Posted by: Mary @ 1:20 pm
This small crazy quilt piece is something that I have been working on over time, hence it represents a time passage piece. It depicts a few special moments captured in time. My children were younger when I made the photo transfers and assembled the crazy quilt blocks. Most of the time I enjoy taking it out of the specialty threads basket kept on the side table, look at it and fondly reminisce, and then put it back. Sometimes I add some embroidery stitches to the piece.
Lately I have been reflecting on the passage of time and how things change and yet how things remain the same. The threads of friendship connect us to one another and remind us of that special circle that goes around us. When you see an old friend after a long span of time it is almost as if the time between collapses and disappears. You catch up on things, renew the friendship, and the connection can grow stronger. Friends are truly wonderful.
The quilt top for my Aunt Ethel got layered and safety pin basted last week, a major accomplishment. Crawling around on a hardwood floor is not my idea of a good time but taping the backing down taut ensures a smooth and pucker free quilt sandwich. Machine quilting something this large on a regular sewing machine is a little bit like wrestling an alligator but it builds character. This design is a simple tiling pattern that my friend Cindy found at the International Quilt Festival in Houston and I used floral fabrics from my collection. This is not an art quilt which is what I prefer, but my aunt does not want an art quilt - she likes flowers and wants something pretty for her bed. One thing you always need to keep in mind when you are creating something is who is this for? When I am doing something for someone else my intent is always to visualize and bring to life what it is that they may not quite be able to express. Currently my focus is to create what is inside of me and express myself fully and move away from being other directed. I still have a need to do things for others and this does not at all detract from my own creative expression but rather enhances it.
After seeing the quilt we made to benefit the Lupus Foundation at the Heart of the Valley Quilt Guild Saturday Sew-In in January, I decided to start a new quilt using my own version of the pattern for my Aunt Ethel. In order to make it scrappy I am cutting each large square from a different floral fabric from my collection. the corner square fabric is a medium gold with stars and the retangles are a cream on cream pale floral fabric. So far I have 16 blocks assembled into one 4×4 unit here. After putting together a total of 6 sections I will design a border and then machine quilt it.
Posted by: Mary @ 9:46 pm
This past weekend I finished a quilt that forms a Shafts of Light Diptych with a quilt created ten years ago, in the year 2000. The original quilt was done as a challenge for the Greater Hartford Quilt Guild retreat that year. The challenge was to interpret the Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem, Voices of the Night/Prelude, in the form of a quilted object. This theme manifested itself to me as a visualization of abstract beams of light penetrating through the forest. I drew my design on an 18″x24″ newsprint pad (I probably sketched thumbnails first but don’t remember after 10 years) and when satisfied with the angles and layout made a paper pattern using drawing paper. The design or layout of the second quilt is a mirror image of the first quilt but with different fabric choices. It is a rare occasion for me to make a second version of anything as all my work is one of a kind.
The fabrics in both cases were chosen intuitively which is how I usually work. The only plan I did have before choosing colors was the placement of darks, mediums, and lights. Value changes have more of an impact than color because it is differences in value or shading that give a piece contrast and definition. I tend to buy fat quarters (18″x22″ or half a yard cut in half) as that gives me a lot more variety and depth in my pieces. To make a piece like this I drag out all of my fabric and go through it and choose the ones that interest me and that might work until I have a pile of fabric. This is my palette. When I shop for fabric, which isn’t often these days as I have enough on hand, I do that intuitively too, and not with a specific project in mind but with the feeling that I am adding to my palette.
These two quilts are paper pieced which is a method where the pieces of fabric are pinned or held to the wrong side of the paper pattern sections and then you flip it over and sew on the lines on the top of the paper with the fabric underneath the paper. I love to design my own paper piecing patterns and have a collection of those. The only tricky part is that everything is reversed or mirror imaged which can lead to some interesting mistakes. You can find good information about paper piecing on the Carol Doak web site if you are interested. Both pieces are free motion machine quilted and the first quilt (on the right) has beads sewn onto the surface which was done after the quilting was completed. I learned to free motion quilt in several workshops a long while ago and I have taught free motion quilting. There are some excellent books out now that describe the process and the best advice I can give you is to loosely hand baste (so the pins don’t get in the way) a small whole cloth sampler (18″x18″ to 24″x24″) using cotton batting the first time (it doesn’t slip around), drop your feed dogs, put your free motion foot on your sewing machine, relax, and just doodle and play with it until you feel comfortable doing it on a real quilt.
Here is the photo memory wall quilt that I gave my daughter Marianne for Christmas. It was started in a workshop at the quilt retreat and finished at home. Printed Treasures inkjet printable fabric sheets are washable and colorfast and were used to print these photos with excellent results. A few years ago I made a photo bed quilt for her brother Joe with computer and monitor blocks that I had designed. Screen shots of video game scenes were printed using a different brand of inkjet printable fabric sheets and the colors washed out when I washed the quilt. It was very upsetting to have this happen but now I am going to redo the screen shots for his quilt with Printed Treasures brand fabric sheets and applique the retangles down over the washed out scenes.
It has been a busy month and I am behind in posting to my blog. Here is the quilt I made for my Aunt Ethel for Christmas. I decided to bring it to her a few weeks early for her birthday and she just loved it. It is a lap quilt approximately 45″ by 60″ which is the perfect size for living in a convalescent type situation. It was started at the quilt retreat in a Quilt Bus class with Kris Driessen from a pattern by Phoebe Moon called Stars in My Window. The design was square so I added strips on either end to make it rectangular. The fabrics are mostly florals and vintage late eighties and early nineties from stash.
Last weekend I went on a 3 day quilt retreat at YMCA Camp Hazen in Chester, CT put on by the Heart of the Valley Quilters of Portland, CT. About 55 women attended the event and it was a wonderful and refreshing respite from daily life. We talked, sewed, laughed, and ate our way through the long rainy weekend, inside the rustic lodge on the edge of a lake. Everyone brought their own projects to work on and their sewing machines and power strips and tons of fabric. There were workshops with different teachers and I have taught at previous retreats as well. The photo memory quilt workshop I took with Debbie Sierpinski was such a creative class and the results were spectacular. I also took a Stars in My window pattern workshop with Kris Driessen of the Quiltbug in NY. I will post photos of both quilts after Christmas as they are both going to be Christmas gifts and I need to machine quilt both of them by then. Here I am at the retreat.
The valances got finished tonight and now I have pictures of the finished quilt as well as the valances. This gives me a real sense of accomplishment to be finishing things. It also motivates me to continue on with self directed creative work. I am starting to get ideas about designing new quilts for the walls and need to put some sketches down on paper. Some of my best thinking occurs while driving and I have been doing a lot of that lately. Pages of loosely drawn thumbnail sketches are a great way to sort out and compare a lot of different ideas. Usually I use either a sketchbook or computer paper. If the design lends itself to the computer I still sketch on paper first. The touch of hand to paper with pen or pencil activates a different part of your brain and thought process than hand to mouse. Working in a variety of ways keeps your work fresh and your wellspring of creativity overflowing. This is my 50th blog post.
This is the color palette chosen for painting my bedroom in my it’s about time redecorating scheme. It has been a major project for me the past 2 weeks, from emptying the room to prepping the walls to painting the walls and then the trim, followed by putting everything back in the room. The room is finished and looks fresh, light and airy, while my knees are recovering from all that lifting and climbing up and down on the ladder. The walls are Hosta Flower, a pale lavender, and the trim is Swiss Coffee, a creamy off white. The paint is by Behr from Home Depot and the Behr web site has some great tools for choosing a color palette. I took my paint swatches to Joann Fabrics and picked out the fabric shown in the background of the photo for new valances. I plan on designing and creating a series of new quilts for the walls. Possible themes being considered are mountain, ocean, desert, and sky for the four different walls, with a diptych on the longest wall. I have not yet decided on the overall look or theme and may mix new and old pieces to show transition and change. Last night I finished machine quilting the last border of my fall leaves quilt for my bed, shown below, and just need to finish it off with the binding - a rich green batik seems to work best to unify the piece. The colder fall weather with a dusting of snow the other night on my way home from work motivated me to make the final push to get this quilt, 6 years in the making, finished and onto my bed.
My fall leaves quilt is heading into the home stretch. Last night I finished thread painting the leaves into the colored band border. All that is left to do is the meandering line quilting in the last white border and then the binding. My quilt should be done before winter sets in so that it can go on my bed. This quilt was started 6 years ago and has been to quilting retreats and been a long time in the making. Here are some photos showing how I take over the dining room table to work on the machine quilting. I have a Bernina 1090 which was purchased at a Super Bowl Sunday sale 15 years ago and it still runs great. It is like wrestling an alligator to roll the quilt to get the center portions between the free motion foot and the right side of the machine, bit it can be done. I did not want to send this quilt out for professional machine quilting because I wanted the work to be totally mine. The machine quilting gloves have small rubber bumps on the palms and fingers which provide good traction and flow for moving the work under the needle as it goes up and down.
These Christmas ornaments were made from my own foundation paper pieced designs this week using some of my favorite fabrics. My quilting patterns are designed in Adobe Illustrator and previously in MacDraw when I had a Mac Plus (my pattern collection goes way back). Foundation piecing is one of those techniques that people seem to either love or hate - there is no in between. Carol Doak is the queen of paper piecing if you are interested in learning more about this method and these types of patterns. To me they are a lot of fun to put together and you get extremely accurate piecing and points.