

In the story a neighbor's house burns down. 

Not much of the burning house is shown in the book

 so I decided to illustrate it. 

Here are the beginnings of the burning house.

I wasn't quite sure how to show flames coming out of the house, 

but I happened to have chili pepper fabric on hand. 

Chili's by the way, are HOT.

I wanted a narrow binding, and totally goofed on how wide to cut it, so I ended up rolling the binding under on the backside towards the raw edge of the quilt. 

You can view other Four In Art quilts here:

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Catherine  at Knotted Cotton

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Susan at PatchworknPlay

Elizabeth at https://occasionalpiece.wordpress.com/

May I introduce to you the E.coli hot pad.

Q: What does an E. coli hot pad have to do with this year's

Four In Art theme of Literature?

A: The inspiration for this project came from a scientific journal article 

written by my husband. The article is called... 

Escherichia coli O157: H7 transport in saturated porous media: 

Role of solution chemistry and surface macromolecules 

authored by Hyunjung N. Kim †, Scott A. Bradford ‡ and Sharon L. Walker 

*†Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of California

The article can be found in the 

Journal of Environmental Science and Technology. 

http://pubag.nal.usda.gov/pubag/downloadPDF.xhtml?id=33005&content=PDF

I know this is such utterly exciting 
news you have probably stopped reading, 

but I thought it would be good to pull information 

from a scientific source for the quilt. 

Q: Why E. coli? 

A: This organism is a dinner topic for our family since my husband's research resolves around microorganisms and how they move through the ground and potentially contaminate our food and water supply. One time I told an acquaintance that my husband is an Environmental Engineer. They responded with, "He must be good at recycling." Uhhh....No. 

I started constructing the E. coli critter out of Kona Cotton & brushed silk.

I inset the body of the E. coli using freezer paper & a glue stick.

I forgot to take a photo of that step, but here's the inset oval. 

E. coli have all sorts of flagellum to help them move around.

I quilted the flagellum in glow in the dark, gray, yellow & orange thread.

Remember, this microorganism is only 3 microns long, 

which is a little smaller than a red blood cell, 

and...

a human hair is about 75 microns wide.  

Here's a photo of the glow in the dark E. coli. 
Scientist often stain E. coli with a fluorescing medium for visibility. 
I figured I could do the same with glow in the dark thread.   

Q: What can E. coli do to my body?


A: There are many types of E. coli, and most of them are harmless,

but some can cause bloody diarrhea. 

Some strains of E. coli bacteria (such as a strain called O157:H7)
 may also cause severe anemia or kidney failure, 
which can lead to death. Other strains of E. coli can cause
urinary tract infections or other infections.

Ironically, you'd probably never want to give a hot pad 
with an E. coli on it as a house warming gift, 
on second hand, maybe you would. 

The backside of the hot pad is actually a kitchen towel with utensils on it.

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It's time for another Four In Art reveal!!!

Click the links below to view other

Four In Art quilts

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Catherine  at Knotted Cotton

Elizabeth at OPQuilt.com 

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Susan at PatchworknPlay

A little bit of silk inspiration from a trip to 

Michael Lavine's in downtown Los Angeles

combined with a quote from my high school

track & cross country Coach Calvin Rossi.

I know this isn't literature, but nonetheless.....

they are words.

"Hills are your friends,

whenever there's an up,

there's always a down."

Coach Calvin Rossi, Irvine High School 

Coach Rossi was constantly talking about hills. He taught 

us to pass competitors on the up hill, then lean into the 

hill on the way down and FLY!!! This is one way to mess

with a competitor by passing them when they are dying

on a big hill. It becomes a mental game. You've just 

intimidated them on the challenging up hill, AND you 

get an adrenalin rush by doing something tough.

Funny thing is, I still do this on my bike rides every 

week with my husband. We play cat and mouse the

entire bike ride, taking turns passing each other. 

A photo of me in 1988. I saw this sign during a race in

Whittier, California and had to go back for a photo.

Detail of silk hill. Working with silk was slippery.

It slid around and pulled easily under 

my walking foot.

I have to say this is one of my favorite hills. 

It not not only is a horizontal hill, but it ended up in 3D!

Life quite often is full of hills.

Hills we don't want to go up, challenges 

we have to take. It's important to remember

that once we overcome the difficulty

there will always be a time of rest, or 

a down hill time in life, where we can

rest, recover or just coast for a while.

I decidedto keep the back of the 

quilt simple, it's solid yellow.

I kept the edges raw and just added some thick bands 

of stitching to finish the edges off. 

The back side of the quilt.

Since all the hills were quilted in smooth hilly shapes

I thought the quilt could use some contrast.

The top and bottom areas of the quilt are all

quilted in geometric straight lines.

I'm on the left, not running up a hill.

1989 Irvine High School.

Go Vaqueros! 

A Vaquero is a Spanish Cowboy.

Camille's Quilt

While Quilt Con was going on... 

the 

rest 

of 

us

had 

to 

do 

something!

I found all sorts of fun fabric at

Road to California last month.

Then I went to town and cut

the heck out of it.

My kiddo came to me recently with a request.

She wanted her own quilt. Why not, everyone

else she knew had their own. 

She had a specific wish list.

Coral.

Yellow.

Aqua.

Gray.

Not too young looking,

and not too old looking.

And definitely no babyish 

looking animals!

It was refreshing to follow a pattern this time 

for Camille's Quilt. After creating a few of my 

own quilts I sometimes find that it's good to 

have a project that allows you to work on 

technique. Cut, piece, sew, iron, cut, piece, 

sew, iron. Camille is picking out some border 

fabric this weekend before it's quilted. 

Smoke Screens

                                                               

February's Four In Art challenge is based on literature.

One of my all-time favorite books is The Screwtape Letters

by CS Lewis. The book is about a senior devil, by the name 

of Screwtape, who teaches a junior devil about the art 

of tempting the enemy (which are the humans). 

I chose the quote... 

"The game is to have them running 

about with fire extinguishers 

when there is a flood."

I titled the quilt Smoke Screens,

because this is Screwtape's intent... to have the smoke

from the extinguisher prevent us from seeing the real

problem that is at hand. Essentially we're blinded. 

With this scenario people are going through 

the motions of thinking they are solving 

 problems, but with the wrong results.

I found CS Lewis' signature on the internet and 

printed it on red fabric for the fire extinguisher. 

For the actual quote I used Illustrator to

design the text and printed it out on the gray

background fabric (which is extra from a 

skirt I recently made). Since these are actually

CS Lewis' words I thought it would be good

to have them looking like they are coming out 

of the fire extinguisher.

I used silver thread to free motion quilt the text. 

Boy, I was seeing circles after all those little letters!

My youngest kiddo wanted to get in on the 

free motion quilting fun too. 

I really like this quote since it's about 

Screwtape teaching to distract humans during 

a crisis with the wrong resources to life's problems.

How often do we find ourselves in a flood, 

but are tempted or distracted with the wrong solution?

Close up of the fire extinguisher handle. I used silver 

heat-resistant fabric for the handle and nozzle.

Detail of silver text.

I liked the surface patterns pictured here with the

light reflecting on the silver thread.

Blue thread was used in the bottom half of the quilt to represent the flood that the fire extinguisher is being used on. I also added a some red, in the very narrow binding, to help draw the eye across the quilt, to provide some balance to that HUGE extinguisher. 

Blue fabric was added to the binding down where the flood is taking place.  

One valuable lesson I learned is... never free motion

quilt while you are on the phone with 

one of your college kids! 

I accidentally did this on the red knob on 

the fire extinguisher handle and decided the 

quilting there was thoughtless & messy. 

Back side of the Smoke Screen quilt, which looks like the 

aftermath of fighting a flood with a fire extinguisher...

total chaos in a lost battle. 

This is where Screwtape and his minions want us to be,

lost, distracted, exhausted and confused about all our efforts.

Personal Note: 

I have found many parallels between 

the temptations from the adversary and the 

instruction from Screwtape. To me, CS Lewis' genius lies in 

understanding the enemy and discerning his 

intents, purpose and temptations with us. 

I have been training Kyokoshin Karate for 7 years. 

One thing that I have learned from karate is that 

if you are to fight an enemy, you need to study 

them and know their weaknesses and strengths 

so that you can be triumphant. 

And so it is in life...

You can view other Four In Art quilts here.

Betty at a Flickr site: http://www.flickr.com

Catherine  at Knotted Cotton

Elizabeth at OPQuilt.com 

Jennifer at Secondhand Dinosaur 

Nancy at  Patchwork Breeze

Rachel at The Life of Riley

Susan at PatchworknPlay