Sweet! 16

Ok, so I finally quilted something other than circles and stipples, thanks to my HQ Sweet 16. It’s SO much easier to focus on FMQing when you’re not wrestling the quilt around a domestic sewing-machine needle. Here’s the quilt (awful pic, I know; more on that later):


And here are close-ups of the quilting:





I did an all-over leaf pattern, with a flower pattern on the borders. It was fun (ok, yes, I’m a dork).
I’m still having problems taking full-length pics of my quilts. I can get the close-ups to represent the colors just fine, but there are problems with lighting when I have to back up for the wider-angle pics. We’ve had rain in Central Texas (hallelujah! finally!) for the past few days, so no outdoor pics are possible. I’ll keep working on it, though.

Back to work now!

Quilt As You Go

I seem to have a never-ending supply of scraps. This comes in handy when I’m reluctant to cut into my gorgeous “new” fabrics (although yes, I am fully aware that my kids would sell my gorgeous fabrics in a garage sale for nothing were I to head for the Big Quilting Studio in the Sky).
Anyway, I kept stitching the scraps together, then joining them with other fabric, until I had 12 of these 18” squares:


Around the same time, I ran across this “quilt as you go” tutorial, so I decided that would be perfect for my blocks. I do get tired of wrestling big quilts under the needle of my machine to quilt them.
This time, I quilted these blocks individually, then attached them together according to the tutorial. It was easier than I thought it would be, and I love the result.


Next up on the agenda: finishing up some old WIPs and UFOs, and working on some surface design techniques. But the next pieced quilt I make WILL use some of those gorgeous “new” fabrics!

Catching Up

I’ve had a burst of energy after a rather draggy February. Fortunately, I know that around January/February my creativity tends to hibernate, so I’ve learned to be patient with it, confident that I can benefit from the creative “downtime.”

But the weather has turned all spring-like: warm, sunny days that make me want to tackle all those projects I’ve been thinking about but haven’t gotten around to. Of course, the problem is that the more time I spend working on projects, the less time I have to document or share them. And when I have lots of time to write blog posts, it means I’m not getting any work done, so there’s nothing to share (this is a corollary of that money/time conundrum; when there’s money for art, there’s no time, and when there’s time that usually means there’s no money).

Anyway, here are some of the things I’ve been creating/working on:

I finally got around to creating a portrait quilt, which has been on my wish list for a while. I’m using Maria Elkins’ technique here, which is a lot of fun and not nearly as hard as I thought it would be. I’m not particularly thrilled with how this turned out, but I learned a lot about both fabric and portraits that work, and those that don’t:



Btw, this is my lovely daughter, Amanda. I’ll be making more of these. I think I may make one for every member of my family, then stitch them all together.

This past weekend the weather was so gorgeous that I had to get outside. That always makes me think of dyeing/painting fabric for some reason, even though I typically end up doing it in the house. But I ended up creating some screens for deconstructed screen printing and then setting them in the sun to dry. Here is the result of my first deconstructed screen printing project:



I’m really happy with this and loved the process. I’ll be doing more of this, as well.
While I had thickened dyes mixed up, I decided to paint on some fabric:



I’m not sure what I’ll do with this yet; I may cut it up and reassemble it.
And, I finally got around to ordering some Citra Solv (and some magnesium, which my body is always low on, while I was at it) so that I could try a technique for creating cool art papers. This is a messy process and the Citra Solv has a strong odor, so it’s best done outside. Plus, a sunny day helps the papers dry quickly. Essentially, I started with a National Geographic magazine and brushed concentrated Citra Solv on the pages, then closed up the magazine and let it sit for a while. I squeezed out the extra liquid/ink, then tore out the pages and laid them out to dry (this technique was in a recent issue of, I think, Cloth, Paper, Scissors). Here are the results:



Aren’t these scrumptious?

I’m almost finished with this small (about 8x10) piece I started a very long time ago. This is silk that I painted after applying a resist. I stitched it with wonderful 30wt. Trilobal poly thread, and added a dyed silk border. I’m still debating on whether to add a binding, create an envelope finish, or stitch around the edges:



Here’s a sneak peak of a wall quilt I’m working on; you’ll just have to wait to see the whole thing when it’s finished:



Let’s see, what else? Oh, here’s a wall quilt I finished a month or so ago, but I don’t think I’ve posted it yet. This is reverse appliqué made from batik-fabric charm squares. I added some beads and hand-stitching for embellishment, but it’s hard to see them in the photos:



And a close-up:



And finally, here’s my 6x6” weekly journal square, #50:



#51 is from Valentine’s week; it’s finished, but I haven’t taken pics yet. #52 is from my birthday week, and I haven’t finished it yet. And that brings me full circle—a FULL YEAR of weekly 6x6” journal quilts! I’m excited to stitch them all together. Stay tuned for the final results of that year-long project!
And don’t forget to check out my other blog, A Year of Pleasures, to see my latest fascination with cotton yarn.

I hope the weather where you are is showing some lovely promises of Spring, as it is here in Central Texas!

Quilts for Kids

Well, A quilt for A kid:

If you don’t know about Quilts for Kids, check it out here: http://www.quiltsforkids.org/

There are a lot of quilting groups and organizations that get together and make quilts for Quilts for Kids, but you can also make them on your own. Either use your own fabric, or contact the organization (click the “Volunteer” button on the site) and they will send you the fabric and instructions for creating a child-sized quilt.

I’m trying to get my employer to add Quilts for Kids to the list of organizations eligible for matching donations and volunteer hours. My company encourages us to donate 10 volunteer hours a year to a non-profit group, so I’m half-way there, since it took about 5 hours to make this quilt.

And, if I can get 9 of my fellow employees (there are about 45,000 of us) to agree to donate their hours (or $100) to Quilts for Kids, the company will match my volunteer hours with a cash donation.

I considered volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, since I think it would be least interesting to build a house for a day or two. Once I found out, though, that I could QUILT for 10 hours instead, there was no turning back. Who knew that volunteering could be so much fun?

FFFC #40: Milk—It Does a Quilter Good

December’s Fast Friday Fabric Challenge was really fun. The idea was to use product packaging, particularly the colors of the packaging, to influence a still-life-format quilt with a plant theme.

I knew right away that I wanted to use this milk carton, since I love the colors. It makes me happy every time I pull it out of the refrigerator (maybe that’s why I drink so much milk?):

The red, white, and blue colors were easy to work in, but I wasn’t sure how to work in the white & black of the cow “print.” Eventually, I decided I liked the idea of a bowl of ice cream (with fudge sauce, of course) to tie in to both the cow colors and the milk connection to the packaging. Anyway, here is the result:

I like the finished result, but my vertical and horizontal lines are off somewhat, I guess because of the stitching; I definitely learned something about when to use extra stabilizer. I may go back and do some quilting to the piece, especially on the red “tablecloth.”

I really love the challenges in the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group and I’ve had fun with every one of the challenges so far. Take a look at some of the other members’ results; they are really creative!

The Eye of the Turtle

This month I’m a super-straggler in the Fast Friday Fabric Challenge group. Those darned Christmas stockings threw me behind :-)

November’s challenge theme was getting REALLY close-up and personal (microscopic, even) with the subject, and the technique was fabric painting. I started with a photo of a turtle I took at the Galveston aquarium, zoomed way in on the turtle’s eye, and painted it on fabric.

Then, I machine-quilted the piece like crazy. I lost the 3-d effect of the eye in the transition from the photo to the piece, and I don’t know that it’s recognizable as an eye, but I had a lot of fun doing it. Here is the finished piece:

Now, on to December’s challenge!

Time to Complete Those WIPs

Time, that is, in two senses of the word: I have this week off and therefore have a little extra play-time, and it’s time to get this stuff off the sewing table/design wall and finish it.

So, after a very lovely and busy Christmas, I’ve started with the easiest WIP. This one just needed a hanger on the back and a signature to be finished:

This is a silk & wool piece, created using a technique from one of my favorite books, Stitching to Dye in Quilt Art by C. June Barnes. After stitching, dyeing, and shrinking the piece, I added the washers and beads, then sewed the piece to a painted canvas. I’m displaying it in our den, but it’s a fairly small piece on a huge wall, so of course I need to make at least one more to hang with it.

And, I’ve caught up with my 6x6” weekly journal squares; these are for the month of December (with the exception of this week, which I’ll complete by the end of the week).

This marks the crocheted Christmas afghan I was working on the beginning of the month:

This one is influenced by work, and the boring, repetitive tasks I had to spend too much time on. Overlaid on that, though, is a little Christmas spirit:

This one is a compilation of the fabrics I used to make the kids & grandkids Christmas stockings; I thought it represented the holiday lunches, open houses, shopping, and other Christmas preparations very well:

And, here are the Christmas stockings, the last of which I finished at 5 pm on Christmas eve:

Finally, here is my 6x6” weekly journal square for the week of Christmas. I free-motion quilted the names of family members who were at Christmas dinner and helped to make it a lovely day:

 

And now, back to work on those WIPs. Or I could start the next silk and wool piece . . . hmmm, I think I hear that silk calling my name . . .

View from the Top (Again)

The first time I made it a quilt, I likened it to reaching the top of a mountain in this now (slightly) more-familiar world of quilting. I still feel that way.

I’ve been a little embarrassed about this quilt, because it was so easily pieced out of large squares of fabric. I still wish I had put a little more effort into cutting and piecing the fabric, but now I know that I just didn’t have the self-confidence. Completing this quilt, though, has given me that confidence, so I have even bigger (meaning, of course “smaller” in terms of the piece size) plans for the next quilt. And so, here’s the quilt that I love not just for itself, but for everything it has taught me:

Making this quilt was just what I needed right now—no pressure to be creative, just a nice, solid project to take one step at a time. I finally used the fabric I bought a very long time ago just because I like it. Plus, we really needed a quilt for the guest room (the sofa in the picture above has a pull-out double-sized bed), so I feel like I’ve done something practical. And, as I said, I both learned a lot in the process of completing this quilt, and gained enough confidence to tackle something a little more difficult.

Now, I’m anxious to get started on the next quilt, and I’m trying to convert a double-sized pattern to a queen-sized one, and figure out whether I have enough fabric to manage that size. I see now why quilter’s complain about the math involved.

Here are some of the raw ingredients for the next quilt--fabric that’s been tucked in a drawer for a couple of years:

Stay tuned for progress notes and pictures!

I’m Still Here . . .

sort of. I haven’t felt very well since my surgery. I had my follow-up appt. with the surgeon yesterday, and he said he wouldn’t have expected that I would be chipper and feeling well at this point. He’s revised his recovery time from 6 to 8 weeks, since this is what he calls a “re-do” (the 2nd surgery for the same issue). Plus, I’m fairly sure that the surgery kicked off another bout of pancreatitis, which the surgeon had said was likely. ANYWAY, enough of this boring stuff.

I have been hand-quilting my Garden Path quilt since I was in the hospital three weeks ago. I actually started this quilt almost exactly two years ago; I was writing in my 10-year journal the other day and noticed an entry from two years ago where I had written about completing the quilt top.

And now, I’ve finished it! Garden Path is 42”h x 26”w and is machine-pieced, raw-edge appliquéd, and hand quilted. Here are the results:

And a close-up:

The center of this quilt was originally a "convergence"-style quilt (from Ricky Tims' book, Convergence Quilts). I cut the plants and butterflies out of batik fabric and machine-appliqued them over the center panel, then added the borders.

I feel such a sense of accomplishment when I finish something like this. Otoh, I’m temporarily project-less and I don’t have the energy to start something new. I’m sure if I look around, though, I’ll find plenty of WIPs from the last couple of years that I can work on.

Does This Path Have Heart?

I’m avoiding working on my flower quilt. It’s ready to stitch, and I’m in the “fear-of-messing-it-up” phase, so instead I’m finding ways to procrastinate. This is a piece I finished a while back, but it needed to be trimmed and have the binding sewn on:

A close-up of the beading at the top:

I quilted this piece on plain, white muslin, then colored it with Neocolor water-soluble crayons. Then I started beading, and I just couldn’t stop! The finished size is 10x14".

I call this “Does This Path Have Heart?” from Carlos Castaneda’s The Teachings of Don Juan. This is what kept running through my mind as was working on it. Castaneda, quoting don Juan, a Yaqui Indian, writes:

Look at every path closely and deliberately. Does this path have heart? If it does, the path is good; if it doesn’t, it is of no use. Both paths lead nowhere; but one has a heart, the other doesn’t.

One makes for a joyful journey; as long as you follow it, you are one with it. The other will make you curse your life. One makes you strong; the other weakens you.

A path without heart is never enjoyable. You have to work hard even to take it. On the other hand, a path with heart is easy, it does not make you work at liking it.”

This idea, of questioning whether a path has heart, is one I try to live by every day. At the end of my life, I hope that I can say that, most of the time anyway, I at least tried every day to choose the path with heart.

And speaking of, today is my one-year “anniversary” (I hate to use such a positive word for such a negative event) of being stricken with a brutal case of pancreatitis. I feel lucky to be alive, since the doctors say I almost died. I’m still wrestling with the physical after-effects of the ailment, but I feel stronger every day and more hopeful for the future. I’ll be having major surgery on June 1st to clean out some infected debris in my pancreas, and the thought of another hospital stay (after several months in the hospital last year) terrifies me. I’m trying not to panic or let that weigh too heavily on me right now. Instead, I’m working on meditating, deep-breathing, and positive visualization of the experience.

Like Having My Own Store!

I love having gifts in reserve to just pull out and give to people when the time is right.

My niece’s baby shower is today, so I went to “my store” (my stash) and pulled out this baby blanket I crocheted a while back (in the appropriate University of Texas colors, of course):

I’m not attending, so I made a deal with my daughter: if she would come by and get my gift and take it with her, I’d provide her with a gift for the mom-to-be. I had these onesies already dyed; two in a reasonable facsimile of burnt orange, and one tie-dyed version:

I hoped to discharge little longhorn logos on the burnt orange onesies, but since I’m not doing anything this week (see post below), that didn’t happen.

I love having my own “store!” Of course, now I’ll have to replenish the stock for the next baby that comes along—and in my huge family, I can guarantee that won’t be long.

Where Do I Put My Books Now?

I was able to finish sewing the binding on my screen-printed table runner while in the hospital (is it strange that I love hand-sewing the binding?), but then I needed to block it because it was so wavy.

It’s been a while since I blocked anything, but I didn’t bother to look up the directions, I just went ahead with it. Then I let it dry (and forgot about it) for 3 days.

I’m thinking I stretched it a little too tightly, because you can see where all the t-pins were. Plus, blocking it seems to have stretched out some of that lovely quilty puffiness that I like so much for pieces like this. Maybe I’ll rewash and dry it, and see if it straightens out.

It’s difficult to get good pics of a piece this long and narrow, but I’ve tried to capture most of it:

All the fabric in this piece is either screen printed or hand-dyed (LWI and shibori) by me. I created the pattern to piece it, which may seem like a minor accomplishment, but which actually took quite a while! Anyway, all that is to say I’m proud of it, pleased with it, and more than a little fond of it.

Of course, now that I have a lovely table runner, I had to clean off the breakfast room table. That means actually reshelving all those books I carry outside to the back patio to read on my breaks.

Two Down, Twenty-seven To Go

I always feel good when I complete a project since I’m so much better at starting than finishing them. I feel especially good today because not only is it a perfect Spring day, but I’ve completed TWO projects! And to top it all off, neither one of them will get tucked away in a dark closet.

The first one is a piece I started back in January (you can read about its birth in this post). Later, I added some color to it with Neocolor crayons:

I beaded this piece while watching (or mostly listening to) TV. When it was finally finished, trimmed it to 8”x10”, added a back and binding, and fused on a label:

This is going to my sister, Suzanne, and her partner Judith, who both have birthdays coming up. If you’re reading this, Judith, Surprise! Happy Early Birthday!

The second finished project started as a piece for Lily Kerns’ Fractal Fragments class at QU; I blogged about it here. I wanted to add a lot of fractal elements, but I just couldn’t get excited about it, so this morning I free-motion quilted the piece and made it into a pillow. I’ve never made a pillow before; it was fun!

And now, I think it’s nap-time . . .

Earth Day ATCs

I’ve signed up for the Earth Day ATC swap through a Yahoo list I’m on, and even though the ATCs aren’t due until the end of this month, I wanted to get them finished and mailed off.

• I started these by fusing scraps of the transformed ugly fabric (see the last post) to a black background.
• I sprinkled this with Bo-Nash powder, heated it, and rubbed a blue-green foil onto it.
• I laid an interesting piece of sheer fabric over that (that’s the blue, green, and purple fabric you see); it’s more sheer in some places than in others. I have no idea what it is, since I got it from the clearance bin at Jo Ann’s. Then I stitched it down with black cotton thread.
• I burned away the sheer part of the fabric with a wood-burning tool.
• I stitched painted Tyvek over the fabric and a layer of batting, then ironed it (with a piece of parchment paper on top, of course) until the Tyvek shriveled and melted.
• I sewed beads and broken shells on.
• I added hand-dyed fabric to the back and free-motion satin-stitched around the edge (I wanted a little “rougher” feel to the satin stitching to match the card, which is why I dropped the feed dogs. I actually liked this better than satin-stitching with the feed dogs up!).

Here are close-ups of each of the cards:

I think these ATCs are particularly appropriate for "Earth Day," since they remind me of Earth's strata (and the beads represent the gems and minerals found in the various layers).

As usual, my sweetie claimed one, and the other three will go to the swap (I need to remember to always make TWO extra now: one for her, one for me!).

My Girl

I finished the project for Terri Stegmiller’s Faces on Fabric class. This was a fun (but scary!) class; I love painting on fabric, but I’ve never tried painting a face on fabric before.

Once I put a certain amount of work into the wall quilt, it was scary to consider all the ways I could have messed it up while painting the face.

One blog-reader commented that she paints her faces first, then appliqués them onto the quilt; this way, if she ends up not liking the face, she can do another one. I may try that in the future.

But for this round, I had to work with I started with, and that required some rework here and there.

Btw, the flower on the left side is cut from what Sherrill Kahn calls “serendipity cloth”—you know, that piece of fabric lying around to mop up extra paint, wipe brushes on, etc. I love being able to “recycle” things in my studio.

My girl’s name is Penelope, which she hates, so she goes by Pen; her friend’s give her a hard time about this by calling her Pencil (this was funnier back when her face was simply pencil lines on fabric :-)).

Catfight!

Ok, just kidding, but it IS nice to hear family members squabbling (playfully, of course) over who gets this wall hanging:

This was the class project from Susan Brittingham’s Viewpoints class at Quilt U. She provided the project instructions for this one, and now I’m anxious to experiment with what I’ve learned and create more perspective quilts.

My family has made it clear that I won’t have any trouble getting rid of them once they are complete!