Saturday, December 20, 2014

Plugging away, getting things done slowly

I have been back in the quilting saddle, but my horse keeps turning me away from the blogging station.  (Gotta blame something!)  I've been busy with several projects, among them some finishes!

Finishes: 

Crumbs and Behind Bars were quilted just before I left Michigan. I finally got the bindings done.
I backed the crumb quilt with a piece of red seersucker and narrow strips of floral fabric. I brought the backing around to the front as binding.  
Crumbs.  queen futon.
detail of Crumbs.  Note: six inch ruler for scale.
Crumbs backing
Behind Bars has a rather plain creamy backing and striped binding.


Behind Bars
detail - Behind Bars 
Marilyn Lange did all the quilting. I am happy with both of these quilts.












































Off the wall and waiting for further action...

You gotta listen to your quilt.  I made this red /green liberated medallion before I moved and planned on adding to it. This fall I put another border on it.  I thought I'd be adding more borders, but everything I tried just didn't work.  The quilt said, "STOP".  So I did.
this quilt said STOP!



Nine-patch rejects revived

Last month I was going through one of my boxes and found a lot of nine-patches that were from an exchange I participated in many years ago.  I decided on a whim to use them up (now or never).  Of course, this was supposed to be a quick project.  Not so fast! More than a few of these blocks were cut smaller than the needed 3.5 inch dimensions, or were sewn crookedly.  At first I un-sewed a few and put them back together. That was a chore.  Then I remembered Gwen Marston's mantra,"If it is too small, add on; if it is too big, cut it off".  Bingo!

9-patch detail. Note strips added to the red/green square



 3 inch 9-patch 


I am so happy to have an empty design wall.  I get to play again!

Wishing all of you a pleasant holiday and a Happy New Year!




Wednesday, September 24, 2014

Back in the Quilting Saddle

May, JuneJulyAugust, September.  Wow. That middle part was all a whirl!
Yes, we did move "on time" and arrived in Belfast, Maine shortly after Memorial Day.  We looked at houses the day after we arrived and put an offer on one that very afternoon.  By the next afternoon, we had the contract!  We closed on the house about three weeks later and the movers (from Michigan) arrived the very next morning. It seems as though movers have jets on their trucks. They get to their destination so quickly. (Note: we had been watching the real estate listings all winter, so we knew pretty much which houses we wanted to see.  Also, our buyer's agent had been in communication with us throughout, so he also knew and had everything lined up.  The house we bought was at the top of our list.)

Once we were in the house, our time was spent unearthing our stuff from all the boxes.  We did it slowly, so there has been almost no need to re-arrange things.  We did have to paint the living room, put shelves in a linen closet and in the bathroom. And of course, we set up the quilting studio.  This space may be evolving a bit more, as I do need to find a good work table,  but I now have space for a large quilting frame.  I set it up yesterday, but now am waiting until the roofers finish all their pounding before I spend more time in there.  House and studio pics will come in another posting.

For at least 17 years BQ (Before [I began] Quilting) an old quilt hung on my living room wall.  The quilt had been found in one of the grandmother's trunks. It had no known history, and she wasn't a quilter.  It was made from silk neckties and brocades and was a vibrant mix of colors.  Given my ignorance of the care for old fabrics, especially silk, the long exposure to daylight faded much of the colors and many of the silk pieces were crumbling when I took it off the wall and packed it away in a pillow case.  I have looked for a photo of it when it was in good shape, but I can't locate one.  The photo below shows it as it looks now.

faded silk quilt



















Believe it or not, the block is a 60-degree diamond, pieced with random strips in log cabin fashion. The black angles, which meet in the rectangles, make it difficult to see the actual block.

60-degree diamond
























The block and the resulting pattern has always intrigued me. Last October at the last Beaver Island Quilt Retreat, I began an attempt to recreate the pattern. I decided to use my shot cottons, mixed with plaids, dots, and stripes.  I cut muslin templates of the 60 degree diamond so I'd have consistency in the final size. All the strips were sewn on to the muslin, log cabin style,  beginning with the red scraps in the middle.  Sounds easy, but I got so confused as I was piecing. I was trying to achieve a herringbone look within the block. Most of the time I would get one side ok and the opposite end just wouldn't work out.  Consequently, I finished  far fewer blocks than I had anticipated at the retreat.  I sort of liked my work, but wasn't too excited about it.  It seemed too busy and I had perhaps too small of a sample to handle the busyness.

Gwen Marston and me, with my work on the wall
















It is amazing  when one steps away from problems for a bit that a solution becomes apparent.  I put this project away and didn't look at it again until I established my studio here in Belfast.
I decided I needed to calm the piece down.  So I made semi-monochromatic green blocks and tried them out. I chose green because almost all the blocks I had made had a touch of green, and it is the complement to the orangey-red/pinks, too.  I sent photos to two good friends, Elisa and Jean, and they sent me their comments. (Thanks !)
Here are some of my arrangements and then the final trimmed down piece.




done!




















Now, this will sit on the shelf while I contemplate the quilting pattern... and hopefully I will come up with a good idea.  In the meantime, I am happy to be back in the saddle.





Tuesday, April 22, 2014

Entertaining myself

The house selling process is coming along pretty well.   We hope to be on our way East by the end of May.  The whole time has been exciting, nerve-wracking, tedious, endless, and busy.  We are fortunate to have neighbors who go South for the winter and allowed us to use their house for about a month while we did the spit polish cleaning before the house listed, and then during the showings and inspections.  That was such a help. You can't tell a dog and cat to stop shedding or to quit bringing in debris from their daily outings.  With the dog and cat out of the house and us in socks only state, we managed to get the house ready with minimal stress.

I found I still needed to keep myself creatively busy to get a good nights sleep and to feel a sense of accomplishment so here's what I did during my down time:

Looked for interesting reflections and photographed them.  Here's a sampling
Neighbor's house reflected on the glass of a print of a fisher-boy

Snow, lamp and shade and my husband on glass of another painting

Primroses in the window

the same primroses in the glass of the china cabinet












































































Had some fun with punchneedle embroidery.
 I don't do this often, as it is tedious, but I was without a sewing machine and I didn't want to haul my scraps over to our "borrowed house".  First I made up a kit as a warm-up project.

4" x 4"















Once that was completed, I sketched a cottage by a lake onto a piece of muslin and had fun picking the thread colors and figuring out the details as I went along.

4" x 6"















Explored lines, color, and space using fabric.
This is just an "exercise".  It is not meant to represent anything.  (The only functional design wall I have right now is a piece of foam-core board that is covered with black fabric.  Its real purpose is a background for photographing light bordered quilts.)  When I was playing with the purple,pink, and white fabrics and began sewing them together, I realized that I could add black scraps to make "empty space" as another feature.

trial and error

"Good and Plenty" - all sewn up.  There is a black border surrounding the center.



Monday, March 3, 2014

Play time keeps me sane

Sorry I have been absent for so long. Since October I've been cleaning, polishing, packing.  We are in the process of selling our home for a move to Maine.  That is a long time dream and for us it is move now or never.  We know where we want to live, but won't own a house to go to until after we get there. This makes for some challenging packing decisions...what to bring... what to pass along to others, etc.

Anyway, we are finally at a point where we haven't too much to do and we can now breathe a little.  Breathing a little means time to play with fabric!  I've packed a lot of my larger stash, but scraps are still accessible.  I've challenged myself to play with solid scraps.  I have a library of Gwen Marston's books and look through them regularly.  I'm sure you'll see the influence of her work on mine.


A Small Study   10" x 10"



Liberated Square in a Square  9"x9"

Another liberated square in a square that morphed into a "stripe in a square".  12" x 12"

Liberated Log Cabin   I didn't like this very much, so I kept one block and cut up the others

Log Cabin Medallion.  The cut up blocks made one border


Log Cabin Medallion as it is now.  22" x 22" .
 Ran out of fabric!  I'll add to it when I get to Maine and unpack my stash.