Commentary about works in progress, design & creativity
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I like it that people have chosen different colorways and color combinations.
I think I need to make a shrine to my favorite quiltmakers. Judy Martin is one of them.
She, periodically, posts a Quilt of the Moment (QOM) and the one she has now is gorgeous. You must go there right NOW and download the pattern, then come right back! Once the pattern is gone, it is gone forever; she doesn’t repost them or archive them or anything, so time is of the essence. It reminds me of my Spiky Stars quilt (must do something about that crappy picture!). It has that whole ‘the center is not the center’ thing going, which I really like.
I will post a picture here for anyone who makes a quilt from this pattern. Judy is also giving a prize to people who make a quilt with this pattern. Check out her site for specific details.
As you may remember I have been on a Bill Kerr/FunQuilts/Weeks Ringle kick lately, so when TFQ mentioned that Weeks had been interviewed on the Craft Sanity podcast, I had to go and look it up. After a lot of drama with the iPod, I was finally able to listen to it and a couple of other Craft Sanity episodes this morning.
Weeks Ringle talks (CraftSanity episode #41) about having a business that is craft/art related and how it works with her life balance. She comes to this discussion from her background and the bio of her life. It is great to get perspective on how she came to where she is now.
I had also downloaded a couple of others. One I listened to was with Rhonda Simmons (CraftSanity episode #31), a Vancouver artist with a website called AlteredEverything.com. She is taking the Art-o-Mat idea to Canada, calling it Outsider Art in a Box and she also does bodycasting.
I couldn’t stop, so I also started listening to the podcast Jennifer recorded with Anna Maria Horner. WOW! I am going to start reading her blog, I think.
The interviews that Jennifer does are quite long and in depth, which offers a very satisfying podcast listening experience.
The dishes and laundry are waiting and I am having another Manderly kind of day. Not as bad as the other day, but still kind of unfocused. The tab with my blog has been staring at me all morning making me think, as I have been plowing through some work, that I should write something. This was actually a good thing, because it spurred me on to go upstairs, turn on the sewing machine and sew. 
After sewing some hexagons, I took the Cheerful Baskets off the design wall so I could put the hexagons up. The photo on the left is my production today, though I did start sewing some of the triangles on earlier in the week. The big piece that I showed previously is also in there. I was really amazed at how fast these little hexagons turn into a hexagon with two triangles. Very satisfying. I always liked the Grandmother’s Flower Garden with diamonds in between and it just occurred to me that this is what I am making now in just a slightly different scale.
I don’t work with conversationals very often and now I know why. It is almost as though my eyes have a hard time focusing on so much visual stimulation in one piece of fabric. I don’t think that is what is happening, but that is what it feels like. The pieces that attract me the most are the ones that have a fairly clear and consistent background (one color). I don’t think that the entire piece looks horrible or anything, but it is a different kind of project to work on.
Below and right is my total progress. I put the pieces up so I could see what I had accomplished. I just put the pieces up on the design with very little rearranging. I did take care to place the monster pieces, of which there are several, far from each other. I’ll move the other pieces around as I get to it.
My next task is to figure out the normal size of a quilt. I don’t know if I will go for a full or twin yet. Some of it depends on how many hexagons I have (I haven’t counted, but I know I have a lot). I also don’t want to make the quilt three times the shape of my design wall, which I did with Thoughts on Dots last year, because that is a weird shape.
Following that, I have to cut more triangles. I went through all those that TFQ and Julie sent to me. I did start cutting more already and I have a great deal of respect for my friends, because they are a bit of a challenge to cut.
I found that my larger rotary cutter moved smoothly next to the triangle template. However, it felt too big, so I tried the smaller rotary cutter that TFQ usually uses. It didn’t roll quite as smoothly, so I’ll have to figure something else out.
One good thing about cutting triangles is that I get to look through and select red fabrics to use. I need to find a variety so I don’t use the same combinations over and over. So far I have cut batiks without hauling any bins down. I’ll get to that next.
I was pleased to see that she has a picture of Pamela Allen, doing what she does best: showing off her style (though she is a pretty great teacher as well).
I also love the Caroline and Co booth. I wonder if I could paint one of my rooms with those orange stripes; people may rebel and/or develop a sudden, recurring bouts of insomnia. I do like the cheerfulness, though.
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As I mentioned, I have had longarming on my mind lately. One of the things I have been trying to work out is how to use different colors and different machine quilting designs in one quilt. I don’t want my quilt to look like I didn’t think about the quilting design and just Pantographed over the whole thing. Quilting Arts has a pattern for a tree skirt and it occurred to me that this might be the PERFECT project for the longarm. I could sew several pieces of coordinating fabrics together, longarm it and then cut out the tree skirt. They suggest stamping and painting and embellishing, which is a good idea. Another project to think about!
I wasn’t that enamoured with the new colorways that DS came out with recently. I like the designs, but the colorways didn’t do much for me. Today I saw this photo (still working my way through the DS Pool on Flickr). These fabrics are obviously designed to be used together. That weird gold looks almost buttery next to the burgundy. It makes me wonder about a fat quarter pack. I have to stop myself, though, because there are many, many gorgeous fabrics that I could use with a bunch of fabrics I already have and these would almost certainly have to be used together and then what would I do with the finished project?
I am glad to see that these fabrics look nice together. Quilt Fabric Delights blogs about these fabrics and this purse at: http://quiltfabricdelights.typepad.com/quilt_fabric_delights/2008/09/i-sewed.html
Linda and Laura Kemshall are quilt artists extraordinaire. I love their Thr3fold Journal and the straightforwardness (is that a word??) and artistry with which they present their projects. They have come out with a new gift bag pattern via Quilting Arts. I looked at the pattern and it is kind of a backwards bag. What I mean by that is that you create, paint, embellish, bead and torture your fabric THEN you make the bag out of it. I can see where this pattern would work for stuff you already had around the house or for test techniques that you didn’t want laying around after you were done testing. These bags look pretty complicated, however. Please note that I haven’t made one, but I am very much a fan of he 10 bags an hour method. Let me know if you make one of these bags and how it turns out. I’ll be happy to post your photo to my blog or link to your blog etc from Artquiltmaker blog.
I saw this quilt in the Denyse Schmidt ‘Pool’ (DSP) on Flickr. The DSP is a group of photos of projects made from DS patterns or fabrics. It is interesting to look through and see the different projects people have made. I saw a couple of things, as I mentioned earlier in the week, that were inspiring.
TFQ asked for more information about the longarm demo I attended last week. As a result, I have been writing about in a letter to her, thus it is on my mind. As I was going through the photos on the pool, I saw this quilt and thought that the quilting design was interesting enough to note. One thing that Kit, from Always Quilting, said was that one needed to doodle designs to be prepared to draw them with the longarm.
Mom confirmed this when she went to try out her friend’s longarm. She said she thought it was about muscle memory.
This picture serves two purposes: the one above, obviously, but also to move me along in a task for my quilt class. I have been putting off creating the machine quilting design sheet for my beginning quilt class because they have totally lost interest and have not basted their quilts. I would like to teach more people to quilt, so it is worthwhile for me to create the worksheet for the future. Seeing this great design gives me a little incentive.
I am a huge advocate of Thanksgiving. I like it because there are no presents to manage. I don’t like the virtual lack of craft opportunities associated with T-day. So, despite the fact that Christmast is months away when I saw this great tree, I had to share it. I love the way Kathy at Pink Chalk Studio blends her colors and fabrics. I really like this tree and it looks like a project where you would get a lot of bang for your buck. Check out her blog.
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My computer is off. All good.
iTunes, however, is not on my computer and I decided to update my library while I supervised websurfing by certain individuals. In the course of updating iTunes, I came across Craft Sanity, a podcast by Jennifer Ackerman-Haywood. TFQ had mentioned a particular episode to me over the weekend and I went looking for it. I wasn’t able to figure out how to download one episode, so I went to her site and saw these beautiful photos of colors and fabric. Now, here I am blogging. Sigh.
Enjoy the colors!
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In a recent post I told you about some blue fabrics that had caught my attention. I have been working my way through a couple of different groups of photos on Flickr (the Denyse Schmidt Pool and IQFH). I saw this quilt by Two Dogs and a Quilt in the DSP and thought that it might make a good pattern for those blue fabrics. I’ll have to dig out the dimensions from the DS book I have. If the pattern isn’t in there, I don’t think I really need one anyway. 😉 See it on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/24268088@N08/2948711943/
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After scrolling through a few months of Field Trips in Fiber, I added Vicki’s blog to my blogroll. I really like her photos and two posts really floated my boat. First, on September 26, 2008, Vicki mentions the completion of MY Bullseye top in her post called Field Trippin’ the Web. I felt like all of this blogging is worth it when I saw my name.
Second, I laughed uproariously at Vicki’s post called Sanity Quilting. I know it probably wasn’t that funny in the moment Vicki was living it, but we have all been there and I could totally see the humor.
Nice work, Vicki, and thanks for blogging.
Yesterday was a gossamer or chiffon dress and drifting around Manderley kind of day. I mean that I drifted around the house from thing to project to computer to laundry not really accomplishing much as if I were a lady of leisure with servants to pick up after me.
The house is kind of suffering from my drifting, but I did accomplish a couple of things. First and foremost, I finished the Basket top. It was challenging to sew together. Somehow I couldn’t wrap my mind around a sensible way to put it together. I think the sashing tripped me up a bit. It is together now and nobody will know how much unsewing I did once it is quilted and hung.
It has now been named Cheerful #1: Baskets. TFQ thought up that name and I like it. It also implies that we will make more cheerful quilts together.
I need to make the back, which TFQ suggested be made out of a spring green fabric. I probably don’t have enough of one to make it, but I will collect a few spring greens and make it up. Then I will send it up to her and she will have Angie from the Quilting Loft quilt it. TFQ suggested it and I like the idea. I have a feeling quilt tops are going to pile up around here as my free time expands and we work through our financial issues.
Although I could have gone straight to working on a WIP such as the Spiderweb or the Tarts Come to Tea, I went, instead for a new project. The Eye Spy quilt for which TFQ, Julie and I have worked so hard cutting pieces has been on my mind lately. The offspring is probably too old now to appreciate the Eye Spy game, but I still wanted to put the quilt together, so I started.
My first impression of the piecing: FUN FUN FUN!!! I sewed a triangle on to a hexagon on opposite sides of the hexagon. I wanted to make sure I knew how this thing was going together, so I sewed the airplane to the yellow umbrella drink and it was really easy to put together. I couldn’t stop piecing last night and stayed up way too late. I just hope I have enough of the red triangles. I also have no idea what to do with the edges, but I will worry about that later. Right now Girls Just Want to Have Fun!
I have also been reading Ringle and Kerr’s Quiltmaker’s Color Workshop: The FunQuilts’ Guide to Understanding Color and Choosing Fabrics. I especially got into the text yesterday morning before I got up. I think my mind was in the mood for food, because when I went to the workroom a group of fabrics waiting to be ironed caught my attention. They were fanned out in a certain appealing way and I just had to take note.
I ironed them and cut the pieces I needed. These are the pieces I need for the FOTY 2008 quilt and they are currently on my design wall where I can admire them together. The blues are not completely matchy-matchy. There is something calming and/or restful about the color combination. I think I have good scale variations and may just have to do some project with just these fabrics. I am tempted to sew them together and keep them in a group in the FOTY quilt. We’ll see.
Finishing To Do List:
So, I think I have tidied up my mind enough to get moving on some other issues – real issues – but I am glad that I was able to clear out these ideas. I would love to hear your thoughts!
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