African Aloe - January 2010 Handwerk Fabric Club Selection

African Aloe

The January 2010 Handwerk Fabric Club selection is available to ship.  The colors are based on the South African Aloe plant. Included are an eggplant purple with pink highlights, aqua, a silver-grey-green, a blush-yellow-peach, and the chartreuse and buttercup yellow of the aloe buds.  Fat Quarter packages (1 1/2 yds. total) are $27 ($30 including shipping by first class post within the U.S.); 1/2 yard packages (3 yds total) are $54 plus actual postage to your location; 1 yard packages (6 yards total) are $108 plus actual postage.  Email me at bonnie@handwerktextiles.com to order.  Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal accepted.

 

South Africa - Some of my favorite photos

Thought I'd share some of my favorite photos from my South Africa Tour last August.  All photos are copyright 2009 Bonnie M. Bucknam.  Please do not use without permission.

Hippos at Isimangaliso

Samango Monkey, Cape Vidal

Isimangaliso

Samango Monkey, Cape Vidal

Isimangaliso

Nile Crocodile

Isimangaliso

Kudu, Isimangaliso

Zulu basketmaker's home near Hlabisa, Kwa-Zulu Natal

Basket making materials, near Hlabisa, KZN

Near Hlabisa, KZN

Near Hlabisa, KZN

Basket making materials, near Hlabisa , KZN

Log Cabins

My friend Pat from Alaska was down visiting and suggested that we make a quilt.  We spent a fun-filled day making log cabin blocks.  Somehow or another, I miscalculated the number of blocks we needed to make.  Yes, I admit, I'm the one who did the faulty math.  Later when I put the blocks together there were several, to say the least, left over.  I decided to make a second top, and set out to make the additional blocks needed. 

After this top was constructed, I realized I had again miscalculated the number of blocks.  There were leftover blocks, again! Amazing!  I guess my brain is no longer capable of "higher" math (5 x 7 = ?).  I needed to break out the calculator.  I made the right number of blocks to finish a third top.  This should be the last yellow and black log cabin that is Guatemala Bound!

Handwerk Fabric Club

Last August I had the good fortune to go to South Africa on the Nancy Crow Craft Tour.  http://www.nancycrow.com/HTML/tours.html  The South African landscape was truly gorgeous. I’ve been trying to preserve some of the impressions by dyeing fabrics reminiscent of scenes from the trip. The colors were truly impressive!

My Handwerk Fabric Club is in its fifth year. I’ve shipped out an amazing array of colors!  I send 6 hand-dyed fabrics every other month. You can choose the size you wish to receive – fat quarters, ½ yards, or 1-yard pieces. Two-yard pieces are also available, but not on the order form. (Just write it in if that’s what you want.) I choose the colors each month. I don’t repeat colors, so every shipment is something new!

The first selection inspired by South Africa was the November fabric, “Cape Point”. The colorway turned out just great! The selection includes two lovely khaki-browns – the mountains, a beige – sand and soil, a reddish-rust – that amazing lichen we saw growing on the rocks on the road in to Cape Point, a light yellow-sage – the vegetation just coming alive, and a marine teal blue – the mixing of the two oceans. I’ve included a photo above of the colorway and a close-up of the darker brown which has beautiful greenish-gold highlights. (And how about that Samango monkey peaking out?) (Sorry, Cape Point is sold out!)  For January, I'm working on a dye selection based on the African Aloe.  I'm pleased with the results I'm getting.  That fabric should be ready to ship just before the new year.

I invite you to join the Handwerk Fabric Club. Note that you can stop and start shipments when you wish; it’s not a contract for a particular amount of time. Your credit card is charged when fabric is shipped. Also, if you’d like to order African Aloe as a trial or single selection, please do. Please email me through my web site, http://www.handwerktextiles.com/ or bonnie@handwerktextiles.com  and let me know that you are ordering or joining so I can set aside the fabric for you. I will email a sign-up sheet that you can mail back to me with your credit card information. I don’t have a secure web site yet, so the postal service is the best way to get that information to me.

I hope to hear from you!
Bonnie
Handwerk

From Alaska -

We've been having fun here in Anchorage! That's LynnAnn sewing corner-square log cabin blocks.

Here's the finished top that Annalise and Susan created! The design for this top was inspired by photos on pages 26 & 41 of Valerie Campbell Harding's book "Strip Patchwork". This is a great little book full of ideas and tips.

I'm including a picture of the pillow Annalise designed and sewed as a Christmas present for her grandmother.

More from Alaska

Here's today's view from my deck. I think the ice-fog shrouded trees are beautiful!



Joan was coming over to sew four-patches, or so I thought. She showed up with a bunch of blocks that she and ClaraJo had gathered from various sources. We sewed them together with "coping" strips and here's another top for the orphanage.


A group of creative women have been getting together at Nan's home to assemble quilt tops for the Guatemala Bound project. I call us the “Nan’s Group”. We each made "wonky" 9-patch blocks for the first top - here are the one's I made.


That's Nan working on the final arrangement of the 9 patches. She sewed them together with spacer blocks.


Colleen, Elise, Nan and Pat discuss what to do next as we enjoy delicious snacks.


These are some of the strips for the start of top # 2... more later.

Alaska Checkerboard

Last summer one of my Alaska friends, Jeanie, sent a large checkerboard top with a dark blue border as a contribution to "Guatemala Bound" (more on the new project name later).  The quilt was quite large.  With her permission, I disassembled the top and made it into two bunkbed-size quilts.  Thanks, Jeanie!  Jeanie likes plaids (this is an understatement).  I pieced the back of the second quilt, keeping Jeanie's preferences in mind:

One of the quilts was quilted using a Laura Lee Fritz design from her book "Mindful Meandering":

My friend Pat in Alaska came up with a great name for the project - "Guatemala Bound".  Much better than the generic Guatemala Quilt Project I've been using.  Many thanks to my creative and generous friends!

Alaska Update

Here are some more pictures from Alaska. Analise and Susan have worked on their project ten times now and we almost have the top assembled - just three more seams to go. We will be adding boders next. They are wonderful ironers!

The off-set log cabin blocks are being created by Kathy, LynnAnn and Olivia. We probably won't get back to them again until after the holidays.