The Shopping, errr Creating Process

Okay kids. The project in the works right now is one that I hope to enter in a competition this year. The deadline is December 31, so I have a few months to make this happen.

The competition is one that involves a theme and a challenge fabric, which means that there is one fabric that I am required to use; I can use any number of other fabrics with it. So, I've chosen a picture for inspiration, and off I've gone!

The more I contemplate this goal, the more I think about how to actually achieve it, the more I realize that I'm embarking on a journey that will, at the very least, expand my comfort zone and push me to another level. My bag of tricks is getting bigger as we speak.

In the meantime, I'm still in the planning stages, where I'm trying to find the pieces of the puzzle that I'll need to bring the picture together. This weekend, I was in Baltimore for a wedding, and took the opportunity to scope out a few quilt shops in Maryland. On this adventure, it struck me how organic and nonlinear the creative process is. All it takes is looking differently at one thing, before doors are opened, and you've changed the scope of your search.

Case in point: I was struggling with how I was going to depict the grass in the foreground of this particular picture. One of the things I love about the scene is that the perspective creates a huge contrast between foreground grass and background grass. This grass in the foreground is long, straight, and very defined. I was finding it impossible to find grass like this anywhere...or even a pattern that would double for it. But then, I looked over at a fabric this weekend with fern leaves and butterflies, and saw it. The pattern I was looking for all along, in leaves, not grass. Now I'm looking all over for fern leaves that are not ridden with butterflies.

It's like that with everything...you never know where you'll end up, but sometimes I think finding your way there is the most fun. And a key component to the creative process.

She's Baaaaaaaack!

Your favorite burgeoning quilter has returned from the wedding and the honeymoon...both wonderful. I'll be posting pics of the honeymoon on the honeymoon registry blog soon. (When I say soon, I mean within the next two weeks, I'm hoping to do this.) The site address, just in case: www.honeymooninmexico.blogspot.com

I've been having a bit of a hard time getting back in the quilting swing of things, so to jump start my imagination and hopefully take my design/quilting skills to the next level, I've enrolled in a painting class at a local arts center. I had my first class yesterday, and it went pretty well. So far, we haven't made an actual picture...yet. But, we experimented with value, shading, color...the works. And already, my quilting brain is turning around, finding a way to apply what I'm learning in this class to the projects to come.

So, boys and girls, stay tuned. I'm getting back in the saddle, back on track, and back to quilting!

New Projects?

Okay, so I confess to falling victim to something I would like to term as "Wedding Brain." It seems as though, no matter how small and simple a wedding you want, there are still zillions of tiny details that are involved. The closer we get to the actual day, the more there seems to do. But, through the mires of RSVP cards and ceremony details glimmers a beacon of the quilter within.

I have been half-heartedly playing at the quilting game. I started a v. small wall quilt for a friend of mine who has been jokingly requesting one for a year now. I have yet to put the pieces together and make this a quilt.

Next up is a quilt that I had meant for somebody, but is being instead repurposed for Charles and I. I had already bought all the fabric, so may as well do it. However, the fabric in question is slicky, and shifts very easily. This makes it a nightmare to work with, so I'm taking it slowly. Very slowly.

Finally, I want to use up a lot of the fabric that I have in my stash. I've been trying to think of what sort of quilt I want to work on with this material. Then I was inspired by television. I kid you not.

I was watching this episode of Ace of Cakes, where a girl visited the bakery and helped work on a cake as her wish for the Make a Wish foundation. The whole episode was pretty inspiring in terms of the power art and creativity can have for those who are facing serious illness or obstacles in their life. Then I remembered the Project Linus chapter I had contacted earlier this year.

Project Linus is an organization that gives homemade blankets (quilted, knitted, crocheted, doesn't matter) to children who are in traumatic situations, like in an abuse shelter or a hospital. The idea is that the kids, while stuck in a very sterile environment that isn't homey, get to have something that someone made for them. It's a morale booster, and from what I've read, it makes a big difference in these kids' lives. Check out their website: www.projectlinus.org

So, fast forward to me sitting on my couch, watching Duff Goldman make a difference in this little girl's life through cakes. I became inspired, and now have the seedlings of a design for the next great quilt adventure.

And, don't worry, I have another surprise or two up my sleeve. If only this pesky wedding could take the backseat!

Grandma's Quilt is Done!

And here are the pics to prove it! Pic #1 is the whole quilt in one shot.



It all started here, with the center panel of the quilt. Look close enough and you'll see a little scene with pagodas and cute little paths and bridges. You can see the quilting stitches in this pic. Since I started quilting with this part of the quilt, the stitching here is at its most dense.



Here's a little bit wider of a view, with the center panel and levels of fabric surrounding it. I'm really happy with the fabrics I found for this quilt. They were so wonderful to work with, and exactly the perfect ones for the quilt giftee.



Speaking of those beautiful fabrics, check out these:


I bought them at a quilt festival in November. I spent quilt a lot of time with these fabrics, even before I started stitching. I tried out the fabrics against each other to figure out what would be the best configuration to piece the quilt top. This quilt was a good lesson in the fact that you can never really buy too much fabric, but you can buy too little. I thought I bought plenty of fabric at the festival, but once I started piecing, it turned out that I still needed more to fill out the design.

















Now check out this dragon fabric. It is gorgeous, and I think it was my favorite of the whole quilt. It works so well next to the red and green tree fabric.



The green fabric I used pulled a lot of the fabrics together, and the gold flecks in it were perfect against the bamboo fabric. This pic is a perfect showcase of all that stitching that drove me crazy with this quilt.



Speaking of that bamboo fabric, now we've made it out to the edges of the quilt. I love this bamboo fabric. Also note the binding at the edge of the quilt...it was stitched on by hand; I still have the remnants of calluses to prove it. I love the way these bindings turn out, but they are the one bit of the project that must be finished by hand.



Finally, we're at the end of our quilt story.



And the big moment...



A happy Grandma!

Catching Up

So, another quilt finished. The quilt for Charles's grandma was completed and handed off last week. It was only a couple months late...

Finishing this quilt brought so many emotions to the surface. Chief among them is relief. I feel as though this project, more than any other in my brief history as a quilter, held me hostage. So much went wrong, I had such a short time-frame, and the knowledge that I had missed the deadline for the first time ever was tough. Even more devastating was the problems I had in actually quilting the piece, the most ambitious quilting job I have tackled yet. I definitely bit off more than I could chew, and was heartbroken when it yielded results I didn't like.

I took a break from the quilt after Christmas, and the break had a mind of itself. Time stretched on, and I was stuck. I wanted to be quilting, but I couldn't move on to another project, and I had to screw up the courage to finish this one. It was the hardest thing I've done as a quilter to dive back in, not once, but twice, into working on this quilt.

In the end, of course, the quilt was beautiful. But, by the time I finished quilting the dang thing, there was little more to feel than relief. And now that it's completely finished and I have no projects on my immediate agenda, I feel free. Free to dream, free to play. And free to know that for now, and for a long time to come, there are no big humongoid quilts to finish.

So, now is the time for rest and for posting photos. I have some pics of the Christmas Inchies I made at the end of the year, and a ton of pics of the Grandma quilt. I will be posting them shortly.

For now, peace.

ARRRRRHGHHHHHH!

Something that I'm doing is not right.

Something that I'm doing is leading me down a road without an option of reverse. It's screwing up the entire backside of the Grandma quilt, and I feel like there's nothing I can do about it.

Here's what's happening. As I quilt, the backing fabric is bunching up and getting sewn in puckers and grossness. Everything looks great from the front, but the back is worse for the wear. My concern is that it's not going to feel comfy to sleep underneath, and it's going to wash poorly. Really, when I think about it hard enough, the problem is that it's very NOT perfect.

When quilting in general, I think there's a certain amount of imperfection that I have come to accept as part of the craft. If you want something perfect, you would get something from the store. I am making hand-crafted love via cloth, and that means that some things are going to be uneven, and it will never be perfect. But, I also expect everything I do to be pretty. This, what's happening on the back of this quilt, is NOT pretty.

I was having this problem before I stopped working on the quilt, but thought I had localized the damage and could start over. In the end, I would just make the damaged portion of the back the spot where I put the quilt label. But now. But now.

Last night I started quilting on the other side of the quilt, thinking it would be a fresh start. A fresh chance to get it right and keep things straight. NOPE. It started again. More bunching. More creating folds and creases that would carry out and out and out in the quilt. At this point, I'm too far in to start over. There are 1500 yards of thread stitched into this quilt, so it's really irreversible. I have to either accept it or trash the whole thing. And, after the zillions of hours and hundreds upon hundreds of dollars I've invested, trashing it is an unthinkable option.

I just need a quilt fairy to come down and tell me what the hell I'm doing wrong, how to fix it, and what to do now. Does anyone know a quilt fairy?

Realisitc Expectations

Last we heard from our little quiltress, she was racing to complete two quilts by the end of the week in order to reach her Christmas goal.

She failed.

Here's the story. I got to a point, the day before we left town, when I realized that no matter what I did, I was not going to finish the quilt for Charles's grandma. So, why was I driving myself crazy? Why was I torturing myself over the quilt and going crazy? I had lost out on so much already, was I going to lose out on the Christmas holiday?

So, I stopped work on it and focused on finishing the quilt for Jacquelyn. Which was finished on time and VERY well received. I don't know that I've ever felt happier giving one of my quilts away. I know that it's something she'll have and treasure for a long time. I'm glad I could give it to her.

Unfortuantely, I got so caught up in the moment, and my camera ran out of batteries, so I don't have any pics of the finished product. But, being close to the new owner, I'm sure I can get some pics in the next time I see her.

So, what's next? Finish the Grandma quilt. I'm set up to start back up on it as soon as I get the nerve. Which needs to be soon, because otherwise I can see momentum going out the window. After the Grandma quilt, I have two other large quilts I wanted to make. However, I feel that I need a break from the large tradtional quilts and may focus on some smaller art quilts for a while.

The biggest lesson I've learned is to accept my own limitations and take one day at a time. No more panicking about self-inflicted quilt deadlines!

The Race is ON!

I have my primary machine back, which means I'll be sewing like mad until Christmas. I have four days until we leave for St. Louis, and two quilts to finish!

Can she do it? (You may be asking.)

Only time (and short amounts of it) will tell.

Xanadu

I want to go to a land where there are no sewing machines, no holiday deadlines, no mondo quilts.

My primary sewing machine jammed up on me. Turns out it was likely my fault, this time. I was using spray adhesive in a project, and it ended up in the guts of my machine. Apparently these kinds of things migrate up the needle, up the shaft, through the machine, until BAMMO! The machine gives up.

Fine. I took it into the dealer, dropped it off, desperately hoping to get it back before Saturday, switched quilts, and started working on the other machine. Then, out of the clear blue, the tension gets all wonky, and I can't fix the stitches. In fact, I spend a good twenty minutes ripping stitches out.

Two machines. Two quilts. And nothing is getting done.

*CRIES*

Quilter's Depression, Part II: The Grandma Quilt

And they just keep getting worse.

Here's the original plan for the Grandma Quilt (for Charles's Grandma, who likes all things Asian, has a soon-to-be mint-green-themed room, and needs a warm blanket):

Flannel back with brown background, tiny flowers, and mint-green leaves. Wool batting. Both to preserve the requirement of warm.
Front made of Asian-themed cotton fabrics that can easily be washed and not fall apart. I found these fabrics at the Quilt Expo a few weeks ago, and they made me giddy. They still do.

So, this weekend I sat down to the task of designing the quilt top. I laid all the fabrics out and auditioned them against each other. What would be the best way to arrange them? Which fabrics should go next to each other? Which fabrics should NOT go next to each other? How could I make the most use of the fabrics and let their lushness speak for themselves? I came up with a relatively simple design, and couldn't wait until I was able to finish it.

I started piecing the top, and all looked promising.


Until I ran out of fabric. Somehow I made a miscalculation, I cut perpendicular to the selvage when I should have cut the other way. Looking back on it, though, I wonder if even that would have helped to have cut in a different direction. I just seriously miscalculated the amount of fabric I had.

So, I tried to get on the Internet and find the fabric I was needing, and have it sent to me. But, no matter how long I searched, how hard I toiled, the fabric was not to be found on the Internet. Just like the wedding dress I tried on at House of Brides in Schaumburg, it appears that the fabric I have in my possession doesn't exist. Just like I did when I found the dress, I went to the designer's website and tried to find it. No dice.

If it weren't for the fact that I actually have the fabric in my hot little hands, I would think I had merely dreamt it into being. What is this talent I have for finding and falling in love with non-existent designs?